Hey there,

Welcome (back) to the Food for Thought blog!

Recently, I was invited to think about water and its importance. It might sound trivial, but this resource is not as abundant or renewable as we might often think.

Even though 71% of our planet is covered by water, only around 3% of all water available is freshwater.

Like with any other resource, we should use water in a modest way; in such a way that we can answer our needs while making sure future generations can answer theirs.

The thing is, most of the water we use is not consumed directly. It is not the water we drink or the water we use to shower. For instance, 70% of all freshwater withdrawals are used by the agricultural sector.

Everything we eat has a water footprint, there’s no way around that. But, of course, we can learn which products are more water-demanding, and act accordingly.

Paired with this month’s Food for Thought article, another article was published on the Education page. This article delves deeper into how water is distributed around the globe, the concept of water footprint, and how we can reduce it.

Today’s recipe invites us to make more efficient use of water in our kitchens, going from the selected ingredients to saving cooking water.

Green Pesto Salad

This recipe takes about 15 minutes to prepare (if you eat it warm) and serves 2 to 3 people.

Base ingredients:

• 80g (below ½ cup) green lentils
• 50g (⅓ cup) buckwheat
• 50g spinach

Pesto ingredients:

• 150g tofu
• 30g basil
• 100g olive oil
• 1 tbsp nutritional yeast
• Juice 1/2 lemon juice
• 1 clove of garlic
• 30g roasted sunflower seeds

Instructions:

• Soak the lentils overnight. You can choose to soak the buckwheat, too, but it is not mandatory (I soaked it for around 1 hour, which worked perfectly with the cooking times).
• In a pan, cook the drained buckwheat and green lentils*.
• While that cooks away, you can add the pesto ingredients (except the tofu) to a food processor, and blend until smooth. Crumble the tofu in as well. Combine it well (with a spoon or fork, do not blend at this point).
• Once the buckwheat and green lentils are done (it takes around 5 minutes), remove them from the heat and add the spinach.** Let it wilt down in the remaining warmth.
• Once it is cool to your liking, mix in the pesto sauce.
• You can garnish with some roasted pumpkin seeds and simply enjoy!

*When soaking pulses, make sure you discard the water. Legumes, especially beans, have antinutrients that leak into the water while soaking (learn more here).

**Now, this water you can save. If you use too much water, save it in a container. You can cook with it or even drink it!

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I would like to hear from you now… have you ever considered your water footprint? And what do you do to manage it?

Use the comment section below to share your thoughts.

Thank you very much for being here and for sharing your valuable time with us.

If you want to learn more, visit our Education page.

See you next time!

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