Openly Balanced

Our CSA Share – The Missing Weeks

Jess Lundie — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 18:21:30 +0000

Aka weeks 6-12, during which I was lost in a haze of crazy. Here are the missing weeks of the CSA share. I love how you can kind of see summer progress – the first tomato, carrots, and potatoes of the year; the changes in color; the changes in berries.

It kind of reminds me of a much smaller version of the guy who took a picture of himself every day for six years. Only more vegetables. And a lot less time elapsed. (I always wish he was smiling for the pictures – he seems so melancholy. Not like vegetables, which are decidedly cheerful.)

All this food! Where did the summer go?

Our CSA Share – Week 13

Jess Lundie — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 21:22:46 +0000

For the last week or so, I’ve been working on getting back on track in my kitchen. What does that mean? Digging around in the back of my freezer and my pantry and finishing eating things up! I’m a little bit of a food hoarder, and while it is comforting to have a couple of jars of tomatoes left “just in case I need them,” preserving season means it’s time to start fresh and new for the coming winter.

But that doesn’t mean the CSA veggies stop coming in and that doesn’t mean the garden stops producing. Good thing I have a few extra bodies around the house to help me eat up the bounty .

The Share

Potatoes
Green beans
Kohlrabi
Beets
Carrots
Kale
Onion
Summer squash
Blackberries

The Garden

The garden is doing fantastic, in spite of my naiveté in planning it. (Certainly the squash won’t get big enough to take over the carrots. I’m sure they’ll be fine wedged in right there.)

This week we have beets, radishes, green and dragon tongue bush beans, rainbow and swiss chard, kale, bok choy, and… no carrots. The fig tree is also in full fruit, and we’ve been eating fresh figs every day. We also have a couple of tomatoes just about ready to go. Yay summer!

The Meal Plan

Eating from the garden has been a new and deeply enjoyable experience for me. I love that when I make a meal, if it doesn’t look quite green enough, I can just pop outside and bring in anything that looks good. We’ve been having lots of salads, squashes, and greens along with my random pantry creations.

Chicken, tomatoes & garlic
Baked oatmeal
Homemade yogurt, granola & berries
Breakfast burritos with sautéed greens
Salmon, wild rice & garden veggies
Burgers & cajun fries
Fig newtons

This Friday is the second delivery for Sustainable Eats’ big tomato buy. I’m going to head up to Seattle to pick up 120lbs of tomatoes. From there it’s paste, sauce, salsa, and soup making for a few days, but then the pantry will be stocked until next summer. Also on the agenda is fig jam, fig newton filling, pickled peppers, and sauerkraut.

What’s in your box this week? Anyone have a good recipe for pickled cherry peppers? Are you starting to preserve anything for the winter?

Unplug & Unwind

Jess Lundie — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 13:00:51 +0000

Today’s post is a guest post by Jesse Langley. Jesse is a freelance writer and editor who specializes in consumer technology. He writes on behalf of Colorado Technical University.

Conventional wisdom says the first step on the road to recovery is to admit you have a problem. So, here goes: my name is Jesse, and I’m a techie addict. I came to that realization when I did a quick inventory of my daily routine:

The first thing I did when I woke up in the morning—after silencing the alarm on my smartphone—was check my e-mail. Then I browsed my Google Reader feed to see if there were any stories I missed the night before. After my shower—but before getting dressed and doing my makeup and hair—I powered up my laptop to browse my Facebook and Twitter accounts. On the way to work I fit my Bluetooth earpiece into place and listened to Morning Edition on NPR from my smartphone, since fiddling with the radio is too much of a distraction.

After a day of staring at my laptop screen at work, my free time was still full of gadgets. On evenings I didn’t devote to blogging or Tweeting, I came home and unwound by watching a movie on Netflix or curling up with a good book on my Kindle. Once I was ready for bed, I set the alarm on my phone, checked my reader feed one last time and drifted off to the sounds of an Audible audiobook.

There’s something seriously wrong with that routine. At no point in my day was I disconnected from the Internet via some sort of device. Even my daily interactions with friends and family were dominated by texts and Facebook wall posts. Something had to give, so I decided to do something radical: I restricted my access to the Matrix and started living life in the physical world.

Disconnect from your phone

We use our smartphones to shop, tweet, text, and to download music, but it’s becoming rare to use them to actually call people and talk to them. It’s passé to use the phone for anything other than emergencies. While the trend is gaining popularity, it robs our daily interactions of significance and familiarity. Learn to use your phone as a phone again: call close friends and family instead of texting them.

Also, keep your phone on a table or on a shelf where you can access it if it rings—but not right at hand. Phones have become like security blankets, and a misplaced phone can cause real anxiety. You don’t need to have your phone on you at all times. And for goodness sake, buy a real alarm clock so you don’t rely on your phone as an alarm.

Set limits and get out

The Internet is my most important tool, for work and the grad school program I’m enrolled in. I used to come home and browse the Net for hours or get lost in tweeting back and forth with cyber friends, and before I knew it, I’d blown past my bedtime. Putting limits on the times I use the Internet forced me to tend to the other, more important tasks that piled up throughout my day; it also made me think about how much time I spent interacting in the virtual world.

Another way to detox: get real face time with your friends and family. Instead of using a Google+ Hangout, actually hang out with your friends at a restaurant or at your place. Friendship, after all, used to be a full-contact sport—going out and doing things is still an option.

These two steps are just part of my tech detox plan, but they’re a good way to start if your own virtual life is taking over your actual life. Do what you can to put boundaries on your interaction with your gadgets, and learn to live without being tethered to tech.

No related posts.

There’s Something About August

Jess Lundie — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 21:10:43 +0000

There’s something about August that gets me every year. Every time I swear this August is going to be different. And then it arrives and takes me by storm. All the vows, resolutions, promises and goals fall by the wayside. August just has its own agenda.

Where I’ve Been

I took a trip to California to help with a huge family move. (I brought my laptop with me, but then the internet didn’t work.) We packed a multiphase move – one house, two trucks, three households, four destinations. It was certainly the most complicated move I’ve ever experienced. Then we organized an estate sale for everything remaining.

Next, we drove the giant moving truck (towing the car) from California to Washington. Our truck would only do 25mph up hills, no joke. There are a lot of hills between California and Washington.

These baby mice were living… in the trunk of my car. /sigh

Upon arriving in Washington, we unpacked our truck at the final three destinations and worked on getting my grandparents settled into assisted living here. It was a good move, but that process has been time-consuming and labor intensive. And, in spite of the fact I feel like it’s all I’ve been doing, it’s still not quite finished.

Just when things were starting to look almost back to normal, my mom fell and broke her wrist playing roller derby.

Ew… It’s broken.

Totally awesome. Totally uninsured – oops. We’ve since been navigating the interesting waters of figuring out how to get expensive orthopedic surgery when you have no insurance. All the while walking the fine line between pain control and nausea, as well as keeping up the continuous ice pack rotation.

I may have backed over my skate bag with my car. Helmet vs. car? Yeah, car.

Did I mention August has a mind of its own?

Everything Has a Rhythm

I won’t lie to you. I’ve really been struggling with this. I had an agenda for August. I had CSA updates and meal plans and a whole series on the basics on bulk buying, preserving, affordable sustainable eating, conscious choice time management to write… I was going to can tomatoes and pick blackberries and blueberries and make salsa and jam and get all the planting done for the fall garden.

I had a PLAN, people. And it’s so frustrating when real life derails your PLAN.

