Eating Food -- Day 1

Right off, we had a problem on the first day of the "Eat Food Challenge". C bought chocolate donuts with sprinkles for the kids. Boo! That's okay though. It's the first day, and it's a little hard to get into the habit. Here is a rundown of what I ate today (what C ate is pretty close; the kids had the same except for school lunch, a popsicle each, and the very last of the graham crackers):

Breakfast:
oatmeal with raisins & milk, coffee
Lunch:
beans & rice, chard
chocolate
homemade bread with organic strawberry jam
Snack:
banana
Dinner:
baked tofu
couscous curry
salad with homemade balsamic dressing
more chard!

It was a lot of veggies, but it actually wasn't too hard. I came home to a chocolate donut sitting in the middle of the table, but since I had some happy chocolate in the cupboard, it was easy to resist.

I ate a ton of food today (as you can see), and discovered that baked tofu is the GREATEST -- it totally eliminates the problem of tofu squishiness that has previously turned me off. C and I polished off the tofu in just a few minutes (the kids had a taste & then opted out). I just marinated it in a sauce I made & then baked it at 400 for 30 minutes. It did seem like a lot of oven use for not very much food, however.

What was a problem? Salad dressing. I have a favorite balsamic vinagrette that I use, but it is full of weird ingredients. So I made my own. I just mixed up some balsamic vinegar, some olive oil, a little salt & some grapefruit juice. It was delish. I also got excited about DIY salad stuff and made croutons from some weird bread I made the other day. They were a hit.

But.... dinner caused a kitchen explosion. I used a ton of bowls, pans, and the chopping board was like a veggie explosion.

The homemade bread may seem like over-achieving, but it's really easy. I feel like a cheater because I use a bread machine. It takes maybe 2 minutes to put the ingredients in and then 3 hours and 10 minutes later -- awesome bread! We started making bread because we were inspired by some friends of ours. We couldn't believe them when they told us that they don't buy bread at the store. Now... neither do we! The breadmaker has been totally worth it even if only to make pizza. The pizza that we make at home is better (not to mention healthier) than most delivery pizza and is very economical to make. What's also nice is that we almost always have the ingredients -- bread stuff, some sort of tomato sauce, cheese, and random veggies.

What's funny is that a lot of the things that seem way out there to me (like making all my own bread) are pretty normal for a lot of other bloggers. It just shows that you can be an example to others--maybe even somebody that you don't know. After a while, what seems weird starts to seem normal, and hopefully the world gets a little greener.

That's a lot of chard
Yep. Sure is a lot of chard. We still have some more to eat. And artichokes (all 7 of them)... and more lettuce... and cabbage. Tomorrow is going to be another veggie heavy day because we have another CSA box on Wednesday. I'm still up in the air about continuing CSA after this trial month.

How much does CSA run in your area? Do you think it's worth it? How much more are you willing to pay for local food?

Kids
I think this challenge is pretty hard with kids, unless you love to cook. We are out of snacks now, except for pretzels. So, it's either fruit or toast or .... fruit. The morning is tough too -- the kids are addicted to Honey Nut Cheerios. We'll see how tomorrow goes.

Eat Food

I just finished reading Michael Pollan's new book In Defense of Food. It's a quick read and brings up some interesting points about what he calls "nutritionism", which has been the fairly recent rise of science in deciding what we should and should not eat. Pollan claims that many of the "western diseases", such as cancer, diabetes, etc. are due to eating processed foods and not following traditional diets. Most people who follow a traditional diet (regardless, it seems, as to what that diet includes) seem to be healthier than people who have a western (ie. American) diet. Another interesting point was that science is telling us, for example, that the Mediterranean diet is particularly healthy (my doctor just told me this). But we don't know what it is about the Mediterranean diet that makes it healthy. The food industry would like to find some specific thing -- say olive oil -- and just add it in to our regular foods, but outside of the context of the traditional Mediterranean diet, olive oil alone may not have the same (or any?) benefit.

Pollan's advice is to "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

I love this advice. He distinguishes between food and food-like products. Food-like products are most of the products in the grocery store. For example, fat free cream cheese. How is that possible? Or a cereal bar with a white line of "milk" running down the middle.

Pollan defines "food" as:

• something your great-grandmother would recognize. (Hallelujah! My great-grandmother would recognize chocolate, wine, bread... :) )
• something that has less than 5 ingredients & has recognizable ingredients.
  
• Something probably found on the periphery of the grocery store, not in the middle aisles.
• Preferably, something not found in the grocery store, but in a CSA box or at the farmer's market.

One way to be sure that you are eating food is to make it yourself. He gives a great example -- would you make a spongy snack cake, inject it with cream filling, and clean up all the mess just so you could have a Twinkie? Probably not. So give it a miss.

