just fifteeen minutes...

Independence - Cucumbers and Basil

2009-05-26T19:02:00.002-04:00

Planted this week were 6 cucumber seeds (that's going to be totallly too many cucumbers if they all grow and survive) and three pots of basil seeds (roughly 6 seeds per pot). The cucumbers are bush plants that are in an earthbox. I hear they're heavy feeders, so perhaps they'll like the constant water-availability of the swc.

My spinach is not looking so hot. Or... maybe it IS looking hot. It's been kind of warm some of these days (up to 85F or so this weekend), and the leaves on the spinach are looking brown and dry. Perhaps it's time to harvest the "baby" spinach before anything crazy happens like mass bolting.

Chard also doesn't look great. Peas look good, though. They're not more than 8 inches tall yet, though. I do hope to get some peas out of them before the weather is in the Summer And No Doubt About It temperatures. The sage is blooming. Lovely purple flowers.

I harvested a bunch of mint that was sneaking up under the rosemary plant, and I made a quart of cold mint tea. It tasted a little funny, though. Perhaps I let it steep too long.

In non-garden news, we're going to a strawbale building workshop the weekend of the fourth of July. Yay!
Also, our dog had some seizures this weekend and has been diagnosed as epileptic. We are officially the home for broken animals.
Double also, I've been to a yoga class three out of the last four days. Love it. Going again tonight.

Independence days - Potato

2009-05-18T12:22:00.002-04:00

This weekend I managed to plant a potato. Ha. It's a very good potato. I think it's the red kind (I threw most of our overwintered potatoes out on the patio a couple weeks ago and now I can't really tell the difference between the varieties). I put it in a container with some soil that grew... basil or something last year, and as it grows up, I'll cover it with leaf mulch to promote the production of more baby potatoes.

When I went to choose which potato to plant, I investigated the potatoes that had been rolled off the patio into what I thought would be a potato patch (I since realized that it is directly beneath the laundry line and thus is not an ideal place for planting). They've rooted themselves and are beginning to grow leaves. Hunh. I didn't even bury them when I rolled them out there. They've just gone ahead and attached themselves to the ground. I'll help them along as time goes by by also covering them with leaf mulch and trying not to step on them when we do the laundry.

This brings me to the idea that planting isn't a particularly exact science. The packets and books say specifically when to plant and how deep to plant, but oftentimes, seeds just want to grow and may very well do just fine if you LEAVE THEM ALONE. I have half a mind to put all my seeds in the garden in the fall and see what happens when they have the option to grow as soon as they sense that conditions are appropriate.

As for harvesting, I pulled a dandelion and chopped up its root to dry for tea. I think that's it. I did make tomato sauce out of home canned tomatoes plus a red and a green pepper from the greenhouse grower at the farmer's market for lunches last week.

We visited the Queens Farm Museum yesterday with some friends, and it was really nice to see farm animals in abundance, plus their growing plants. They already have tomatoes and squashes in the ground, which means I could probably plant mine. The animals I saw included goats, sheep, baby pigs, big pigs, a donkey, tons of chickens including banties and roosters and all manner of colors, a cow, ducks, geese and peacocks. It was interesting to see the pigeons in among the chickens. They were about the same size as one of the banties.

independence days - leeks and dandelions

2009-05-11T09:03:00.001-04:00

in the past two weeks, i've managed to plant a row of leeks, keep everything alive, eat a butternut squash (only two left now!) and cook tomato sauce from my canned tomatoes. oh, and i made some iced dandelion tea again. tasted pollen-y this time.

peas and spinach are growing well. some radishes are up, though oddly the ones that i planted second are doing much better than the ones i planted first. chard is up but still tiny. no sign of garlic or carrots or parsnips or the lettuce i planted this year. some volunteer lettuce around about the yard, though.

tomatoes look good in their pot indoors. need to prepare their beds for them to go outside. cabbage that's indoors is getting mighty leggy. not sure what to do about that. perhaps transfer the pot to the patio so they can have more light and wind.

planning to plant:
basil in all available pots
bush cucumbers in self-watering-containers
flax seed around about
a loofah or two

Independence Days Year 2

2009-04-29T10:52:00.002-04:00

Sharon's Independence Days challenge is moving into its second year. I like the spring because it's hopeful, and I'm hopeful that this year I can keep up with the challenge a little longer. I've managed to plant things for the last three weekends, and have foraged a bit in my backyard already.

Things I have planted:
-4/12-
Peas
Chard
Radishes
Tomatoes (started inside)
Cabbage (started inside)

-4/19-
Carrots
Lettuce
Parsnips
Radishes

-4/26-
Leeks
Radishes

Things I have harvested/foraged:
Day lily shoots (chopped and sauteed with a fake sausage link)
Dandelion heads (made into iced tea, thanks for the idea Maud!)

Things I have cooked:
Spaghetti sauce with my home-canned tomatoes from last year

Community:
Connected with several CSA people at a party. One woman is coming over to take some of my plant pots off my hands on Thursday.

independence days week 11

2008-07-09T10:13:00.004-04:00

well, i didn't manage to plant anything, but i did manage to harvest and preserve!

1 planted: nothing

2 harvested: mint to dry, lettuce for salad, lamb's quarters to dry

3 preserved: dried collard greens, lamb's quarters, mint, zucchini "noodles"

4 stored: 25lb wheat, 25lb baking soda, 25lb garbanzo beans, 25lb lentils, 1lb thick rolled oats (wanted to try them before we bought in bulk), 3 qts of soy milk, 4 cans pineapple chunks, olive oil, two pounds brown rice

5 prepped: nothing that i can think of

6 managed: nothing that i can think of

7 cook something new: beet and carrot latkes from the csa bounty, brownies

8 work on local food systems: nothing that i can think of

9 reduced waste: chopped down weeds and threw them on the compost pile

independence days week 10

2008-06-30T13:09:00.004-04:00

this has been a week of not much happening in terms of independence days. this is the point at which i started to lose interest in the garden last year. things were in the ground and i would find "better" things to do with my time. goal this coming week: plant something! preserve something! hack down the yard weeds! spend time in the back yard!

1 planted: nothing

2 harvested: one of our basil plants for pesto thursday night. two sugar snap pea pods just before i tore out the plants to make room for more planting. not sure what i'll put in that pot...

3 preserved: nothing

4 stored: picked up a couple months' worth of honey and 9 months' worth of yeast

5 prepped: received my order of five colored bucket lids with spouts. not sure how the spouts will do with emptying/refilling.

6 managed: weeded a bit

7 cook something new: cole slaw! from the new moosewood cookbook. yum.

8 work on local food systems: csa pickup - fruit shares have begun!

9 reduced waste: nabbed a novel and several half-filled notebooks from neighbors' trash piles

independence days week... 9 i think

2008-06-27T11:02:00.005-04:00

1 planted: kentucky wonder green beans beneath my corn and sunflowers

2 harvested: a handful of snap peas, mint for tea

3 preserved: nothing

4 stored: placed a bulk food storage order! 25lb baking soda, 25lb red wheat berries, 25lb garbanzos, 25lb lentils, 1lb thick rolled oats

5 prepped: placed an order for some bucket lids with spouts to see if we can do those perhaps instead of/to supplement gamma lids (which are quite expensive!) also, joined in on sharon's food preservation class which starts next tuesday :)

6 managed: weeded the corn patch

7 cook something new: made a mahvelous mock tuna from garbanzo beans. also blettes grand-mere, which is swiss chard with raisins, rosemary, and pine nuts.

8 work on local food systems: joined the just food mailing list.

9 reduced waste: can't think of anything out of the ordinary here...

10 learned a skill: i don't know that i like this category because i feel like learning is not a "boom. it's done." thing. i can't say "i learned THIS this week," because learning is a long-term process for me. perhaps i'll skip this category from now on.

independence days check in

2008-06-23T08:50:00.002-04:00

i've started to lag in my independence days efforts, but this week, my lady led the charge and we actually got a lot done! (and most of it was done yesterday!!!)

planted: none. hoping to plant beans under the corn this week.

harvested: much lettuce, lambsquarters, onion greens, 10 quarts of strawberries from our csa's u-pick venture, roughly 10 sugar snap pea pods which got added to a quart we got at the market

preserved: froze probably 8 quarts of strawberries, plus a couple pounds of rhubarb. the plan is to make strawberry-rhubarb crisp next week (we didn't have oats this week)

stored: nothing that i can think of

prepped: also nothing that i can think of

managed reserves: again, nothing i can think of

cooked something new: strawberry pie (my very first piecrust EVER), pb granola bars for the son who doesn't like to eat breakfast

reduced waste: participated in crunchy chicken's liquid gold challenge saturday, ate the entire GIANT BOWL OF LETTUCE that my lady made for us to use up the bounty of lettuce from the csa and our garden

expand local food community: picked strawberries at our csa farm, borrowed a pastry cutter from a friend (instead of buying my own) - she'll get a piece of pie in return

learn a new skill: fertilizing garden, making pie crust

independence days weekly update

2008-05-23T11:20:00.002-04:00

1. planted: replanted some more peas that didn't come up.

2. harvested: nothing yet, but i found four stalks of wild garlic that i want to nab. three are in our back yard and one is in the front yard of someone down the hill from us. my potatoes are sprouting now! the purple peruvian ones. yay!

3. preserved: not so much.

4. stored: i stored 3 more liters of water, and about 7 cups of white rice that the roommate left behind when he moved out.

5. prepped: built the bean trellis frame, just need to add strings. made stick-trellises for the peas. dug up half a bed that will hopefully be finished and planted with popcorn and sunflowers and melons this weekend.

6. managed: went through the freezer and composted some old old veggies. cleaned out the fridge of all the things the roommate had left in there to rot.

7. cook something new: made the red, gold, green and black chili from fatfreevegan.com - it was excellent!

8. work on local food systems: shopped at the farmer's market per usual and welcomed back some of the farmers who were returning for the summer season.

9. reduce waste: i ordered pet food online and specified that i didn't want any packing peanuts or other plastic packing materials, so they stuffed the box with shredded junk mail :D that made me very happy. have also been eating the food that the roommate left behind him. snagged a 3L soda bottle from our neighbor's recycling to store water in.

10. learned a skill: hand-cultivating a garden bed was new to me. it's some work!

eight out of ten this week :) not bad.

the no-power-hour

2008-05-23T11:13:00.002-04:00

inspired by crunchy chicken's eco-throw-down challenge, we're doing a no power week starting monday. here's what we've got so far for an outline:

1. the fridge stays on.
2. the rest of the breakers in the box get turned off so we don't accidentally flick the light on out of habit.
3. we're picking up some extra local-beeswax candles at the market tomorrow.

that's all i got. working will involve electricity still. as will commuting by subway. also, i'm unsure about whether our stove/oven uses electricity... though i doubt it. another iffy thing is the boiler that heats the hot water for us as well as the people who live above us... i'm not going to cut them out of hot water... or me.

personally, i'm looking forward to no tv for a week.

managing stores: making room in the freezer (though not minimizing waste...)

2008-05-22T10:39:00.000-04:00

last night i went through the freezer and threw out several *very* freezerburned bags of vegetables from long long ago. peas-n-corn, edamame, and half a banana met their demise upon the compost pile. now i can start freezing rhubarb and stuff!

weekend progress

2008-05-19T08:35:00.002-04:00

saturday i went to the market myself and did ALL THE SHOPPING by myself. this isn't a big deal if one normally takes a car to the store to do the grocery shopping, but we take transit to the union square farmer's market to do grocery shopping. i had the giant whole foods bag my boss gave me slung over my shoulder with the whole foods goodies in it (paper towels, toilet paper, baking soda, toothpaste, broccoli, plus a couple other things), my backpack with a dozen and a half eggs in it plus my water bottle, and two green grocery bags full of food. it was heavy! but i did it! *proud*

in the afternoon, i broke the ground in a section of the yard along the border between us and our one neighbor. i plan to plant corn and sunflowers (and maybe watermelons) in that space, plus the "garden in a roll" butterfly garden that our now-ex-roommate ruben gave us. the bed is about 2 or so feet wide and the yard is about 20 or 30 feet long. i broke about half of that length with the hand cultivator to about 4 inches deep, pulling all the rocks out (now i've got half a bucket of rocks if you need some...) it was a lot of work, and it felt good :) i also nailed together the frame for the bean trellis. i was tired after that and figured i'd put the strings up later.

sunday i made stick trellises for the peas that are up, and i re-planted more peas that still hadn't showed (others i'd planted at the same time had come up already). then we did laundry, hung it outside, went to the regular grocery store for bulgar, canned tomatoes and canned corn (heavy things i didn't want to carry home by myself on saturday, haha), came home, and it started to rain. argh. so i pulled all the laundry in and hung it up inside.

then ruben came over and packed up the rest of his stuff and we took him and his stuff over to his phat pad in the west village (it's so beautiful! classic new york, you know?) and he took us out to dinner at lime thai (limethai.com), and it was very nice :)

oh, and saturday i took our recyclables out to the can, and the upstairs neighbors had put a 3 liter empty gingerale bottle in the can, so i snagged it and pulled the label off and cleaned it out and filled it with water, so i stored 3L of water this weekend. oh, and ruben left us the food that he had at the house, so we now have roughly 7 cups of white jasmine rice that we put into metal containers this morning for storage. oh, and on sunday when we were on our way to laundry, we passed a dumpster someone had hired for their remodeling/cleanup, and in it were (are, really, cos we didn't go back to get them yet) various window-type screens, irises that were dug up, a sawhorse, and a bunch of other stuff, plus a ton of dirt and actual trash. i'm very interested in the screens for dehydration purposes, and also the sawhorse for holding up the screens. plus the irises cos they're really pretty flowers and i hate to see them just dug up and thrown away :(

so yeah. um. busy productive weekend :)

independence days update

2008-05-16T13:03:00.002-04:00

i feel like i didn’t do a lot this week, but then i think about how every little bit counts and it’s not ABOUT doing a lot…

1. planted: i planted out two tomatoes into the swc we built. only one of the seeds we’d planted had sprouted, so i had erin pick me up an heirloom seedling at the market. she brought me a black brandywine :D awesome. we're out of potting soil now, and out of money til the end of june (or when my stimulus payment arrives,whichever is first), so planting will be slower for the next several weeks, i expect.

2. harvested: not so much. the lettuces and arugula are doing well, the spinaches are up but tiny, one of my pea babies died, but several more are coming up. two of the basil plants bit it :(

3. preserved: also not so much.

4. stored: i scored those 2 glass gallon-sized empty wine jugs that someone was throwing away, so they’re now filled with water :D

5. prepped: laid out a frame for the beans trellis, just need to screw/nail it together and attach the strings. anyone know if garbanzo beans climb?

