Cheese sandwich with deep thoughts

This is a cheese sandwich made with homemade cheese, roasted hatch chiles, olive oil, and ten-grain bread from Central Market. It is toasted. I have included this photo and description simply to make the rest of this entry less boring, because there is no more food talk or photos. But doesn't this sandwich look great! it was. MMMMM don't forget the salt!

Meanwhile. The weeks of no packaging are long over. Here are some thoughts on the experiment.

1. It's not over. I'm still sticking to it as best I can. I have this idea to transform my refrigerator and cupboards into entirely name-brand-free zones. As I run out of condiments, I will make them and you will get to read about it. There is still so much fun to be had.

2. I realized that when I feel accountable (thanks readers!) it's really very easy to never forget your shopping bags or containers, and to think ahead a little bit. It was a little more effort, but what isn't at first? And for me, this effort isn't the same as "work." I love being in the kitchen with NPR or some music to sing to while I chop, chop, chop. But, this brings me to my third point:

3. It's not for everyone. But, we can all do something for the environment. For me, it's very easy to reduce my packaging and waste overall. But maybe it is not so easy for you. Maybe you are a busy mom and your kids really love Shark Bites. Maybe your job is very demanding and time in the kitchen is just more work, no matter how you look at it. I hope things can change, and that people can build stronger connections to the foods we eat and where they come from, but still, I totally get it. Major cooking is not for everyone. But what can you do?

Let's first consider an area where I majorly fail in environmental stewardship: exercise. Physical fitness and I have a very tenuous relationship, and in order for me to not be morbidly obese, I have to make it easy for myself. I drive eight miles to one of Austin's best gyms and use the machines, when I could just run around the neighborhood. I drive to yoga class when I could do it at home. Yes, I could have a major attitude readjustment...be more disciplined, learn not to feel embarrassed when people drive by and I'm out there sweating like an animal and tripping over tree roots; not get distracted by my iPod and run into traffic; vacuum enough that I'm not doing downward dog into a carpet covered in actual dog hair... but if I'm serious about staying in shape, these things aren't going to happen. Just like most of you are not going to make your own Saltines.

We all have changes we can and can't make. Play to your strengths, I say. If you are someone who loves exercising outside, maybe you can ride your bike to work instead of driving. If you love growing flowers, maybe you can learn to grow some veggies, too. If you love meeting new people, maybe you can go volunteer to pick up trash with KAB (Scott and I did this once, and it was fun, but not as much fun as cooking and dancing to Thriller). Few of us can do ALL of this...but all of us can do something, and make it fun.

A word about bread (but it's never just one word with me)

When you think of cooking at home, from scratch, one of the first things that comes to mind is baking your own bread. However, keen readers of this blog (all two of you) will observe that I bought bread, rather than made it, and already mentioned this as an example of something that it was better for me to buy than make. Let's look at that in more detail.

Some people don't even eat bread anymore, though this trend has mostly passed--right about when Robert Atkins did. I'm not laughing or even smirking. But it should be noted that if everyone on this planet ate the amount of protein that the Atkins diet advocated, we would run out of land, water, fish and animals in about five minutes. No, that isn't very well researched, but I know that this planet can not support six billion people eating meat three times a day. It's already struggling mightily. (And that's not even considering the monetary side of things--people expect meat to be cheap--it shouldn't be! The affordability of meat--high quality, muscle meat--hides a lot of unpleasant truths.) We gotta try to eat from lower on the food chain.

Anyway, I love carbs and think they are part of a healthy diet, particularly in the form of whole grains. And while I can roll out my own pasta and make tortillas and other basic stuff, I don't think I can bake good bread. I don't have the skills, ingredients or equipment to do it right. Plus, is heating my oven up to high when my AC is already working full-time just to keep this place at 81 degrees a very pleasant or environmentally sound idea?

Central Market sells a million different kinds of breads that are not wrapped, so the only packaging used is a paper bag. I thought about just chucking it in my shopping bag, but then I was like, have some damn dignity. I think that unless I get a designated bread bag, I don't need my unwashable food mingling with everything else. I think one paper bag is ok.

The bread I bought is called ten-grain, and it is so good. I highly recommend it--it is chewy and not coarse, and has a really nice and mild flavor, despite the hippy-high grain count. I would have to buy TEN different grains to get the nutritional benefits of this one loaf. No fun.

Just to share, here is one way that I have enjoyed this bread this week. I made a fried egg, put it on a piece of bread and topped the whole thing with leftover tomato sauce that I made last week. Sounds kind of weird, but it was delicious. I will give my recipe for easy tomato sauce at another time, but it's basically just olive oil, tomatoes, onions, garlic and in this case, rosemary, because I have been on a big kick with it lately and there is a shrub of it growing in front of my neighbor's apartment. It makes everything taste like it comes from a fancy restaurant.

