Frustration Free Packaging!

(Photo stolen from Amazon's website)

3 years ago, I posted a rant about my frustration with toy packaging. I'm happy to report that Amazon is trying to help us and the environment with their new "frustration free packaging". They are working with certain toy manufacturers to have the toys packaged as simply as possible inside a plain cardboard box that is sturdy enough for the toy to be shipped in. If you want Amazon to gift wrap it, they will. The receiver will only have to tear a tape seal, open the plain box, and maybe open a couple of baggies of small parts inside and be ready to play with the toy. No more plastic that you can't cut through or endless twist ties. You get to the goods much faster and, best of all, the minimal and mostly cardboard packaging is much more environmentally friendly.

Now, the CO2 emissions from shipping the toy across the country, the resources used to manufacture the toy in the first place, and the materials some of the toys are made of that ultimately need to be disposed of when the toy's life cycle is over are still not environmentally friendly. But it's a small step in the right direction. And because Amazon is leading the way, with their gigantic volume they have some weight to throw around in terms of pressuring toy manufacturers to get on board with this. My overly ambitious hope is that we'll see these plain boxes show up next at our local toy retailers...

So, if you must buy new toys for the holidays this year, please consider looking on Amazon for the ones with frustration free packaging. And if you want to do better than that, buy, swap, or hand-me down used toys which have no packaging at all, don't need to be shipped across the country, probably have a lot of life left in them, and the kids will enjoy them just as much!

I Vote for Extinction

You don't still use these, do you?

Learn More.

Front Yard Sorbet

For the past two years, I've enjoyed the deep red foliage and gorgeous white-pink blossoms of the plum tree in our front yard while merely stepping over the sticky stain blobs of the tiny plums it drops on the sidewalk. Never having an edible fruit tree before, I think we subconsciously assumed the plums were sour, toxic, or bad in some way. But this summer, since we've been in the rhythm of checking our garden for harvest-ready peas and tomatoes each day, I finally looked at the plum tree and really SAW the plums before they made it to the sidewalk and it dawned on me that we had no reason to believe the fruits were bad and had never even tested them.

I plucked just one off a branch, ate it, and waited around for a few hours ready to dial 911 if I started feeling poisoned or something. It was really juicy and sweet and I didn't die, so I commenced with Googling and unofficially identified that we are the owners of a "cherry plum" tree. Several websites dismissed these trees warning that cherry plums are not worth harvesting as they aren't much bigger than a cherry and their fruit clings to the pits. But I couldn't pass up the chance to pick and eat fruit with Turtle in our very own yard!

We got out the 6 foot ladder and took turns climbing up to reach the plums that we could. Unfortunately, many of them were still beyond my reach, so I would need some serious equipment if I ever really wanted to harvest them all. And many of them were already half eaten or fermented, bursting apart as we touched them. But eventually we had 20 or so good ones that we kept.

Since they were all pretty ripe and wouldn't last long and we didn't want to eat 20 plums that day, I decided we should make something out of them. Sorbet seemed summery and easy enough, so we looked at a few online recipes, rinsed the plums, and started to de-pit them.

Perhaps there exists some awesome technique or tool used for pitting cherry plums neatly. If so, please let me know. I just kind of ended up hacking them open with knives and then they'd nearly explode into a pulpy mess all over the cutting board. There was a lot of skin and juice all over the place and not much "meat" and it was really hard to get the meat off the pit. After trying a few different things, the easiest was to just hold a plum over a bowl and use my fingernails to kind of pull the pit out and just drop whatever was left behind into the bowl as juice dribbled down my arms. Very messy business and I was starting to understand the websites that said cherry plums aren't worth putting your energy into!

Here you can see what pitting 20 cherry plums gave us- less than a cup of juice and skins. I can't imagine how much work and mess it would have been to try to make a true quantity of sorbet.
Then we remembered that we had some leftover watermelon in the fridge, so we chopped that up and added it to bulk up our mixture. That went into a blender and then was strained to get the skins and seeds out. After straining, you can see that we only ended up with a little over a cup of stuff.

Meanwhile, I prepared a 1:1 sugar to water syrup on the stove. 1 cup sugar dissolved into 1 cup water allowed to boil for 30 seconds together. We added that directly to the fruit mixture. So, it ended up being 1 cup syrup to 1 cup fruit. Then a squirt of lemon juice, stirred it up, and put it in a container in the freezer. I have never made sorbet before. I have no idea if we needed the lemon juice, but most sorbet recipes had it. I have no idea if my ratio of syrup to fruit was right, because all of the recipes dealt with much larger quantities of fruit, used different ratios than each other, or said add syrup to taste. I had no idea if mixing watermelon and plum was a good idea and if our sorbet would taste any good at all, but we had fun making it, so I was happy with the experience.

