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I’m kind of a “momma’s boy.” Really, I have a difficult time saying “no” to my mother sometimes. Aren’t most families the other way around?
My trash from this past week was generously gifted from the fam. Shall we do this again? One more time…
Bread: basically every grocer will supply this in a single-use plastic bag. Try a local bakery which displays their goodies in open cases, in which you can bring your own cloth bag. Or, try baking your own bread at home! Remember to store it in a closed container away from sunlight. I like to put mine in the refrigerator. I don’t eat much bread, and it keeps longer.
Deli-cuts: just say no. Or, something close to no. All deli items are packaged in single-use plastic. They are then cut in slices and put into single-use plastic baggies for you to take home. Try bringing your own container to avoid that additional baggie, or avoid these easy eats and cook with paper-wrapped meats and cheeses. I hear cheese is hard to find without a plastic rind, so your best bet is a small, local producer.
Cereal: bulk grocer, bulk grocer, bulk grocer!
Raisins: bring your own containers to bulk grocery stores. In Manhattan, try People’s or even Hy-Vee.
Bars: candy, granola, snack, and whatever else is packaged individually for single use. You just have to say no. Many of these items can simply be made at home. You can then package them yourself in reusable containers or recyclable foil. What a pain, cooking and planning and shopping for ingredients. Pinterest anyone?
These are all changes I’ve made in my everyday life for this project. Three more days, and it will have been for 60 days. Take a gander, this is my trash for 60 days.
From left to right: (1) plastic seal from contact solution, (1) plastic seal from peanut butter, (1) plastic cap from scintillation vial, (7) pairs single-use laboratory gloves, (1) chocolate bar wrapper, (1) chip bag, (1) snack cracker bag, (2) granola bar wrappers, (2) mini cereal bags, (1) plastic deli bag, (1) plastic bread bag, (1) plastic raisin bag, (1) plastic mail sleeve, (1) plastic check holder, (2) strips plastic packing tape.
This was such an adventure. This was such a learning experience.
We’re almost done here, folks.
This is Trashy.
I have now presented my poster to the class about my window farm. Thanks to everyone that stopped by to learn about window farming. Showing my window farm to people gives me an opportunity to educate others about creative gardening and producing/buying local organic food.
I was asked many times today about what I was going to do with window garden now that the class project is over. My garden will live on so do not worry. My window farm will be moving with me to a Boy Scout summer camp that I run. There it will hang in a window in the dinning hall. With this prime location I will have around 1500 people walk by it during the summer and I am sure that many of them will stop to take a look.
The possibility of having 1500 people learn about local food is an exciting idea that I cannot turn down. Exceptionally sense most of that 1500 will be middle school kids. Teaching kids at a young age is the easiest way to make meaning life changes.
And after camp the garden is moving with me to Chicago where I hope to expand it.
I hope that many of you are think about making your own window garden, and if you do please let me know. Here are a few things that I have learned from making my own can could help you.
First, herbs are the best to plant in a window garden because many of them do not grow to big. This style of gardening is not good for large plants. Also herbs allow you to continually harvest them without completely killing the plant.
Second, do forget to water them. The bottles themselves are not very big and with that they cannot store a lot of water. I have to water my garden every two days or it will quickly dry out. I learned this the hard way and my lettuce has not fully recovered from it yet.
Last, come up with a design of your own. You could simply build one close to mine or you could be creative. Being creative with your garden makes this project such a fun to do. A good friend of mine is now making one out of old sections of plastic plumbing of different sizes. Some of the pipes even have right angles in them so he can be even more creative with the design. He is planting wild flowers in his.
Over all this has been a fantastic project. I have truly enjoyed designing and building my garden and learning about environmental issues at the same time in class.
…and by that I mean why is there a much higher level of convenience in finding processed foods that have traveled hundred and hundreds of miles instead of locating the local produce, grown within 50 miles?
and why do my tastebuds reject that which it knows is best for them?
I wondered these things as I drove the 10 hours down to see my boyfriend in Waco, TX. Traveling and eating fresh produce is difficult enough, traveling and eating fresh local produce is ridiculously difficult. My local food diet was in shambles eating m&ms, pretzels and whatever food I could find on the road. When I ate a burger it wasn’t native buffalo, the cheese wasn’t fresh made in a creamery down the road. It was produced somewhere foreign, shipped to a distribution center, shipped around the country, and somehow it made itself into my hand, driving 70 miles an hour down I-70. It’s also difficult to find out what plants grow natively and how to find them in different states.
