Cooking without the plastic

I had a good rummage through my kitchen cupboards a few days ago. I was very pleased to find a little tea strainer I didn't know I had and it is metal. I thought I only had a plastic one. Yay for digging in cupboards. I have cleared out a lot of stuff for the charity shop, I don't like to throw things away if I think it might be of some kind of use to someone and it could make a little money for charity too.

I was digging around in there because I am wanting to cook from scratch more to save on packaging waste. I dug out all the mixing bowls and my loaf tin. I have a metal one and a silicone one in there already. I made some very yummy bread. I have never really made bread entirely by hand before, we have a bread maker and that doesn't normally come out that great either, hence why we hardly use it. This bread came out wonderful. Bloody love it so I'm going to try and keep at it. No plastic wrapping on my homemade loaf. I made wholemeal and you can find the instructions I followed here.

I really suck at pastry. I have had two goes recently at a wholemeal pastry but it's really not very good. I'm going to try regular white flour pastry again soon but the last time I did that it wasn't much better. Gordon makes it look easy but our food processor broke on us a while back and I am still on the look out for a decent second hand one.

I did make some reasonably acceptable little pasties and a pie as well as a quiche, I just need to crack this pastry business. It looks nice and was quite yummy but could have been much better. I made cheese and broccoli.

I already have my next thing in mind too. Crisp bakes. I do like a nice crisp bake and I found this page on making them. I'm ideally wanting to find things I can make up and freeze so I can just throw them in the oven when I can't be bothered to make anything else. I am starting a collection of little pie dishes and ramekins so I can use those instead of foil and throw away items. I picked my quiche dish up in a charity shop for £1.99.

Making things like this might take extra time and effort but it's far better in a few ways. It's cheaper by far to get cooking than to buy things ready made. It's a more healthy option as you know exactly what is going in it, no preservatives or anything fake needed. The packaging is greatly reduced if not eliminated depending on if you have access to bulk buy/weigh and save. It also makes you a little more mindful of the food you are eating, I have found that I think more about what I am consuming when I am picking out all the ingredients instead of just grabbing a box. As well as all this, I am ending up using things I have rather than eating from a bag in the freezer and leaving the carrots and broccoli to go bad. I see them and use them in something.

So, packages of ready made stuff in the supermarket? You can go plastickit! (and the card and foil trays too).