Sustainability In the Kitchen ~ guest post by Ellen Arian

Ellen Arian is the founder of ellen’s food & soul. Her newest blog post is loaded with great tips and links to products to help with sustainability in your kitchen. Enjoy!

Gina

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Sustainability In the Kitchen

by Ellen Arian

As changes to our climate become easier to see and feel, and as our world population continues to multiply, I look for ways to tread lightly and live more sustainably. Since my life is centered around cooking, my seeking is as well, and I wonder…about the impact my daily choices will have on my children’s generation or on their children’s generation, and about the connection between the way we grow, gather and prepare food and the well being of the places we inhabit.

Thinking in this way has led me to consider self control, especially in the kitchen. So many of our values and expectations around food reflect a culture that, until recently, has encouraged consumption and growth untempered by restraint–a culture in which all our wants are met, and nearly all personal needs are validated as necessary and appropriate. But these values are far in excess of those that sustained earlier generations.

On a related note, when I teach cooking classes from home, students often comment on the ways I attempt to conserve resources in the kitchen; these are approaches that have become so much a part of my daily work that it never occurred to me, until I was asked, to try and share them.

With all this in mind, I’ll use the rest of this space to describe methods I rely on for living deliberately and with a degree of care. Since the variables of food, tools and the kitchen underlie these efforts, they will be the focus. And if this topic feels daunting, rest assured that some of these approaches took years to take hold and, as time passes, they have continued to evolve. So consider any step that might resonate for you, and let go of the rest.

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