First of Our Kind
Coming soon…when we debut, in.gredients will be the first package-free and zero waste grocery store in the United States.
|
|
|
||
| No matter the case, real, unprocessed food is better for you than food that’s been chemically modified. At our store, you won’t need packaging to convince you of what you’re buying. You’ll be buying real ingredients. Learn more | in.gredients is a collaborative effort between business, community, and consumers with the goal of eliminating food-related waste while supporting local businesses and farmers. Learn more | There’s no waste in nature. Waste is a human invention. As good stewards of our environment, our top priority is to reduce the amount of waste we produce and reuse what we have. Learn More |
Real food
Local, Community
Reduce, Reuse, then Recycle
|
Like this:
Entrepreneur Magazine: 100 Brilliant Companies
 |
We’re thrilled to be amongst Entrepreneur Magazine’s 2012 100 Brilliant Companies…we’re blushing bright red!
If the World Had 100 People
Really, really cool infographic from Miniature Earth. It’s always nice to see folks coming up with creative ways to illustrate how much we actually consume / how resources are allocated in the world with the intent of increasing awareness and driving change. Miniature Earth’s site is worth perusing – lots of great content!
(image: Miniature Earth)
Volunteer Day No. 10! Store Garden and Lighting
in.gredients is bustling this morning with helping hands! We’re finishing the Urban Patchwork-powered store garden’s wicking beds and painting our store’s sign frame. Great weather, great time…
Cleaning up upcycled light fixtures for store use! Reduce, reuse…
Like this:
The REAL Difference Between Cage-Free and Pasture-Raised Eggs
Understanding the meanings of buzzwords and phrases is critical to understanding how our food system works and how to know which terms are legitimate and which are marketing ploys! In this video (shared via PBS and Grist), poultry farmers David Evans and Alexis Koefoed explain the terms “cage-free”, “free-range”, and “pasture-raised” to help consumers make informed decisions at their local supermarkets – decisions we don’t want our customers to have to make while shopping in our store, and decisions we want to empower others to make wisely and confidently when shopping elsewhere! Check out this great vid.
(video: PBS)
Recipe: Honey Nut Energy Cubes
by Colleen Doyle
Many people have asked me if I miss eating snack foods like chips, crackers, and granola bars, which are only available in packaging. To my surprise, after nearly a year of working toward zero-waste, I can honestly answer that I don’t crave any packaged food—savory, salty, or sweet. I’ve managed to find healthy, package-free replacements to satisfy every kind of hankering. Here is a recipe for sweet and hearty energy cubes. The measurements are approximate. I used what I had on hand—any other nuts, seeds, fruits and grains can be substituted.
1 cup honey
1 cup nut butter (I used almond)
1 cup popped amaranth
0.50 cup chopped almonds
0.50 cup chopped dried apricots
0.50 cup sunflower seeds
0.50 cup pumpkin seeds
Directions
1. Heat honey until warm. Slowly add nut butter until just mixable.
2. Mix in the remaining ingredients one by one. When the mixture became too stiff to stir, I used my hands to fold in the rest of the dry ingredients.
3. Press the mixture into an oiled 8×8” pan. Cool for one hour.
4. Cut into 1 inch cubes. Store in the refrigerator for up to one month or freeze indefinitely.
(image: Colleen Doyle, No Trash Project)
Recipe: Oat Milk
by Colleen Doyle
Homemade oat milk’s a wonderful solution to a packaging problem. Store-bought oat milk (and many other boxed liquids) come in a drink cartons comprised of 75% paper, 20% plastic, and 5% aluminium foil. There’s usually a plastic pour spout on the top of the carton. Making your own cuts down on packaging waste – and is also far more economical.
A quart of organic oat milk from the store will usually cost around 3 to 4 dollars. The oat groats I bought in bulk only cost $1.69/lb. Oat milk’s smooth and creamy. Many agree that of all the milk substitutes, oat
milk in most similar to dairy in texture. Cooked oat milk tastes nutty; raw oat milk has a slightly grassier flavor. Both are easy to make!
0.25 cup raw organic oat groats
4 cups water
0.25 tsp of sea salt
Directions: Cooked oat milk
1. Soak the oat groats in a bowl of water for about 8 hours. Rinse the oats and discard the soaking water.
2. Place the oats, salt, and 1 cup of water in a saucepan. Bring to a boil then cover and simmer over low heat for 40 minutes. Remove from heat and let the oats cool completely.
3. Blend the cooked oats with the 3 cups of water until very smooth (I used my immersion blender and added the water directly to the saucepan—which meant less dishes to wash afterwards!).
4. Strain through a fine mesh strainer into an airtight container. You can reserved the solids to use in a baking recipe (I simply warmed mine up with a little water and ate them as a porridge the next morning).
You can also make raw oat milk:
1. Leave the soaked and rinsed oats in a colander in a cool spot for 12-24 hours to initiate the sprouting process. Then blend the oats with the 0.25 tsp of salt and 4 cups of water until very smooth. Let the blended oats sit for 1 hour before straining.
