Porkchops and Applesauce... minus the Porkchops

"If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.” - George Bernard Shaw

Last week we received a plastic shopping bag full of apples and knew that no matter how much our son loves apples and we might enjoy them occasionally, we were not going to eat them all before they spoiled. It became the perfect opportunity for further adventures in canning! We decided we would make juice from the apples for our son and also preserve the byproduct - unsweetened applesauce. We also had some mangoes and peaches we had to use up before they went off, so we made mango peach jam.

The mango peach jam was improvised based on instructions with the box of pectin for each. Essentially we had enough of each to mix a half batch worth of ingredients for the mango jam with a half batch of the ingredients for the peach jam and voila! The mixture foamed and boiled up after adding the sugar, so we should get a good set from this batch.

The finished mango peach jam sitting out to cool after a boil bath, as well as a pint of apple juice. We're just going to put the pint in the fridge for our son, so no need to boil and seal, just cool.

We moved on to the apple juice using these instructions for making homemade apple juice. We had to improvise a little because we don't (yet) have a sieve, but we did have a colander and cheesecloth. After cleaning, cutting, and cooking down the apples as per the instructions, we deviated slightly to put the mash in the cheesecloth, move it around with a spoon to free up the juice, and then wring and squeeze the mash to get even more juice out of it.

Wringing and squeezing the mash in the cheesecloth.

The cheesecloth allowed us to really press the applesauce and get more juice from it.

You can see some juice trickling out of the applesauce here.

What we ended up with was one quart and one pint of rather tasty unsweetened, unfiltered apple juice...

We decided not to filter it and instead left it pulpy.

... and two quarts of equally tasty unsweetened applesauce. Yummy!

We decided to leave the peels in for extra fiber and texture. Mmmm.

The juice instructions mentioned that the applesauce could be preserved but didn't provide processing instructions. We used this homemade applesauce recipe for its processing instructions. We placed the jars in the boil bath and processed the applesauce for 20 minutes and the juice for 30 minutes.

We ended up cleaning and reusing the 12-quart stock pot we used to cook down the apples for the boil bath because the pressure cooker pot we use normally for canning wasn;t tall enough to boil quart jars.

After processing we set the jars out to cool. We are very much looking forward to having some of our homemade juice and applesauce when we feel like having some. And we only lost one apple that was too far gone to use.

Putting Veggies On Stack

“Permaculture is that art of the possible.” - Graham Bell

Stacking functions is a permaculture concept that means to seek many yields from a single element of a system. It's something I try to do whenever I can and remember to think to do so (obviously trying to increase that frequency!). So when I was planning dinner tonight I decided I would get inventive to stack functions while cooking the veggies.

The Challenge:

• Roast the meat.
• Boil the potatoes.
• Steam the cauliflower and asparagus.
• Cook the onions and mushrooms.
• Stack functions to get all of this done with as little energy and as few pans as possible.

How I Succeeded:

Roasting the meat and cooking the mushrooms and onions was pretty much a no-brainer. They all went in the same pan and went in the oven together. Pretty much status quo, and it makes the mushrooms and onions and meat tastier.

Cooking the rest of the veggies? Let's get creative!

1. Get a large (I used a 12-quart) stock pot and put the water and potatoes in it. Bring the potatoes to a boil.
2. Place a large steel colander in the pot to use as a deep steamer basket and load with cauliflower.
3. Place the steamer basket in the colander and load with asparagus.
4. Place the lid on top and cook until the veggies are ready to eat or prepare.

All three veggies were cooked in the same pan on one burner rather than three pans and lids and two steamer baskets on three burners. Added bonus for the colander pulling double duty as a steamer basket! I was able to reuse the colander to drain the potatoes. I should have prepared the mashed potatoes and cauliflower in the pot I used to cook them, but I admit I used a separate steel mixing bowl.

