Update

Ah well, since I'm horrible at writing here... hopefully one of these days I'll get better at it, an update!

My fire escape hanging garden is coming along. Some plants are currently living indoors due to erratic weather and others need to be separated into different containers but due to my local store's shortage of all natural potting soil it hasn't happened.
In other news, I spent a bit of time earlier today making yarn out of an old sheet (I'm considering crocheting a small rug or something) and now I'm off to recycle old paper into new beads. All of which will have pictures posted just as soon as I remember to

I meant to post this a bit ago

This is what happens when Mommy gets hooked on Fallout 3 and is forever getting the soundtrack stuck in her head.

Getting Warmer

Well, the city's getting warmer, for the moment, that's really all anyone can say isn't it.. three days from now it might snow again but yesterday was just lovely.
Anyway, the warmth has me thinking about restarting old projects and working on new ones, things I've wanted to do but wasn't sure how.
first things first, restarting my compost, remembering to keep two things in mind. 1. if I go on a grapefruit binge I simply cannot compost it all without poisoning my worms 2. veggie matter goes in the BOTTOM of the bin, such a simple direction but when one is in the middle of cooking it doesn't always happen that way and then come the fruit flies (EWWW)

The big project this year is planting, I haven't given up all hope for my window garden but I do know that until I figure out how to get it to work properly I'm just going to keep throwing funds at it senselessly... That being said i want to make a fire escape garden, it's illegal if it blocks the way at all, and I fear for the well being of my plants as the fire escape is the smoking section for my apartment and sometimes there are quite a few people out there. SO... hanging planters from the side of the railing, I think it's the way to go. I'll be posting as I figure it out but the plan so far consists of wire, plastic bottles and that weird organic fertilizer with blood in it to keep the rodents and birds away. Isn't that strange? I don't think I'd have thought of blood as a deterrent for rodents.

This post was brought to you by discombobulated pre-planning

Earth Day: The Day I Bake Cookies

Today, they tell me, is Earth Day.

A day that is the ultimate result of a president, inspired by a senator, failing to make people more conscious about ecology. The love child of governmental failure and a grassroots uprising, Earth Day is a beautiful idea, but like many beautiful ideas its intentions got lost in the shuffle. Who remembers what day Earth day is? In my experience the majority fall into three major categories.

1. People in advertising, attempting to show their beautiful green colors for about one month out of twelve

2. People who are already living relatively earth friendly lives and thus don't need their awareness expanded

3. People who's calendars just happen to include "Earth Day" in that neat little spot where they put "groundhog's day" and occasionally holidays one is seriously unlikely to be celebrating as they are taking place in other countries.

The people who take the time to observe Earth Day may watch how much gas they use, plant a tree, support World Wildlife Fund, or something else just as admirable.. My question is this - What about the other 364 days of the year? Why is it that on special occasions we do something to give back to the earth that supports us instead of splurging on special occasions and letting those fewer days be the ones we're a little naughty? We could have a symbiotic relationship with our host organism but instead we choose to be parasitic, we have made our models the leech, the tape worm and the crab-hitchhiker.

Anyway, I could rant on the subject but I won't... Much... I'll just say this: We have the widest spread, the biggest toys and the most monumental impact on the planet, we are rivaled by no other species on the planet... But the planet remains the greater being. We don't need to save the planet, earth will survive all by her lonesome, her and whatever microorganisms are left after we're gone. They will do as has been done before and one can only hope that once sentient life does evolve it has more sense than we've had... Or! We can pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, put on a brave face, set aside our current social norms and step forward with the sincere intent to do something about this clusterf--- we've gotten ourselves into.

So, they tell me today is Earth Day. Today I experienced the sudden compulsion to bake, went to the store and bought flour and chocolate and veggies (not all of which went into the same dish). I came home and made three different types of cookies, which my son tried to steal, and a veggie pie from scratch, which is now missing 1/3. I can't say that I celebrated Earth Day, but I celebrated the day and every day I try to be more Earth friendly than the one before (with exceptions for occasional splurges!) so I think that's O.K.

I'm Back

What can I say? Life stepped in.