My family has been eating more and more "food" lately -- we make all our own bread, thus ensuring whole-grain bread without a lot of weird ingredients and preservatives, we only buy organic peanut butter (I love this... I looked at the ingredients and it said "Peanuts"), we changed yogurt brands because I decided that the old kind was too artificial. BUT I have a hard-core pastry habit (from a store that I know uses trans fats.. not from a real bakery) and I put Splenda in my coffee every morning. Many things in the cupboard probably have high fructose corn syrup (would great-grandma recognize this? Probably not! Would she recognize the bag of potatoes? Yep!)

So, as of tomorrow, we are going on a week-long Eat Food Challenge. We will be eating food. Actual food. Not "food-like products". I will put sugar in my coffee (gasp!). I will either make my treats myself or buy them at a real bakery that uses real ingredients (which would involve a longer bike ride than the current source). I will continue cooking dinner, but not use funky mixes or frozen fish sticks. This is a week-long experiment because I want to see what the problem areas are. I know there will be a big adjustment, but we want to give it a try.

The kids?
That might be a problem. They eat school lunch, which is a total nutritional disaster. The menu reassures me that the hot dogs are made of low-fat turkey (which I refuse to eat after reading about turkey farms)... and that's just a start. There is also still some Easter candy, which I know I could not reproduce in my kitchen (what exactly IS the cream filling in a Cadbury egg? Don't know, but it's like a drug! Must be a "food-like product".) I think that most of the after-school snacks (with the exception of fruit) would also fail to qualify as food. But, my kids love home-made muffins and I found a recipe for granola bars...

Making these changes at home and taking away school lunch might cause a revolution. So, we'll start with home. By the end of the week.... who knows?

How about you? Are there any food-like products that would be particularly hard to eliminate from your diet? Or do you eat food all the time?

*I love that "food" now has a special meaning :)

BBQ Etiquette & Dishwashing

Today we barbecued with the neighbors, and it brought up a few of the green issues that always come up with picnics/BBQs:

1. Should we bring our own plates/silverware or use the disposables provided by the host? (If I know ahead of time, I always bring my own stuff). I try not to make a big deal about it, but sometimes I really stick out.

2. What should we eat? Normally, we only eat "happy" free-range meat, but that is not usually the fare at a BBQ. We bring our own, but everyone shares. On this issue, I would feel sort of weird refusing to eat other people's food (but having them share mine...I'm not going to refuse to share it). What do you do? Maybe the health benefits of friendship outweigh the badness of the antibiotics etc. in the meat? I like to think so.

3. Recycling? Few people recycle at BBQs here. This evening we collected the recycling and brought it home. Some of it was already in the trash, but the trash was mostly styrofoam plates (pretty clean ones), so it wasn't really gross. C said "I'm really weird about this... do you mind if I recycle the bottles?" It led to a little chat about recycling, but no one seemed to think we were freaks or anything.

Any comments or suggestions? I'm curious to see what other people do. One thing that did cut down on the waste at this BBQ was the fact that it was almost entirely finger food. Now that's pretty smart. Not something you could do every time, but really handy, especially with little kids.

Dishwashing
Of course, once you bring those plates home from the BBQ, you have to wash them. BLAH! It's my most hated chore. We don't have a dishwasher, so we wash them all by hand. But if we had a choice, is that the best choice?

Dishwasher vs. Hand-washing
Treehugger posted about this a while ago and found that using the dishwasher uses less energy and less water (unless, perhaps, your dishwasher is very old). For this to be the case, you should not pre-rinse the dishes and should not use the dry cycle.

Hand-washing:
So what do you do if you don't have a dishwasher (or yours is not efficient)? How much water is used during hand-washing really depends on how you do it. There are 3 methods (that I can think of):
A. Run the warm water. Wash each dish with a sponge, rinse it off.
B. Fill a sink with warm soapy water. Wash the dishes. Rinse in another sink (or refill the sink).
C. Wet the dishes. Wash them with soapy sponge. Rinse in sink.

Method C is what my husband does. He is amazing at conserving water. I honestly do not see how a dishwasher could use less water. Method A is the method I use. It is a terrible wasteful method, but pretty fast, and I do not have to put my hands in funky water. Next time I wash the dishes, I will try method B -- the full sink method -- with a pair of gloves.

Another important factor is the type of dish soap used. Most dish soap is phosphate free, whereas most dishwasher detergent is not (point for hand-washing!). You can also avoid plastic packaging by using a bar of soap to wash the dishes. Just dab the soap with a wet sponge and voila! -- soapy sponge. I thought this was totally revolutionary, but then my husband told me that's what he grew up doing. (He's from Central America and thus is wise in water conservation and not wasting stuff.)

Any suggestions on dishwashing? What do you do?

We ARE Traffic -- Critical Mass and bike riding

Today I ran into the critical mass bike ride. Pretty much literally. I was on the way home from school on the bus and the bus got stuck behind the cyclists. Since my bike was on the bus, I rang the bell, hopped off, and joined in.

About 10 years ago, I seem to remember a debate about critical mass -- some cyclists thought it was good -- others thought it just made drivers hate us. I'm not sure if this debate is still going on. What I do know is that I had a GREAT time, on the ride.