But I also know that everything has a rhythm and a pattern and a right place and a right time. And no amount of banging your head against a wall and pushing and arguing with the powers that be will make something come into being when it’s not time. Clearly, August was a time for other things.

But now as September sweeps in and I can start to feel my head breaking above water, it makes a little more sense. The tomatoes are late this year. So are the blackberries and my figs. It’s supposed to be 90 degrees this weekend, so maybe kayaking on Puget Sound is still in the books this summer. Maybe there will still be a few days to float the river.

Maybe if I just trust in the process, and hurry a little less, and worry a little less, I will see that life is more about being in the moment than it is about getting where you thought you were going.

And maybe that’s what August is really all about.

No related posts.

Permaculture Book Giveaway – Winners!

Jess Lundie — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 23:47:30 +0000

The Permaculture Book Giveaway is now wrapped up and we have winners!

Congratulations to Kristen Hannum, Kevin Bettencourt, and Buffalo Mary. Your books should be arriving soon.

Thanks so much to everyone for their entries. Can’t wait until the next one .

Book Giveaway! Four Blogs, Three Permaculture Books

Our CSA Share – Week 5

Jess Lundie — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 13:49:05 +0000

I spoke too soon. After last week’s declaration that summer weather was finally here, we had an unseasonably rainy July week. The greens in my garden loved it. My lawn loved it. My tomatoes? Not so much. No more talking about the weather.

In spite of the rain, we got a great CSA share from the Pigmans this week. I was excited to see some new flavors – raspberries, cabbage, carrots and sweet onion. Stir fry is one of my husband’s favorite meals (and mine – so easy to make!). It’s nice to see some of our usual stir fry ingredients finally turning up. I’m missing the asparagus this week though.

The Share

Beets
Broccoli
Carrots
Kale
Walla Walla Sweet Onion
Cabbage
Shelling Peas
Raspberries

The Garden

Strawberries (lots!)
Various sprouts

The Meal Plan

I anticipate pulling a bunch of baby greens from the garden this week, as we still need to do a bit of thinning so that everything has room to grow. I’m really excited about that – this will be the first week where our garden supplements our meals significantly!

Mixed green salads
Curried braised cabbage and egg
Veggie egg rolls
Baked oatmeal and berries
Homemade yogurt, granola and berries
Sourdough pancakes
Cheeseburgers
Shredded beef burritos

I’ll probably use the extra garden greens to make a bunch of bird food. Since we got carrots in our share this week, I don’t anticipate having to pick up any additional veggies from the market or the co-op for that or for our own meals. I may go to the market and see if there is any asparagus though. I suspect we’re reaching the end of the season on that, and I still haven’t preserved any of it!

What’s in your box, cart, or bag? What’s on the menu for the week?

How To Eat Organic On A Budget – Buy In Bulk

Jess Lundie — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 18:16:14 +0000

One of the first complaints you hear from people when it comes to eating organic food (or sustainable food, or local food) is that eating organic is too expensive. But there are several tips that can help you make eating organic more affordable, and sometimes even cheaper than eating conventionally farmed food.

I’m going to use the word “organic” for this post, but know that these tips also apply to sustainable and local food. Personally, I often forgo a certified organic label in favor of supporting a small local farmer who utilizes sustainable farming practices.

Buy In Bulk

We got a bulk order of 26lbs of cherries this week. These cherries were not certified organic, but were sourced from a sustainably managed orchard that does not use pesticides or chemical sprays. Organic certification is expensive, and not always a financially viable option for many small farmers who practice organic farming methods.

26lbs of cherries – minus probably 2-3lbs eaten this week – pitted and individually frozen, fills four and a half gallon-sized ziplock bags. It looks like this:

These cherries were the first of many bulk orders we will be participating in this summer. We will use them all fall and winter in cobblers, ice cream, pies, smoothies, sauces and as accent flavor in savory dishes. I don’t really like cherry jam, so I went ahead and froze the whole order. I froze them individually on trays before bagging them. It takes a little more time, but makes it so we can defrost what we need when we need it. Plus I didn’t have to try to predict serving size.

Tips for Buying in Bulk

Buy things in season. Produce is much cheaper in season than out of season. Not to mention the taste and the transport impact aren’t even comparable. In addition to produce, some pastured meat is only available fresh certain times of the year. Remember that and buy it when it’s available.

Order with a group. I would never have been able to get this price for just 26lbs of cherries. But my order was part of a group order that bought all the cherries out of this orchard that week. With bulk meat orders, you get a better per pound price on a whole cow even if you only need a quarter cow. Find a few friends and split it! Plus it’s more fun and less work for everyone involved.

Figure out storage ahead of time. There’s nothing worse than letting your eyes get bigger than your stomach (or your freezer space!) and not having the time or resources to deal with the food you’ve bought. Make sure you have some sort of plan, no matter how simple, for preserving and using the food that you buy. Freezers are good. Lacto-fermentation is great. Canning is awesome. But all of these methods take a little bit of space and time. Like a garden, with buying in bulk it’s better to err on the side of too little at first than get stuck with an unmanageable and discouraging project.

Shop around for good prices. Don’t necessarily be satisfied with the first source you find. Shop around until you find a product you’re happy with at a price you can afford.

Negotiate deals (but remember that farmers need to make a living). It is totally okay to ask for a lower price for buying more or seconds (cosmetically flawed produce – particularly great for canning and preserving). But don’t expect them to be able to meet the price for conventionally-farmed-whatever at a chain grocery store. They have to make a living too, and by choosing to support them you are investing your money in the kind of world you want to live in. And that’s awesome.

Buying in Bulk – The Tricky Part

It’s can be hard to factor bulk orders into your food budget, especially with seasonal foods. I spent $86 on cherries this week. That’s a lot of money on cherries. But that is because if you’re going to buy local cherries, you get them now, when they’re in season.

On the one hand, I know that buying in bulk is one of the best ways to make eat organic, locally and sustainably on a budget. I got the cherries at a great price ($3lb Bings, $4lb Rainiers), and I’ll get to eat local cherry cobbler in February… yum! But bulk orders like this do inflate our summer food budget, even while reducing the amount we spend on food during the winter. And things like purchasing a CSA share and buying in bulk make your food budget inconsistent month to month. That requires either a little bit of financial flexibility, very good planning ahead of time, or a little bit of both.

In spite of the tricky bits, if you can manage it, buying in bulk is absolutely worth it, and a great way to start eating organic on a budget.

How do you eat organic on a budget? Have you done any bulk buying so far this season?

No related posts.

7 Days of Conscious Living

Jess Lundie — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 19:11:45 +0000

Photo CC || http://www.flickr.com/photos/what_i_see/

During my not so brief hiatus from blogging, one of the things I was working on was this little mini e-course (am I the only one who hates the word “e-course?”) called 7 Days of Conscious Living. I worked on it and worked on it and finally got it to the point where I was ready to release it into the world.

About two months ago, I snuck it onto my website all sneaky-like. And I didn’t tell anyone about it. Because, you know, that’s what you do when you’re dealing with resistance and fear.

But then I started getting little snippets of feedback on it. Things like -

“Very enlightening. Even from day one – my priorities as I wrote them were totally unrelated to the actual things I am doing everyday. It also helped me realize that most of the time I am everywhere but where I am actually am, if that makes sense. Short version: not present.”

And I realized that besides doing myself a disservice, I might actually be doing 7 Days of Conscious Living a disservice. And doing YOU a disservice by not telling you that it is there, and that all you have to do is sign up.

