O289: Operation Needy to Nerdy

This Portland enterprise called Free Geek is the heart and soul of sustainable. At its root:

Sustain = support from below.

Watch at YouTube

How neat would it be to be a part of this Nerd Herd?

Hat tip to Treehugger's reference post on recycling resources (this is worth a bookmark for the wealth of links provided) where I stumbled upon Free Geek.

K258: KLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

Kate loved making new okra plain quick recipe (solar) - tomato ugali version with 'x' - you'll z00t!

Where 'x' is my flavoring of choice, fennel. Makes this 95% homegrown from food I grew, just feet from my front door.

First off I was anxious to fix an okra meal that wasn’t gumbo. It isn’t that there is anything in the world wrong with gumbo. It is just that this is the only recipe American’s seem to know for preparing okra.

The decision to try Ugali, the East Africa cornmeal mush part of a standard diet, has the added bonus of using up some cornmeal I have had for too long. I am trying to keep corn in any form out of my diet, because any food from agribusiness will have corn in it. Therefore, it seems like a prudent idea to keep corn to a minimum when consciously selecting food. My occasional meals or snacks add enough corn products to my system. The Ugali was also deliberate, to introduce me to an international dish for something different.

Eating a vegetarian meal was another bonus with this version, besides trying to eat within 100 feet of my home. Because I used a bit of butter for flavoring I couldn’t be considered a vegan meal. The salt, pepper, butter & cornmeal were not local, hence 95%.

I also got a kick out of using no energy except the sun to cook this meal. The utter simplicity of walking outside to gather, coming inside to rinse off, add water, season and take outside to the solar cooker – done in a couple hours is exhilarating.

Besides, it was fun to write a recipe introduction with the alphabet: K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Okra in the Solar Oven

4 okra, chopped
½ kg. tomatoes, chopped
1½ cups of water

Combine okra and tomatoes, and add to a dark pot. Add water, and cover pot with lid. Cook in sun for 2 hours. Serve over rice, pasta or the traditional East African staple ugali (white corn meal cooked to a texture similar to polenta.This recipe was from the refugee camp in Kakuma, Kenya where the Sudanese are being housed.

ugali – less than double water to cornmeal & salt. Boil water, add cornmeal slowly and cook until done (4 min or so) Add butter to flavor.

Mucilaginous vegetables – Chile cautions these aren’t good for stock.

Okra Kakuma style (Submitted by SCI staff at Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya)
Remember this family? I posted this photo and others from around the world in Global Groceries.

The Aboubakar family of Darfur province, Sudan, in front of their tent in the Breidjing Refugee Camp, in eastern Chad, with a week's worth of food. © 2005 Peter Menzel from 'Hungry Planet: What the World Eats'

Meat, Fish & Eggs: $0.58**
Goat meat, dried and on bone, 9 oz; fish, dried, 7 oz. Note: Periodically, such as at the end of Ramadan, several families collectively purchase a live animal to slaughter and share. Some of its meat is eaten fresh in soup and the rest is dried.

Fruits, Vegetables & Nuts: $0.51**
Limes, small, 5; pulses ration, 4.6 lb, the seeds of legumes such as peas, beans, lentils, chickpeas, and fava beans. Red onions, 1 lb; garlic, 8 oz; okra, dried, 5 oz; red peppers, dried, 5 oz; tomatoes, dried, 5 oz.

Condiments: $0.13**
Sunflower oil ration, 2.1 qt; white sugar ration, 1.4 lb; dried pepper, 12 oz; salt ration, 7.4 oz; ginger, 4 oz.

Beverages:
Water, 77.7 gal, provided by Oxfam, and includes water for all purposes. Rations organized by the United Nations with the World Food Programme.

Food Expenditure for One Week: 685 CFA francs/$1.23
**Market value of food rations, if purchased locally: $24.37

Post Script: I fixed the okra and hated it. I didn't z00t! I sent out an email to my neighbors offering up this okra that another neighbor had planted and harvested, that I'd cooked in the solar oven. NO TAKERS - out of several dozen. ZERO. Okra is an aquired taste it seems. I actually didn't get as far as the ugali because the main dish was so off-putting.

This is a tough one. The idea of something can get in the way of reality. I had to shake myself and just stop. I was going to just ditch this whole post too until I read Chile's post about a canning dish she didn't like. It is a very real aspect of what we do. I compare it to when I get sick and vomit. Sadly, nobody plans to eat a perfectly fine meal and then lose it - without virtually any nutritional gains. It just happens.

K257: Kismet and Kindness with Food

Today’s offering was to be kohlrabi. I think it is the most sci-fi, bizarre looking food I planted this summer. I ordered heirloom seeds of this purple type. It grew really high and strong. I hoped to try several recipes like this one from Foodie Farm Girl.
4 kohlrabi bulbs with leaves
2 Tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
4 ounces cultivated mushrooms (I used Baby Bellas), quartered
3 Tablespoons cream (or milk, chicken stock, olive oil, or water)
salt and pepper to taste

1. Trim the kohlrabi bulbs, peeling them if the skins seem tough. Rinse the leaves (discarding any that are yellow) pat them dry, and coarsely chop. Set aside. But the bulbs into 1-inch chunks.

2. Bring a saucepan of lightly salted water to a boil, and add the kohlrabi chunks. Reduce the heat and simmer until tender, about 15 minutes.

3. Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a skillet. Add the onion and sauté over medium-low heat until softened, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, another 1 to 2 minutes. Do not let garlic brown.

