Andy Remeis, along with Alex Davis and Diana Ellis, is co-author of Dinner at Your Door. She is an award-winning baker with a decade of experience in the restaurant world. She has led dinner co-ops since 2001.

Green your weeknight meals

Cook less often

By Andy Remeis

March 19, 2009

We are all growing more conscious of our carbon footprints. We turn off the lights when we leave a room, we turn down our thermostats, and we try to get on our bikes once in a while.

But how many times do you go to the grocery store in a week? How often do you bring home dinner in take-out containers and plastic bags? How many times do you turn on your oven every week?

Last night I cooked a simple but satisfying meal of lasagna made with local turkey and fresh mozzarella, accompanied by homemade bread and Caesar salad. I shopped the day before and picked up everything I needed for the meal and some extras for the week. But no more; this was my one meal to cook, and my one grocery-shopping trip, for the week.

As my oven baked three loaves of molasses-buckwheat bread and three lasagnas, I finished my weeknight cooking for the week. I got on my bike and delivered those dinners — hot and ready to eat — to two other families. Dinner for three families was cooked with one oven, and delivered on one bike.

Deliver dinner for three families with a single bike.

The trick is that those other two families will each be doing the same thing later in the week. My family, in turn, will receive two other meals — hot and ready to eat, made with fresh ingredients and a little love.

Magic? No, just another week of our dinner co-op. Think of it as one more way that our interdependence can help green our weeknights, one meal at a time.