So here it is – 7 Days of Conscious Living – my little e-course on priorities, conscious choices, presence, and how to shift what we do towards being a reflection of what we care about most.

Conscious Living: A Love Story

Our CSA Share – Week 4

Jess Lundie — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 21:38:25 +0000

Summer finally appears to be here! I’ve gotten so many great comment entries on the permaculture book giveaway – if you haven’t entered yet, go check it out.

Our CSA share was much larger this week, thanks to the warm, sunny days. When I piled it up on my counter, it almost completely eclipsed the toaster & toaster oven (yes, redundant appliances).

It was great to see the first broccoli of the season. I’m excited about munching on that, especially since the broccoli plants in our garden are only about 3” tall right now.

However, with all these greens, I’m running out of creative salad ideas. If you have any good ones (or any other great way to prepare greens), please share with us!

The Share

Asparagus
Broccoli
Lettuce
Beets
Spinach
Strawberry

The Garden

Strawberries, more every day!

The Meal Plan

Taco Salad
Other salads? Time to get creative.
Baked eggs on asparagus
Baked eggs on other veggies?
Kefir-strawberry vanilla smoothies
Berries with homemade yogurt & granola
Carbonara
Pizza

What’s in your box, bag or basket this week? What’s on the menu?

Book Giveaway! Four Blogs, Three Permaculture Books

Jess Lundie — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 01:01:25 +0000

Once upon a time, four green bloggers decided to get together and do some giveaways. Once upon a time happened to be today and I happen to be one of them .

Today’s giveaway is permaculture focused. I’m currently trying to learn a little more about permaculture because, frankly, it just makes sense to me. I LOVE systems and permaculture is all about designing and using systems to your advantage.

But the more I learn, the more I realize how set in its ways my mind is. My brain takes comfort in the idea of an annual garden and its straight rows. Those rows = my rut.

These books will help nudge your brain out of its rut and then teach you how to get started.

Permaculture Books – The Giveaway

Urban Homesteading, Heirloom Skills for Sustainable Living by Rachel Kaplan and Ruby Bloom.

A permaculture classic and a great introduction to permaculture. Practical tutorials, permaculture theory, gorgeous pictures. Awesome.

Edible Estates by Fritz Haeg, Will Allen and Diana Balmori

Look at the cover of this book. Just look at it – I so badly want my lawn to look like that! (Also, for some reason this book reminds me of Monopoly. One more house on Marvin Gardens, please.)

Getting Started in Permaculture by Ross and Jenny Mars

One farm, 50 projects scalable to your yard, your garden, your life – a different kind of introduction to permaculture. Hands-on and ultimately useful. Set aside an afternoon and put a little more permaculture in your life.

How To Enter

In order to enter, you need to go and leave a comment on the giveaway post at EACH of the participating blogs. One comment per blog = one entry. Your comments must be there by Friday, July 22nd. But really, you know you’ll never get around to it if you don’t do it now. So run down the list below and leave your comments!

We will select three winners, one for each book.

1. Suburban homesteading, worm raising, organic gardener Brad from Highly Uncivilized. (He makes his own hard cider. How freaking cool is that?)

2. Chemical-free urban beekeeper and farmer Mil at Urban Farm and Beehives.

3. Eco-friendly expert Clare from EcoFriendly Expert.

4. Me! Comment here.

Good luck and happy gardening!

NOTE: The book giveaway has now concluded. Thank you all for your comments and entries! Winners will be notified by e-mail.

Our CSA Share – Week 3

Jess Lundie — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 15:47:41 +0000

What a great CSA bag this week! Tons of spinach, delicious strawberries, chard, and a bounty of asparagus. I made some yogurt to go with the strawberries, and I’m really looking forward to eating all the amazing greens this week.

The Share

Not pictured, a huge bunch of lettuce – we ate it! Also, that box of strawberries was overflowing, but only for about a minute.

Asparagus
Chard
Garlic
Lettuce
Spinach
Strawberry

The Garden

5 strawberries
Bunch of garlic scapes

The Meals

Again with a fridge still full of leftovers. This is one of the disadvantages to having a CSA share – you get vegetables every week, no matter what the state of your fridge. I know, really something to complain about, huh?

Taco salads
Regular salads on the side of things
Creamy baked eggs with asparagus
Spinach & greens quiche
Carbonara with asparagus
Veggie egg bowls (quinoa or wild rice, veggies, fried egg & one of a variety of homemade dressings – I like eating things in bowls)
Curried braised cabbage & egg (I thought this sounded gross, but it is actually delicious)
Bird food

I doubt we’ll need anything additional from the market this week, except maybe some carrots or sweet potatoes for the parrot’s food. (He needs one orange vegetable in his daily veggie mix.)

Also, I may actually end up preserving or fermenting some of the asparagus, as we still have some leftover from last week and that is one vegetable I didn’t try preserving last year. I’m thinking asparagus season is almost over, so I may go to the market and buy a big bunch and give it a shot. Anyone have a good recipe to share for preserving asparagus?

(P.S. Joining up with some fantastic bloggers for a permaculture book giveaway this weekend, so be sure to stop by and enter to win some great books!)

Can Sustainable Agriculture Feed The World?

Jess Lundie — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 00:57:04 +0000

A thoughtful reader left a provocative (no, not that kind, the thought kind) comment on a post of mine last summer, asking some interesting questions about industrial agriculture:

On a more serious note, do you think the industrial food system is bad in-and-of-itself, or in the ways it currently operates? Could the system be changed? More importantly, could we (as in all almost 7 billion of us) survive without the industrial food system? How do we address the issue of food distribution (and why aren’t we doing a better job of it now)? I’m not sure if there are solid answers to these questions. As it is, I’m just kind of thinking out loud.

I hit the first two questions in Can Industrial Agriculture Work?. Now on to the “more importantly.” It really is more important, because for now, if a solution involving changing our behavior doesn’t work for us, it’s not going to happen, no matter how good for the planet it may be.

Can sustainable agriculture feed the world?

Study after study shows that as far as yield per acre is concerned, sustainable agriculture done right outperforms industrial agriculture. It just does. (Why do we care about yield per acre? Lots of people, crowded planet, limited fertile farmland.) What we tend to look at with industrial agriculture is yield per dollar. And with that as its focus, industrial agriculture beats organic for that.

But, and this is a big but… BUT that yield per dollar equation relies on two major inputs: oil and water. One more time – industrial agriculture relies on cheap and easy access to oil and water. We have no reason to believe that oil is getting cheaper (see: What is peak oil?). And we more or less know that, barring some huge technological breakthrough, we are in trouble when it comes to fresh water, the kind our animals, our food crops, and our families need to survive.

At what cost?

The other thing to remember about industrial agriculture is that those prices you see in the grocery store aren’t real. If you live in the US, they’re actually heavily subsidized by your tax dollars. You may not realize it, but much of our current agricultural system is propped up by the Farm Bill (although this year, maybe not?), without which current practices would be absolutely unsustainable (that is, one way on top of all the other ways they are already unsustainable). Prices as we know them simply don’t reflect reality.

As for the externalized costs of industrial agriculture – costs to the land, water, animals, our own health – they are… heartbreaking.

And these prices, this system, our “food reality,” is indeed, unsustainable. It is not really a question of whether we can feed the world – over 10 billion people by 2050 – without industrial agriculture. We can. We know we can.