4. Add the mushrooms and the reserved kohlrabi leaves to the skillet. Cover, and cook 5 minutes. Then uncover, and cook, stirring, until all the liquid has evaporated, 3 minutes. Set the skillet aside.

5. Drain the kohlrabi chunks and place them in the bowl of a food processor. Add the mushroom mixture and all the remaining ingredients. Purée until smooth.

6. Transfer the purée to a saucepan and reheat over low heat, stirring, 2 minutes.

Or I was going to go with this Chile Chews' kohlrabi recipe with fennel, since I also grew fennel. It is one plant that did amazingly well in my raised bed.

Well, the pests decimated my kohlrabi and I was really stumped for this week’s offering as I didn’t have a backup plan. Then my new neighbor, a young landscape designer who works at the local botanical gardens drove up. He had a gift for me, an exotic, gorgeous dragon fruit. It was grown at the botanical gardens and he found it lying on the ground.

What a delicious surprise. It is just as sci-fi, bizarre looking food as the kohlrabi. I am eating it raw as it is overly ripe and ready to scoop out the inside fruit with a spoon. It is so much like kiwi in flavor.

It was kismet, not to mention really kind of my neighbor, because the ‘smell-me, upscale” markets charge over $10 for this baby. Lucky me to have such good neighbors . . . Can you imagine such a fantastic treat grown one mile from my home and delivered by a handsome young man? Pinch me.

G232: Garden Fare & Stuffed Grape Leaves

After griping about the poor yields of my garden bed and the community garden, I am forced to admit that I have been feeding myself pretty damn well from what I can harvest. It is just as well nobody else seems interested in the garden or I’d have competition. This week I have the long Chinese noodle beans, acorn squash, carrots, zucchini, Roma tomatoes, fennel, lettuce, radishes and possibly some okra.

Not only that, I am the recipient of stuffed grape leaves from my son. Lucky for me, he has been craving them for two weeks running. I taught him the recipe most like his Lebanese grandmother’s. It is made with ground lamb. I asked him if we could try to cook it in the solar oven. He said he didn’t want to risk it with this batch. I will have to suggest it again sometime.

This is more like the version I would like to try some day when I have my own grape leaves growing where I have shaped rebar arches to hold them. I’m feeling I need to experiment with the recipe below to make stuffed grape leaves more local, vegetarian and homegrown. I might eliminate a bunch of steps and simply let the ingredients cook within the grape leaves. There is something too fussy about this recipe from here.

For the stuffing:

Soak over night or for a few hours:
3 cups long grain brown rice (Basmati or Jasmine are the best)

1 large diced onion
1 Tbs olive oil
1-2 large carrots, grated
2 large bundles of baby dill, finely chopped
1 large bundle of spearmint leaves, finely chopped
1-2 tsp salt
1-2 tsp allspice, ground
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1⁄2 cup or more pine nuts, toasted
a handful or raisins (optional)
6 cups of boiling water

One large lemon (I’d double)
3 Tbs olive oil (or to taste)
1⁄2 cup water

In a large pot, sauté the onions in the olive oil until slightly golden. Add the carrots and stir constantly. Strain the rice and add more oil to the pot if needed. Sauté the drained rice along with the onions and carrots, for about 5 minutes, while constantly stirring to avoid scorching. Add the raisins and boiling water and cook on high heat until water reaches boil. Reduce to low heat, and let simmer until water is only at the bottom. Turn off the heat, and leave covered for 15-20 minutes, until rice has absorbed all the water.

Toast the pine nuts in a pan, and add the pine nuts and chopped herbs to the rice and mix well. Transfer to a big bowl and wait until it is cool enough to work with your hands and stuff the leaves.

To prepare the leaves:

Pick as many leaves as you can – 150-200 leaves should be a good start, and if you need more you can pick more later. Pick only the largest of the youngest (which are also the softest) leaves, and keep the stems on (the stems will not be removed until just before stuffing the leaves). One jar of leaves would be enough if you are not picking your own leaves. [. . .]

Boil a pot full of water with one tablespoon salt. Blanch the leaves until they change their colour from bright green to olive (at this point they will look as if they were pickled).

With a small pairing knife, remove the stem of each leaf before stuffing. Place a teaspoon of rice in the middle of the leaf, and fold the sides of the leaf starting from the top and the sides (next to the stem), and then roll to the bottom. Be sure not to over stuff, in order to achieve an elegant, elongated shape of each stuffed leaf.

Place the leaves in a pot, arrange them in circles and layers, and make sure they are sitting tight and close to each other. Add 1⁄2 cup water, lemon juice of one large lemon and three tablespoons of olive oil. Place a ceramic plate large enough to cover the leaves but small enough to fit into the pot (as to keep the leaves and place so that they don’t open during the cooking). Simmer in low heat for 30-45 minutes, until all the water is evaporated. If there is an excess of water after 45 minutes, gently pour it out.

Wait until the leaves cooled a bit, transfer into trays and serving plate and enjoy!

I confess I was drawn to this recipe simply because the blogger describes grape leaves so beautifully. I think it goes without saying, grapes are one of the finest natural snack foods on earth. I do believe they are a wonderfully sensual food. I would love to grow grapes to have the vines to use in craft projects. If I were I wine drinker I would be especially enamored of this plant life and all of its myriad uses. Here is what this Canadian blogger wrote about stuffed grape leaves.

While grapevine leaves do not have a very distinctive scent, they have the most fantastic tangy flavour, and are used for the legendary stuffed grapevine leaves. Everything about making this classic specialty dish is sensual and relaxing. Picking the leaves and arranging them in orderly piles; blanching them in salt water; rolling the fragrant rice, spiked with mint, dill, allspice and pine nuts; their fragrant and quiet simmer in lemon juice and olive oil; and finally, eating the cool and elegant rolled leaves one by one, admiring their exquisitely delicate flavour.