Disturbed By Bulk

The other day I stopped in to Costco with my father, he's become something of an enthusiast ever since the recent arrival of our local Costco and the seemingly endless parade of consumers began. I have a smaller living space, which I pack rat enough without buying ridiculously over sized food products, and haven't really felt the need to do much exploring in that arena. Anyway, we stopped in to Costco because my father wanted to see if I could buy bulk Rice Milk, my two year old having developed a certain fondness for it we go through a rather large amount, and so I joined him on the search... I've been to Costco a few times before and have generally found myself an odd mixture of daunted and unimpressed, the selection being large in size rather than variety I suppose it's an understandable reaction. However, since my first trip to Costco I've become quite a bit more environmentally aware, since the second I've become a bit more active, since my third I've been looked at like a nut-job by various friends and family for everything from avoiding white flour to setting up a compost bin in my NY apartment (complete with worms) to bringing my drop spindle with me on the subway... It's safe to say things have changed. My fourth ever trip to Costco I can honestly say I was frightened. I walk in, find stacks of giant cardboard boxes wrapped in multiple layers of plastic wrap, and balk... I was no longer sure that lower prices on Rice Milk was worth this. As we wander through the isles I see any number of things that just get under my skin, large boxes of small bags of snacks, giant containers of products that I know will contain a grocery list of my "Ingredients-to-avoid", Rows of giant containers of non-recycled paper goods... I couldn't help but wonder how many trees died to populate that isle for a week.

To be honest, the non-perishables made my skin crawl by sheer scale of ecological disregard but what got me really frustrated with the whole thing was the refrigerated and fresh produce sections. How much of this stuff passes it's expiration date before it even leaves the shelf/bin? It's a real question and probably equal to the question of how much of it goes bad before the people who buy it can use it... There were spinach bags in there that could have provided me and a few friends with spinach for a week, if we felt like eating spinach at least once a day, which I'm pretty sure your average American isn't prepared to do. How much unnecessary waste is being produced by Costco and the people who go there because they want more bang for their buck?

There wasn't any Rice Milk, I don't think I really expected there to be. It's frightening to think that this is what appeals to people, giant impersonal rows of non-biodegradable, chemical filled, unhealthy merchandise. It's no wonder America is growing so fat, so in need of care... It's senseless! Meanwhile my small local health food store struggles to stay alive. I've heard it said that our future, if we continue on the path of self destructive binging, lies one of two ways. One school of thought says that we are raising what will possibly be one of the first generations to die before their parents due to issues like heart failure. The other says that our children will not die before us, but instead live lives in and out of hospitals and dealing with chronic health issues, the kinds that don't go away because we've just messed ourselves up beyond actual repair. It was one of those recurring thoughts as i watched people pushing around their double-wide grocery carts.

I just can't help being disturbed by buying in that kind of bulk.

A Dark Chocolate Treat

One of the things I tend to do when I'm not super busy, or I don't have the energy to do the things i probably would be better off doing, is experiment with what I have lying around the house. Thus things like "Spontaneous Nachos" came into being! Well, today I had fun with raw cocoa powder.

I've seen snacks along these lines on other sites, there's a candy bar from fruitopia.net that I really want to give a try but never have all of the ingredients for. Today I just experimented.

The amount is pretty small since I didn't want to let alot go to waste if this experiment went south, but if it sounds good to you it's easy to make a bigger batch.

combine -

2/3 cup raw cocoa powder

5 teaspoons Cinnamon

1/3 cup Brown Rice Syrup

4 teaspoons Grapeseed oil

2 teaspoons Vanilla Extract

chop up 1 cup Walnuts and 6 sun dried dates to add to the mix

slowly stir in 1/4 cup Brown Rice Flour

at this point it will be a pretty thick concoction which can easily be rolled into small balls on a coated surface, I chose to use a mix of some more Brown Rice Flour mixed with Nutmeg and Chili Powder, but if you feel the absolute need to add sugar I could see this being the appropriate point. I've eaten a few and they're pretty yummy, if you dig dark chocolate, since then I've stuck them in the freezer to see what they'll be like once they're a little more solid. I think I may try using some coconut oil the next time around... yummmmmmmm