Four Pounds of Cheese Project, Day 7: Fridge Clean Out Day!

Ok, so this isn’t actually day 7. But what can I say: it’s been a busy weekend. However, I promised to clean out my fridge, and I did it this morning. I’m pleased to report that the Four Pounds Project has had a lot of effect on our family waste! We have been more aware about the leftovers in the fridge, and have been eating on them all week. I had about a 1/2 cup of my sugar snap stir fry left, and I threw it into the freezer to buy me some more time. I will pull it back out when I make stir fry next. I also discovered that my sweet dog Dakota likes oatmeal leftovers when mixed up in her dog food. Because I’m kind of desperate to encourage her to eat anything, I was happy for this little jewel, which I wouldn’t have tried if not for the Four Pounds Project.

I did have a beautiful tomato turn to juice, and this was very very sad for me, because I bought it on Thursday to put into several sandwiches this week. It had a couple of bad spots when I bought it, and I guess that was enough to speed up the decaying process. My farmer’s market trips are each Thursday morning, and I normally buy just enough tomatoes to last me until the next week. The ones on my vines are very small and green still. It’s been a weird growing season here.

We also lost some cilantro that we worked on about 3 times this week, but there was just too much in the bunch to finish it off. That got tossed before I got a chance to photograph it. I do wish they’d sell cilantro in smaller bunches.

Besides that, I had one small apple with a little bad spot. I think tonight I will cut out that little spot and chunk up the apple into a stir fry with some soy-marinated tofu and some southern pecans that my parents gave me. Mmmmmmm…. Makes me hungry just thinking about it.

Huge thanks to Jenni for creating this fabulous little project. I think it will help all of my family be more aware of using up what’s in the fridge before we prepare something new. Just being accountable for everything that went bad was a real eye opener. It became quite a fun and educational game for us.

Now, who wants to take on eliminating single use plastic containers?? 

Four Pounds of Cheese Project, Day 6

I’m happy to brag on my sweet husband today, who jumped on to the anti-food waste bandwagon at lunch. When I got home from work, he told me that he purposely used up the tomato from the fridge on his sandwich so that it wouldn’t go bad. Yea, Jamie! After work, my daughter Eva and I drove across town to watch a friend in a community theater performance (cheers, Aria!), and we munched on PBJs and some almonds en route. Eva couldn’t finish her sandwich, which is pictured here. Jamie and I both debated eating it to eliminate the waste, but referring back to my comments in an earlier blog entry, I stuck to my conviction that eating more than you need is no better than tossing it. Perhaps I could have wrapped it up for a mid morning snack tomorrow. But well, I didn’t.

Tomorrow is the big fridge clean out day. I promise to reveal all!

Four Pounds of Cheese Project, Day 5

Happy to report no food waste today! We’ve been thinking about what’s in the fridge, and ate up the rest of our sugar snap stir fry with our tempeh sandwiches. Jamie had his on the side, but I put mine on the sandwich with the tempeh, and then threw in some dill and sage from the garden. Fabuloso.

Tomorrow I work all day, but on Sunday, I plan to do the Big Fridge Cleanout as my final cheese project post. That I think will be the most telling report of the whole week, because it’s the back hideaways of the fridge that are the biggest challenge to keep fresh. I’ll have my camera at the ready-

Four Pounds of Cheese Project, Day 4

On Day 4, my food waste consisted of bready products. In trying to actively reduce my waste, for my breakfast toast I dug underneath my new loaves of bread to find an almost empty baggie. From the feel of it, it was probably only the heels now, which sometimes I’ll eat, and sometimes I’ll wrap up with our various doggie meds for a pharmaceutical pet treat. Anyhoo, I opened it, and this photo is what I found.

Wowza. That must have been in there since before our cross-country trip. Bread sometimes does this for us, though for the most part I think we’re pretty good about using it up. Heels are good for quick snacks with a bit of Nutella, or a sandwich. Why are we culturally prejudiced against the poor bread heel, anyway?

We’ve been eating on the sugar snaps that Jamie stir-fried, and I uncovered the scary looking tinfoil container, which happily proved to be fresh mushrooms that I used on my evening’s pizza. Whew! I also ate up my last Alabama peach, which was fabulous.

The other waste of the day also came out of the bread cabinet. With my dog food tortilla success of  Wednesday, I decided to give it another go and found a tortilla bag underneath some other bread bags. Unfortunately, the one lonely tortilla in the bag had also gone past its prime, and was more like corn chips than a tortilla. I debated as to whether or not it was still edible (what do you do with stale tortillas?), but I decided that my dogs would likely choke on it, and I didn’t feel motivated to try and eat it myself. So it got tossed.