Kick Out The Jams

"The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday - but never jam today.” - Lewis Carroll

Something we've wanted to do for some time is start preserving food in a way that wouldn't require refrigeration or freezing. Hopefully someday when we have a little more control of our housing (i.e. not renting or renting from a landlord that will allow us to downsize appliances), we'd like to significantly downsize our refrigeration since it is such an energy drain.

Over a period of time we slowly worked on building up a supply for canning as we could afford to do so. We bought a canning kit with the pressure cooker and all of the tools needed for safe canning, then we bought a couple of cases of pint jars. We also were gifted a case of quart jars from a friend who moved out of the area which helped tremendously.

I had no prior experience with canning. It was always something that fascinated me (you mean people save food in glass jars for later? that's possible?) but also was a bit scary because it was different. And seemingly very time consuming. My partner had canned jams and jellies many years ago, so thankfully she was more comfortable and was able to help me step through my first experience. The result?

Our first round of blueberry jam! Both our preserved food and my confidence levels increased.

We received a bounty of 12 pints of fresh organic blueberries from our local food pantry with our weekly pick-up. It was almost as if some sort of cosmic providence was prompting us, serendipitously saying, "You've been preparing for this, now it's time to do it." And so we did. Our son devours blueberries, so we only chose to preserve four pints. While there certainly was some effort involved, I was pleasantly surprised by how little time it actually took. We read through the recipe a couple of times in advance and followed it to the letter. We ended up with the four perfectly sealed and set jars you see in the photo above. Success! I immediately felt empowered and confident that I could can our own food to save for later and spread out our food to be more resilient. And I don't mind saying that we made some very tasty jam. The first jar we opened was proof that making it ourselves was most assuredly worth the effort and far superior to store-bought jams and jellies.

We wanted to make mango jam from a bounty of mangoes we received from the food pantry, but we ended up not having enough to do so. Here's where the boosted confidence came in handy. I had read through the recipes for jellies and preserves some, and did plenty of online research on the "theory" behind canning and making canning recipes. Really fascinating stuff! Even with what we had remaining for blueberries after our son and our previous canning, we didn't have enough to even do blueberry mango jam. So we improvised. We ended up portioning out what we hoped was enough mango, blueberries, and apple juice (store bought unfortunately) to make enough of a fruit base for the box of pectin. The results?

Our second round of jam! Feeling totally empowered now.

It worked! We had a proper seal on all four jars and the jam set nicely. We still haven't tasted it yet to know whether it's a good flavor combination, but the process worked. If it tastes good, we promise to share the recipe.

We have visions of moving on to canning carrots (we always seem to have an overabudance of carrots, but thankfully they naturally keep long anyhow) and making pickles (our son loves pickles, too). So far everything we've done has been processed in a boil bath, which is a lot easier and less scary. I'm thinking pickles would be a nice progression for confidence building, but carrots may be the next push from necessity. Have I mentioned we get a lot of carrots? The scary part for me is that we'll have to process the carrots in the pressure cooker, and using a pressure cooker is very foreign to me and rather intimidating. But after some great success with making jams, I'm feeling a little less afraid of venturing into unknown canning territory.

An Open Letter to Drivers

"Give whatever you are doing and whoever you are with the gift of your attention." - Jim Rohn

Dear Drivers:

I used to drive a motor vehicle, so I totally get how we can all get in that zone when we're just trying to get to our destination as quickly as we can. I've been there myself. But now that my family and I have been relying on bicycle and public transportation as our primary means of transportation, and now that we've been hit by a car while bicycling, we want you to know that we are all sharing the roads. We all need to pay attention for each other, but especially you as drivers need to be especially attentive since you are driving the multi-ton machines that can seriously injure or kill others if used irresponsibly.

If I can be so bold as to make a couple of firm assertions...

• We all share our roads. That means not just cars but also bicycles, buses, motorcycles, pedestrians, skateboards, and probably other vehicles that I'm not thinking of right now.
• That you are mostly safe from others outside of your vehicle does not mean that others outside your vehicle are by default mostly safe from you.