Photo CC || http://www.flickr.com/photos/kkoshy/

Honestly, I believe we really cannot feed that many people with industrial agriculture, at least not as we know it today. Sustainable agriculture means more efficient land use, definitely a must-have for a more crowded planet. It also means not depleting our limited resources, rebuilding rather than decimating the land we are using to grow crops, and moving away from buying food with oil. Industrial agriculture isn’t working for the planet, and as we try to feed more and more people, we will feel the crunch and it will become clear that it’s not really working for us now.

CSA Share – Week 2

Jess Lundie — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 13:55:49 +0000

This week’s share was much the same as last week’s – it will probably continue this way until the weather changes. (Come on sun – it’s almost July here!)

This week I was excited to open our bag and find kale! Kale is a big favorite in my household because my husband absolutely loves Olive Garden’s Zuppa Toscana. We eat out more than we should, but we eat at Olive Garden very rarely. However, I found this great recipe for the soup, and with a few alterations it becomes a fantastically nourishing meal – I substitute homemade chicken bone broth or stock for bouillon cubes, whole raw milk for heavy cream, and make sure to used pastured bacon and sausage.

It’s a great winter soup – there is kale available late into the fall and it starts showing up as soon as the markets open in the spring (this year I’ll be trying to grow my own!), potatoes store well, and we keep a stock of the sausage in the freezer. I honestly wouldn’t have imagined I’d still be eating it in late June! That’s ok by me though .

The Share

Strawberries
Mint (many herbs, choice was ours)
Green onions
Kale
Lettuce
Asparagus
Beets

The Garden

One (1!) strawberry. Hah!

The Meals

We ended up with a lot of leftovers from family and derby shenanigans over the weekend, so there’s lots of eating of those to come. Otherwise…

Zuppa Toscana!
Roast lamb with asparagus and beets (not a repeat, we didn’t end up eating it last week)
Burrito bowls with veggies
Salad with veggies & quinoa
Baked oatmeal and strawberries

I’ll probably also try a shredded beet salad. Anyone have a good recipe? Not anticipating any co-op or farmers market supplementary purchases this week – the fridge is packed full!

What’s in your box or garden this week? What’s on your menu?

Mistaking Near For Good

Jess Lundie — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 23:19:39 +0000

Over the last year, I have really worked on bringing my food sources closer to home. The CSA share, raw milk and pastured eggs from a local farm, pastured meat from the farmer’s market, and the beginnings of growing some veggies in my I-have-no-clue-what-I’m-doing garden.

I’ve made other changes as well – I’ve brought my activities closer to home to reduce gas consumption, become an avid thrift store shopper, and forsaken bookstores in favor of the library. All these changes have reduced my environmental footprint and made me more connected with my local community. My focus has been on localizing and smallifying, little bits at a time. It’s been a Good Thing in my life.

But… is local the goal?

Once upon a forever ago, Worldchanging’s Alex Steffen sent this out on Twitter:

“Foodsheds can be very large, and for some foods will be of necessity. Obsession with distance makes us mistake near for good.”

Followed by, “For cities, eco food less about where it was grown than whether grown as part of a healthy biological system or a system of chemical inputs.” (If you’re not following Alex Steffen on Twitter (@alexsteffen), you totally should. He’s not particularly chatty, but his periodic rants are insightful and interesting.)

Local has a lot of good things that come with it. Local can mean smaller carbon footprint, deeper relationships, community resiliency, accountability, and stronger local economies. There are inherent benefits to local, but there are also occasions when we would be mistaken to assume that one good thing always comes with another.

If I ran out of tomatoes in February, I could probably find some locally. But if they were grown in an energy-intensive greenhouse or covered in chemicals, that wouldn’t be supportive of the things I am passionate about. Hothouse tomatoes = not what I’m looking for! I would be mistaking near for good.

Photo CC || http://www.flickr.com/photos/eschipul/

What is the goal?

In the case of agriculture, we’re looking for a sustainable model. How can we feed people without destroying the planet in the long term? Beyond that, how can we ensure that this food is truly nourishing, nutritious, and meeting our needs? Any local model that doesn’t meet those goals is missing the point, no matter how local it may be. How awful would it be to miss a great model (perhaps not local) because we were so focused on food miles that we miss the forest for the trees?

Once again, it’s about deciding what is important to you. What are you trying to achieve? And what are your priorities? What are you willing to sacrifice or let go of to get there? What are you willing to give?

No matter what the answers – really, no matter what the question – it’s important to remember to keep the goal in your sights, and make sure your actions actually meet the end you are striving for. Life is complicated and connections are many, and it’s easy to get lost in the mix. When we become so caught up in a certain metric that we forget the big picture, we lose out.

Where have you gotten lost in the metrics of your life and mistaken near for good? What helped you refocus and get back towards achieving your goals?

Doing Good Consciously

Our CSA Share – A Weekly

Jess Lundie — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 22:55:40 +0000

This is our second year in a row signing up for a CSA share with Pigman’s Organic Produce Patch. We signed up for a half share last year, and I was blown away by the quality and value, not to mention the ease that it brought to my weekly shopping and meal planning.

What the heck is a CSA?

A CSA, or community supported agriculture, is basically an easy way to buy farm-direct during the growing season. With a CSA, you pay an up front fee, usually at the start of the season or some time before the season begins. The farmers use your share to pay their bills and keep the farm running. In return, you receive a weekly share of the farm’s product once the season begins.

There are many forms of CSA. Some (like ours) are single-farm. Some are small farm co-ops that allow a group of farms to offer consumers a wider variety of foods than they can grow themselves. Some do only vegetables, while others include fruit, herbs and flowers. There are even meat and dairy CSAs in some areas. Being a part of a CSA is an affordable and easy way to know where your food comes from.

Our Share

I wrote a bit about our CSA share towards the end of the season last year, and got a lot of questions which were harder to answer than they should have been. I decided that this year I would do a weekly report of our share with meal lists and photos, to give people an idea of what having a CSA share can be like. Except we’re starting with Week 3, because that’s where we’re at.

Writing a weekly update might also hold me accountable for using everything, so I don’t end up with things like mustard greens (*cough Week 1 cough*) hanging out in my fridge until they go bad because I haven’t bothered to spend the five minutes it would take on the internet figuring out something to do with them. My bad.

As the garden comes along, I will probably also include what we pulled from our garden for the week. It will be interesting to see how the two sources complement each other as the season continues.

Week 3 – The Share

Asparagus
Lettuce
Green Onions
Radish
Sugar Snap Peas
Strawberries (!!)
Garlic Scapes

This is a mid-week picture – we’ve eaten a ton already. The container of strawberries was full & overflowing. We’ve eaten all the sugar snap peas, half the asparagus, most of the lettuce, and the radishes (you can see the greens they were attached to in the upper right – the bird and I will eat those this week). Next week = picture of our whole share before we eat most of it!

Week 3 – The Meals

So excited to see the strawberries this week – the first of the season! I still have rhubarb from last week’s share, and I might make strawberry rhubarb pie or cobbler, but more likely I will just eat the strawberries and make a plain rhubarb cobbler.

We’re still eating up the freezer veggies from last season, and we have the tail end of canned tomatoes, veggies, salsa, jams, and jalapenos in the pantry. I ordered half a lamb last season that needs to be eaten soon. And I just discovered I have two open jars of last season’s salsa in my fridge and I don’t know which one is older, so we do burritos and finish off both of them.