Grape arbor photograph

G231: Gleaning

The idea of finding food for free, has been on my mind for some time. I know that there are fruit trees all over the place with fruit rotting on the branches. I have also always wanted to have mesquite trees growing close by – ever since I tasted the flour from the pods fifteen years ago in Arizona. I look out and imagine a map I could make of the square mile or so in my immediate vicinity between the highway and the ocean. I can just see it filled with notations about avocados, limes, nuts, berries . . . I plant these seeds in my own subconscious. And sometimes a ‘volunteer’ seed just starts sprouting again.

Last week after writing about food foraging and the Ice Plant recipe I decided to take this a step further. I googled and found a group,

Senior Gleaners, are all volunteers of 55 years of age and over. They volunteer their time and labor in gleaning surplus food from gardens, fields, groves and regional supermarkets to supplement the hungry and poor.

I had a great conversation with Donna, the volunteer in charge. We spoke in terms of what could happen in my area. Disappointingly, there is nothing organized along my stretch of the coast. I would have to drive pretty far inland to the fields and she also suspected I’d not be able to handle the physical. I guess the fields are up a hill.

She also organizes grocery store runs. Now I have some experience with the grocery store donations because I worked at a local Vons for a few months a few years ago. It was a stomach-turning miserable experience to see the mountains of waste and the utter disrespect shown food. There was no communication between the bakery department head and the donation pick up volunteers. Carts and carts of food was stuffed into compost boxes (or big trash bags if nobody was paying attention) every single day. We baked way in excess of demand so that bakery cases looked overflowing. *shudder* And I witnessed only one department.

The idea of spending volunteer time, fuel to pick up white bread, chemical laden cakes and donuts for people in need of meals just doesn’t appeal to me. For me it is like so many do-good enterprises that seem more about white, middle class people needing a bunch of busy activities to assure themselves they are generous. So, I left it there for now. The volunteer was dismissive anyway. She was distracted with her month long vacation starting the next day. But, a seed was planted.

I spoke briefly Sunday about preparing a map to the woman running for City Council as I was showing her the Ice Plant fruits. She is a member of Sierra Club and is a sustainability advocate. I let her know that I had my application in for the Environmental Committee and she agreed this would be something great for that group to tackle. Another seed was planted.

Today I was writing another post and searching for a citation buried somewhere within Green as a Thistle blog and found that Vanessa is writing again. In this particular post she used a term I was unfamiliar with, feral fruit. Apparently, she learned of this from Chile. Now I read Chile most every day, so I must have slept through that recent paragraph. I like the sound of feral food. Call it gleaning, foraging, feral food, fallen fruit, mapping food. Today I decided it was time to share some of these great resources and links.

With Vanessa’s post I got several more links besides Chile's. Funny how one can think he or she is alone in a thought. Nothing is individual – all is shared. Chile and Vanessa and others will approach this same theme with their own insight and expertise. I don't think any of us in this nascent world of sustainable living thinks we have it all figured out or are prepared to eliminate information.

We're all in this together — by ourselves. —Lily Tomlin

• How to make a feral fruit map, at a site filled with much more.
• Treehugger post on urban gleaning.
• Village Harvest lists
• Transition Towne Edible Edges tour and review of Totnes
• Treehugger on planting nut trees in Transition Towns
  

Here is the thinking behind the group calling itself Fallen Fruit.

"Public Fruit" is the concept behind the Fallen Fruit, an activist art project which started as a mapping of all the public fruit in our neighborhood. We ask all of you to contribute your maps so they expand to cover the United States and then the world. We encourage everyone to harvest, plant and sample public fruit, which is what we call all fruit on or overhanging public spaces such as sidewalks, streets or parking lots.

We believe fruit is a resource that should be commonly shared, like shells from the beach or mushrooms from the forest. Fallen Fruit has moved from mapping to planning fruit parks in under-utilized areas. Our goal is to get people thinking about the life and vitality of our neighborhoods and to consider how we can change the dynamic of our cities and common values.
-Fallen Fruit is David Burns, Matias Viegener, and Austin Young

Here is their list of resources, from which I include the YouTube video for some instant gratification, besides planting some seeds.

Respect image from Wasted Food

E217: Empty – Imagine no water

Rather than thinking about purifiying water or storing water or water conservation, water reduction or grey water substitution, imagine no water. Designers for the following products and links were working with this premise or brief. From Inhabitat, here is a fog and dew collector.

lon Alex Gross’s fog and dew collectors provide a low-tech way for people in arid, developing regions to collect drinking water. Gross uses design to show users how individuals can come up with their own answers to ecological and technical problems. His method fuses the ancient methods of fog harvesting and dew collection with modern improvements such as super light materials and internet connectivity.

The fog collector uses a screen to catch fog droplets in the air and turn them into drinking water. The 2 meter mesh surface can collect up to 10 liters of water in 24 hours. It can be used during day or night, and is most efficient when faced against the wind in high ground.

The dew collector is made of a special laminate foil that attracts dew drops. Despite only collecting water at night, the dew collector is very effective. It weighs just 400 grams, yet can collect up to 1.5 liters of clean water per night. It is most efficient when positioned on the ground in conditions of 50% humidity or more.

Again, to imagine a life with water supply on empty and you live by the ocean.