The next day, we took out our nearly frozen solid chunk of sorbet and broke it up with a fork to make it fluffy, then put it back in the freezer for a couple hours. It looked gorgeous when we took it out after dinner:

Now, I'm no gourmet. It probably had too many ice crystals and maybe the sugar ratio wasn't quite right and so on and so forth. But it was really really yummy. Seriously yummy! Everyone loved it!

It was a lot of work and mess for a tiny bit of dessert, but it was even sweeter because we had used the fruits from our own tree and made it ourselves!

How My Garden Made Me Sick

Yesterday, I learned what bolting is.

Bolting: What my stomach contents wanted to do all afternoon and last night after eating a big salad for lunch made from the romaine I've been growing the backyard this summer.

We planted 4 each of romaine and red leaf lettuce from seedlings this spring for the first time and they both did beautifully, continuously producing scrumptuously crisp and tasty leaves for us to eat for the past month or so. Having no real experience with lettuce, I wasn't sure if I should cut a whole head and bring it in to the kitchen- would that kill the plant, would it resprout? So, I would just keep tearing only the leaves I needed for the day off the bottom of the head in the hopes that the center would continue producing. That plan seemed to work and I had fresh lettuce for sandwiches and salad every day for a long time. I signed up for the green salad at all the potlucks and we couldn't even begin to consume all of the lettuce we were producing with our little family of 3, one of whom won't eat lettuce.



Then a couple weeks ago I noticed that the romaine was suddenly growing tall instead of just bushy. It shot up a long stem between each set of leaves and kept stretching out its height. I had no idea what that meant but figured it signaled that the lettuce was moving on to some new phase of life and maybe wouldn't produce much longer. But I kept eating it and it tasted fine. Then the red leaf shot up flowers and when I mentioned it to friends they said "yeah, you can't let the lettuce go to seed". But no one could actually tell me why when I asked. So, I chopped off the flower stalk in the hopes that I could force the lettuce to keep producing leaves and kept eating it.

Yesterday I was thinking about how the lettuce plants were probably ready to reproduce and would soon stop making new leaves and would die, so I should enjoy them while I can, so I made this big salad for lunch from the romaine, which looked closer to death than the red leaf. AFTER I enjoyed my salad, I decided to finally look this up and try to understand more about growing lettuce. It was only after some searching and many more unexplained "you shouldn't let the lettuce go to seed" statements, that I finally found out what was going on.

It turns out that my lettuce has been bolting- that's the name for when it shoots up and puts out flowers to make seed. It's like it's trying to "leave" your garden. And that lettuce will naturally bolt after some time and you can't stop or reverse it, maybe just slow it down a little by cutting off its flowers like I did. And, more importantly, that as it bolts, it will start producing bitter compounds in the leaves and becomes inedible. And that sometimes it will bolt early if it's under stress- if it becomes too hot, too dry, too crowded. And that if you let it go to seed, you'll end up with seeds that you wouldn't want to plant because they have a tendency to bolt early or you'll end up with seeds scattered in your soil that will become lettuce weeds in other areas of your garden plot. And you shouldn't put the seeds in your compost for the same reason. And that people spend a lot of energy cultivating and taking care of strains of lettuce that last as long as possible before bolting and those are the best seeds to buy.

Well, it was nice to learn about how to garden lettuce after I had already gardened it. And really good to know about the bitter compounds after I had that big salad because then when an hour or so later I started feeling nauseated and that went on all day and all night, at least I knew why! I'm pretty sure I toxified myself slightly yesterday with my homegrown bolted romaine lettuce. But that's what I call hands-on learning!

We unceremoniously pulled all the lettuce up last night and plopped it in the compost pile. Moving on to other garden adventures...

The Sheer Ridiculousness of our Response to Environmental Disaster

This is really funny and really sad and really clever and really tragic and I just don't even know how to feel about it! I love the video and hate the reality. I'm having a hard time even facing what's going on with the bp spill.

