A Day of Food!

Our most recent project for ESF is to document a day of eating. This assignment, though fun, could not have taken place at a worse time for me, considering finals and the utter lack of time to make food. I'm sure we all share the same feelings, but have all sucked it up and made some amazing blog posts. Lately I have been very interested in reducing packaging, so I decided to add that component to my post to take a look at what kind of waste I produce in a day, and to inspire others to perhaps do the same. Here's what I ate today:

I woke up at 5am this morning in order to go study for a midterm. I'm a firm believer in eating a good breakfast every morning, and get quite cranky if I don't. I'd had Trader Joe's free range eggs the past couple of days, and after reading the linked article, I had sort of lost my appetite for them. I looked around my kitchen to consider my options, and found this:



A potato. I don't normally eat potatoes for breakfast, but I'd had the potatoes for a few days now and since I'm going to be gone during spring break, I decided I ought to use it. Since I don't own a functioning computer, I used my IPhone to search for "Breakfast Potato recipes" on Google and found a fairly simple one.

Easy Breakfast Potatoes:

The recipe called for 2 large russet potatoes, but all I had were baking potatoes, so I just used one big one of those. I then poked holes in it with a fork and microwaved it for 3 minutes. Then I diced it.



Then I put some olive oil in a frying pan...



And tossed it with the potatoes, rosemary, and sage ( I had to substitute sage for parsley because I didn't have any).


I let it cook while covered for a bit...



And then browned the sides by stirring the potatoes over higher heat. Then I put it in a bowl...



...Added some ketchup and ate it!



Potatoes are very filling, and I headed off for my early morning study sesh feeling very satisfied. After my morning classes, I wanted to stay on campus to continue studying, so I headed to the cafeteria to see what I could find. The vegan stand was serving vegan mushroom stroganoff with sides of steamed broccoli and russet potatoes. I wasn't really in the mood for more potatoes, but I got the dish anyways and accompanied it with one of those delicious dark-colored mini loaf things. It was good, but again, very filling.



After studying for awhile, I headed out to the media lab to work on my audio production project. I didn't end up getting out until around 9:30, so when I got home I need to make a quick dinner: Oatmeal with brown sugar and milk!




Throughout the day I was drinking tap water from my REUSABLE bottle. I don't normally drink anything other than water, which sounds healthy, but really I think it's because I'm cheap and don't like high fructose corn syrup. (It's made from corn, silly!) Speaking of high fructose corn syrup, I'd like to ask you to check out the labels on the bottled drinks sold at USF. It's actually quite a challenge to find anything without high fructose corn syrup!
I also ate a banana while studying, but I don't have a picture of it.


Condensed List of Food with Packaging/Waste:

BREAKFAST:
- 1 baking potato (bought in bulk, no packaging)
- 1 pinch dried rosemary (came in small plastic container)
- 1 pinch ground sage (came in small plastic container)
- 1 pinch salt (came in large paper container)
- 1 pinch pepper (came in small paper container)
- 2 Tbsp ketchup (came in plastic container)

So for breakfast, there was several ways to eliminate the waste I produced. Here's how:
- rosemary: comes fresh and dried in bulk
- sage: comes fresh and dried in bulk
- salt: comes in bulk
- pepper: comes in bulk
- ketchup: can be made by hand

LUNCH:
- meal made by Bon Appetit (got it for here, so no to-go packaging)

This meal was difficult to judge because it was made by Bon Appetit and I don't know what kind of packaging they use.

DINNER:
- oats (bought in bulk, no packaging)
- water (from the tap)
- brown sugar (came in plastic bag)
- soy milk (came in paper carton)

Here's how I could improve:
- brown sugar: comes in bulk
- soy milk: this is a difficult one, but the good news is that paper milk cartons can be composted/used to hold food scraps for compost, so it wont go completely to waste!


I've been paying a lot of attention to eliminating waste. Here are my rules of thumb:
1. When possible, buy in bulk. Bulk purchase becomes much easier at Rainbow Grocery.
2. When buying in bulk is not possible or is extremely inconvenient, buy products in recyclable or reusable containers.
3. Actually USE the containers when you're done with their original contents.


Anyways... If you happen to read my post and have any questions about how you can eliminate your own waste, add a comment and I'll be happy to reply and help you out! Thanks for reading and have a great spring break!