Posts filed under ‘guilty displeasures’
Raw Shame
This is kind of embarrassing. I go all the way into Manhattan to score some raw milk (which is illegal but shouldn’t be, because it’s delicious and wholesome), and then I come home and soil it with an Oreo cookie. Oreos are made from highly processed ingredients, they’re “chocolate” cookies, but the very last ingredient listed on their packaging is chocolate, and they’re made by Nabisco, which is owned by R.J. Reynolds and is one of those big nasty food/tobacco/evil companies.
It was really tasty. I really shouldn’t buy Oreos. From now on I’m just going to make my own cookies, or even better I’ll make Boyfriend make them for me.
Pine Sol without Pine
With all the gardening and soil hauling that I’ve been doing this week, my floors have gotten really nasty and muddy. Yesterday I attempted to address this problem with a little mop action. Of course, my floors are already muddy again, but that’s not my point. My point is this: what the F am I doing with a bottle of lemon-scented Pine Sol under my sink?
Pine Sol, on its own, is really not that bad. Its active ingredient is pine oil, which is a natural cleaning agent that comes from distilling the needles and wood of pine trees. The cleanser also includes alkyl alcohol ethoxylates, which are toxic if you consume them and hazardous in large quantities but also totally biodegradable, as well as isopropanol, which is basically rubbing alcohol. The cleanser also has some sodium petroleum sulfonate, which is basically oil-based soap. While you wouldn’t want to drink Pine Sol, or rub it on your skin, it’s probably not the worst thing (from an environmental perspective) to clean your floors with.
But still – lemon scented Pine Sol? I can’t even remember buying this stuff. I generally clean my house with vinegar, lemon juice, and the occasional “natural” cleanser that I buy from natural foods stores when I’m feeling fancy (note: the Seventh Generation bottle pictured above is about 3 years old and currently contains a vinegar-water solution). Pine Sol is a product of the Clorox Company, which is on the cutting-edge of greenwashing after having bought out Burt’s Bees and with its “Green Works” products (CLOROX: disposable wipes will never be “green”, please stop making them!). (more…)
Lazy blogger, mediocre environmentalist
It’s been over a month since I last wrote here, and I don’t really have an excuse. I think it’s because I keep coming up with blog topics that are kind of hard to research and/or comply with. Someone recently told me that it actually slows down your boiling water if you add salt to it first – I always have added salt in the beginning because I thought it sped up the process. Does anyone know what the truth is? I’m too lazy to look it up, but I would really like to know whether I’m wasting a ton of energy trying to heat up salty water all the time.
I’ve also been thinking about greening up my cat’s litter situation, but I’m totally hooked on Fresh Step (which is clay-based and not at all green, plus it costs about $10 a box). I’m not at all interested in potty-training my cats, (more…)
Not Terribly Green Meal (but yummy, nonetheless)
The other night Boyfriend and I made a tasty dinner out of a mix of some green but mostly conventional ingredients. This is kind of how all of my meals look these days, as I’ve been out of work and pinching pennies. Although there are lots of ways to save money while still eating green, I haven’t been leaving my neighborhood much (the little work I’ve been doing of late has been from my couch), and there isn’t a lot of organic and sustainable food in Bushwick (yet! – this weekend we had a great discussion about this).
Anyway, here’s the meal broken down:
The potatoes are from my local grocery store, and I picked them out because they were labeled “eastern potatoes,” which I assumed meant they were kind of local but I have no clue whether or not that’s true. I sliced them up and fried them in olive oil (pricey, but good for you) – a technique that I learned from my Step Dad, who traditionally makes these kinds of fries to go with big weekend bacon-and-eggs breakfasts.
The rolls, tomatoes and arugula came from the grocery store, and although the rolls were baked locally, the rest probably hailed from California or Mexico. (more…)
Clean Slate
The holidays. They’re over now (phew), but I’m still feeling the aftershocks. It’s time for a confession.
Christmas is about gifts, and this year I bought a lot of them, made a couple (too few), and received even more. There might be a recession on, and Americans might have experienced a leaner holiday this year, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at the mountain of loot that I brought home on December 26th. It’s worth noting that a few of the consumer goods I received were fairly green – I got a compost bin, some gardening tools, and a gift certificate to buy vegetable seeds from Seeds of Change. I also wrapped the presents that I gave in the paper that I saved last year. But for the most part, this Christmas was a nauseating display of consumption and waste.
And there was also food. Too much of it. And lots of alcohol to wash it down. I ate until my stomach hurt on more than one occasion, and threw a New Years party which resulted in a morning-after recycling bag full of bottles and cans whose girth rivaled that of my 1995 volvo sedan. Even a couple of days ago I caught myself eating and drinking to the point of gluttony, excusing my behavior with the pathetic phrase, “it’s the holidays, right?” No, it wasn’t the holidays. It was January.
