I've Been Thinking...

Recently I've been thinking about the wisdom of radical behavior.  On the one hand, it is far easier for me to theoretically stick to something 100% than to let myself have room for error.  Because when I think to myself, ok, you don't have to ONLY eat sustainable meat, then it quickly becomes a slippery slope.  And soon enough I'm buying 3 lbs of bacon, 3 lbs of sausages, and going to Popeye's.  So much for the quarterly report!

The problem is, while I can easily live with myself radically, I don't want to end up as a hermit foraging alone in the mountains, drinking my own distilled pee.  After all, I think happiness comes from those you surround yourself with, not just the ideals you hold yourself to.  But at the same time, when I want to throw an impromtu BBQ for biking down from San Francisco to Menlo Park, the fact of the matter is, my roast/braise meat CSA is not BBQ friendly.  The 3 lbs of sausages or chicken we picked up were far more popular and cheaper than the $40 slab of goat Pumpkin caltrained down. 

Don't get me wrong though, my diet has significantly changed, and the way I feed people has significantly changed.  While I'm discussing 3 lbs of sausage, we only used a fraction of the package.  The rest is stored safely in my freezer.  I only cooked 3 whole, out of desperation to eat sooner since everything else was being cooked from scratch.  That includes pizza dough, tomato sauce, lemonade, and butchering the chicken into proper pieces.  

And while we can debate the merits of having a BBQ in the first place, with it's emissions spewed directly into the atmosphere, I wouldn't have changed things for the world.  7 friends in the kitchen and in the garage (the theme being food AND bikes), cooperating to make a beautiful meal, which we then sat outside and enjoyed.  Beautiful indeed.

The Beginning- Quarterly Report

When I started this blog in the beginning I made a few [overly-ambitious?] promises that I wanted to update you on.  

#1 Pledging to buy only sustainable meat, B-.  Technically I could call this a win.  After all, for meat I'm cooking with, I've gone 100% sustainable.  Some parts were hard, such as  staring at the Monterey Aquarium seafood guide for each and every seafood choice (often so confusing I have to leave it for another day so I can cross reference the internet).  Some parts easy, such as with beef/lamb/goat because the CSA provides plenty.  We actually have leftovers from month to month!  But technicalities aside, I have to admit I cheat when dining out.  Popeye's Tuesday $.99 for 2 pieces deal still slips into my diet about once a month and I can't deny my popularity.  As for the temptress bacon, there has been some clever accounting where I'll host a eating-party and keep leftover bacon that somebody else has bought (this happened once, maybe twice).  Tsk, tsk.

On the other hand, there has been so much real improvement.  On Monday I inadvertently made a recipe from a vegetarian cookbook for rice and beans.  Certainly the pre-sustainable cow me (the mad cow me, if you will) would have recoiled in disgust.  Instead, I added a serving of beef, home-made tortillas, and wished for more vegetables (we had missed the farmer's market that week).  And when I say serving, I mean the USDA serving size, a mere 5 ounces.  I can distinctly remember scoffing at the equivalent visual (a deck of cards) in college.  These days it's totally natural.  I can even spend lunches without meat, without a problem.  Life is all about progress.  

#2 Seriously scrutinizing labor concerns of purchases, A.  This one was new but has been relatively easy.  Like I mentioned during my shameless plug for Rainbow Grocery, I loved that they paid their staff a living wage.  Marin Sun Farms is a small family farm.  I talk to the farmer's I buy from at the farmer's market (although admittedly, I mainly just ask for prices).  Even Costco has amazing labor practices, their cashiers get paid over $20/hr.  If I can't find a place where I trust their labor standards, I don't go in.  Sometimes this means waiting for the next farmer's market, but most times, I've planned better than that.

As for non-consumable purchases, well, my big purchase in 2 months was $11.91 in computer parts.  After that, another $18.39 for Aviator sunglasses, the only non-consumable part of our Valentine's Day extravaganza.  It was definitely out of convenience too, Pumpkin had forgotten her already old and beat up sunglasses and we were due for a lot of biking that weekend.  And I suppose it doesn't hurt that I find Aviators hot.  