Basically, once a month a bunch of people meet on campus and then ride around town en masse. There doesn't seem to be a real organizer or a real plan. Maybe there is, but it doesn't seem like it. The people in front just decide where to go and the other people follow along. What is amazing is how great it feels to ride through the streets (during rush hour, mind you) and not be afraid. Because usually when I ride my bike in the city, I'm afraid. That's messed up.

So yes, critical mass does mess with traffic. But the people on the ride didn't seem too confrontational. They seemed pretty happy. And the people in cars can just chill out and wait for a few more minutes (because really that's all the delay we caused)... that seems fair considering the huge detours I make on my bike to avoid the busy streets that scare me.

This is supposed to be a "bike friendly" city, but it doesn't seem that way to me most of the time. The bike lanes are full of parked cars. How is that a bike lane? The bike lane on my road is probably 3 feet wide and full of cracks and holes and gravel. When I ride with the kids, I make them ride on the sidewalk because I don't feel like the bike lane on our street (which sees a lot of traffic going at least 35) is safe at all.

I think it's a bike friendly city in that there are lots of trails and there are a lot of people that ride recreationally. But not that many people ride for transportation. It seems like that number is increasing, but it's still a very small number.

Why don't more people ride for transportation? Here's some reasons:

• They can't get all sweaty before work.
• It's too far.
• They're out of shape.
• They think it will take too long.
• It's too scary.
• They have to carry a bunch of stuff.
• Bad weather.

There are answers to these excuses (and more!) here.
My main reasons to ride the bike (instead of driving) are:

• Parking is free and easy!
• Don't need to go to the gym.
• For short trips, it takes about the same amount of time.
• If you are riding along at a relaxed pace, you don't get too sweaty.
• People smile and wave and you can smile and wave back.
• Gives me a good excuse to eat more :)
  

Riding is especially fun if you bring your kids. Last summer we usually rode with the kids to the swimming pool. I would pull my son on a tag-a-long (tandem that attaches to my bike) and C would pull the girls in a trailer. People ALWAYS complimented us when we got to the pool -- "Oh, you're so fit... Oh, good for you." :) Sometimes I would take all the kids by myself, J on the tandem and then attach the trailer to that (bad for bike -- killed my gears) -- people were REALLY amazed by that. That was part of the fun. Then, because we didn't spend any money on gas or parking, we could justify a little treat like popsicles or something.

Make Your Own Laundry Detergent Explosion

I'm proud to say that today I put a little "Grad" into the "Grad Green" and worked on my dissertation proposal. Yeah!

Since I have a child home from school sick, I thought it would be fun to do a little experiment. With 5 people in the house (and 3 of them 6 or under), we can really whip through the laundry. Today, we finally ran out of laundry detergent. We had been buying liquid detergent in a giant plastic container. I had already decided that next time, we would at least buy powdered detergent because it comes in a cardboard container. But I've been running across all these recipes for laundry detergent (I guess it's not really "detergent" -- it's soap), so I thought I'd give it a try. Maybe we can get radical and REALLY reduce the packaging (and the price).

Most recipes require washing soda, which I couldn't find, so I used a recipe that called for baking soda. It made a huge amount, so I halved it. Here's the recipe:
1 bar Ivory soap, grated (I used Kirk's castille soap b/c it's what I had. Ivory would be cheaper)
1-1/2 c. baking soda
1/2 c. borax (this can be found in the laundry aisle. The brand is 20 mule team)
16 c. water.

Boil 4. c. water then grate the soap into it. Dissolve. In another pot, boil 12 c. water.
Pour the 12 c. into the soapy water (I don't understand this step)
Pour in the baking soda and mix.
pour in the borax and mix.
Put all this into some kind of container. Use 1/4 to 1/2 cup at a time, depending on dirtiness of the laundry.

Okay. Not too complicated. J thought it was pretty amusing. The ingredients aren't toxic. It seems to make a bunch (even 1/2 the recipe!). I made the soapy water. It took probably 2 or 3 minutes. I still don't understand why you don't just boil all the water at once. But, here's the mistake I made. I thought the order didn't really matter. I had the soapy water all ready and was waiting for the other water to boil, so I just put in the baking soda and borax. THEN I put in the rest of the water. EXPLOSION!!! The whole thing foamed up, bubbled over onto the floor, all over the counter.... it was crazy. And pretty hilarious. J thought it was like a soap volcano -- which it was. Lesson learned -- put the water in BEFORE the baking soda (I guess that baking soda was the culprit in the foaming action).

The recipe said to put all this in a plastic container (before adding 12 c. of boiling water). I am (generally) a rule-follower, so I did that. Of course, the plastic container melted. So, don't do that. Keep it all in the pot until it chills out.

After chilling out, the mixture looks very weird. It has some white clumps at the top and the bottom looks like water. But I'm willing to give it a try. The recipe says to stir it up and make sure some clumps are added to each load of laundry. I'll do that and report back ASAP.

