On Gradually Achieving a Sustainable Local Diet - Gardening in Small Spaces

In the final post of the Sustainable Local Diet Series, I will discuss some of the “basics” of small space gardening. I am not here with specific answers, I am a novice gardener myself, but what I can offer are the questions you will need to ask yourself when developing your garden. Even growing something as simple as bell peppers will require different amounts of labor and inputs depending on where you live. This makes any sort of specific, targeted advice pretty useless unless you live in Columbia, Missouri and are gardening on a southern facing porch as we are. I hope this piece will provide a basic outline and resources to get you started in the garden. There is never such a thing as “too late” to start a garden, it may be “too late” at this point to grow certain fruits or vegetables, but there are a wide variety of cool weather and winter crops at your disposal. And no matter what your conditions are – even if you live in a north facing apartment with no back porch - greens, herbs, garlic, small onions, those kinds of things are not beyond your reach. With appropriate planning and a little common sense, you can be eating homegrown spinach in January in Missouri without a whole lot of effort.

Start With What You’ve Got and What You Use

One of the most important steps in planning a garden, this should probably be your first step is to find out what “hardiness zone” you are in, as this will show you how long your growing season is, when to plant, and what can be grown in your area. Knowing your hardiness zone will making determining what to grow much easier, seed packets often even have the necessary hardiness zone, sun, days to maturity and other important information on them.

Next, what type of space do you have to work with? Will you be gardening in a small yard, a patio, in a window sill? How much of your available space are you willing to dedicate to a garden? After you determine where you want your garden to be, you need to gauge how much sunlight (full-sun, partial sun, shade, etc) that area receives and a rough estimate on the daily duration. I recommend keeping a gardening journal – perhaps I am just a nerd, but I write down my plans, what I did, when I fed the plants, etc., so I won’t make the same mistakes over and over or have to “re-invent the wheel” next year when I do it again.

Finally, in making the basic plans for your garden, you have to decide what it is you want to grow. What fruits and vegetables do you eat most often? Is this something that can be grown easily in your area? Just because something – say citrus – does not grow naturally in places like Missouri, with proper conditions, you can grow dwarf citrus trees inside. It takes a lot more effort as you have to create optimal conditions, but it is possible. I suggest writing down a list of prospective crops and then doing research to see if it can be grown in your area and what can be “companioned” with it, but more on this later.

Efficiently Use the Space You Have

This is the section of this post that Brett and I are just learning how to heed. When you grow food in small places, you must make the most efficient use of your space as possible. This means being creative and viewing your space in multiple dimensions.

When you have a yard, this is far easier. First you need to decide as to whether you are going to have a container garden, an actual plot in the ground, or both. If you are simply planting in the ground, I would recommend using a raised-bed style of permaculture. Permaculture is a living systems approach to human environmental design that seeks to mimic the self sustaining qualities of undisturbed nature. The basic tenant, at least in terms of gardening, is to create a system that can sustain itself with as few human inputs as possible. Not only does this make the work easier for us, the system just works better when we either leave it alone, or nurture the basic elements that sustain the system. It is no understatement to say that this can be a difficult project to get started, especially since many suburban lawns are, well, dead. But once the system is in place, it requires very little effort.

Essentially, to create a permaculture garden, you must first build up your soil and create your raised beds. Building up soil naturally can take hundreds of years, which obviously, we do not have. But we can help the soil along, by adding humus, or organic matter that will eventually be broken down into nutrient rich top soil. I will not go into the process in too much detail, as again, it depends on where you are and what you hope to get out of your garden. I would provide examples of what can be used to build up the soil, but the list is long, and it depends, again, on what you hope to do with your garden, how permanent you want it to be, and so on. For more information on the principles and how to’s for planning a permaculture garden, I would highly recommend reading or watching anything recent by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, the “fathers” of permaculture.

For the rest of us who do not have a yard or perhaps no grass to speak of with which to garden in, we have to be a little more creative. We can easily think of our “floor space” where we can set pots or other containers to grow things, but there are also hanging baskets which are great for things like strawberries, other berries, and even cucumbers. Also, do not forget about your vertical space. Using hanging baskets accounts for some of this, but one can even have a small, narrow pot containing a vining crop like squash, place a trellis against a wall or other sturdy surface, and voila! There are also window boxes, and “banister boxes”, which are containers that have hooks to hang the pot on the banister of a porch. You can get a table and place sun loving plants on the table, and shade lovers or plant starts below where they will receive shade. The plants don’t need much space in between pots, so long as the greenery isn’t getting tangled. Basically, just leave enough room for your plants to “do their thing” and for you to be able to get to them to tend them. Beyond that, pack ‘em in; you actually create your own “micro-climate” by bunching different tiers (heights) of plants in a cluster. Fruit trees can even be grown in containers and pruned to grow flat against the wall, taking up very little space. I recommend the book The Edible Container Garden by Michael Guerra as a good starting point.