I am at a low enough income level I can appreciate a product that uses sunshine (free) and saltwater (free) and turns it into drinkable water. Just imagine the magic this could create in the lives of millions all around the thousands of miles of coasts of Africa, Asia, Australia, the Americas and any other water-scarce, drought struggling areas of the world right now this very minute.

This is Watercone, sun-powered water desalinator featured in Inhabitat.

The Watercone makes salt and brackish water fresh using only the sun, evaporation, and a simple, portable plastic cone.

Every day 5000 children die as a result of unsafe water-related diseases, and Watercone provides up to 1.6 liters a day, covering all of a child’s daily water needs.

The process is simple- fill the black base pan with salty or brackish water, float the cone on top. The black pan absorbs sunlight and heats up the water to support evaporation. Through condensation, the evaporated water collects in the form of droplets on the inner wall of the cone. These droplets trickle down the inner wall into a circular trough at the inner base of the cone. The cone can then be flipped over and the fresh water poured out.

Additional information on water retrieval at Casaubon’s Book

A184: Apricots and other Stone Fruit

In my weekly Farmer’s Market buying, blogging framework I try to pick something new. This week of *A* - the redux – I didn’t spot some new thing to try. I had hoped I would be seeing towering amaranth plants in our community garden. Not. I have not had any success with any of the amaranth seeds I planted in May.

What I did see that made me really happy were piles and piles of stone fruit. Besides the ubiquitous lemon, a citrus I would like to grow myself because I use lemon more than any other fruit in my cooking, stone fruits are my definition of the best fruits of summer.

For the last two weeks, I have added tiny apricots not only to my oatmeal, but to other things. I have added them to a dish of heated kale, potatoes and onions and to a salad. This little taste of sweet with the soft texture gave these last two dishes a really distinctive difference.

As a kid in the late 50’s and early 60’s I remember our getting a ‘lug’ of peaches each summer. A lug was a wooden crate of individually wrapped peaches. Each peach was wrapped in tissue. What a treasure.

But, more than my current recipes or my childhood memories I want to share my newfound excitement for a totally new use for peach pits. Flooring! This is a concept I discovered recently and I find it intriguing. This flooring has a history in South Africa. It is now being manufactured at Stone Fruit Floors.

The floor consists of peach pips that are packed by hand onto a glued surface and filled with a silica sand and resin mixture, then sealed with a twin pack urethane. The sharp edges of the pips are grinded off, firstly to expose the nice red colour hue of the pips and secondly to make it very comfortable to walk on them with bare feet.

The first reaction is that this must be a really green alternative. But, as you can see the silica sand / resin mixture, the ocean of urethane negates the natural peach pit part. Right? Well, I am not ready to dismiss this out of turn. Just for the use a peach pits alone I want to keep this in my mind.

Stones. Stones are a basic of our building tradition. For me, nothing says trite or boring like a granite countertop. I want to scream when I see a televised design reveal showing a granite counter and every other human yelling, “Awesome!” I want to hurl at the robotic utterances, vapid designs and monstrous waste of natural resources. Stones are being blasted, gouged from the earth.

Leave the damn stones in the earth. Quit digging pits and start collecting pits from peaches, olives, cherries and apricots. Capture a vast diversity of plant stones now being tossed into landfills.

Figure out how to make the resin finishes from recycled plastic waste. And, as usual, I love to take the commercial product and try to figure out how to hack it. How can we in the do it yourself category carry this off?

Update: The pits, this is the accurate description for our Senate. It is well and truly in the pits as these miserable people caved in and voted away our forth amendment rights via the FISA legislation. Bush power to spy on us with the assistance of the telecoms is now official - with absolute immunity from prosecution. Obama could have shown himself a leader. He didn't and I am not surprised.

R123: Rethinking Rust

My love of the rusty and discarded – the barrels are my best example so far of re-purposing. This Landscape Architecture Office was my first inspiration. I started loving this look, as an already accepted design trend, long before I knew about Peak Oil or sustainable living. For me, the most appealing aspect is the juxtaposition of the living, green plant life next to the rust. The counterpoint of the stones (or concrete) is that neutral that anchors it all in my opinion.

Recently I thought about all of the rust in my landscape and the look of rust in my painted mobile home. What is funny is that I have such a strong sense of what it will look like filled with new plant life that I forget the plant life isn’t there yet. Yes, I have some huge pines towering over me, a huge fichus, another small tree and bunch of succulents. But all of the bushes, vines, grasses, etc. I see in my mind’s eye just don’t exist yet.

This photo was taken when I first painted the driveway and had everything pulled to the sides.

Notice that in the back I hung cans off the fence to grow flowering vines up the rusted metal mesh grid above. This concept was to create a living wall between the neighbors closely spaced lots.

I decided this week to take down all of the cans filled with dirt because it isn’t a very sustainable plan. I just don’t want to try growing from these cans again. The plantings would require me watching really closely and watering almost daily. That is just not a good idea. Yet, I need to get flowing vines planted in the ground below. I only have a tiny strip of earth. We shall see.

Today I am late posting as I have been working on listing my new heirloom seeds and working on a new planting plan. I had prepared my proposed plan thinking I would only be able to find smaller sized pots. I lucked out in getting the larger size. So, I have finally figured out what I want to plant and need to get it planted and watered today or tomorrow.

Update: I left out one of the main reasons I love all of the rusty elements. I think it is funny that the look of rust in a mobile home park can be so welcoming, conscious and healthy. That is my vision - to shake up our perceptions. I want to turn pervasive notions of good / bad, right /wrong, up /down, and other binary preconceptions upside down and rightside out . . .