But now that C found washing soda at HEB, I'm going to give a dry recipe from Planet Green a try:
2 c. grated soap
1 c. washing soda
1 c. borax
Mix well. use 2 Tablespoons per load.

Car Update, CSA

So.... today's an exciting day in Grad Greenland. The worm factory is here. Which means that I ordered the worms. There are many worm sources, but it seems like they run from 25 to 30 a pound, usually with shipping included. OUCH. They'd better work. Sometimes I fantasize about selling the excess worms once they start making worm children, thus becoming a worm farmer, and pretty soon independently wealthy. Then I remember that I'm grossed out by worms and that the only reason that I decided this was doable at all was because my husband said he'd deal with the worms. :)

Today was also my first CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) pick-up. This is another of those things I had been thinking about a lot before starting the blog, and the blog gave me a kick in the pants. A quick internet search and I found a CSA open to subscriptions -- they're certified organic, and the drop-off house is about a mile from my apartment. So I rode my bike over, picked up my stuff, and sampled the first off it today at dinner.

I have wondered about the price of CSA. The one I'm using is 120/month (30/week), and is supposed to feed a family of 4. It will DEFINITELY feed my family. It's a lot of vegetables. But... is it less expensive than buying the same thing at the grocery store? Hmmm...

Here's what was in my box:
swiss chard
collard greens (I switched these for more chard in the "trade" box)
asparagus (7 spears)
lettuce
cabbage
leeks
spinach
beets (3 with greens)

I don't think it's really less. The chard is 1.99 (organic) this time of the year. Lettuce is 2-3 (organic). Asparagus is 2.99 a pound at WF (not sure if organic or conventional). I got a total of 8 items. They would have to be less than 3.75 each to be less expensive than the store. BUT... they're all local (5 miles from home... pretty darn local) and organic. And I will be eating a LOT of veggies. I'm still not sure. Maybe it's a better deal later in the season, when it's not just greens. If you subscribe for more than a month, the price per week is lower, but I wanted to test it out first. So far, I'm happy, but not wowed by the price.

Car Update
Last week I posted about my husband "divorcing" the car. He has stayed pretty faithful to the terms of the divorce, bike/bussing all over town. He has also guilted me into riding my bike a lot more. Since last week, we have driven a total of 60 miles. That total includes:

• Driving with the kids to look at a house.
• Driving to work with my sick son. (can't bring him on scooter)
• Driving to the bus stop to go to my brother's house.
• Bringing the kids to my MIL's house (left car & rode bus home)

That's it! I think it would be harder to make the total go lower, as other weeks might not have sick kids involved, but they might involve trips to the grocery store or something like that. In addition, this 60 miles does not include the 30 miles of driving I caused b/c I missed the bus (or.. the bus missed me!)

If we could keep the driving under 100 miles/week (including camping trips... maybe "save up" for those) that would be a HUGE reduction of our driving and reduce our spending on gas by about half. So, I'm going to aim for that.

Just like mom...

What has struck me recently is that many of the "green" things that people are starting to do are things that were normal not so long ago. I find myself going retro and doing things that my mom used to do:
1. Use cloth diapers
2. Use cloth napkins
3. Grease a pan with a little bit of butter (no PAM spray)
4. Use cast iron pans
5. Wrap sandwiches in waxed paper
...or that my Dad still does...
6. Use a hanky

Nothing revolutionary here. These are just tried and true solutions to daily needs. So today I'm going to blog about the exciting world of *Cloth napkins*!

My brothers and I grew up using cloth napkins, and I used them in my single life. For some bizarre reason, I switched to disposable for a few years after getting married. I've since switched back. Why? Because disposable napkins are disposable -- and why do we need to cut down trees to wipe our hands? It's just a waste. Cloth napkins feel nice, don't get all crumpled up and gross, and just seem classy. You'd have to use a ton of them to really add to the laundry, so I think that their impact (after being made) is really minimal.

If you're thinking about venturing into the world of cloth, here's my advice:
1. If you're serving spaghetti, use red napkins. Red is my favorite napkin color because of the stain factor. Personally, I don't really care that much about stains, because even though it might not look great, I know it's clean, but I don't really like to give groddy looking napkins to guests.
2. You can make your own napkins, or just buy some. I've found them at Goodwill. My favorite red ones come from Target, and they can easily be cut into 4 and hemmed -- you really don't need a 24" (or so) square to wipe your hands and clean your mouth. You should use cotton or linen. Don't get some polyester blend b/c it's just not as absorbent.
3. After dinner, just toss the napkin in with the laundry. (If it's a red one, don't wash it with the whites :) )

What's funny is that even though I've been using cloth napkins for years, I never used to bring them with my lunch. It's oh so nice to eat my lunch with silverware from home wrapped in a cloth napkin.

Enviromom blogged about zero waste birthday parties and I thought she had a nice idea -- she made cloth napkins for the kids to use and they kept them as favors. I think kids would like it -- now that my kids know that trash goes to the dump (and have seen some pictures of the dump) they are very interested in reducing waste.

