Clip coupons.  Shop sales.  Stock up.  While everyone seeks ways to save on food costs in today’s economy, most of the “tips” offered are sounding like a stale rerun, repeating the same conventional basics over and over.

Maybe what we really need is a time of crisis is to rewrite some of the old rulebook.  Maybe we need a dose of frugality innovation.
With that in mind, here are some fresh perspectives on saving a dime while saving the planet.  For those in the Madison, Wisconsin area, come join me for my workshop on this topic of cutting costs while eating well at the upcoming Isthmus Green Day on April 25 at the Monona Terrace.

1.  Use it Up
Every year around early spring, my family and I go on our annual “food buying detox diet” where we literally go cold turkey as best we can on buying food.  This isn’t as depriving as it sounds as we focus on eating through the pantry, using up all those items we already invested in that are often lingering near expiration dates.

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We’ve heard the comparisons that this recession looks very much like the great depression. It is hitting everyone’s pocket book, no matter your socioeconomic status. This free fall to the bottom isn’t discriminating.

So why should you craft when there is even less disposable income for you to play with? Well here are my top reasons you should craft when times are tough:

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A key reason roots back to probably the same reason why our grandmothers routinely canned: it simply made economic sense. By making fruit preserves as home, you could get a better-tasting, higher quality product much cheaper. Today we can add environmental sense to that equation: home canning enables us to eat more local, organically-raised produce year-round, eliminating the need for fossil fuel based transportation costs.

Despite this rationale manifesto for home canning, getting started can prove to be a discouraging hurdle as the process – from fruit processing to hot-water baths – can seem overtly time-consuming. Not so, according to Linda Amendt, the cape-crusader of home canning. Winner of over 900 awards in state fair culinary competitions and author of two cookbooks, Amendt is on a mission to help people rediscover for themselves the satisfaction and savings of home canning.

“Making a batch of jam is no more complicated than whipping up a batch of cookies,” explains Amendt. “And I promise, nothing off the store shelf will ever compare to what you make in your own kitchen.”

Here are some of her tips to get off to a successful start in homemade preserves, the easiest route for novice canners. While the official growing season is – alas – behind most of us, stockpile these tips till next year and in the meantime use fresh apple cider, which is still available, for a great beginning project (recipe after the jump).

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So here’s the simplest route to sustainability: keep a stocked pantry. Save money, time and fossil fuel – not to mention upping nutritional value — by dining chez you. Maybe not as sexy an eco initiative as backpacks with PV panels, but keeping an organized, stocked pantry goes a long way in creating a self-reliant, green kitchen and household.

Stocking the pantry saves time and money – two non-renewable resources and drains on greening our lifestyle. With a little planning and organization, your pantry will never let you down. I recently gushed about my pantry passion in an article for Hobby Farm Home magazine, going into more detail on stocking the kitchen.

Here’s a few starter tips:

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Stocking the pantry saves time and money – two non-renewable resources and drains on greening our lifestyle. With a little planning and organization, your pantry will never let you down. I recently gushed about my pantry passion in an article for Hobby Farm Home magazine, going into more detail on stocking the kitchen.

Here’s a few starter tips:

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Your ears perking up yet? If this showed up on your local Craig’s List or Freecycle would you be frantically e-mailing, “When can I come over”? Amazingly, such an opportunity probably exists right now, perhaps right down your road, as fruit trees ripen and – too often – fall to the ground and rot.

Like an archeological remnant of a past generation, industrious homeowners often planted these fruit trees several decades ago, before our era of mega-supermarkets and the universal concept that we can, and should, buy everything 24/7. Seems these trees tend to fall into two categories: either they belong to senior residents who can’t physically pick and process the fruit, or newer residents who bought the house with the tree and don’t have the time to pick, much less know what to do with four bushels of pears. Other folks even go as far as considering these trees a nuisance, as overripe fruit falls to the ground and attracts bugs and rodents, eventually chopping the tree down.

