Saving the Earth This Holiday Season

First, a disclaimer: this is by no means an exhaustive blog post on how to stay "green" this holiday season. It is simply my own personal ideas and methods for saving not only energy and resources but also money. This post will hopefully inspire you to make one little change to your holiday season that will lighten your load on the planet.

Now, on to the post! The winter holiday season (and I'm primarily speaking of Christmas because it probably involves the most waste) is particularly rough on the planet. Tons of people travel, wrapping paper gets tossed in the trash, giant amount of (delicious) food is prepared, and gifts are passed around to no end. This is all super fun stuff, don't get me wrong!  Who doesn't love ripping a giant sheet of bright paper off a brand new iPad, then sitting down to a great dinner with family and friends? But, there are a few ways that I reduce-reuse-recycle and each year I try to incorporate some new little trick.

First and foremost, I save gifts bags, tissue paper, ribbons, bows, and any other wrapping materials. I accumulate this stuff every year from other people and through saving it all I can wrap pretty much every single gift I give free of charge and free of materials! I keep a box in my cabinet filled with this stuff and simply pull it out whenever I need to give a gift. Assuming you have the space, this is the easiest way to reduce the amount of stuff that gets thrown away. I even go so far as to rescue wrapping stuff from other people who are just going to throw it away. And there is the classic Sunday-comics-as-wrapping-paper trick too.

Second, I do not feel bad about re-gifting. There is nothing wrong with taking something you don't really want (that is unopened/unused) and giving it to someone who will actually use the thing. I don't suggest re-gifting stuff just to get rid of it - the item does need to be a thoughtful gift. But really, there is no shame in giving something you don't want to someone who does! And in the event that you get something truly unusable, just donate it to Goodwill and hopefully some stranger will get some enjoyment from the thing.

Another way to reduce the amount of stuff in this world is to give the gift of homemade foods. I for one really enjoy receiving some delicious treats from friends/family, especially if it's something I can't or won't make myself. This is a super awesome way to save money, too! There are so many great recipes out there for chocolate dipped pretzels and truffles and cookies that I can always find some semi-unique little food item to give to people. Going to Goodwill and getting kitschy decorative plates tops off a nice plate of brownies and turns it into a cute gift.

Continuing with the topic of gifts, I try to shop at local stores. Sometimes this limits me monetarily because they do tend to have higher prices, but I really try to support my local economy when gift shopping. There are often items that I wouldn't be able to find anywhere else, especially those inspired by the local region (Boston, Somerville, the northeast in general). This can make for really thoughtful and unique gifts for friends and family. And seeking out the best local shops is a fun activity in and of itself, and even better if you do your shopping with a friend!

There are many ways in which I don't reduce/reuse/recycle. I still put out lights on the front steps, still have a small Christmas tree in the house (fake), still send cards and presents in the mail, and will always be traveling somewhere for the holidays. But these are things that are important to me! Lights are so pretty and fun, but to offset them a bit I made sure to buy my lights at Goodwill and they are on a timer. I try to get my cards from local artists/crafters at a craft fair each winter. When I travel I bring my water bottle and some snacks in tupperware so I don't have to buy stuff in the terminal. I'm not perfect, but I'm trying! And I hope you will too :).

Ants In My Pants

In the past week I've learned what it's like to sit, day after day, staring at a computer screen, like so many workers out there.  I decided to take a week long temp position with a financial company - it pays better than substitute teaching and I needed a break from the kiddies.  The job sounded boring but I figured, how bad could it be?

Well, pretty bad.  I take an investment statement from a box, check the client address and return address with an Excel file for accuracy, then turn to the next page and make sure the information is correct on that page too.  Then I set it aside and take the next statement.  This is what I do for eight hours every day.  There is no change at all.  It is the most boring and repetitive thing I have ever done.  Each box can have anywhere from 15 to 225 statements in it, and there are about 8,000 statements to go through (with four other temps).

I have never had more "ants in my pants" than the last five work days.  By the time 3pm rolls around I start fidgeting, and get up to go to the bathroom or get a drink or even just walk out of the room for a few minutes.  As soon as 5:30pm hits I'm outta there but then have to sit in my car for 30-40 minutes.  When I get home all I want to do is get outside and run, which is great health-wise but the cause of my newfound desire to run is not my favorite.  I just have so much freakin' energy after not doing a damn thing all day except exercise my eyeballs.