Start Them Right

There isn’t much to say here besides do your research and learn how long it takes the seed to germinate as well as the number of days until they reach maturity. That way you don’t plant them too early or too late. We made this mistake here with our pepper seeds this year. We started the seeds back in April, and the starts we kept are just now getting to be about 7-8 inches tall. We didn’t do enough research to know that we should have started the seeds back in February.

Plant It Right

You can just stick a plant in a pot or the ground and hope it will grow, but this is not how I suggest you do this, not if you don’t want to be disappointed. Having a successful garden requires a little research, or, at the very least, a seasoned gardener to help you along the way. Plants require particular nutrients to function at their best – just like humans. Some plants like sandy soil; some do not. A quick Google search will bring up the specific soil requirements for the plants you wish to grow. Some like to be planted deep; for others, it isn’t as much of an issue. Some plants will provide nutrients or attract predators that will nurture or kill pests on other plants. Growing these things in the same space is called “companion cropping (or planting)”, where you essentially have two plants that have a mutually beneficial relationship together (such as a nitrogen loving plant in the same container as a nitrogen fixing plant like legumes). This takes a lot of the hard work of gardening out of the equation. Feeding isn’t required as much (and sometimes, if you get a really good set up going, not at all), and pests are kept to a minimum. A good site to read more about companion cropping can be found here.

It also helps to anticipate the needs of your plant and attend to them before the plants get too big and have a large established root system. If you are growing berries, set the trellis up before you plant the berries, that way it will already be in place when they need it. Planting peppers, eggplants, or other tall bushy crops? Go ahead and stake them up before they establish a root system, that way you don’t have to risk any damage. Growing tomatoes? Pick up a few tomato cages, I highly recommend tying the plants to the cages with Velcro tape if you can find it, this will keep them in place so they don’t hit the cage when it’s windy.

Plant Food and Drink

If you are growing in soil, in the beginning, you will want to feed your plants in roughly the same way I describe below for a container garden. Hay and grass clippings also make a great addition as mulch as they keep the weeds down and help retain moisture. Just keep in mind that anything applied to the grass while on the lawn will be absorbed into your crops. Over time, as the health of your soil improves, you will need to feed it less and less, perhaps eventually, not at all.

If you are gardening in containers, you can do much to create a self-sustaining environment that requires less feeding, but it will still require some. Depending on what you are comfortable with, I would go with some sort of organic manure. We like worm castings (poo), and from what I understand this is a “vegan” option of fertilization. This is not why we use worm castings, we use them because they work great and, at least to us, they seems more “sterile”, but if the “ethical” aspect is an issue for you, worm poo might be the way to go. Otherwise, get your hands on some local chicken or horse poo from organically raised animals. Or, if you are really brave, you can try humanure.

Watering is always an issue. Rains are not reliable, and using a sprinkler wastes an inordinate amount of water. So what to do? If you have a garden in your yard, you might try the “drip irrigation” method, as the water is dispensed in a slow trickle at a rate that it can be absorbed by the plant. I would recommend the “buried clay pot irrigation” method. This can be done in a raised-bed garden or a larger container garden. Essentially, all this traditional method of irrigation entails is burying an unglazed clay pot in the soil and filling it with water every so often. The pores in the clay will slowly release the water as the plants can take it up. This is likely a less expensive alternative to the drip irrigation system, and it also nice for larger containers. If planting in smaller containers, I recommend the “stick your finger in the soil to feel for moisture and water as needed” method. :-) Be resourceful with your water. Chile documents a way she captures the water used to wash her organic farmer’s market produce to use in her garden. Got a glass of water that got a little past it’s prime? Toss it in a watering can and use it when the plants need it. As I noted in my local booty update, we used the (strained to get the food debris out) water we had used to boil the corn and beans to water our plants. You don’t always have to use “fresh” water. I would, however, caution against using the “rinse water” from conventional or store bought produce, who knows what is on them, and you probably don’t want that going on your plants.

Tend and Enjoy

What I love about gardening is that, if you do it right or at least close enough, the plant does most of the work for you. However, things don’t always go perfectly: plants get attacked by bugs; leaves yellow and fall off; and fruits drop off before they are mature. This is part of having a garden.

To deal with insect infestations, first determine what is eating your goodies. Chances are, if the problem isn’t too bad, you will simply be able to manually remove the bugs. If you don’t want to kill them (which I don’t), you can generally relocate the worms and other larger bugs you find as we do. Aphids, those small little bugs (of many colors) that infest the new growth and blooms of plants (among other things) – well, I’m not so kind to them. They are so small that they generally meet their maker when they meet my thumb and forefinger, but gardening isn’t always pretty. You have to be able to decide, is it the plant or the bugs? ‘Cause they’ll eat your whole garden if you let ‘em. If manual remedies are not doing the trick, you have one of two options to choose from, the size of your operation is likely to determine which you choose. First, you can figure out what predator your pest has and try to find ways to attract them. Predators of aphids include lady bugs (lady beetles) and wasps, which can be attracted to your plants to eat your aphids. Not into the idea of attracting wasps to your garden? A safe, organic concoction we’ve come up with that works on aphids and does not damage the plant is a mixture of boiled, crushed garlic and ground cayenne pepper. After the garlic has boiled for a few minutes, strain the cloves out and let the water cool. Then spray this mixture directly on the affected areas of the plant. We usually come back an hour or so later to water/rinse the plants off. Wait a week and if the pest problem continues, repeat.

