Updates, Updates, Updates!

Phew. It's been a busy couple of months and it's been a while since I've had the time to sit down and write. I'm still keeping up with environmentally friendly changes in my life (still letting it mellow!). I'm still keeping up with the indoor garden and harvesting the last of the peppers from my outdoor plants (which have produced amazingly throughout the summer!). The biggest bit of news, however, is that I'm beginning culinary school! I can't even really put into words how excited I am about it. I love to cook (and eat) and I can't wait to learn all about it. Since I'm about to be busy with school I decided to post this quick update. I probably won't be writing as often as I previously had.  With that I'll leave you with this quote that pretty much sums up the way that I feel about food...

"When you acknowledge, as you must, that there is no such thing as perfect food, only the idea of it, then the real purpose of striving toward perfection becomes clear: to make people happy, that is what cooking is all about." -Thomas Keller

Brand New Old Bike!

I finally have a bike in my possession! My dad was able to give me his old mountain bike. He has a road bike that he uses and no longer needs this one. I used to ride this bike while I was living there, but since then I haven't gotten my own bike mainly because I've been trying to find a used bike which turned out to be harder than I thought (more on that later). So far I have bought a bike basket, a side mirror and a cable lock. These purchases were made easier by the fact that I didn't have to spend money on a bike in the first place.

The Indoor Garden Expands to The Outdoors

The last I updated about the indoor garden everything was moving along nicely. Since then, I've moved some things outdoors. The tomato plant was outgrowing the space that I had for it in my front window, I had some pepper plants transplanted into my parent's backyard and I also planted cucumber seeds in my parent's backyard. It's been an interesting experience to see the plants begin to flower and set fruit. The carrots were recently harvested and they tasted delicious. Although, they were smaller than I had expected (more on that later).

Environmental Enlightenment #18 (If It's Yellow Let It Mellow)

Yep, you read the title correctly and I'm sure that most of us have heard the phrase, "If it's yellow let it mellow, if it's brown flush it down." For those who haven't heard the phrase before, the first part means that while using the restroom one wouldn't flush the toilet after urinating and instead "let it mellow." The second part of the phrase refers to always flushing after solid waste. Some people get really grossed out by this concept and honestly I don't see any rational reason for it. Also, I don't know why I didn't start doing this sooner!

Environmental Enlightenment #17 (Giving Green Gifts)

I'm making an effort to make ALL aspects of my life more environmentally friendly and this includes giving gifts. The goal is to be able to a) find something the person will like and b) have it be in line with my environmental values. Another part of giving green gifts involves the wrapping paper. This past Christmas 2010 I "knot wrapped" all of my Christmas gifts in order to avoid wasting wrapping paper. I discovered "knot wrapping" at Lush (they will "knot wrap" gifts in the store when asked) which is based on the Japanese tradition of Furoshiki. 

National Ride Your Bike to Work Day

According to The League of American Bicyclists, May is National Bike Month and National Bike to Work Day is today, May 20th, 2011.

If I had a bike, or a job for that matter, I would definitely participate. As I have mentioned in previous posts, I've been trying to figure out a way to get rid of my car altogether. In the mean time, that means reducing its use as much as possible. I think that Ride Your Bike to Work Day can be a good experience for people to test the waters and see what they think about incorporating a bike into their commute.

Green Festival 2011

Yesterday I attended the Green Festival in Chicago at McCormick Place. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I was very excited! The festival took place on Saturday May 14th and Sunday May 15th, but I only went on Sunday. There were stages where people were giving talks, a music stage, an organic wine/beer garden, renewable energy booths, fair trade booths, organic food booths and so much more! I was a little overwhelmed at first, but we made our rounds, I snapped some photos and grabbed a bunch of pamphlets. I'll post some pictures here and talk about what I saw and also what I bought.

Environmental Enlightenment #16 (Reusable Produce Bags)

I've been taking reusable grocery bags on my shopping trips for quite a while now and whenever I got to the produce section I always felt bad about having to use those thin plastic produce bags. I tried to rinse them out and reuse them, but at the most I could get two uses out of them. I had no idea that reusable produce bags even existed until I happened to come across an ad for them in a magazine. Right away I knew I had to have them!

