The worms are dead

I've spent the last week either packing, moving, cleaning, or unpacking. I'm exhausted. But I love my new place!

On the last day in the old place, I came home to a horrible smell. Horrible. Totally shocking and disgusting. Blech. I knew that it was coming from the worms. So, I opened them up. It was bad. Even stinkier. Slimy. Gross. Gross. Gross.

Worm maintenance has been mostly C's department, but I could tell they were too wet. I drained off quite a bit of "tea", added a bunch of dry fiber, and waited for C to come home to further assess the situation.

They were almost all dead.

We ended up throwing all the stinking mass of worms and slime and uneaten food into the dumpster. It is some consolation that what we threw away is still way less than what we put into the worm factory. The worms did a great job for months converting our food waste into worm movement and more worms.

We let them down.

What have I learned?
You have to pay attention to the directions (duh). Put dry fiber (paper, etc.) AND food.
Worms can die.
If they die, you will need to move.

So, will I try again? I'm not sure. There are a lot of deer where we live and the neighbors put salad scraps out in the yard for the deer.

Btw, the deer are SOOOO cute. There are baby deer and mommy deer and daddy deer with antlers. We see them every night. (Can you tell my kids love the deer?)

Wormapalooza -- level 2

We have added the next level to our worm farm. We weren't really sure when to do it, but it seemed like the first level was getting pretty full of worms, so we decided to spread the love.

A few days later, the worms have traveled into the 2nd layer of the farm. C lifted up the top layer and they were like spaghetti coming out of the holes of the box. Pretty gnarly.

We have had the worm farm for a while now, and I am still pretty pleased with it. It does not smell. At least, not a gross smell. It has a pleasant earth odor, but really only when you open it. The worms do a good job of eating the food scraps we put in. I also chop up receipts, pieces of boxes with food residue that I can't recycle, and school handouts that have been colored on (only the scribbly drawings, not the good ones). I haven't tried orange peels. Any advice on those?

The worms are getting it on!

Actually, that may not be a totally accurate title. The worms obviously have been getting it on. There is a scary amount of worms in my worm factory, so I have ramped up the feeding schedule. They seem happy. My daughter, E, is thrilled. She loves to feed the wormies. I think that she thinks they are pets.

They have started making worm "tea", which is not something you drink, but something that you can put on plants. Awesome.

They still freak me out, but I love them a little more every day. Many people wonder if they stink, but they don't at all. I keep them in the coat closet, so that's a good thing.

Guardian of the Plastic

Do you ever feel like you are hoarding trash? Sometimes I do. For example, what am I supposed to do with a plastic bottle that held moisturizer? There's no recycling number on it, so I can't recycle it. Maybe I could use it for something else in the future. I keep trying to convince myself it's a fun bath toy, but really all that happens is that the kids squirt water on the floor.

How long do I have to hang on to plastic stuff that I don't want? I feel bad just chunking it in the trash, but that seems to be its destiny.

Also.... stickers. Stickers are the bane of my existence. There is nothing good to be said of them. Kids stick them on the furniture, on the walls, on the windows, on the floor, on their bodies (and then cry when you peel them off). Of course, they can't be recycled. They're just trash. Please stop giving my children trash! (This is directed to the world at large, including WF ... I don't care if the stickers are of dolphins.)

Can you tell I've had a frustrating day? Actually, it hasn't been too bad, but the stickers have been weighing on me lately.

An interesting plastic turning point has occurred this week -- our huge stockpile of plastic bags that we have been using as trash bags came to an end. What are we supposed to put our trash in? I feel like this is a dumb question, and there must be a really obvious answer, but really.... tell me. Here are the options that I can think of:

• paper bags -- but it will get gross and leak
• put the trash in other bags and non-recyclable containers -- this is what we're doing, but it makes a big mess.
• no bag -- C is fond of this option, but I find it icky.

It's true... I have a huge trash aversion (well, who doesn't?). The trash is totally C's department, but since I do most of the throwing of stuff in the trash, I probably get the most exposure to the trashcan. So, what to do?

The average American throws out 4.5 lbs. of trash a day. That means my family would be responsible for 22.5 lbs. of trash (a day!). I think that we're below average, but we still seem to throw out a lot of trash. The worms are helping out, little by little, but they really need to reproduce.