P109: Pain and Paint

I painted all day today and the colors are my happiness. I felt so full of it I even found a bunch of old bottles of acrylic craft paints and made up several pearlized pinks with metalic copper thrown into the mix. Hell, I don't even like pink and I thought this was fantastic. We are painting an old weathered fence down a narrow walkway. We are mixing these free paints and watering them down so that they act more like a wash or a stain to the old wood. The grain still comes through, but the look is fresh. It also helps make the walkway appear wider because it is brighter. It isn't done though. I had to stop.

Thing is my hands are killin' me from this past couple weeks of intense manual work with my mitts. I don't have the endurance right now. I think it is making me cranky.

People can be such a royal pain in the ass about paint. This is an observation based on a career in commercial interior design. Some people treat a color selection like it is a decision about surgery. It is fucking paint.

I simply can't believe the number of people (especially men) who say stupid shit about the fence. How terrified are people of color? (Jeebus, what an appropriate question in this racist culture.) It is fucking paint, folks. I am not attempting to re-wire your homes or remove your plumbing. If you are that upset about 70-100 fence slats no longer in their faded, moldy state - please avert your eyes and hurry past the cobalt blues, aqua, raisin, lilac, paprika, etc. Keep your arms close to your body so as not to touch the happy boards.

Same with the garden. . . Trained to critique it seems. Because these same people haven't volunteered their help they might have to help themselves to a cup of shut the fuck up.

Early to bed tonight. Tomorrow I am devoting all of my time and attention to my neglected personal space as I am likely to bite someone in the public sphere.

M87: My Garden Plans

If I hadn't titled this post as I did, I don't believe readers would ever be able to figure out the graphic above. I am the first to admit that my methods are unorthodox. My garden is a true urban garden. My containers are made up of all free materials and are in keeping with the design aesthetic I like to call, "Yes, it is a a rusty ole' thing and it is beautiful." or somesuch . . . Admittedly, there are many people (family and friends included) who don't see beauty where I see beauty. Part of the problem is that my vision holds all of the lush edible vegetation covering every rusty object in my domain. Until I get the green growing the place does just look like a junk heap. The goal will be year round food, blooms and living green air cleaning machines.
Today I am preparing the initial plans for my garden. These plans will then become the template to add all of my ideas for what I want to plant and when I want to plant. I could do elevations too if I really wanted to create layouts in the oil drums that allows for great height at the center, bushy plants surrounding and trailing plants at the edges.

Last year I had good luck with the tomato plant and the pea pods climbing the wire mesh and rebar I'd secured to the side of my house.

I have lots of room on this drive I painted like a dance floor to plant this raised bed (made from a demo'ed pergola) and oil barrels and any other handy container I might find.

K67: Kitchen Daydreams, dish drying edition

The kitchen daydreams continue with another wonderful design called Flow. Here is an incredible prototype invented by John Arndt that completely captures the reuse, reduce, recycle concept and more. It is called Flow and it incorporates whole systems in drying dishes, watering plants and composting kitchen scraps. I don’t even know if it is for sale. I know that I am going to create my own knock-off of this inspired design. I think you will enjoy this.

This whole system includes the terra cotta clay pots with specific functions including evaporative cooling fridge box and planters.
The hole in the counter and rolling compost bin with worms is pretty cool. I am not interested in that because my composting is handled.

The table yesterday is still appealing to me for the bits of trash from meals and mail. And, frankly I don’t have a spot in my set up for a kitchen counter composter. The real stars though are the hanging units for the plates. I think I can figure out how to rip off the glass and cup concept, but the plate rack is a balance issue that has me puzzled. I will have to daydream about this for a very long time.

The dishrack takes advantage of the smallest amounts of wasted water and puts it to use to water the herbs and edible plants growing in the planter boxes. The rack also eliminates the need for a cupboard allowing the dishes to be easily accessible. The plants also help attract dust which helps to keep the dishes clean and the dripping water helps to wash off the dust.

My own kitchen has some problems. It is temporary as I ran out of money when I moved in and renovated. I re-used the old white (stained) laminate counter I’d pulled from the trailer and tossed. The old counter is resting on two IKEA cabinets without doors. My kitchen sink is a big plastic laundry sink I bought for about $20 with a faucet costing 3 times that amount. I made curtains for the fronts from a paint cloth. I made a top channel in each and threaded them onto an electrical conduit or pipe I installed with electrical clips. This is the setup until I have enough money or courage to buy or make a concrete counter with a stainless steel sink. To make this would not cost much, but the work demands some real strength and competence. It intimidates me something fierce.

The temporary nature of my kitchen set-up also includes the old jalousie windows that leak. These windows were originally lower, but I asked the handyman to raise them. It turns out that the new location is perfect for catching all the rainwater that flows off the curved trailer roof. When it rains I line up cans with bowls and pans on top of them to catch the row of droplets coming in the back windows. So, wouldn’t a window conservatory affair with planter inset at the sill height and these dish draining racks above be perfect? I think so.

I will continue to daydream and to draw up plans on the computer. It is just a matter of time because it always works out somehow with found objects, barter or bargains. It just does.

Check out Flow.

J64: Join

The word join usually is my cue to exit stage left. But an integral part of my year in living a life of sustainability necessitates leaving my hermitage on occasion and working with others. I have written about some interactions with my neighbors. But, I haven't been consistent or ventured very far.