Most likely the plan will look like:

Spinach (last week’s share)/ lettuce salad with radishes, green onions and quinoa for lunches and on the side of meals
Snap peas in salads & for snacks
Roast lamb (garlic scapes) with asparagus & roasted freezer beets
Burrito bowls – ground beef, last season’s salsa, bell peppers & other last season freezer veggies, lettuce, rice
Garlic scape pesto pasta
Rabbit stew or pot pies
Egg rolls

I’ll probably supplement our CSA share with the following veggies from the farmer’s market or, if the pickings are slim (it’s been a terrible season here), the co-op:

Potatoes (stew)
Sweet potatoes (I’m addicted & the bird eats them)
Carrots
Cabbage

Are you part of a CSA? If so, what was in your bag/box/crate this week? Or what are you eating from your garden?

Why Do I Always Talk About Food?

Jess Lundie — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 16:54:28 +0000

I’ve been working on reordering some of my categories this week, sort of a “spring cleaning” for the blog moment. (My office got it too – no more iguanas hiding in piles, maybe?) In the process, I discovered that I write about food. A ton. More, probably, than I write about any one other thing.

Instantly I jumped on myself, “You should write about food less. I bet people are getting bored about reading about food.” But I’m working on cultivating this radical self-kindness habit right now. It’s not going super-amazingly, but I’m working on it anyways. So instead of continuing to jump down my own throat, I thought about why so many of my posts seem to end up being about food. I came up with a few good reasons.

Food Matters

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again – food really matters. In terms of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, it’s right there on the first level. (Some other things that start with F and aren’t on the first level: Furbies, felt, Facebook, forensic science.) If things melted down, we’d be okay without Facebook. We wouldn’t be okay without food.

From a societal standpoint, this means we need to figure out food production and food safety. Of course, these aren’t necessarily easy issues. But as the human population continues to increase, these issues are becoming more and more urgent. In the wake of natural disasters, social or political upheaval, and economic difficulty food (and access to fresh water – big one!) is paramount. Many other things can fall by the wayside, but we need to get food right.

Food = Health

Disease – food. Obesity, diabetes, cancer. Hormonal imbalances, thyroid, early puberty. Behavioral issues and developmental disabilities. It seems like every week new studies are being released that show that what we eat (and how much of it) is the root of many of our “modern epidemics.”

Photo CC || http://www.flickr.com/photos/nexus_icon

And who would be surprised? Why wouldn’t our diseases be a reflection of what we’re eating? While my husband was deployed, I mixed motor oil in with the gasoline in our weed eater. (I totally thought it was the same thing as whatever you’re supposed to put in there.) That… did not go so well. That kind of substitution doesn’t go so well for our bodies either. We’re made to run on salads, not soda.

Photo CC || http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevendepolo

How can we think what we choose to put in our bodies won’t have a cost? Personal, social, economic…cost.

Food = The Environment

In addition to affecting our health, food is one of the major ways in which we are connected to the health of the planet. The more people there are, the more apparent this connection is becoming, as we are stretching the natural systems that we depend on to their limits. If we (humans as a species) are going to make it, we need to find a way to produce our food that sustains and renews the world we all share.

Food is also a metric for where things stand. When we moved into our house, we had a gorgeous tree called a madrona tree. They’re fairly common up here. Unfortunately, our madrona was in the process of dying as we were moving in. We eventually had to call someone to remove it so it wouldn’t end up falling on our house. When the tree guy came to remove it, he told me that the madronas are sensitive trees. They are the first to succumb to environmental pressure, and are a canary in a coal mine for the ecosystem. He’s been taking out a lot of dead madronas lately. But most people don’t notice that these trees are slowly dying.

Food, however, is a metric we could notice, if the feedback loops were corrected so that price accurately reflected the state of supply. If a can of tuna were more expensive now that we’ve decimated the tuna populations. People can be responsive, but we have to be attuned to the metric and the metric has to be working.

Food = Your Life

All this being said, it’s ok if a) this is all too overwhelming or b) you’re left not really caring that much about the big picture issues. For me, the me reasons actually ended up mattering more.

Initially I changed the way I eat to reduce packaging and tread more lightly on the planet. But I don’t honestly know if I would have kept it up just for those reasons. I don’t know because what I discovered was that changing the way I eat changed my life.

It’s like every teacher who ever told me “You get out what you put in” while I rolled my eyes at them held a reunion in my kitchen just to make their point. With your body, you get out what you put in. It needs fuel – good, clean, whole, healthy fuel – to get you through the day and keep you going. And the difference between okay or just getting by and being truly nourished by your food was bigger than I ever imagined it could be.

Food connects you with community, with your family, with your body, with the planet, with your life. This, I think, is why I really write so much about food.

Food matters. (And, bonus, you get to eat it!)

Cavemen, Change & Dealing With Resistance

Jess Lundie — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 20:06:08 +0000

One of my derby sisters is halfway through a 30-day paleo challenge (for those blog/challenge-addicted among you, her mostly-daily blog is here). As might be anticipated, she has hit a wall of resistance in the form of her husband and kids. But she is a tough broad, and she is pressing on; she is dedicated to using the 30-day challenge as a tool for change, both for her own health and for the health of the rest of her family.

The fact is that many of us face resistance when we try to make changes – any kind of “green” change, be it food, consumption, transportation, or even something as small as turning off the lights when you leave a room. Resistance can take the form of whining, arguing, or flat out mutiny.

My favorite form of resistance so far has been my husband’s “caveman” comment. He’s leveled this comment at me on several occasions and in several different versions: “You just want to live like a caveman.” Or, “I think you’ll only be happy when we’re all living in caves.”

First off, I have no desire to be a caveman.

What? No? Really. Seriously no.

Photo CC || http://www.flickr.com/photos/lord-jim

Also… no.

I love the internet. After spending over a year living in an unheated, partially finished basement, I am very attached to heat. I watch TV, go out to eat, and send so many text messages I should probably have an umbilical cord attached to my cell phone (just don’t make me talk on it like a real phone).

Personal preference aside, it seems increasingly likely that a sustainable future looks more like an ultra-modern city than a cave. There are far too many people on the planet, and not enough caves. Efficient, clean, dense, walkable urbanism could be the solution. And that’s completely ok with me.

But DH doesn’t really think I want to live in a cave. That is just his way of trying to tell me something. It’s his form of resistance to change. And while comments like this can be frustrating, it is useful to try to deal with them as what they really are rather than the attack they seem to be. Sometimes, we have to be ready to hear past the resistance.

Hearing Past The Resistance

Hearing past the resistance can be hard, particularly when you are passionately connected to the changes you are wanting to make. When the rejection of the change feels almost like a rejection of who you are, your values, your beliefs. When it’s your project and your baby, or when it’s just something you think should NOT be that big of a deal. (It’s just cloth grocery bags, for crying out loud!)

But if you look below the surface, resistance is often nothing more than an expression of fear. Fear of change, and what change might mean. And the fear… now, you can totally do something with fear.

After all, change probably scares you too! I know it scares me, and I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who’s not a little bit scared of some changes. And fear can be treated like fear, which will make it much more likely that you can resolve the resistance where it stands and find an ally where you currently see a roadblock.

So the next time you try to make a change and come up against a wall, try to figure out what’s at the heart of it. Then take one step at a time and deal with that instead.

Have you made any big changes in life recently? Or even little changes? Changes that met with resistance, your own or from others?

No related posts.

Garlic & Seed List Making

Jess Lundie — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 12:14:46 +0000

As some of you may remember (if you’re still around from last year in spite of my hiatus, I <3 you), last year I planted garlic. We were in the middle of maybe moving and the whole season ended up being weird, but the garlic… the garlic came in a pot from the other house. And it lived out front and I tended it and cared for it and harvested the scapes and made it into pesto. And even though there were only four little garlics, there was much love.