Don’t anger the Lorax, make pear pie instead. By connecting with these untapped fruit sources, you cook up something bigger than your private food stash – you will be an ambassador for building community, one bite at a time. I made my annual pilgrimage yesterday to local seniors John and Mary’s house to raid their pear tree, coming home with three five-gallon buckets of fruit. No secret invasion needed; Mary calls every year right before Labor Day to let me know the pears are ripe and we’re welcome to harvest.

Here are three tips for foraging a fruit tree near you:

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As environmental stewards, we’re used to taking the path less traveled to make a difference: pulling out the canvas bag in the check-out aisle, installing solar thermal panels on our roof, driving a hybrid before they became hip in Hollywood. Same theory works for food: by embracing new seasonal flavors, harking back to a more agrarian, land-based diet that evolves with the seasons, we eat nutritionally-dense foods that readily grow locally.

Fall ushers in the perfect time of year to explore some of these unusual vegetables as they tend to be hardy crops that grow well past the first frost, and will still appear at farmers’ markets. Root crops such as rutabagas and turnips formed winter diet staples for centuries. In fact, rutabagas were among the first vegetables planted by colonists in America when they began farming, as the large and strong rutabaga roots helped break up poor soil. Some tips on experimenting with some unusual produce offerings:

• Start small. Focus on one new vegetable at a time. While it may be tempting to plunge overboard at the last farmers’ markets and buy anything fresh, start small and just try one. Well-intentioned ambitions tend to lead to excess produce wilting away, ending up in the compost pile.
• Try again. Remember that the strong flavors of these more unusual vegetables are new to your taste buds. Give your taste buds time to adjust. Try the dish again the next day in left-over form, which sometimes mellows pungent flavors a bit.
• Bring in other favorite flavors. Try dressing up unusual flavors with some of your tried and true favorite ingredients to make things more familiar and pleasing. Being from Wisconsin, we’re partial to flavorful cheeses.

This Rutabaga with Cheese Sauce recipe from our cookbook, Edible Earth: Savoring the Good Life with Vegetarian Recipes from Inn Serendipity, pairs rutabaga with a comforting cheese sauce, a dish similar in texture and flavor to a scalloped potato casserole.

Rutabaga with Cheese Sauce

Ingredients:
¼ c. butter (½ stick), melted
¼ c. all-purpose flour
2 c. milk
1 c. Cheddar cheese, shredded
Dash of salt and pepper
1 large rutabaga, diced and cooked until tender (4-5 c. diced)
½ c. bread crumbs tossed with 1 T. melted butter

Directions:

• Melt butter in a saucepan over low heat; stir in flour.
• Continue to cook and stir until smooth; gradually stir in milk. Cook, stirring constantly, until thickened.
• Add cheese and stir until cheese is melted and sauce is smooth. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
• Place rutabaga in a shallow, lightly buttered baking dish; pour sauce over rutabaga. Sprinkle with buttered bread crumbs.
• Bake at 400 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes.

Serves 6-8.

For those of us trying to eat both healthy and earth-friendly, stereotypical "processed" food can be a double-edged sword: we may not want the additives, the packaging, the lack of nutrition, but we’re still lured by the fact that we crave easy-to-serve-up comfort food like mac and cheese or pizza. Instead of trying to rationalize your guilty purchases with "it was on sale," or "this is the only stuff my kids will eat," think out of the expected blue box and take an un-processed approach to processed food. Some tips to get started:

• Focus on your favorite. What’s the processed food you eat the most? Focus on creating healthy alternatives to that one dish. For us, mac and cheese motivated our out-of-the-Kraft box thinking as Liam kept requesting it on a daily basis. That is what led to our recipe below, now in our cookbook, Edible Earth: Savoring the Good Life with Vegetarian Recipes from Inn Serendipity. Surprisingly, healthy unprocessed alternatives to processed foods are simple to make and don’t have nearly the long ingredient list as you’ll find on the back of the blue box — and you can identify all of them.
• Cook in bulk. Part of the lure of processed foods is the heat and eat convenience. Sure, most recipes for healthy processed food equivalents make a big batch, like this casserole-sized dish of mac and cheese, but that lends itself to easy meals of leftovers that can be quickly reheated in the microwave.
• Use "grown up" ingredients. Processed foods are designed for the mainstream palette, catering to the expected same old, same old. But when you’re making your own homemade versions, feel free to experiment with the ingredients for your grown-up, more mature tastes. We like to sometimes substitute smoked cheese for the cheddar cheese in our mac and cheese recipe.

