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, 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!).

I’m not sure exactly what the difference is between Lemon Pine Sol and regular Pine Sol, but I have a feeling the lemon kind is probably less benign. Wikipedia tells me this much, “The new lemon scented Pine-Sol received a positive review from the public due to its pleasant scent despite losing its cleaning and disinfecting qualities.” Does it have pine oil? Who knows. The smell alone should deter us all from buying it. I used the stuff to clean my floors yesterday and the chemically odor lingered for hours – people complain about the scent of vinegar, but at least that smell clears out within a half hour or so. Yes, the Pine Sol left my floors (momentarily) clean, but the whole experience made me feel dirty.

Upon scrutinizing the cabinet under my sink, I notice that there is also some Windex and a HUGE bottle of Murphy’s Oil Soap. At this point I face the dilemma of not wanting to use these products but also feeling guilty about throwing them out. I have a hunch that over the course of the next few years I will slowly employ them in cleaning my household and then flush them down the toilet, where they will enter the sewer system and eventually wreak lemon-scented havoc on New York’s coastal ecosystems.

But I make this promise to myself, and to you, reader: I will never buy crappy mystery cleansers like lemon-scented Pine Sol again. Never!

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, and I’ve tried and rejected natural litters in the past. My only compromise thus far has been to minimize the number of plastic grocery bags that I use to throw the litter away in – we have a little trash can that all the litter is scooped into and then we throw out the whole thing once a week or so.

I shouldn’t even have plastic grocery bags in my home anyways, though! This really bothers me. I have been RELIGIOUS about using cloth grocery bags for the past couple of years. I always keep an extra bag in my purse, and if I don’t have a bag on me I just carry everything by hand. But somehow my kitchen cabinets are still overflowing with plastic bags. I blame this partially on Boyfriend, who is less diligent than I when it comes to shopping bags, but most of the blame should go to our friends, who are generous and bring gifts like beer and whiskey to our house, generally swathed in plastic.

Some brainy sciency-types say that my grocery bag obsession isn’t even helping the planet. It’s like cutting up plastic bear rings or turning off the faucet when I’m brushing my teeth. A drop in the bucket, they say. I’m doing my best to block them out, because I think we can use any environmentally-friendly act that Americans are willing to undertake.

Anyways, the month-long blog hiatus is partially due to all of the frustrations listed above, but mainly resulting from a highly distracting garden, some community food projects that I’ve been undertaking, and a new job tossing pizzas in Prospect Heights. But now I’m back, and I promise to stop being lazy – at least for a little while.

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. The cheese was Cabot, which is a local(ish) brand that was bought out by Kraft a while back. I generally avoid anything marked with the Kraft logo (because it makes me wanna vom), but it was the only cheddar in the store so I turned the other cheek and went with it.

The only certifiably green component of this meal was the burger meat, which was grass-fed and came from Whole Foods (not my favorite place to shop but I guess a little better than the normal grocery store). Plus, the two of us split a mere quarter pound of beef, and when it comes to sustainable meat-eating, less is more. Boyfriend cooked the meat to perfection – spiced with a little salt and pepper, flattened into patties, and seared on medium/high so the outside got nice and charred and the inside stayed a little pink.

Tasty as this meal was, it needed a pickel, and it could have been a lot greener. Next time I’m making it from 100% farmers market and home-grown ingredients (except maybe for the olive oil). Food tastes better without the guilt.

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 and start 2009 with a clean slate. I’m not sure if I want to make an actual resolution, although I did have success with last year’s resolution (there’s a snot-filled hanky on the table next to me as I write this now). The changes that I want to make are too many and too big to be grouped into a single resolution, but if I were to have to make one big umbrella resolution, it would be to cut back. It’s time to trim the fat off my lifestyle, to get rid of wasteful habits and to embrace an attitude of asceticism. Less is more in 2009. Clear is the new black. My new years shopping tip: don’t go shopping.