These guys.

And then I forgot about them. I didn’t actually forget, I just never really bothered to look up when to harvest garlic. And it seemed like the ground was probably just as good a place to leave them as my fridge or under my counter. After all, it’s dark and cold in my fridge and it’s dark and cold in the ground, right?

Ok, so I forgot. Until it was way, WAY past time for me to harvest the garlic. And actually I mostly remembered about harvesting the garlic because I realized it was past time for me to be planting garlic AGAIN for this year.

In (sudden, belated, completely pointless by now) great haste, I raced out the door and discovered… Those guys. Looking pretty much just like that. Super cute and resprouted for this year. Awesome.

Why am I the biggest procrastinator of all time??

I did it with seeds too. My awesome neighbor does seed orders every year and offered (twice now – this year AND last year) to let me piggyback on his order. Last year he just flat out gave me seed potatoes because he is sweet and I am pathetic – the seed potatoes that became the potato trees that are now, I am happy to report, replanted in their condo!

I totally failed at piggybacking, or ordering seeds, or anything seed related. Which, as DH pointed out with only a hint of snarky sarcasm, is probably an ok thing because… oh wait, I still have ALL my seeds left from last year. And a few from the year before.

There’s a lot of things on which I could blame my continuing failure to garden. The marriage, the deployment, the rental, the move, the redeployment (fancy Army term for them coming home), vacation, unpacking. All of these are actually fairly reasonable excuses for having planted nothing but some herbs, two tomato plants and a potato condo.

But the real truth is that gardening intimidates me. It’s overwhelming and scary and… also scary.

And I think the idea of putting down roots scares me. The longest I’ve been in any one place since high school is three years. A year and a half is a long time to be in one house (one city even!), and that’s what we’re coming up on this summer. The idea of putting something in the ground and trusting that I’ll be here to see it grow is somehow weird and scary. And that’s not something that comes from having “the Army might move us at any point” looming over my head. (They might. That’s life.) It’s my thing. My weird. My scared.

But fortunately, I still have those seeds from last year and the year before. So the germination rates might be a little wonky. That’s ok. I stored them well and… we’ll see what happens. If they grow, they grow.

If not, heck – it’s effectively a first year garden. I’ll take it.

If you’d like to share, talk to me about your gardens and your hearts. I’d love to hear what your garden – if you have one – is to you. If you don’t have one, is there something holding you back?

Seed Saving, Garden Planning and Stupid Questions

Can Industrial Agriculture Work? (Part 1)

Jess Lundie — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 17:49:24 +0000

This was a really great question posed by a reader on a post called Canning & Gratitude:

On a more serious note, do you think the industrial food system is bad in-and-of-itself, or in the ways it currently operates? Could the system be changed? More importantly, could we (as in all almost 7 billion of us) survive without the industrial food system? How do we address the issue of food distribution (and why aren’t we doing a better job of it now)? I’m not sure if there are solid answers to these questions. As it is, I’m just kind of thinking out loud.

Instead of writing a novel in the comments, I promised her a blog post with my thoughts on her excellent questions. In fact, it will probably end up being a series of blog posts, because yeah – big questions. Long answers. Lots of thoughts.

First off, is the industrial food system bad in-and-of-itself?

No. I tend to think no on this one.

Part of this answer will depend on what we mean when we say “industrialization.” We could probably debate that until the proverbial cows come home. But for the purpose of this pondering, we’ll use the Wikipedia definition:

Industrial farming is a form of modern farming that refers to the industrialized production of livestock, poultry, fish, and crops. The methods of industrial agriculture are technoscientific, economic, and political. They include innovation in agricultural machinery and farming methods, genetic technology, techniques for achieving economies of scale in production, the creation of new markets for consumption, the application of patent protection to genetic information, and global trade.

Industrialization, like anything, is a tool. How we use it is our choice. Given this definition, industrial agriculture is actually a portfolio of tools, and we have a choice about the directions we take with and goals for which we develop them.

Innovation in farming methods and agricultural machinery are not inherently bad. Innovation in farming methods and agricultural machinery that disregard the bigger picture, the health of the whole, and sustainability over the long term are a huge problem. That type of industrialization will not serve the planet OR our own needs. These methods excel at maximizing profit, but fail across the board in numerous other ways.

Photo CC || http://www.flickr.com/photos/walmartcorporate

Industrial agriculture as it exists now, with it’s priorities “misaligned,” so to speak, fails us nutritionally. It fails the planet. It fails our children and their children. It fails those who are starving for lack of access to food in a world where there is enough to feed everyone. Which leads to the next question…

Could the system be changed?

I believe very strongly that it could be. It is absolutely incredible the ingenuity, creativity, and flat out awesome that humans are capable of when we get ourselves moving towards a clearly-defined goal.

But right now our incentives are all weird. Between agricultural subsidies from the farm bill and corporations having the rights of actual human beings, it’s a weird, incentive-skewed world out there. All of our awesome humanness is being directed in funky directions, distracted, or minimized.

If we could somehow get rid of all that, I think the ingenuity and investment currently fueling industrial agriculture could create a system that looks very different.

What I wonder though is if industrial agriculture might always look… well, industrial. Look at industrial organic and how far it has strayed from the original spirit of organic agriculture. The criteria are met, certainly, but industrial organic operations are taking on a lot more of the “industrial” these days than we necessarily picture. Does industrial agriculture just end up looking industrial?

Or maybe industrial could also look like solar and wind powered farm machinery. Or vertical urban agriculture. Or things we haven’t yet dreamed of because of weirdified feedback loops. Clean industrial. Sustainably industrial?

I don’t know. But I’m hopeful. How about you? What do you think?

Pyramids, Plastic & Things We Don’t Know We Don’t Know

Jess Lundie — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 20:53:05 +0000

During the week, my DH sends me news updates of things he thinks I’ll find cool. I don’t spend much time browsing general news sites, and his list of links usually exposes me to stories I might not hear about otherwise. (Except maybe weeks later when I finally get through my recorded backlog of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.)

Things that often end up on this list:

Stories about crippled dogs (we have a gimpy dog)
Cute animal stories
Really neat technology stuff
Really neat technology stuff WITH cute animals

This week though, there was this awesome story about the satellite discovery of 17 new giant pyramids discovered in Egypt. Pyramids we had no idea were there.

When I was little, I totally wanted to be an Egyptologist. Somewhere along the line, I ended up with the impression that there was nothing more to do, no big discoveries to make. That everything was basically a derivative exploration of work people had already done. I’m bummed. I was so wrong.

There Is So Much We Don’t Know

There is just so much we don’t know. Stuff we don’t even know we don’t know because we aren’t at a place where we can even recognize the not knowing.

I’ve mentioned the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in previous posts – the patch of garbage twice the size of Texas floating around the Pacific Ocean, mostly plastic. Twice the size of Texas… (These guys have a blog about all the junk they find sailing around in there.)

Sailing on a sea of bottles… Photo CC|| http://www.flickr.com/photos/29212301@N00/

Even scarier, 70% of the plastic that ends up in the ocean sinks. To the bottom of the sea floor where, to be honest, we still really don’t know much about what goes on. It’s only recently that we’ve started to understand the ways in which the currents that flow along the sea floor are connected to our lives. But we know they are. From weather patterns to the life cycles of the marine life we depend on for food, what happens in the ocean intimately affects all of us.