This Macaroni and Cheese recipe from our cookbook, Edible Earth: Savoring the Good Life with Vegetarian Recipes from Inn Serendipity, takes the most kid-friendly recipe around and makes it "gourmet" enough for grown-ups.

Ingredients:
1 package (10 - 12 ounces) elbow macaroni
6 T. butter, divided
3 T. all-purpose flour
2 c. milk
1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, cubed
2 c. Cheddar cheese, shredded
2 t. Dijon mustard
½ t. salt
¾ c. dry bread crumbs
2 T. minced fresh parsley or 2 t. dried

Directions:

• Cook macaroni according to directions on package.
• Meanwhile, melt 4 T. butter in a large saucepan. Stir in
  flour until smooth. Gradually add milk. Bring to a boil;
  cook and stir for 2 minutes. Reduce heat; add cheeses, mustard,
  salt and pepper. Stir until cheese is melted and sauce is smooth.
• Drain macaroni; add to the cheese sauce and stir to coat.
• Transfer to a greased shallow 3-quart baking dish. Melt
  the remaining butter; toss with bread crumbs and parsley.
  Sprinkle over macaroni.
• Bake, uncovered, at 400 for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown.

Serves 8-10.

Interested in diversifying your seasonal diet? Give leeks a try for the following reasons:

• Mild, sweet flavor. Classified as alliums, leeks prove to be the milder, sweeter version of their more popular poignant counterparts, garlic and onions. A delicate, graceful vegetable with broad, flat green leaves around a contrasting white base, leeks produce a pleasing aroma and sweeten as they cook. Trying using leeks wherever you typically use onions and notice the subtle flavor changes. Experiment with adding cooked leeks to mashed potatoes or lightly sauté chopped leeks alone or with another sautéed vegetable
• Health Benefits. Leeks deliver all the healthy benefits associated with garlic: reducing the risk of prostate and colon cancer and reducing the "bad" LDL cholesterol while pumping up the "good" HDL cholesterol.
• Fun to clean. Leeks let you get your hands a little dirty and feel like you just harvested them yourself. To clean, first cut the green tops to about 3 inches from the white section. Peel off the outside layer. Cut the leek in half lengthwise and wash thoroughly to remove the soil that accumulates between the layers. Store unwashed leeks dry with roots attached in the refrigerator for up to two weeks.

Our love affair with leeks started with this Potato Leek soup recipe, a dish common on Danish dinner tables. From our cookbook, Edible Earth: Savoring the Good Life with Vegetarian Recipes from Inn Serendipity, this soup is the perfect warming, Fall comfort food.

Potato Leek Soup

Ingredients:
4 large leeks (2 to 2 ½ pounds total)
2 T. butter
1 T. fresh dill weed or 1 t. dried
4 large potatoes (2 ½ to 3 pounds total), peeled and sliced
About ½ t. salt
2 c. broth (2 c. hot water with 3 vegetable bouillon cubes, dissolved)
2 c. milk
Sour cream

Directions:

• Trim and discard root ends and tough green tops of leeks; remove all coarse outer leaves.
• Cut leeks in half lengthwise, then hold each one under cold running water, separating layers to rinse our dirt. Cut into thin slices.
• Melt butter in a large kettle over medium heat. Add leeks and dill; cook, stirring often, until leeks are soft.
• Add potatoes, salt and broth. Bring to a boil over high heat; cover, reduce heat and simmer for 30 to 40 minutes until potatoes are tender.
• Purée in batches in food processor. Return to pot and stir in milk.
• Cook over medium heat, stirring often, until soup is steaming. Add more salt, if needed. Top each serving with a dollop of sour cream.