Originally, the game plan was to eat organic only for my final week. However, further research showed that organic certification didn’t mean that the plants were local, and organic plants (while not processed) may still have the same economic footprint as non-processed foods. Next came eating local produce. I figured that local produce would have a lower carbon footprint, for the transportation section alone. Readers, I did not fair very well. Call Hall provided some on-campus locality, but coldness, Kansas, and a picky eater do not bode well together when trying to only eat locally. And, I love me some Panda orange chicken from the Union.
However, I have learned from this project that there is local produce available to me. There are even local diary and meat products. I feel fortunate to live in the breadbasket of America, I am still to this day working on appreciating the delicous splendor of my local land.
My last post I talked about how unrealistic this project is when it comes to providing food. It is impossible to grow enough food from so few bottles and the amount it would take is huge. Some people did not like this idea that I was claiming that this was not realistic. I would like to clear up a few things.
While the amount of food this system can grow is very little it has allowed me to educate others on the idea of local food. Just before the start of this class I was learning for myself about the importance of local food but did not have a way to share it. This project has allowed me to educate others about this movement will showing them my project. The real value of this project is the education and not in production.
On another note Window Farms have showed up on Weekend Edition on National Public Radio a few weeks ago. I have posted the link to the story at the bottom of this post. A key thing that they talk about in this story is how much fun it is to build and take care of a window farm. In my opinion this plays as equally important role as education. If it were not fun then no one would take the time to build one.
While trying to find out exactly how much this project helps the environment I have came across a bigger idea. I want to know how many trees I would have to plant in order to cancel out my carbon footprint. This way I can sleep at night knowing that I am not making things worst. Worst as in green house gases. I am going to look into this and will blog about what I have found soon.
It has taken me longer to wrap up these blogs than my initial game plan was (oops!). Things have been just a smidge insane but here it goes.
If I have learned anything over the course of this project it would be that reducing my food consumption is really difficult! I hadn’t realized how much I eat and, consequently, how much I also waste.
I like that I have come to a more full understanding and appreciation of the food I choose to eat and the importance of the time I take to eat it. Food is, obviously, an important part of all of our lives. It’s really unfortunate that for the most part people have lost a lot of consideration for what they put inside of their bodies. We need food to keep us alive and healthy.
Since coming to college I have noticed more and more that most of the foods that I do consume are of the overly processed and packaged variety. While this is cheap and convenient, it’s not really ideal. From the information I have gained through our readings and class discussions, other people’s blogs, and my own research I have a new outlook on the foods I want to put into my body.
Over the course of this project I had to sit out a few social events on account of my friends heading down to Aggieville to grab dinner, but other than that I don’t really feel like I “missed out” on anything too dramatic. I feel like I have gained way more—both financially and for my overall health. I have opted to try and find more responsible alternatives to many of the things I enjoy—for example fair trade coffee and tea. I have been doing some research on farmer’s markets that I would also like to start visiting.
I will most defiantly continue trying to keep my food consumption and waste under control. I have talked to my family about plotting out a garden in our backyard and I know that my grandparents have been working hard getting tomatoes and some herbs ready. I’m excited to be home this summer and further my food reduction and pass on my knowledge to my family.
I think that this project has been helpful in just making me more aware of things and figuring out what I can do individually to find solutions that are best suited for my lifestyle.
This is my farewell blog. Earlier in the year, I talked about an elderly woman who lived behind me, who I had met because she saw me over in my yard planting plants. Well the other day I was outside getting something out of my car and she stopped me and said she had a paper of mine that had blown out of my yard and in to hers, she had seen my name on it and remembered me from the day we had spoken. We got to talking and soon enough I learned that she was taking care of her son who is going to die any day of pancreatic cancer. I told her if she needed anything to let me know and we parted ways. I’ve had a lot of people who have been close to me die from cancer, including my Grandma Jeanie, who I was unbelievably close to. I know the helpless feeling and to watch your son go has to be nearly unbearable. I got home and decided to cook some dinner for her and her son. My father had been doing this since I was a child, if someone had a problem he always brought them his famous rigatonis.
So I looked through my cabinets and decided to make some potatoes, give her a vegetable tray my Grandma had given me that was left over from Easter, a loaf of fresh bread, and some bow tie pasta with homeade red sauce. I cooked everything and carried it across the alley over to her yard. Needless to say, it was an emotional visit to her house. As an elderly woman on the college side of town, she doesn’t get a lot of respect from the people around her. She just kept thanking me and we ended the visit with a hug.