On a side note, I hit the farmer’s market today and bought 3 tomatoes, 1 green pepper, and a small bag of carrots. When I got home, I found that we had 2 other full bags of carrots in the fridge. Hmmm. I presented the problem to my husband Jamie. His solution: carrot soup this weekend. I can’t wait.

Four Pounds of Cheese Project, Day 3

I’m happy to say that today I have nothing to photograph. Everything that was served up was eaten. I have 2 Alabama peaches left which I decided to gamble until the morning, because I do love them in yogurt. And my husband stir fried the sugar snaps I was worried about. We had them on the side of a fish taco dish. We still have some as leftovers, so I’ll have to stay on top of them this week to make sure they actually get eaten.

I did notice one concerning something in my fridge with aluminum foil on it. I didn’t open it, for fear they were forgotten mushrooms. But I will reveal all tomorrow. We seem to have a problem with mushrooms, especially when there’s foil involved.

And finally, I made a lovely breakthrough with my dog: I discovered tonight that she’ll eat her dog food when I roll it up in a nice tortilla and hand feed it to her. Gobbled it right up. The things we do for our pets…. But I am glad that she ate.

Four Pounds of Cheese Project, Day 2

Well, here we are at day 2 of our Four Pounds of Cheese Project, in which I shamelessly show the world the food waste our family of 4 makes this week. Today we did better than yesterday, only cutting out a few bad spots in one of my remaining Alabama peaches. I was going to photograph those spots, but honestly I’m exhausted, and so you will have to simply imagine them. You could hold them in the palm of your hand. They look peachy and a bit rotten.

I also had a bit of baked potato (not photographed), because I’m trying to find things to feed my aging and ailing dog, Dakota. I think her poor 15 year old body is beginning to shut down, and she’s not eating much anymore. She normally likes potato, so I asked my daughter if she would share some of hers. My pup ate a couple of bites, but left a couple more. Poor sweet Dakota. I will show you her picture, just because I love her, and it’s hard to watch your dog go through this final stage of life.

The interesting thing I’ve been thinking about in today’s exercise is the “Clean Plate Club” and how it relates to this food waste project. I find that I am a reluctant member of said club, and unless I can box it back up for leftovers later, I feel compelled to eat everything that is served to me. But I don’t believe this is a healthy attitude towards food, and I actually try to fight this mealtime compulsion of mine. Because frankly, if you eat more than you need, that’s no different from throwing the food out. In fact, it’s worse, because the food is still wasted, and you’ve mistreated your body. Of course the preferred action is finding the appropriate amount to serve in the first place, so you won’t feel overfull and/or have to throw out perfectly good food. That’s the trick. It’s not a guilt thing; it’s a math thing.

My challenge for tomorrow is my sugar snap peas, which I harvested last week from my garden and threw in an open container in my fridge. I will have to either cook or freeze them, or I will be forced to feature them in a later post this week, and I’m determined that’s not going to happen.

Goodnight all-

The Four Pounds of Cheese Project, Day 1

A couple of weeks ago on a cross-country trip, I got a rare visit with my dear friend Jenni Field. She’s a pastry chef with a hilarious blog-site on which she shares her cooking genius and beautiful sense of humor with the world. Lately, she’s been thinking about our complicated relationship with food, and how we grow, prepare, choose, eat, and waste it. She thought so much about it, that she birthed an idea that she calls the Four Pounds of Cheese Project. The name comes from a recent National Geographic-reported stat that the average American throws away about 4 pounds of cheese per year, or 14% of what they purchase.

Basically, she challenged her friends and loved ones to photograph their food waste for one week and then blog about it. I’m game! After all, I’m an environmentally-conscious-slightly-obsessive kind of girl who can’t stand to waste anything. My family of 4 only takes the trash out to the curb about once per month, because we just don’t make that much. I figured this would be a good exercise for me, but that overall I would make a passing grade.

So let’s get started. After conferring with Jenni, I decided to make the following categorical decisions:

1. Photograph everything that’s edible but not eaten, including stuff that makes its way to the compost pile. After all, this is about hunger and wasteful production issues more than landfill space.

2. Don’t photograph food waste that isn’t edible, like coffee grounds or carrot greens (though there is a discussion to be had about food parts that we toss that are actually edible, like apple cores).

