The Trashy American

Hey guys! I know I’ve been totally M.I.A. I’ve started a new job that is a ton of fun, but I’m finding that when I get home from a long day of work, the last thing I want to do is sit in front of a computer. I frequently go entire weekends without flipping open my laptop. So, needless to say, not a lot of blogging going on. C’est la vie.

But I stumbled on something interesting & relevant recently and thought I’d share:

That’s Not Trash, That’s Dinner

Enjoy!

Hope you’re all well and savoring the last days of summer.

Lots going on since I last reported on the State of the Garden.

R.I.P.:

“Appletini” Mint: Contracted some sort of nasty mold and died post haste.

Radishes: Produced very few specimens in spite of an amazingly lush growth spurt.  What little it did yield was way too spicy, besides. I think I’m done with these.

Peas, mostly: We harvested a couple dozen pods of yummy little petit pois, but I think my slug-chewed vines have given up at this point. I’m going to try a different set-up next year.

I made some paella for a belated birthday celebration for my mom last weekend and included some of our garden peas supplemented with a bunch of shelling peas from the farmer’s market.

Slugs: Although they did some damage, I drowned a significant amount of them in my beer traps. Those things work!

Among the living:

Daylilies. These took a while, but man were they worth the wait! They do a lovely job of camouflaging our building’s cement foundation and add some color to the container garden area.

Clockwise from bottom left: peppers, lettuce, more peppers (a little munched-upon, but ok), Swiss chard, more lettuce. I can’t believe how much lettuce we’ve been getting in spite of the heat! I read that they would bolt and go bitter, but ours have been sprouting happily after each “haircut.” We actually had a whole salad (two portions’ worth) of these tonight, and they were delicious!

Tomatoes: As long as I remember to water them daily, all of our tomato plants seem quite happy on the deck. I think they get plenty of sunshine during the day, and being in pots seems to keep the pests at bay for the most part. We’ve got about 6 different varieties, none of which I know much about, so it’ll be exciting to see them ripen when they do. I’d estimate a couple weeks to go for the little guys, maybe more for the bigger ones.

I keep looking back at earlier pictures of my garden, and even though I know it’s perfectly normal, I can’t help being amazed by how much things grow in the summertime. It’s especially impressive after a long, dark winter.

Are you growing a summer garden? How’s it looking?

Our deck has been sadly devoid of a reasonable dining solution this summer, which means that when we grill out, we have to trudge back up the stairs to the kitchen afterward to eat.

But! On trash day last week, as we were coming home from the gym, I spied a solution:

I was smitten. Especially considering the price tag.

Mr. Bear pointed out that this is “indoor” furniture. It may or may not hold up to the elements. But I pointed out that it’s also free furniture, and if we only get a season or so out of it, it still gets more life than it would have had it gone straight to the dump, which is where it was headed.

I am hoping to pop by our local hardware store this weekend to ask some questions about varnishing/water repellent stains. Any suggestions?

Hey guys! Again with the truancy. I know, I know. My excuses? Fireworks! Ice cream cones! Lazy bike rides by the beach! When I am on vacation, I really do unplug.

Also, some pretty exciting news. I am finishing up work at my current job (and have thus been kept rather busy lately: yep, more excuses) and starting a new one in a week and a half. I couldn’t be more excited to tackle new challenges and hone my skills in a fun, fast-paced environment. I am not sure exactly what effects my new schedule/job will have on my posting around here, but I suspect I won’t be quite as prolific as I have been in the past. I will continue to post anything I’m doing or thinking about that’s relevant to ZW as well as anything exciting I come across elsewhere, in terms of news, ideas, stories, tips, etc. about Zero Waste.

Now. To the topic at hand.

We have been out of town for the last two weekends, and so grocery shopping has not occurred with regular frequency. We also haven’t been eating up leftovers as well as we normally do, and to be honest, even in a normal month I throw away more spoiled food than I would like to admit.

