DAY 25_CAT vs PLANT

8 September, 2010

My new roommate Abby has a cat.  This cat's name is Quill.  Quill is a gray little bundle of fluff with a huge, fluffy, gorgeous tail.  Quill is a wonderful little cat, kind of quirky, but what cat isn't.  I feel like Quill and I had a pretty good relationship going until yesterday...when I walked into the dining room to find her LAYING in my greens seed flat!  Quill!  What are you doing?  Dirt isn't a bed! Its dirty!  Man.

The greens were pretty flattened and she had dug around in them a little bit, but I managed to pull them together pretty well, and they are starting to pop back up again.  The situation, however, is that Quill knows she isn't supposed to be on the grow table and goes up there when we aren't looking.  I've walked in the room a number of times to see just the flash of her jumping off of the table before I can see her. 

I don't know what it is about cats in plants, but they seem to love to be in them.  While, with houseplants this is ok as long as they aren't eating them, with vegetables/greens I am going to eat it is a different story.  First of all, this is my FOOD, I'm basically hoping these greens will grow because they are my only option for eating greens once they stop growing locally (pretty soon).  Secondly, unlike root vegetables, the part that is growing above ground is what I'm going to be eating so having cat's laying in them is kinda gross. I'm feeling really protective about these greens...

Anyway, Abby and I have decided that we can block off the part of the house that the grow table is in during the part of the day we are all gone, when we are around, Quill knows to stay off.  Sorry Quill, but you've lost free-roaming privileges. 

Its interesting to think about the challenges of having pets and growing food inside. If people start doing this more and more (as they may have to to make up for a short growing season here and a need to eat locally without petroleum-based transportation) the area for growing will have to be designed in a way that animals won't be able to mess with it.

On another note, with school starting I'm now spending the majority of each day in studio and class and (after starving for a few days because I didn't bring food I could eat) am realizing that I need to start bringing local, organic food that doesn't have to be refrigerated or microwaved for lunches.  This morning I made some tortillas which I can dip in pesto (for lunch) or maple syrup (for snack) in.  These tortillas are more like Indian naan because they are a little bit thicker and doughier than actual tortillas.  Really good, super simple, and I can really use them for a lot of different things; with sugar and butter they are a yummy dessert, they can be used for cold-wraps (with sprouts and other vegetables), used for little pizzas, or just with spreads. 

2 Cups flour

1/4 Cup sunflower oil

1 teaspoon salt

3/4 Cup hot water

a little honey or maple syrup

Mix, add flour as needed to create soft ball.

Knead until smooth.

Let sit for 30 minutes.

Break in half, then half again, then thirds. Makes 12 tortillas.

Roll out until thin on a floured surface.

Cook on medium heat, both sides, ready when turns from wet to dry

I need to leave time in the morning to make whatever I'm going to bring everyday, so I usually get up around 6:00 (I was getting up with the sunrise at 6:30) to make food for the day). I've also been bringing fruits, nuts and bread, but the tortillas with some kind of dip satisfies a craving for good-tasting sugared or seasoned food :)  thanks for showing me abby!

I should also mention that it has been getting REALLY cold.  It is usually around 50 degrees when I am getting up in the morning, and the heat hasn't kicked on in our house yet because most of the day it is warm enough.  The morning is the coldest part of the day, though, and  while it would be nice to have heat, I'm glad I am not having to factor that into my electricity/energy budget yet....there will probably be some big changes/sacrifices when that happens.  This is another paradox of energy because as it gets colder, there is more of a need for energy to create heat; in our food, in the spaces we inhabit, heating water, storing food (refrigeration)...but I will have less of an energy budget because these things will all be competing for energy.   All the things I would have done before the project to keep warm are already starting to come to mind; electric blanket, drinking LOTS of warm liquids, crank the heat, space heaters, warm foods, hot showers. Starting with a cold bucket shower in the morning I have a hard time warming up the rest of the day (warm up a little biking around).  I usually am wearing a sweater/jacket all the time, even indoors.   In order to conserve the energy/heat I am using to make tea in the morning (because it is SO cold after showering) I put it in this amazing thermos I have which keeps it warm ALL day, great job thermos.  This way I can bring hot liquids with me without having to use more energy to constantly be heating them.  I think warming up a gallon of water in the morning may need to become a priority...

DAY 24_ENERGY PARADOX

7 September 2010

First day of class, took a cold bucket shower, accidentally drank sour milk, exploded my blender making a green smoothie, ran out of time to make another breakfast and biked in a 55 degree, gray drizzle 8.6 miles to the St. Paul campus at 7:30am, with a guitar strapped to my back.  Good start to a semester without oil, ha.