6. managed: not so much here.

7. cook something new: made a killer cream of asparagus soup on saturday. also cauliflower cheese pie, which wasn’t as great.

8. work on local food systems: not so much.

9. reduce waste: used a potting soil bag as the mulch cover on my swc that holds the tomatoes… and the repurposed wine jugs that would’ve gone to the recycling plant without me.

10. learned a skill: yeah, again, not so much.

five out of ten this week.

score!

2008-05-14T17:20:00.002-04:00

on my walk home from the train station today, i stopped when i noticed that inside someone's clear recycling bag was a carlo rossi 1 gallon empty wine jug. it was inside their fence, and inside a bag, so i hesitated... and decided i didn't want to look like i was trash picking.

i couldn't stop thinking about it the rest of the walk home, and almost turned around to go back and get it (i'm thinking water storage here). then, i walked past another house, and they had not one but TWO of the same carlo rossi glass gallon empty wine jugs, only these were NOT behind a fence and NOT in a bag! score! i nabbed them, and they're in the bathtub awaiting a washing-out before they get a baking soda and sunshine treatment. wine isn't the worst thing that water could taste like, but i'd rather if it didn't taste like anything but water ;)

now i'm considering putting a wanted post on freecycle for more of these bottles.

weekly dinner menu starting 5/10/08

2008-05-12T11:56:00.002-04:00

Sa - cream of asparagus soup (from The New Moosewood Cookbook, p.3)
Su - cauliflower cheese pie (from The New Moosewood Cookbook, p.159)
M - chick pea burgers (from a NY Times recipe we clipped ages ago) on top of salad
Tu - couscous salad w/spicey yogurt dressing (from the South Beach book p.262 - we'll be using bulgur rather than couscous)
W - pizza on yeast-free dough (from How It All Vegan p.115) topped with feta, spinach, tomato and kalamata olives
Th - leek and mushroom quiche ( http://homecooking.about.com/library/archive/blv214.htm )
F - xtine's bulgur pilaf (from xtine's recipe) and zucchini ribbons w/dill (from South Beach book p.237)

can i just say that the cream of asparagus soup was diVINE. mmmmm... so good. the cauliflower cheese pie was good, too. i think the crust (made of grated potato and onion) could have used for the potato to be rinsed off after it was grated. it had that gluey taste that my dad's potato pancakes used to get that makes me sort of go "ulgh" a little.

i had two wisdom teeth taken out on friday afternoon, and while i'm in very little pain from it, i'm still not up to snuff for noshing on crunchy things. hopefully by wednesday i'll be able to do pizza crust! so glad to have the teeth gone. omg.

companion tomato plant

2008-05-11T09:26:00.002-04:00

we tried to start two containers of "best boy hybrid" tomato plants (one in each 1qt yogurt container, but only one sprouted. the seeds were packed for 2006, so it probably wasn't our fault the other one didn't sprout.

however, with one tomato sprout and one giant self-watering container (that can hold 2 tomato plants), i wanted a second. so yesterday i asked erin to get me a heirloom tomato seedling at the market. she brought me a black brandywine. i am SO excited about that.

now we've planted them out into the swc, which counts as #1 on the independence days challenge.

weekly independence days check-in

2008-05-09T11:11:00.000-04:00

it’s been a pretty good week for me :)

1. planted: more sugar snap peas because only two of the (20) seeds i put in before came up… and one of those sprouts has now kicked the bucket. ah well.

2. harvested: leeks at the csa farm last sunday! and stuff is sprouting in my garden! lettuce and arugula look good, more lettuce is coming up that i planted last week or the week before, onions are up, i have what looks like a spinach sprout, and some mystery sprouts (i moved the pots around and forgot what exactly was where…)

3. preserved: nothing *sigh*

4. stored: 2 quarts of water in mason jars that i had found in the closet

5. prepped: i’m cleaning out the various other glass jars we have left over from grocery store foods to be used as water storage containers.

6. managed: inventoried the shelves in the kitchen

7. cook something new: this week we made gingery marinated chickpeas, felafel from scratch, and tahini-lemon sauce (which we used on sandwiches and also as a pasta sauce), all of which came out of the “new moosewood cookbook”. molly katzen is my new best friend.

8. local food systems: we carpooled out to our csa farm on sunday for a walking tour and a talk with farmer james. it was very enlightening, not to mention gorgeous! the weather really cooperated. the csa is on track for the first week of june’s delivery. they provide 1200 shares to a bunch of different csa’s all along long island and into queens. we also got to know some of our fellow shareholders a little better.

9. reduced waste: last night i used the pasta water to blanch the broccoli. we’re considering finding a way to use the shower-warmup-water to wash the dishes, but we’re still in the pre-brainstorming phase on that one.

10. learn a skill: i worked on patching a pair of pants that had worn through. my hand-sewing skills need work.

#4 - stored

2008-05-07T11:00:00.003-04:00

i found two quart sized mason jars in the closet, washed them off, and filled them with water for storage. i am also cleaning out various empty glass food jars we've collected (spaghetti sauce, lactofermented sauerkraut, honey, jam, peanut butter) via a water-and-baking-soda-in-the-sun method, and then i'll fill them with water for storage as well. baby steps.

week's menu - 5/3/08

2008-05-05T11:05:00.002-04:00

Saturday - pizza on homemade ww focaccia bread. tomatoes, garlic, spinach, feta, onion, mushrooms.

Sunday - veggie kebabs under the broiler. cherry tomatoes, leeks, bell pepper, tofu, mushrooms.

Monday - felafel w/chopped salad: tomato, cucumber, onion, dill, lemon juice.

Tuesday - pasta salad. pasta, kalamata olives, sundried tomatoes, feta, bell pepper, fresh tomato, cucumber, olive oil, vinegar.

Wednesday - mexican black beans and rice. black beans, onion, tomato, rice.

Thursday - pasta with tahini-lemon sauce and spinach, broccoli.

Friday - popcorn. and asparagus in a cream sauce.

then on saturday we go food shopping again.

#6 - manage stores: on the shelves 5/2/08

2008-05-05T10:56:00.002-04:00

we measured the dry goods and took stock of some of the canned goods on our shelves on friday night:

14 cups of rice
1 cup of kasha (ew)
2 1/3 cup bulgur wheat
1/4 cup brown flax seed
1+ cup quinoa
1 cup black eyed peas
1 cup red lentils
1/2- cup pinto beans
3 cups rotini
7 1/3 cups popcorn
2 cans refried beans (15oz each)
1 can green chilis (4oz)
1 can tomato paste (6 oz)
1 can tuna (6 oz) {note-we no longer eat fish...}
1 packet tuna (5oz)
~1/4 cup crisco {don't ask}
~15 oz NY honey
~10 oz french honey {was a gift}
~3 oz capers in salt
4 cups nutritional yeast

then we got tired of measuring. on saturday morning i took a look at what ELSE is on our shelves (without really measuring).

white sugar
brown sugar
confectioner's sugar
bread crumbs
TVP
baking cocoa powder
peppercorns
yeast
coffee beans (regular and decaf)
sucralose (splenda)
fish sauce
spirulina
3 packets Goya Sazon
1 box Fantastic Brand vegegarian chili
wasabi and sesame crackers
nacho flavor sunflower seeds (ew)
5 boxes jello (2 of which are sugar free)
sugarfree pancake syrup
1/4 bottle balsamic vinegar
>1 bottle cider vinegar
cooking sherry
sesame oil
burgundy cooking wine
rice wine vinegar
Tapatio hot sauce
1 bottle unopened yellow mustard
<1/2 gallon white vinegar

weekly update... just starting out

2008-05-02T09:36:00.000-04:00

hmm… well, my “doing” is more likely to happen on the weekends than the weekdays, so i’m a bit short for this update BUT here we go:

planted: nothing since last weekend when we planted spinach, lettuces, basil, watermelon, peas, and onions.

harvested: nothing yet, but some of our lettuce and arugula have sprouted! and not only that, i can tell a difference between the two kinds of sprouts now (they’re in the same container). not quite to a point where i can tell which is which though…

preserved: nothing yet.

stored: also nothing since we do our shopping on the weekend.

prepped: considered water storage ideas, and will ask at juice/smoothie places for containers of some sort this weekend. also planning to gather buckets from the grocery store this weekend.

managed: will go through my stores tonight to see how much food we have in the house, precisely

cook something new: made two batches of tabbouli in the last week, and a killer pasta salad. also had sauteed asparagus with lemon butter and garlic over fresh pasta. yum. (i have a feeling this might become my favorite category.)

work on local food systems: not sure where to start on this one.

compost something: cleaned the kale and other things out of our veg drawer in the fridge. the compost pile got to eat them. i guess that may be “managing” too, eh?

learned a skill: i learned more about water-bath canning, in an intellectual way.

independence days

2008-04-29T10:53:00.002-04:00

i'm joining in on sharon's challenge to create our own Independence Days by doing something every week from her seven categories:
1. plant something
2. harvest something
3. preserve something
4. prep something
5. cook something
6. manage your reserves
7. work on local food systems

i think key categories that appeal to me are the plant something, harvest something, preserve something, and prep something categories. i generally do cook a lot, trying new recipes and concoctions (though it gets a bit grueling in the summer with the kitchen heat... maybe i'll "prep" a solar oven for myself this year? thinking big ;) ).

i hope to check in here with my updates. kick me if i don't! (i know i've been avoiding blogger lately)

goin' on a midnight train to... ohio?

2008-03-21T11:18:00.002-04:00

heading out for ohio this afternoon via amtrak. i packed a tote bag to bring with me, and most of it is either food or games/entertainment for the 24 hours of train trip that will take place tonight and monday. i hear the forecast is snooooowwwwww! maybe we can build a snowman :D

one local supper

2008-03-20T12:15:00.002-04:00

thanks to a comment on my potatoes post for the idea here.

ingredients:
1 jar of lacto-fermented sauerkraut from hawthorne valley farms
1 package of sweet italian sausage from herondale farm
the rest of our potatoes from the csa (golden earthworm farm)
butter from ronnybrook farm
salt (non-local)
nutritional yeast (non-local... we had no parmesan cheese for topping)

step one: make large pot of mashed potatoes (peel potatoes, boil, drain, add salt and butter, mash, taste, add more salt and butter)

step two: remove casing from sausage and cook in skillet

step three: open sauerkraut jar

step four: layer in a casserole dish sauerkraut, then sausage, then mashed potatoes

step five: bake at 350 for roughly 35 minutes or until potatoes look mighty tasty

step six: sprinkle with nutritional yeast or parmesan cheese and dig in!

mmmmmmm... can't wait for leftovers for lunch today :)

i took my bread dough out to lunch this week (or, what sundays are for)

2008-03-17T14:37:00.002-04:00

the purpose of a sunday is to get me ready for the coming week. i make sure i have enough clean clothes to keep me presentable. i make my kitchen look good enough to keep me from wincing when i turn the light on over the sink monday morning. i bake bread to see myself fed in the mornings.

yesterday we had plans for lunch. i did laundry early (presentably clothed - check) and started the bread. the problem with baking bread is that while it only takes a total of maybe an hour of "doing something", i have to be present for the whole five hours of the process of bread-creation because something needs to be done at least once an hour. so i brought my dough with us in the car out to lunch... seatbelted into the back seat ("it smells yeasty in here," says erin. "is that you in the back seat?"). i only had to leave the table once, to punch down the dough halfway through the rising. well done.

tome-ay-toes!

2008-03-14T12:40:00.002-04:00

planted in quart-sized yogurt containers!

date: march 11, 2008
variety: big boy (from the mix of seeds we got for free from craigslist)
planted in: mixture of potting soil from last year plus miracle gro organic potting soil

package says 7-14 days to germination. we set them on the west-facing windowsill in our bedroom.

po-tay-toes

2008-03-12T08:53:00.003-04:00

sharon's post yesterday about living the staple diet got me thinking about potatoes, since they'd likely be a staple food where i live. she had lots of ideas for ways to eat potatoes, and i think if i had enough potatoes to make it through the winter without them going musty-smelling, maybe i could do it? hmm... here's some potato-brainstorming:

- mashed with milk and butter and salt
- mashed potato cakes
- shepherd's pie (topped with mashed potatoes)
- mashed with cheese/garlic/horseradish/onions/herbs (clearly not all at once)
- colcannon (aka mashed with kale/spinach/chard/other green goodness)
- boiled with parsley and butter
- baked with toppings (cheese, broccoli, butter, herbs, yogurt, etc.)
- au gratin (is scalloped the same as au gratin?)
- fried breakfast potatoes with onions or onions and peppers
- roasted potatoes with rosemary and herbs
- roasted potatoes with other root vegetables
- soups: potato and leek/onion, chicken vegetable soup
- stews: potato lentil indian-style-stew-thing, winter vegetable stew, meat and veg stew

any other ideas out there? perhaps i'll consult allrecipes.com and the fatfreevegan.com

indoor laundry

2008-02-21T11:36:00.002-05:00

back before it got cold, i was contemplating on a theorhetical level the idea of drying our clothes indoors. i wanted to put up a line of some sort.

fast forward to now, when i deal with drying our clothes indoors every week because it's bitter cold outside (half the time) and the clothes don't dry as quickly in the cold. we had one clothes drying rack already that we had gotten at target last year. over the summer we used it for socks and underwear outside (cuts down on the number of clothespins we needed). now we use it for clothes, mostly t-shirts. the shirts, pants, and underwear that doesn't fit on the rack are generally hung on hangers in the bedroom, wherever there seems to be space to hang them. generally, several items go on the pole in my closet, a few go on the hooks in another closet, and some hang on things that weren't meant for hangers to be attached to. socks get hung on a metal shoe-rack we found by the side of the street on trash day. it works :) i still look forward to sunny warmish days to hang laundry on the line again. they'll come soon enough, i'm sure.

sweet sweet love

2008-02-20T09:12:00.002-05:00

my lady is terrible at keeping secrets and surprises. she gets very excited about it and it is very cute. so when she gave nothing away about valentine's day plans, i was completely unprepared for her to show up at my work with tissue-paper flowers to take me out to a lovely valentine's day lunch (at an all-organic restaurant: gustorganics.com). she loves me :) there were chocolates and a hand-made card, and a very special i-fixed-the-ring-you-wear-and-had-it-engraved. it was very very nice.

then in the evening, i tried to go low-impact by having a pleasant dinner at home. i moved the furniture to the sides of the living room, set up a table for two covered in red tablecloth (that was actually a pair of red pillowcases my dad had wrapped christmas presents in), put on the fireplace dvd (no really. we have a fireplace dvd), and cooked a nice dinner including a vegan pasta recipe that involved artichoke HEARTS and HEARTS of palm (get the theme?). we had some bubbly peach-flavored grape juice, and ate dinner by candlelight.

best v-day yet <3

on spring fever and sap rising

2008-02-11T11:07:00.000-05:00

my sap is rising. i can feel spring in my bones. i sorted our seed packets this past weekend and bought some storage tubs to make into self-watering containers. someone linked to a plan to make a garden out of a wading pool, which is really awesome because we've had this wading pool in our backyard waiting to be trashed for the last year or two, haha. now we can make it into something beautiful and useful! erin suggested we make it an herb garden. i like that idea :)

speaking of herbs, our rosemary is still alive, and so is our sage. nice. i love perennials.

i ordered 5 lb of wheat and 5 lb of barley seed to do a little greening of some abandoned land i walk past on my way home. first step is to clean up the garbage in the plots, which might happen as soon as it stops being 15F out there. brrrrrr. we saw some snow flurries yesterday, which was Very Exciting, but it didn't lie on the ground more than an hour or so (making it rather Less Exciting).

my goal in 2008 is for me not to get bored with the gardening, and for me to start biking anywhere that i go alone.

riotous thanksgiving plans

2007-11-15T14:43:00.000-05:00

we're travelling this thanksgiving, which isn't riotous in itself, but we're doing it by bus and rail.

tonight we leave new york by greyhound through cleveland to ashtabula. friday we'll spend the day hanging out with friends and family there and connect with jake. then the three of us will catch a train out of cleveland and down to florida, where erin's folks (and friends) live. we'll be staying with family, who may be in danger of desperately spoiling jake because he's their first grandchild experience ;)

erin's mom, judi, has been incited to try for a mostly local thanksgiving dinner *jumping for joy* with a turkey from a guy they know, and we'll hit the local farmer's markets and stores that sell local produce. i'll be bringing jersey cranberries with us cos i don't think they grow down there.

we'll be renting a car while we're there :( but we did get the smallest available car.

