What will be your special night menu? Our ideas and recipes for preparing gourmet food that is anti-waste and sustainable. On special nights, we want to prepare a festive and luxury meal, which is unusual and will delight the guests. We certainly want to prepare dishes as fancy as Swiss watches. In principle, luxury dishes and luxury watches are the same. They offer something elegant. For information, you can learn more here if you want to know what makes Swiss watches classed as the most luxurious in the world.
Back to the topic, we sometimes forget about the environmental consumption we practice throughout the year … Good news: “sustainable” does not mean “hard”. It is possible to spoil the flavor while maintaining a mild ecological footprint.
To get there, we are guided by two main ideas:
– Choose the most sustainable ingredients (and hence the menu).
– Avoid food waste: during the holidays, our bins are filled with 17% of food that can be consumed!
How to do it? Here are our tips for an ecological party.
Prepare the menu
Learn about guests’ tastes. So many know if we will have carnivores, vegetarians, allergies to crustaceans and are not tolerant of dairy products. Better to ask first. This avoids visitors and frustrated dishes that come half full in the kitchen.
How do you adapt the menu?
– Either we find a menu that is suitable for all guests; one of the recipes is provided easily (for example, you can remove / replace the cream);
– Whether we choose pierrade foods: simple and friendly, it allows everyone to arrange their dishes without justifying any preference or intolerance.
We can also make life easier and support recipes prepared in advance and cook without having to be next to each other at all times (in the oven, for example). Or play a hospitality card: everyone brings some food. We ask guests to pay attention to come up with more sustainable dishes … and we accept with a smile if this doesn’t happen.
Choose recipes for sustainable cooking
We compile a menu that meets the following maximum criteria:
1. Local and seasonal ingredients
It’s tempting to include tomatoes or strawberries in the year-end menu. Especially because all the supermarkets offer. But fruits and vegetables out of season have 10 times more impact than those grown seasonally and locally. Apples, pears, pumpkins, mushrooms, parsnips can be cooked in a very subtle way. And they will have more flavor than winter tomatoes that grow in heated greenhouses. Unless you use summer to cook and store some garden produce. In this case, dried tomatoes, confit pepper or homemade fresh herbal oil can perfectly complement the preparation. If you invite non-local relatives or friends, this is also an opportunity to find local recipes. Or ask them to come with dishes that represent their region.
2. Moderate meat and fish, be kind in vegetables
Vegetarian spread. We do not recommend eating more than 70 g of red meat a day. Why not apply this rule on vacation too? If we eat it, we plan only for the main dish or input, not both. To note, vegetables sprinkled on crackers make delicious zakouski: carrots and cumin, pumpkin and beans, beets and turnips or even hummus. This spread can also be used as an appetizer or to accompany the dish. It’s healthy, tasty and colorful.
3. Moderate amounts of sugar
We consume lots of sugar throughout the year, which is harmful to health and can increase cancer. What if instead of using these ingredients during the holidays, we try to limit them? Not to rob yourself but to give yourself the chance to find something else. We can test dessert recipes with a little sugar.
4. We accept compromises
A continuous menu of 100% is possible. But if we choose most local, seasonal and organic ingredients, we cook a little meat and fish and limit food waste, it doesn’t need to be a scourge because we really want to eat a mango for dessert. It must be fun!