Sometimes plants get a little industrious. They begin to grow like crazy and then equally as suddenly, the leaves begin to yellow. This could be a sign of a “health problem” or an issue of over watering, but even healthy plants experience “leaf drop”. If you notice a wilting leaf, help the plant out and carefully remove it. Notice a limb that is skimpy on leaves and doesn’t have any fruit or much new growth on it? Clip it off. This will encourage new growth and will perhaps result in a limb with leaves and fruit on it.

When fruits drop off before they mature, this can be a sign of a number of things. The most obvious is weather, if it has been windy or stormy and you notice dropped fruit, I think we can chalk it up to that. However, more commonly, the plant needs food. If you notice, during periods of calm, sunny weather that your plant is having a fruit dropping problem, try feeding it (unless you just did this recently) or checking it’s moisture level. The plant could also be getting too much or not enough water.

I’m sure a common question is how often to feed and water your plants. Many folks will even give you solid number, but I think they are full of “hoo-ha”, we don’t all garden in the same conditions, and it's not like an oil change, done every certain number of days or “miles”. It takes common sense and time to figure out what works in your garden.

Watering your plant is simple enough, if you stick your finger down in the soil, say, about an inch, and it feels moist, it doesn’t need water. If it isn’t, it likely does. In my humble opinion, it is better, if you are using the “water as needed” method, to give light, frequent waterings, rather than large drenches. Heavy waterings are likely to leech the food out of the soil of a container garden, leaving the food at the bottom and useless. An important thing to add is that wet leaves exposed to sunlight are likely to get burned; either avoid getting water on the leaves or water when it’s dark. Wet leaves can’t breathe, so water is a friend to the roots but an enemy to the leaves.

Food is another issue. We tend to give our plants food about every 2 months (we give them a nice dose of food when we transplant them as well), so far, this has worked out for us. But of course, how often to feed depends on what you are growing and what you are feeding your plants, really time and experience are the best teachers.

Once you’ve gotten the basics down, enjoy watching your garden grow, be humble and have a sense of humor about your mistakes. That old adage about learning more from your mistakes than successes has thus far proved quite true in my life, and I’ve made a lot of mistakes gardening. And I’m sure I’ll make many more, but with each mistake comes knowledge – if nothing else, the knowledge of what not to do next time.

I hope this series has shown ways that eating a more sustainable, local diet can be not only affordable, but quite rewarding. I thank my readers, as always, for being able to get through the novels that I pass off as blog posts and the tips and suggestions you gave us. As usual, I am wondering if you all have learned more from what I’ve wrote, or vice versa.

‘Til next time!

On Gradually Achieving a Sustainable Local Diet - (Mostly) Local, Sustainable, and Affordable

This post in the series will focus on how to eat a sustainable, mostly local diet, in a way that is affordable. But first, I must encourage you to check out Chile’s latest piece in her series on food security. Many of the things she touches on are relevant to this topic, and there is no need for me to “re-invent the wheel”, so I strongly recommend checking out her post.

Perhaps the biggest way to make a sustainable, local diet affordable is to cook your own meals and eat at home. I cannot stress this enough, Brett and I used to eat out a lot, let’s just say more times a week than we cooked at home, and it was pricey, not to mention unhealthy. Since I’ve started cooking my own meals, I have seen our food expenditures drop. Processed foods, while sometimes cheaper than whole foods, often lack in nutritional value and have a lot more packaging. If you look for organic or “natural” processed items, you are going to pay a premium and the packaging issue remains. I must also state, in my humble opinion, a varied whole foods diet is far more healthful than one largely comprised of processed foods - even the "healthy" ones.

I am assuming most of the people who read this blog (since it is predominately a cooking blog) know how to cook, but if you don’t, start simple – learn basic skills like chopping, sautéing, roasting. From there you open up many doors. For those of you with even basic cooking skills, you have a lot of tools at your disposal. I believe very strongly in “full disclosure” (acknowledging your biases) so I will state for the record: I am a pretty lazy girl most of the time. As much as I love cooking, after working all day, I don’t want to spend forever in the kitchen on weeknights, especially not during the summer when it’s hot. So I have a cache of easy meals, things that don’t require a whole lot of preparation or too many ingredients. If you can’t see yourself getting in the kitchen every night, might I suggest the “one day in hell = a whole week’s worth of easy meals” method. Basically, pick a day of the week, say Sunday, plan on soaking all the beans you wish to eat that week on Saturday night, on Sunday, get up, cook all your beans, cook all your rice, even chop up veggies if you like – you’ll be in the kitchen most of the day, but you’ll have easy meals for the rest of the week. And we’re talking homemade, easy meals.