Several weeks ago I took a real leap into community by participating in a city workshop on the Highway 101 streetscape for the 2 miles in front of my home. I also have been attended a city council meeting and viewed several of them live streaming on my computer. I approached city council members, emailed and have been commenting regularly on a local blog. This is pretty big 'joining in' step for me at the community level. As a liberal I have never felt 'at home' in these western bodies. In the 80's I lived in upstate New York, Manhattan and Philadelphia where I felt shared political values with so many others living in those places.

Moving to Phoenix in '92 indeed felt like moving to a desert. I feel similarly here in Southern California. I will admit that I didn't dig deeply into the red state community groups. I just stayed to myself. But, I am pushing through my reluctance to have some beginnings of a grassroots experience. The other beginning is my participation in my mobile home park's resident association board. This only entails a meeting once or twice a year.

Now the last two weeks, since I haven't been writing on my blog, I have been writing possible city council presentations and composing several newsletter drafts. Some interested neighbors and I are trying to drum up more participation in a Community Garden for our 'soulful little' mobile home park. We also want to do some art projects around the park. This is timely with city council action coming up with mobile home parks, with the rising cost of food and to help us all build community for whatever the future will bring. The city could be contemplating eminent domain, despite talk of needing the only bit of low income housing the city can claim.

The garden is something that will help us all focus on empowering ourselves rather than stewing in paranoia or general anxiety. So, I have joined with others. It is good to venture out of my comfort zone now and again. It is also a way to be an example of living more lightly. Already so many themes of combating waste and conserving water have come up conversationally. There will be the junk that comes up with group processes, but I just know I will get more than I give.

G43: Groceries

Suddenly I found it much simpler. That’s a lie. It really wasn’t sudden, it has taken years and yet it now feels so elementary I can’t believe it.

Let me back up, I bought a bunch of jars to store my food sixteen years ago. I have used these jars and added to them with the free jars from spaghetti sauce with the lids painted black. I then added some plastic ones to the mix several years ago when I was trying to organize a group living situation (where we have all moved onto other things).

Last year I started giving myself a ‘pounding’ each month. I would go to the bulk food section and buy legumes, beans, nuts in one pound portions. This year my plan was to make cloth bags and continue this practice. That was before I started reading all of the predictions of peak oil, biofuels and greed pushing prices up. According to Casaubon’s Book, the situation is only getting worse with some needing to make the choice between eating and heating. My plan changed to calculating buying enough for the year.

Full disclosure means I confess that perfectionism has hobbled me for 7 weeks. First, I gave my local Henry’s bulk food manager a list of food I buy with the directive to let me know where each legume, grain, bean and nut is grown. He went on vacation, then gave me the list with assurances that the majority comes from California or the West Coast. Then I found Jimbo’s and more organic products. Where to buy? Next, my quest was to find free storage containers that were not plastic. I got one large jar from my son’s restaurant. He balked when I asked for a dozen more. They simply don’t go through that many olives or marichino cherries. Lastly, I didn’t have the cloth bags, so I didn’t want to go get my bulk order. Finally, the perfectionism became stupid.

Friday night I finally sewed six fabric bags. Let me preface this by saying that I bought this bolt of fabric (<$20) at JoAnn’s Fabric, Phoenix in 2001. I kept thinking I would make sheer curtains and I never did. Now, seven years later I finally decided to bust out the sewing machine and get busy. I made the bags and found the plastic jars in my shed (filled with cotton balls, q-tips, scrubbies, band-aids, etc.) and a large plastic bin ($.50) at the thrift store. Though I still lack some storage to do what I would prefer, but I believe I am getting there.

Sharon is offering an online course on storage, but I don’t have the income. Again, I think I will just keep moving ahead and learn as I go. If nothing else, I am happy to think I have most all the bulk food I will need for the year and Chile will be please with my Re-think It use of found objects, long after her challenge is over.

Here’s another thing. I read some time ago about using a personal wire basket for grocery shopping. I thought it was a great idea and was trying to figure out how I might pull this off without buying anything. Then it occurred to me I could simply use my laundry basket, the one I got at the thrift store right before Thanksgiving ($4).

Can I tell you how incredibly easy it was to grocery shop this weekend? I went to the grocery store with my laundry basket, bags and list of bulk foods. I went straight to the bins and filled my bags and put them into the basket. I had to use the twist ties as I hadn’t sewn on ties or pre-marked the bags for content, as I’d initially planned. But, the whole thing just made me grin at the checkout, very soon after I’d entered.

Then on Sunday I went to the Farmer’s Market for the vegetables and fruit for the week. I did get a treat of locally made pumpkin bread wrapped in cling wrap. But, all in all I see my grocery shopping getting more simple. Without packaged goods, convenience foods, paper products, toiletries or cleaning products – It’s. Simply. Food.

F42: Finished!

I am so happy that I finally got my project done. Early in January I wrote about this Art Project that made me think of Tesseract. Yes, the reference is pretty esoteric, but it is a sort of memory reference.
Right after I started it, Chile Chews had a Re-think It Challenge and I felt this project was a perfect example.

I also wrote about my friends loaning me the air compressor in my Borrow and Barter post to help put all the blocks up more easily.

I feel like a big weight has been lifted from me. This idea was in my mind's eye for almost 3 years, every single day. As my eyes opened each morning I saw the hideous soffit that revealed all of the original trailer and added pile up of materials. It was like looking at sedimentary layers of rock with foam insulation oozing out from between them. My hanging wire sculpture by artist Sasso, foundly named empty man, only made it a focal point. At last I have a more pleasing sight.

I just wish these photos weren't so lousy. They simply can't communicate my utter delight and how it really looks good. Really.

E31: Endive & Eggs

Each Wednesday I explore a local, seasonal food or two. Since the first of the year I have progressed through the alphabet with foods beginning with A , B , C and D.