A Day in the Lower Impact Life

2007-11-08T14:20:00.000-05:00

sharon started a virtual roll-call of low[er]-impact "a day in the life" articles. kim did one. glenn did one. sarah did one. i'm sure others have done them, too, but i forget who did and who didn't. here's mine! this is from yesterday, thursday, november 8.

i wake up to my cell phone going off at 5:30am. i don't keep an alarm clock plugged in, and i only have to charge my cell phone every other day. i plug in the bedside lamp, click it on, roll over and poke/converse erin awake enough for us to get up. since i'm not showering today, this takes up to a half hour and involves some giggling. we get up, i grab my work clothes and the kitten and the kitten's box and my cell phone and unplug the bedside lamp before heading downstairs. i let the dog out, feed the cats, start the coffee (actually, erin usually does the coffee, which is fair trade, organic and locally roasted in brooklyn), use the bathroom after erin to combine our flush. if there's any water left in the shower bucket from whoever showered last then i pour that into the toilet to flush it instead of pulling the handle. i dress, deodorizing with my lovely crystal deo. back in the kitchen, i toast a couple pieces of bread (this week is whole wheat from a local bakery, but i'd rather if it were homemade) and spread them with either peanut butter (organic, but not local) or yogurt cheese from ronnybrook farms (today was yogurt cheese). a cup of coffee with ronnybrook milk rounds out breakfast. i read whatever is on the table while i eat (we do still get the newspaper). i grab leftovers from the fridge (today i'm having pumpkin black bean chili, leftover parsley potatoes and steamed broccoli), and an apple from the counter and stuff them in my bag. i wash my plate and knife (unless erin uses them for her toast) and rinse out my coffee cup and hang it up. i brush my teeth and head out the door to the bus. it's now 7:00am.

by bus and subway train i travel the 10 miles to work. i like seeing the same people on the bus and train most days. in the summer i was biking to the train station, but i've let that go for now.

8:00am i arrive at work and take the elevator to the 41st floor. i put my lunch in the fridge, turn on my computer, and do a day's work. if i have something that's not paper recyclable, i take it to the common trash can in the kitchen. i use a cloth i keep in my pocket to dry my hands in the restroom. i use my re-usable mug for my cup of coffee, and also for the water i drink during the day (from the tap). i heat my lunch up in a glass bowl i brought from home, and eat it with real utensils, using a cloth napkin to wipe my mouth. i pack up my teabag and apple core in my otherwise empty food containers to take home to compost. i continue doing work (and internetting in between bits of work). at 4pm, it's time to head home, so i shut down my computer, turn off the monitor, check to see if the lights in my bosses' offices are off, grab my food containers and my jacket and ride the elevator downstairs again.

i walk a half mile up the train route and catch the train at brooklyn bridge. this is as far as "every day is mostly the same" goes.

today's thursday, so that means stopping on the way home to pick up the csa share. today's also sign-up for the winter share, so hang out and talk with diane a bit about what would be required of the site co-ordinator for winter share pickup, even though someone else has already signed on for the job. then i head home with our veggies (this week we got red boston lettuce, daikon radishes, rutabegas, yellow potatoes, cilantro, parsley, scallions, and red cabbage). i could walk the 2.5 miles home from sunnyside, but it's remarkably dark already, and i can see the bus coming when i get to the bus stop, so i decide to hop on. i get off the bus 2 miles later and walk the 0.5 miles home from there.

6:15pm i get home, put the veggies on the table and make my way upstairs to see what is going on in the house. erin's watching re-run tv to unwind from a stressful event at work. we argue briefly, and i go play with the kitten in the bedroom. usually i would work on making dinner, but we're having a sort of going-away celebration for our roommate who is moving out this weekend. so tonight isn't going to be particularly low-impact in terms of food. at least we don't order in, but we do go to the regular grocery store and pick up several items of unknown origin (taco shells, whole wheat tortillas, tapatio hot sauce, vegetarian taco mix in a box, pre-shredded cheese, sparkling apple cider from california, on-sale halloween candy). it's going to be a taco night ;)

when we get home with the groceries (i'm sad to say that we did drive to the store, but i'm glad to say we didn't take use plastic bags to carry our purchases), christine and ruben are home. we all gather in the kitchen for an entertaining version of making dinner. we eat, we drink apple cider, we laugh, there's a toast, christine brought cupcakes...

8:30pm no one can eat any more food. lol. we pull out the scattergories game and play three rounds. then we get distracted. after a bit, someone picks up the alphabet die and starts rolling it. it morphs into a free association word game, each of us calling out words that start with whatever letter lands on top. then we decide to make up sentences, each of us rolling the die in turn and adding a word to the sentence. good wholesome low-impact fun. much much much laughter. many lewd references. around 10:45pm we all head up to our respective beds.

how does one go about purchasing land?

2007-10-18T11:40:00.000-04:00

please feel free to let me know.

p.s. garbage patch research voyage

2007-09-25T11:24:00.000-04:00

remember the humongous floating garbage patch i mentioned some time ago?

check out the ship2shore blog about a research voyage (going on still? three weeks starting september 9) into the heart of the garbage patch.

Ten Year Plan

2007-09-25T10:31:00.000-04:00

start 11:04a.m.

i haven't been one to make up "goals" or lists of things to do before i die. i don't believe that i am the things i accomplish. somehow, even with my desire to control things and my fears of change, i tended to go with the flow and follow where my life led me.

my life led me to a place of environmental concern. now i feel like i have a basic underlying premise to living. a framework in which to continue. it feels like a foundation and a place to push off of at the same time.

so, i've developed a sort of ten-year-plan that may take more or less time than that. my dad has always encouraged me to continue in higher learning. until this point, i was "on leave" from school since having completed my bachelor of arts degree in december 2004. i didn't know where to go. i didn't have anything i wanted to study enough to make a graduate school plan around it. slowly, slowly, my interest in growing food sustainably has... taken root and grown in my mind. i'm not at a point where i am certain of the path ahead of me, but i'm looking into the requirements for grad school and the options in terms of agriculture/horticulture programs of study. i'm not entirely convinced that grad school is where i want to head. maybe a bachelor of science degree... maybe coursework and study outside of a school environment. but i'm thinking about it.

another factor in the ten year plan is property and a homeland. zane over at lichenology had a passage about the idea of homeland that i really liked, and i may find it again and link to it. i want land that is home. i have an idea of where i'd like it to be (western new york state), and i have an idea of what i'd like it to encompass: large garden, perennial food plants/trees, and a house that i've built with my own hands. to the final point, i've been considering building with cob, which uses the land itself to fashion a very... earthy home. i want to live on the land as i build. i want to build compartmentally, starting with the main room of the house and adding rooms as they happen. in this way, once the main room is built, i could conceivably live in the house as i'm building it. (note, i say "i", but maybe i should substitute a "we" instead? i just don't want to speak for erin, even though she is very excited about the land-and-home idea.)

twelve minutes.

here or there?

2007-09-20T12:03:00.000-04:00

is it better for trash to lie on the street or for trash to be carted to a landfill where it will be deprived of air and thus fossilize in a ginormous mound?

i can't decide. i can't wrap my mind around the idea that putting all our trash in one place (especially with the state of our landfill problem*) would be any better than leaving it on the street.

but is leaving it on the street really better? a "clean" city is more pleasant to live in than one that has trash all over. enviro groups do clean-ups of their favorite natural places... but where does the stuff they remove from "nature" go? to the landfill, eh?

then the issue becomes, what does it mean to throw something "out"? is there any way to safely remove our unwantables away from our living areas without destroying someone else's living areas?

exceedingly tough questions considering how much of our trash these days is NOT part of a natural cycle of decomposition and re-earthing.

i just don't know.

*entirely vague statement with no citation to back it up ;)

surprise!

2007-09-08T17:27:00.000-04:00

this morning we stumbled into the homegrown fair in union square (put together in conjunction with farm aid this weekend), and as we got there, daryl hannah was introducing the ditty bops, who i'd heard OF but never actually HEARD. yay! plus there were tons of tents including groups like just food. very exciting! we listened for a bit but chose to move on because we needed to get food and man was it HOT and SUNNY out!

stepping out

2007-09-07T10:37:00.000-04:00

an important part of using less is relocalization of my life. that means not only eating local and "buying american" (which there was a fun article about in the ny times yesterday), but also building a community structure where i am. while i know my neighbors by name and all, it would be nice to expand my people-base and make some more personal connections outside of my small section of 71st street.

to this end, i have a couple of new groups that i'll be exploring in the coming week. the first is a contra dance on saturday with the country dance new york group. i haven't been to a proper contra in a very long time, and i miss it. i miss the music and the dance, and i think i'm at a point where i could do the socialization a bit better, too. the other one is a peak oil meetup group that i joined yesterday whose monthly meeting is this coming wednesday. exciting!

oh, how i love my chocolate and sugar addiction

2007-09-05T09:13:00.000-04:00

when i was a kid, i wanted to be a grown-up. why? because grown-up people could eat candy and sweets anytime they wanted to.

that's still the best thing about being an adult, as far as i'm concerned.

mmm... chocolate.

so far today i have eaten:

2007-09-04T15:02:00.000-04:00

2 slices of homemade whole wheat bread with organic peanutbutter
4 itty bitty toblerone bars (decidedly not local :/ )
organic coffee with local milk
less than organic coffee with less than local milk
a fig grown in brooklyn on a co-worker's tree
cucumber and tomato salad with (non local) feta
peach, blueberry, grape salad
organic echinacea tea (not local)
cucumber slices
tap water

random sunday updates

2007-09-02T19:11:00.000-04:00

today i baked. i baked 4 loaves of very pretty bread, and also 11 blueberry muffins with cinnamon crumb topping. the muffins aren't as pretty as the bread, but they're tasty.

if you haven't seen, google is showing off it's black version (blackle.com) and counting up the kwh it's saving by not having a white background.

i finally jumped in and tried washing my hair with baking soda and apple cider vinegar. i was actually surprised at the results from the first go. my hair didn't seem at all greasy the day after i washed it. i took 1 tablespoon of baking soda and mixed it with 3/4 cup of warm water. i poured that over my hair a little at a time, starting at my hairline/forehead and working my way back, massaging it into my scalp. then i rinsed in warm water to get the baking soda out. after that, i mixed 1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar with 1 cup of warm water, and rinsed that through my hair starting at the tips and working my way forward to my forehead. then i rinsed THAT out with warm water. so far so good. my hair does not smell like vinegar.

re-plate

2007-08-30T10:30:00.000-04:00

i just link-hopped to replate.org, which seems to be a movement to help hungry people and waste less food. interesting idea.

indoor clothes drying system progress

2007-08-28T10:07:00.000-04:00

i stopped at ye olde home depot on friday to see what they had in the way of drying racks to aid in the drying of laundry in inclement weather. everything they had was made in china. no joke. ALL OF IT. i was at a point where i was trying to decide whether to invest the $9.99 in a retractable clothesline, and i told myself that i'd get it if it weren't made in china... and it was. so it was a no go. i did find a cfl that fits our bedside lamp (nightlight-sized socket), also made in china, but somehow worth buying anyway (...? not sure of the logic on that).

this morning, in my quest for procrastination activities, i searched lehman's site for "clothesline" and discovered that they offer something similar to the retractable clothesline i was looking at at home depot, only better, AND it is made in the u.s.a. (by amish people, it says, but that makes no sense to me because what amish people have time to make retractable clotheslines?). it's on my desires list now. i think i may also look at their drying racks.

hey, i know her!