Serves 6.

One way to curb restaurant bills is go back to the perception of a “restaurant meal” from a generation ago: something special, a celebratory occasion, a meal to be savored, a treat. Eating out wasn’t daily fare but an anticipated, relished experience. In our world today, where everything flaunts 24/7 access, sometimes it helps to step back and set some parameters on ourselves. By using less, we appreciate more. And in the case of restaurants, save a bundle in the process.

Some tips on savoring restaurants as treats:

* Replace gifts with celebratory meals. For all of us trying to break the expected “gift in a box” rap during birthdays and other holidays, take that person out for a meal instead. Don’t wrap a restaurant gift certificate, make a date with that person, share the experience and pick up the tab. Consider this a triple win: No more gifty stuff piling up, relationships grow closer from time spent together, and you’ll undoubtedly remember such a restaurant outing much longer.

* Dine unique. One of our cardinal rules of eating out: The food must be something we can’t make at home. This often leads us to ethnic restaurants where the ingredient list alone proves a good value in eating out. There’s a local Indian restaurant, Maharaja, in Madison, Wisconsin, that we frequent when we venture off our farm to the big city. This $7.99 lunch buffet offers over a dozen freshly-cooked Indian dishes, a frugal eating paradise for us and a great way to introduce our six year old son to new tastes and flavors. He dives into the mouth-watering tandori chicken and ends with a bowl of pistachio ice cream and honey balls.

* Eat local. When you do eat out, nix the expected restaurant franchise and seek out the locally-owned, family-run spot. Not only will more of your money stay local, such small business restaurants are more likely to use area-grown, seasonal foods that whatever fell off the distributor truck. For a listing of locally-owned restaurants with a local food flavor, see www.chefscollaborative.org

Restaurant dining can inspire new dishes to try to make at home. This Oven Roasted Garlic recipe from Edible Earth: Savoring the Good Life with Vegetarian Recipes from Inn Serendipity came about after enjoying such flavors at a favorite French bistro café. We have an enclosed terra cotta baking dish we use for roasted garlic, but any shallow casserole dish will work.

Ingredients:
4 medium garlic heads
2 T. olive oil
1 ½ c. water

Directions:
* Using a sharp knife, cut the top of the garlic head to expose the inner cloves.
* Brush heads with olive oil and place in a shallow casserole dish. Fill dish with 1 inch of water and cover.
* Bake at 350 for 45-60 minutes until garlic is very soft and light brown. Smell! Check garlic for softness since oven temperatures may vary. Serve with French baguette slices. To eat, remove the garlic from its skin with a knife and spread onto baguette rounds with butter.

Serves: 4.

For most parts of the country living in four-season climates, these last weeks of October mark the final farmers’ markets of the year. For the local, seasonal food groupies, this marks a bittersweet time, reminiscent of the last days of summer camp: while we promise to see each other next year, we desperately hug each other for a long goodbye, trying to hang to the fleeting magic of summer.

So rather than mourn over the loss of fresh abundance, celebrate the Fall abundance and stock up on autumn produce. If carefully stored, these goodies can tide you over into the new year — when Spring asparagus and spinach greens will be abundant once again.

Some tips on celebrating the last farmers’ market:

