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After writing seven previous cookbooks, what made you turn your attention to the topic of eco-friendly living?

You're right! I've covered everything from Great Bar Food at Home to cooking with kids, and started GlobalGourmet.com back in 1994. But being green has been a personal concern for a long time. I decided to write Cooking Green because as a cook, I knew that there was so much more we can all do to save fuel, save water and cut emissions in every step of the food chain, beyond buying organics and local foods. How we cook is as important as what we cook. My goal is for lifestyle terms like "eco-friendly" and "green" to become to new normal, and where "green living" just becomes "living."

Please tell us about your new book, Cooking Green: Reducing Your Carbon Footprint in the Kitchen - The New Green Basics Way (with hundreds of tips and 50 energy and time saving ways to shrink your "cookprint")

Consider this: 12 percent of greenhouse gas emissions (more than 14,000 pounds per household) come from growing, shipping and preparing our food. And this doesn't include aspects like basic water or land use.

What is a "cookprint?"

Your "cookprint" measures the entire environmental impact you make on the planet when you cook or eat - whether you cook the meal or someone else prepares it for you. Your "cookprint" includes the entire chain of resources used to prepare meals, and the waste produced in the process. The cookprint starts with food in your garden or at the farm, it travels to your kitchen (or a restaurant kitchen) and takes residence in the fridge, freezer or pantry. The cookprint also includes the food's packaging, transportation and refrigeration demands along the way. Then, the cookprint grows larger every time heat or fuel is added, from a cooktop, oven, or small appliance. Discarded resources, whether they're organic produce trimmings, plastic packaging, or water down the drain, further color the cookprint. As do the implements you cook with and the way you store leftovers. Understanding your cookprint helps put the cook squarely in charge of just how big, or how green, that cookprint will be.

Is pressure cooking having a resurgence, and why?

I'm seeing more books and websites dedicated to pressure cooking. I think the stigma of exploding pressure cookers of the past has finally been overcome, and people now realize that pressure cookers are totally safe, as well as practical. Pressure cookers appeal to people who need to save time without sacrificing flavor, which is pretty much everyone. Plus, by using less fuel, they're nifty green devices and they help keep the kitchen cooler, so there's less need for air conditioning in the summer. As the population grows greener, I expect we'll see a further increase in pressure cooker use. Did you know that up to 94% of the oven's fuel is wasted, and only about 6 percent actually goes into cooking food? To shrink your cookprint, leave the oven off and adopt greener cooktop methods, including pressure cooking.

What are your favorite pressure cooker recipes?

My favorite recipes are actually just the basic guidelines - how long to cook a particular food (like chicken pieces or beans). I'm leaning less to actual recipes and more to punting on my own and experimenting with whatever I have on hand. Once you get the timing down, it's easy to ad-lib. Grains and beans are ideal pressure cooker candidates. Plus, they're low on the food chain so they demand fewer resources to produce, and cooked grains and beans freeze beautifully. So you can shrink your cookprint by whipping up a batch of barley, for instance and freezing part of it for another day, then thawing in the fridge. A double batch cooks with about the same amount of fuel as a single one, so by doubling up you save fuel and time later.

What is thermal cooking?

Thermal cooking is a form of passive cooking, where food partially cooks with active fuel, then finishes cooking with the fuel turned off. The key is having the vessel well-insulated to retain the heat. In the old days, it was called hay box cooking, where a hot Dutch oven was set in a box surrounded by hay and left for several hours to finish cooking without fuel. The Hot Pan Cook & Serveware works on the same principle, using a cooking pan and a thermal liner to retain heat.

What kinds of kitchen tools are best for eco-friendly living?

Cookware that lasts for generations, and pans that distribute heat evenly to make the most of the fuel they use. Small appliances like toaster ovens, rice cookers and electric tea kettles are more efficient than pots on the stove, provided you use them often enough to offset their manufacturing cookprint. And of course, pressure cookers.

Do you have some quick tips for a greener kitchen?

Cooking Green has hundreds of tips to shrink you cookprint, but here are a few to get started. Stop using the oven; opt for a cooktop method instead, or use a toaster oven, for instance. Choose plants over animals; a single serving of steak requires more than 2600 gallons of water to create, not to mention the methane and greenhouse gas issues. Stop wasting food; Americans throw out 27% of all food available for consumption. You can freeze vegetable scraps. shrimp shells, and meat trimmings and bones for making into stocks, which you can whip up in a pressure cooker. Even small amounts of leftover beans, grains or cheeses can enrich a soup, be tossed into a tortilla, or find a home in a casserole or stir-fry. Be conscious of your impact, so you can take what are often just common-sense measures to reduce it.

What cooking trends do you see today and in the future?

A decade ago, buying local and organic was something only Alice Waters and crunchy people did. Now every store sells organic, and local foods are more available in supermarkets. In the future, I predict people will be wasting less water, eating more plant-based foods on a daily basis and scaling back the animal proteins. Fuel-efficient appliances, like induction burners, will be almost commonplace in the next decade. And as the trend continues, probably pressure cookers will too.