In fact, I’m beginning to suspect that this is the single largest area of “waste” in my home right now. Obviously time to tackle that.

Yesterday I cleaned out the fridge completely, tossing anything no longer edible and reorganizing so nothing can hide from me (muahaha.)

Now my goal for the rest of this month: no wasting food. Which means: not making more than we can eat, not forgetting about things until they go bad, and not buying things that we can’t finish in a reasonable time frame. Also: finding new uses for things that would otherwise spoil.

Easier said than done, I can tell you now. But I’m gonna try my dangdest! (And let you know how it goes.)

Here are some great posts/sites re: avoiding food waste if you’re interested:

Iron Chef Your Leftovers (via Lifehacker)
Love Food, Hate Waste
How to Avoid Throwing Away Food (from Make Wealth History)

My favorite quick tip from the above? Buy produce at staggered levels of ripeness: a few ready to go, a few that need a couple days. That way by the time you eat the ripe ones, the unripe ones are ripe. I did this yesterday with avocados!

Other important tricks include: learning “kitchen sink” recipes, finding uses for stale food and freezing or canning abundant produce.

How about you? Do you find yourself throwing away more food than you care to admit? Do you have strategies for remembering to use up what you have? Let’s hear ‘em!

I thought when I started this project that I needed to do it 100%. Maybe 110%. To pinpoint every single opportunity to cut down on waste and go all-out. After all, Zero Waste is an absolute, right? It means I have to make zero. waste.

This dog is not concerned with perfection. And she is definitely not Zero Waste.

I started to realize pretty early on, though, that taking this project to the nth degree could easily drive me nuts (not to mention poor Mr. Bear, who definitely did not sign up for this on purpose…) The idea of going ZW probably appealed to me in the first place because of my fairly intense nature. But I have realized that I’ve got to just let it go sometimes, or it will start being a burden rather than a cause for daily mindfulness.

And that’s exactly what I want it to be! For me, and for you if you’re doing a similar project. I am not going to achieve a perfect Zero Waste lifestyle. I read No Impact Man. That dude was committed, but there were still things he couldn’t avoid (and in the end, things that he chose not to avoid.) In other words, even were I to say to myself: “I’m going to do this completely and perfectly”… I would fail. And that would take all the fun out of it for sure.

So instead I have come to approach this with balance in mind. Whenever I am faced with options, I do my best to make the ZW choice, if it exists.

I’d say I succeed about 90% of the time. The other 10%? Well, I still buy cheese in a plastic wrapper, because I love cheese and I haven’t found a grocery store convenient to my home that will let me have cheese without the plastic. If and when the opportunity to make that change presents itself, I will happily hop on it. In the meantime, I enjoy my cheese and don’t feel (too) guilty about the packaging.

One of the truly amazing things about this project, and I’ve mentioned this before but I really feel like it bears repeating, is how a few relatively minor adjustments have so dramatically reduced our waste output. Between the compost bin and shopping in bulk, we have easily cut back on 80% of our waste. Another 10% comes from educating myself about environmental impact so I can make wiser choices when it comes to consumption and disposal. It’s amazing how quickly it’s become a simple, low-stress part of my life. I think about ZW every day, definitely, but I don’t have to spend a whole lot of mental energy on it anymore. It’s become as much a part of my life as brushing my teeth.

Does this photo have anything to do with this post? No. But Simon and Ceci turned 1 this week. Happy Birthday little monsters!

Another really cool thing is that the ZW movement seems to be gathering steam right now, and I’m starting to feel like there is a critical mass of people interested in cutting down on waste. I posted about the new ZW grocery store that just opened up in Austin earlier this week, and I have to tell you that that little piece of news has made my whole week a little brighter.

It has made me feel better about falling short of perfection, because I really do think that if a bunch of us put some real effort in, going ZW (or getting really close!) will get that much easier. And that is a wonderful thing for everybody.

What about you? Do you struggle with perfection? Do you find it hard to do something if you can’t do it 100%?