• Thank the farmers. For the farmers’ sake, there really should be a champagne toast and award ceremony at the last market. The last market represents the culmination of months of labor and love for their crops, and the advent of some seasonal downtime to come to reenergize for the next growing season. Take this situation in your own hands and give a simple "thank you" to your favorite vendors, and promise you’ll be first in line next Spring. Farmers deeply appreciate such words of support and appreciation from the people who enjoy their wares.
• Stock up on hard squashes. Pick up some hard-skinned winter squash for long term storage; make sure they are unblemished by soft spots, cuts or breaks. Most winter squash benefits from a "curing stage" – simply keeping the squash first at room temperature(about 70 degrees) for 10 to 20 days, then transferring to a cool (45 to 50 degree) dry place such as a basement for long-term storage. Keep an eye on the temperature and don’t let them freeze. Large, hard rind squash can be stored four to six months under such conditions. Acorn or butternut squash do not store as well: typically only up to three months. Store squash in a single layer with a little breathing room between them to allow air circulation.
• Buy a bushel of apples. Almost any kind of apple will keep for up to four months or even longer if stored properly. The key is to sort through your apples and save the "perfect" ones without any damage for long term storage. Eat the ones with any bruise, dent or rotten spot first, since these are the main causes of apple spoilage. Some apple varietals keep better than others. Thick-skinned apples like Jonathans generally keep longer than sweet or thin-skinned ones like Delicious. Firm flesh apples generally keep better.

Part of the fun of a bushel of apples is sharing the bounty. This Apple Bread recipe from our cookbook, Edible Earth: Savoring the Good Life with Vegetarian Recipes from Inn Serendipity, makes two loaves, perfect for sharing. We’ve learned the hard way that greasing and flour-dusting the pans are crucial steps to ensure the loaf smoothly pops out of the pan.

Apple Bread

Ingredients:
3 c. all-purpose flour
3 c. peeled, sliced apples
4 eggs
2 c. sugar
1 c. vegetable oil
1 t. salt
1 t. vanilla
1 t. baking soda

Directions:

• Prepare two loaf pans by greasing and then dusting the inside with flour.
• Combine the flour, apples, eggs, sugar, oil, salt, vanilla and baking soda and mix well.
• Pour into prepared loaf pans. Bake at 300 degrees for 1½ hours or until a toothpick inserted into the centers comes out clean.
• Cool for 10 minutes before removing from pan to wire racks.

Yield: 2 loaves.

Potluck gatherings

Here are some tips on what to do when the host says "bring a dish to pass":

• Non-cooks think fresh. Don’t panic if you’re not a cook. Instead, think of yourself as the fresh and seasonal produce provider. A simple bowl of fresh, plain produce – from apples to baby carrots – adds a nice touch to any buffet. This strategy also works well if you’re riding a bike or taking public transportation to a potluck: fresh and raw food are easier to transport.
• Educate on ingredients. Add a note card by your dish explaining where your ingredients came from. This not only helps guests with food allergies, but it educates on sources of local food sources. "Easy Oat Apple Pie" takes on deeper flavor and meaning when folks know the apples came from Turkey Ridge Organic Apple Orchard in Gays Mills, Wisconsin (which just happens to be cooperatively run), and the butter from Organic Valley Family of Farms, another cooperatively run, farmer-owned business based in Wisconsin.
• Keep food safe. No matter what the season, make sure hot food stays hot and cold food keeps cold because food at unsafe temperatures promotes bacteria growth. Depending on how far you need to travel, wrap hot food in foil and layers of clean towels. Place inside a large box in your car trunk for easy transport. Cold food needs to stay below 40 degrees F. Pack food in a well-insulated cooler with plenty of ice blocks, particularly during hot summer months.
• Label serving items. Make it easy for your serving gear to get returned by labeling them with a permanent marker.
• Minimize last-minute prep. Try to keep out of the host’s kitchen by doing as much of your prep work as possible at home. Slice vegetables for a salad ahead of time, and transport ingredients in containers, tossing together ingredients tableside right before serving.
• Know your audience. Bring a dish that suits the majority of your audience. If your friends lean toward the gourmet, by all means experiment with your latest exotic culinary efforts. If the gathering has kids, basic bread or hearty macaroni and cheese is always appreciated. A staple, yummy dessert goes over well, like Easy Oat Apple pie that showcases Fall seasonal apples.

This is an easy pie for pie-making newbies, as it doesn’t call for a rolled pie crust. Rather, the crust is pressed oatmeal dough, kind of like apples wrapped in a big, chewy oatmeal cookie. This recipe is from our cookbook, Edible Earth: Savoring the Good Life with Vegetarian Recipes from Inn Serendipity.