Thursday Experiment: Soy Milk

We have discovered something totally awesome! Tonight C and I made soy milk and it is:

• super cheap
• super easy
• super delicious
• AND makes no trash!
  

I was inspired by this video on youtube by The Daily English Show. I figure if you can teach someone to make soy milk in a little over 2 minutes, then it can't be too hard. And it's not.

C picked up some bulk organic soy beans at WF. They cost .99 a pound. If you buy a pound and bring your own bag, they only cost .89. A pound of soy beans makes a LOT of soy milk.

Here's the procedure:
1. Soak the beans overnight.
2. Rinse them. Measure 1 cup of beans and 3 cups of water into the blender.
3. Blend like crazy.
4. Put blended beans and water (now, amazingly, white) into the biggest pot you have.
5. Repeat steps 3 & 4 until you have used all your beans or until the pot is about 1/2 full.
6. Cook -- I'm not sure how long. Maybe 10 minutes? Let it boil, but BE CAREFUL because it gets very foamy and will quickly boil over (I know this from experience.) Skim the foam off. The heating step is important because it deactivates some enzyme in the beans that will make your tummy hurt.
7. At this point, I mixed in 1/4 c. sugar and 1/2 teas. vanilla per 2 c. beans b/c I like vanilla soy milk.
8. Pour the hot liquid into a cheese cloth that is inside a colander resting in a bowl. Squish the cheesecloth until the stuff inside (okara) is pretty dry. Set aside the okara for more fancy experimentation.
9. Turn to your husband (or whoever is near) and say "This is amazing!"

I'm hoping that this will cut down our milk budget (the kids can really chug some milk, and it is getting expensive) and on the packaging. We really like soy milk, but hate the packages, which are not recyclable here.

More news about WF Composting
I asked an employee at Whole Foods about the composting. She told me that they have been composting food waste for years, but have just now opened it up to customers. You can compost any food or paper. She told me that they compost at some wildlife refuge and then resell the compost. Just proves that being green can pay.

When are my worms going to start eating? They seem like they're getting ready for prom, the way they eat.

Pad Thai can save the world

Last summer I read a book which I of course can not remember the title to. The book was about 7 things that we can do to save the planet (or change the world? Something like that.) If you know what book I'm talking about, please send me a comment so I can stop rambling.

Anyway! One of the things was Pad Thai. Huh. How can Pad Thai save the planet? Well, the idea is that we should eat vegetarian meals. According to the Vegetarian Guide, going meatless is the "single most powerful action you can take to save energy and reduce pollution." Wow. I have had my students read an article about this, and most of them think it's hooey. Maybe because it's Texas. I'm not sure. But I have seen this message more and more and the numbers (again, from the above source) seem believable.

• It takes 54 calories of energy to produce 1 calorie of energy in beef. That's insane. (Numbers on this vary, but they're all really high. Some sites even say that if you get all your energy from beef, you pollute more by walking than by using the car. The message here is not that we should drive, but that we should not eat so much meat.)
• Water pollution -- it takes 5214 gallons of water to produce one pound of meat. This is something that I had not really thought of before. You use 5200 gallons in a whole year of showering, so you could save that by giving up one pound of meat.
  
• Land -- meat requires more land than plants. It takes 16 pounds of grain to produce one pound of meat. That's just not efficient.

Never mind animal welfare, smell, worries about contamination, price, etc. It is better for the planet to eat vegetarian as much as possible. It's also less expensive (especially if you only buy happy meat, which has REALLY decreased my meat consumption).

Today I used my beautiful mung bean sprouts to make Pad Thai. (Last week I started the sprouts). They expanded, filling a large yogurt container -- next time I won't use so many beans. So, for 15 cents, I got a ton of organic sprouts and a botany lesson.

I used a Martha Stewart recipe for the pad thai, but it was ridiculously complicated and dirtied a bowl and 4 pots and pans. Crazy. So, I simplified it a little. It was delish! My friend said it was like eating in a restaurant :)

Pad Thai to Save the World

8 oz. rice noodles (maybe use more, b/c we needed more noodles)
1/4 c. sugar
3 T white vinegar
3 T fish sauce
2 T + 1 teas. molasses (it calls for 1 T tamarind paste, but I don't have this lying around. This is a substitution. The 1 teas. is to make the white sugar into brown sugar b/c I ran out of brown)
1/4 teas. ground red pepper
1/2 lb. string beans
1/2 lb. sugar snap peas
2 T canola oil
2 minced shallots
2 large garlic cloves, minced
1 c. fresh mung bean sprouts (use more -- they're so good)
3 scallions, dice green part
chopped roasted peanuts for garnish

Soak noodles in warm water for 20 minutes.
In large skillet or wok, heat oil. Add shallots and garlic & stirfry. Add string beans and snow peas. Stir fry (don't burn garlic!) Add sugar, vinegar, molasses, fish sauce and red pepper. Add noodles and 1/2 c. bean sprouts. Warm everything.