I had to rig up a way to carry both my guitar and my bag that has my laptop to school because I'm taking a guitar class this semester :)  This is great, but when you are biking 17 miles round trip for class everyday it can get a little old.  I bike 7.6 miles to St. Paul in the morning, then 3.4 to the Minneapolis campus and 6 miles home at the end of the day. 

I'm still working on calculating the watts/hr that specifically each of my appliances use, however there are a number of online resources for finding average numbers to use that are serving as 'stand in' numbers until I get my own. I looked at this site, which talks about various methods for cooking and comparing energy and cost:


http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/cooking.html

Electric Stove burner (4400 watts) x 30 min =1,250 watts/hr 1.25 kWh
Electric Oven, 1 hr = 2.0 kWh
Toaster Oven (2000 watts) x 1 hr = 0.16kWh

An average blender is 300 watts. Because it is only on for 2-3 minutes it uses about 9-10 watts/hr 0.009kWh, which is significantly less than any of the above methods of cooking. To compare my oatmeal breakfast (about .625 kWh) versus the smoothie (0.009kWh) there is a big difference!

The use of appliances and other low-energy devices in our homes is an interesting part of this project. While the number of electronic devices in our homes continues to increase (electric toothbrushes, toasters, blenders, juicers, rice cookers, electronic can opener, leaf blower, vacuum pack sealers....) these things are relatively low energy. During the process of putting together a list of electric use I'm beginning to notice that the big energy users are my fridge, computer (because I use it all day), electric stove burners, and the grow light. The paradox is that these are the things I would have a difficult time eliminating. The little devices and appliances add up, but using them in moderation (and only the ones you really need) doesn't contribute to the total energy use very much. The other paradox is that as I've begun to cook everything from scratch I am more likely to need (or use) more kitchen appliances I didn't use before (blender, dehydrator, bread maker). I've gone through and eliminated some of the unnecessary appliances I used before (ones I could easily live without). These include my; hairdryer, microwave, clothes washer, clothes dryer, lights in rooms I don't need.

An interesting report on the rise of 'miscellaneous' electricity products is found here:
http://enduse.lbl.gov/info/LBNL-40295.pdf
and shows these interesting graphs on rising use in different categories:

DAY 23_SOLAR AT THE STATE FAIR

6 September 2010

The past few years the Minnesota State Fair has put together a huge exhibit called the Eco-Experience.  It has its own building and is run entirely by volunteers (about 400).  The Eco-Experience has exhibits on solar power, wind power, local foods, transportation, composting/waste, water quality...They get people to volunteer by offering training sessions in each area.  People who want to to learn more than they could just walking through the exhibits can go to a 3 hour training session and get a more in-depth understanding of the systems and then volunteer for at least one shift at the fair (free ticket!).  Anyway, so solar power has been explained to me about 1,872 times and I still can't say I really get it so I volunteered for this thing. 

The kinds of people who volunteer for something like this are coming from ALL over the place, everyone has their own reasons to learn about solar power, but in most cases people are recognizing that solar power is a HUGE upcoming industry and people want in on it. 

Of course, the day I volunteered was one of the crappiest days of the fair, cold, rainy and overcast.  So much for solar power :/  I was working outside where they had a bunch of panels hooked up to various things so people could see up close hows things looked and worked.  With off and on sprinklings of rain we still had a small steady stream of people.  What was interesting was when the sun would come out lots of people would suddenly flood into the area.  I think there must be a perception that solar power only works in full sun.  I had a few people come up to me and (noticing that our gadgets were still working with overcast skies) would ask how they were working on such a crappy day.  The solar panels still capture light on overcast (even pretty dark) days, but are significantly better in full sun.  This was demonstrated by the largest array they had (about 8 3'x5' panels) which was hooked up to a wattage meter.  Watching the meter move throughout the day (from dark rain to full sun) was interesting.  The highest wattage the panels were producing was 750 watts and the lowest I saw was about 30 watts.  That's a pretty big range.  The wattage per square foot was ranging from 6.25 watts/sq ft (750 watts) to only 0.25 watts/sq ft.  A pretty average peak wattage from what I understand is about 8 watts (peak) per sq ft. 