Easy Oat Apple Pie

Ingredients:
2 c. all-purpose flour
1 c. brown sugar
¾ c. butter, melted
½ c. oats

Filling:
2/3 c. sugar
3 T. cornstarch
1 ¼ c. water
3 c. diced, peeled apples
1 t. vanilla extract

Directions:

• Combine the first four ingredients; set aside 1 c. for topping.
• Press remaining crumb mixture into an ungreased 9-in. pie plate, set aside.
• For the filling, combine sugar, cornstarch and water in a saucepan until smooth; bring to a boil. Cook and stir for 1 minute or until thickened. Remove from heat; stir in apples and vanilla.
• Pour into crust; top with reserved crumb mixture. Bake at 350 for 40-45 minutes or until crust is golden brown.

Serves 8.

While potlucks are inherently a simple concept, in our ten years of hosting such gatherings on our Wisconsin farm, we’ve realized that a dash of thoughtful planning can green the event and make it educational fun through food for everyone. Here are some thought-starters:

• Create a seasonal food theme. Give guests a general menu theme like "savoring the local flavors of the season." With food on average racking 1,500 frequent flyer miles from growing field to our plate, eating local and seasonal saves fossil fuel. If you have culinary friends up for a challenge, host a seasonal theme in the dead of winter and get creative with root crops such as rutabaga, turnips and potatoes.
• Ditch the disposables. Environmental issues aside, who wants to eat a plate of delicious food off a floppy disposable plate? Don’t have enough serving ware? One trip to your local Goodwill store will garner a load of inexpensive plates, silverware and cups for years of gatherings to come. The more mismatched the set, the more character.
• Diversify the guest list. Don’t rely on food alone to spice up the gathering. Invite some new faces and perspectives to liven up and challenge conversations. With potlucks being such an inherently informal affair, they serve up easy events to include people you may not know well but would like to extend an invitation to. Think about people in your neighborhood you casually say "Hi" to while passing but never had a real conversation with.

Take on the fall seasonal flavor of turnips at your next potluck gathering with this Turnip Puff recipe from our cookbook, Edible Earth: Savoring the Good Life with Vegetarian Recipes from Inn Serendipity. This casserole-type dish transports easily.

Turnip Puff

Ingredients:
2 c. cooked, mashed turnips, cooled
1 c. bread crumbs
½ c. butter (1 stick), melted
1 t. sugar
½ t. salt
2 eggs, separated

Directions:

• Combine turnips, bread crumbs, butter, sugar salt and beaten egg yolks.
• Beat egg whites until soft peaks form. Fold into turnip mixture.
• Spoon turnip mixture into a buttered 1-quart casserole dish.
• Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes.

While stocking up and buying bulk can help both the pocketbook and
planet, having too much food at home can do the opposite by generating waste. The average American throws out about 1.28 pounds of
food a day, adding up to over 467 pounds of food a year. Worse
yet, this statistic doesn’t include items that end up in the
compost. Whether that wasted food is a wilted salad or graham
crackers years past expiration code, by managing and eating our
stockpile of food at home, we don’t contribute to this waste.

Some thoughts on using up the food you have:

* Be leery of sales. Couscous on special? All of a
sudden you buy five boxes and forget the fact that you’ve never made
couscous before. Unless something is on the top of your “foods I
adore” list, be leery of purchasing more than one, even if the price is
right.

* Clear out the pantry annually. If I told you there was
green cash hiding in your pantry, you’d probably beeline and take
everything out, trying to find the booty. But this cash is in the
form of food you already purchased, the cans and boxes that are sitting
on the shelf waiting to be eaten. Every winter we try to “eat
through” what we have at home, focusing on using up those random food
items that accumulate. 