The one great thing is that the company has a lot of extras that I don't get when I'm working for a nonprofit.  There is a ridiculous free bagel spread every Friday (every flavor, crazy amounts of spread, giant blocks of fancy cheese, nutella, and juices galore), every bathroom has hair spray, lint rollers, de-static spray, and lifesavers, and there is free coffee, tea and hot chocolate.  Nice perks!

There is only one more day (two at the very most) before I go back to subbing.  I guess it's a nice break from working with kids all day, but the work is so mind-numbing that I really don't know if I could have done it very much longer.

Epic Dinner Party

Last night I, probably mistakenly, invited 21 people over to dinner. And by "over" I mean I invaded my upstair's neighbor's apartment for their dining room (kind of without asking). Thankfully I have really awesome upstairs neighbors. The following is my photo "travelogue" of the event...(I didn't take the time to edit anything, sorry for the kinda bad lighting).

 

 

And Flora was sad because she got left out of the fun...

Eat Plants

After reading Food Rules by Michael Pollan and Food Matters by Mark Bittman I have decided to follow their rules and suggestions. My new mantra: "eat food, not too much, mostly plants" (thanks, Mr. Pollan). In some ways I've been following this mantra for a while, mostly through not eating much meat. It's annoying to cook and kind of expensive and surprisingly easy to give up! I will admit only to purchasing Wegmans marinated steaks and chicken breasts, 'cause they're so freakin' good.

But now I'm going to make an effort to eat a lot more plants. Witness tonight's dinner (please excuse the steam, and check out that plantain over by the fork!):

I definitely ate my colors!

Now historically, I haven't been the biggest supporter of plants. The list of veggies I didn't like as a child is quite long (carrots, brussels sprouts, spinach, celery, etc.). Currently I enjoy cooked carrots (see above photo), spinach, and I can sometimes manage brussels sprouts if they're covered in other stuff like butter. But I still don't like celery.

Salads I can manage, especially when they're full of chopped veggies and topped with cheese. Unfortunately, salads are not easy to make, what with all of the washing and seed removal and chopping. It's not something you can just whip up before dashing out the door to work. My solution? To pre-make a week's worth of salads on Sunday and bring the dressing with me in my lunch bag.

It's easy, simple, and requires only an hour of my Sunday afternoon. With a head of lettuce, two roma tomatoes, one green bell pepper, and some feta cheese, I can make four or five servings of salad for my week.

I've also made a sweet salad with lettuce, mandarin orange slices, dried cranberries and goat cheese. Use any toppings you like and you can assemble everything, including the cheese, ahead of time. Then just whisk the tupperware from your fridge and head off to work with a salad! I always bring something else too, because these salads are not big enough to be a single lunch.

After a few weeks of salad-making it occurred to me that I should consider making my own dressing! So I looked up a simple recipe in Fannie Farmer and have been creating my own dressing every since. It's the easiest thing ever and doesn't even require refrigeration.

You'll need a half cup of olive oil, two tablespoons of vinegar (your choice), half teaspoon of salt, and pepper to taste. Add the salt to the vinegar and let stand for a few minutes, then whisk that mixture into the oil. So far I've tried balsamic vinegar and red wine vinegar, with great results. I actually use an old bottle of Trader Joe's salad dressing to house my new dressings.

Cookie Fun

If you come from a family that celebrates Christmas, then you've probably made your fair share of Christmas cookies in your lifetime. I certainly have. Every holiday season I looked forward to the day when we were going to make cookies. I loved eating the leftover dough, making every single shape I could with the cookie cutters (trying in vain to keep the reindeer legs attached to the body) and using each icing color and sprinkle shape we owned. Of course, my cookie zeal only lasted about 15 minutes and then I got tired of the endless process and mom was left with gagillions of undecorated cookies. With time she began to baste half the cookies with egg and and bake them with sprinkles, thus reducing the number that had to be iced.

I still love making cookies, and each year I try to get someone to make them with me so I don't have to decorate them all. This weekend I had the help of both roommates in the cookie decorating and we managed to ice each and every cookie in the batch! We decided on a winter theme, using only the mitten, teapot, heart, and snowflake cookie cutters. Here are the results (a small sampling, really) of our labors:

Etsy

My obsession with Etsy is getting worse as each day of the holiday season passes. At this point I am visiting the homepage more than once a day, clicking through dozens of different gifties each time. It's an addiction! The items on the site are just so darn unique and wide-ranging, from pottery to art prints to jewelry to dog clothing. I can't get enough!