This week I selected endive and eggs. The endive is something I have avoided for many years because of the bitterness. But, I’d like to plant this in my garden this year as an alternative to the lettuce I am accustomed to eating. I used the following as a recipe and I think I am on to something. I will need to keep playing around with it to seriously consider endive a staple in my menu planning. I am pushing myself here and trying to unseat myself from the comfort zone.

Dressing
fresh lemon juice
garlic clove, coarsely chopped
olive oil
grated Parmesan cheese
Salad
1 head curly endive, wilted
pine nuts
Kalamata olives

The decision to include eggs was partially sentimental and partly because I am not quite ready to eliminate eggs from my diet. Ideally I’d like to eat like a vegan and be able to grow all of my own food. As I wrote last week, I am also not ready to give up dairy. BTW, I successfully made yogurt from my organic milk this week – using only a pan and bowl with a lid. It is now inside a cheesecloth sling I tied to the refrigerator rack over a bowl full of the dripping whey. I look forward to my homemade yogurt cheese later today. Back to vegetarian variations. The chart below would indicate that I would be categorized as eating an ovo-lacto vegetarianism diet. I like that. It sounds so wonderfully female.

So lacto or ovo variations on vegetarianism are still mostly plants.

Foods in the main vegetarian diets
Diet Name	Meat, (including Fish and Poultry)	Eggs	Dairy	Honey
Ovo-lacto vegetarianism	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Lacto vegetarianism	No	No	Yes	Yes
Ovo vegetarianism	No	Yes	No	Yes
Veganism	No	No	No	No

The sentimental reason for my eating eggs is for the tradition, the rituals within my family relationship with my son. It started at his 5th birthday when I was working as Sous Chef at a Jesuit Community, Creighton University. It had become a real challenge for me to keep coming up with different dishes at breakfast. One of the favorites was baked eggs in bacon rings. I fixed it often enough to become proficient. So, on that freezing Midwest birthday morning I decorated the breakfast table and fixed the birthday boy eggs in bacon rings, but I re-named them ‘Lord of the Rings’ eggs. I believe we were reading the hobbit at the time or we had been to the animated version of Lord of the Rings. He was enchanted.

In fact, he wrote this on his application for Culinary School.

On my fifth birthday my mother cooked a simple breakfast of eggs and bacon. The way my mother plated the breakfast has stuck with me for 21 years. She called these eggs “Lord of the Rings.” She baked an egg wrapped in bacon with a teaspoon of tomato sauce and chili powder at the bottom of a muffin tin and out popped the most interesting and delicious breakfast I had seen in my five years on earth. Now, I don’t remember what presents I got or what I did that day to celebrate my birthday, but I still remember the “Lord of the Rings.” That is why I love to cook. You can start out with the simplest ingredients and with a little thought, a lot of heart and some time; you can create a meal or dish or just a taste that someone might remember for the rest of his life.

He now is a General Manager of a local restaurant where he’d been the Executive Chef. We cook together most holidays and enjoy the process. I am proud of him, his cooking and his loving respect for his mom. When he was 32 I decided to make a ritual of our mutual appreciation of cooking and my homage to the egg. I blew the yolk from thirty-two eggs and then decorated each egg with a decoupaged picture of him at the age of each egg’s year. I was also supporting his plan to build his own nest egg, so this was incorporated into the concept. Another reason for this ritual was my own need to establish a way to show love and celebration for his birthdays, without my having an income. I was unemployed and I knew this was going to be the norm as I grew older. So now I know I can fix an egg each year, decorated with something significant about the year with a photo.

Of course I couldn’t omit the Lord of the Rings from this 32nd birthday celebration. I did experiment with another plating challenge. I sprinkled shredded parmesan cheese on a plate, melted it in the microwave and then turned it over a bowl to cool, to harden into a nest shape. This is how I served the bacon wrapped eggs. I just loved the salty flavor, the texture and it fed my joy over beautiful food. I wish I had less blurry photographs to remember the day.

Endive in bowl

C20: Cork

I am crazy about cork. And as part of the Re-think It challenge I wanted to describe my project to give my home missing baseboards. But, instead of wood baseboards, I will use cork from wine bottles. The inspiration came from this photo, though my approach will be simpler. I don’t want to include the wood strips.

My son is a general manager at a local restaurant, so I keep bugging him for corks. Alas, I am not a wine drinker. Thank goodness, because I’d worry that for the sake of my baseboards I’d be a drunken sot.

I also have a cork floor that I laid myself. This is a sustainable material from the past. My understanding it's had continued use in Britain, like linoleum, and is making a comeback in this country. I am an unabashed fan of this product. Here are some fun facts to know and tell.

Cork Flooring

• Superior Resilience
• Acoustic Insulation (sound absorbing qualities)
• Compressible and Elastic (returns to shape after subjected to pressure; cork is 82% air, and within that, for every cubic inch there are 200 million air cells; cork will recover 99% after compression)
• Impermeable to liquids and gases
• Low Conductivity of heat, sound, or vibrations
• Extremely high coefficient of friction (very slip resistant)
• R=5;Natural product that warms and enriches any interior
• Fire Resistance – cork is inherently fire resistant
• Good thermal insulation
• Naturally Hypo–allergenic (resists rot, mildew, and mold)
• Naturally Anti–Static
• Easy to install and care for (similar to wood floors)

What’s the history of Cork Growth and Development?
The cork that is used to make cork flooring tiles comes from the Cork Oak, which is found and is most prosperous in a narrow band around the western coast of the Mediterranean. A distinct mixture of temperature, sunlight, relative humidity, and soil make–up is needed for the Cork Oak to flourish. The laws set–up in these areas to protect both the development and peeling of the Cork Oak are stringent, and punishable by strict and ever–present fines. It is considered a natural treasure.