This is a prime example of why I love gardening and farming. I would have never met our neighbor if I would have been inside all day watching TV. Instead I got a chance to not only meet her but help her, this is something that a numeric value can never be placed upon. My plants might be dead (with the exception of the tomatoes) but I think that I’ve learned some really great lessons from this project regardless. Simple things are the most valuable. Watching the food that you eat grow from a seed, putting time and effort in to your basic needs, and a simple supper for a neighbor in need are all things that NEED to make their way back in to societal norms. Maybe that is why I am partial to communal living as an alternative living style. The thought of people working to help each other survive in a simple form is, for lack of a better word, absolutely beautiful.
Alright folks, it has been quite a while since my last post, but I encountered several unexpected challenges along the way. And I was nervous to cook. Then other times I just straight up got lazy and came up with all kinds of legitimate excuses as to why I couldn’t attempt cooking that particular day. Finally yesterday I sucked it up and did it- turns out my cooking isn’t half bad!
From the beginning of this project I knew that cooking would be my biggest challenge, but also the most important leg of my mission to reskill myself in preparation for the transition into a post-peak oil world. In a post-peak oil Manhattan my entire food culture and lifestyle would be forced to change. As it is right now, my meals are cooked for me 6 days a week and on Saturdays I go out to eat usually for lunch and dinner. This challenged me to consider what I would do if oil and gas prices made that lifestyle financially unfeasible, how would I survive? Well, I’d have to cook, of course! But not in the way that I think of cooking now. I really wanted to push myself to consider how I would have to get a long if life in Manhattan really changed in a major way due to gas prices. How would I have to cook if Dillons and Wal-Mart could no longer ship in food from all over the world, if microwavable TV dinners were a thing of the past, if your staple food sources were whole and fresh ingredients produced and sold locally?
With these questions running through my head, the first hurdle I had to overcome was the question of when I could embark on this culinary adventure. First there was the issue of kitchen access. As I mentioned my meals are prepared for me 6 days a week in Kappa’s industrial-type kitchen, so the only day of the week that the kitchen is available is Saturday, and Saturdays tend to be pretty busy for me. But Easter Sunday there would be no food prepared so the kitchen would be free all day. Perfect.
The next issue was figuring out what to cook. From the beginning I had it in my mind that I wanted to attempt a margherita-style pizza using the pizza dough and mozzarella recipes found in Barbara Kingsolver’s book that we read in class. But then the idea of cheese making began to overwhelm me. I didn’t have a lot of the required equipment, I didn’t know if Kappa’s milk was ultra pasteurized or not, I didn’t know how to go about ordering the cultures you need to produce cheese… (see, I told you I was really good at coming up with justifications NOT to do something when I’m feeling lazy. Believe me, it’s not a trait I particularly love about myself). In time, pizza was starting to sound like a bad idea. Then last Thursday I went to the third Transition Manhattan meeting at UFM and was struck with inspiration thanks to Professor Rhonda Janke, who came and spoke to our class last week. She had made cheese from the milk of her sheep that she brought to share. This reminded me that my cousins, whom I would be visiting Sunday morning for Easter in Wichita, raise goats and often make goat cheese, and goat cheese pizza is frickin’ delicious. The thought of utilizing my cousin’s cheese-making skills to my benefit reminded me- in a post-peak oil Manhattan I probably would not be doing EVERYTHING for myself. One of the main points of transition initiatives is community building and creating resources that can be utilized by the community. At the UFM meetings we talked about what we would like to see in this new Manhattan and some of the things included a local dairy and grain mill- places where I could easily purchase the things I’d need to bake a pizza like flour and mozzarella cheese. With this in mind the pizza plan was back in motion.
So I knew I’d be getting my goat cheese Sunday morning, but Saturday I decided to hunt down the rest of my necessary ingredients- white and wheat flour, mozzarella, tomatoes, mushrooms, garlic and olive oil. Ideally, I would have liked to buy all of these things locally, but farmers’ markets don’t open for a few more weeks, the local grain mill and dairy are still the stuff of Transition Manhattan dreams, and after doing a little bit of research, I’m pretty sure olives don’t grow in Kansas. The compromise I settled on was to buy as many of my ingredients as possible from the Peoples’ Grocer co-op. I had to go online and research what they were all about (have to admit, didn’t know what a co-op was), but they are committed to selling local, organic, and environmentally sustainable goods so I figured they were my best bet. Turns out, unfortunately, the price of sustainability is HIGH. I shouldn’t have been surprised by this, but I was a little taken aback by how much more expensive everything was at Peoples’ and they didn’t even have the produce I was after (probably because it’s not yet in season). I started feeling panicky at the thought of spending so much money for one little pizza, so I ashamedly left the store empty handed, and with head hanging in shame and defeat, instead ventured on to Dillons with only the promise of plus card savings to console me.
