To-Go Ware

Since most of my daily food intake happens at work, carrying my food on my bike has required some creative solutions. I’m trying to get away from disposable things, plastic things, but glass is too heavy and too breakable to be an ideal solution for me. Enter To-Go Ware. Though one coworker commented that it looked like a surgical kit of some sort, they’re nifty little stackable metal containers, durable, but still lightweight.

Of course they are metal, and that means no microwaving them. I asked some advice of the women working at the cute little socially conscious eco-store where I got them, and they had some solutions for me. First was to have a microwavable plate that I’d leave at work. The contents of the container could be transferred to the plate and heated up. That would work! But even easier, if there is a toaster in the office kitchen, use the toaster to heat up the contents. I also have cloth napkins on hand, because I don’t want to grab the metal to-go container after it’s been in the toaster a while.

The toaster takes more time to heat things, but I don’t mind.

My next challenge is to get in the habit of taking an emtpy to-go container with me when I go to restaurants. I rarely sit in, mostly order food to go. This results in containers. Some of them are reusable, and that’s what I’d used up until recently to bring my food to work, but some of them are not at all reusable. In either case, it is earth-expensive stuff that I can change my habits to avoid, without having to give up my occasional restaurant meal altogether.

Being environmentally conscious goes hand in hand with my veganism. It is part of what motivates me to bike commute…that is, it is primarily what motivated me to start bike commuting. The fact that I love the bike commuting is what makes it easy to continue. Of course it also means I eat a lot more.

Today it was leftover Dal Makhni from Vegan Yum Yum’s cookbook. A coworker was rinsing her dishes in the break room when I took my food out of the toaster today, and it must have smelled good, because I was afraid she was going to steal my lunch!