Another way to save big, both in dollars, and on packaging and energy usage, is to buy your beans and rice in bulk. Most grocery stores have at least a small bulk section, and there you will find a selection of dried beans, rice, legumes, perhaps even nuts, fruit, coffee, and spices. These goods are far cheaper than their canned counterparts and even the 1 lb. packages of beans and rice you can buy from the “regular” section. If you don’t know what you like, take Chile’s advice and just buy a little bit of each at a time until you find out. You won’t waste money or food that way.

Once you’ve determined what you like, buy larger quantities of it. Perhaps there is a local co-op in your area where you can make larger purchases from. This takes planning as buying things in bulk can cost quite a bit up front but if you have the means to do so, or can save to do so (as Brett and I did), you can save even more than you do buying from the bulk section of the supermarket. Brett and I have dedicated a closet to storing our rice and beans. In determining what to buy and how much, we took an inventory of our most oft used and favorite recipes to see what beans and grains were used most often. We then bought 25 lbs. of organic black beans, adzuki beans, pinto beans, and long grain brown rice, and 10 lb. bags of organic Anasazi and cranberry beans. Stored in a tightly sealed containers in a cool, dry place (such as a closet), they will keep for a couple of years. Brett and I also don’t own a car, so doing this is also more convenient for us. In a few trips we can lug home a year’s worth of beans and rice, and we eat a lot of beans and rice, so this saves us lots of time.

Before I go on, I feel like I have to state for the record that I am not advocating the vegetarian or vegan diet; sorry folks, that’s not how I roll. There are better people out there for the job and I personally do not care how others choose to eat; I think it is a personal decision. With that said, however, eating less meat, and more things like beans and rice is another way to save a lot of money on sustainable food. Local meat and dairy products can be quite pricey, and meat in general is just far more expensive than grains and legumes. Perhaps consider having a few meatless meals a week. Need some ideas? Check out my recipe index, and peruse any of the amazing veg*n food blogs on my blogroll.

You might also consider purchasing a CSA share. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. You can find all sorts of great information about CSAs here, but the gist of it is this: you and a farmer enter an agreement where you pay, at the beginning of the season, for a “share” in the farmer’s harvest. You will get a proportionate amount of fresh produce over the duration of the growing season in your area on a weekly basis. Buying a share in a CSA does involve some risk, but being a farmer involves a lot of risk, and I don’t feel bad about sharing it with the farmer. What I mean by risk is, if there are floods, droughts, pests, anything that reduces or destroys the harvest, well, you don’t get any produce. But in a good year, you are likely to get more than you paid for. When produce is abundant, our farmer adds a little extra to the bag, if he’s doing well, he figures we should too, since we put our trust and “faith” in him.

Since you have to pay up front, this is another seemingly “costly” way of eating. At first it felt that way to us, but it is something we wanted to do, so we saved the money, and we have seen the savings ever since. In the end our quarter share of a CSA works out to about $5-6 a week. If any of you read this blog on a regular basis and see the weekly pictures of our CSA booty, you can attest that – as of late – we are getting much more than $5-6 worth of produce. Sometimes, as the lovely Jessy knows, there are more people who want shares in CSAs than are available, and you get “wait-listed”, sometimes for a long time, poor Jessy and her husband Dan have been waiting for 2 years! My advice is to be patient and get on a waiting list, but in the meantime, shop at the farmer’s market. (My fingers are crossed for you guys! Maybe next season!)

The farmer’s market is a great place. There is an atmosphere at the farmer’s market. It is so refreshing to talk to people who actually know about the products they sell, lots of folks gathering and talking, and there is almost always live bluegrass music (this is Missouri). Atmosphere aside, this is the place to find some of the best deals on some of the highest quality produce during the growing season. Most people assume that the farmer’s market is more expensive than the grocery store, and they are right, to an extent. If you buy meat, dairy, bread, or anything like that, these items may be more expensive than the grocery store. In my experience with the bread, it is really about the same. My basic point about this is – if you are buying a premium product – expect to pay a premium price, no matter where you procure it.

Buying in season is very affordable. When sweet corn really starts coming in here, the farmer’s are almost giving it away. Same with tomatoes, potatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, squash. There are many resources at your disposal to get an idea of what is grown in your area and when (this is for the US). Buying local has many positive advantages: first, in my opinion, it just plain tastes better; second, fewer miles are traveled from farm to table, saving resources; and third, it is better for your local economy which affects you directly by way of schools, roads, and other public services. Most of a dollar spent locally ends up recycling in the community as the person you gave that dollar to is likely to spend it locally as well. Whereas most of a dollar spent at Wal-Mart immediately leaves town.