#3 Pledge to take public transit/carpool/bike, A-.  This one was old and easy to continue. The more I bike, the more routes I discover and the more I remember where the hills are.  Google Maps now provides a bike routes.   Amar does it with grade, in the city.  Livestrong with a point and click style route planner, elevation, and time estimate.  And calories too, if that's your thing.  Public transit, whether Caltrain, VTA or MUNI provides an excellent supplement.  As does carpooling!  Even I was surprised that I could minimize my driving down even more.  I literally can't remember the last time I drove alone.  I can remember my last carpool though!

#4 Eliminate waste from my life, A.  This mandate suffers from vagueness but I'm calling this one a victory too.  From reducing water waste to eliminating food waste, this one is my favorite (and probably Pumpkin's bane).  What can I say, I love efficiency =).

Friday Friendsday (R+J)

While visiting my good friends R + J to start an early morning ski trip, I discovered they had soundly trumped my navy shower. Even in the haze of the wee morning hours, I knew this genius must be publicized!  So henceforth, Fridays are now the realm of my amazing friends and their equally amazing green conquests.  Friday Friendsday!

I had told R about my navy showers/water saving antics a while back and in response he engineered this:

This seeminly inocuous assortment of tubes and wires is a homemade pump system.  R+J's shower is now a resevoir for water, they've put the stopper in and take showers with slightly cold feet. Instead of going down the drain, the grey water is used for flushing toilets and washing laundry.

To do this, R simply bought a pump, which activates upon being dropped into the shower water.  It then pumps water out of the shower and through the clear tube.  The clear tube can be connected to either the low flush toilet toilet (shown below) or the washing machine.  Not too shabby for <$20!  And the tube usually stays connected to the toilet because it has it's own resevoir. As a low flush toilet, the tank actually holds enough water for multiple flushes.  Truly genius.

Hats off to R+J!

Rainbow Grocery

If you are lucky enough to have the AT&T phonebook in SF (or to find 10+ untouched in front of a neighboring apartment building), then you can find yourself 20% off coupons for each odd month, except November.

Rainbow Grocery is a worker owned co-operative and it's truly a hippie dippie store.  You have staff that is paid a living wage, local and organic choices, and daylight harvesting (a mysterious and large contraption which almost eliminates the need to use electricity during the day).  You have bulk bins and no meat (*gasp*).  And by bulk bins, I mean rows and rows of beans, pasta, rice, flour (who knew there were so many?), nuts, and cereal.  Unriviled.  Then there are the bulk buckets which have tasty delights such as peanut butter.  Ooo, don't forget the bulk oils or beauty products.  We always bring our own bags/jars, which means a $.05 discount/bag, but more importantly, no waste.  Which I suppose is why I forgave them for not selling meat (and somewhat hypocritically still selling dairy).  

Bounty!

But the lack of meat doesn't really matter, because Rainbow is for non-perishables.  My meat comes from the meat CSA (pick up tonight!! Woooo!), produce and eggs from the farmer's market.  But those pesky carbs that Pumpkin enjoys so much is the realm of Rainbow.  So yesterday, with coupon in tow, I spent $28 on walnuts, rice, black beans, brown sugar, tahini, and rice milk (somebody is also lactose intolerant).  Enough to last...at least a month (see picture below).  The bulk of the purchase were walnuts for a pricy $7.59/lb (on sale from $10.09).  Although with coupon it was technically $6.07/lb, that is also technically the price sustainable meat.  I know which one I rather have, but since Pumpkin puts walnuts in a very tasty homemade granola and bread (why she doesn't substitute this with some STEAK is beyond me), I suppose it is more than okay =D.

The most exciting purchase (the realm of Rainbow is expansive and exotic) was bulk tahini (which I shoveled into my own jar) for hummus.  But then I realized, after opening my bean bags, that I had managed to shovel two bags of black beans instead of one bag of black beans and one of garbanzo.  *Sigh,* not quite a true hippie.