I wish I didn't know what I do about the importance of wetlands, about marine ecosystems, about the persistence of crude oil, about how the effects of Valdez still aren't over and that this is potentially thousands of times worse, about all of the ramifications of our dependence on oil and the plastics, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, and other petrochemicals made from it, about how volunteers washing birds with dishsoap makes for nice news but is pointless because their habitat is gone or toxic enough to impact generations of their population, about how toxins biomagnify and move up the food chain, about how we don't even hear of the hundreds of marine mammals who've been killed, about how we cannot even begin to predict what all of the fallout will be from this spill in terms of lives cost, biodiversity losses, marine fishery collapse, impacts on food supply, the economy, the aesthetics of the region, the health impacts of rescue workers exposing themselves to toxic oil and its vapors for weeks on end...

It's CRUSHINGLY depressing. I have to not pay attention or my outrage and feelings of hopelessness will consume me. I have to just keep thinking about what I can do to play my part in creating the world I want to live in and I want my son to live in, moving forward from here...

Enjoying Shopping With A Toddler. Really.

As the rice paper wrapper melts in my mouth, I am reliving childhood. The sensations- the texture, the taste, just the look of the box awaken long quiet neural circuits. Botan Rice Candy.

The coolest part is that they are wrapped in rice paper, so you just pop them in your mouth and wait for that to melt before you eat the candy. I remember only getting these candies occasionally as a kid, that I thought they were really special. I feel like that's because my grandparents would bring them to Texas from LA or San Francisco. They certainly weren't stocked at the local Stop 'n Go, where we rode our bikes to get candy cigarettes and talk to teen clerk, Kermit (whom I always associated with the muppet). As Texans 30 years ago, we'd had our share of Chicle, but most things Asian were a novelty.

We picked up the rice candy today at Daiso, a Japanese everything store that's a couple of steps up from a 99 cents store, but cheaper and more fun to look around in than Target. Having Turtle home sick for the day, we browsed around just to entertain ourselves. He played with cutesy keychains, ceramic figurines, and wooden trains while I looked at garden supplies, stationery, and arts & crafts stuff. Then we each picked out a treat. I got the rice candy and he got Yan Yan.

Which took effort for me to cheerfully and without comment buy him. It is biscuit-like stick things that you dip in liquid vanilla "cream" which is actually, uh, ? I don't even want to read the fine print. The label does reassuringly say, though, that it "does not contain pig fat". I'm sure people all over the world enjoy Yan Yan all the time. It's just that I didn't even let him have so much as a single M&M until a few months ago and only then because they were already mixed into the trail mix.

We also scored some cat deterrents for the garden we prepped this morning. A couple of weeks ago we started some seeds in peat pots indoors and they are ready for transplanting. This morning we turned the soil in a small portion of the two as of yet unused by us raised beds in my backyard. But that was after we had to scoop out all the cat poop that had accumulated from neighborhood cats helping themselves to our giant litter boxes. We added compost, watered, and then set off on our errands.

We were happy to discover these plastic sheets of spikes that you cover your soil with and the plants can grow right through them. They had Japanese labels that were awkwardly translated to "Don't Cat!" Turtle expressed mixed feelings: "Mom, but then the cats will be hurt" but also "Yeah! Then those cats will not crap in OUR garden!" Which qualified as his first use of the word crap. Gotta note that in the baby book.

After Daiso, we wandered over to the German Bakery. Turtle selected a frosted shark shaped cookie and I enjoyed a slice of coffee cake so brimming with poppy seeds that I'm glad teachers don't get drug tested.

There's so many days when I have to squeeze in a trip to the store after an already long day to pick up something necessary and Turtle is whining and dragging his feet, arguing with me in the store, running away from me, or making us cross the store over and over for false alarm potty trips. Or days when you have multiple errands and every buckle and unbuckle of the carseat feels so tedious and you know everything it taking you three times as long as it would if you could just do it alone.

But today was really nice. We accomplished several necessary errands, he cheerfully walked along beside me, waited in line with me, browsed on his own without knocking things over and making a mess, let me take my sweet time looking at stuff by keeping himself occupied with something else down the aisle, and we talked and laughed together and pointed out funny or cute things to each other. Then we had ourselves a nice time at the bakery and Japanese treats to look forward to for later. It was the closest thing I've had to spending the morning shopping with a girlfriend in a long time. I'll take what I can get these days...

I'm so excited about our "Don't Cat!".

Complete Kitchen Remodel - Fast! and Free!

In a fit of annoyance earlier this year, I put our microwave on the floor in order to reclaim some precious counter space in our tiny galley kitchen.  It was kind of weird, but you know how you just get used to things.  We just bent down and put stuff in the microwave.  The bonus was the Turtle could reach it himself and got to have the official job of pressing the buttons.  When other people came over, they didn't quite know what to make of it, but whatever.  

