Long time, no cucumbers

It's been a long time since I updated this blog and I am sorry. Not for you, whoever you are, since I don't know if anyone is even reading this. But I am sorry for myself, because this blog is about a subject I feel rather passionately about, and I want to think these thoughts and have these ideas and this is my place for that.

But the thoughts are, nonetheless, still here in my head, so let me share a bit.

Since my last update I have read Michael Pollan's Food Rules, Lou Bendrick's Eat Where you Live, Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Alisa Smith and JB Makinnon's Plenty, and Nick Rosen's Off the Grid (among other reads, of course. These are just the one's most relevant to this blog.) We grew, ahrvested, and eventually (accidentally) killed several cucumber and cherry tomato plants. But the worm bin has been thriving and the compost mixer is, well, composting (though we haven't harvested the compost since we're using more as a waste management system than as a tool for the final product so we're still regularly adding more "garbage" to it).

I still haven't perfected all my advanced planning and occasionally find myself making unexpected trips to the supermarket and stuck either using plastic or buying new reusable bags each time (thus our huge collected of cloth bags at home). But I went to the store yesterday and remembered to bring the cotton mesh produce bags for the first time.

We're still cloth diapering, of course, though we need to expand our stash since we find ourselves running through all the diapers within three days then stuck with disposables for one day while the diapers are getting washed and dried (we sun-dry which saves energy but takes longer than a dryer. But the best part is that, as a result of all the sun bleaching, there is not a single stain on any of our diapers. Nearly two years of two babies in cloth with no stains, not bad I think!)

But all of the above has pretty much become second nature to us now. our biggest challenge is to keep up with our interest in buying only blue and white, ie, local. We are defining local not bu how long it takes to drive (not that we have a car anyways) nor by mile radius (since that would include a fair bit of Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea), rather by the borders of Israel.

So what is grown here? The answer is, a lot. The problem is, a lot of it is grown for export. And some staples just aren't grown here at all. We're not going to be as strict as they are about it in Plenty, but I'd like to at least do the research and see what is available. Rumor has it there are places in the country where they grow wheat and produce flour locally. The best part is due to our overall mild climate there are very often fresh produce year-round. Even tomatoes! Yes, you can buy the supermarket version, picked green and gassed to ripen after long storage. But we get ours farm fresh.

Our other big consideration now is to face the ethical dilemma. Dairy, poultry and fish (the only "meat" my husband eats, but both my kids and I are vegetarians, though not vegans), end eggs. We must research how they are raised, which/what we choose to buy, where we will get it from, etc. It's not a step I look forward to but, like when I gave up fish (the only thing I missed as a vegetarian, but knew I had to give up eating if I really did choose vegetarianism for moral purposes), I know it's necessary.

There's more I want to say about vegetarianism, especially after reading Kingsolver's book, but that will have to wait till my next update. For now I am going to pout my computer aside, open my book and finish my (delicious sweet potato, black lentil and goat cheese) salad that I bought as a treat to celebrate the first time in months that I am taking an hour to sit by myself at a cafe and eat a leisurely lunch.

Worm bin update

Circle of life

So our compost mixer has attracted flies (mostly our fault, since we didn't have a good ratio of greens to browns, about to be rectified now that we have borrowed my parents' paper shredder and all my old bank statements are about to be composted). With flies come maggots. Neither are really all that bad, I mean the bin is outside so the flies aren't a real problem and the maggots do help the food stuff decompose faster. The bigger problem is that there are so many maggots they fall out of the bin by the dozens every time we turn it. Gross, I know. So I set a sheet of cardboard with a large aluminum tray underneath the bin and now the maggots fall into that. But the best part is every hour or so the tray starts rustling and it turns out the birds have figured out that the tray contains free food. So the birds are eating the worms that are eating out garbage that is being tuned into compost. The circle of life indeed.

The update

Wow has time gotten away from me! I really didn't mean to go this long without any new posts. I guess right now I'll do some quick updates, and hopefully soon write some more thought-provoking posts.