Flashback to the conversation:
J: "Mom... what's a dump?"
M: "It's where the trash goes after the truck picks it up."
J: "What do they do with it?"
M: "They bury it."
J: "Why?"
M: (Um......) "So it won't be stinky for other people"

Etc...
Now everything we throw away gets "will this go to the dump?". Pretty soon, some of it at least will go to the worms!

Problems with the Bus

Last night we went to my brother's house for Easter dinner. (Which was awesome, thanks guys.) We decided that we would do a sort of "park and ride" by driving to the bus stop, parking the car on the street (free on Sundays!) and taking the bus. Going to my brother's house was no problem. The bus was right on time, the ride was pleasant... the walk from the bus stop to the house was about 10 minutes -- not too bad. It took about 40 minutes in all (driving would have been about 20). But on the way back, we missed the bus. Big problem! We walked to the bus stop, but just as we were getting there, we saw the bus go by -- early! Almost 10 minutes early. This was NOT COOL, as the next bus wouldn't be by for another hour. It was already past my kids' bedtime, so my cousin and my brother's girlfriend gave us a ride to the car -- why two people? Aha! Because we don't all fit in one car. So, it didn't save any gas at all -- in fact, it was worse. We should have saved 14.6 miles of driving. Instead, we caused 30 miles of driving. ARGH!!

Lesson learned? I guess it's not realistic to take the bus at night with the family. OR we'll have to plan to be at least 15 minutes early at the bus stop.

My brother did let me know about a cool new feature of google -- in some cities, you can do google directions and click on a tab that says "Take public transit". It will give you various options of where to take the bus and tell you how much money you will save. According to this feature, driving would have cost us 7.06, whereas the bus only cost us 1.00 (because of the young kids and my student status). I think this is a pretty realistic driving cost. A while ago I calculated how much it cost us per mile to drive, and it came out right around .50 a mile. This figure is not just for gas, but wear and tear on the car, maintenance, etc. The IRS rate for 2007 business use was 48.5 cents per mile, so about the same.

I'll be updating the driving numbers on Wednesday.

Hoppy Easter!

Easter for my kids is a lot different from Easter when I was a kid. The Easter bunny brought me a new basket every year, with fake grass & a ton of candy. The Easter bunny was partial to See's chocolates. Yum! I loved Easter & still do. Any holiday with an excuse to gorge on chocolate is a good one in my book.

My kids know that they have to leave a basket out for the bunny (because obviously the bunny can't hop around carrying all those baskets). This year they left plastic eggs too (again...to help the bunny out). The eggs were eggs that they got in an egg hunt out at the playground & they'll be used again and then sent on to Goodwill or maybe Freecycled. I, I mean the bunny, decided that plastic grass was a big waste. So all that was bought was 2 bags of candy -- a small bag of gummy bears & a bag of marshmallow chicks. The bunny thought that just about everything else would lead to insane sugar overload (and thus domestic unhappiness) or was just too overpackaged for words.

I took a picture of one of the baskets. It is a basket that came with a grocery shopping toy set. We emptied out the veggies and left it for the bunny with some empty eggs. The bunny apparently hopped in during the night, filled the eggs, and left a small stuffed bunny to guard them. (The bunny is from the kids' toys... but they did not seem to notice).


So, for 3 Easter baskets, I spent 2 dollars and only made 2 pieces of trash. Two pieces too many, but still...

What's funny about this basket thing (besides the fact that a bunny comes during the night distributing candy) is that it just shows that kids don't really expect that much. I think that a lot of times adults outdo themselves on the trappings of the holidays, when what the kids really like is the mystery. Just like a birthday party in which the kid spends more time playing with the box than the present, it doesn't really matter what the basket looks like, or what exactly is in it (well... obviously candy) -- just the fact that the bunny shows up at all is amazing. I had the extra fun of listening to the kids whisper about the bunny, play with their stuffed bunnies, and chow down on marshmallows for about an hour in the middle of the night. That -- not plastic grass -- is what memories are made of.

Last Day of Unstuffing -- thank goodness!
So... 7 bags (at least) of stuff gone. I took it away today -- one bike trailer to the laundry room, another trailer full to Goodwill, and still some stuff to bring to the library. I took a picture. It's crazy how much stuff we had just junking up the place.

Today we added 5 giganormous nursing books (old editions), another pile of kids' clothes (including several pairs of pants), all my nail polish stuff (I never wear nail polish but have a whole container of polish, etc.) and some paint. I will try to find a good home for the paint so it doesn't end up getting thrown away or messing up someone's house.

Not playing with a full deck, Moonlight bike ride

Day 6 of unstuffing:
A shoebox full of tapes -- I don't have a tapeplayer! I will Goodwill the tapes that have real music on them. What to do with the ones that have my mixes from 1998?
Several partial decks of cards -- I have found two full decks -- will get rid of 3 almost full decks. Again, not sure what to do with these. Would they be a good kid art project? I don't want them to end up in the trash.
Some excess bath toys
Spiderman party masks (Spiderman party was 3 years ago)

It's amazing how stuff piles up, considering how small the closets are. I will add more to the pile as the day goes on. This has been quite cathartic, but I can't wait to get rid of the huge pile of junk. Tomorrow I'm going to take a picture of it -- it's pretty scary.