I finally purchased this kitchen island and put it in the dining area to extend our kitchen counter.   

So now the microwave has a home along with the fruit bowls and cookbooks and I've got my workspace cleared.   I was so happy about this that I never even bothered to put anything inside the island yet.  When I went to open it to decide how to finally organize it, I found that Turtle had co-opted it and had been placing various toys in it.  (Oh, so that's where THAT's been!)  I had no idea.  

But yesterday I set about claiming my island, happily filling and organizing it, and then looked over and decided that Turtle's kitchen needed upgrading, too.  

First, I fashioned some stove-side utensil holders out of toilet paper rolls.  

Next, the oven was given a red-hot burner.  

I reused a gift bag decoration to add a vase of flowers above the sink, which is a giant lettuce container set into a cardboard box.  A small plastic bin is attached on the left to hold a sponge.  I can put a little water in this sink and it holds without leaking so Turtle can actually wash dishes in it.  The salad container pulls right up and out for dumping out.   

The sink itself was given a facelift.  Previously just a cardboard front, I cut cupboards in it for increased storage and covered it in reused wrapping paper.  

This up-ended diaper box had been divided with a shelf to make a crude pantry but never decorated.  I added a door to the bottom with rope handle, made from one side of a gift bag, to make a mini fridge and covered the wrest with leftover holiday wrapping paper.  

Turtle's kitchen is adjacent to mine, so he gets to use the hooks on my island for his canvas shopping bag, apron and pot holders.  The apron set was sewn by my sister and given as a xmas gift this year- cute, huh?  

Here's the "after" picture.  Turtle's kitchen is much brighter and cheerier now with all the colored wrapping paper and the flowers than the plain cardboard look it had before.  He has more storage with the utensil holders and under the sink cupboard and he gained a new appliance with the mini fridge.  All in all, not a bad remodel for 90 minutes of my time, a bunch of reused stuff that was lying around the house, and a lot of packing tape!  

He was so inspired that he set about making us a scrumptious meal.  Each person was served a variety of whole produce, eggs, and rigatoni.  Mmmm. Mmmm.  

This morning, Turtle told me he needed a kitchen timer.  So, now we have a play doh container decorated on the sides and with a printout of a real kitchen timer taped to the lid (Thank you, Google image search) and a large jingle bell inside so that when you shake it, the timer rings. As I write this, he is making me coffee with "spices and honey and milk and eggs".  This is his specialty, served in a reused fruit cup cup with half a plastic Easter egg sitting in it.  And muffins, which are play doh blobs in each hole of a mini muffin tin.  I am told that right now they are in the oven and we are waiting for them to "poof up".  

I love that he is working in his kitchen, using his imagination and creativity to prepare meals for us.  And I love that I get to use my imagination and creativity to make and improve his kitchen so that he can engage in this kind of play.  And I really love that I didn't buy and won't be someday getting rid of a $200 plastic play kitchen.  

Put Down That Knife

No, you only have to build a complex machine to cut the tops off, house it in a climate controlled factory, filled with other machines that dice them, soak them in preservative, mix them with peeled and diced oranges, drop them into a blend of juices, fraction the mix into machine extruded plastic bottles, cap them, label them, transport them to a retail grocer, purchase a bottle of it, drive it home, and unscrew a cap to eat them.    

Way easier.  

Now that people are recognizing that whole natural produce is and always was healthier than processed produce and even less recognizable foods created by food scientists, the poor processed food companies are left to craft strange marketing campaigns such as this one and this one in order to compete against regular old food.  

It's pretty pathetic.  

Apples' Brand Management

I know how to punctuate.  I'm not talking about the computer company.  I'm talking about the fruit.  I didn't think that apples needed brand management, but clearly I am behind the times.  Can you believe these ads I recently ripped out of magazines?  

It's definitely cooler to remove the healthy fiber from the apple, add preservatives, burn a ton of fossil fuels to process and package it, and then toss the packaging into a landfill.  Yup.  Way cooler than crunchy biodegradable old school apples.  And totally equivalent "servings" of fruit. Totally.  

Oh, yes, the "after" is definitely better on this makeover.  Makes the apples appear to be fried in trans fat.  Plus they must douse them in some awesome chemical to keep them from turning brown like old school apples do.  That's what makes them "fresh", because, you know, regular apples aren't "fresh".  

