Reduce Waste with Recipes – Mixed Green and Romaine Salad with Apple and Walnuts

If there’s one thing the grocery store has a lot of—besides food—it’s packaging. Cereal comes in boxes, soda in cans, and even lettuce in bags. Today we want to share a recipe from our cooking class, as well as some tips for shopping for ingredients that have less packaging.

First, the recipe:

Mixed Green and Romaine Salad with Apples and Walnuts

Ingredients

3 cups romaine lettuce, chopped

3 cups mixed greens

1 cup apple (honey crisp or braeburn)

½ cup walnuts

For dressing:

2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

2 tablespoons maple syrup

2 tablespoon Dijon mustard

2 ½ teaspoons walnut oil

1/8 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Instructions

Image: Flickr/Robert Couse-Baker

Wash and chop lettuce. Cut the apple into two-inch strips and hold in cold water with a small amount of apple cider vinegar to keep it from oxidizing. Toast walnuts at 350 degrees for eight minutes and chop if desired. Whisk all the dressing ingredients in a small bowl. Then toss the lettuce, apple, and nuts with a few tablespoons of dressing.

Now the tips:

In a recipe like this, consider buying lettuce by the head and mixed greens by the pound instead of by the bag. If you’re buying significant quantities of greens, you’ll use less plastic this way. You can even bring your own containers to the store to hold the greens if you’d like. If you’re buying produce that’s sold by weight, some stores will let you have your container weighed when it’s empty so they can subtract that from the weight of the container filled with produce (to figure out how much you need to pay). This can eliminate plastic bags from the equation entirely.

We’ve mentioned this before, but this same strategy can be used for buying items like nuts or spices, too. You can buy from the bulk bins, which is usually cheaper and uses much less packaging.

Bonus tip (for reducing food waste):

Only buy the produce you need. Did you know that for items sold by weight, most grocery stores will let you buy only as much as you need? This means you can buy one head of broccoli instead of multiple banded together or one stalk of celery instead of a whole bunch. Doing this means you will have only the amount of food you need and it’s less likely any leftovers will go to waste in your fridge.

Turn a T-Shirt into a Grocery Bag

Earlier this summer we wrote about how you can turn plastic bags into yarn. Someone even used this yarn to knit us a grocery bag. Now we want to share an idea for a homemade grocery bag that doesn’t require knitting skills. All you’ll need is an old T-Shirt, a pair of scissors, and a needle and thread (or sewing machine).

Don’t let the sewing part scare you, though. The project only involves minimal sewing. You just cut the amount of fabric you need from your shirt, sew the bag’s edge, and cut slits in the fabric with a scissors so the bag is expandable. Once you’re done, it’ll be perfect for carrying your purchases at the store or the farmers market.

Photo: Delia Creates

You can find a complete tutorial at the website Delia Creates or you can check out YouTube for instructions. Plenty of videos and photo tutorials make variations of the T-Shirt bag, so select one that works for you.

Projects like this one are a great way to use old T-Shirts that are no longer wearable, and most of us probably have at least one hiding in a drawer somewhere. If you have old T-Shirts but don't need a grocery bag, Pinterest is full of ideas for other upcycling projects. T-Shirt rugs, headbands, potholders and jewelry are also possibilities.