In our last post, we highlighted some sustainable restaurants in the New York City area. This week, we’re helping you out on the nights you want to stay in. Cooking at home is another way to minimize your environmental footprint. First of all, you’re already cutting out a lot of the trash-creating aspects of eating out – especially disposable napkins and cutlery. You can easily make your home cooking even more sustainable by using recipes from a cookbook that was written thoughtfully, with low environmental impact food sources in mind. We pulled together a few of our favorite cookbooks with a focus on sustainability. 

The Chefs Collaborative Cookbook

This book, edited by Ellen Jackson, brings together recipes from some of the over 12,000 American chefs who have joined the Chefs Collaborative network, which hopes to redesign American eating habits so they’re oriented towards sustainability. The recipes emphasize seasonal ingredients and sustainably grown produce.

Modern Native Feasts: Healthy, Innovative and Sustainable Cuisine

Andrew George draws on indigenous knowledge around ingredients and cooking processes to offer a scintillating range of recipes that are surprising, good for the environment, and good for your body. 

The CSA Cookbook: No Waste Recipes for Cooking Your Way Through a Community Supported Agriculture Box, Farmer’s Market or Backyard Bounty

If you get produce from a CSA, this book by Linda Ly and Will Taylor will inspire you not just to use every vegetable that comes in your CSA, but to use every last edible piece of the veggie. If you don’t use a CSA, sign up for your local one! 

The Sustainable Table

In Cassie Duncan and Hayley Morris’ book, they bring together recipes from farmers, at home gardeners turned farmers, and professional chefs. Recipes are backed by stories about individual journeys towards seasonal and local food consumption habits, so reading this book will give you more than a few role models in addition to recipes. 

The Insect Cookbook: Food for a Sustainable Planet

Ok, you might not be ready to venture into insect-based meals, but we included this one for the adventuresome among us. In this book, Arnold van Huis, Henk van Gurp, and Marcel Dicke present a convincing case that eating bugs is good for the environment, along with a surprisingly strong argument that they might taste good! Intriguing recipes abound.