To Buy or Not to Buy Organic

I loved this book and learned so much that I didn't know about food and how it is grown! The book goes into details about how foods are grown, what type of pesticides/chemicals are generally used and why organic foods are healthier. It also covers 12 foods to only buy if they are organic aka  The Dirty Dozen, because of the amount of pesticides used on their conventionally grown counterparts. What interested me the most was the fact that the author mentions "going beyond organic" by choose local and sustainable foods. This wasn't something that I had given much thought to previously. 

Environmental Enlightenment #15 (Know Your Meat)

I'm about 3/4 of the way through "To Buy or Not To Buy Organic" and already it has encouraged me to discover where my meat is coming from. I'll review the book in a future post, but I do want to say that it brought up a very good point about not only considering organic foods, but also considering local and sustainable foods. Those organic grapes from Argentina may not be worth all the fossil fuels used to transport them to your doorstep. Anyways, it got me wondering where my meat is coming from. So I did a little research...

Mini-Farming Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre

I finished reading the Mini-Farming book yesterday and I was very pleased by the 200 plus pages of detailed information! Reading this book made me want to throw on a pair of over-alls, grab a shovel and get planting. Unfortunately, as it stands right now, I don't have any "land." The indoor garden is it for now. Although I have made a bargain with my parent's for some of their yard space and I fully intend on applying some of the methods that I learned in this book when I transplant some things over there.

Earth Day 2011

This past Friday, April 22nd, was Earth Day. I have recollections of a handful of Earth Day "clean-ups" taking place at my grammar school, but I haven't attending any such events since then. When thinking about what to do for Earth Day this year I thought back to this blog post about picking up litter. It seems that I got ahead of myself in writing this blog. For one, I didn't take into consideration weather. It's snowed here well into March and April has been a cold rainy mess. Now, there have been a sprinkling of unseasonably warm days, which I have taken advantage of, but for the most part it seems like picking up litter everyday will be more challenging than I expected.

Environmental Enlightenment #14 (Lunapads)

Prepare yourself for another "feminine hygiene" related post. When I first wrote about the DivaCup I was only beginning to realize how much this product would change how I handled my monthly gift from mother nature. In this post I would like to go into a little more detail about the DivaCup as well as my new experience with Lunapads.

In my original post about the DivaCup I briefly mentioned Lunapads as an alternative reusable menstrual product, but I hadn't yet tried them for myself. Since I was using the cup I saw no reason for purchasing a Lunapad. While learning how to use the DivaCup I was still wearing a disposable liner "just in case." I thought that once I became confident in my DivaCup skills that I would be able to stop using the liner and just go with the cup. I underestimated my paranoia! The cup has never leaked, but I just can't help wanting some extra protection on the off chance that it does leak. So after reading numerous positive testimonials about Lunapads I decided to try one out for myself. I purchased a mini pantyliner to wear as a back-up with the cup.

Environmental Enlightenment #13 (Natural Easter Egg Dye)

In addition to my magazine subscription to Fine Cooking, I also receive e-letters from them via e-mail. These e-letters usually include recipes related to the season. For example, the most current e-letter features how to plan your Easter menu. It also includes how to make the perfect hard-boiled egg and how to naturally dye your Easter eggs. That last part caught my attention. So I followed the link that they provided and found the recipe for naturally dyeing Easter eggs here. This recipe uses vegetables, fruits, coffee, tea and spices to dye the eggs a wide range of colors. I haven't dyed Easter eggs since I was a kid, but I might just try the recipe out this Easter.

Environmental Enlightenment #12 (Recycle Old Shoes)

When it comes time to get rid of something used/old I am trying my hardest not to throw it away. I've been doing a lot of research on how to recycle things that I never knew could be recycled! Earlier this week the boyfriend had some old gym shoes to get rid of and my first thought was to donate them to charity. However, they were unwearable at this point (falling apart and too abused to be useful to anyone else's feet). As far as I knew there weren't any shoe recycling programs, but I decided to do a quick Google search to double check. To my surprise there is a way to recycle old gym shoes! Nike (and their sister company Converse) has a re-use a shoe program. Every part of the shoe is used. The rubber from the out-sole is used to make running tracks; the fabric from the upper-sole is used to make padding for basketball courts; and the foam from the mid-sole is used to make the springy surface of tennis courts. The materials are passed through grinders to make the raw material which is then used for the previous mentioned purposes. Yesterday I found the nearest drop-off location and took the old gym shoes into Nike to be recycled.