A great way to take advantage of the abundance of summer and the low prices of local produce is to preserve it. There are many ways to preserve food from drying and canning to freezing. Sweet corn’s in season? Buy it up, boil it, take it off the cob, and put it in freezer bags. You’ll have local sweet corn for the winter. Consider purchasing a boiling water bath canner if you wish to preserve acidic foods like fruit, pickles, or even tomato products, or a pressure canner if you wish to preserve low-acid foods like veggies or meat. Peppers and fruit can be easily dehydrated in the oven, a dehydrator, or even on your porch or a cool, dry room in your home. Chiles can be dried without a dehydrator. Simply cut a slit in the back of each chile, run a string through the base of the stem, and hang ‘em up someplace that isn't humid. In a couple of weeks, you will have dried chiles. Put them in a bag or container and store them in a cool, dry place. A word of caution: if you do decide to can, be safe, make sure you have the proper equipment, that you read the directions fully, and do not deviate from the recipe (you can still be creative, most recipes will say something like “1 ½ lbs. of hot peppers", you can choose which hot pepper you wish to use). Failure to follow procedures could be harmful and potentially fatal. Do not be scared of canning though. When done properly (i.e. following the directions), it is perfectly safe and a great way to not only save money, but to eat locally even in the dead of winter. If anyone else has any food preservation suggestions or tips, please leave them in the comments area.

The final area I will touch on briefly is gardening. Not only is this a way to save money on (very) local, sustainable food, it is just damn good fun, and a great workout. It’s a great activity to do with children (especially in conjunction with vermicomposting) as well as a partner. Even if you live in very small quarters and don’t have much in the way of sunlight, you can still grow things, limited as the options are. You just have to learn what is possible, and learn to use all space as efficiently as possible. The next and final piece in this series will be a brief introduction to gardening in small spaces.
'Til next time!

On Gradually Achieving a Sustainable Local Diet - Waste = Food

In the second part of this series I will discuss ways of making sustainable, local food affordable. I was hoping to be able to keep this to one post, but as I’m long-winded and tangents always arise that are worth exploring, the second part of the series will come in two posts.

Before we discuss how to make sustainable food affordable, it helps to have a different perspective on our diets and what a sustainable food system is. As I noted in the introduction to this series, much of eating (and living) sustainably is psychological, we must learn to look at our diet in a more holistic manner, but also as just another way we interact with nature on a daily basis. For a long time, we have viewed food (and many other things really) as a distinct set of parts (the ingredients) put together to create the “end product” (the meal), rather than food as a system and our preparation and consumption of it as just one part in the whole cycle. We rarely think of what happens before we obtain our food or when our food goes “away” in our garbage cans, to the landfills, out of us as our “solid waste” (we all know what I’m talking about here, but I’m a lady - hehe) and so on. We rarely stop to think about (or perhaps do not even know) how unheard of this is in the natural world. “Waste” is not an issue in the natural world. “Waste” is food, which is the focus of this post.

I would argue that the term “waste” simply describes improperly used food. Whereas in our societies waste = pollution, in nature waste = food (a concept coined by William McDonough, author of the really good book Cradle to Cradle), and this is one of the reasons that natural systems are able to sustain themselves and rarely experience issues of excess or “pollution” (concentrated, improperly used food). For example, when one plant dies, bacteria, bugs, and other organisms break the plant material down into food for other plants. Legumes fix nitrogen in the soil, making it fertile and available for plants and other organisms. Earthworms break down dead material, while also aerating and fertilizing (with their castings) the soil.

The sustainable, waste = food system is a cycle by which nutrients and energy are continually being reshuffled and reconfigured for the best and most efficient use. The healthiest systems are the most diverse, where creatures on every level make remarkably efficient use of the available resources.

Waste and Organic Material

There are some very simple steps to take reduce waste in two fairly obvious areas. The first is to plan, and stick to the plan, as discussed in the previous post. The second is related but worth reasserting: try not to buy more food than you can reasonably eat, that is, unless you have plans for preserving it.

Be realistic about how much produce you can handle as well as how long it will last once you bring it home. When you buy local food, it often doesn’t stay “good” for as long since it wasn’t sprayed with a myriad of gases to extend shelf life and reduce spoilage. So, it works best to go the market or store multiple times a week, if this is an option. Perhaps, if your farmer’s market doesn’t set up shop more than once a week, there is a store in town where you can procure locally grown items. A few minutes spent with Google will generally help you determine the “health food” stores in your area. Call ‘em up and see what you can find. A few minutes talking with a purveyor at the farmer’s market could be even more helpful. Aside from knowing where to seek local goods, they might also have some advice on how to best store and prepare the goods they produce.

Despite our most valiant and creative efforts, there is still an unavoidable amount of organic waste: you can’t eat apple cores and seeds or spoiled veggies, and there is little reason why a meal that didn’t turn out should simply have to end up in the trash. Compost it!