Finally Sunday evening came and it was time to cook. I made the crust following the recipe in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle provided by Camille Kingsolver (page 146), minced the garlic by hand and used that and olive oil instead of pizza sauce, topped it with mozzarella, tomato slices, mushrooms and goat cheese. The garlic was more difficult than I expected. I think I thought that it would chop like an onion, but it’s not like an onion at all- it comes in these funny little pods. You probably all knew that, but what can I say, this is all new to me. I nervously placed the pizza in the oven and waited. While I was cleaning up my mess an incredible aroma began to fill the kitchen- if this pizza tasted only half as good as it smelled, I was pretty sure that Food Network should give me my own show right then and there. A few minutes later the pizza was finished and beautiful and absolutely delicious. All in all, despite a few road bumps, the cooking adventure was a great success and I feel confident that I will not in fact starve to death in a post-peak oil world. Here are some photos of my sweet cooking skills:
Garlic pods
The dough
Before baking
After baking (delicious!)
So proud
In Overland Park, Kansas an edible schoolyard began almost 2 years ago at the Hiersteiner Child Development Center. This center is associated with Johnson County Community College and the college advocated for the edible schoolyard. JCCC was given $21,218 from the Sunflower Foundation and another $13,000 from a private donor. The Sunflower Foundation works to improve the health for all Kansans. Unfortunately I could not find much about this center, it is a daycare, not a school and I believe it serves the children of JCCC students and well as JCCC employees. I’ll have to do some more digging and hopefully find more edible schoolyards in this area.
Check out a video about the Hiersteiner Child Development Center’s edible schoolyard HERE
This is one thing I didn’t really think about for this project. I do need to do more research about finding out if this is possible for public schools and where to get the money to start a program like this. If the state is willing to fund it that could be a big way to get schools involved. Many if not all of the public schools are facing budget cuts and would welcome funding. This funding could go towards those who would be teaching about the garden and helping in it, so additional funding could save teaching jobs.
Since we are not in California and produce does not grow year round there needs to be other activities for students while there is no planting, cooking, harvesting, preserving, etc going on. A few of my ideas include researching fruits and vegetables that students have an interest in growing. The older students can become the overseers of each of these crops and teach others how to take care of them . Also students of all ages can learn about the benefits of eating local and organic. They can research global environmental issues, as well all know that in the future and now this information will be vital. In the late summer and fall upper level students can be taught how to preserve fruits and vegetables so they can be eaten year round. And with this preserved food they can learn to cook with these local, organic ingredients and learn about healthy eating. As a video I posted on a previous blog said, this generation of kids are expect to live a shorter life than their parents. They are expected to die of heart related diseases as well as diabetes.
I have all these good ideas, at least I think they are good. I feel that is what I am good at. I can come up with great plans and ideas but I have a hard time being able to implement them. For that I must turn to those in the community where I want to propose this edible schoolyard. Lucky for me, one of those people include my oldest sister. She is a outspoken voice in the community. So my goal over Spring Break is to talk to some of these people and see how they feel about this project and see what they may want to bring to the table. In the case of the first edible schoolyard in Berkeley, they had many community volunteers that helped make their garden a success.
Does anyone have any other suggestions of what to do during the off season in schools while nothing needs to be done outside?? All ideas welcome 
Story time:
Back in November I got in a fight with a wall. Seriously, I was totally minding my own business then out of nowhere it just attacked me and my favorite pair of jeans. I know, how rude. The battle was epic, but eventually I emerged victorious, though the conflict was not without casualty. My poor jeans, the only jeans that on the first try were not too tight on my thighs but too loose on my hips, my most slimming pair of jeans, my FAVORITE pair of jeans, fell victim to the wall. It was truly tragic.
Ok, so I have a flair for the dramatic. In reality I was walking home from a party and to save time I cut through some backyards that were separated by about a three and a half foot cement retaining wall. I tried to be really skillful and just step up with my left leg rather than be lame and clumsy and climb up on my hands and knees. Unfortunately clumbsiness is totally my default state of being, so the right thigh of my jeans got caught on the wall as I tried to stand up, ripping my jeans and leaving a two inch tear in the fabric.