DAY 22_LONG BIKE TRIPS

5 September 2010

While I biked to and from school/work and to do small errands almost all the time even before this project, whenever I had to go more than 5-6 miles one way I would usually drive.  With small trips and even going the 6 miles to school I can get there by bike just as fast as I could by car.  It takes me 25 minutes to go 6 miles to school versus 15 minutes by car + 10 or 15 minutes to park and walk to the building.  With longer trips,however, I have to remember to factor the time in to get there.  Two trips taken today were longer trips. 


1_Plymouth (15 miles one way)

A couple friends are taking a 3 month trip around Europe and were having a send off party. The only catch-its in Plymouth (a suburb north of Minneapolis) Surprisingly, we found a route that was almost all bike trails out there. It was a 15 mile ride and took 1:15 minutes.

2_Dinner with Tom (8.6 miles one way)

The second long trip of the day was to dinner at my thesis Chair Tom Fisher's (also Dean of the College of Design) house.  This was an 8.6 miles trip, and I made it in 47 minutes.  Tom's wife Claudia has been hearing about this project from Tom and made a special effort to cook as locally as possible.  Every dish they made had at least one ingredient from their garden.  Another advisor on my thesis -Virajita, had her family (two boys) and her parents who are visiting from India there as well.  Claudia had to spend at least 10 minutes explaining all the dietary details of each dish (all vegetarian, some lactose interant and mostly local).  On the menu was:

_cooked kale and tomato salad (all local)

_tabouli salad (herbs from garden)

_beans with fresh herbs from garden

_spinach and cheese enchiladas (local cheese and tortillas and spinach)

For dessert we had a peach and blueberry pie and Virajita's 'ladu' balls. 

Soooo good, thanks so much Claudia!

With all kinds of sustainability folk at the table we of course were talking about local foods.  Virajita and Erwin, who grew up in Mumbai talked about how all foods available to them were local.  Without the energy resources we have in the US, food in India is trucked in every day freshly picked from farms on the perimeter of the city.  They bring only what they can sell in a day because it won't keep in the hot climate without refrigeration.  Virajita's 10 year old son Madhav stated matter-of-factly "If you never had oil, you wouldn't ever need it."  This is true.  The problem we are currently facing is that the infrastructures of our entire society are built around a resource that we are rapidly depleting.  Most people throughout the entire world who never came into contact with oil have totally different infrastructure and won't be facing nearly the extent of crisis that we will in the coming years. 

DAY 21_STORING FOOD

4 September 2010

STORING FOOD:
Its getting colder here, and while that is sad because we have all been wearing jackets and boots the last few days, it is sadder because I am realizing how many foods that I eat everyday will start to disappear soon.  I'm starting to freeze foods (and wishing I would have frozen some foods that are already gone).  I made a big batch of pesto today and froze it in a muffin tray.  After freezing I dipped the pesto tray in hot water to loosen the edges and put the 'pesto pucks' in mason jars in the freezer.  I'm working on freezing and dehydrating a bunch of local pears I found at the coop the other day. 

WATER:

I tried heating my water in a 5 gallon solar camp shower bag I have today.  Filling up the bag (using my weekly surplus water) was the first thing I did when I woke up this morning, however I went out to the porch only to find that it was completely shaded. The porch on our house is on the west side of the house :(  It takes at least 3 hours to heat the water in the bag to shower temp 95-100 degrees, and full sun.  It wasn't until noon that the sun finally peaked over the house and started landing on the porch.  After this I had to wait another 3 hours to heat the bag.  Although it is was still a pretty warm day, there was only partial sun.  I dumped the water into a 5 gallon bucket after it had heated for 3 hours.  It was kinda warm.   Definitely warmer than room temperature, but not hot.  So afternoon long shower's it is.  I used a mason jar to scoop water out of the bucket and pour over my head to wash my hair. 

FARMER'S MARKET:

This morning I went to the midway farmer's market.  This market is smaller than the St. Paul market, but also has local foods and is only 3 miles away (as opposed to an hour bike ride).  I was surprised to still see some greens (chard and Chinese spinach).  I saw apples for the first time and got a bunch.  I also saw a guy selling cheese....of course, all his cheese was wrapped in plastic.  I asked him if it was possible to not wrap it in plastic and he looked really confused.  After some explaining he started to understand what I was asking him-avoiding plastic waste.  However he didn't seem to think there was any possible way he could transport the cheese without plastic.  He kept asking me "Well... how would I do that?  I don't see how I could do that."  I didn't have any suggestions for him, because, well, I'm not a cheese maker.  Pretty disappointing.  I haven't found any way to buy cheese without packaging so far. 