I tried to sell my own photos on the site last winter (and didn't sell a single thing) and from that point on I've been an Etsyan. I've only bought one item (!) from the site, four packets of seeds from an artisal flower grower in the Pacific Northwest. I wish I could tell you I had a beautiful array of colorful asters growing in my garden but sadly I planted all of the seeds right before a two-week cold snap in June and none survived. I'm sure they would have been beautiful! I have faith that anything else I buy from the site will be wonderful and gorgeous and give me the warm fuzzies.

There are so many of us Etsyans out there that there is now a parody site called Regretsy where people post the worst of Etsy's items, including a large plastic hair bow filled with playing cards and a Hitler-tinkerbell painting. There are quite a few questionable items on Etsy, and I've come across many things that I felt were not handmade or vintage (as the site declares the items must be). Oh well, people will always try to beat the system.

If you've never visited the site, I suggest paging through some of the items at least once. It's like a hipster craft fair every day! And now I'm off to the Bazaar Bizarre, a real hipster holiday craft fair!

PIE

I do apologize for my long absence. My goal was to write this post last Wednesday, as a kick-off for Thanksgiving weekend, but things got a little hectic around the house and I missed my mark. I also decided to leave my computer in MA instead of transporting it all the way to MI so then I was without photos for this post until today!

Anyway...

I don't know about you, but I love pumpkin pie. #1 Great texture, #2 Great taste, #3 Minimal crust, and #4 Only really acceptable from October through December. Plus, if made well, it has the optimum pie-to-crust ratio for a perfect bite every time. I've only ever made Libby's recipe (on the back of the pumpkin puree can) and it's the best I've encountered. But, since I received a sugar pumpkin in my CSA share I figured I had to try making a pumpkin pie from scratch.

The pumpkin process is a long one. I decided to do whatever my Fannie Farmer cookbook said, so I cut up the pumpkin into chunks and steamed them for about 30 minutes. Then I had to peel the skin from each piece, the longest part of the whole process. Once peeled I pureed them in the food processor for a while. Eventually I managed to make 3 cups of puree, of which I needed 1.5 cups for the recipe (I froze the rest).

Then I added the various spices, eggs, evaporated milk, etc. to the mixture and blended them together.

I always make my own crust (it really is easy, but only try it if you own a rolling pin and cloth mat to roll out the dough) and they are always better than anything a store can provide.

Finally, the finished product:

Sadly, I really wasn't that impressed by the pie. It was still great, but it was a little watery and slightly bland. I couldn't believe it! Isn't homemade stuff always better? I figured I'd done something wrong, but then I happened to read a smittenkitchen post and she experienced the same thing with pumpkin. Canned pumpkin appears to win this battle.

The real winner of my pie making extravaganza was sweet potato pie. It had all the things I was looking for in my pumpkin pie: great taste, great texture, great crust-to-pie ratio. And I made the sweet potato puree at home from my CSA share!

Sweet potato pie is very similar to pumpkin pie: puree, mixed with eggs, milk, and spices. Instead of cinnamon, ginger and cloves (like pumpkin pie) it uses cinnamon and nutmeg with a splash of rum. I consulted Fannie Farmer for this one too, and with excellent results. Of the people who tried both pies everyone voted for the sweet potato over the pumpkin.

My allegiance still lies with Libby's canned pumpkin and the recipe on the label. I made my traditional pumpkin pie over the Thanksgiving holiday and thankfully created the old, reliable pie. But I may have to add sweet potato into the traditional pie mix of the winter holidays. Either way, these two pies are absolutely delicious and I look forward to consuming a few more bites before the season is over!

Veggieland

I decided to write one huge post with lots and lots of recipes and photos from my various veggie creations. So grab a comfy seat on the couch and dig into a big pile of...

Roasted Root Vegetables

I received a crazy vegetable in the share: celeriac. What does one do with celeriac? Well, after extensive allrecipes.com research I decided the easiest thing was to combine it with parsnips, carrots, and potatoes and roast the whole pile in the oven. So I chopped up two carrots, two parsnips, five small potatoes, and the celeriac and spread them out in a 9x13 baking dish. Then I chopped up about 4 tablespoons of butter into small pats and randomly placed them in among the veggies. Finally, I sprinkled a tablespoon of freshly chopped sage over top with a pinch of oregano.

Bake at 425, stirring everything up a few times to make sure the butter coats everything. I think it took about 40 minutes total for everything to be nice and roasted. Turns out I don't really like celeriac but it smelled awesome in the kitchen and the potatoes were excellent.