I’m not one to wax rhapsodic about the precautionary principle. But given how much we don’t know we don’t know, it seems like we might want to be a little more careful. Beyond “minimizing harm.” There’s so much we don’t know, how can we even really evaluate harm in a meaningful way?

I guess I just have this old-fashioned, romantic notion that we should leave the place better than we found it.

And maybe have a little bit of respect for all the things we don’t know.

(P.S. Where the Pacific Garbage Patch is concerned, what that means is using less plastic and generating less waste. Check out 7 Days of Conscious Living – it’s pretty easy once you get started.)

No related posts.

Memorial Day, Gardening & Recycled Goods

Jess Lundie — Tue, 31 May 2011 20:31:19 +0000

Hope everyone is having a good “Monday” back after the Memorial Day holiday. Yesterday I hassled a friend about heading home to be productive. After all, the only activities allowed on Memorial Day are relaxing, eating and doing a ton of yard work.

Wait, what? Yah, I had to add that to the list because that is what our weekend was about.

To Portland…

DH and I spent the first part of the weekend down in Portland. Highlights include derby teamwork & strategy clinic (<3 RCR so bad!), visiting my friend’s farm and her new baby goats, and eating amazing Portland food. New recycled cotton derby socks.

Best of the weekend? Ned Ludd. Amazing food, kitchen garden out back, container garden in the front. Homemade pickles. Yum. The farm-to-cone sea salt and caramel ice cream at Salt & Straw came in a close second.

Inside Ned Ludd. Photo CC|| http://www.flickr.com/photos/29311691@N05/

The options for real, local, sustainable food in Portland never cease to astound me. It’s such a luxury to be able to eat out and have so many choices for thoughtfully prepared, ethically sourced food. Affordable. Sure, not IHOP affordable. But not IHOP food either! And having these choices shouldn’t be a luxury. Clearly, it doesn’t have to be. What would it take to bring places like this more into the mainstream? Or at least to more places?

And Back

Memorial Day proper was garden day. We mapped out what is going where in the yet-to-be-built (we’re getting there!) raised beds and weeded. Weeded, weeded, weeded. I’m excited to get the scarlet runner beans and the herb gardens going, and just waiting for a day with a little bit less precipitation to get the beds built.

Although, if all else fails, I’ll just build garden beds in the rain. It’s Washington, right?

Post-Recycled Consumer Goods, What?

Right now I’m reading You Are Here: Exposing the Vital Link Between What We Do and What That Does to Our Planet (longest subtitle ever, right?). It’s a good book – I’ll do a full review when I finish it. Short version for now: engagingly written, some of the same stuff but some new stuff too.

New stuff like the difference between recycled-content goods and post-consumer recycled goods. Maybe I’m the only person in the world who missed this memo, but I totally did.

I try to be good about buying recycled products. Toilet paper, office supplies, pretty much anything where I have the option, I buy recycled. I totally didn’t realize that I was missing the mark here. From You Are Here:

Recycled-content products are usually made from the leftovers of production when new goods are manufactured. With paper, this is the extra shavings of pulp and sawdust, for example. Post-consumer recycled products, on the other hand, are made from materials that have served their function for consumers and have been recovered through a recycling program. The latter is obviously better for the environment because virgin materials are being saved.

Either way recycled is better than not recycled, but I have been mistakenly thinking that “recycled” meant “post-consumer recycled.” Good to know.

Speaking of recycled, this weekend I saw shopping carts made out of recycled plastic (post-consumer? who knows…). Those were pretty neat!

How was everyone’s Memorial Day weekend?

Products & Priorities

Jess Lundie — Thu, 26 May 2011 11:10:12 +0000

It seems like every time a new “green” product comes out, there’s a big debate about whether or not it’s actually good for the planet. Heck, it doesn’t even have to be a product that claims to be green. I’ve read more than my fair share of discussions about everything from Kindles (no more resource intensive publishing, shipping and retail) to electric cars to the latest green cleaning solution.

We’re flooded with basically endless choices, new green criteria an extension of our existing consumer culture.

How do you know what to buy? Or what to not buy? How do you know what’s really helping and what’s greenwashing, or just basically the same thing in a different form. It’s one thing to advocate being conscious in your consumer decisions. It’s a completely different thing to start actually doing it.

That’s when the overwhelm starts.

How To Decide?

I don’t know about you, but personally, I don’t think my Kindle is going to save the world by driving the publishing industry to extinction. An e-book device on every lap comes with other consequences – plastic, heavy metals, synthetic materials, and its own supply and retail chain. What about upgrades and new features? What happens when the price gets so low that the hot new thing becomes another quasi-disposable electronic device? Where do they end up?

Photo CC || http://www.flickr.com/photos/knk/

I just don’t see that as a solution. And finding an option that meets all those criteria and answers all those questions just isn’t possible. That’s where priorities come in.

What’s Important To You?

I really think the first step of standing in sovereignty with your decisions comes from deciding what matters to you. I have a little set of consumer rules that I’m fairly happy with, but I’m happy with them because they fit my priorities.

If I am someone who is deeply passionate about animal rights – there’s something you can work with. Look for vegan options, products that aren’t tested on animals, and pay close attention to what role the companies you purchase from play in habitat conservation – sourcing through retail as well as product disposal.

If you’re into strengthening regional food systems, local might be far more important to you than organic certification, and connecting directly with the farmer above and beyond that. You may be more comfortable engaging in the khaki market than shopping at the closest chain grocery store.

See how that works? Priorities create the foundation for clarity, and help you shield your mind from the blare of “corporate greenness” and the confusion and overwhelm that can come from becoming more aware of how your choices shape the world.

What are your priorities? In the scheme of your life, what really matters to you?

P.S. There’s a lot more about how make choices that reflect your priorities in 7 Days of Conscious Living. Go check it out if you haven’t already!

What Are Your Priorities?

Behavior & Cheez-Its

Jess Lundie — Tue, 24 May 2011 22:53:14 +0000

This is the story of how I almost became addicted to Cheez-Its and what that reminded me I already knew about human behavior.

Enter the Cheez-Its

Over the holidays, my brother-in-law came to visit. He and my husband made a late night run for cheese (we were making pizzas and had run out) and came back with a ridiculous assortment of processed snack food. The kind that I’ve mostly forgotten exists because we basically never have it in our house any more. Amidst the piles of snacks that they unloaded onto the counter was a box of Cheez-Its.

Cheez-Its have long been a point of contention in my family. I don’t like them. Everyone else does. No one understands how I can not like this apparently perfect snack food. I say blech. Gross.

Except.

I like the parmesan flavor. A lot. And the box that hubs and bro brought home was a combo box – parmesan and cheddar.

Photo CC || http://www.flickr.com/photos/cwinters/3715152300/

I immediately expressed my dismay and I’m pretty sure hubs thought I was griping about the fact that he had bought a bunch of “against the rules” snack food. (I was, a little.) But mostly I was griping about the fact that there were cheddar Cheez-Its touching my parmesan Cheez-Its! (Because you know, they were parmesan and therefore automatically ALL MINE.)

Things You Learn In Dog Training

In dog training, or really in any operant conditioning training, you learn a sneaky, bizarre rule: intermittent reinforcement is more powerful than consistent reinforcement. Intermittent reinforcement makes behaviors persistent against extinction. It’s one thing when we know a reward is a sure thing, but when we’re gambling for that reward that only comes sometimes, we hold out. Try harder, work faster, stick with it longer.