And it still is January, which means that I’ve still got an opportunity to repent for my holiday season sins (more…)
Welcome Back, Me
Hi! It’s me, Gwen. Remember me? I write this blog. Or I did, as recently as eight short months ago. Since I last wrote, I have been driving a 1995 Volvo sedan around the mighty USA, spewing carbon and other nasties into the air at about 28 miles per gallon. I’ve been eating roadside beef and American cheese, hanging out in towns with no recycling services, and living in an Alaskan home that gets its water trucked in on a monthly basis. The closest I’ve come to composting is throwing an apple core out the window of my moving car. And that’s really just littering.
Tsk tsk.
But now I’m back in New York, ready to repent for my eco sins by riding the subway, getting a new job in the environmental sector, and moving into an apartment with a back yard (soon to be my garden). I’m going to push the New York recycling system to its extreme, conserve electricity using the time-tested method of turning out the lights, and shop with near exclusivity at my favorite grocery store in the world – the Union Square Greenmarket.
And we’re selling the car. That’s right, the car’s gotta go. New York is no place for a Volvo, and Boyfriend and I could certainly use the cash (remember $5 gas? we were on our way to Alaska during that golden age).
So here we go. Back to blog land, and back to a never-green-enough lifestyle.
Super Repentance
Yesterday was perhaps the most American of days (excluding Xmas, 4th of July, and this coming Thursday, which I’m sure I don’t have to remind you is the first day of Chinese New Year). My friends and I gathered around the TV and put on the game, and treated ourselves to a feast fit for about 300 sumo wrestlers. There were ten of us.
Now, it’s not like I eat this way every day. The Superbowl is a special day, where we’re all given a free pass to binge on salty, fatty, orange-colored foods. It’s part of what makes America great. Right?
No, not right. Aside from the crippling stomach situation that resulted from my 8-course meal (consisting mainly of chips, cream, cheese, cream cheese, salt and beer), the feast left me with a soul-ache. This had a lot to do with the fact that most of the food I procured for the event wasn’t seasonal or organic (except for the salsa and some of the chips). And it had a whole lot to do with the sheer amount of food that my cohorts and I stuffed so willingly into our faces. (more…)
The Power Cooking Challenge
I love to cook, and I love having good tools to cook with. Sharp knives, big shiney mixing bowls, wisks – these all make me very happy for some reason. Over the past couple of years I’ve managed to collect a few nice gadgets for my kitchen that have brought my cooking to a whole new, more delicious level, and I really don’t want to live without them. The problem? They’re electronic, meaning they’re diabolical and highly guilt-worthy.
Anyone who has ever whipped egg whites or heavy cream into frothy white peaks by hand can relate to my love for the electronic hand mixer. Hand mixers and cuisinarts and coffee grinders are the tools that separate the modern cook from the cave man (who I believe is known to have bought his coffee pre-ground). These tools hold places of honor in my kitchen, and although I certainly do not have to plug-in every time I make a meal, I am sure to bust them out at least once a week. And every time I weep the tears of a thousand lost kilowatt hours.
So, should I abandon power-cooking altogether? Fat chance. You’ll have to pry that cuisinart out of my cold, dead hands to get me to give it up. But I’m also not willing to live with the guilt.
The challenge: get a small generator that I can power myself – using solar, wind or human energy – and run my small electronics off of it. I found this online – Human Power Generator – and it looks pretty sweet, but it requires making it myself and I’m not very confident in my skills as an electrician. In fact, all I can find online, are more sites like this that instruct you in making your own generator. Why doesn’t anyone manufacture small human-powered generators for running home electronics? WHYYYY!!???
This is frustrating. Please write to me if you’ve got any leads. I’m going to keep working on this, and I’ll definitely let you know if I find anything.
Armed and Ready to Cook
I must have been pretty good this year, because Santa brought me some sweet presents. Two of my favorites: the Atlas Pasta Maker, and the Cuisinart Food Processor. Pretty much as soon as I got home from Massachusetts last night I took them out of their packages and put them to work.
The meal: Ravioli with Cheese and Veggie Filling
Ravioli is fun to make but can be a bit time consuming. I recommend making a bunch on a slow weekend or when you’ve got some time to spare, and freezing some. It’s also a fun meal to make with kids. When I was little my mom would make home-made pasta (usually lasagna) and it was always a fun cooking event for the kids to participate in. Cooking with your kids is a great way to get them interested in food and nutrition, and also to encourage them to eat new foods that they haven’t tried yet. (more…)
Biggest, Guiltiest Travelling Day of the Year
It’s almost time to get on the road and drive upstate to my aunt’s farm for turkey day, and I expect nothing less than a traffic nightmare and a facefull of CO2. But I can’t complain, because that would make me a big hypocrite. Yes, friends, I admit it: I have a car. (insert screeching breaks noise here)
And what’s worse, it’s an SUV (be it a small one – a Honda SUV). The thing gets about 28 miles to the gallon on the highway, and I don’t take it to work, and I share it with boyfriend and my two sisters, but still. It’s a car, and I live in New York, and I should at least have a Hybrid, right?
So, that’s another thing that brings convenience and guilt to my not-so-green life. It makes my stomach turn a bit just thinking about it, but I’ll have to get over that because I’m expected to consume about 27 lbs of turkey and other holiday fare over the next several days and nausea would hinder me severely.
Drive safe, everyone.