* Get creative. Back to those candy canes. Determined
to find a use for a gallon-sized bag of assorted peppermints, I Googled
“peppermint candy recipe” on the Internet. This technique works
well if you’re stuck with one random ingredient that you don’t know
what to do with. The result is the Peppermint Biscotti recipe
below, which now appears in our cookbook, Edible Earth: Savoring
the Good Life with Vegetarian Recipes from Inn Serendipity. These
cookies quickly became a holiday tradition for us – especially since
all our friends now give us their peppermint collection, knowing we’ll
put it to sweet use!

Peppermint Biscotti

Ingredients:

¾ c. butter, softened (1 ½ sticks)

¾ c. sugar

3 eggs

2 t. peppermint extract

3 ¼ c. all-purpose flour

1 t. baking powder

¼ t. salt

1 ½ c. crushed peppermint

candy, divided

White chocolate bark for

frosting.

Directions:

* In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar.

* Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in extract.

* Gradually add flour/candy mixture to creamed mixture, beating until blended (dough will be stiff).

* Divide dough in half. On ungreased baking sheet, roll each portion into a 12 x 2 ½ inch rectangle.

* Bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes or until golden
brown. Carefully remove to wire rack. Cool 15
minutes. On cutting board, cut diagonally into ½ inch slices.

* Place cut side down on ungreased baking sheets. Bake 12-15 minutes until firm.

* For frosting, melt chocolate. Dip one end in chocolate and roll in the remaining candy. Cool on wax paper.

Yield: Approximately 3 dozen biscotti.

Think of your kitchen pantry — whether it’s an cabinet or deluxe walk-in closet model — as your own private mini-convenience store, a place readily stocked with the basics that give you options from making dinner tonight to whipping up dessert for friends serendipitously stopping by. Being stocked with cooking staples at home saves both time and money while helping the planet, since no last-minute car trips are needed to the supermarket for missing ingredients, and there’s no pricey take-out temptations because you know you can quickly pull together a healthier, cheaper meal at home.

A dash of thoughtful planning helps in stocking up and buying bulk:

• Shop bulk for key staples. Find a local store that has a bulk food aisle, such as a food cooperative or health food store. Buying in bulk will not only save cash, particularly with organic options (while prices vary, bulk foods are often one third cheaper), you’ll save all that unnecessary extra food packaging. Some key staples we always have on hand and buy in bulk include all-purpose flour, sugar, cocoa, rice, pasta and powdered milk.
• Invest in bulk containers. Part of the conundrum of buying bulk foods is finding somewhere to easily store the product when you get home. Keep an eye out for containers you can recycle and reuse as storage containers. Glass or heavy duty plastic containers with wide-mouth tops so you can easily stick your hand inside for both access and easy cleaning work well. For items you use regularly and buy in larger quantities, it sometimes makes sense to purchase sturdy containers that store easily in your pantry. At our bed and breakfast, Inn Serendipity, we go through a lot of sugar and flour for breakfast baking and bought large plastic tubs with tight sealed lids from The Container Store.
• Think substitutes. Once you stock up on key staples, you can save money and time by eliminating some items from your shopping list that you can readily make from the basics you already have. Does your recipe call for a one-ounce square of unsweetened baking chocolate? Mix three tablespoons unsweetened dry cocoa with one tablespoon vegetable oil and use that as an easy, cheaper substitute.
• Collect favorite staple recipes. Develop a collection of a half dozen recipes that you can always quickly prepare from ingredients you have at home and, importantly, that you love to eat so you’re not tempted by takeout on the way home.

This Chocolate Cobbler recipe from our cookbook, Edible Earth: Savoring the Good Life with Vegetarian Recipes from Inn Serendipity, can be quickly whipped up with pantry baking staples. Impress your friends as they savor this gooey, warm comfort food — they will think you prepared all day. Note the "pantry substitute" for self-rising flour.

Chocolate Cobbler

Ingredients:
1 c. self-rising flour **
½ c. sugar
2 T. plus ¼ c. cocoa powder, divided
½ c. milk
3 T. vegetable oil
1 c. brown sugar, firmly packed
1 ¾ c. hot water

** As a substitute for self-rising flour, place 1 ½ t. baking powder
and ½ t. salt in a measuring cup. Add all-purpose flour to
measure 1 c.

