Your Guide to Eating Green for St. Patrick’s Day
March 1, 2012
•Le Cordon Bleu
•Boston
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Your Guide to Eating Green for St. Patrick’s Day
St. Patrick’s Day originally started out as a solemn religious holiday, but has since morphed into a raucous celebration of all things Irish. Most major cities, especially Boston, have St. Patrick’s Day parades where revelers don their oversized green sunglasses, green beads, and “Kiss Me I’m Irish” t-shirts, whether they are Irish or not.
And when it comes to food, restaurants offer “green eggs” and ham, green beer, and the traditional Irish boiled everything dinner. Even some cooking schools offer courses on preparing meals, both delicious and fanciful, for this day to celebrate the wearin’ o’ the green.
If that’s not your idea of how we should eat green on St. Patrick’s then this guide for eating green may be more of what your looking for. Cooking schools in Massachusetts may not be totally up to speed on the many ways to cook and eat green, but this guide can help you. It includes tips on how to both eat healthier and to have less of an impact on the environment.
Seven Tips for Eating Green
- If you’re lookin’, it ain’tcookin’
Keep the oven door closed when cooking. Every time you open the door it loses 25 to 50 degrees and must then work harder to get back up to temperature.
- Go Organic
Most organic food tastes better, but all organic food is better for the environment and your body. Who wants artificial pesticides and herbicides in their corned beef and cabbage anyway.
- Go Local
Boston may swathed in cold and snow half the year, but the growing season brings plenty of locally grown and produced foods that are both unique to our region and delicious. Buying locally sourced food is good for the environment because it uses fewer resources to get to your kitchen. Buying locally also creates jobs with local farms, food producers, and distributors.
- Cook at Home
Don’t go to your favorite Boston pub for shepherd’s pie. Stay home and make it yourself from locally sourced organic foods. When you buy and cook your own food, you know exactly what you are getting without hidden additives or short cuts on quality.You can also help your friends and family cook at home by giving them gifts of classes at local cooking schools.
- Reduce Packaging
There are a couple of reasons to avoid heavily packaged foods: One, there is a direct relationship between heavily processed and heavily packaged. Less packaging typically means less additives and more whole foods. Two, packaging means an increase resources for producing the packaged food – more paper, more plastic, more shelf space, more everything.
- Visit the Bulk Section
And we don’t mean Costco or other warehouse stores. We mean visiting the bulk bins at your local whole grocer. You’ll find nuts, grains, pastas, and other scoopable products. This additional way to reduce packaging means fossil fuel guzzling machines were used to get these bulk items to market.
- Get Your (Green) Veg On
You’ve heard this before, but it bears repeating: Green vegetables are good for you – especially cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, and … wait for it … cabbage. Cabbage is good for you! So enjoy that organic grass fed corned beef and locally grown cabbage and know that you are improving your own nutrition while also helping to conserve environmental resources.
This article is presented by Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Boston. Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Boston offers culinary arts and pâtisserie and baking training programs in the Boston, Massachusetts area. To learn more about the class offerings, please visit Chefs.edu/Boston for more information.
Find disclosures on graduation rates, student financial obligations and more at www.chefs.edu/disclosures. Le Cordon Bleu® and the Le Cordon Bleu logo are registered trademarks of Career Education Corporation. Le Cordon Bleu cannot guarantee employment or salary. Credits earned are unlikely to transfer.