Here is my bread working hard for me. Tasty!

My first trip to the store

After I wrote yesterday's introduction and idea for this I got a little panicky. Am I in over my head? Maybe. But its my game, so I can make and break the rules as needed. The point isn't to make myself miserable.

So first thing, I thought about the week's menu . For Sunday there would be pasta with some kind of fish and veg, and Monday or Tuesday, depending on my leftovers situation, would be Hatch chile quesadillas with leftover roasted chiles from the other day.

I also had to think about breakfasts and lunches. I want this experiment to impact Scott (my husband) as little as possible. I make him lunch every day and he skips breakfast (sometimes we have oatmeal but not since it's been hot). He usually has a turkey or ham sandwich, fruit, yogurt, and granola bar. I usually eat a lot of cereal, fruit, smoothies, and leftover dinner foods for lunches (or whenever I feel like eating, as I work at home).

I had some stuff from last week for Scott's lunch, including turkey and one yogurt. I also of course have mayo and mustard so I don't have to think about that just yet. But I would need to provide more yogurt, and granola bars--which I decided would be easier as just "granola."

So for Sunday night, I would have to make:
Fresh pasta and finished dinner
Granola

Monday night I would have to make
Yogurt
Homemade tortillas
Homemade...cheese???
Dinner out of homemade tortillas and cheese

OK. I looked up some yogurt and cheese recipes and started making my shopping list and gathering containers. Central Market, where I do most of the shopping, has an extensive bulk section with plastic containers or bags provided. I have a bunch of them laying around that I'd normally take to the recycling, and looking in the cabinet I found a few more that were about half full of stuff that conveniently would be perfect for my granola. I had a basic recipe for granola from the cookbook Super Natural Cooking, but I decided to vary it quite a bit to suit my needs. So I dumped out all the random stuff lurking in my containers and got this:

Dried cranberries, a little dried mixed tropical fruit, whole almonds, sliced almonds, and toasted pumpkin seeds. A nice start. I washed out all those empty containers, added them to the ones I already had, grabbed my shopping bags and headed out.

All in all, here is what I ended up taking to the store. A bunch of plastic containers, and bags. Oh wait, there was one more thing to do. Central Market has a "label your own" produce system, where you weigh each item and print the label from the scale. They provide plastic bags for this. I've seen people put the labels on their shirts, and I usually put a million on one bag and put a lot of stuff in the one bag, but this time there would be no bag. I got a piece of junk mail and folded it lengthwise, to put my stickers on. Should work ok.

Scott was really concerned that I was going to appear to be insane, juggling a bunch of containers and asking for special treatment. I didn't want this any more than he did.

So I put all the buckets in one of the shopping bags, and at the store I put the bags in the cart. At the bulk bins I filled up my containers quietly and quite normally, just using my own containers instead of theirs. The first exception: I needed something bigger than what I had for all the flour I was buying, so I stole a paper bag from the bread area (I also used one for my bread). But the rest of my containers were enough, and I used no new plastic.

So far, no one seemed to notice me at all. But then I had to go to seafood....

All I wanted was for them to fill my cylindrical container with shrimp. Usually, they put your fish in one plastic bag and then into another one filled with ice. I didn't want any plastic or ice--I didn't care about a couple of stray fish germs mingling with my other groceries, and I wasn't going to be gone long enough to need ice (I never am--I usually tell them to skip it but sometimes forget). So I gave the fish man my bucket and politely asked him to just fill it with shrimp. He did, seeming a little befuddled...He then tried to put it in a bag with ice, and then in a bag without ice. Both times I just smiled and said I didn't need that and that it was fine the way it way it was. Having worked for years in a health food store full of high-maintenance clientele, I am very sensitive to not being the asshole customer. While it might have been a little unusual, I caused him no extra work--in fact, it was less work. I was polite throughout and smiled, and felt a little awkward, but in the end it was fine.

In produce, I filled my bag, printed my labels and was done. I decided not to get any berries even though I wanted them, because they are all packed in plastic containers. I got Texas peaches which I used another paper bag for (helps them ripen), plums, bananas, and two oranges. Plus all the veggies for my dinners.

Now I would need some packaged stuff--there was no way around I. I had looked online and couldn't find a small dairy within driving distance or with a delivery program to do a glass bottle exchange, and the farmers market with the eggs isn't until Weds. So I bought three half-gallons of milk in cardboard, and one dozen eggs in cardboard. (BTW, regarding the milk containers, I wonder if plastic is better, as its recyclable? They say explicitly at my recycling place that they DON'T take the lined cardboard milk containers.) I would use all the milk to make the yogurt and cheese, and the eggs for pasta and other recipes later. But to make the yogurt I also needed some yogurt. Annoying, but in theory once I'm started I'll never have to buy it again. So I got a glass jar of the White Mountain Bulgarian Yogurt that is so popular around here. I also needed cooking oil, to make the breadsticks I was thinking of, and for my granola (it calls for coconut oil but I didn't want to buy a bunch of extra stuff--I knew it would taste fine with canola). They don't sell olive or any oil in the bulk section, actually, so I bought a big jug of it. In the future, I'll check other stores for bulk oils. And, I needed to get parchment paper for the cheese, which I also wanted because I can use it when baking instead of foil, or to wrap stuff at home. (I want to reduce plastic wrap and other at-home disposables.)

