Editor’s note: We’re very happy to welcome Lisa Kivirist to the Green Options writing team! Lisa, along with husband John Ivanko, is the author of Rural Renaissance: Renewing the Quest for the Good Life (which we reviewed), and Edible Earth: Savoring the Good Life with Vegetarian Recipes from Inn Serendipity. Lisa and John own and run Inn Serendipity, a central Wisconsin bed and breakfast.

Like clockwork, three opportunities come our way every day to make the world a better place: breakfast, lunch and dinner. Add in snacks, and our daily eating choices can collectively add up to significant impact on our planetary tides.

But with the buffet of eating options – from mega supermarket aisles to lengthy restaurant menus that resemble encyclopedias — making educated food choices can border on overwhelming. Simple strategies help.

Being from Wisconsin, we feel compelled to sprinkle in some cheese references, and frankly, we first encountered the "Eat High, Use Less" strategy in our local cheese store. Bruno, a Swiss cheesemaker who runs Alp and Dell, the cheese store adjacent to the Roth Kase cheese factory here in Monroe, shared this insight with us: In Europe, where folks arguably know their fine cheeses, they eat about eighty percent of their cheese. By "eat," he means savoring a nice slice of cheese, perhaps accompanied with some bread or fruit. The focus is on the flavor. The remaining twenty percent gets used in cooking. In the United States, the opposite rough statistic holds true: we cook with about eighty percent of our cheese and eat only twenty percent; with gobs of it on pizza, the focus is on our enjoyment of the fat.

Bruno helped shift our thinking that day, prompting us to focus on eating less, but eating better. Quality versus quantity. A fine-quality hard parmesan cheese may cost more, but just a few grates of such a flavorful cheese can dress up a whole bowl of pasta or Caesar salad. Rather than guzzling whatever java was on sale, savor one flavorful cup of Equal Exchange Sumatra, a fair trade, organic coffee.

Some tips on eating better by using less:

• Cut back on quantity. Flavor tends to increase with higher quality foods, so you may find you can get away with less quantity, which adds up to cost savings. We found this to be the case with coffee. We just needed to just fill our coffee maker two thirds full with Equal Exchange Sumatra, yet the coffee brewed was nicely full flavored.
• Upgrade slowly. Every year we pick a handful of food items we regularly use and see if the “eat high, use less” theory can apply. Chocolate readily fell into this category, but we were discouraged by the pricey fair trade, organic offerings. Undaunted to cut back on chocolate, we found that dry, unsweetene baking cocoa powder (not hot cocoa mix) – still fair trade and organic – delivered a cost savings when mixed with sugar or other ingredients as needed in recipes. When a recipe calls for a one-ounce unsweetened baking chocolate square, simply and economically substitute three tablespoons unsweetened cocoa mixed with one tablespoon of vegetable oil.

Confession: This moist, richly flavored chocolate muffin is really a cupcake in disguise. These vegan muffins use cocoa powder and is from our cookbook, Edible Earth: Savoring the Good Life with Vegetarian Recipes from Inn Serendipity:

Cocoa Muffins

Ingredients:

1 ½ c. all-purpose flour
1 c. sugar
1 t. baking soda
½ t. salt
3 T. cocoa powder
1 t. vinegar
1/3 c. vegetable oil
1 t. vanilla
1 c. water

Directions:

• Grease 12 standard size muffin cups.
• Mix together all ingredients.
• Bake at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Yield: 12 muffins.