2007-08-27T10:47:00.000-04:00

this weekend was one of small-worldliness.

saturday while christine and i were taking an iced chai break from thrift shopping (in a vain attempt to find some appropriate-for-work shirts for me), we were perusing the ny go! magazine. they have a page of photo montage from the various girl bars in the city, and lo and behold there was someone we knew! not only that, but it was someone we've never met in person (knowing her from oho), and someone who doesn't live in the city! erin contacted her and verified that it was indeed bridget :)

saturday night we made the drive up to putnam valley to visit liz and craig in their new place there. my god it's beautiful there! they're in a house that used to be a three-season cottage right near a lake (they have a private dock, though it's not visible from the house) with a stream in the yard and a hot tub on the deck. very nice! we didn't use the hot tub this time, but that's ok. it was lovely anyway. we all (except me) collaborated to make a delicious dinner of london broil made into philly sandwiches plus a salad. we spent much of the rest of the evening looking through pictures and playing scrabble. craig was explaining one photo to erin and said something about christine who is involved with the charm city roller girls now, and i'm like, "hey, i know her!" turns out craig and christine haven't seen each other in about 12 years. who knew!

like i said, small world; connections...

leonardo di caprio brings us 'the 11th hour'

2007-08-24T20:41:00.001-04:00

in theaters now? i'm not sure of all the details. the trailer looks terrifying, though... in that psa kind of way.

a review from nytimes.com

electric is down

2007-08-24T12:39:00.000-04:00

from friday morning 8/17 til friday morning 8/24, our electric meter turned 17kwh. that's less than 2.5kwh per day :D

average for the last 25 days is more like 5kwh per day, but that's still pretty good. i know that us having our water heater and cooking powered by other means puts us ahead of the game in the electricity category, but still.

reasons why it was down this week: it was cool. we didn't use the fans at all this week. also, with jake back in ohio, we're not having his ceiling fan and cd player on all night anymore. i'm sure that helps. i have been needing a light in the bedroom when i get up lately (i am up at 5:30) such that i don't look like i got dressed in the dark ;)

i've been eating better this week than last week. we did go for pizza one day, but i didn't even want it (we needed to do laundry, and going for pizza was the quickest solution to dinner so we could get down to the laundromat).

we also used the clothes dryer for the first time in FIVE MONTHS this week. wow. we didn't know how to deal with the rain we've had in more than a theoretical way. i still want to hang a line from cup hooks that criscrosses our bedroom ceiling... but we may just get another drying rack instead. i'm considering doing underwear and socks in a bucket by hand. it's still at the consideration point.

i haven't gotten sick yet, but my chiropractor asked me if i had a cold. when she was adjusting my neck, she noticed that my lymph nodes are swollen. i can feel it, too. it's just out of reach, this illness. i hope to keep it that way. airborne to the rescue! *note to self: get echinacea tea at the grocery store this weekend. and dogfood.*

thrift store compromise and sick weather

2007-08-21T12:36:00.000-04:00

i've been looking at thrift stores lately for things to wear to work, and i keep finding the same pattern: i can find skirts (not work), pants (both work-worthy and not work), and casual tops (not work appropriate except maybe on fridays). one reason that contributes is the fact that many of the thrift shops in the city do not offer fitting rooms, and that there are many MANY ways a blouse can be ill-fitting, and it's terribly difficult for me to find work blouses used. i did manage to buy 4 pairs of slacks (2 in a size i'm in now, 2 in a size i wouldn't mind being within a couple months) and two casual tops last night. thinking about it, i've decided that a compromise of buying used things-that-i-usually-can-find used, and then going ahead and getting a few new blouses and/or sweaters at target. progress. it's like the meat thing, if you remember. plus, i think i've thought long enough to come up with an idea of how to alter my currently-too-large work blouses... if i can find a helper who will pin them on me, and if i can get myself to hand-sew the alterations.

sunday the weather started to turn gray. we didn't do laundry. yesterday it misted all day long. today it's flat-out raining with a high of 62F. it feels coooooold. a couple of people at the office have had thick colds in the last week. christine has been home sick yesterday and today with something that hit her like a train. my head feels a bit foggy today, and i can't tell if it's because of the weather, or if i'm actually starting to catch what everyone else seems to have. i'm going to invest in some airborne just now.

i knead left-handed

2007-08-18T21:09:00.000-04:00

on our vacation, teresa gifted me with her tassajara bread book (just like the picture!), and i'm honored to have it. the author, ed brown, puts forth that bread "makes itself, by your kindness, with your help, with imagination streaming through you, with dough under hand, you are breadmaking itself, which is why breadmaking is so fulfilling and rewarding." i really like that attitude.

he also goes through step by step with pen and ink illustrations of the steps involved in mixing the ingredients, kneading the dough, forming the loaves. and according to him, when turning the dough while kneading it, "clockwise is usually easier for right-handed persons." he later instructs when preparing the loaves, "knead the dough with your right hand. Turn and fold it with your left hand." it's interesting to me that i've always always done it the other way around.

that is all. oh yes, and i'm going back to baking bread now that jake is back to ohio for the school year. it gives me something to do with my time.

the disgusting power of plastic

2007-08-17T14:27:00.000-04:00

floating garbage patch the size of texas resides in the north pacific ocean. it grosses me out. you?

(it doesn't show up on google maps satellite setting. maybe the oceans aren't real photos there??? *sigh* the shortcuts google takes *shakes head sadly*)

what do you mean you "have to" give me one?

2007-08-16T08:51:00.000-04:00

8:50 a.m.

we went camping in ithaca, ny, last week. that's a four or five hour drive from nyc (though it took us a good eight hours to get there this time... don't ask).

it was getting late, we were nearly to ithaca, and we stopped at a flying j to get gas around midnight. i went in to procure some [nasty horrible bad for us and the environment] things to munch on, and when i was paying i told the cashier lady that i didn't need a bag, thank you.

she gave me this baffled look.

"i... i have to give you one," she said, quickly adding "you can use it for trash..." meanwhile stuffing my goodies into a plastic bag and shoving it at me.

i gave her a baffled look.

i've never been "required" to have a plastic bag for my purchase before. dang.

also, the times this morning reported that CARE has refused $45 million in federal funding for a very good reason.

the root of all evil

2007-08-15T08:52:00.000-04:00

8:51 a.m.

i make a decent salary, especially for the work i do. i live pretty darn well and don't want for anything in my day-to-day. i'm 25 (and a half), and i feel like i'm starting to understand how to manage my money a little bit. i don't know how to make it grow yet, but i can get through everything i need to get through in a year without stressing (too much, at least... i AM quite a worrier and to not stress at all would be close to miraculous) including things like day camp payments for jake (which total at least $2,000 yearly) and whatever else might pop up. on top of that, i have actually started a savings account for SAVING money. i've really and truly never had one of those before. i'm thinking big and saving for land and a house. it may be a while before i have enough for even a down payment on anything. haha. but it's started, and i'm not touching that money.

in keeping with the 10-5-10-5 model of fair share international, i'm considering keeping $25 in singles in my wallet to give to street folks (musicians and performers as well as beggars), and putting $25 per paycheck toward a charitable cause.

i'm thinking also about the holidays and gifts for people i know. mostly it's going to be consumables (food!) or handmade useful items. i'm also starting a list of things i would appreciate as gifts. is august too early to start thinking about that? probably.

the conversation at lunch yesterday turned to the subconscious effects of television, which brought me around to talking about advertising and the emotionally manipulative way that companies convince you that you need what they're selling. we started to teach jake about how the purpose of advertising is to get you to buy things you don't need and weren't even thinking about until you saw the ad for them. all of a sudden he wanted mouthwash. the kid doesn't use mouthwash. i have never EVER experienced him wanting to use mouthwash... until he saw a commercial on tv for it. now that's "effective marketing".

my day off

2007-07-26T11:42:00.000-04:00

starting 11:42 a.m.

jake was feeling poorly this morning, like, really bad. his throat was apparently killing him, and he seemed to be about to hack up a lung. that meant that each time he coughed, he cried out in pain because of his throat. *sigh* so i gave him a day home sick. which means that i'm home as well! however, as it tends to happen when one stays home from normal activities, he started to feel better. i think this is in part because of the lemon/cloves/ginger/honey infusion i made him, in part because he had warm, slippery oatmeal for breakfast, and in part because it's often the case that when you're ill you feel absolutely worst as soon as you wake up. regardless, he's only allowed to lie around today and drink tea and eat soup, no matter how much he whines. thankfully for me, we have a stash of disney movies that he's watching while lying on the couch. he's been through mary poppins and dumbo so far this morning. he'd really love to go out and play, but when you're home sick in my house, you stay prone and drink strong infusions! it's the rules. staying home is not a thing to be taken lightly.

i'm also making him some veggie soup for lunch: water, better-than-boullion (veggie), carrots, potato, onion, pasta, zucchini. i'm looking forward to it even if he's not ;)

which puts me to mind of that old story "stone soup" where the whole village gets together to have some of this miraculous soup made of a stone, and they each bring one vegetable to add to the pot and they are amazed at the wonderful soup that comes out of it.

in other news, i think i may have discovered the thing that is making the fridge reek. there were some now-almost-liquid green onions in a ziplock bag in the drawer. fingers crossed that that's what it was!!! figuring out which of the many veggies in the fridge is giving off that rotting smell is rough work when the fridge is almost always full. maybe i'll give it a bit of a cleaning today before we head to the csa pickup.

the persistence of green!

2007-07-25T11:36:00.000-04:00

starting 11:35 a.m.

i'm forever amazed at the persistence of green growing things. there are sci-fi future tales of broken down cities, and they're usually described as being forlorn and desolate places. i don't think that would happen. i think they'd end up covered in green!

think about how much time and effort people can put into "managing" their property to keep out the green things. they scrape out the cracks in the sidewalk and their driveways and other paved areas (if they don't drown them in chemicals instead).

have you seen ivy take over a house? it'll cover a building in its entirety, including windows and doors. i've seen the same thing beginning to happen to the sound-break walls at the sides of the highway.

have you seen a road in disuse? the cracks that form in the asphalt start to grow green things, which in turn make the cracks bigger and bigger green things start to grow!

i ride the elevated number 7 train everyday through queens, and looking out at the rooftops, i could imagine them turning green. there's one that already looks like marshland. it collects standing water (poorly designed or maintained drainage there), and there must be enough "dirt" there to support the fairly lush marsh grass that's growing on it. no one set out to turn that one into a green roof (though i really admire people who do have planned green roofs... like the silvercup building in lic), and the green is just taking over. i can imagine how easy it would be to turn so many of the flat roofs in the city into growing-places. just a bit of dirt... many plants aren't really that picky. there's generally something that will grow in whatever conditions are available. it's people who try to keep things from becoming green.

i feel rather hopeful about it. if the world ends, it'll just return to its green self :)

thinking blogger!

2007-07-18T09:55:00.000-04:00

a sincere thank you to bryan for naming me in his list of "thinking blogger awards". it's flattering to be considered someone who makes others pause and think. now, i'm supposed to nominate five more blogs that make me pause and think. i've been watching the thinking blogger awards go around the blogs i read regularly, and many of the ones that inspire me have been nominated already (casaubon's book; simple living: simplify and reduce; my fair share; mustard seed journal; walk slowly, live wildly; little blog in the big woods). i'm going to list a few that i haven't seen nominated yet, but please know that if i could list them all, i would.

1. back into the groove
2. bornfamous
3. exploring not-so-big living
4. hoppes homestead

again, thank you very much, bryan, and thank you to all you bloggers out there who are thinking and inspiring with your posts!

riding in the rain

2007-07-18T09:32:00.000-04:00

this morning i debated taking my bike to the train station. it was sprinkling when it was time for me to leave the house. the paper called for a "light shower" in the morning, and i didn't want to be late coming home to get jake, so i decided to brave it. i thought of miranda biking to the farmer's market in the rain and pushed off down the hill.

the further i went, the harder the rain fell. by the time i got near the train station, i was thoroughly soaked. i don't mind being rained on, but i can't show up to work wet to the skin! so, after biking a mile in the rain, i turned around and biked back home in the rain. [note to self: bike brakes don't work so well when they're wet.]

i got home, changed out of my dripping clothes and into dry ones, donned my galoshes, and looked out at the torrential downpour that the rain had become. *sigh* i didn't want to wait for the bus in that. i was already late for work. so... i whined to erin. (what else could i do? ;) )

by the time i was done whining, she had offered to drive me to the train station. by this time, though, the rain had let up almost completely. the only thing stopping me was that i'd have to walk past rose, the homeless lady who lives on our street (and tends to yell at me in a language i don't understand as i pass her - she's intimidating). erin promised to yell at rose if she came at me yelling. luckily, no one had to yell, and i made it onto the bus and in to work only an hour late. whew!

my hair is nice and soft now. one benefit to being rained on ;)

sister envy and body image

2007-07-17T13:50:00.000-04:00

my sister called last night to talk about our impending camping trip with the family (so excited about that, by the way). she's chatty, which is kind of nice because i have trouble carrying a conversation. we got to talking about our gardens. hers is 11 long rows (it takes her an hour to weed one row). she has not only tomatoes, zucchini and peppers, but also radishes, carrots, corn, beets, onions, canteloupe, watermelon... the list goes on. (and that list doesn't include her herbs on the porch.) and all of these things she grew from seed. *sigh* cue inferiority complex.

i was already feeling a bit down about how well my garden isn't doing, and now i hear that my sister (to whom i've generally felt inferior much of my life) has this gigantic fruitful garden going on. i feel sad. but my garden is better than no garden. and erin says my sister isn't better than me. she says my sister is just more like my dad than i am.

as for body image...
for a while i was proud to be losing weight and getting to a "normal" weight range, but now i'm self-conscious about my body and its... skinniness, i guess. i don't want comments on how good i look, but i don't want comments on how bad i look, either. it's going to take some thinking on my part.

compromise

2007-07-16T10:00:00.000-04:00

erin and i sat down and had a chat last night about why we've been eating out so often lately and what we could do about it. we decided that we pretty much went from eating meat two or three times per day to maybe once a week, and that was too drastic of a change for us. we're not ready to be that vegetarian yet.

our compromise is that we're going to have "sustainable" (organic/local) meat each night as a step in the right direction because in the past we were getting all our meat at the grocery store based on price.

i feel a bit better about food now. a little bit.

more nyc water statistics

2007-07-13T13:04:00.000-04:00

nyc annual consumption in 2006 was the lowest since at least 1979: 1068.7 million gallons per DAY in 2006 compared to 1512.4 million gallons per day in 1979.

nyc per person consumption in 2006 was 133.5 gallons per day compared to 189.0 gallons per day in 1979.

the highest per capita consumption year in this span of time was 1988 with 208.3 gallons per person per day, though the total nyc consumption was 1483.9 million gallons per day. population must have hiccuped down that year.

interesting stuff on the dep website. including a record of various droughts and how long they lasted and what the reservoir level percentages were at the time.

also interesting is the list of restrictions that apply near and during a drought.

water levels for reservoirs serving nyc

2007-07-13T10:56:00.000-04:00

New York City
Water Supply System Reservoirs
July 12, 2007

Total Storage (% of Capacity)
Current: 89.3
Normal: 94.0

Consumption (billion gallons)
7/12/07 1.19

Average Precipitation (inches)
Actual Historical
May: 1.64 4.30
June: 2.89 3.93
July: 1.57 4.15

* to date

note that average precipitation is several inches down this year from historical averages, and that the total reservoir capacity is down 5% from the norm for this time of year. click title for source.

snapshot this morning

2007-07-13T09:08:00.000-04:00

jake says, "we should make a list of chores to do tomorrow." (he's big on doing chores)

i say, "erin had one she wanted to do."

erin says, "yeah, the 27 thing fling!" [a-la flylady's 27 fling boogie]

jake says, "no, not a game!"

we laugh. erin starts in with, "for every job that must be done/ there is an element of fun/ find the fun and snap!/ the job's a game!/ then every task we undertake/ becomes a piece of cake/ la la/ la la/ la la la la la la....!"

jake and i join in as i'm wheeling my bike out the door, "just a spoonful of sugar/ helps the medicine go down..." and it trails after me as i head down the hill

:)

community-building?