So far I have just been collecting the cheese wrappers. I've only bought cheese twice so it isn't much waste, but I have to wash it because there is always a little cheese still stuck to the wrapper and I don't want it to mold as I collect it. Although I could keep doing this I think it would be more interesting to start to identify what waste I am accumulating and find ways to try and change this almost unavoidable waste.  It makes me think of the new waste system in (Norway? Sweden? I forget)  Basically, they get a yellow waste bag every week and aren't allowed to create more waste than fits in the bag.  The trash service won't take anything else.  Because of this, people began just leaving extra packaging waste that they didn't need in the stores.  For example, they would just leave the cardboard box that toothpaste comes in on the shelf.  After a while, stores began to realize that they couldn't be responsible for getting rid of that waste (because they had waste restrictions too) and started working with product suppliers/manufacturers to create products without extra waste.  People really do have the power to change these things, because ultimately, manufacturer's are forced to respond to our needs (especially in cases like this).   I've thought about doing the same thing with cheese.  I have a plan for cheese-packing rebellion:

(1) I got the contact information for the the lady who is in charge of the deli dept at the co-op, I'll explain my concerns to her first and see if they can find a way to package cheese in compostable plastic or paper of some kind.

(2) I'll buy the cheese in the packaging but ask at the check out if they will take my waste (even though I am creating waste this way, if enough people starting doing this they would start to realize the desire people have to not accumulate plastic wrap waste). 

(3) If none of the the other options work I will take the cheese out of the packaging as I leave the store (trash by the door). 

Cheese plastic is really the ONLY food that I can't buy due to the packaging, as far as raw ingredients go.  Obviously things like yogurt, sour cream, cream cheese I can't buy because they come in plastic tubs. But the cheese seems like a an easy fix, they already use compostable plastic for a lot of things a the wedge.  More details later on the saga of cheese waste...

DAY 20_GREENS

3 September 2010

As I mentioned before, I'm focusing more on growing greens on the grow table instead of as many vegetables.  This is for a couple reasons:

_The green's season in Minnesota is almost over-no greens available once it gets cold

_There isn't any great way to store greens, canning, freezing or drying

_Greens can be grown as "microgreens" which can be harvested in less than 30 days.  These greens are basically harvested when they are 4-5 inches tall and are contain the most nutrients as young plants.

_They take less time because they don't need to be transplanted.  They can grow with a shallow root depth (in seed flats right now) and can grow fairly close together, maximizing the amount of food I can grow under the one grow light I have.

I started my greens about 4 days ago and am already seeing a lot of sprouts!  I planted half of the flat with Collard Greens and half the flat with Romaine Lettuce.  I'm planning on planting a new flat every week for 3 weeks, hopefully this will give me a steady flow of greens for the rest of the project...

Left is a picture of the sprouts, they are actually getting too big now, gotta eat them!

So the question with all this is, how am I going to eat so many greens?  I'm trying out the green smoothie method, here is my first attempt:

_1 nectarine

_1 spice plum

_1/2 bunch of dino kale (about 1 cup chopped and packed

_small bunch of parsley

_1 cup water

Not bad, the texture is weird because you have to chew a little bit after each sip...

I think this will be a good way to get the nutrients I need from vegetables that are out of season. 

Lastly, I wanted to show a picture of my kitchen cupboards.  I've collected a large variety of bulk foods at this point: bread flours, nuts, maple sugar, oats, yeast, baking soda, salt, cornstarch.  The cabinet has my roommate's food on the left half and my food on the right half.  Top shelf I keep all my empty containers for shopping and the other two shelves have all my containers of bulk, local, organic foods and vegetables/garlic....No more boxes!

When I was filling up mason jars full of bulk foods the other today at the co-op a noticed a lady kept looking at me.  Finally she came over and exclaimed excitedly "that's such a good idea! you don't have to use any bags!"  I told her that, yeah it was really nice not to have to collect all the plastic bulk bags (which there isn't much other use for) and that bringing containers was really easy, all you had to do was weigh the container first.  She was really excited about this because apparently she had a lot of containers she didn't know what to do with and told me "I just hate all these bags!"  Talking to her made me realize how much of the bag use is purely out of habit.  I started thinking of all the things I would put in bags until starting this project and I couldn't use them anymore: greens, small vegetables.....Once you get in the habit of bringing containers it starts to seem sort of bizarre that you ever used bags in the first place (especially for individual produce items), but after only 3 weeks of doing this I can hardly remember how I shopped before...weird. 