Moonlight Ride
Last night was the midnight moonlight bike ride. It was totally awesome & empowering. We rode through the city -- hundreds of riders with blinking lights riding together. There was an amazing variety of people and even a couple of tallbikes. As we rode through downtown, people on the sidewalks shouted to us, waved, and even high-fived us :) It was a lot of fun.

Frugal Green
I'm a big fan of Amy Dacyzyn's Tightwad Gazette. One of her comments in the book is that sometimes the most frugal thing is to do nothing. This applies to being green, too, as so many times frugality and greenness go hand in hand. For example, C and I went for a bike ride to the farmer's market. We were late, so there was only lettuce and spinach left, neither of which we need. It was around lunchtime, so we tried to think of a place where we could study and have an inexpensive lunch. In the end, we decided to come home. Money saved = probably 15 dollars. Paper waste saved = at least a couple of napkins, probably more. Leftovers eaten = delicious.

Leftovers

I am the master of leftovers, and I think that it is a really important skill. This is something I have really perfected after marrying C. He refuses to throw out food, so if there's 2 spoonfuls of beans leftover, back in the fridge they go! I think that the key is 1)to serve the food in an appetizing way. I don't just throw containers of leftovers on the table. I serve the plates with the food already "arranged" on them. and 2) to "artfully" recombine the leftovers with new stuff. For example, the other day we had leftover sausage. This was cut up and sauteed with some vegetables to serve with pasta. Seems like a totally new dish.

Other fabulous combinations:
Two tablespoons of beans + some more beans + some veggie crumbles = taco filling
Leftover spaghetti sauce = pizza sauce
1/2 banana = cut off gross part, freeze for smoothie
1/2 eaten apple = cut off gross part, use in oatmeal
leftover broccoli = chop up, put in spaghetti sauce
leftover potatoes = add to breakfast tacos
leftover rice (almost constantly in our refrigerator) = mix with the beans; top with cheese

Amazingly, there are people who don't eat leftovers. It seems so sad to take a perfectly good meal cooked with love & then toss 1/3 of it (or more!) in the trash. Do you have a favorite leftover concoction?

5 bags down, new sins, BYOP

Today is day 5 of "unstuffing". I got rid of a bag of playdoh toys that I found in the bottom of the closet. Actually I got rid of about 2/3 of the bag, keeping the most fun toys to play with. More magazines -- I had no idea there were SOOO many magazines laying around the house. A puppet theater that I have had for at least 15 years and have never played with. This is a little hard because my mother gave it to me, but I've never used it. I have the puppets and my kids play with them all the time, but it's time to let go of the theater. Last but not least, a whiteboard. Don't need it. There's one on the other side of the easel anyways.

My MIL is watching the kids tonight, so C drove them there in the car and will bus/bike home. So, he's violating the terms of his car divorce, but it's a pretty good solution (I think). Tonight is the midnight full moon bike ride, so she is kind enough to watch the kids so we can go.

Less waste, but a giant pain....
We went to dinner at WF tonight. I love to go because the food is great and there is a playscape for the kids. We decided to bring our own plates from home (plastic) so that we would not have to use disposables. We brought our own silverware too. No problem.

What I had not really thought about was the return trip. With dirty dishes. Yuck! I don't mind bringing the dishes. I don't mind scraping them into the trash. I feel pretty happy sitting outside, being a good example. But putting dirty dishes into my bag to bring home was not the highlight of the night. I guess the overall good feelings I get cancel out the annoyance overall. Next time I'll have to thing of a better way to bring them home.

New sins
Apparently there are now 7 new mortal sins (not replacing the original 7 -- in addition to). One of them is pollution. Yeah for that! Other groups have talked about the importance of caring for the earth, and it's nice to see the Catholics join the party. Hopefully this will lead to more recycling. One time I had a job copying the church bulletin and it took ALL day because it was so many pages. Every church dinner (across denominations) I've been to has been served on disposables. Maybe now that pollution is a sin....

I've read lots of very negative comments about the new sins. Maybe the pope wants to clear room in heaven, because almost everyone I know has committed one of them. There also seems to be overlap (at least in the version I read). If one sin is creating poverty and one is excessive wealth, you don't really need another one that is increasing the divide between rich and poor, do you?

Recycling Envelopes

Our apartment complex has paper recycling, but I had been told that we could not recycle envelopes. Turns out that's not true! I checked the website for the city and they accept envelopes -- even ones with windows. That still freaks me out a little, so I'll tear the window out, but that will really cut down on the trash.