2007-07-09T12:42:00.000-04:00

starting 12:43

one of the main themes that cycle around reduction and peak oil and the return to simpler living is the idea of rebuilding a sense of community where we live. i agree that this is important, but i find myself ill-suited to this endeavor.

the online groups do offer something of a sense of community. at least we do learn that there are others out there (more than 250 on our list now!) who have similar interests and are taking similar actions. i appreciate that, but i wonder how many of us (myself included) are way more comfortable when confronted with words on a screen than with our own neighbors.

our block is pretty neighborly, as they go. there are three or four families with young children (under 10) who all enjoy playing together on summer evenings. jake has been somewhat of an "in" with these families, but that doesn't stop me from being terribly anxious whenever i walk him across the street to his friends' house, or go to call him in for the night. i worry about what these people think of me. i am afraid of their opinions and that they might not like me... plus, what do i say to someone with whom i think the only link we have is our young ones and where we live? what's the "proper" way to socialize with people i barely know but whose children are my child's playmates? there are a lot of unknowns in the potential relationship between myself and these other parents. do they mind if i let my son go play with their kids on their property while i am at home making dinner? i mean, i remember a time when i was young where we all played out on the sidewalks and in different kids' yards and no parents were around at all (they were doing their own grown-up things that we didn't care about, though always available if someone needed an adult). i feel like times have changed, though, and i have this uneasy voice in the back of my head that says that i should be omnipresent wherever jake is, especially if me not being present means that some other adult is "the authority" over wherever he's playing. but then when do i make dinner???

it's hard. being friendly doesn't come naturally to me, at least not beyond saying hello. i think that's probably the core of our issue with not having the kind of community these days that would be supportive of living completely locally; we've lost the skillset that involves acting neighborly and knowing what the "rules" for that would be.

on rebelling

2007-07-06T14:14:00.000-04:00

i'm finding it daunting to look at a bare screen for fifteen minutes when i don't feel i've been thinking about or doing anything that i want to share on my blog. sorry for the delay in posts. i find it annoying when someone i read regularly takes a hiatus and leaves me with nothing new to see! not that i blame the author; i don't.

anyway, after a month of the project, i think i may have reached a point where i rebel against what i should be doing and gorge on what i should definitely NOT be doing. for instance:

tuesday night erin and i went out to see a movie. dinner consisted of a medium popcorn, medium diet pepsi, whoppers, twizzlers, and peanut m&m's. ahem.

wednesday morning we had pancakes for breakfast (not too bad for the environment, but sugar on top of white flour wreaks havoc on my body), went out to play, came home and ordered pizza. then we had more m&m's at the beginning of the fireworks (which we watched both on tv and out our front window since the neighbors were setting off quite a display themselves).

yesterday i was mostly back on track. i picked up the csa share and made a good, local dinner for the fam. today i chose not to eff with my diet and only ate what i brought to work with me.

on the 90% list, pat linked to linked to her "anyway" theory (and also to sharon's article about pat's "anyway" theory), and the idea that choosing "the right thing" to do as though i were choosing between stealing and paying is helping me through today. it's putting my rebel back to sleep... for now. knowing me, though, it'll wake back up in a week or two (maybe less), and i'll see what i can find then to serve as a lullaby.

dinners this week:

2007-06-29T09:46:00.000-04:00

MONDAY: chicken sausages, salad (non local bits: sausages, vinegar, olive oil)
TUESDAY: rosemary roasted beets, homemade bread, salad (non local bits: a couple bread ingredients like baking soda and salt, olive oil, vinegar)
WEDNESDAY: leftover roasted beets, rice, salad (non local bits: rice, olive oil, vinegar)
THURSDAY: boiled potatoes with garlic scape butter, steamed zucchini with green onions, salad (non local bits: olive oil, vinegar)
FRIDAY: pizza out (non local bits: EVERYTHING lol)

not too too terrible.

what the times says today about the power outage

2007-06-28T08:14:00.001-04:00

apparently, they don't know what the cause was. the mayor is playing it off. people's feathers are still a little ruffled. click the title for the whole story.

but what does it really MEAN???

2007-06-27T17:45:00.000-04:00

starting 5:46 p.m.

this evening heading home there was a service problem on one of the subway lines i take. the announcement said, "due to a temporary power failure, 4, 5, and 6 trains are not running IN EITHER DIRECTION. for service to..."

this comes two days after the ny times (among other sources) reported that the 4/5/6 line has exceeded capacity and is thus overcrowded at rush hours. they cannot put more trains on the track for safety's sake (the trains must have enough space between them to be able to stop in an emergency). the cars cannot hold more people (and if you've been on one of these trains at rush hour, you know for SURE they can not possibly hold any more people). in fact, the train capacity is supposed to allow for 3 sq feet for each passentger (1.5ft x 1.5ft). this doesn't happen. today because of the train issues, the 7 i was riding was packed so that my back was pressed against the back of the guy behind me, and my left side was brushing the guy standing there. it's not comfortable, but it's waaaay better than walking ten miles home. this is all the more reason for me to start riding my bike all the way to work. none of this shit would affect me!

about that, though: my bike needs brake pads... or something. i can't wait til i know my bike well enough to know exactly what it needs. until i get it fixed, i'm not going to ride it. i don't think it's safe right now.

i can't help thinking about the train electricity problems, and what i'm thinking is along the lines of, "is this the beginning of the end?"

wonderful wonderful food

2007-06-26T10:17:00.000-04:00

starting 10:16 a.m.

i talk a lot about food. it's important. it's very likely one of the most important things in my life. and i've noticed that it's the one main thing that i don't mind spending excess money on. it always seems worth it. (things i don't like to spend money on include: clothing, haircuts, entertainment, the internets, "things"... pretty much anything that's not food.)

so, food is important to me. plus it's really enjoyable. we eat all manner of foods at our house, even more so now that we're receiving veggies from the csa where the deal is "you get what you get!"

one of my co-workers asked me about how jake was doing with all the vegetables, and the truth is, he is a great eater! he started out not being totally keen on all the salads we've had lately, but then we discovered the garlic parmesan cesar dressing in the fridge. then we ran out of that. erin eased us into olive oil and rice vinegar for dressing. jake loves it! he really enjoyed the sauteed zucchini we had last week. he's getting into the idea of tofu with soy sauce. part of it is the idea that THIS IS WHAT THERE IS TO EAT. if you don't want it, or don't like it, at least try it. if you still don't want it or don't like it, you can remain hungry. plus, all this food is normal in our house. we're not a household of twinkies and sugar coated cereal (whose idea was that invention?!?). the one thing we have in our house that's not "good" for us is probably the home-made popsicles from kool aid (made with splenda). for snacks there are strawberries or unsalted peanuts or an apple. it's just the way it is.

sharon talked yesterday about how picky kids result from picky and/or lenient parents. i've heard tales of parents who routinely make two meals: "adult" food for the parents, and either macaroni and cheese or chicken nuggets for the kids. the reasoning behind that is sort of a twisted "they won't like what we're having, so why offer it" kind of thing... i think. but how do you think they might start to like something, if they've never seen it on their plates? jake claims to not like the peels on an apple, but one evening erin cut one up for him and told him that if he didn't want the peel, he could eat around it. he ate the peel, and we didn't make a big deal about it at all.

so, what's the big deal about food? it's wonderful wonderful! that's the only big deal i see.

three steps forward, two steps back, three more steps forward

2007-06-25T14:36:00.000-04:00

starting 2:35 p.m.

we make progress. we take steps. we feel good.
along comes a stressor*. we step back into a place of comfort until we adjust to the stressor. we step forward again.

i had a lot to say this morning, but at this point i'd like to talk about the pendulum swing of personal progress. because we can only keep so many balls in the air, each of us pulse like the waves toward where we would like to be. i'll give a couple examples.

number one: my son lives with my girlfriend and i during his summer break from school. he arrived mid-june this year, and having him in the house completely shifts the way we operate. i don't mean this in a bad way, either, it's just different to live with such a dependent being in our care than to live with three independent adults in the house. it puts stress on our "normal" routines. for instance, going to bed takes roughly an hour now when before it was a fifteen minute routine, if that. all this to say, we had taken steps and put routines into place toward our goal of reducing our impact, and then along comes a stressor. we backed into a comfort zone a little bit. we ate out several times last week. we bought milk at the grocery store. we drove on a couple outings (at least one of which would have been easily done by mass transit when it was the two of us adults). and now i can see us gradually starting to step forward again after a short period of adjustment. i made us dinner last night after thinking there was nothing to eat (salad + strawberries w/milk + local popcorn = dinner!). i'm sure there are other things that show we're adjusting, too, but i can't think of them off the top of my head.

number two: i've begun biking the 1.4 miles to the train station and home again on work days, and i've shifted my work day a half hour earlier in order to get home "on time" to relieve the babysitter. before starting these things, i had been getting off the train two stops earlier than i needed to do and walking the rest of the way. the first day i biked, i stepped back into the comfort zone of riding the train all the way to my destination. the next day, i rode the train to the stop one stop away from my destination. this morning (the third day i've biked), i am back to being early enough to walk from two stops back and still have time to stop and change into my work shirt/blouse thingy at starbucks (although i felt guilty for using their bathroom and ended up with a double tall latte in a paper cup, argh!)

three steps forward, two steps back, three more steps forward.
sixteen minutes!

fair share international

2007-06-22T09:00:00.000-04:00

starting 9:00 a.m.

directed by bryan, this morning i discovered fair share international which is an australian organization suggesting a formula of 5.10.5.10 for a better world. the formula breaks down thusly:

5. redistribute at least 5% of your gross annual income to help people who are financially disadvantaged somewhere over the globe

10. reduce your use of water, energy and minerals by at least 10% and keep it there forever

5. contribute at least 5% of your leisure time to community-building activities in your neighborhood, or with a volunteer organization which helps disadvantaged folk

10. perform 10 acts of significant democratic action per year to correct practices associated with greed and injustice over the world

it's an interesting concept, and bryan says it ties right into the 90% project for him. it's a little baffling as to where to start, though. i could pretty easily give the 5% of my income to friends and family, some of whom are relatively financially disadvantaged. or i could give the money to an organization that directly helps truly financially disadvantaged people somewhere else on the globe. speaking of which, i saw this site yesterday that describes one man's project to bring bicycle-powered ambulances to namibia for use with the HIV/AIDS home care program, among other programs, i'm sure. intriguing. i'd sort of like to have my hands in an organization so that i can see where my money is going, but that may be my tendency toward trying to control everything...

i wonder what 5% of my leisure time is. let's see. i work 40 hours weekly, commute 20 hours weekly. that's 60 hours out of 168 (24x7). i sleep roughly 40 hours weekly, so that puts my count up to 100 hours. i spend three hours grocery shopping, 1 hour doing laundry, let's say 10 hours preparing and eating food, an hour a week in the shower... that puts me at 115. let's say i have roughly 53 hours a week that are leisure time. 5% is more than 2 and a half, less than 3 hours per week to spend in building community. not so bad, is it? hmmm...

reducing my use of water, energy, and minerals is already underway. i'm going for 90% rather than just 10%. we'll see how low i can go.

i'd have to step up the writing of letters or campaigning for political revolution. i did send two letters already this year, but i think i may have sent them to the wrong people. i sent them to my federal representatives when i think the issue is actually an issue for the state legislature.

oh my! that was 17 minutes!

random updates!

2007-06-21T11:22:00.000-04:00

starting 11:22 a.m.

bike update: this morning i rode my bike the 1.4 miles to the train station instead of taking the bus! i locked it up to a pole (not one it could be lifted off of, though) near a group of other bikes locked up similarly. i just hope it's still all there when i get back. my chain wasn't long enough to go through the front wheel AND the frame AND around the pole. it felt good to do, but it took me longer than i anticipated. i was still at the train station earlier than i would have been if i had waited for the bus, even though the bus passed me on my way up 65th place. i also had to get off and walk up this brutal hill. i was out of breath from the walking, but not from the biking!

garden update: the landlord has finished laying the pavers for our new patio, and will be tearing out both sides of the fence and removing the 4' diameter stump that has been there since they took down the old elm tree two and a half years ago. we had moved our potted garden away from where they were putting the patio, and now we've moved it back onto the new patio and thus away from the stump/fence area. i had worried about all the moving of the plants, especially with so many of them bearing immature fruit just now. my fears were relieved when erin pointed out three bright yellow cherry tomatoes on one of the plants! (they're supposed to be yellow) yay! maybe it finally got hot enough to start them a-ripening.

csa update: tonight is another pickup already! we've been working at the lettuces slowly, and carter helped us make the collard greens on monday night, but we still have lots of green peas and lettuce and all the beet greens left :\ i need to buckle down and get to cooking these things. we've still been eating out too often. we stopped for pizza last night again on the way home from the chiropractor.

hmm. time's not up, but that's all i've got today.

thank you mom and dad, and the cycle of lifelong learning

2007-06-20T10:13:00.000-04:00

starting 10:12 a.m.

i am utterly grateful to my parents for all they did while raising me. especially for the useful skills they taught me instead of just doing them themselves. i may not have liked having to go out and feed the animals in the morning and evening, but it did teach me responsibility. i may have gotten bored with gardening, but i knew how to plant things and how to tell when they needed something i could provide. i may not have liked the crunchy jeans and sandpaper towels that came from hanging them on the line, but i did know there was an alternative to throwing them in the dryer. i learned to do my own laundry early on, and have been doing all my own laundry since i was 14. i learned to cook at least 8 different meals, so i could feed myself (not well, mind you, but feeding myself poorly is still better than going hungry or getting fast food). i went on almost every grocery shopping trip and learned the layout of the store and the benefits of buying generic. likewise i learned the benefits and perils of shopping at goodwill. i learned how to use the hand tools and then the power tools in my dad's machine shed. i could drive the riding lawnmower and then the tractor and then the tractor-with-implements-attached. i know when the weather is right for making hay, and i have driven the tractor during all three stages of haymaking (cutting, raking, baling). i've been involved in the mad-dash hay bale collection process when we were racing those dark clouds.

this was my childhood, and it was good. i love knowing all these things. i love the memories of doing all these things. i'm absolutely glad that i grew up on a farm (albeit a recreational farm rather than a working one... though maybe that made the experience even better). but because i was a child and then a teenager, i missed some parts of the lessons and the knowledge, and now as an adult i have to fill in the blanks. things like stretching clothesline and having enough clothespins for all my laundry. things like how to tell when to harvest my vegetables. when are tomatoes supposed to turn red again? are they supposed to sit green on the plants for more than a month? where might i get a hand drill so jake can help with hardware projects? for that matter, where do i get a hand saw that's fit for cutting down a small tree?

i'm guessing that this is maybe how life is supposed to work. your parents lay down the ideas and some of the rudimentary skills, and then when you're an adult, you go back and fill in the gaps in learning either with outside resources, personal experience, or by calling mom when you need to roast a turkey or dad when you're trying to replace the old showerhead.

in other news, i wasted a batch of yeast bread dough the other day by letting it sit too long. i guess i'd gotten somewhat used to the ease and long timeframe of sourdough bread already! speaking of which, i should mix together some new starter tonight.

reminder to be slow

2007-06-18T11:47:00.000-04:00

starting 11:47 a.m.

colin has posted about how his daughter reminds him to slow down and enjoy life. now that jake is here for the summer, i am trying to remember to do things at his pace and enjoy the things that a slower pace helps me see.

yesterday we took turns kicking a piece of insulation foam all the way home from a trip out of the house.

today we went to the farmer's market, and we had a rockin good time. jake helped me pick things out and pay for things, and then he wanted to help carry things, but they got too heavy after a little bit. that's ok. regardless of the hour long trip there and the hour long trip home, it was way more enjoyable than going to the grocery store with a small child has ever been. i asked jake whether he preferred the market or the grocery store, and he said the market because it doesn't have the thing that beeps as you buy the groceries. he said that thing is annoying.

now he's taking the "brains" out of the cherries that he picked out and paid for with his own money :) and i gotta go enjoy that.

birthday party!