3. Include food that came out of my garden, even though this food does not “consume” the vast amount of resources utilized by its commercially grown counterparts for professional growing, picking, packing, shipping, and storage.

Ok, so now that the ground rules are set, I will make my first confession: I was more than a bit embarrassed by my food waste by the end of Day 1. It all started out innocently enough. There was the unfortunate peach incident, which was a bummer (I’ve been working my way through a basket of fabulous Alabama peaches that I personally drove back on my above-mentioned cross country trip, and I let one go bad). I tossed it before I remembered to photograph it, so I’m including a photo of one of the survivors in memoriam.

Then there was the breakfast toast crust left by my sweet daughter. When my kids were toddlers, I fell into the mommy habit of eating up all the leftover crusts, pretzels, and grapes that they left behind on their plates. As this was in addition to my regular adult lunch, I found I was eating a bit more than I needed each day. Over the years, I have tried to let go of this habit. I must admit to being tempted to gobble up my daughter’s crusts just to save me from having to report it in this blog. But in the name of honesty….

Lunch came, and only a handful of mac ‘n cheese got left behind by my son. I’m still feeling pretty good about myself.

But then came dinner, and as I reached in the fridge to pull out the blueberries for our oatmeal, I spied a forgotten tub of beautiful, unopened, and thoroughly molded strawberries. (The photo doesn’t do a good job at showing all the mold; it was on every berry.) I stared at them, and the mental debate began: well, I thought, technically they had molded yesterday, and so were wasted before Day 1 of this project. Really, they weren’t for this meal at all, I reasoned. Ah, but then this is a slippery slope, isn’t it? I hated this waste most of all, because these berries were professionally grown, picked, packed, shipped, and stored, using up tons of resources and most likely all kinds of not pleasant to think about chemicals. And they weren’t even opened.

But those strawberries are why Jenni proposed the Four Pounds Project to begin with. I can already tell that I’m going to be looking at my fridge with different eyes by the end of this week. And hopefully my sharing my ups and downs will be useful to somebody else out there who also wants to reduce their consumption and waste.

What’s Stewing in Your Brain?

There’s a short story by somebody – I can’t remember the title or the author, or when it was written, or really much of anything about it – but what I do remember is that it is about a fantasy world where all the un-pursued dreams and ideas go. I only have impressions of the story. For example, somebody thinks their town could really use a community center, but never takes the time to make it happen. Poof! Off to the Un-Pursued World it goes. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could clean up the local park (grumble grumble), but oh yeah, I gotta get home and make dinner, and hmmm? What park? Poof! The clean park goes off to the Un-Pursued World. Or, the local computer techie thinks she could invent a new way for jets to conserve fuel, if only she had the time. Poof! You get the idea.

We’re busy people, involved with our families, friends, work, home and hobbies. But we are thinkers too, and I think that most of the time, when people complain about, well, whatever – the government, pollution, the younger generation – if we allowed ourselves the space to reimagine the situation, we would find that underneath our negative grumblings are seeds of positive, potential change. Ultimately, we all want to live in a good world, and I believe that most of us want it to be good for everybody.

I also have a feeling that many people have already done that re-imaging work. But it largely remains there – in our imaginations. As I was mulling all this over with my forward-thinking friend Noelle, she made the observation that she often feels that many of her life values are in conflict with her life-style. Our middle class cultural language of money, houses, errands and schedules feel off-kilter with her need to more fully embrace the bigger picture. We talked about how this conflict can cause frustration, dissatisfaction, and at worst, cynicism.

So, with genuine curiosity about the brighter side of people, I came up with 4 questions. I emailed them out to a couple of friends, and was amazed by the depth and readiness of their responses. I was also struck by the similarities of the two people’s answers, even though they didn’t know each other very well. And, I was happy to find that just the act of talking out one’s greatest life-changing desires has served as a catalyst for re-evaluation and action.

I am going to continue this little project of mine, emailing out my questions to more and more people. But I also thought this this blog venue would be a super platform too. If I’ve piqued your interest, take a little time and answer the following questions. You can send it to me by email. I’ll post about this process again, and share some of the responses. Have fun!

1) If you could convince everybody to make certain personal changes in their lives, what would they be? And what do you believe the benefit would be to both them and to our community?

2) Is there an organization or business that you wish existed in your community that would provide a life-improving or community-building service? What would it be and again, what would its significance be?

3) If you could change a local policy to improve your community, what would it be?

