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

Snacks!!

I was munching on some watercress today and thought I might just post some nifty healthy snacks today. I'll start with part of my lunch today:

Super simple watercress eating -

rinse watercress, cut or rip to desired size (I don't get rid of the stems personally) and put into appropriately sized bowl. Add equal amounts olive oil, balsamic vinegar and red wine vinegar along with half as much soy sauce (you may want to add a little water since the flavor is strong). I suggest adding either cherry tomatoes, chopped tomatoes or cut up radishes to give it an extra little something.

This next has become a favorite with both me and my son, it does require a little bit of work but it's yummy.

requires 1 cucumber, 1 - 1 1/2 cup plain yogurt, a couple of garlic cloves, salt & pepper and an assortment of veggies (we use tomatoes, radishes, broccoli and celery)

the cucumber needs to be peeled, cut into long 1/4 strips and the seeds are simply sliced out, use a cheese grater or something similar and grate the cucumber into a bowl, chop up your garlic to comfortable sized chunks (I prefer them to be super tiny so it mixes well through out but some people enjoy running across the random garlic chunk) and add them to the cucumbers. Stir in yogurt, salt & pepper to taste. This is your dip, it also goes well with pita bread but we're going for the veggies.

Tomatoes, radishes and celery and good raw foods but personally I've always thought raw broccoli needed a little something, so we flash boil. For flash boiling all you really need is a pot with enough water to cover the veggies you want to cook, bring it to a boil while you're chopping up your broccoli. Stems go in first, they take longer (by about a minute), I tend to do them separately so I don't have to pay too much attention, check for color, then pull one out and check for taste. Repeat this with the broccoli tops and any other veggies that you feel need some cooking before some dipping.

I know it sounds complicated but it really doesn't take very long and it's super yummy.

Another flash-boiling favorite is watercress rolls

for this you'll need watercress, nori sheets, water, soy sauce and fresh ginger... you'll probably also want a sushi mat, i've never really tried this one without it.

To start with put equal parts water and soy sauce into a cup or bowl for dipping, you won't need a huge amount.. maybe 1/2 cup each. Grate fresh ginger into the mix, you won't need alot but it's another of those "to taste" things, I'm a ginger fan.

while you do this bring some water to a boil, you'll be flash boiling small amounts of watercress at a time, it doesn't take very long at all for the leaves to turn a darker shade and get super flexible in the water, at which point you fish them out and stretch the watercress across one end of a waiting nori sheet, roll it up using a little water to seal the end and repeat! When you're done you can slice the rolls up like sushi, dip and munch.. yummmmm....

Give Me Comfort!

I'm not entirely sure what got me on this topic today, but I find it mildly disturbing how much woman are encouraged to wage a sort of semi-silent war on our own bodies. Oh, we bitch and moan about everything from underwires, to diets, to menstrual solutions but ultimately we shut up and deal with it. I'm fed up! Give Me Comfort, Damnit!

I started off like everyone else I knew who's body was headed in the decidedly uncomfortable direction of female puberty (I make no comments on male puberty having not had the first hand experience.) As far as I know I was the first girl in my class to actually need a bra, not to say I was the first one wearing a bra but some people are very into that whole training thing... though I can speak from experience and say that those things don't need to be trained to do a thing. Anyway, I'm almost certain that I was the first in my class to go out and buy one of those horrific contraptions we all know and love, the under-wire bra. In my defense I didn't know there was another option. Why? Because every store out there sells an abundance of under-wire instruments of torture along with sports-bras, and lovely little non-supportive strappy bits that really only fit A or B cups (something I haven't been for a LONG time) and add a little aesthetic touch in the bedroom. It wasn't until I got pregnant that I was introduced to the supportive wireless bra, which is not only for pregnant and nursing women, damnit. My first issue with the under-wire is of course the discomfort factor, totally discounting that lovely feeling when the wire breaks through the side of the bra and starts jabbing you in the armpit, the damn thing certainly assures you that you're supported... by constricting sensitive parts of the body. Second is strictly to do with breastfeeding and it's lovely ability to encourage clogging in the milk ducts, an unpleasant experience as many women can attest. Third are other health reasons. I'm sure alot of us have heard the urban myth about underwires causing breast cancer, super scary, but no proof... What is an issue is pressure points, they're all over the body including under the breast and armpit, not a lovely thing to put constant pressure on, I'm told these include pressure points for the Liver, Gall Bladder and stomach. I knew they couldn't be good for me! Of course now I'm shopping for bras sans nursing flap and wireless bras are like needles in the haystack of plastic-capped metal crescents.