I got home around seven with $70 worth of stuff, including dog chicken (my dog eats raw legs, will discuss in another post). Now it was time to cook! Fortunately, Scott and I eat really late and stay up even later, and I'm very fast in the kitchen, but this was going to be a challenge.

Next posts, cooking and recipes.

How complicated is simplifying?

I love to cook, and for a long time now I have been thinking about "making everything from scratch." Essentially only shopping in the produce aisle and bulk bins. The goal would be to eat minimally processed, healthy food that generates zero waste from packaging.

But the more I think about this, the more complicated it gets. And then I start whittling it down..."Well, I'd have to make exceptions for olive oil, and milk...what about yogurt and crackers?...it's not like we really buy that much processed stuff anyway...I guess we're doing ok the way things are."

And, we are doing ok. We eat pretty healthfully and I make most of our food. But I still find myself going to the recycling place every couple weeks with bags and bags of waste, and taking the kitchen trash out every couple of days.

Recycling is good, but it's better to just not use stuff in the first place. Something like a plastic cup--I always recycle them, but each one has a lifespan of about half an hour. It is useful for about half an hour while you're drinking your iced coffee, and then you "discard" it--even if you recycle it, you pass it off to someone else and are no longer responsible. And what about the materials and energy used to make it? all for about half an hour of usefulness. Something like a napkin or coffee stirrer--useful for about five seconds! This is just not reasonable.

And what about the "trash" that I call "my possessions?" Looking around my house, how much of this stuff will be in a landfill someday? Unfortunately, a lot. I'd like to think that all my possessions are valuable antiques that will be passed down for generations, but...ha.

Imagine if we had to be personally responsible for every object we brought into our lives. Not just responsible for getting it to the dump or recycling center, but for the impact its production and decomposition would have on the planet forever.

Yes, it's an extreme point of view (and thankfully, not original, as lots of people care about this stuff). I also understand the value of a division of labor in our society--there are many industries devoted to properly disposing of our stuff, recycling our bottles, sanitizing our toilet water, etc etc. But we are really lucky to not have to think about it all too much, and maybe one of the last generations to be in this position.

Division of labor brings me to another point about "processed foods." Some of the processed or packaged foods we eat are made by experts and artisans. For instance, it's not going to do the Earth any favors if I run my oven at 400 degrees every couple of days to make bread, bread which is going to end up being way inferior to what I could buy from an actual baker who has the proper equipment and expertise to make great bread. What about cheese makers like Grafton cheddar, candy makers like Kakawa chocolate beans, my beloved Ana's salsa (which I will continue to buy even when it's like 10 dollars a pint), Brown Cow yogurt, Sriracha* hot sauce. These are products I love and respect.

But...what would life be like if I really did try to do without any and all packaged foods? For, oh, let's say two weeks. What if I learned to make my own yogurt? My own crackers, and granola bars and breakfast cereal (Frosted Mini Wheats I will miss you!). What if I were that annoying person who asked the people at Central Market how to calculate the "tare weight" on my Tupperwares because I didn't want to use their provided containers?

And what about the exceptions? I can't make olive oil, soy sauce, milk, or eggs. But rather than going without these things, I can try to find them in package-free versions. My friend tells me I can get local eggs from Milagro farms at the farmers market on Wednesdays. And I think Central Market might have olive oil in bulk, for example--I know they have peanut butter, honey, and a million other things. But that brings me to another point--should I be buying peppermint bark and mini peanut butter cups and jellybeans and honey roasted pecans from the bulk bin just because they technically come with no packaging?

The simple idea of "making everything from scratch" can get really complicated, I'm finding out. What is "scratch?" I know its not mini peanut butter cups, but there are some people who consider flour to be a processed food, and basically only eat whole sprouted grains and produce and beans. I know this kind of thing can get very restrictive and extreme. That is not really my goal. My goal is to eat healthy, delicious food that does not generate any waste. I'll do this for two weeks, I'll find solutions to the snags and snafus and challenges, and I'll decide about exceptions.

Hopefully it will be fun!

*Actually, I don't know anything about Srirarcha, it could be made by Vietnamese child slaves out of nuclear waste. But I really hope not because I eat a LOT of it.