the hunt for plastic free zucchini bar ingredients

Now, a little about a recent Kroger shopping trip, when I specifically went to the store to gather some ingredients for zucchini bars. I needed eggs, Bisquick, oregano, vegetable oil, cheese, and an onion. 

The onion and eggs were easily found without plastic. The rest, not so much. 

I picked up a box of Bisquick, shook it, squeezed it and decided it must have plastic packaging inside the box. (Yeah, I don't really buy Bisquick ever.) Luckily, we have smart phones! So, I typed "Bisquick substitute" into Google and I immediately found a way to make it at home with ingredients I already had. 

Next up, vegetable oil. I'm pretty sure there is not a single glass bottle of vegetable oil in existence. I looked and squeezed every bottle. All were plastic. In this case, I knew my roommate had some at home, so I opted to use hers because I rarely need vegetable oil. 

Additionally, I think butter could be substituted. Zucchini bars are not exactly a "baked good" so I'm not positive about this. Maybe I'll try it next time. Of course, butter wrappers cannot be recycled, so maybe vegetable oil in a plastic bottle is the better option?

Onto oregano! So, I spent an excessive amount of time in spice section. SO many spices and SO many spices in plastic containers! I decided on an "Italian Herb Blend" in a glass container with a plastic lid. While I was there, I remembered I just ran out of my most favorite spice ever: McCormick's Roasted Garlic & Herb Grill Mates spice. It is delicious. But, I looked for an alternative to this delicious spice that was in a plastic container:

And, I found something similar, but I have to admit that it's not quite as good - I think because of the lack of salt. :) But, it has a glass bottle and metal lid - it was one of 4 spices available in that type of packaging:  

Finally, I also needed cheese, which is also very difficult to find in a non-plastic container. Unfortunately, I looked at quite a few different cheeses, fancier ones and good old Kraft cheese. I could not find anything in paper or something more sustainable than plastic. But, as I mentioned in my last post, the Kraft cheese company has moved to use smaller plastic bags that hold the same amount of cheese. So, I did opt for that choice: 

 

Overall, I feel I was pretty successful in making some delicious zucchini bars with ingredients that used as little plastic as possible. I did not take a picture of them, but they looked exactly like this picture from online which had the same recipe: 

If this looks good to you, go scope out the recipe at that site, here.