2007-06-14T15:06:00.000-04:00

starting 3:06 p.m.

yesterday was erin's birthday, and we had a lovely party last night. our friend emily came over and brought 90's music, guacamole makings and some chips, and i put together things for making beverages/smoothies from local strawberries and organic bananas and some non-organic, non-local wet goods (seltzer, sparkling cider, pineapple juice) which we sipped from pretty new-to-us glasses with straws and paper umbrellas while we worked on a totally unnecessary dinner. we were so full of guacamole and strawberry smoothie by the time dinner was ready that we each only ate a small bowl of salad before declaring ourselves too stuffed to eat anything more! we soon re-evaluated that declaration when we remembered that christine had procured a vegan cake with erin's name on it, and i had snagged some organic ice cream to go with. yum! there was a lot of laughter and good friends togetherness in the name of celebrating that erin is in our lives :)

oh, there were also presents from emily in the shape of a mortar 'n' pestle and a set of star-shaped popsicle molds that we promptly filled with smoothie!

happy birthday erin!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

another baby step i'm taking: i've given up q-tips cold turkey. i'm on day 3 without them. this is a big deal. i was seriously addicted, and it was dangerous to my health/wellbeing. yes, i'm dramatic. i used to get ear infections through my teen years that stemmed from moisture that got into my ear canal. scared by the pain of some of these infections, i started meticulously cleaning any and all moisture out of my ears at least once a day. then they were itchy... so i soothed the itch by "scratching" it with another q-tip. sad sad story is that i think i've totally stripped my ears of any useful oils and wax that could reside in there, and i'm hoping that they'll even themselves out in time with the discontinuation of q-tip use. i've also heard that a drop of olive oil in the ear can help them stop being so dang itchy until they figure it out. i'm not ready to try that yet, though.

food food food... and a deodorant adventure.

2007-06-13T10:12:00.000-04:00

starting 10:11 a.m.

baby step: we ran out of the tom's of maine deodorant the other day, and last night i went to whole foods to pick up a couple things (locally roasted coffee, organically raised chicken, organic peanut butter, and the deo), and i decided to take the plunge and try the salt crystal deodorant. so this morning has been my first go, and i can't smell myself! woo! lol. it's protecting me better than the tom's did, and it's not sticky like the tom's was. i walked my half mile from the train to work, and i did sweat, but i do not stink now, so that's great!

the other night i made a nice meatless, beanless, soyless dinner. i whipped up a roux with local milk, butter, and whole wheat flour. then i added local green garlic and local asparagus bits (about an inch long each), and served that over non-local whole wheat pasta with a biiiig salad. yum!

speaking of salad, i'm very proud of us for eating two salads each per day because of all the greens we're getting from the csa. this week we got a bunch of arugula, a head of boston lettuce, a head of RED boston lettuce, AND a bag of mixed greens. it's a lot. of salad. we have learned a new salad dressing, though, which is fun. it's olive oil and white wine vinegar with spicy mustard and some herbs-of-choice (lately it's either green garlic or rosemary or thai basil from the garden). the dressing truly makes the salad.

as i mentioned, i did buy chicken last night, and we had one breast split between the two of us last night with dinner. organic chicken is so tasty, man. it makes me wonder exactly what the hell they're feeding the non-organic chicken. no, please don't tell me!

time's up!

still thinking mostly about food

2007-06-11T11:44:00.000-04:00

starting 11:45 a.m.

the last couple weeks we haven't bought any meat. we've bought tons of local tofu (made at dj organic farms from soybeans grown on the farm in yaphank, long island), and we've eaten loads of home-cooked beans. we're not lacking in protein in our diet... i don't think.

dang it. i always forget about the turkey bacon. we HAVE bought meat the last couple weeks, in the form of jennie-o turkey bacon, which i've vowed to give up in exchange for more humanely produced turkey bacon from whole foods (i don't want pork bacon - the fattiness is just too much for me). but we haven't been buying meat for lunches and dinners.

we're not vegetarians yet. and looking at our eating habits the last couple weeks, i don't think we're ready to be vegetarians. yes, we HAVE tofu in the house. do we cook it and eat it? some of the time, sure. but more and more often we're ordiring in or eating out for dinner instead of finding something to do that provides us with something tasty and protein-providing.

so ok. i'll say it: i'm tired of the taste of tofu. it's... distinctive. and it's not salty. and it doesn't take well to salty accoutrements (garlic salt, adobo, etc). it still tastes like soy and water in a patty. *sigh*

you know what i want? an easy, tasty tofu cookbook that goes beyond "cut it into small squares and sautee it in canola oil [until it tastes like fried crappiness]." that's what it took for me to learn to cook meat properly. god bless the south beach diet 30 minute cookbook. cooking from that each night for a good 6 months is what helped me realize that i liked to cook! now that feeling is starting to go away :(

i know what they all say, "you can really substitute tofu into any meat recipe and cook it the same way." it's not true. because meat has a taste of its own, as does tofu, and so substituting one for the other doesn't really satisfy me. plus the texture of tofu is... nonexistant. it's very weak, like a soft cheese (which is what it is, essentially, since it's "bean curd").

if what it takes to make tofu taste better is to keep it soaked in brine intead of regular water, i'm into it. how do i make brine? it needs something more than just salt in the water. hmmmm... however, i'm not looking to pickle the tofu.

until i start to have some idea of what to do with it, though, i'm going to put up my white flag and admit that i'm not ready to be vegetarian! not yet! i'm going to buy some pasture-raised, organic, local chicken tonight! and i'm going to enjoy it!

the end.

2007-06-07T14:56:00.000-04:00

starting 2:56 p.m.

today went really fast.

one of my co-workers brought in some cherries to share with all of us, and it's funny because i have no idea whether it's cherry season here or not. i asked him if he has cherry trees. i saw on the internet that mid may to june is cherry season in california... and it's quite a different clime here on the east coast. i don't even know if cherries can grow around here.

at my dad's farm, we used to have 2 cherry trees. they'd produce a good number of cherries, and it was nice to just pick them off the tree and eat them. unfortunately, both trees had some manner of illness in them and one of them died. my dad cut down the other one before it had a chance to die on its own. it seemed like a very sad thing to lose those trees, even though it completely opened up the view from the kitchen window out across the hayfield toward the woods.

i love that view. my grandma has a similar one from her house next door, and when i visit, i can hardly take my eyes off of the view across the field. when my dad had animals, the horse and sheep would dot the pasture between the house and the trees. it's all so very... slow. just looking out there makes things happen more slowly.

i always wanted to live somewhere where i could see the horizon. we were in colorado when i started to remember things, and there were the mountains. then in ohio, there were always trees between the land and the sky. now in new york, there are buildings and bridges in between. am i the only one who dreams of a place like kansas or dakota where the grass waves like ocean from here to eternity? it's probably not as romantic in real life as it is in my mind.

kathleen norris writes about the beauty of dakota. things sound slow there. of course, because of the limited population and the nature of people, folks tend to be closed off from "outsiders" there. she says it makes it terribly difficult for someone new to become part of the culture of the plains.

reading kathleen norris always made me want to be a monk.

on critical thinking skills

2007-06-06T09:08:00.000-04:00

starting 9:08 a.m.

several of the home-schoolers whose parents are involved in the riot for austerity are doing school projects that involve following one product from cradle to grave. that is to say, choosing one thing, like a pair of jeans, and looking into what it takes to create the jeans (cotton made into fabric, thread to sew, metal for the metal bits, etc.) and what happens to each of those raw materials before they become part of the jeans and then what happens to the jeans during their life as jeans, and how they continue until they go back to the earth as nutrients.

i was thinking about all of this and how even with my 17 or 18 years of schooling, including a h.s. diploma and a b.a. degree, i wouldn't have any idea how to go about starting this kind of a project. i mean, how do you find out where the cotton comes from for a pair of jeans made by levi? my assumption is that vague notion that cotton comes from "the south", but how to find out if that's true? then to go and figure these things out for each and every component in one pair of jeans... it's overwhelming to me just thinking about it.

what i think it would require, something i don't think i picked up on my journey through the various schools i went to, is real critical thinking skills. what did i learn in school? tons of random useless facts (trivial trivia, ha!), and how to do something once someone tells/shows me how to do it. what's missing is the idea that i can figure out how to do something WITHOUT someone showing me how to do it first. critical hands-on learning on my own. which leaves me paralyzed with overwhelmingness when i'm faced with something i don't already know how to do when there's no one there to point me in the direction of a solution.

in this, i think some home-schoolers have an advantage. but only if their parents/teachers have the critical thinking skills to encourage their children to figure things out on their own. funny, that. i don't have any confidence in myself as a home-schooling mom because i have no idea how i would teach my children any of it. which is ok. i can be ok with that. it's just interesting to me that some people can get by without critical thinking skills. i wonder if that's an evolutionary thing. specialized abilities, as in, if everyone is good at being a leader and coming up with ideas, who will they lead and how will their ideas come to fruition? a beehive needs drones and a queen and all the rest (my trivial trivia knowledge is letting me down here). maybe human society works better with a division of responsibility/strengths?

rainy monday weekend recap

2007-06-04T10:31:00.000-04:00

starting 10:31 a.m.

rain glorious rain. it started to sprinkle yesterday afternoon (after about half of our laundry was dry), and it modulated between gentle rain and downpour through the night and into today. it's been a long time since i was happy that it was raining. yesterday after it had been sprinkling for a couple hours i went out in it and emptied the compost. the dirt under the first 1/8 inch was dry as a bone. it hasn't rained in at least the last three weeks. beautiful rain.

we had a[nother] nice low key weekend. several small victories were had :)

-we got to the farmer's market early and made one round of the place, buying everything they had. kidding, but it felt like that. $70 worth of local food, 15 different items, a half hour of time. when we got there, the first thing we saw was that there were STRAWBERRIES! so exciting! perfect for the rhubarb we got at the csa! it was also exciting to see pea pods and green garlic available. eating seasonally seems like a much more exciting way to do it.

-when we got home, erin and i split up and i took my bike to the bike shop to get fixed up and she headed to the post office on her bike.

-i started the dough for oatmeal/oat flour/whole wheat sourdough bread for the week.

-we napped (personally, this is the best part of these low key weekends).

-we headed out to the brooklyn museum for their free first saturday thing. there was square dancing! the one guy who seemed to have previous dancing experience sought me out and asked me to dance. go figure :)

-we didn't take a cab home even though it was late and the G line was a mile away and that only led to a bus (which ended up leading to another bus because this one was only going half the route cos it was late). it wasn't an easy trip home, but we did it and didn't give in to convenience!

-when we did get home (at roughly a quarter to midnight), i kneaded my bread dough and made it into loaves to rise overnight. it's big when i do something instead of just going to bed. i love sleep.

-sunday morning i baked my bread,

-erin made pie crust dough,

-we went and washed laundry and hung it up,

-erin made pie filling and we started baking our very own strawberry rhubarb pie :D

-i quick soaked beans and then cooked them for the week's lunches (or however long a 16oz bag of kidney beans lasts with two people eating them every day),

-we pulled in the laundry as it was beginning to rain a little, hanging the not-quite-dry bits on whatever we could find (bannister, backs of chairs, shower curtain rod, hangers upstairs),

-we walked to the store in the gentle rain,

-we bought FIVE things at the store, spending $18! that's a big one for me because when we were doing all our shopping at the stop n shop, we were spending some $200 each week on completely non-local things.

-after walking home in the rain, we made a nice dinner of local veggies and rice and lentils, watched a disappointing movie, and went to bed.

not a bad weekend at all :)

time's up!

in the mean time...

2007-06-01T11:11:00.001-04:00

ok. i have some time now.
fifteen minutes starting 6:55 p.m.

i picked up my csa veggies, but in the excitement and my confusion i forgot to grab my bunch of radishes. so i got rhubarb, arugula, white turnips, and spinach, and my radishes were donated to a food charity. i made a salad this morning for lunch, but then my coworkers wanted to go out for sushi, and i made the decision to be social instead of eating my salad. i paid for it all afternoon with my stomach's reaction to the white rice. it's so easy to see in hindsight that i shouldn't eat crap! haha.

this morning when i went to make breakfast, i took a bite of my granola, and the milk tasted kind of sour. fair enough, that quart had been in the fridge for almost two weeks now, and we still had two quarts left from this past week (less than a week old at this point) to get through before tomorrow's trip to the farmer's market. open a "new" quart, go to pour, and it's solid on the top. smells like yogurt cheese only a little more sour. :( both quarts were like that, and i don't think it was our fault. it was freaking hot last saturday, but we wrapped them in newspaper and i brought them straight home, so they were only in the heat (under my care) for an hour or so and they totally still felt really cold when i got them home and in the fridge. oh well. we get new milk tomorrow.

today is the official beginning of the 90% down project. it feels less like the start of a race and more like the germination of a seed to me. other people are talking about "last hurrah"s and what they're starting to do differently today that they weren't doing before. because i'm taking a year to GET down to the reduced point, it's supposed to be gradual, right? like growing. growing smaller emissions. hmm...

one thing i did do today is to track my mass transit. i think i want to log my mass transit (at least until i get bored or can estimate better than i can now). that means carrying a paper or a book to write down where i got on the bus/train and where i got off (to be tracked on google maps later on in miles). i want a lighter bag *sigh* and i've been thinking about this for a long time, so maybe it's time to act on it finally. i have this idea where i have like, a regular tote bag (which we have several of), and then i take a bandana and make it into a smaller pouch bag that fits inside the tote bag and is clipped to the handles somehow. the smaller bag holds things like my wallet, ipod, comb, check book, pen. the tote bag is used for things like my lunch, book, bottle of water. i'm still thinking about it because a) i don't have a sewing machine and am loathe to do much sewing by hand at this point, and b) i want to work on the design so it ends up having a "finished" look rather than an "i threw it together on a weekend" look. vanity.

fifteen minutes is up!

big day!