4) And, is there a particular value (or more) that you hold dear that is in conflict with your lifestyle? If so, what is it, how does it make you feel, and what would you need to rectify this imbalance? Discuss.

On Being Vegetarian

A couple of nights ago during the throws of dinner preparation, my husband mentioned that he had read in London’s Guardian newspaper that the United Nations had just officially recommended to the world that we move away from an animal based diet in order to combat climate change. So this morning I looked the article up, and then the original report itself (it is linked from the Guardian article).

Here’s a quote from the report:

Impacts from agriculture are expected to increase substantially due to population growth, increasing consumption of animal products. Unlike fossil fuels, it is difficult to look for alternatives: people have to eat. A substantial reduction of impacts would only be possible with a substantial worldwide diet change, away from animal products.

Fifteen years ago, I took a very cool trip to the four corners region of the United States with a college anthropology class. Though the trip itself was a fantastic experience, it was actually just one conversation with a fellow student that was the most meaningful part of the week, and still has daily impact on my life.

The anthropology group, back in 1994. Jonas is in the middle of the back row with the groovy hat.

There we were, me and my friend Jonas, sitting on the curb of a Taco Bell. Each of us munched on our respective paper-wrapped delicacies; mine was meat-laden, his was not. “So why are you a vegetarian, anyway, Jonas?” I asked, making conversation. And he answered. He gave thoughtful responses about how being vegetarian was good for your health, the environment, economic justice, and of course animal well-being. He talked at length about all of these philosophies, and had the statistics to back them up. It was a solid argument. And then he smiled and asked “so why do you eat meat?” Of course this was the most brilliant bit, because the only response I had was “because it tastes good.”

That was the beginning of my life as a vegetarian. Over the next year, I began cutting out different types of meat, letting myself move into this new dietary world in stages. First I let pork go, then beef. Poultry was last, a whole year after I had started. (I still eat seafood on rare occasion.) That first year, I ate my weight in grilled cheese sandwiches, because I didn’t know what it meant to eat a vegetarian diet. But the longer I stuck with it, the more I learned about the incredible variety of healthy and delicious foods available to us non-meat-eaters.

It’s been 15 years now, and I am now raising my children as vegetarians too. They are 7 and 10, and healthy as horses.

There are still many improvements I can make in regards to my diet: eat more locally grown foods, cut out seafood altogether, leave off dairy (or at least cut back). But I think where I score the worst is my persistent unwillingness to provide the life-changing service that Jonas did: talk to others about the whys behind my choice.

I’m a Good Southern Girl, born and bred. We are Super Polite down there, and we don’t like to discuss politics or religion, or anything that might cause conflict in general. So when people ask me why I’m a vegetarian, I give some vague answer about it being good for the world, and then talk extensively about how I don’t judge others for eating meat, and how my own husband eats meat sometimes, and how I’m OK You’re OK and all that. But it’s not OK. It’s not OK to keep that precious experience of epiphany to myself. And so in honor of Jonas, and in solidarity with the United Nations, I give you my reasons for leaving meat out of my diet, complete with statistics and their sources:

1. It helps combat climate change. According to the UN report I referred to above (entitled “Assessing the Environmental Impacts of Consumption and Production”),

…agricultural production accounts for a staggering 70% of the global freshwater consumption, 38% of the total land use, and 14% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

2. It promotes economic justice. From the online Gaiam journal:

Food First’s Frances Moore Lappé says to imagine sitting down to an eight-ounce steak. “Then imagine the room filled with 45 to 50 people with empty bowls… For the feed cost of your steak, each of their bowls could be filled with a full cup of cooked cereal grains.” Harvard nutritionist Jean Mayer says that reducing U.S. meat production 10 percent would free grain to feed 60 million people.

3. It’s good for my health. From The Journal of The American Dietetic Association:

The results of an evidence based review showed that a vegetarian diet is associated with a lower risk of death from ischemic heart disease. Vegetarians also appear to have lower low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels, lower blood pressure, and lower rates of hypertension and type 2 diabetes than nonvegetarians. Furthermore, vegetarians tend to have a lower body mass index and lower overall cancer rates.

4. It is compassionate towards animals. From the Humane Society (click on HSUS Guide to Vegetarian Eating):

Ninety-eight percent of hens in U.S. factory farms are intensively confined in small wire “battery cages,” stacked several tiers high and extending down long warehouses. Hens are given less space than the area of a letter-size sheet of paper in which to eat, sleep, and lay eggs.