Moving right along, I've ranted about bras now let's shift our attention to the wonders of menstruation, the next in a long line of idiocies. There is a horrible stigma put on the bleeding woman, people joke and laugh kind of nervously. If you're young and just getting used to it you hide it as much as humanly possible, try not to admit it, and if you've run out of pads/tampons in school it's one of the most mortifying experiences to have to approach a female staff member and hope she has something that you can use. We've been taught to look at this mark of an amazing ability with shame, You can create life! Granted it takes more than a fertile woman to create life but you can bear it, you cradle it inside you as it grows... Now, anyone who's talked to me about pregnancy knows that my general opinion is that pregnancy is just a series of unpleasant experiences with moments of grace; but oh, that grace is awe inspiring and the ultimate result is priceless. But I digress, back to the bleeding. In times with less light and chemical polution women were synced up with the moon, their cycles coming just as regularly, how kick-ass is that? OK, it's uncomfortable but there are herbs and tinctures that can help deal with that (Chastetree, for one.) OK, it's messy... here's where we come to the issue. Your average girl/woman is presented with two choices, or rather two choices with about a thousand sub-choices, tampons or pads... Tampons - Large, slim, medium, etc Pads/Sanitary Napkins (Lord and Lady it sounds like you just had a little spill and blood just happens to be flowing from your nethers) - long, slim, wide, with wings, super absorbency, the list goes on and on... and on. All of it synthetic and, in my experience, none of it comfortable. Synthetic, it is non biodegradable! Your average woman goes through something like 5 of any of these products a day, over the course of 4 - 7 days we're talking 35 a month, 220 a year, from the year that it starts until menopause. ummm.. Yikes!

There are other answers! Cloth pads, upside: reusable & way more gentle on your skin, downside: more laundry and cleaning blood out of cloth. Sea Sponge Tampons, upside: reusable & no association with TSS (Toxic Shock Syndrome), downside: you have to clean it out to use it again (I have no personal experience there.) Menstrual cups, menstrual cups are something special, the first time I heard about it the only thing that crossed my mind was a great resounding "EWWWWWW!" Menstrual cups are small rubber cups that are inserted kind of like a tampon only instead of absorbing they simply collect, they collect quite a bit actually and get emptied out a few times a day. Once you get past the "ewwww" factor and think of the upshot it's actually a pretty nifty little contraption. No extra laundry, no major cleaning, no big environmental impact, as far as I've heard no risk of TSS, no nasty chemicals rubbing around where nasty chemicals oughtn't be. Of course I'd already been doing the nasty chemicals drill for nine years before I found out that these things existed... Wait? I can be comfortable? during my period?

I mentioned diets at the beginning of this rant. Diets is a hard one, I think that western civilization as a whole needs to relearn how to eat. This is, actually, a fairly wide spread opinion if you're looking for it. Diet pills drive me crazy, they don't teach you anything useful so once you're done you regain what you've lost and then some. Diet fads are just as bad, binge dieting followed by the inevitable binge eating that, again, comes from not having learned how our bodies work. It doesn't help that anyone paying attention at a news stand, grocery store, or in the comfort of their own livingroom with the TV on is being presented with unreasonable goals, a lot of which are airbrushed beyond reason. What happened to being healthy? Honestly! What happened to that being a standard for beauty? There are woman who are naturally as thin as a high fashion supermodel and yes they are beautiful, but mixed in with them are some scary looking women who's over pronounced cheek bones tell a somewhat different story. The female form is beautiful, it's curvy and luscious and tells a story all it's own for whoever has the guts to actually look. If you are broad shouldered and busty, there is no way you will fit our society's ideal beauty line, if you are too short, if your torso isn't long enough, if your legs aren't long enough, if you're too long or lanky, what the hell are we doing to ourselves?! Get comfortable! I'm not advocating getting nice and comfortable sinking into your favorite chair (though at the end of the day that is nice.) Your body knows when it's healthy, if you are wheezing after a flight of stairs, if you can't take a nice afternoon walk, if you are unable to do comfortably the things that you want or need to do to get through the day, then adjustments may need to be made. But somebody please, can we chuck the unrealistic expectations? Can we focus on health and just get comfortable?

OK... uhmmm... Rant ended.

Apartment Worms

I was meandering my way about the web about a week ago when I came across something I honestly find pretty awesome.

I'm a big believer in composting, it baffles me how we generally are ok as a society with the idea of wasting ridiculous amounts of food... losing the potential wealth of nutrient rich soil in favor of our quick, "clean" and easy garbage receptacles. I've been doing exactly that for years, though my conscience did make me somewhat less than easy with my actions.

Every so often I search online for a simple answer to the question "How does an apartment dwelling New Yorker manage to compost simply?" Simple here is key, there are programs out there for composting, I could bring my leftover veggies to a neighbor with a back yard, I could do these things but being a rather preoccupied single-mother-type person means that more often than not if it's not simple, it simply doesn't get done. It was a happy day the day I found this...

A day or two later I searched out an internet worm farm and ordered myself a meager 500 Red Wrigglers (finding less than that is a bit of a chore) from Uncle Jim's Worm Farm, I figure one or two thousand is a number best left for people with something larger than a plastic bin shoved into a kitchen corner. I spent the next few days following instructions at a leisurely pace and by the time my new little friends arrived today their new home was all set, complete with first meal. I had trouble containing myself when the UPS guy came with his inconspicuous little box, and again when it was made clear to me that it would be appreciated if I waited until AFTER my friend left before opening my box of worms. My son and I opened the box, the dog came over to check things out, we unwrapped the newspaper and opened the worm and dirt filled bag... The lovely thing about two year old boys is that they're super enthusiastic about everything, even if they have no clue what you're talking about. He was the perfect audience for my compost-enthusiasm. Though when presented with the option he decided that, discretion being the better part of valor, he'd play it safe and not actually HOLD the mildly menacing squirmy creatures... whether they made Mommy happy or not.

Ultimately the worms were awesome but nowhere near as exciting as the fact that I now have a self-contained composting system in my kitchen, ready and waiting for the next orange peel or half eaten apple I find squirreled away behind the couch or in a toy bin... 2 year olds!