I understand that Capri Sun and BK are employing the best strategies they can to compete with readily available inexpensive healthy apples.  After all, you have to have a compelling reason to buy an apple from these corporations when you can get one from a backyard tree, farmer's market, or grocery store.  So, they've added value by making their form of apples seem "cooler" than the real ones.  

Just what we need is kids who expect and only enjoy apples that have been relieved of their peels, natural texture, and taste (since they are served with caramel dipping sauce).  Or that can be sucked through a straw from a shiny package.  

This reminds me of those anal-leakage inducing Olestra chips they used to have and all of the diet snacks that look and taste like candy bars.  Not to mention diet soda and such.  Way to train the brain to appreciate healthy food!  Eat chocolate bar looking things and chips and drink sweet tasting soda all day so that the only tastes and textures you enjoy are chocolate bars and chips and sweet tasting soda.  That will certainly go a long way toward helping you reduce inappropriate food cravings!  You never learn how to appreciate, enjoy, and even crave fresh veggies and fruits and less sweet foods because you never give body a chance to adjust to them.  It's all ridiculous!

OK, I'll get off my soapbox now.  Especially considering I polished off a diet soda earlier and I just blogged about my recent fast food "binge".  But, please, apples?  Aren't they already pretty cool the way that they are?  

The Fruits of My Labor

As the holidays approach, I often start thinking about craft projects to undertake.  I love being crafty, but sometimes this is my only craft "season". So as my family knows, from often being the recipients of my efforts, there tends to be one creative crafty project I actually complete per year.  This year's inspiration:  

The Pottery Barn fabric fruit set my son has.  And you thought organic produce was expensive!  This small pile of inedible produce was almost $40 after tax and shipping.  But it's been used and appreciated way more than anything else I could have possibly gotten with that $40 gift certificate to Pottery Barn.  I decided to make fabric fruit of my own for Turtle's cousin, who will be receiving a play kitchen for Christmas.  (It's so great that they are so young I can post what they are getting for Christmas on the internet and they'll still have no idea!)

A trip to Jo-Ann's scored me two $4.99 stacks of fabric squares in produce colors and a bag of stuffing.  I started drawing patterns for fruit sections on paper based on examining the fruit we already had.  I winged it, looking at the purchased fruit for help and realizing that the degree of curvature, length, width, and number of sections are what makes the difference between a fat tomato, small orange, and a slim banana.  

A little while later, I had an orange, banana, and tomato!  A bit lumpy, yes. Some accidental square-ish corners.  But I had the hang of it.  And, hey, I haven't used a sewing machine in about 5 years.  To make the fruit better than this, you have to sew very smooth curves with no angles in the seams from lifting the foot up and turning the fabric like I did.  And if I did it again, I would stuff them more so they would fill out and be firmer.  If I have time later, I plan to add leaves and stems and such, too.  But I was excited to move on and tackle strawberries.  

I found this great red fabric with black dots on it that reminded me of strawberries, some green for the leaves, the green ribbon the fabric squares came tied in for stems, and a little leftover quilting batting (from the last sewing project 5 years ago). I drew the pattern by thinking about a strawberry and decided it would need 3 panels.  Pottery Barn does not have strawberries, so I am very proud of myself that I did this one with no model.  

Here's the sewn and stuffed strawberries, awaiting finishing touches.  To make the leaves, I cut star shapes out of batting, then traced it onto the green fabric with one of those white sewing pencils.  Then I sandwiched the batting between two layers of green fabric, stitched along my tracing and cut just outside the seams.  It would be way easier to just use felt, but I was determined to not go back to the store.  So, this worked to make leaves that keep their own shape.  

Next was hand stitching green ribbon to the center of each star and then stitching the star to the top of the strawberry, closing the strawberry as I went.   

Here is the first finished strawberry!  It was labor intensive, but totally worth it.  I had so much fun and was so happy with the result that I made 5 more, 3 for each boy.  It took most of my day today to sit around doing 6 strawberries, but it was really relaxing for me as I almost never get to just focus on working with my hands. And, I could talk to my family while I did it, so it was better than doing almost any other type of work that I usually find myself doing that requires brain power and my full attention.

Aren't they cute!  Turtle and his cousin will each receive a delicious basket of strawberries for Christmas.  His cousin will also receive all the other fruit I make over the next few days.  It's a lot of fun to make the kids their toys instead of just buying them and to know how much fun they'll have playing with them.  This was also a great craft for a busy person like me who doesn't often get to take the time because the items are small. You get to design, plan, and sew, but you can finish one piece of fruit in less than 30 minutes if you know what you are doing. So there is a great feeling of satisfaction and no danger that you will leave the project 80% done for years like there would be if I tackled trying to sew myself a whole outfit or something.  