For millions of years, the cork oak has survived on its inherent strength and spontaneous natural regeneration, though artificial regeneration is becoming more common. Selective thinning is also necessary to regulate the density of the cork oak communities, and to remove the aged trees. Cork trees that grow too close together heavily jeopardize their neighbors’ development, for the nutrients in the soil are detrimental to the cork oak’s longevity and success. In general, cork oak communities are thinned every 9–10 years, similar to the time period between which the stripping and pruning is undertaken. Regarding the actual stripping, most countries can only (by law) prune the oak when it is dormant in the winter months between December through March.

These photos were taken during my remodel. The original flooring was covered in yak vinyl. We removed all of this and a whole portion of the rotten trailer floor (not shown here). After all the drywall work was done I laid the cork tiles over the wood subfloors. This lower photo was taken when I decided how to arrange slate tiles for my shower tiling project. Too bad I didn't take a better picture of the cork flooring installation of the 12 inch square tiles. I got them on sale in 2005 for $3/square foot. Besides this good price and all of the features described, I found one of the nicest aspects for me is that this cork pattern hides dirt. Since I've writing about cleaning this week, this seems notable. Oh yes, indeed it is. When I get enough corks to complete the baseboard project I will publish them on make-a(green)plan.

B14: Borrow and Barter

This morning I watched a news piece about Muhammad Yunus "banker of the poor." He was on a program from New Zealand, International Dateline, on Link TV. Mr. Yunus, a Nobel Prize winning social reformer, explained what inspired his work and the micro-loan concept. He described the complete failure of conventional banking and capitalism.

'If the banks lent to the rich, I lent to the poor. If banks lent to men, I lent to women. If banks required collateral, my loans were collateral free. If banks required a lot of paperwork, my loans were illiterate friendly. If you had to go to the bank, my bank went to the village."

My own resistance to the conventional banking world and my rebellion against a money culture is primarily one of non-consuming and frugality. Borrowing and barter are also concepts I advocate. My life is filled with interactions with those around me where money isn’t exchanged. Yesterday I spent several hours teaching a nurse in the neighborhood how to use Excel. She wants to set up a chart for her work, tracking her patient care. She gave me a mattress several years ago when I was having back problems from a broken down mattress. I have asked her if I might borrow her bike in the upcoming weeks to see if I can get myself into a biking frame of mind.

Today I am working with a young mother who keeps the family business books. I learned how to input expense receipts and invoice payments into Quick Books. We will look at this approach versus what she used before to decide what works best for them. We also have a history of barter with her husband doing construction projects for me and with me. I have sewed some curtains for her. The good news bad news is the family business is booming, the family business is taking all of her husband’s time. Poor me.

Another neighbor loaned me her coffee grinder this week (forgot to grind the beans at the store) and I will loan her my food processor to make hummus. She borrows my vacuum and I borrow the shredder. We borrow ingredients from each other and share food we when we made batches too big. She has also paid me to do work for her business. There are no hard and fast rules.

I could go on and on with these examples. This is a community safety net and I value it highly. I don’t think micro-loans and community barter and borrowing will solve the crisis that is capitalism. The answer isn’t communism. New economies are as illusive to me as new post oil sustainable cultures. Right now I am in transition from everything I have ever known. I believe our nation will be going into a transition following the upcoming political and economic changes on the horizon. It is so difficult to envision the unknown.

One last word on borrowing . . . I believe our blogosphere is the most profoundly apt example of borrowing. We borrow each other’s tips, quotes, links, videos, photos, references and inspiration. Today I asked a fellow blogger if I could borrow from her two-part series about her EcoAction group’s work from her Step Wise blog.

Sustainable design depends on "back-casting"; visualizing the future based on sustainability principles, then imagining what would need to happen to make it so. This is a different beast than fore-casting, which tends to be limited by our present and what we think is possible. Let's go!

Visioning Exercise:

If you haven't done this sort of thing before, take some time to think about the things that you care most about. Remember that sustainable lifestyles are positive for you and your family, community, economic viability and environment. Then take a piece of paper and think through the answers to the questions below. You don't need to answer all of them, just enough that you can have a truly vibrant picture in your head of what you want:
Envision your ideal sustainable lifestyle in as much detail as you can. What do you do? Where do you live? What is your community like? How do you spend your time? Which of your values are you expressing? Then, to think it through:

• What's in it for me and my family?
• How will it fit in with our lives?
• Why do I do the things I do in the first place?
• When my vision is complete, how will I know it?
• What will a typical day look like for me?
• What will my environment and home look like?
• What will my neighborhood and community look like?
• What are the key components of my life?
• What is it that pulls me out of bed every day?
• What part of this makes me happy?
• What are my talents?
• How will I use my talents in this vision?
• What are my strengths?
• What are my weaknesses?
• What could derail me?
• How will I handle the areas that are weaknesses?

She has many more examples of the exercises including collage images. Information/concrete steps were favored by those who didn’t go for the envision exercises. For them, a nuts and bolts compendium of ideas was thought of as most useful. The full posts should be read for some rich details of this group approach to EcoAction (her word).
I borrow her opening:

This is a fun and easy way to keep your sustainable dreams literally in front of you. It is one of the ways of making the vision in your head tangible, or of developing a vision if you aren't already in touch with it.