Cooking Green: Reducing Your Carbon Footprint in the Kitchen [Paperback]

Kate Heyhoe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 31, 2009

Choosing local, organic foods benefits your health and the planet’s. But how you cook is as important as what you cook: cooking itself is an under-reported yet substantial greenhouse gas creator. Now, Kate Heyhoe shows you how to think like an environmentalist in the kitchen. Without changing your politics or completely disrupting your routine, you can reduce your impact on the planet by rethinking how you cook, shop, and consume food. Using your favorite recipes, you can bake, broil, and grill in greener ways, saving fossil fuels and shrinking your “cookprint.”

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The foods we eat and the ways we buy, store and prepare them are significant contributors to global warming. This information-packed volume, from cookbook author and newgreenbasics.com founder Heyhoe, provides detailed guidance for those looking to make their cooking and eating habits earth-friendlier. Heyhoe has thought long and hard about this topic—she cites myriad inspirations (from environmentalists to food scientists like Harold McGee and The New Basics Cookbook) and compelling statistics (less than 7 percent of the energy consumed by a gas oven goes to the food) that led her to develop the concept of a cookprint (the foodie version of an environmental footprint) and this guide to shrinking it. The book covers everything from appliances and cookware to shopping, ingredients (including details on the impact of meat and seafood on the planet), cooking techniques and cutting down on waste, and answers the questions that many aspiring eco-friendly types have probably wondered about—like which kind of grill is the greenest. At the end there's also a no-frills recipe section with dishes such as ginger chicken and broth, passively poached, short-cut lasagna and true skillet cornbread—all featuring a Green Meter—that put into practice what Heyhoe preaches. (Apr.)
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From Booklist

What does it truly take to cook green? It is more than buying locally grown foodstuffs, explains Heyhoe, though obviously “locavores” do have a head start on dining sustainably. Cooking green is far more comprehensive than monitoring appliance use; tracking energy output, for sure, is yet another element of eco-friendliness. Add cookware to the mix of determinants, along with type of technique, the table decorations, even the choice of energy-efficient ingredients (like no-cook pasta sauces). Ever-present sidebars are informative, with data that can potentially impact our ecological decisions: using freezer packs saves energy, vacuuming refrigerator coils often decreases electricity use, and trading white linens for bare tabletops in a four-restaurant chain amounted to a $100,000 annual savings. Fifty recipes, from meatless moussaka to true skillet cornbread, wrap up her go-green dictate, all belying the myth that good for you isn’t great for the taste buds. This is a very careful, well-explained examination of the “cookprint” we decide to leave; after all, 12 percent of the planet’s greenhouse gas emissions are directly tracked to the ways we grow, prepare, and ship foods. --Barbara Jacobs

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Lifelong Books; 1 edition (March 31, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 073821230X
• ISBN-13: 978-0738212302
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #250,402 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

'At Global Gourmet, we bring you the world on a plate.'

Kate Heyhoe is the founding editor of The Global Gourmet, launched as the web's first food and cooking site in 1994. Julia Child and Jacques Pepin each made their online debuts with Kate, and the award-winning Global Gourmet site has introduced millions of cooks to exotic foods, recipes, and techniques from all over the world. Kate is also the founding editor of newgreenbasics.com and cookingwithkids.com.

Kate's books have been praised by Mollie Katzen, Martin Yan, Mary Sue Milliken, Graham Kerr, James McNair, Michael Chiarello, Marcel Desaulniers, and even AOL's Steve Case, among others. Her books include:

Cooking Green: Reducing Your Carbon Footprint in the Kitchen--the New Green Basics Way
Great Bar Food at Home (James Beard Award finalist)
The Stubb's Bar-B-Q Cookbook
A World Atlas of Food (a culinary textbook)
Macho Nachos
Harvesting the Dream: The Rags-to-Riches Tale of the Sutter Home Winery
A Chicken in Every Pot: Global Recipes for the World's Most Popular Bird
Cooking with Kids for Dummies

Kate lives in the Hill Country near Austin, Texas, with her husband and business partner, and a menagerie of cats, dogs, and assorted wildlife, including Fluffy the toad. Hundreds of articles about Kate and Global Gourmet have appeared in media as diverse as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Time, Los Angeles Times, Parade, FoodArts, WOR, Bloomberg, and Sony World Wide radio networks. She has written for Better Homes & Gardens, Saveur, Cooking Pleasures, Chile Pepper, Great Chefs, and other magazines.