I also picked up some colorful doggie themed fabric squares and was thinking the next small items I could easily make would be bean bags for the kids.  Rectangles stuffed with rice or beans- how easy is that?!  And I was even thinking of trying to create a dog chew toy out of some old jeans denim for my brother's new puppy.  But I have to figure out how to sew the seams super strong so it won't fall apart right away.  I have some old jingle bells that maybe could go inside...  

Trying to Eat Locally

(Image Credit)

Since I posted my initial thoughts on eating locally and slowly, I have:

•finished reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
•visited 4 different local farmer's markets and actually asked questions regarding the locations of the farms and the farming practices instead of just shoving money in people's hands and walking away
•purchased almost solely organic produce
•slowed down in the supermarket thinking of the "Vegetannual" and considering which of the items for sale were actually in season locally before I purchased them, looked at the stickers and labels on produce and chose only those grown in my home state California, which I decided is my beginner's definition of "local". Mind you, I do understand that it being summer right now and California, it has been super easy for me to eat in season and locally. We'll see how winter goes...
•switched my family from processed high sugar flavored yogurt to plain organic yogurt and started a new breakfast habit of plain yogurt with fresh berries and organic granola. Everyone loves it!
•bought some grass fed steaks and grilled 'em
•got a haircut and a pedicure (OK, this has nothing to do with food, but Yay!, right?)
•bought a grass fed pork shank
•used my aging cookbooks and Google to try to determine what a shank is and how to cook one
•called my mom halfway through the cooking of the shank for emergency troubleshooting
•ruined the pork shank but cheerily attempted to masticate some of it with my family before tossing the rest, Omega 3's and grass fed premium down the drain
•bought cuts of meat from the meat counter in the supermarket for maybe the 7th time in my life
•attempted to have a conversation with the butcher about the geographic origins of the chicken I wanted to purchase
•realized the "butcher" was actually some college aged dude who didn't know anything:

Me: Hi! Do you know where this chicken comes from?
Butcher: Uh...I think all of our chicken is from Foster Farms
Me: So, where is Foster Farms? I mean, I know they are a huge national company, but where do they actually raise the chickens?
Butcher: I don't know.
(Then he walked out from behind the meat counter to the pre-packaged chicken area and started trying to read the Foster Farms labels, so I did, too, until he found one and shared with me that)
Butcher: Hey, here you go, it says "California Grown"

I'm pretty proud of myself for beginning to take seriously the quest for at least KNOWING where our food comes from and how its been treated before it gets to us. And for making the effort to discuss all of these ideas and issues about food with my husband, convincing a man who mostly views food as fuel and would rather not have to eat as it interrupts his day, to change his eating habits.

Now, I've also gotten busy and resorted to last minute processed foods and had a hard time keeping up with the frequent shopping that organic produce necessitates. But, at least we're giving it a go.

Next on my plate? I'm reading The Omnivore's Dilemma now. So, we'll see where that leads...

What's In Season?

(You can buy this vegetannual poster here.) 

The Vegetannual

I am currently relishing in reading Barbara Kingsolver's book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Today I sat in the park at toddler hour (10 am) without my toddler, drinking my chai, and reading about the mythical, metaphorical plant Kingsolver invented, the vegetannual. She invented this plant to help the horticulturally challenged have a handy dandy way of understanding which produce is in season throughout the year and why.

Somehow I have gained the knowledge that cherries and peaches are summer fruits and cranberries are in season in winter, I think? Winter is definitely squash, or is that fall? and a mango in January isn't normal. But I'm kind of shaky on the whole thing because for as long as I have been in charge of grocery shopping, I have gone to supermarkets that feature all produce almost all year round. I haven't gardened much, but I've tried a couple of times and remember that seed packets have maps and charts on the back telling you where things will grow and when to plant them. I know my old neighbors cucumbers were out last July. But, uh...okay that's about it for me.

