Green your weeknight meals

(post, Andy Remeis)

We are all growing more conscious of our carbon footprints. We turn off the lights when we leave a room, we turn down our thermostats, and we try to get on our bikes once in a while.

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Caesar Salad

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But how many times do you go to the grocery store in a week? How often do you bring home dinner in take-out containers and plastic bags? How many times do you turn on your oven every week?

Last night I cooked a simple but satisfying meal of lasagna made with local turkey and fresh mozzarella, accompanied by homemade bread and Caesar salad. I shopped the day before and picked up everything I needed for the meal and some extras for the week. But no more; this was my one meal to cook, and my one grocery-shopping trip, for the week.

As my oven baked three loaves of molasses-buckwheat bread and three lasagnas, I finished my weeknight cooking for the week. I got on my bike and delivered those dinners — hot and ready to eat — to two other families. Dinner for three families was cooked with one oven, and delivered on one bike.

[%image reference-image float=right width=350 caption="Deliver dinner for three families with a single bike."]

The trick is that those other two families will each be doing the same thing later in the week. My family, in turn, will receive two other meals — hot and ready to eat, made with fresh ingredients and a little love.

Magic? No, just another week of our dinner co-op. Think of it as one more way that our interdependence can help green our weeknights, one meal at a time.

reference-image, l