Normally I would have just thrown the jeans away, gone to American Eagle the next day and thrown away $45 on an identical replacement pair, then spent the rest of the week kicking myself for spending so much money because really, I don’t have that kind of cash to just throw around. Irresponsible, that’s what that would have been. And wasteful. But anyways, this was in November, before the beginning of this class and before this project, but I couldn’t bear to throw these jeans away. Not because I was concerned about the wastefulness at the time (sorry), but because they were my favorite pair- they really were great jeans. So for months I’ve just had these ripped jeans lying around for no good reason. Then I took this class and developed this project and week number two of my reskilling adventure was sewing and mending: light bulb! Why should I throw away a perfectly good pair of jeans just because they have a teeny tiny little rip in them? Because I didn’t know how to mend them and I didn’t want to take the time to learn and in our society this generation would rather throw away insane amounts taken-for-granted cash than walk around in hand-mended clothing (how embarrassing, right?). Sewing and mending, I feel, is quickly becoming a lost art form. My mother sewed her own prom dress as a teenager, not to mention all of my childhood Halloween costumes and countless adorable one-of-a-kind outfits. Unless I start learning to sew now, my hypothetical future children will never own any clothing that are not store bought, generic, and energy consuming. And they will always have to throw away every pair of ripped jeans, and Lord knows childhood sees its fair share of ripped clothing. Time to stop the wasteful madness! Time to learn some skillzzz. Word.
My mom lives 12 hours away in Cincinnati so learning to sew from her for this project would have been totally impractical, but part of the reskilling, transition community philosophy is to take advantage of the often hidden local resources that already exist at our finger tips, we just don’t utilize them because Walmart is more convenient. So, turns out my Kappa housemother is a sewing wiz, the kind of person who quilts and enters sewing projects into art shows- who knew. She’s an incredibly busy woman but she generously donated her time to teach me how to mend my jeans and sew a pillow. Sewing is surprisingly simple! I mean, a pillow is nothing more than a rectangle, so I’m sure it gets much more complicated when making clothing, but sewing is really one of those skills where a basic foundation of knowledge can really get you far. When I figure out how to upload pictures onto a post, I’ll show off my beautiful work, get excited. I really hope that this skill will help to reduce my consumption by allowing me to hold on to clothes longer, even when they get a little beaten up. And I get to wear my favorite jeans again!
Next week’s reskilling mission: COOKING from whole ingredients (cue ominous music: DUN DUN DUN!!! I’ll keep the Manhattan fire department on standby.
Hullow all! I hope you are all having a wonderful week and your own projects are going well!
This week I’ve really been trying to focus on observing my consumption and the consumption of those around me.
One of the things I have started noticing, after spending a morning in the student union by Caribou Coffee, is the amount of waste created by disposable coffee cups. I decided to do a little bit of research and was shocked by the incredible number of these cups used annually. According to this website, http://sustainabilityissexy.com/facts.html, it is estimated that 23 BILLION paper cups will be used by AMERICANS ALONE this year. This is utter madness! I will absolutely continue using my reusable mug now more than ever. Sadly I haven’t gotten to use that little fella for the past week. . . going caffeine free has been pretty rough. There has only been one time so far that I couldn’t go on without a Diet Coke … whoops!
Other than my lack of caffeine and other beverages besides good old fashioned water, things have been going pretty well.
My friends and I have taken to sitting in the dining hall for quite a long time during our meals and this has provided me with an excellent opportunity to observe how others are consuming. There is A TON of waste generated, and I know I’m only seeing a fraction of it. Whether they have been given too much food, which is very likely because the dining hall employees are serving us and some give massive portions while others are more appropriate, or perhaps they dislike what they got, something has got to change. So much food, with nothing wrong with it, is being thrown out every day for every meal.
Several of my friends have been raised with the “you get it you eat it” mentality and they stick to it hardcore and encourage the rest of us to follow suit. It’s a great thing that they are promoting a waste reducing habit and I have found it to be helpful with getting my project started.
One of the most difficult foods to try to stop eating has been French fries—curse their greasy, salty goodness!! There are some meals that I do a better job of editing out my “wants” than others, but this coming week is when I am really going to crack down on myself.
Speaking of dorm food … here’s an interesting link that talks about some of the programs (farm-to-fork, all taste … no waste, recycling efforts, and food repurposing) that K-State housing and dining services are trying to implement http://www.housing.k-state.edu/dining/sustainable.php. I found these to be very interesting and I’m glad to have learned that our university is taking steps in this direction.
You stay classy, San Diego. I’m Ron Burgundy?