Kingsolver reminds us that most of the produce we enjoy are annual crops of flowering plants. All flowering plants share a life cycle abbreviated as: winter seeds lying in ground waiting, spring sprout, shoots, leaves, buds, flowers, pollinate, fruits, store extra energy as tuber, root, or bulb, seeds lie dormant until it starts over again next spring. All of the annual plants are growing roughly across the same growing season between frosts, but since we eat different parts of different plants, different produce items will be in season at different times. So, depending of course on latitude and climate and length of season for the particulars, the basic sequence of produce that is in season in any given place will follow that life cycle. Think about it this way: lettuces are leaves, peaches are fruit, beets are tubers. Meaning, lettuce will be in season first in the spring, peaches next in the summer, and beets toward the very end of the growing season in late fall. Isn't this brilliant?! Something I can understand and easily remember.

Kingsolver's explanation is much more award winning author than mine, so I invite you to read an article adapted from her book called "Stalking the Vegetannual".

Think Globally, Eat Locally

Now all this talk of in season, out of season is related, of course, to the travels of our food. You can't eat an out of season cherry unless it is in season somewhere else in the world at that moment, which means that someone is shipping it across great distances to you.

Some years ago, I became more aware of the distances that foods travel and the ecological impact that has and I began to read the signs and stickers at the grocery store that told me where my grapes and bananas were coming from. A handful of times I even decided not to buy something because it came from too far away and lately I've tried looking for locally produced labels when I have a choice. But most of the time, I just buy what we're in the mood for, the recipe calls for, or what strikes my fancy when I see it. And although I've been to the farmer's market on and off over the years, it has been more of a fun weekend outing than a serious way of providing food for my household. For sure we are snacking on out of season crude oil dependent tropical transports most of the time and giving it no regard.

Kingsolver's book asks the reader to give some regard to this. I will probably look further into the Slow Food Movement and groups like Locavores. I might revisit the idea of joining a local CSA. I've looked into it several times, but never taken the step. I might at the very least try to frequent the farmer's market more often. I might stop buying out of season foods and try to find recipes for the in season ones. But, herein lies the rub for me...

I believe in this issue and agree with it, but being non passionate about gardening, food shopping, meal planning, cooking, and all things related, I'm not finding an inner fire to get me actually making big changes on this one. And I fear that plus becoming used to being able to get all produce all the time is going to make it hard for a lot of us to do the right thing when it comes to sticking with local food.

Change takes time, though. So, at least understanding the vegetannual and thinking about it when I shop is a good first step!

Further Food For Thought

If our historical relationship to food and the ecological impact of agriculture interest you, I also recommend reading anything written by Michael Pollan or Vandana Shiva.

Two Steps Forward...

You may recall me complaining about what I perceived to be the precocious push toward ____________at my son’s daycare. I don’t know what to call it. It’s, you know, when people feel the need to show their affection through sugary treats and junky toys, but it’s not even necessarily true affection because it’s more of an obligatory recognition of mostly meaningless consumerism holidays. Mothers of two year olds stuffing every child’s cubby holes with from-China-to-the-landfill “goodies” and stuffing their tummies with high fructose corn syrup. (Is there a word for that?)

I asked for advice on how to handle the situation, given my misgivings about it and was wholeheartedly told to stick to my guns and do what I believed in. So, for Turtle’s 2nd birthday, when I was reminded that I was welcome to bring something to school for a special celebration, I declined. When I was then asked whether I minded if the teachers created their own special celebration for him, I happily welcomed them to do so, as long as the focus was friends and fun, rather than unhealthy food.

I was happy with the result. They created a construction paper birthday “crown” for him to wear all day and at morning snack presented him with a banana with candles to blow out after they sang Happy Birthday. And there were somebody’s leftover monkey patterned napkins. 

That's it.  No cake, no crap, just a fancy banana.  We picked him up and his eyes were still sparkling under his crown from the excitement of being the center of attention for much of the day. Score one for us!

A few weeks later, I was reading the parent newsletter they send home and saw this:  


Now, I never even said anything to anyone, so I can take no credit for this policy change, but who cares? Score two!

Then we were out sick for a few days and apparently missed someone else’s second birthday. We returned to find --- (cue dramatic music) --- a goody bag in our cubby. And, to add insult to injury, it wasn’t some kind of hand crafted goody bag filled with thoughtfully selected items. I didn’t know this, but you must be able to just go to the party stores and purchase pre-made and sealed goody bags, every molecule of which are covered with licensed characters, which just personally annoys me.

When you are just shoving impersonal “gifts” in everyone’s box, including people who aren’t even able to attend the celebration, what is the point? And how am I supposed to respond? Do I need to thank you? What is the etiquette? I’m sure that if you are the person who bought these goody bags and brought them I sound really ungrateful and bitchy and overly righteous. And you were just wanting to do something fun and cute for your kid and their friends.