Scented Candles
Recently I was talking with a friend about scented candles. I love the smell, but I started thinking that they must be causing indoor pollution -- after all, the candle melts, and where does it go? Into your lungs? According to WebMD, some candles with metal wicks can cause lead poisoning. I have a few candles, but they don't have metal wicks. But what about the other stuff? The EPA did a literature review on the topic:
http://web.ksl.com/dump/news/cc/series/candepa.htm
They found that: "When candles are burned, they emit trace amounts of organic chemicals, including acetaldehyde,formaldehyde, acrolein, and naphthalene (Lau et al., 1997). However, the primary constituent of public health concern in candle emissions is lead."

These organic chemicals were found to be at safe levels in most normal candle-using scenarios, but a "worst case scenario", such as burning 30 candles for several hours in a small space (your bedroom perhaps?) could result in harmful levels.

As much as I totally trust the government, and believe in the "acceptable" risk levels that the EPA sets, I think I'll opt out of the candles. Indoor air pollution is already a problem, so why add to it?

4 Bags unstuffed
Today was an awesome day in getting rid of stuff. My husband got involved and we have a HUGE bag of weird tools and household items to get rid of. I also threw in 2 years of Men's Health magazines and a cookbook that I haven't looked at since we got married (how to throw a cocktail party -- hah!)

C (my husband) says he has "divorced" the car. He rode his bike and took the bus to school day and was very happy with how it worked out. I rode the scooter to work and stopped by WF for some swiss chard (I'm addicted) and had to carry it around in my backpack with my students' papers because I forgot to bring my bag. Good thing it wasn't wet.

Car miles today: zero! :)

photo: www.ubcbotanicalgarden.org

Baa Baa Black Sheep... Three Bags Full!

Unstuffing status -- three bags full.
Today's stuff includes:
2 pillowcases
2 shirts (mine)
9 pieces of clothing from my youngest daughter

Children's clothes is an area where I have an embarrassment of riches right now. I was going through her clothes and found about 20 pairs of 3T pants. That's probably more pants than anyone, even a toddler, needs. What's funny is that the 9 pieces of clothing don't even include those 20 pairs of pants. Those I will assess another day. I will definitely pare it down, though, as it will cut down on arguments about clothes.

My husband came home today very angry about the car. Not only is it slurping down gas like nobody's business and making a funny sound that will probably cost hundreds of dollars, but my husband got a traffic ticket today. He says he won't be driving to school anymore and took the car key off of his key ring. He had to go back to school and he went on the scooter. An interesting turn of events, considering that I was just blogging about the car.

The current mileage on our car: 96048
Fuel expenses in Feb: 120.25 (15.90 for scooter fuel)
Fuel expenses in March (so far):104.55 (5.76 for scooter fuel)

Obviously fuel expenses are going to be higher in March. We went out of town for spring break, so we used more gas. Still, this shows that we are spending a pretty good chunk of money (although not as much as I had feared) on gas. Add to that repairs, oil changes, insurance, etc. and it's more than I would like.

I used this handy dandy calculator: http://www.bikesatwork.com/carfree/cost-of-car-ownership.html
According to this, we spend about 248 a month on driving. That's without calculating in the occasional ticket. I did not include car rental in the calculation because I wanted to see what it costs to drive our car. We will still have to rent a car when we go on vacation. For the cost of the car, I put 500 a year, because our car is paid for, but if we paid 4000 and it lasts 8 years, that's 500 a year. That may be wildly optimistic, but the point is that the price per month would not be lower... only higher.

So the only way to decrease the amount we spend on the car is to decrease the amount that we drive. Obviously. I've considered getting rid of the car in the past, but with 3 little kids, getting around can be pretty hard. My oldest can ride his bike for a couple of miles, and my oldest daughter can ride the tag-a-long, but the baby needs to go in the trailer, and the trailer and the tag-a-long don't work together (I've tried... I broke the gears on my bike pulling all the weight) and the girls are really heavy together in the trailer. It works pretty well if we go somewhere as a family because then I can pull the tag-a-long and my husband can pull the trailer. As you can see, it gets complicated. We also need the car to be able to go camping. I love camping.
I think the most realistic (baby step) thing to do about the car for now is to not drive to work. I will commit to that and keep track of mileage on the car for the next week and keep brainstorming.

Two bags down...

Today I was going around the house, looking for things I don't need in my goal to unclutter this week. I found some random toys, a crossword puzzle book (where did this come from?), and was just about to despair when -- jackpot! -- I found a whole bag of clothes that I had ready to donate to Goodwill already. Is this cheating? Nah! They've been clogging up my closet for months now and pretty soon I'll need that space for the worms.

That's right. The worms, or at least their house, is on the way. I watched a bunch of youtube videos on worm farming last night (just to be sure that Sustainable Dave is not making it look too easy). I figured that if Dave "wimped out" as he says on the video, then so can I. We opted for a Worm Factory, and as soon as it arrives I'll get the worms because I don't want to have a bunch of worms with no place to live.