We’ll see how well this goes. I’m easing into it – for starters, no more paper towels (I’ve got lots of dish cloths, anyway). Maybe then I’ll work my way up to something bigger (no clothes shopping for a year?). Let me know if you’ve got ideas.

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.

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.

The act of binge eating is pretty gross, both physically and spiritually. It’s very hard to justify your third helping of cheesecake when you know a) that it’s going to eventually kill you; and b) that the unfair distribution of resources has left millions around the world without enough to eat, while you’re eating until you become physically ill. Nevermind all the suffering that those non-organic cows had to go through to pump out the milk to make the cheese, and the several million underpaid and exploited workers worldwide who spent their days slaving away in cane fields just to make the sugar that you’ll probably not even stop to savor because you’re all distracted by the look of sheer determination on Eli Manning’s face.

And then there’s this little mess:

These babies are being sent off to the recycling plant ASAP, but does that make my liver feel any better? Will that help to counter of the carbon that was spewed skyward from budweiser trucks in order to deliver this stuff to my local store? Of course not.

All I can do at this point is shake my head in shame. Plus, I lost 10 bucks for betting on the Patriots. Like my losing team, I spend today reflecting on my actions and wondering “what went wrong?” “What can I do next time to balance my fun American traditions with my profound dedication to sustainable living?”

What happened yesterday is a thing of the past, Tom Brady, but together, with a little hope, a lot of effort, and the speedy expulsion of your Supermodel Girlfriend from the continental United States, we can make 2009 a record-breaking superbowl.

Seriously, just get rid of the Brazilian chick.

 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.

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. 

Anyways, so ravioli looks fancy, but is actually quite simple to make. You just need to make pasta dough and some filling, and then put them together like a little pocket full of heaven. You also need a pasta maker and a food processor (or somebody who really enjoys dicing veggies).

Pasta dough is basically flour, eggs, salt, oil and water. I used olive oil and half whole wheat flour/half white flour (they say it’s good for the colon). Here’s a basic recipe for a couple of servings of ravioli pasta – I tripled it so that I’d have leftovers to freeze:

2/3 cups flour; 1 eg; 1 tbs oil; 1 tbs water; 1/2 tsp salt   — mix flour and salt, beat egg with oil and water and add into flour, mix it all with a wooden spoon and/or your hands until you have a nice big ball of dough.

Lay the dough out on a table with some flour and roll it out with a rolling pin until it’s about 1/2 inch thick. Then cut it into strips and feed it into the pasta maker on the lowest setting (low setting = wide noodles, high setting = thin noodles). You need to run the pasta strips through the pasta maker a few times, each time raising the setting so the noodles get nice and thin. When you get holes in the dough, make sure to patch them so your ravioli don’t ooze.

Take your pasta strips and cut them into squares (I like my ravioli big – about 3-4 inches wide and tall). Set them aside and make your filling:

What kind of vegetables do you like? Carrots? Squash? Spinach? Chop it up in your food processor and mix it with cheese and salt, and you’ve got your filling. Boyfriend and I made three kinds: mushroom, spinach, and squash. We mixed them with feta cheese and parmesan, but you could pretty much use any cheese (your call). Throw in some fresh herbs, pine nuts, whatever you like. The only criteria is that the filling be kind of dry – you don’t want it too wet and drippy (so once it’s all mixed together it should be a pasty or muddy texture).

Then you take small globs of the filling and put it in the center of one pasta square. Put another square on top of it and pinch the edges together with a fork – make sure that you press hard enough so the edges bind, but don’t press so hard that you poke holes in the ravioli. Trim the edges of the pockets with a knife so you get a nice clean square, and then pile them on a plate with a bit of flour sprinkled on each so they don’t stick together. They should look like this:

At this point you can take some of your uncooked ravioli and put it in a plastic bag in the freezer (if you suck the air out before you seal it they’ll last longer without freezer burn). The rest you toss into a pot of boiling water and cook until a minute or so after they start floating.

Top them with some sauted garlic, olive oil and salt and serve. Yum!

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.