The Humane Society goes on to document similar conditions for pigs and calves, and mutually troubling conditions for adult cows. Also from the report:

There are no federal animal welfare laws regulating the treatment of the billions of animals raised for food. And while all 50 states have cruelty statutes, most explicitly exempt common farming practices, no matter how abusive.

All of these arguments can be applied to eating dairy products as well, and I recognize that I still have a long way to go to reduce the negative impacts of my diet. But giving up meat for me was a significant start. What I have found through my life as a vegetarian is that you don’t have to go “cold turkey” to make a difference. Here are some ideas:

1. You can commit to eating a vegetarian diet one or two days per week. Or try one full week.
2. You can visit the farms where you buy your meat and/or dairy.
3. The next time you go out to eat, you can try one of the restaurant’s vegetarian choices, which are yummy and filling.
4. You can ask your vegetarian friends why they choose that diet.
5. You can read one of the plethora of good books on vegetarianism (just visit your local library) or do some google searches. There is an overwhelming amount of information about the benefits of giving up meat.
6. And of course you can ask yourself the question Jonas asked me: “why do you eat meat?”

The Positive Roots of Bargain Shopping

Bargain shopping. How exciting is that? Finding a great t-shirt on sale for $4, right next to the tennis shoes that should run $50, but instead are only $15. I mean. Wowza. I have been raised to be extremely fiscally responsible, and there is a certain joy – almost the same as winning a contest – that comes with stretching the family budget yet still providing those “necessities” that make the household go ‘round.

But then, bargain shopping has a price, doesn’t it? It’s one that we don’t want to know about, don’t want to talk about, because the reality of it is tragic and ridiculous. I could use this blog entry to talk about the horrors of sweat shops and child labor, but it’s already been done so much better than I could ever hope to do. Please take the time to watch the amazing story called “Human Cost Behind Bargain Shopping.” Read the article and/or scroll down to the bottom part of the page to a blue box entitled “Free Video: Dateline Hidden Camera.” There, you’ll find the video story told in three parts.

So why do we do it? Why do we accept such a reality, continuing our support of these practices? How is it that our value system has blinded us into honoring the low price tag, when that tag represents so much suffering? I think at least part of it comes from a nobler place, a couple of generations back.

My own family history sheds some light for me. My late grandparents told me many wonderful stories of their growing up years: how they traveled by horse and buggy, how for Christmas they received one toy and a stocking with delicious treats such as oranges and nuts tucked inside. The first Christmas after my son was born, and he was swamped with brightly colored packages that he was still too young to even open himself, I remember my grandfather shaking his head in wonder. He made some amazed comment and reflected how different his childhood was from what would be my new baby son’s. He couldn’t get over all the stuff that was being presented to my diapered infant. But here’s the funny part: most of the gifts were from him and my grandmother.

My grandparents were of The Great Depression years. They knew better than any of us the value of a dollar (or a nickel). They valued frugality. Their financial need made them environmentalists: they reused everything that it was possible to reuse, “disposable” was an unheard of concept, and gardens and homemade clothes were considered household duties, not hobbies. Being frugal wasn’t just a pastime, or a way to get more stuff; it was a means of providing the most basic of needs. “Waste not, want not,” was a mantra that still echoes from that age.

But the lesson got twisted along the way. The initial value of being modest in one’s consumption got corrupted with the end of the Depression years and the advent of Wal-Marts and K-Marts, Amazon and Black Friday. Suddenly, our disposable income increased along with our ability to readily buy cheap goods. By bargain shopping, we feel we are honoring our ancestors’ values of careful budgeting, but what that has really come to mean for us is “buy as much as we can for as little as possible.” I believe, despite the reality of the impact our behaviors have helped create, our intentions have still been good; we are providing for our families, saving money to increase positive opportunities for them, and being generous with our gifts for special holidays such as Christmas and birthdays. After all, my grandparents were just as “guilty” of lavishing gifts on their loved ones as their younger generations.

But it is time now to reflect on these values and redefine them once again. It is not ok to purchase the cheap soccer ball for our kid if its affordability means that somebody else’s child is forced to make it for us in conditions that are absurd and cruel. I would instead propose that we take the time to learn about these realities with our children and open our eyes to the true price tag that is attached to the desired item. We may find that we return to our grandparents’ original values, strengthening them with our new awareness and conscious choices.

And if you still need that bargain shopping adrenaline rush? Try a thrift store!

For more information, please visit The National Labor Committee.