So today was a pretty good day, green-wise. Here's the progress I made :)
-Worm Factory on the way
- Planted about 1/4 of my plot in the community garden with lettuce and squash. Hope it's not too late for the lettuce. Maybe it will just be baby lettuce, which will atleast be something. This was actually a major triumph because I can't find the key to get in the garden, so I had to climb the fence and have my husband throw the compost over. I'm a mess.
-One more bag of stuff gone (that's two so far). They're big bags, too.

What I'd like to work on is driving to work. Two days out of the week I drive about 10 miles round trip to work. I can't really ride my bike because I wouldn't be back home in time to meet the kids off the schoolbus. I guess the next best thing is to ride my scooter. Next semester I'll try to plan my classes better so that I can ride my bike or take the bus.
According to fueleconomy.gov, my car gets 21 mpg in the city. That's shockingly bad. It doesn't seem like it's that low. I will have to look into that further. My scooter gets about 70 mpg. I can't find a reliable source that says exactly what the mileage is right now, but averages on various sites seem to be around 70. Obviously, the best solution here is to ride the scooter. Today was rainy and windy though, and I'm afraid I'll blow over. But after looking at the numbers, I'll be sure to ride the scooter if I won't blow over or at least combine an errand if I have to drive (as the grocery store is on my way to work).

Unstuffing might be harder than I thought

I live in a small apartment with small closets. I have three children and lots of books. I used to have even more books, but I decided that most of them were clogging up my life and that realistically I wasn't going to read them again, so I either sold them, gave them to friends, or donated them to the library. It sure made moving easier, but I do kind of miss the scenery.

I DON'T like to look at my family's junk strewn over every single horizontal surface in the house. But that's what I look at every single day. Sometimes I sit in a room, look around, and think about how many hundreds of things are in that room, most of which I don't use, and almost all of which I bought. What a waste.

But there are plenty of things that I do use. For example, I have two staplers. I use them both. I like to have one at home and one at school. Sometimes I carry one around in my backpack when my students have to turn in work. It's silly maybe, but I like to have two staplers. So I'm not getting rid of them.

Today, for my first bag of stuff to get rid of, I have the following:
Phone book & 8 old Newsweeks -- to be recycled/given to library (there is a bin of old magazines at the library for art projects, catching up on old news, etc.
Superman action figure with no head
Box for a toy doctor's kit -- we have two boxes, both missing a latch. I think one is enough.
Race track -- huge, and always leads to fights
Lacing toys
Sweatshirt -- I cannot figure out who left this at our house -- maybe it will find its owner in the laundry room
One shoe -- how did this happen?
Worduko book
Starbucks mug with lid -- I have a couple that I like better, and this is too heavy for me.

So all this fills up (quite well!) my first bag of stuff to get rid of. I'm a little worried about later in the week, though. It took about 15 minutes to gather this stuff up. The next few days might take longer because I'll have to dig stuff up. I did notice, though, that I have a dresser with a bottom drawer that doesn't open. I stashed some stuff in there months ago... couldn't have been very useful :)

Worms
Last night I watched the video on worm composting that is on 365 days of Trash. It doesn't seem as gross as I had feared, so I'm going to go for it! I'll have to make a spot for the worms (I knew I needed to declutter). I do a lot of cooking, and my children eat a LOT of fruit, and it's a shocking amount of food waste that goes into the trash. I hope the worms can handle it.

First Post!

So.... I've been thinking about starting a blog for a few months now, and since I am procrastinating on grading papers, now seems like the perfect time :)

I spend hours reading other peoples' blogs and have finally gotten jealous -- maybe jealous isn't the right word -- inspired is more like it. I have the feeling that writing about my family's journey to greenness might actually help us get there.

We haven't been total slackers. We gave up plastic bags a long time ago and recently started bringing our own bags for bulk foods. We try not to drive much (often fail there), and we eat an almost vegetarian diet (with the exception of happy meat, which is so expensive that we don't eat much of it). But there is still lots of room for improvement.

I am going to be dedicating this week to getting "un-stuffed". With three kids, we have accumulated a bunch of stuff in the house. I feel like I spend most of my day picking it up. Grrr... So what's green about that? Well, here's my theory:
- The more time I spend picking up/cleaning/sorting/grumbling about stuff, the less time I can devote to other more useful activities.
- If we can pare down the junk, we can continue happily living in a fairly small (about 900 sq. ft) living space. We have been thinking about moving lately, and it will cost a lot more to maintain/heat/cool/clean/etc. a bigger space.
-We just went camping, and didn't bring any toys. The kids were happy playing with sticks and climbing trees. That seems much more wholesome (and therefore greener) than throwing a bunch of plastic toys around the room.
-It's not just the toys. It's my stuff too.

So, this week I plan to collect one bag of stuff we don't need each day and donate it. In our apartment complex, it is typical to leave toys and clothes in the laundry room or outside the dumpster for other families to take, so I prefer to do that rather than send it to Goodwill. But either way, one bag a day to the laundry room or to Goodwill (if there's too much stuff in the laundry room and it seems like it might get thrown away).