(Now, as I'm sure you are all aware, I eat a mostly vegan diet; animal products are rarely consumed in our home (aside from the occasional egg, or some cheese for Brett), so I’m not sure as to the safety of composting animal ingredients So, I would recommend doing some research before throwing those tired looking steaks in the compost.)

The method of composting I recommend is vermicomposting, or composting with worms. This can be done in small spaces, indoors even, as it does not stink, and is an effective way of reducing your waste because you turn your food scraps into worm food, and the worms turn it into very high quality plant food.

Vermicomposting is a fairly simple method that doesn’t require a whole lot of tending. The “source” for vermicomposting still seems to be the book Worms Eat My Garbage by Mary Appelhof, since it is accessible and suitable for anyone above a 5th grade reading level, you might laugh at this, but complex scientific concepts that can be explained in terms younger people can understand works for me, I’ll take pictures too :-). You can make a composting box (sometimes called a "worm bin") out of a plastic or wood bin, or you can purchase special boxes from selected locations. I would highly recommend looking into this system, especially if you live in an apartment where most of your waste is comprised of food scraps, not yard waste.

Waste and Non-organic Matter

One cannot take a glass jar outside, put it on their garden, and hope to grow food. Some of the things humans create are inappropriate for use as food. So, a good starting point would be to look for goods with the least possible amount of packaging (a quick example would be to choose dried beans over canned). Whatever packaging is necessary works best if it is either reusable or recyclable. #7 plastic, for example, is neither reusable (due to safety concerns) nor recyclable in our area. So, we stay away from it. Strawberry containers are not recyclable here either, but we can take them to the farmers at the market who will reuse them. Be resourceful and creative, and remember reusing always beats recycling.

The list that follows contains some ideas for reusing and is by no means complete. If you have any additional ideas, please leave them in the comment section; we are all here to learn from each other.

• Twist ties from produce or bread bags can be used to tie herbs in a bunch to be dried.
• Use the back of receipts, junk mailers, flyers, and “mess up” paper from the printer (something didn’t print right, use the back) to make lists.
• Take your shopping bags, berry containers, and egg cartons to the farmer’s market. Oftentimes, farmers will happily take them for use for their product.
• Glass jars, such as spaghetti or applesauce jars, peanut butter jars, mayo jars, olive or nut jars can be rinsed in soapy water, their labels removed can be used for other things. Uses we’ve found for glass jars include: storing bulk nuts, seeds, flours, and odds and ends. We even use the appropriately sized ones as drinking glasses. And Heather (from the awesome blog Simple – Green – Frugal) had the excellent suggestion of using peanut butter or mayo sized glass jars to take soup as a lunch to work. They also double as something to safely heat the soup in, as well as a bowl.
• Containers that starter plants come in or things like cut to size milk cartons make excellent places to start next year’s garden seeds.
• Old, worn out pantyhose (sadly, I don’t have any), can be used to store onions, as Chile demonstrates here. Actually, just have a look around Chile’s blog, she has a wealth of advice, tips, and alternative uses for materials that would normally end up in the garbage.

Since we’ve been working to reduce our consumption – live more sustainable lives and all that – our trash output has been significantly reduced. Most of what ends up in our trash can these days is food scraps, which not only makes for a very heavy garbage bag, it is also a waste of valuable “plant food in the making”. Our apartment complex has recently come under new management (the old management said we could not vermicompost), so Brett and I are hoping to start making our own plant food soon.

Now that we’ve discussed looking at one’s diet as part of an energy cycle – the idea that all waste should either be food for something else or be put to another use – I will spend the next post discussing how to eat locally and affordably.

'Til next time.

On Gradually Achieving a Sustainable Local Diet - Meal Planning

This first post is going to be about meal planning. What I hope will be a brief (for me) introduction to planning meals which are easy to prepare, that also reduce waste, environmental impact, and cost without having to eat the same thing every night.

This might seem obvious, but to someone whose diet consists largely of takeout or prepared foods, the first step to meal planning is to learn what you like. A couple of years ago, when I first started learning how to cook, the only thing I could ever think to make was a replication of the errant things I ate at restaurants or that came out of a box. Obviously, many of the ingredients didn’t go together, and I wasted a lot of food. I also got bored with those options, and as a result, returned to a diet largely consisting of takeout and boxed foods.

I have become a strong believer in the “cultural diet”, where your diet is comprised of foods from predominantly one culture. The reason I think this is an appropriate and easy way to eat is this: a cultural diet comes about for a reason; the diet consists of foodstuffs available to that particular area, and in combinations that extract the most nutrition from the resources available. Basically, cultural cuisine is interchangeable and relies on what’s abundant. If you live in a semi-temperate climate, you can largely have free choice in the cultural cuisine you choose, and even with dietary restrictions, like eating a mostly vegan diet as I do, knowing what cuisine you like can help you form a base for your meal planning.