Last week was crazy, mostly in the best of ways. My apologies for the radio silence over here. Here are ten (mostly) fun things I did during my truancy:

1. Pupsitting for this Triumverate of Cuteness

2. Eating Fresh-Caught Cape Cod Clams

3. Killing Slugs & Drinking Beer for Breakfast

4. Harvesting Baby Lettuces & Radishes from My Garden

5. Spying the First Budding Tomato of the Season…

6. And the First Daylily Stalks!

7. Reading Cookbooks & Avoiding Novels

(Clear winner of this stack: Anthony Bordain’s Les Halles Cookbook, which I read in the car on the way down to the Cape and which instantly made me snarkier and snobbier than ever before.)

Also (not pictured):

8. Eating Butternut Crunch Ice Cream

9. Seeing Bridesmaids

(Am I the only human who thought this movie was abysmal?)

10. Grilling in the Rain

(Food was yummy. We were clammy.)

How was your week? Did you get around to any quintessential summer activities?

Check it out:

Packaging-Free Grocery Store to Open in Austin.

The in.gredients site.

This actually happened on Friday, but I got too drunk to write about it. (Just kidding!)

The post might alternately be titled “How to Murder the G-D Slugs that Haunt Your Dreams and Destroy Your Garden, Zero-Waste Style.”

So I’ve mentioned the slugs before.

They are getting worse, as might be expected, given that the weather is (slowly) heating up and it has been raining constantly in Massachusetts.

I had a busy morning at work on Friday, and didn’t manage to consume my usual bowl of granola. At lunchtime, I went outside to do some quick weeding and staking, only to discover that my poor scarlet pole beans’ leaves had been viciously hole-punched by some mangy slugs.

Googled around and arbitrarily determined (well, actually it was based on what ingredients were already present in my apartment) that a Beer Trap was the best way to catch the slimy turds.

Here’s how you make a beer trap.

Gather:

-Fairly deep container (such as a large used yogurt container or tomato sauce jar)
-Shovel
-Beer

Dig a hole somewhere fairly close to where the slugs are doing their damage.  Put the container inside the hole and fill it in so that the top of the container (which should not have a lid on it) is flush with the ground around it. Pour some beer inside.

The slugs will smell the yeast from the beer, crawl over to have a sip, and drown.

Aerial view of my beer trap.

I went back upstairs to continue working (I work from home if this is not already obvious.) Which is why, when my lovely boyfriend got home from his half-day of work, I was drinking a beer at my computer.

“Are you drinking beer?”

“Uhh, uhh… Slugs?”

I think I’m still close enough to college-aged that we don’t have to call a doctor on me, but just to be safe I gave Mr. Bear the rest of the beer. I’m a major lightweight.

Then I had some lunch, which consisted partially of lettuce from my garden!

NOW THE EXCITING PART!

When we got back from our weekend trip, there were dead slugs in my beer trap, at least half a dozen or so (I’m gonna spare you the visual.)  Muahahahaha.

Slugs: 0         Tipsy Meg: 6

Do you celebrate meatless Mondays? You should! It’s an easy way to be good to the planet and your body without the pressure of a full-on commitment. Did you know that the meat industry in the U.S. pollutes more than the entire transportation industry? Yeah. Cow farts.

Anyway, on to a more appetizing topic: Grilled Falafel!

We got a grill a few weeks ago, and now the theme of our summer is “What can’t we grill?” Mr. Bear was skeptical on the falafel front, but try number 2 came out absolutely perfect, and we’re both sold.

We used falafel mix, which we buy in bulk at the coop. It happens to be excellent. If you have a bulk grocer near you, see if they carry it – many do. If not, you can definitely make it from scratch. We’ve done that too, and of course the taste is somewhat better, but it is a bit more time-consuming. Here’s a recipe pretty similar to the one we used when we did it from scratch.