Fresh Salad with Watermelon Radish

Another interesting discovery was the watermelon radish. When I cut it open it was such a vibrant pink color on the inside - a perfect watermelon! But I had no idea what to do with it so I decided to chop it up and sprinkle it into my salad. I washed the lettuce from the share and chopped it up, mixed in tomatoes and green peppers I got from the store, and added the radish.

Unfortunately, I don't like radish very much. But I covered it in salad dressing to make it tolerable. What do I do with the three other radishes???

Ethiopian Cabbage

After discussing with the roommates I decided on an Ethiopian dish listed on allrecipes.com for the head of cabbage. I had everything except the potatoes so I walked over to the store in a 60 degree late-November evening and picked up five small red potatoes. It was a pretty painless recipe, mostly just waiting for everything to cook through, and the spice combination of turmeric and cumin was delicious! I might even be convinced to buy more cabbage...

White Bean Soup with Spinach and Leeks

This was the first recipe made from my veggie pile. It's a simple soup involving cannelini beans, spinach leaves, leeks, and vegetable broth. I threw everything into the slow cooker and set it to work while I was out on Thursday. It's a little bland but adding parmesan really helped.

...stay posted - there is more to come....

Potatoes and Onions and Beets, OH MY

My Thanksgiving share has arrived! Storage onions, cipolinni onions, shallots, sweet potatoes, beets, parsnips, carrots, potatoes, celeriac, turnips, kohlrabi, winter radishes, leeks, napa cabbage, radicchio, green lettuce, bok choy, kale, sage, butternut squash, and a pie pumpkin! Now what?!

First, a big shout-out to Kesley, with whom I am sharing this plethora of plant goodness. We split most of the stuff but she took ownership of the kale, cabbage, and butternut squash (I won the pie pumpkin and celeriac). Second, a thank-you to Moraine Farm for supplying a one-time share for those of us not lucky enough to have a summer/fall veggie CSA.

What's a CSA, you ask? Only the coolest way to get a weekly delivery (or most likely pick-up) of vegetables and other goodies from a local farm. Generally speaking, a CSA begins in late spring and ends in early to late fall. It is a weekly box filled with whatever is in season, either delivered to your door or waiting for you at a pick-up site. The share is with one farm, usually very local (within 30 miles or so), and the farmer is often the guy or girl handing you your weekly box of deliciousness!

It is an awesome way to eat locally and connect with the seasonality of life (and the challenge of cooking with new foods, like celeriac). The Thanksgiving share is full of root vegetable and cold-loving greens. I'm looking forward to attempting a pumpkin pie made of fresh pumpkin! I will be sure to update everyone with the various recipes I discover in my attempt to eat all of this plant matter...

P.S. Have a good recipe for something like radishes? Please share! I'm desperate to find ways to cook all of this stuff!

World's End

I am 10 business days into unemployment and trying to fill each one with something fun. For five of them I was enjoying my visit to San Diego and ignoring (blissfully) my current job status. Unfortunately I am now at home, whiling away the hours simultaneously watching old Daily Show episodes and searching for jobs online. I'm waiting for the day when the temp agency finally finds me a job.

So on Friday I trekked over to the MFA to see the new "Degas and the Nude" exhibit. Many moons ago, when I was still employed, I decided to become a member of the MFA. I really enjoy the museum and frankly it makes me feel knowledgeable and educated. I will eventually see every room in that building and on Friday I spent some time really exploring the Ancient Egypt and Roman halls.

Yesterday I drove all the way out to World's End, a Trustees site that I still have free access to with my employee ID card. The property is in Hingham on the south coast and from it you can see Boston in the distance. I had heard it was gorgeous and I was itching to do some light hiking somewhere pretty.

World's End is a Frederick Law Olmsted creation with winding carriageways and beautiful old trees. The property was owned by a wealthy guy who decided he wanted a subdivision created there for other wealthy people. He hired Olmsted to design the landscape and create the winding roads. The subdivision was never created and there are now about four miles of pathways that tons of people use each year for walking/running/family time.

The fall colors were absolutely beautiful and the sinking sun set the marsh grass on fire. It was chilly and very windy but I still got in an hour and a half of walking and exploring. This year's fall has kind of sucked, with the leaves turning at weird times and not coordinating nicely for us leaf-peepers. Even so, the site still gave me a glimpse of yellow/red/orange that I love so much this time of year.

San Diego: Photo Travelogue