What we’ve learned is that we’re actually more likely to perform when we are only rewarded some of the time. Periodic performance bonuses at the office. Slot machine jackpots. The parmesan Cheez-It in the box of all those stupid gross cheddar ones…

Rewarded intermittently with those perfect, parmesan Cheez-Its, I ate most of the box by myself. More than if the box had been cheddar (I probably would have eaten two, just to remind myself that I really think these are gross). But also way more Cheez-Its than I ever would have if the box had been all parmesan flavored. Because I was gambling on my reward. Intermittent reinforcement. (Not to mention the cheddar ones don’t count as food, so it takes double the crackers to get the right amount of the “good kind.)

Intermittent Reinforcement & Our Choices

I think behavioral science is fascinating. But it’s also important, because so many of our behaviors are subconscious. What we think are rational choices may not be. How many times have you stuck with something longer than you should have just because this time, maybe, it will work out? How often do we hold out for that big jackpot, that miracle moment, rather than start to take the small steps that will make a difference in our lives now.

On a societal level, how can we measure our investment in options without understanding our perception of reward? If the chance at something is a more compelling influence of behavior than our rational analysis of cost v. benefit, what does that mean for our choices?

And on a daily level, how many people are addicted to checking email, FaceBook, Twitter every two seconds just to see if there’s anything new? (Me…trying so hard to change that!)

Like changing your defaults to change behavior, there is a lot of power in simply becoming aware of how your responding to reinforcement cycles you may not even realize exist.

How does reinforcement play a role in your daily life? Is there anywhere you’re getting sucked into an intermittent reward pattern where there might be a more effective option?

On Changing Behavior

Potato Condos, Old & New

Jess Lundie — Mon, 23 May 2011 11:41:37 +0000

Happy Spring, everyone!

Lots of catching up to do around here – and, first up – the potato condo. Many of you may remember my major garden experiment last year (let’s face it, in spite of extensive mental staging, I didn’t end up getting much actually IN the ground).

For the most part, the potato condo went pretty well. We ended up going out of town for two weeks during peak growing season. Because I felt like our housesitter was overburdened already, I did not ask her to add boards and soil to the condo as the potatoes grew. That may have been a mistake, as when I returned the potatoes were huge! There is a good chance that I hurt my yield by failing to keep up with the growth there. Live and learn.

Lesson #1: Keep up with potato growth.

In Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver mentions that when you’re running a farm, going on vacation during growing season is basically impossible or must be impeccably timed. Good thing it was just a potato condo and we weren’t actually depending on it as a major food source during the fall and the winter. But point taken.

Actually, it’s a really good thing we weren’t depending on it, because….

I Am A Super Procrastinator

I am recovering perfectionist. I’m a work in progress (aren’t we all?) and while I’ve gotten so much better than I used to be, the perfectionist-procrastination definitely still gets me sometimes.

The garden has been a big one for little ex-perfectionist me. I have a tendency to wait until AFTER I should have harvested whatever it was. It’s like I have to wait to see what WAS the perfect moment that tomato (or cut that perfect baby basil – totally waited too long on that one) in order to be able to recognize it. Perfect for next time, basically completely useless for this time.

This is one of those places where the internet really isn’t helpful. It’s so hard to explain what something should feel, smell, look like over the internet. And everyone has a different opinion or trick or method – great for experts, terrible for beginners. So my perfectionist procrastination won out.

Lesson #2: Just freaking harvest it already. Stop being such a paranoid baby.

So Many Potatoes

In spite of all of it, the potato condo was a huge success. I ended up with so many potatoes, a little weird from staying in the ground for so long, but still – so many potatoes! I harvested, washed and dried them, cured them, and stored them lovingly in my pantry.

We ate some of them – they were delicious. But then one day I opened up my pantry, heart intent on baked cajun fries and – oh no! – potato TREES.

Lesson #3: store my potatoes colder. Oops!

The good news is that they’re all sprouted and ready to put back in the ground to try again this year. Woohoo! I’ll totally do that any day now, I swear. /procrastinate, procrastinate…

How is everything going in your garden? Any repeats from last year or new projects for this year? Are you as behind as I already am?

My CSA Share – A Breakdown

Jess Lundie — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 19:51:53 +0000

On my last post on CSAs, one of you mentioned in the comments that a breakdown of money-paid/food-received in my CSA share would be helpful. As I mentioned before, I didn’t do a weight/cost thing each week, which would have been particularly useful for this post. However, part of the reason I never did this was because the amount of food we received was a) above and beyond what was expected and b) easily exceeded the amount of food we would have gotten for the same dollar figure at the farmers market. That missing data aside, here’s what we’re left with for this year’s CSA share.

How Much Did It Cost?

There were several options for our CSA share this year:

Regular and extended FarmShare – $600

Regular season FarmShare – $500

Regular and extended HalfShare – $360

Regular season HalfShare – $300

If you signed up and paid your bill before April 18th (we did), you got a $10 discount. We signed up for a HalfShare – according to the brochure a HalfShare is a good fit for 1-2 people while a FarmShare will feed three or more. We will definitely stick with a HalfShare next year. However, based on our selection of food this year, I do plan to plant certain things to supplement the selection (peas, beans, tomatoes, strawberries, cilantro, basil, and dill, in case anyone is wondering).

How Long Does It Last?

The answer to this question will most certainly depend on your individual farm and certainly on your region and growing season. We signed up for the Extended HalfShare this year. Regular season ran for 20 weeks, beginning the first week in June. The Extended option continued on for several more weeks, and the last week was a double share with a large selection of storage vegetables.

What Do You Get?

Again, this is going to vary depending on your farm, your area, and how the season goes. This was a weird year for Western Washington, and our CSA share was a little weird as a result. So was the farmers market and my backyard, so there’s not much to be said about that. We were heavy on slicing cucumbers, light on tomatoes and peppers. To be honest, I never want to see a cucumber again (until next year, I guess).

Photo CC || http://www.flickr.com/photos/chickenthistlefarm – Not mine, but easily could have been.

Our weekly shares this year included asparagus, beets, broccoli, cauliflower, artichokes, chard, lettuce, spinach, carrots, rhubarb, peas, beans, strawberries, raspberries, marion berries, blueberries (omg they were so good), melon, cabbage, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, onions, kohlrabi, garlic, brussel sprouts, corn, potatoes and a variety of herbs. I’m sure I missed something – there were so many veggies!

Each week we got approximately one brown grocery bag full of veggies. Typically, there was an assortment of five or so different veggies and a choice of one type of berry and herb. The quantities and typed varied depending on the month. For example, at the beginning of the season, we typically got two bunches of lettuce per bag. There was no lettuce at all in our last bag. At the beginning of the corn season, we got two ears. This last bag, we got six! It’s kind of like Christmas – every bag is a surprise .

Cost / Time = Worth It?

Dividing total cost by week comes out to $14.50 a week for our CSA share. That is almost certainly less than I would have spent for the same veggies at the farmers market. Not reflected in the price is the time and gas saved because I didn’t have to go to the farmers market every week. In fact, I would say I only went to the market on average once or twice a month. Our CSA share also included a 5% discount at the farm’s booth at the market, so I saved a little bit of money that way as well.

While there were some fruits and veggies I missed and some I felt like I had in excess, the convenience of having everything right there in the bag more than made up for the selection. The variety encouraged me to try new things, learn new recipes, and eat more broadly than I would under ordinary circumstances.

The Verdict

Saving money + sustainably grown + healthy food + support local farmers = win + win + win + win.

CSA = win.