But we just don’t see eye to eye. I don’t appreciate having to accept the stuff and bring it into my home, which I am constantly trying to de-clutter. I don’t appreciate my son getting used to the idea that he will get gifts all the time from everyone or begging to have the junk that’s in the bag even though it might be unsafe to play with or I don’t want him to eat it. And I feel guilty just throwing away the bag directly, even though I truly don’t want it, because it seems like such a waste. Of course the real waste is that a pre-sealed goody bag was ever even created in the first place! Aaahhh, don’t get me started…

Well, at least the POLICY is that goody bags are banned.

Mid-Life (Shoe) Crisis

OMG! I really never thought I'd blog about this, and I feel like SUCH a girl, but I've been drooling over the website of a shoe company I discovered over the weekend for the past hour.

I was in Nordstrom on Sunday, trying in vain to buy myself a pair of cool, funky, just for fun heels, because why not?, dammit! I have been on a slippery slope toward more and more responsible shoes for the past decade or so, limiting myself to that which is necessary, comfortable, a good deal, matches multiple outfits, etc.

I walked around and looked at EVERY solitary pair of shoes in the giant women's shoe dept at Nordstrom and could not find a single pair that turned me on. I left shoeless and with a gift card I've been needing to use still burning a hole in my pocket.

Earlier that day, I had driven 30 min away to check out a vintage clothing store that I read an article about. I poked around and wasn't as impressed as I'd hoped based on the journalistic exaggerations of the article and felt badly for emitting so much CO2 to drive to the place as I headed for the exit. Then I saw them.


The T.U.K. "tattoo" heels.

And a bunch more cool shoes lined up next to them. Something inside me stirred. A deeply buried memory of days gone by, platforms, Doc Martens, fishnets, Mary Jane's. Neurons fired, epinephrine oozed. I remembered coveting and enjoying cool shoes.

My high school best friend, sister, and I used to drive from San Antonio to Austin to visit an old house-cum-retail-shop called Atomic City. It was a pilgrimage for cool shoes. Anticipation ran high opening the door to find out which funky rebel shoes had come in, shipped from the UK! (extra cool factor) for our wearing pleasure.

I'll never forget the purple 10-hole Docs I wore to death in high school. 

Or my sister's banana yellow patent leather ones that became her trademark.


We were the few, the proud, the punks. We had to take road trips to freaky dive shops to find our shoes.

A few years later, they started importing Docs to Journeys at the mall and it was downhill from there. Eventually, even the department stores picked them up and they had officially become mainstream. Boring people starting wearing them. Parents didn't mind them. Yawn.

I moved on to skater shoes (yes, that's me, in a former life), chunky platforms, Vans, then adulthood came and slowly turned my collection brown and black and navy instead of purple, patent leather, and skull covered. Sensible low rubber heels instead of 4" platforms. The only mary jane's I have now are made by Keen and are a hippie-pleasing earthy tan suede.


Don't get me wrong. I appreciate all manner of shoes. And I'm partial to Simple Shoes in particular for their eco-ethics, Keen, Teva, and all those other REI-ish, granola shoes and the lifestyle they represent.

But, come on. They aren't wild crazy different out there sexy subculture shoes. They aren't shoes your parents don't want you to wear.

If I order a pair of shoes from T.U.K., what will I wear them with? My wardrobe matches my current blah shoes. Where will I wear them to? I go from work to grocery store to park playdate to home. My nightlife is sitting in pajamas drinking tea checking email before bed by 10 pm.

F*&# it! If I have to wear them to the playground, I will! 

I HAVE to have cool shoes again!

Sanjay

This is 6th in the Earth Week 2008 series.  

Sanjay- I don't know what to say!  You've been outgoogled.  Finding you online is the proverbial needle in they haystack because a certain famous someone has got your name.  

Here you are in the car on our trip to SF a few years back.  A group of us went up to participate in the UN's World Environment Day International Student/Youth Forum.  It was so cool to be a participant in a workshop facilitated by you.  I love role reversals!  

You were a star at PR, shameless with a video camera or onstage with a bullhorn.  Our Healthy Foods and Recycling Campaigns were so successful because of your creative and tireless promotion.   Oh how I wish I had one of those VHS to laptop converters so I could share your recycling videos with the world.  But you are safely protected from embarrassment by old school tech.  Actually, I know a place that could convert it for me...hmmm... 

What has the infamous San-man been up to since then?  I wish I knew.