Serve with bean sprout, peanut and scallion garnish.

Serves 4

I was really happy with this recipe. The ingredients cost a total of 6 dollars to feed my whole family, and that's including the fish sauce, which was 2.99 (there's a ton left over). It might cost you less because I bought all the ingredients at WF (but I did use all my own bags, gleaning a 50 cent bag credit.)

Richard Barrow give a similar recipe here.

Whole Foods has started Composting!
I have been jealous of other people who can compost their food waste, and so far my worms are being a little slow in the eating department, but on my visit today I saw that WF in Austin is now composting paper and food waste. Wow.

Where does the compost go? If you know, post a comment.

Image from myrecipes.com

Real Food Day 4 & Experimental Thursday!

Real Food
Certain things are easy with real food. Dinner. Putting real sugar in my coffee. Making bread. It hasn't required a whole lot of change.

Kid food has been a real bust. What do you do when the neighbors give your kids ice pops? Do you rip them out of their hands (Not real food!)? No way. On Tuesday I packed a lunch for my daughter, but she forgot to bring it to the cafeteria and got the school lunch instead. She did eat her packed stuff at snack time, though.

Breakfast cereal? I basically gave up. Today, however, I woke up late and my son missed the bus, so I decided since he would need to eat a serious breakfast at home, I would make scones for everybody.

One thing that the challenge has made me do this week is not to resort to convenience foods. The other night when I made spaghetti sauce, I didn't have quite enough tomatoes. So, we just ate a less saucy sauce. Today, I did not have the normal blueberries to make the scones, so I decided to get radical :) and chop up some frozen strawberries. They were delicious, in a sort of strawberry shortcake way.

Another problem area has been eating out. I'm just not sure how real the food is. Today I had breakfast at my favorite pancake place, but I know their pancakes come from a mix (they sell it in the front of the store), so I ordered something else. I opted for corn tortillas instead of flour, but I'm not really sure the corn tortillas were any more "pure". With any challenge like this, I figure that trying my best is the point -- stretching my comfort zone a little -- thinking a little more about what I do every day. Should I torture myself and my family or strive for a goal that is so difficult that it is unatainable? I don't think so. I just do the best I can.

Experimental Thursday!!!

My neighbor taught me about the wonders of sprouts, so today I decided to start my own sprouts. I bought 15 cents worth of mung beans in the bulk part of the grocery store, and that is supposed to make a whole jar of sprouts. I'm excited to see how it goes. Here's the process:
1. Soak beans (about 1/4 cup) over night.
2. Put the beans in a jar with holes in the lid. About 3 or 4 times a day, fill the jar with water and then put it upside down so the water drains out. This will rinse off the beans so they don't get funky, and give them some water to grow. Keep this jar in a dark place.
3. If you want thick sprouts, put a weight on them. My neighbor gave me a "pillow", which is a piece of nylon material with rocks sewn inside of it. She puts this on top of the sprouts and has a plastic container with holes in the bottom.

I like this experiment because already I've learned 2 things I never knew about sprouts:
1. They are white because they grow in the dark. If you want to "green" the sprouts, you expose them to the light at the end of the sprouting process.
2. The weight makes the sprouts fatter because they have to be strong and push up on it.

So hopefully in about 5 days (give or take), I'll have a jar of sprouts and I can try making some pad thai. For only 15 cents -- that's my kind of price.

Worms!
The worms arrived today. In a box labeled "live worms". I wonder what the mail carrier thought of that :)

We fixed up the farm and put the worms in. We took a video, but it's not fit for publication right now because it's WAYYY too long. My friend was visiting and she was pretty grossed out, but helped shred the paper. According to the instructions, the worms need 3 days with not too much food to get used to their home, and then we can really get in business.

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.

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.