I graduate from grad school tomorrow, and so my family and I attended the awards ceremony this afternoon to cheer on my peers who worked very hard and accomplished a lot of good not only in school but for the broader community. I was so glad to be there to celebrate their successes and that my family could join me. We started home around 6:00 p.m. and it was still very much light out and a beautiful evening for a family bicycle ride. And then shortly after leaving it happened.

We arrived at the intersection of one of the busiest roads in our city and three state highways. There is a traffic light there and we had the crossing signal. She was driving her SUV but had come to a full stop at the red light. We waited a little to make sure it was safe to cross and seeing she was well stopped and we had the crossing signal we started across the intersection. We were very confused when -- just as I and our toddler son were in front of her SUV -- she started making a right turn on red. To us it appeared she was talking on her cell phone, but she denied this to my wife when confronted about it.

As a parent you can imagine the rush of emotions I had as I started going down and right before my eyes my toddler inside his bicycle trailer was toppled by the front end of a multi-ton SUV. I'm not at all ashamed to admit I screamed a couple of obscenities as it all went down. I'm grateful my wife (who was towing the trailer on her bike) didn't actually see the full detail of the accident, but she had her own rush of emotions as it unfolded, too. Thankfully we were all okay aside from the two minor bruises I incurred. My wife's bike was okay, as was our son's trailer. My bicycle's front wheel was mangled. The timing really sucks, too, because it's the end of the semester and we are pretty much flat broke and doing what we can to get by.

She pulled her vehicle into a nearby parking lot and came over to talk the incident over with us. Thankfully a witness also came over and made sure we were okay and offered help. We opted not to call the police because we were all okay and instead opted for a firm but compassionate conversation. We made it a point to ask her twice to pay more attention and not talk on her cell phone while driving in the future. She compensated us for the damage done to my bicycle and we parted ways shaken but mostly uninjured. For this we are especially grateful.

We were very lucky, but we realize other bicyclists, motorcyclists, pedestrians, and skateboarders (as well as other motorists) have not been so lucky. So I request of all drivers:

• Don't talk on your cell phone while driving. It's not illegal in our state to talk on a cell phone while driving, but that it is not illegal does not mean that it is safe or right. Give your driving and those with whom you share a road the gift of your full attention.
• If you are approaching an intersection and have a red light or stop sign, come to a complete stop and look both ways twice before driving through. What is wise for crossing the road as a pedestrian or cyclist is also wise for the motorist approaching the intersection those pedestrians and cyclists may be crossing.
• If you stop at an intersection with a traffic light, check the crossing signal and do not drive through if that signal is giving the sign to cross. To do otherwise risks the safety of others sharing that road with you.

We all share the roads, and we all share personal responsibility for our own safety and the safety of others. We all need to take our responsibilities seriously, but as drivers of multi-ton vehicles please take your responsibilities extra seriously. You have the most potential to do the most harm if you do not.

Refusing and Reusing Instead of Recycling

"There's so much plastic in this culture that vinyl leopard skin is becoming an endangered synthetic.” - Lily Tomlin

We've made another simple change to our behaviors in the hope of reducing our waste and getting the most use out of what we bring home from the store. We're trying to get away from storing foods in plastic containers, even though in the past we reused our plastic (well, the plastic regarded as "safe" for reuse) containers from packaged food. Instead we're trying to switch to either not buying packaged food if we can get away with it. Why not buy whole foods and make our foods from these whole food ingredients? If we buy packaged food (such as tomato-based pasta sauce) we try to buy glass. We're then reusing the glass jars for food storage. Rather than tossing the "unsafe" plastic in the recycling and reusing the "safe" plastic, we're aiming to refuse plastic as much as possible and reuse all of the glass that comes in as much as we can. We'll have to be careful still not to bring home too much glass or we could end up with a deluge of unnecessary glass, which will then just have to go to recycling anyway and then... what's the use?