2007-05-31T10:14:00.000-04:00

fifteen minutes starting conveniently at 10:15 a.m.

first things first: I GOT A BIKE!!! across from the chiropractor's office last night there was a stoop sale going on, and the guy had three different bikes for sale. the one i picked is a blue ross ten speed that needs new tires and at least one new inner tube. i'd like to put panniers on the back of it, and i also need a helmet and a chain lock. i'm going to try to take it in to the bike shop as soon as i can, but that might not happen tonight because:

TONIGHT IS THE FIRST CSA PICKUP!!! lol. exciting stuff. they sent out a newsletter for the week with a list of what we'll be receiving (arugula, spinach, salad turnips, radishes, rhubarb) along with a recipe for rhubarb compote and another one for dijon vinaigrette. i'm so excited. i'll visit the pickup station on my way home from work (it's two or three blocks off the 40th st stop on the 7, so i'll get off the train, go pick up, and get back on the train to head home). i see some lovely salads in our near future involving arugula, spinach, radishes, and turnips with vinaigrette ;) and erin wants to try to make a pie with the rhubarb. yum.

the last two days i've been getting off the train at brooklyn bridge/city hall (2 stops before the stop i used to get off at). i've discovered the bike lane that goes across the brooklyn bridge. it's separated from the walking lane, which is good. i was vaguely concerned that i would have to bike around the pedestrians. i would ideally like to go from the city side of the bridge to the brooklyn side of the bridge first, in order to find out where the bike lane starts/ends on the brooklyn side, but i don't see that as very feasible seeing how we live on the brooklyn/queens side of things. i did map out the bike route from home to work a while ago (before i really thought biking to work was going to happen for me), so i know how to go, theorhetically speaking.

oh, i didn't finish the getting-the-bike story. so i bought this bike for $10 (!), and it has a flat tire, right? so we go back and forth as to whether we can take a bike on the bus, and we decide that we probably can't do that. the only way to get ourselves home? walk. it turns out it is roughly 3 miles from the chiropractor's office to our house. we stopped for dinner (add $5 to the cost of the bike cos we wouldn't have stopped for dinner if we hadn't been walking the bike home), and tried to stick to the shade. my arms and abs and legs are sore today, and i have a bruise where my calf repeatedly hit the pedal of the bike i was walking. i think i got a sunburn, too. but i have a bike now! and a story about our awesomeness! yep. it's a big day in my life.

also, it's about time for a garden picture update because five of the six tomato plants have tomatoes on them (still green), and we have baby yellow squashes and yellow squash flowers going on, and the pea plants are flowering and the peppers are about to start flowering.

fifteen minutes is up!

excerpt from jean hegland's INTO THE FOREST

2007-05-30T10:33:00.000-04:00

starting 10:34 a.m.

"maybe it's true that the people who live through the times that become history's pivotal points are those least likely to understand them. i wonder if abraham lincoln himself could have answered the inevitable test questions about the causes of the civil war. once the daily newspapers ceased to appear every morning and radio broadcasts grew more and more sporadic, what news we did get was so fragmentary and conflicting as to tell us almost nothing about what was really happening.

"of course, there was a war going on. we had moved our mother's radio from her workroom into the kitchen, and before the batteries died last spring we used to coax it into muttering its litany of disaster while we were fixing dinner. sometimes the news of the war would make father stomp and swear, and sometimes it would send him upstairs to his bedroom long before our meal was cooked.

"the fighting was taking place half a world away, taking place, the politicians promised, to protect our freedoms, to defend our way of life. it was a distant war, but it seemed to cling to our days, to permeate our awareness like a far-off, nasty smoke. it didn't directly affect what we ate, how we worked and played, yet we couldn't shake it - it wouldn't go away. some people said it was that war that caused the breakdown.

"but i think there were other causes, too. sometime in january we heard that a paramilitary group had bombed the golden gate bridge, and less than a month later we read that the overseas currency market had failed. in march an earthquake caused one of california's nuclear reactors to melt down, and the mississippi river flooded more violently than had ever been imagined possible. all last winter the newspapers - when we could get them - were choked with news of ruin, and i wonder if the convergence of all those disasters brought us to this standstill.

"then, too, there were the usual problems. the government's deficit had been snowballing for over a quarter of a century. we had been in an oil crisis for at least two generations. there were holes in the ozone, our forests were vanishing, our farmlands were demanding more and more fertilizers and pesticides to yield increasingly less - and more poisonous - foods. there was an appalling unemployment rate, an overloaded welfare system, and people in the inner cities were seething with frustration, rage, and dispair. schoolchildren were shooting each other at recess. teenagers were gunning down motorists on the freeways. grown-ups were opening fire on strangers in fast-food restaurants.

"but all those things had been happening for so long they seemed almost normal, and as things got darker and more uncertain, people began to grasp at new explanations for what was going wrong."

it's fiction, originally published in 1996, but it could well be non-fiction written today. the first two times i read this book, i loved it. it became one of my favorites, and while i appreciated that it was a version of the future that could actually happen (as opposed to something like star trek), i didn't really see it as my future. now i think it could be. it's a story of hope. they get through it in the end stronger than ever, and the story is a good one and well-written. it's like i'm reading it with new eyes, getting ideas this time.

i know this makes it look like i'm a defeatist and an extremist regarding where we're heading and what we're doing now. it's not intended that way. i'm not saying the world is ending and we're all going to die and all that. but i rather like recreationally thinking in terms of different paths that things could take. different ways things could go. and this book explores one of those paths. i still rank it among my favorites.

note to self: don't try to do it all at once

2007-05-29T10:41:00.000-04:00

starting 10:41 a.m.
one hard number so far: electric usage the last 12 months for us was 6,663kWh

that's higher than i thought it would be, but that also includes about 10 months when we had regular christmas lights on our bannister that were on 24/7. we used two air conditioners all summer long last year, even leaving one of them on during the day when we were at work (for the pup who was crated in our bedroom that heats with the afternoon sun). we had all regular bulbs in our house until two months ago. now our usage in the last two months is in the 100-150 range instead of the 300-400 range. interesting to see where it goes from here.

we've vowed to do our best without air con this summer. this time last year, we had the bedroom unit blowing already because the mosquitos were rampant and our screens were holey. we replaced some of the screens last year, and this weekend we replaced the rest of them. next step is taking the bedroom unit out of the window to let the breeze in through both sides of the window. baby steps. we're going to leave the kitchen unit in the window for now because cooking in there does heat it up something royal. i hate to use energy to heat up food while using energy to cool the room at the same time. argh. but that's just until we baby step our way to not needing both things.

next i want to make a list of things to eat and how to eat them. that sounds simple, but i almost cried in the stop n shop because i felt like i shouldn't be buying a lot of the things i was buying but then i also didn't know what i COULD be buying to feed myself. it was my first moment of overwhelmingnessosity. i got through it.

i also got some [clear] kool aid mix to make popsicles once i find something to use as popsicle molds. buying popsicles is so wasteful, but they're so tasty! all that plastic individual-wrapping. *sigh*

sharon has a nice essay up about how to eat seasonally. i'm not yet in a place where i think that way. i'm working on it. at the market this weekend there was an abundance of radishes and asparagus. i bought some asparagus, but not radishes. to eat seasonally, i will want to get a bunch of what's available NOW instead of thinking "what the hell will i do with a ton of radishes??" and "why can't i get celery yet? what will i snack on?" without putting two and two together. mindshift.

i noticed when i bowed to convenience this weekend. we ate pizza friday night. i took the bus home from the farmer's market instead of walking the mile or so like i usually do (it felt effing hot that day and i had got a sunburn. stress is one thing that will make me bow to convenience, i'm finding). we ordered in on sunday while we were cat-sitting jack and stevie. we ate breakfast out on monday morning on our way home from cat-sitting. we drove over monday night to feed jack and stevie because we had taken that same damn bus three times already throughout the weekend, and waiting for that particular bus takes a looooooong time, plus there's the walking at the other end to get from and to the bus again. plus more waiting to get home. that's the first time we've used the car in the last week, though.

there's good and there's less good. and there's baby steps. it's ok when it's a baby step.

sixteen minutes!

sunday morning baking bread

2007-05-27T08:13:00.000-04:00

notes:

rye flour makes the bread dough sticky!
sarah and tanya's way ensures quite a rise.
the "urge to merge" is strong with sourdough bread,
therefore, loaf form pans are pretty much necessary.

a culture of convenience

2007-05-25T10:12:00.000-04:00

two stories:

the other day i was talking with the administrative woman at my chiropractor's office about why erin hadn't shown up on time for her appointment. i told her that erin was taking the bus from work and she asked, "is the car on the fritz?" no, i told her, we're just trying to use the car less and public transport more... save the world a little, you know? apparently she takes the bus when there's too much snow to drive in, and "it's okay, but taking the car is just so much more convenient".

yesterday my boss was complaining to me about how the kitchen is now supplied with paper cups instead of the styrofoam ones we used to have. "now you have to use two cups or else it's too hot to hold on to," she says. i suggested that maybe if she used an actual mug for her coffee, then she wouldn't have to waste two cups or burn her hands. she assured me that she has a couple of mugs IN HER OFFICE, but that if she uses those, then she has to WASH them afterword. erin says i should have offered to wash them for her, and that's a good idea except that the moment had passed.

these are just two examples of what i'm starting to notice about how very many things in our culture are based around the idea of convenience. we buy our bread because it's more convenient than making it. we throw our clothes in the dryer because it's more convenient than hanging them up on a line. we drive our personal vehicles to the store, four blocks away, because it's more convenient than walking with the granny-cart.

what is convenience, anyway?

the first definition that dictionary.com comes up with is this:
[kuhn-veen-yuhnt]
–adjective 1. suitable or agreeable to the needs or purpose; well-suited with respect to facility or ease in use; favorable, easy, or comfortable for use.
2. at hand; easily accessible: Their house is convenient to all transportation.
3. Obsolete. fitting; suitable.

"easy". convenience makes life "easier" for us. it makes us need to think and plan less. it makes it so that we no longer have to have nearly as much knowledge as we used to. i'm learning, really LEARNING, so many new skills and ideas now that i've given up a lot of modern convenience items. i now KNOW how to make sourdough bread. i KNOW that putting the starter in the fridge for most of a week won't kill it (found that out this morning. yay!). i KNOW that i need to check the schedule for the bus before i leave the house. i KNOW that putting laundry on the line in the morning means i only spend 25 minutes at the laundromat now instead of the hour and a half i used to spend. i KNOW that when my plants start to turn yellow in the leaves, it means they need a bigger pot.

these things are a big deal to me. i'm proud of my knowledge. i don't think it makes me "better" than my neighbors who don't know these things. i take pleasure in learning and using the skills i have. i take pleasure in finding ways to do something "the best way". i'm starting to take pleasure in trial and error.

that was much more than fifteen minutes ;)

barbara kingsolver sees red

2007-05-24T16:10:00.001-04:00

this article literally brought tears to my eyes. i identify with the rural caste and always will, no matter how big the city is that i'm living in.

90% observation, biofuel, visual aid, and excess water

2007-05-24T10:48:00.000-04:00

fifteen minutes starting 10:48 a.m.

today i feel a bit paralyzed, and it has nothing to do with The Environment, though much to do with my environment. i feel like there's something i should be doing right now.

i joined the riot for austerity web ring :) see the link over to the right under the blogroll? i haven't explored it much yet because i just got approved last night, but i assume it will take you to the blogs of other people trying to get 90% down. it's so nice to know that there are a bunch of other people out there who are about to embark on a similar journey as i am, and it's interesting to see how they're planning to do it compared to how i'm planning to do it. the main theme i see on baseline posts (which i'm still working on. i'll get it up sometime) is the dependence on gasoline and driving places. almost everyone i've looked at says that the gasoline guideline is likely one of the places they will not be able to get all the way to 90% down. i take mass transit every day to work, and i'm STILL over my allotment.

an article in the ny times this morning says that big oil is trying to place the blame for high gas prices on biofuel development. this sounds like passing the buck and avoiding anything that might cause a panic (like saying that we're running out of available oil supplies). i'm not a proponent of biofuel. i've heard that to make fuel out of corn not only completely messes with the world market on corn, but also uses at least as much energy to produce it as it generates in the end. this is mostly hearsay, but i'm more likely to believe that than i am to believe that biofuel development is the wave of the future and the thing that's going to reverse global warming.

erin is reading a book called deep economy, and she related a tale the author tells which gives a great visual for the effect of mining/using oil on the atmosphere. the oil under/in the earth's crust is in large pools that we drill down and suck up so that we can use it. now, when we take the oil out of the earth, it doesn't just disappear (matter can neither be created nor distroyed; it is just changed into anther form). instead, pulling the oil up and using it creates an equivalent "pool" of carbon dioxide/greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. that's a pretty striking visual, eh?

news this morning is that erin tried the bucket-under-the-tub-faucet thing i talked about the other day (yesterday?), and it turns out that our tub faucet runs more than 2 gallons during one shower (i didn't time the shower, and our bucket only holds 2 gallons). that's a lot of water! one idea i had was to limit a shower to the time it takes to fill the bucket. that would definitely shorten our showers and avoid run-over on the water capture... or we could get a bigger bucket. either way, i don't think our plants can use 2 gallons of water EACH day. what else could we use it for?

fifteen minutes is up!

"you are doing, without help, what they said could not be done"

2007-05-23T10:18:00.000-04:00

fifteen minutes starting 10:18 a.m.

ok. i sent my official "i'm in" email to miranda over at simple reduce. the idea that i'm actually doing this is indeed a little overwhelming, and i definitely appreciate the way they are stressing that failure in this project is not failure at all but more like progress. i can totally make progress.

something i noticed in the shower this morning is that even when the showerhead is on, the tub faucet runs at a bit more than a trickle. greywater anyone?

i really feel the need to do something imminently because i am starting to not have anything i want to write about.

news:
-my coworker jenny brought in a book on raw dog food for me this morning. if we get toby on a raw diet, it will be so much easier to bring him into local eating with us without the guilt of spending however much of our "bulk dry" allotment on artificially colored kibble each week. the book has lots of information in addition to recipes and adaptations for dogs of every size and age. and in addition to it being more local, it'll be much better for him, too. it's interesting to me how things that are "earth-friendly" are also way better for us as organisms than things that are industrially produced.