Directions:

• In a bowl, combine the flour, sugar and 2 T. cocoa.
• Stir in milk and oil until smooth.
• Pour into a greased 8-in. square baking pan.
• Combine the brown sugar and remaining cocoa; sprinkle over batter.
• Pour hot water over top (do not stir).
• Bake at 350 for 40 to 45 minutes or until top of bake springs back when lightly touched.
• Serve warm.

Serves 4.

Editor’s note: We’re very happy to welcome Lisa Kivirist to the Green Options writing team! Lisa, along with husband John Ivanko, is the author of Rural Renaissance: Renewing the Quest for the Good Life (which we reviewed), and Edible Earth: Savoring the Good Life with Vegetarian Recipes from Inn Serendipity. Lisa and John own and run Inn Serendipity, a central Wisconsin bed and breakfast.

Like clockwork, three opportunities come our way every day to make the world a better place: breakfast, lunch and dinner. Add in snacks, and our daily eating choices can collectively add up to significant impact on our planetary tides.

But with the buffet of eating options – from mega supermarket aisles to lengthy restaurant menus that resemble encyclopedias — making educated food choices can border on overwhelming. Simple strategies help.

Being from Wisconsin, we feel compelled to sprinkle in some cheese references, and frankly, we first encountered the "Eat High, Use Less" strategy in our local cheese store. Bruno, a Swiss cheesemaker who runs Alp and Dell, the cheese store adjacent to the Roth Kase cheese factory here in Monroe, shared this insight with us: In Europe, where folks arguably know their fine cheeses, they eat about eighty percent of their cheese. By "eat," he means savoring a nice slice of cheese, perhaps accompanied with some bread or fruit. The focus is on the flavor. The remaining twenty percent gets used in cooking. In the United States, the opposite rough statistic holds true: we cook with about eighty percent of our cheese and eat only twenty percent; with gobs of it on pizza, the focus is on our enjoyment of the fat.

Bruno helped shift our thinking that day, prompting us to focus on eating less, but eating better. Quality versus quantity. A fine-quality hard parmesan cheese may cost more, but just a few grates of such a flavorful cheese can dress up a whole bowl of pasta or Caesar salad. Rather than guzzling whatever java was on sale, savor one flavorful cup of Equal Exchange Sumatra, a fair trade, organic coffee.

Some tips on eating better by using less:

• Cut back on quantity. Flavor tends to increase with higher quality foods, so you may find you can get away with less quantity, which adds up to cost savings. We found this to be the case with coffee. We just needed to just fill our coffee maker two thirds full with Equal Exchange Sumatra, yet the coffee brewed was nicely full flavored.
• Upgrade slowly. Every year we pick a handful of food items we regularly use and see if the “eat high, use less” theory can apply. Chocolate readily fell into this category, but we were discouraged by the pricey fair trade, organic offerings. Undaunted to cut back on chocolate, we found that dry, unsweetene baking cocoa powder (not hot cocoa mix) – still fair trade and organic – delivered a cost savings when mixed with sugar or other ingredients as needed in recipes. When a recipe calls for a one-ounce unsweetened baking chocolate square, simply and economically substitute three tablespoons unsweetened cocoa mixed with one tablespoon of vegetable oil.

Confession: This moist, richly flavored chocolate muffin is really a cupcake in disguise. These vegan muffins use cocoa powder and is from our cookbook, Edible Earth: Savoring the Good Life with Vegetarian Recipes from Inn Serendipity:

Cocoa Muffins

Ingredients:

1 ½ c. all-purpose flour
1 c. sugar
1 t. baking soda
½ t. salt
3 T. cocoa powder
1 t. vinegar
1/3 c. vegetable oil
1 t. vanilla
1 c. water

Directions:

• Grease 12 standard size muffin cups.
• Mix together all ingredients.
• Bake at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Yield: 12 muffins.