Category: Sustainable Living

Author: Joe Himmelfarb ‘24

Sometimes we want to eat something warm, sweet, and comforting––something that feels close to home. At the same time, we want to indulge guilt-free, in terms of both our health and the carbon footprint of our food. To appease these cravings, look no further than this apple crisp recipe and look fast because most apples are almost out of season! This recipe is not only delicious, fairly easy to make, and highly nutritious but also a great way to practice sustainable dining. 

Farmer’s markets are still offering a variety of fresh, seasonal apples, but fear not if you cannot reach one: groceries at this time of year often stock locally produced apples. Eating locally has numerous benefits for the environment and is indeed inseparable from the notion of sustainable agriculture. It has been found that “conventional food distribution [is] responsible for 5 to 17 times more CO2 than local and regionally produced food.” Furthermore, opting for local produce supports small family farmers who often promote sustainable agriculture in various ways like limiting their use of synthetic inputs and industrial processing tools. That said, it is also important to take advantage of seasonality: out-of-season produce, even when grown locally, uses more resources than in-season produce grown locally. For example, “More water is needed to…grow strawberries in New York in the dead of winter.”

A final note before the recipe: cooking apple crisp offers an excellent opportunity to test out new kinds of apples. While most apples are not as sweet as our beloved Honeycrisps, Fujis, and Galas, tarter apples shine when it comes to baking. I prepared this apple crisp using Stayman, Jonagold, Rome, Nittany, and Goldrush apples that I purchased at my local farmer’s market. If you are able to visit a farmer’s market, I would highly recommend asking vendors for their opinion on the best baking apples.

Ingredients:

Apple Mixture:

• 5-6 apples, roughly chopped
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1-2 tbsp maple syrup
• Salt (optional)

Crumble: 

• 1 ½ cups of rolled oats
• (Roughly) ½ cup walnuts
• 2-3 tsp cinnamon
• 2-3 tbsp maple syrup
• Salt (optional)

Instructions:

Step 1: Preheat oven to 350°F. 

Step 2: Blend oats or mash manually until coarsely ground. 

Step 3: Blend or mix in the remaining crumble ingredients, adding more or less cinnamon, maple syrup, and salt as desired.

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Step 4: Roughly chop apples. 
Optional Step: For softer apples, microwave chopped apples for 5 minutes.

Step 5: Mix apples with the rest of the mixture ingredients in a baking dish.

Step 6: Cover apple mixture with crumble.

Step 7: Bake for 35-40 minutes.

Step 8: Enjoy!

Optional Step: For a light, delicious plant-based pairing, try nice cream. To prepare: freeze a few ripe bananas, and then blend them while adding small amounts of water or plant-based milk until a creamy consistency is reached. You can also try blending in other flavors like vanilla, cocoa, or fruit like mango and strawberry. 

Recipe adapted from the Mama Sezz blog.

This series is brought to you by the student group, Greening Dining.

Author: Alev Studenikina ‘23

Everyone loves sweet potatoes! They can be cooked in a variety of ways and taste especially wholesome in the Fall season with the anticipation of Thanksgiving.

While, sadly, most of us right now cannot savor food marvels like Curried Sweet Potato & Lentil Stew or Maple Glazed Sweet Potato Cake made by the Campus Dining chefs, sweet potatoes are such an amazing ingredient that even a simple dish can be mouthwatering. 

Also, did you know that sweet potatoes are the way to go in terms of sustainable food production that would address the challenges of feeding the world population? The sweet potato “provides more calories per hectare and per growing month than all the major grain crops” while containing vitamins A, C, B6, manganese, potassium and antioxidants. After the discovery of the Covington sweet potato variety, well-suited to the climate in North Carolina, billions of pounds of sweet potatoes can be grown annually in this state, and sweet potatoes are farmed in other states such as California, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Louisiana. This means that sweet potatoes are relatively locally grown for many people in the USA, giving them a lower overall carbon footprint compared to other foods.

Enough of the facts – here is a simple recipe for healthy and delicious oven-baked sweet potato fries!