2. The oat milk will keep for 3-4 days in the refrigerator. Use it as a cooking base, pour it over cereal, or drink it straight. I sweeten mine with a little honey and freshly ground cinnamon!
(image: Colleen Doyle, No Trash Project)
Like this:
Recipe: Real Mustard
From: Melody Birdsong
Equipment: Blender
Yield: About 2 cups
0.5 cups water
0.5 cups apple cider vinegar
0.25 cups yellow mustard seeds
0.25 cups brown mustard seeds
1 tsp turmeric powder
1 tsp Salt
1 tbsp Agave
1. Mix the mustard seeds with the vinegar and water in a glass bowl. Cover and let sit for at least 12 hours, up to 48 hours.
2. Once the seeds are done soaking, pour the seeds into a blender with the liquid and add turmeric, salt and agave.
3. Blend until the consistency of a paste, this could take 1-2 minutes, and the mustard seeds have been broken down but still visable.
Notes:
- This recipe is awesome! Great base for other flavors to be added in.
- Would like to try with beer instead of water, and all vinegar instead of water.
Winner: in.gredients Color Vote
Thanks for helping us choose a color scheme for our first store. You’ve weighed in and picked the green with white trim!
Ollas: Throwback to Old Gardening Ways
in.gredients' Shayla Sander helping Allison Elementary plant an olla in their school garden.
The ancient practice of olla irrigation is one of the best water-conscious methods to water your garden – and perfect for gardeners who can’t water frequently.
First introduced in North America by Spanish colonists and later adopted by Native Americans, an olla‘s a large, unglazed terra cotta pot. When buried underground and filled with water, the olla slowly releases water into the soil, feeding plant roots within a 2-3′ radius of the pot.
If used correctly, 100 percent of olla irrigation water’s absorbed by your plants, and your plants’ roots will proliferate around the moist clay jar – making hand-watering a thing of the past.
Austinites, if you’re interested in ollas – check out Dripping Springs Ollas. We have ‘em here at the store and in the school garden’s we’re sponsoring. They’re fantastic!
The olla, planted! A ceramic lid sits on top to keep bugs out.
Like this:
Behavioral Programming: How Our Ethos Work
 |
Christopher Pepe:Christopher’s an all-star developer and partner/consultant with Praecipio Consulting and a part of in.gredients‘ founding team. |
|
Basic programming: how computers make decisions
Computers are great at solving certain problems – and terrible at solving others.
In its classic model the computer was programmed to make a “choice” given a set of rules that are obeyed. If anything changed, a program wasn’t equipped to adapt. This is great if the computer is, for example, playing chess – it just needs to know the few million possible configurations, play out every game to the end in its head, and choose the move that means it’s most likely to win.
Many computer programs implement an algorithm or a repeatable set of “choices.” They aren’t really choices, though, because the computer will choose the same way every time. To get a program to behave a particular way it has to be programmed to pick exactly the right path. For example, if you’re hungry, get some food – unless you have to go to the bathroom, and in that case go to the bathroom first. Given this flow, the program will never consider if the house is on fire and will burn up. It will also never deviate from its path even if what it “chooses” doesn’t make sense given the bigger picture.
What’s behavioral programming, and why’s it different?
Behavioral programming, however, is bio-mimicry – a way of programming computers to act more like plants and animals so they’re better suited to adapt to change. A set of behaviors are programmed in and depending on the most pressing need, a behavior emerges. Think of The Sims. If you’re hungry, go get food. But if you have to go to the bathroom food may need to wait… that is, unless the house is on fire. You’re still limited by the behaviors you’ve learned, but are more free to choose which behavior best fits your current environment. As the environment changes, so may the best choice.
So what could this possibly have to do with in.gredients?
Glad you asked!
We’re often asked how we select our products – i.e., what criteria’s most important in choosing products for the store. It’s hard to say “Term A” is more important than “Term B” because in the real world few things are so cut-and-dry. Today’s world is a complex array of terms both positive and negative, often with loose definitions like “natural.” Terms like organic, beyond-organic, biodynamic, local, heirloom, sustainable, green, natural, free-range, cage-free, pastured, grass-fed, grass-finished, GMO, chemical, big-ag, and toxic are thrown around. Organic actually has a legal meaning, but there’s a lot of variation in how it’s applied. Most of the others vary wildly in what they mean. Often times, a non-certified organic small farm may be a better environmental steward than a large national organic brand. It’s a complex field to navigate.
At in.gredients we take each product into consideration and inspect it from every angle. Where does it come from, what are the ethos of the producer and the rest of the supply chain, are there alternative options we can compare it to…and, like in behavioral programming, make a calculated decision based on the decisions unique environment and the variables within it. And just like real-life, those variables may change in the future, and our decisions may have to react and adjust.