Newly Purchased Books!

Online shopping can be a dangerous thing. I went on Amazon for just one book, I swear! But I ended up checking out with four books. Although I'm pretty excited about all of them. I'll be writing up a review for each book as I read it, but for now I wanted to share the titles of the books and what I know about them from their inside covers.

Renewable Energy Tour

Saturday, April 2, 2011 I embarked on a renewable energy tour in White County, IN. I had no idea what to expect, but I was mainly attending out of curiosity anyways. I live in a big city where farmers and their land are very much out of sight, out of mind and it was interesting to see what the farmers of White County were doing with their land and resources. The description of the tour according to the IEEE website is as follows:

"The tour is an all day event with the tour taking four hours having stops at a 500 Megawatt wind farm, a Algae wheel wastewater treatment plant, a Anaerobic Digester running off cattle/swine waste and other organic products to produce 3 megawatts/hour of electricity off methane gas and a visit to the Liberty Landfill for a 6.9 Megawatt biomass power generation plant."

Earth Hour 2011

This past Saturday, March 26th at 8:30pm, was Earth Hour. There are many opinions on whether or not turning lights off for one hour each year actually accomplishes anything, because burning candles still releases carbon dioxide. Regardless of any environmental benefits, I think it is nice to unplug from technology for a while. I set up some candles in the front room, bathroom, home office and kitchen. The boyfriend played some acoustic guitar and friends came over with wine which we drank by candlelight. It was a nice night and we even went beyond the hour because the candles just looked so nice and I was talking and lost track of time anyways.

Environmental Enlightenment #11 (The Diva Cup)

Let me preface this post by saying that this one is for the ladies. More specifically, this post will be about environmentally friendly feminine products. Boys feel free to stop reading now, or keep reading, but know that I warned you!

When I started reading Sleeping Naked Is Green I was hoping for a chapter on how to green that special time of the month and I was not let down. There was a chapter about The Diva Cup. This was the first time I had heard of menstrual cups and I was instantly intrigued. I had a feeling that a large amount of waste in my life came from disposable pads, tampons and their packaging. The following statistic is taken from the Diva Cup website:

"Women, on average, experience a lifetime menstruation span of 41 years (11-52). From use of disposable feminine hygiene, an estimated 12 billion sanitary pads and 7 billion tampons are dumped into the North American environment each year (1998). More than 170,000 tampon applicators were collected along U.S. coastal areas between 1998 and 1999."

Environmental Enlightenment #10 (Natural Bath Products)

I promised a post in which I would share my love of Lush products and here it is! I'd like to start out by saying that I haven't used many of their products, but the ones that I have used I love. Lush has a wide selection of bath bombs. I enjoy a soak in the tub a couple times a month so I decided to try two of them out. My favorite was the French Kiss Bubble Bar.

I have a soft spot for Lavender. It smells so good! One day while I was out shopping with my sister we stopped in Lush and started sniffing all of the bath bombs. Picking up their products and smelling them in the store is totally acceptable and quite fun. The woman working at the time was very helpful. She asked what scents I liked and directed me towards the French Kiss Bubble Bar. It contains Lavender oil, Rosemary oil and Thyme oil. Then she performed a demonstration on how the bubble bar works. She plopped a small piece of a bubble bar into a pitcher and started to pour water into it. My sister and I watched as the water began to bubble up. Then she poured the bubble-y water back and forth between two pitchers and the bubbles became fairly thick and soapy, just as a regular bubble bath solution would. This demonstration was supposed to mimic the act of filling up your bath tub with a piece of the bubble bar in it. I took it home and tried it out and it worked so well. I also have jets in my bathtub so when the bubbles popped I just ran the jets and it stirred it back up into bubbles again! I used about 1/4 of the bar for one bath and it was plenty. I love this product and would recommend it to anyone who wants to take bubble baths in an environmentally friendly way.