Ingredients:

• 2 sweet potatoes
• Vegetable oil (I used olive oil)
• Salt (to taste)
• Spices (turmeric and paprika, to taste)

Steps (15 min prep time + 30 min in the oven):

Step 1: Pre-heat the oven to 180°C (350°F).

Step 2: Wash the sweet potatoes and cut them into approximately fry-sized pieces.

Step 3: Line a tray with baking paper and transfer the sweet potato pieces onto it.

Step 4: Add a drizzle of olive oil, plus the salt, turmeric and paprika.

Step 5: Mix everything together so that each piece gets coated with the oil and spice mixture.

Step 6: Spread the pieces out on the tray so that there is some space between them (otherwise they will not get a nice crust). I could fit one cut-up sweet potato on the tray, so I baked the two in turns.

Step 7: Put the tray in the oven for 25-30 min. After 20 min, turn on the grill setting or the fan inside the oven to dry out the “fries” a bit.

The result:

There was actually more from the two sweet potatoes that I used, but these “fries” are irresistible when they are just out of the oven, so quite a few were gone before I got to take this picture!

This series is brought to you by student group, Greening Dining

Author: Kara Steele ‘21

Have you ever been to your local farmer’s market? Going to the farmer’s market can be a really fun way to support local businesses and connect with the community (especially now since they are mostly outdoors and socially distanced). Visiting farmer’s markets can also be a good way to learn more about the crops grown in your area as markets often offer local, seasonal produce. While it is fun to try new things and eat super fresh food, eating local, seasonal food can also reduce your environmental impact and food waste. By eating food grown closer to you, you can reduce the energy needed to transport the food to you and reduce necessary packaging. Eating local can also minimize food waste as over 50% of food waste happens when the food is in transit or storage.

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Lately I have been finding a lot of eggplant at my local farmer’s market, so I went on a hunt for some tasty eggplant recipes. The winner so far is plant-based eggplant parmesan, which is featured below.

Ingredient list: 

• Two to three small to medium sized eggplants
• Salt (1 tbsp + ¾ tsp)
• Water
• Flour (4 tbsp)
• Breadcrumbs (Italian preferred)
• Garlic powder
• Italian seasoning
• Pepper
• Nutritional Yeast
• Marinara sauce 
• Spaghetti 
• Optional: Parmesan or plant-based cheese

Steps:

1. Wash and cut the eggplant into quarter inch slices. I usually use two to three small- to medium-sized eggplants. Fill a bowl with a tablespoon of salt and a quart of warm water and mix. Then add two more quarts of cold water and the eggplant slices and let sit for 30-45 minutes.
2. Preheat the oven to 450˚F.
3. Prepare your dredging liquid. In a bowl add about a ½ cup of water and 4 tbsp of flour and stir. 
4. Prepare the breading. In a separate bowl, add: 2 cups of breadcrumbs, ¾ tsp salt, 1 tsp garlic powder, 2 tsp Italian seasoning, 1 tbsp nutritional yeast, and pepper to taste. Pour this mixture onto a plate.
5. Prepare your assembly line. Line up the bowl of dredging liquid, plate of breading, and a pan lightly greased with olive oil.
6. For each slice of eggplant, dredge it in the dreading liquid and coat it with the breadcrumb mixture and put it on the pan. If the breadcrumbs on the plate get too saturated with liquid they may stop sticking, so mix in some dry breadcrumbs if needed.

1. Bake the eggplant slices for 18 minutes, then flip them and cook for another 10 minutes. Check their tenderness with a fork. If the eggplant is still chewy or tough, you can cook it longer until it becomes more tender and less bitter.
2. If you want, you can add a sprinkle of parmesan to the slices when they have about 5 minutes left to cook, but you can opt to leave this step out for a more plant-based meal.
3. I like to serve it with marinara sauce and spaghetti, but feel free to mix and match as you prefer! Enjoy!

Recipe adapted from page 103 of 30 – Minute Vegan Dinners by Megan Sadd.

This series is brought to you by student group, Greening Dining