Dorm Cooking 101: Our first success!

Easy Microwave Pudding

Ingredients:
1 tablespoon cornstarch
2 tablespoons sugar (or sugar substitute)
1 tablespoon cocoa powder (optional)
1 cup nonfat milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:
1. In a microwave-safe bowl, mix together the cornstarch, sugar, and cocoa until uniform and lump-free.
2. Pour in the milk and stir well.
3. Place the bowl on a large plate and microwave it on high for 4 minutes. Remove the pudding every 30 seconds and stir it well making sure there are no lumps.
4. Stir in the vanilla.
5. Chill it in the refrigerator for an hour or more and then enjoy!

Hints:
· For chocolate pudding, use cocoa powder, and for vanilla pudding, omit the cocoa. You could also make different flavored puddings using orange extract, lemon extract, mint extract, honey, maple syrup, or spices like cinnamon and nutmeg.
· For a thicker pudding, use more cornstarch, and for a thinner consistency, use less.
· This pudding is delicious served warm or cold, and pairs well with fresh berries or bananas.

Appealing Piles of Peels!

Have you been wondering what actually happens when you throw your banana peel in one of those bins marked “Compost: Food Scraps Only”? Is it worth the extra effort to collect your food waste separately from your trash and find a compost bin to throw it in? Or does it all end up in the same place in the end?

The city of Berkeley has fairly recently joined its neighbor cities in implementing a highly successful curbside recycling program. As most students at Cal come from other areas of California or even farther abroad, we are largely unfamiliar with this system and its benefits. In the past, residents of urban areas such as Oakland and Berkeley would never have considered composting without a large yard or garden at their disposal. Now, however, everyone can compost all the time, even college students living in dorms or apartments.

All the waste that goes into those large green bins is collected and sent to a composting facility (not a landfill) where it is made into large mounds 50 yards long and 5 feet high. These mounds are periodically stirred and kept moist for another 2-3 months, after which time all that “trash” has become fertile black soil chock full of nutrients. This soil is used in city landscaping, sold to local farmers, and sometimes even donated to small nonprofit organizations such as school gardens. In this way, no actual waste is produced, and the size of landfills is significantly reduced. More importantly, there is less need for inorganic fertilizers that may leach excess nutrients into groundwater and streams. Instead of using gallons of fossil fuels to create nitrogen-rich fertilizers for our crops, we can let nature do it instead, and avoid polluting our waters in the process!

I know that all this sounds too good to be true, but now let me make it even better. Composting is easy! All you have to do is keep an extra trash bin in your room and designate as your compost bin. Then, whenever it gets full of food waste, take it out to one of the zillions of official compost bins in you dorms, on campus, or elsewhere in the city of Berkeley. Any fruit or vegetable peels, bones, paper products, or plastic that is clearly marked as being compostable can be thrown in a compost bin. Since city officials are already doing most of the work for you, why not compost? Just remember that with each banana peel you toss in the green bin, you are saving energy, helping local farmers, reducing pollution, driving down the size of landfills, and allowing the environment replenish itself the natural way.

Oh, and if you’re not fortunate enough to live in beautiful Berkeley, composting
still an incredibly easy process. Though special composting bins are prevalent, and no doubt effective, making rich compost is as easy as keeping a special pile or box or bin for your plant and food scraps in your yard and turning it every once in a while.

-Sara

For the love of a tasty autotroph!

Ever met a person with whom you had one thing so much in common that almost all of your conversations revolved around that specific topic? Welcome to the relationship between me (Grace) and my roommate (Sara). For the past week (we've known each other for a week and a day) virtually all of our conversation has somehow meandered to the topic of food. Specifically vegetarian food. Homesickness (we are college freshmen) manifests itself in rhapsodic memories of favorite family recipes; fierce attempts at studying consitently crumble the moment one of us feels a craving for homemade hummus or suddenly recalls that interesting flavor combination (rice pudding flavored oatmeal anyone?) that she had to tell the other.

So, a little more about us. We're vegetarian, aspiring scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, who love the environment and belong to a living community specifically oriented around low-impact living. We've learned to use our low-flow toilets like pros (no clogs or overflowing for us!), we can take a shower in 10 min. or less, and we recycle or compost pretty much everything we can. The only difficulty we've faced in our college lives has been finding healthy, varied, and good-tasting vegetarian food. Our ambition is to make this blog a source of information for anyone (and especially students like us) who wants tips, motivation, and of course, recipes, all having to do with easy, delicious, environmentally-friendly vegetarian cooking.