Falafel patties on the grill (plus asparagus from our CSA)

Grilled Falafel

Ingredients:
falafel mix
pita pockets
assorted condiments

Combine water and falafel mix according to package instructions or make falafel from scratch.

Then add in a bit of olive oil (1-2 tbsp, depending on amount and dryness) to make it moister. Since falafel is traditionally fried, the moisture tends to seal in pretty well. On the grill, it needs a bit more internal moisture to come out right.

Form small hamburger-shaped patties. Grill on a grill basket for about 5 minutes on each side (just until golden brown.)

Break into smaller pieces, place falafel in pita pockets, and dress with any of the following condiments/add-ons:

• Lettuce
  
• Yogurt with Dill and Lemon
  Combine 1 c. Greek-style yogurt with 2 tsp. chopped dill and the juice of 1/2 lemon. Stir to combine. You can also use tzatziki.

• Hummus and/or Tahini
  
• Tomato-Onion “Salsa”
  (Note: this is a variant on my bruschetta-topping recipe.) Combine 1 large chopped tomato, 1 small chopped onion, 2 cloves minced garlic, 1 tbsp. olive oil, 1 tbsp. red wine vinegar, salt and pepper. Stir and allow to sit for at least 30 minutes before using.
• Chopped Pickles or Cucumbers
  
• Anything else that tickles your falafel fancy

Here are the condiments we used:

Lettuce, pickles, tomato-onion salsa. All except the pickles came from our CSA box!

Hummus & lemon-dill yogurt. Dill from our garden!

This is an easy weeknight dinner, and would also be a lot of fun for a party, because it is relatively simple. You can put out a buffet of falafel, pitas and condiments for guests to make their own falafel sandwiches.

Do you have a favorite vegetarian grill staple? Although I’m pretty good at coming up with a variety of veg dishes in the kitchen, I’m very new to grilling, and any suggestions you might have would be awesome!

It’s laundry day in my house, so I thought I’d write about how I’ve incorporated ZW into that fun-filled area of household chores.

If you are lucky enough to live within reasonable distance of a store with bulk laundry detergent, that is a great option. Our coop does carry bulk liquid laundry detergent, but the one time I have needed to buy it there (since beginning my quest), they have been out of stock.

I resorted to using Seventh Generation powdered laundry detergent in a cardboard box, and I have been extremely happy with it. The packaging is paper rather than plastic, and it is minimal and recycled (also recyclable!) Although I’d prefer that it didn’t come with a plastic scoop, that too is made of recycled and recyclable plastic, so that’s a good step in the right direction. You can also make a paste out of the powder and use it as a pre-wash stain treatment for tough spots.

We wash all of our clothes and almost everything else in cold water now, and I don’t see any difference at all in terms of cleanliness. Occasionally a really nasty (usually dog-related) mess will go through a warm cycle, just to be sure it’s disinfected, but everything else does great on cold. I highly encourage you to switch to cold water if you haven’t already, since the majority of energy used in washing clothes comes from heating the water (usually unnecessarily.)

I love that Seventh Generation is serious about making products out of plants (instead of petrolem) that are safe for both people and the planet.

Although we still use a clothes dryer now, I’ve got my eyes open for a second-hand laundry rack to air-dry things when the weather is reasonable. Once I find one, I’ll switch to drying them that way and fluffing them briefly in the electric dryer as needed.

It goes without saying that we also try to wear clothes as much as possible (certainly more than once) before tossing them in the laundry. This obviously is a big factor in cutting down on the energy (and time!) spent doing laundry.

When it comes to dry cleaning, choose an eco-friendly shop (do local research) and ask them not to wrap your clothes in plastic. Some places will even let you bring in your own bags and hangers. Also remember that many things that you may think “need” to be dry cleaned can actually be washed carefully by hand. Here’s a great Martha Stewart tutorial on this.

What are your laundry habits like? Do you line or rack dry your clothes? Wash on cold? Use a particular eco-friendly detergent that you would recommend? I’d love to hear your tips!