Well, what I did was look to the places I went out to eat, the boxed food I ate, what cuisine did it fall under? Was there a trend? For me, there was, it was Mexican food. So I decided to pursue Mexican cooking, and suddenly many doors opened up for me.

This, of course, does not mean that I only eat Mexican food, what it means is that my diet largely consists of Mexican food because pinto beans, black beans, brown rice, tomatoes, peppers – all of these things that I like and keep on hand – are interchangeable in most Mexican dishes. You can put essentially the same things together, with various spice combinations and it’s something completely different. So, sticking primarily to a favored cuisine can be seen as the lazy person’s way of getting optimal nutrition with the least amount of effort and resources.

Once you determine what you like (and what you don’t like, but this also comes with time and experience), you should determine what your protein base is going to be. If you are a vegetarian or vegan, will it be beans and rice? Tofu? Tempeh or seitan? Can those items be found locally or from a bulk cooperative? If you are an omnivore, will this be fish? Red meat? Poultry? A combination? Again, are these things that can be locally or sustainably sourced?

You can use your preferred cultural cuisine and protein base as a good starting point for finding a battery of recipes that you (and your family) like.

When looking for recipes, look for ones with interchangeable ingredients, detailed instructions, and familiar terminology, this leads to more clarity in the kitchen (it also helps to make sure you have suitable equipment). At first, look for basic recipes, and have some sort of back up. You have to convince yourself that it’s alright not to like something, or this process will be torture for you. Have a frozen pizza or a takeout place on speed dial in case things don’t work out. If you tolerate food you do not like, you will never enjoy eating sustainably, and what’s the point of eating if you don’t enjoy your food? Mere survival? Psh! I’m not satisfied with that. Don’t worry about the additional waste this might produce. It’s only temporary, and there are ways of making food waste less of a source of guilt that I’ll touch on in a later post.

I don’t recommend inundating yourself with tons of new recipes all at once, unless you are really ambitious. It took me almost a year to become a vegetarian, and it has taken Brett and me five years to get to the point we are, so this is a process. And recipes don’t work out, ideas don’t go according to plan, it happens. We tried 1-3 new recipes a week and had a back up plan of very tried and true foods in case of failure, even if they are processed foods, you have to start where you are. Over time, some of those recipes will become integrated into your “routine”. Once you have a large enough battery of recipes, begin to look at staple ingredients. What is used most often in all your recipes? Is this something you could feasibly have access to year round? If not, this should be placed into your “seasonal” routine.

So how do you plan meals that don’t involve unnecessary waste? Well, you must be willing to innovate, working with what you have and what’s available. Once you’ve gathered an arsenal of knowledge and experience, keep a mental (or literal) inventory of what you have on hand when you go to the farmer’s market or grocery store and find ingredients that you use often, but are seasonal or non-perishable. Bring them home, assess your new “inventory” and work from there.

I will lead off with an example from our household: This week, I have left over cabbage, egg roll wrappers, refried beans, some “aging” brown rice, and pesto. When we went to the market we got our CSA, which included many staple items we usually use, we also picked up some additional staple items that were available from the farmer’s market. After consulting our “tested and approved” recipes, and the ones I've created or found that we want to try, we came up with the following meal plan, which includes something different everyday of the week and a very small list for the grocery store. We will be having eggrolls with Leng’s Green Beans and Tomatoes (we have leftover eggroll wrappers and cabbage, we got shiitake mushrooms and carrots at the farmer’s market, and got collard greens, green beans and tomatoes in our CSA share); Black Bean Quesadillas (we bought 25 lbs of bulk organic black beans awhile back which we'll cook up a large batch of and eat on throughout the week, we got sweet corn and peppers at the farmer’s market, and we already had salsa and tortillas at home); Pesto Sandwiches with Roasted Beets and Sautéed Beet Greens (I had some leftover pesto and spinach, got tomatoes and beets in our CSA, and bought a petite loaf of bread from the grocery store); Black Bean Burgers (we will have cooked black beans, aging rice, frozen burger buns that need to be used, Matzoh meal that needs to be used, spinach that needs to be used, and we got tomatoes and sweet corn from the farmer’s market); Black Bean and Potato Tacos (black beans from home, we got potatoes in our CSA and more from the market, we got peppers and tomatoes from the market, and will need to buy some black olives); Black Bean, Corn, and Chile Quesadillas (black beans from home, zucchini from our CSA, corn, jalapeno peppers, and bell peppers we got from the farmer’s market; and finally, Roasted Potato and Black Bean Quesadillas (black beans from home, potatoes from CSA, yellow squash from our CSA, and the rest of sweet corn from farmer’s market).