Our compost bin(s) are up and running. The worms seem to be doing well and our mixer is filling up. I think soon we'll have to stop adding new items and leave it alone for a few weeks to really get cooking. We talked about what we'll do during that time and I think we'll try to save our compostables and make weekly trips to a local compost pile to dispose of them. What we discovered the last few weeks is that the majority of our waste is compostable, and since we've started these bins we've reduced our garbage output to about two bags a week, sometimes even less, down from a bag every other day or so, and actually daily during the weekend, when I cook more.

In other news, I've been very good about not accepting plastic bags at stores. I think I've only taken three in the last month: one when I bought a can of Raid (not very eco-friendly, I know, but that was before I discovered how effective peppermint castille soap is at killing ants) and wanted to separate it from my other food shopping, the other two times accidental by only realizing after I left the store that I didn't leave the bag. But I still carry my own shopping bag with me everywhere I go and a member of my synagogue sent out this link, which is something I have been looking for and am very excited about getting.

Let's see, what else. Oh, the gardening is moving along. The tomato and cucumber seeds have sprouted very nicely and it's time to repot them. The swiss chard seeds I tried never sprouted which is very disappointing since I really adore chard, but I am trying again. Our lemon tree is growing nicely though it has been infested with ants a couple of times. Some peppermint spray and a water moat around the base of the planter seem to have taken care of that (though they have since moved into our kitchen, yuck!)

Eating local has been going fairly well. It's really not hard once you get used to it. We do make exceptions, like if we want something that just is not grown/produced locally at all (like coconut milk). But overall it has kept us healthier I think since a large proportion of imported items are highly processed (like macaroni and cheese). We did cheat the other day and bought a box of Snyders sourdough pretzels. What can I say, no one's perfect.

That's about it for now. More to come!

Hot stuff

Thanks to our food scraps plus a pile of dead straw from someone's curbside and several generous handfuls of grass from the yard, the new composter is filling up nicely and now it needs to get cooking. It does seem to be getting warmer in there though it could just be that it's a black barrel on a hot day in a sunny porch. But hopefully it'll start steaming soon and then I'll know something is really happening.

I know the cycle will be starting over continuously as we add more waste, since we have no intention of getting another mixer and alternating, bit seeing as the compost itself isn't the whole goal then it really doesn't matter. As the material breaks down we can take out handfuls of compost, sifting through for whatever needs more time and using what we get, as we get it, on the plants.

Speaking of which, it's looking like some of my sprouts are ready for re-potting. I think it;s the chard though ti may possibly be the cucumber, and the tomatoes sprouts are on their way.

I love looking out the window and seeing the colorful cloth diapers hanging in the warm sun like Tibetan flags, the composter making fertilizer, the amaryllises nearly blooming, al with the backdrop of the city's main industrial zone. We're really our own little urban paradise here. At least, we;re on our way.

Happy birthday to you

I finally got my birthday present...er, five and a half months late.

Today my husband gave me this!

Updates to follow!

Little green bag

I recently swore off plastic bags. I've often carried my own bag around, and have a collection of cloth bags that we use for large shopping trips. But now I'm off plastic bags for good. I have a cute little fold-up bag I keep in my purse at all times for those unexpected shopping trips and if it's not enough, I just buy a cloth bag from the supermarket rather than take plastic.

Today, for example, I made two unplanned stops. In the first store I declined their bag and stuffed everything in my purse and whatever didn't fit I just carried. In the second I bought their green bag (literally, it's green) for my groceries. We have a growing collection of them at home but they get used for everything; just this morning I emptied the laundry into one when I couldn't find an available basket.

Plastic bags really frustrate me. Now that I'm making a point never to accept them in stores I've started to realize how little thought the average consumer puts into them. And it's not even just at checkout; you use plastic in the produce aisle (do you really need to bag your cucumbers?), every time you buy individual serving sizes (is it really that hard to spoon out your yogurt from a larger tub?), and each time you buy pre-packaged (why get your chicken all wrapped in plastic in a styrofoam tray instead of having the butcher give you the fresher, prepackaged cuts?)

Just some food for thought.