-a woman from share our strength gave a presentation at the company quarterly meeting yesterday, and one of the things she stressed was their program that teaches nutrition and cooking because as she put it, a lot of emergency services and food pantry items are things like cookies and kool aid because those are the things that are cheap and shelf-stable. well would you look at that. ties right in with the "farm bill" subsidies and that article by michael pollan that was in the ny times magazine a couple weeks ago. speaking of which, the slow food site has a sample letter to congresspeople regarding that very bill and changes that would make it less horrendous.

-today is the first day that i'm switching from those string cheese sticks (individually wrapped in plastic. ugh.) to fresh mozzarella balls (they come all together in one large tub that would be easily reusable). i'll let you know how it goes. i've considered making my own fresh mozz balls, but i don't think i'm "there" yet. i did read up on how to do it, though. it's one of those things that will take a bunch more thinking before there's any doing. i also read up on making yogurt, but it takes a candy thermometer and sterilization of containers and milk, so i think that project is also down the line a ways.

-working where i do and doing the things i do at home seems completely incongruent. because i'm just starting to make changes (everything here has begun since the start of the month of march), i don't feel like i'm in a position of having enough confidence to push people i work with or even plant a seed in their minds as to making their own changes. it's frustrating, and i'm daydreaming of working at or starting my own csa farm. i think maybe when i "retire" i'll head back to my dad's place and try to make it work. until then, we'll see.

fifteen minutes is up!

garden pictures may 21, 2007

2007-05-22T09:34:00.000-04:00

zucchini plants:

pea plants:

little baby roma tomatoes!

mighty cilantro plant:

spearmint from seed:

ok. that's quite a few pictures for one blog post.

this just in: excitement to override gloom and doom

2007-05-22T09:16:00.000-04:00

fifteen minutes starting 9:17 a.m.

exciting things going on today! today is the aha wall street heart walk, which marks a couple firsts for me: it's the first 5k run/walk i've ever done, and it's the first charity fund raising activity i've done where i actually got donations from people. ha. two of the girls from my department are walking, as well as several people from around the company. it should be a good time.

also, yesterday i went out and took updated pictures of our garden (to come in a later post), and discovered that not one but TWO of our tomato plants have bitty baby green tomatoes on them, and the yellow squash plant has miniature squashlings happening! woo vegetables!

crunchy chicken has had crops already, and i was inspired to pull a few of our [horribly overcrowded and in need of thinning] green onions to help season the cauliflower we had for dinner last night. the rest of last night's dinner included felafel from a box mix and steamed local asparagus from the farmer's market. it was tasty.

the conversation erin and i had with Emily the Biology Major was interesting because (as i understand her) she says that the combination of humans' huge brains and opposable thumbs has spelled evolutionary disaster for us. we have these tools and this intellect that helps us override a lot of our natural circumstance, and yet we still maintain these urges for power and leisure time and conflict and dominance that originally helped us to survive in the wild. this means that we can use our brains and thumbs to create things like guns and factories and industrial farms, thereby killing ourselves off and taking a ton of other species with us. sad, really. we're a danger to ourselves and our fellow beings.

that said, it doesn't mean that everything is or should be gloom and doom regarding our current situation. the lady christine warned me against falling into the "rabbithole" of gloom and doom environmentalism because ultimately it could just lead me into a deep depression about how un-saveable the world is. it's good to be reminded of the positive things sometimes. (i'm not an eternal optimist.)

fifteen minutes isn't quite up yet, but i feel like i'm done for the day.
have a good one!

more about food and numbers and fear.

2007-05-21T09:53:00.000-04:00

fifteen minutes beginning 9:52 a.m.

i'm feeling a little naive about the 90% down project. i'm looking at my numbers and seeing some of them already within the guidelines or very near within. i'm looking at what i could do to bring them down, and it doesn't seem that difficult. maybe it's because of where i live that it feels this way. i mean, i definitely COULD bike to work every day most of the time. it does require buying a bike, yes. and a helmet. and a chain. i can buy local food every weekend at the farmer's market. i mean this week even we made a trip to the union square market (omg. what a FEAST that is!) and we spend $60 on local foods there, plus we spent $45 at stop and shop (mostly spent on cheeses and salsa and turkey bacon), plus $25 at the veggie stand (celery, broccoli, oranges, almonds). that's 46% local, 34% stop and shop, and ~20% veggie stand. now, i haven't broken down the non-local things into dry vs wet yet, which would make it more in accord with the guidelines sharon has laid out. and this is just the beginning of the season. i understand that during the winter, it'll be much less varietous to eat local. *sigh* i just worry that it's going to be more difficult than i think it will be.

plans for food:
- rice and dry beans in bulk bags (instead of cans the way we generally do now) until we manage to grow beans ourselves
- continuing to make bread from local flour (blew family farm)
- more seasonal veggies in our diet
- bulk tea from the indian foods store rather than coffee

i'm thinking that winter foods will be lots of beans, whole grains, cabbage, apples, winter squash, bread, milk, cheese. maybe i'll start eating potatoes again.

what scares me about the way i'm doing this is that i'm still relying on others to provide for me. i'm relying on the farmers in the area to get their goods to the market in the city so that i can buy them. while this is a big step toward more sustainable living, it's not quite good enough for me to feel 'safe' should something actually happen that breaks down the infrastructure (see sharon's post about avian flu pandemic here).

wow. is fifteen minutes up already? dang.
(and i didn't even get to talk about the convo i had with Emily the Biology Major about humans as an evolutionary failure!)

the truth about flying

2007-05-18T15:09:00.000-04:00

an article by george monbiot emphasizes that high-speed long-distance travel will bring us down. follow the link to read more.

2007-05-18T10:55:00.000-04:00

fifteen minutes starting 10:55 a.m.

over at casaubon's book sharon has laid out guidelines for a 90% reduction of emissions/consumption. i'm going to do my best to cut what i conceivably can. that does mean that i need to figure out the numbers for my household/person in the next day or two. this means contacting the facilities guy at work to see what the electric bills are like for the company and dividing by number of people in the office (roughly 100 people, but i'll count them to be sure). also need to contact the landlord about amount of heating oil our house uses and figure some way do get water figures. erin suggests timing and multiplying by the gallons per minute to figure out usage.

my boss interrupted my fifteen minutes with a call for aid on his pc.

figures as i see them right now:

~electric used at home in the last month: 113 kwh (entire household and it's wind energy)

~natural gas used at home in the last year: 51 therms (only used for cooking)

~mass transit travel each day: 20 miles/day times 365 days/year = 7300 miles/year by mass transit calculated at 100 miles/gallon = 73 gallons of gas getting around the city

~2 round trips to ithaca, ny to see my aunt and pick up/drop off jake = 500 mi/round trip times 2 round trips/year = 1000 mi/year divided by 35 mi/gallon (estimate for erin's saturn sl 2002) = roughly 30 gallons

more calculations to come.

food, farming, and redefining 'down to earth'

2007-05-17T09:19:00.000-04:00

fifteen minutes starting 9:20a.m.

there's a lot to think about out there, and a lot to get m'f-ing depressed about, too. there was a storm last night, and as my co-workers and i were watching through our 41st floor windows the brown clouds that rushed across the hudson, i commented that maybe the world was ending and this is all our pollution coming to get us. exaggeration, to be sure, but in the last two years the weather has changed. things are more extreme. maybe the world IS ending.

one thing i'd like to change personally is how much food we waste. we buy about $40 worth of vegetables from the veggie stand each week, and they sit in the fridge. we eat a good deal of veggies, too. i bring three ribs of celery and a crown of broccoli to work each day. veggies are at least half of what we eat for dinner. but i think we're so out of the loop of seasons and cycles that we eat based on mood rather than based on what's there. this morning there was no chili left and i didn't feel like having tuna again (plus someone of my weight isn't supposed to have more than 6oz of tuna more than once every 9 days - mercury issues). i was going to give up and buy some lunch at work, but you know what? we have a TON of food in the house! in the end erin helped me to put together some rice and beans, and i cut up some cauliflower to go with my broccoli. poof! lunch! all it took was to put aside what i FELT like eating and go with what was available.

the idea of instant gratification of any whim we have is mind-boggling. you want some ice cream? go to the store and get some. same with coffee, grown thousands of miles away. same with strawberries, not always in season but always available at the store because they ship them in from places where they ARE in season. i'm very excited about both our garden and being part of the csa this year because those things will hopefully start to bring us back down to earth, so to speak. we'll HAVE to eat what is available. i'll feel horribly guilty if i let a bunch of tomatoes and peppers rot on the plants because i didn't FEEL like eating them just then. i read an article about the people who run the golden earthworm farm that our csa food comes from. it said that matt had been a chef and thus runs his farm thinking not only like a farmer, but with a mind for how the plants will be served at table. i think this is a MAJOR benefit for those of us involved in this csa. one friend of ours said they had been involved in urban farm food delivery something or other previously, but they had to quit because they didn't know what to do with all the damn kale they received. if the farmer is a chef, he knows that a person/family can only eat so much damn kale! lol. plus they grow heirloom varieties of veggies. i am interested to see what that means exactly (i know what it means intellectually, but to see and feel and taste them is a different story entirely).

so i'll raise my glass of tap water in a spirit of returning to roots and re-joining the cycle. bon santé!

fifteen minutes is up.

garden pictures

2007-05-17T08:30:00.000-04:00

erin took these of our garden-o-pots

post number 2

2007-05-16T09:30:00.000-04:00

fifteen minutes starting 9:30a.m.

when i start a new blog/journal/writing project, i find myself thinking about what to write ALL THE TIME. it's really annoying in that my thoughts take on a narrative quality that i don't appreciate.

i forgot to mention two other changes we've made in the 'recently' category:
~using only reusable bags for most of our shopping (sometimes i forget to bring one)
~i went shopping at a thrift store on friday for the first time in aaaaaages, and i bought us some cloth napkins as well as an outfit to wear to liz and craig's wedding. it's pretty.
~i've been picking up 2 recycleable containers on my walk from the train for the last two days (two because that's what i can carry in one hand. i'm considering bringing a bag to pick up more, but i do a lot of thinking before i do any doing... in general)

that's not two things. hmm.

flylady is big on progress rather than perfection. and i like that idea, but i can also see how my habit of perfectionist thinking could get me in trouble with the eco-changes. i can see myself possibly getting burnt out on the walking everywhere thing. pay attention, anna.

no impact man posted his bread recipe today! it's very exciting and doesn't require me to buy yeast. it does require several days' worth of time, but most of it is non-intensive time. there's a lot of "let it sit for several hours/days". i can do that. it also requires a lot of flour. i'd love LOVE to find some local flour i could buy around here. colin says he uses local flour, but a ten-minute google search around the nyc area yielded very little in terms of leads on that. hopefully since someone asked for colin's source of flour in the comments of his post, he'll provide a contact.

i like eating local. today i have a tuna sandwich (not local tuna), with green pea sprouts on it (those ARE local). who knew you could eat baby green pea plants? and they taste a lot like green peas. pretty darn cool. next year when we plant peas and have to pare down the ones that came up, we can have them on a salad or a sandwich. yum.

speaking of yum, i tried tempeh the other night for the first time. the texture is kind of like veggie-burger. i cut it into bite-sized rectangles and cooked it in an oiled skillet with some soy sauce and a touch of water when the soy cooked down to nothing. then i served it over a bed of the very same green pea sprouts. muy tasty. i want to look into other sources of organic/local groceries besides whole foods, though. the sheer amount of packaging and advertising in that store is ridiculous. and to think that's the ALTERNATIVE to the norm! *shudder*

you'd think because my boss is out of town that things here would be quiet, but it was very busy yesterday, and today looks to be similar.

oh, one other 'recently' and a 'not so recently':
~i've quit using paper towels and napkins at work. i have a washcloth with me that does that job instead.
~the diva cup rocks my socks off. get one. unless you're a guy. then talk your ladies into getting one.

it's totally weird to me that women in our world are quite so squeamish about their bodies that they don't want to even think about something that requires them to touch and/or insert something up THERE. i think it's a sign of our disconnection.

fifteen minutes are up!

in the beginning

2007-05-15T09:08:00.000-04:00

fifteen minutes. starting 8:51 a.m.

i wanted a place to talk about my accomplishments lately plus whatever else is going on in my head.

this weekend:
~changed to low flow shower head
~added soak and soap valve to shower
~added aerators to kitchen and bathroom sinks
~did not drive anywhere in our car

our plants are doing well. the tomato that got run over by mr. mustang out front has a bunch of leaves growing back on it, and the herbs from seeds are finally starting to look like they're differentiating from one another.

recently:
~planted a pot garden with >2 dozen plants
~switched to cfl bulbs in five of our lights in the house
~started unplugging everything when it's not in use
~are hanging out laundry to dry in the back yard
~using soapnuts to wash our clothes
~shopping at local farm markets
~using mass transit more and car less
~composting in the back yard!
~switched our electric company to wind power
~joined the sunnyside csa (community supported agriculture)
~i've started baking bread on sundays, though i have yet to perfect my recipe
~plus all the things above that we did this weekend

it's funny to me the way it seems like everyone finally has begun to DO something now. like, right NOW. it's like we've been bombarded with information for a long time, and it finally reached a tipping point where the tide starts to change in noticeable ways. it makes me want to actually read the book 'the tipping point' even though i don't really know what it's even about. the guy sitting next to me on the subway was reading it yesterday.

so with all these baby steps starting to add up, i'm wondering what else i could do without/change. we're looking forward to participating in a "low impact week" where we try something a little more extreme. it's happening in june, and two of the things we're considering are no a/c at home, and unplugging the refrigerator. greenpa says he's been living without a refrigerator for the last thirty years. it can be done. it just takes some thought and planning. no keeping food around for weeks without eating it. we'd be going to the store more often (maybe) for things like milk and um... other keep-cold-ables. but with our garden coming along well, and our participation in the csa this year (first pickup is thursday may 31!), i'm thinking we'll be buying less at the stores anyway. it's a thought.

and you know what? i feel more relaxed and rested now that we're doing all these things the "inconvenient" way (hanging laundry up, baking my own bread, taking mass transit, etc). it's really really nice. weekends have started to feel like two-day vacations. bliss in slowing down. go figure. speaking of which, i've also begun to read a book that teresa sent me ages ago called "take your time" by eknath easwaran.

fifteen minutes is up!