This meal plan will utilize all perishable items we have in the apartment and only require us to buy the following from the “regular” grocery store: a petite loaf of bread, whole wheat bagels, sriracha hot sauce, almond milk, a lime, black olives, and taco shells. Some of this stuff will last beyond this week. We’ve already paid for our CSA (I will explain that in the next post), we spent $22 at the farmer’s market (you will see our load in the Garden Update that I will be posting soon), and $16 at the grocery store, granted we still have to get the lime, olives, and taco shells, but I can’t imagine that costing too much. Point is, with a little bit of planning and effort we are going to eat seven different, mostly local meals, for around $50.

I have to say here – it is important to be honest with yourself about your cooking style. If you do not like to spend a lot of time in the kitchen, accept that and seek out – or better yet create – recipes that are simple but tasty and nutritious. If you or your family don’t like a certain food, healthy or not, don’t eat it! We seek these lifestyle changes for good and altruistic reasons, but we should also be able to enjoy the change as well. I like to view learning to cook new things as a positive challenge that I can tackle. I think about it like this: Sure, I don’t know how to do that now, but a few years ago I couldn’t do this and now it’s second nature. Be confident in yourself - that is important.

My advice doesn’t provide a lot of specifics, I know. I simply advocate a cultural diet that is looked at holistically – it will be easier, and often less wasteful that way. Learn the cuisine, the flavor combinations, the interchangeable ingredients, and find ways to source them, as locally as possible. Learn how to work with what you have on hand and what is available and keep it simple, always be willing to innovate while accepting and preparing for failure. Simple meals are easy to prepare, and are often the best ones. I don’t go to the farmer’s market and buy random items that I’ve never had before. Most of my “experimental” foods are often a result of unexpected items in our CSA, some we like (beets and collard greens), some we don’t (radishes). I pretty much stick to the items that are staples in the cuisine of my choosing: Mexican. This means a lot of beans, rice, tomatoes, chilies, corn, potatoes, and tortillas for a vegetarian, but I love these things.

And I stick to my meal plan, this I can’t stress enough, if you have things planned in ways that utilize all you have on hand, and then decide to go out to eat, food will be wasted. It is hard if you are in the habit of eating takeout all the time, but stick with it (perhaps join Chile’s challenge and make that what you “quit”). If friends suggest going out to eat, suggest they come over for a meal at your place, show off your cooking skills, spend some quality time with those you care about in a setting that doesn’t require spending a lot of money. Once you get out of the habit of eating out every night, you can start to view it as a luxury, to be done as a treat every once in awhile. And who knows, maybe you can start a new, perhaps more rewarding tradition with your friends.

'Til next time.

On Gradually Achieving a Sustainable Local Diet - An Introduction

This series of posts is a result of my experience, as well as a few posts I’ve seen recently. Chile is doing a series on food security and what to do if food or the resources to obtain food are unavailable; Arduous did a post of food waste and cooking for one, which got me thinking. I started thinking about the path to food sustainability and the “in between” region, folks who aren’t destitute and struggling to feed themselves, but aren’t made of money either. Do I have anything to offer you all? Well, I am one of those people who isn’t destitute and also isn’t made of money, but wants to find ways to reduce my dependency on the “global food system”, eat locally, reduce my burden on the environment, and also to have at least a little more control over my access to food, a concept I’ve heard referred to as “food sovereignty”. The thing is though, I also don’t have a whole lot of time, equipment, space, a large family to cook for (just the two of us) or well, the discipline to spend hours in the kitchen each night.

I will probably tell you a lot of things you already know, but perhaps you will learn something new, a new trick, skill, or way of viewing your eating habits. I must also caveat that my experience is in no way all inclusive, I am not even where I want to be, I can’t say in any way that I “know it all”, or even that I have the best way of going about or viewing things, but this is what worked for Brett and I. A lot of it is psychological; some of it is common sense, pragmatic, or resourceful. I must also state that neither Brett nor I are fans of sudden change. Nor do I feel that, at least for us, this is the most effective route to a long-term, lasting change in lifestyle or personality. I prefer the gradual method, the trial and error method, but this requires one to have an unlimited sense of humor, and also be willing to fail, even waste, on their path to, well, reducing their waste. It might seem counterintuitive to waste to not waste, but if you don’t know how to cook, garden, or preserve food, there is a learning curve involved, it helps to be aware of that. You should also view your transition as a journey, a gradual change that requires effort and even failure, basic cooking skills, how and where to obtain food, and how to be resourceful with the materials you have.

The first post will be about meal planning. Learning to look at what you eat in a slightly different manner, and assessing where you are, what you like, where you’d like to go, the level of effort you want to put in to your food preparation, etc. I will discuss how Brett and I plan our meals in such a way that we do not waste food and does not require a lot of money, but does require planning, motivation, and creativity.

In the second post, I plan to discuss the notion that sustainable, local food is unaffordable. I will talk about the different ways of food procurement and how to get the most out of the resources you and your locality possess.

And the third post will be about gardening in small places and changing your viewpoint about “waste”. I will discuss how to turn your waste into food, while also reducing your environmental impact, costs, and reliance on the global food chain.

Stay tuned.