DAY 19_MY OTHER BIKE IS A HUMMER

2 September 2010

While all of the food, drink and health products I'm buying are local, most of them are coming from the co-op I live by or the farmer's market, meaning they had to be transported (even the short distance) to each of these places.  A friend pointed out that the more products I could actually buy AT THE SOURCE the more I would have an understanding of what goes into making those things.  Even things that are made "locally" often have many other added ingredients which come from far away.  This is an excellent point, and I figured I'd start with one product I was particularly suspicious about ingredient sourcing-beer.  :)

Our big destination today was a tour at the Summit Brewery.  Summit gives tours every Tues and Thurs at 1 and on Saturdays (but you have to reserve).  The brewery is located along the bend in the river between Minneapolis and St. Paul-an 11.6 mile bike ride from Uptown.  The ride was really nice because we could take the Greenway which connects to the Mississippi River Pkwy the whole way there.  Pulling up on our bikes in this industrial area we were doubting we would find bike racks and were about to go find a street pole when we found racks right next to the front door!  Yeah! The best part about biking is you almost always get the best parking spot available. 

It became clear when they were explaining the ingredients that go into their beers that even "local" beers are not necessarily local.  Obviously all the brewing happens here but the ingredients could really be coming from anywhere.  For example, they are doing an series of beers called "Unchained", the beer in this series this year is a Belgian Style Golden Ale.  In order to make an authentic tasting Belgian beer they really have to get ingredients (malt, hops) from Belgium.  Many of their other beers are likely quite a bit more local than that one.  The original Summit Extra Pale Ale is their flagship beer (and the best) and all ingredients in that beer are at least grown in the US, if not the Midwest.  Stick to the local stuff Summit, you do it better that way :) 

The tour included seeing the huge fermenting room, bottling room and 3 free beers for everyone.  Seeing the bottling room left me with questions about if they reuse bottles like they do kegs.  I interrogated the tour guide as he was passing out drink tokens and he said he didn't know of any breweries in Minnesota that had a bottle-return program.  That Wisconsin breweries used to do this, but he wasn't sure even they did anymore.  It would make SO much sense to do something like this.  It would save money for the breweries, for the customers (either as a refund or in less cost from not having to buy more bottles).  Without even considering the energy intensive process of making hundreds of thousands of glass bottles every year, this seems like an obvious move breweries could make.  We were further disappointed to find that they didn't sell any growler-size beers anywhere.  Most breweries I've heard of let you buy growlers of beer and you can return the bottle or refill it when you are done for a refund.  Anyone know of breweries that do this in the Twin Cities?

Our next stop was Izzy's Ice Cream on Cleveland and Marshall.  Izzy's is great, a local company...but are their ingredients local?  We interrogated an unsuspecting worker who ended up knowing quite a bit about their ingredient sourcing.  It turns out they get the "base" for all of their ice creams from a place just across the river in Wis.  I forget the name of the town (started with an M....) but the majority of the ice cream is this base.  After that, they get ingredients that they can find locally as much as possible.  Both the workers there knew some of the sourcing for specific flavors which was great.  It is fairly easy to guess what flavors could be totally local after searching for local foods for 3 weeks (the berry flavors were safe for sure)  I got a maple nut with a little raspberry...The mistake I made, however, was I got a cup! Oh god! I totally forgot, everyone else got cones and it wasn't until we all sat down together that I realized my fatal flaw.  Waste.

The highlight of being at Izzy's however was a bumper sticker we spotted on an SUV that pulled up next to us.  "MY OTHER CAR IS A BIKE".  Wait. What? Your OTHER car?  Is a bike?  Is that supposed to be a good thing?  Is that any different than having a bumper sticker that says "I own a bike"?  I dunno, I don't get it.  Congratulations?  My other bike is a Hummer, or...um...whatever.

Total of 26.13 miles logged in 2 hours and 14 minutes round trip.  I've officially gone 200 miles in 19 days! 

To reward ourselves we decided to make a breakfast dinner.  On the menu:

_Waffles made with all local, organic ingredients, topped with pure maple syrup mixed with chopped walnuts.
_Hash browns with onions, garlic and butter
_Bacon from Beller Farms (Wedge)
_Winehaven Marechal Foch Red (Chisago Lakes Area)

This was only the second time I've had meat during this project so that was really exciting, super great meal. We cooked the entire meal by candlelight and the worms got the leftovers. Thanks for playing no-oil with me guys :)