Thoughts? Is this a better approach for us? Any flaws with this plan? Any ways we can improve?

I May Have No Vehicle, But I Still Have My Drive

Americans are broad-minded people.  They'll accept the fact that a person can be an alcoholic, a dope fiend, a wife beater, and even a newspaperman, but if a man doesn't drive, there is something wrong with him. - Art Buchwald

At the end of September, we parked our pickup truck because it wouldn't pass inspection. Over the summer we anticipated this and invested in our bicycles. We were faced with doing major repairs to the frame of the truck to pass inspection or replace it. We decided on a third option: Sell the truck to a salvage yard so others might get useful parts from it and instead walk, bike, carpool, or invest in our local public transportation to get where we need to go.

It has been three months since we have gone carless and the experience has been enlightening to say the least. I've learned how self-powered transportation means bearing more directly the weight (both literally and figuratively) of my choices. The consequences are more direct when I overconsume both in having to carry the weight of our shopping purchases by hand or by bike trailer and by having to move my heavier body, the result of too much consumed and a history of not enough self mobility. Little by little I am personally working on moving around through the power of my own body as I try to counteract my obesity.

Riding the buses around the city has admittedly decreased how much we ride our bikes, but at the same time it has connected us more to our community. We've come to know our fellow riders, especially the regulars on the bus. We know our bus drivers by name and they are a part of our family life as much as our family and friends are. We see them at least twice a day, two days a week. There are some limitations to the bus. It only runs during "regular" business hours, meaning buses aren't an option for evening activities. The buses don't run on weekends, which means one less option for getting to weekend social or spiritual events. Even still, the tightness of the bus schedule has prompted us to find the most efficient routes and combination of errands to run in a day to get what we need in a limited amount of time.

One of the two buses we ride several times a week to get around the city.

Carpooling has proved incredibly humbling. We live in a culture that looks down upon grown adults approaching 40 with a child that have no automobile to drive themselves around. Asking to catch rides places one in the precarious situation of needing to rely on others to meet needs. Carpooling can be great for building community and encouraging sharing resources, yet it can also place a strain on the resources of family, friends, and community members who give us rides. This strain is something that is present in our minds every time we ask for rides. We do our best to not expect we will get rides and also have to be very tentative with our plans because of this.

Being without a vehicle is not without challenges such as tentative plans based on whether we can get somewhere or not, increased careful planning to make sure we accomplish what we need without placing too much strain on those we know and on the systems we use, and the hard work it takes to move ourselves around a small rural city by our own body power (when weather permits, sometimes even if it does not). At the same time, it presents opportunities to get to know our place and the people with whom we live so much better than the solitary shelter of our single vehicle. We get to experience more directly the benefits and costs of our choices. We also reduce our impact on our environment by contributing less to the 65% of oil consumption that goes toward transportation. Instead of throwing capital away on a decaying and depreciating vehicle we spend less and gain more by investing in community infrastructure like our local public transportation. For all the challenges, I'm really enjoying being without a vehicle and find myself dreaming of ways I can contribute to my community to expand public transportation options and opportunities for sharing transportation resources such as carpooling or programs like Zipcar.

Finding and Using Manual Power or Low Energy Solutions

“When our eyes see our hands doing the work of our hearts, the circle of Creation is completed inside us, the doors of our souls fly open, and love steps forth to heal everything in sight.” - Michael Bridge

Part of our personal quest for sustainability as a family has included finding ways to do the things we do with less energy. Part of this includes making some of our own food from whole foods instead of buying processed equivalents. Yet this means we have to use tools in the kitchen that are more readily available in energy-sucking versions like food processors, microwaves, mixers, etc. Where we don't feel we can get away from using a tool entirely, we've tried to slowly replace these tools with manual powered or low energy solutions.

Manual powered and low energy alternatives we are using in our kitchen.

We like coffee. We decided while we don't drink a lot of it, we weren't prepared to entirely give it up... yet. We also prefer grinding our own beans. We had an electric grinder that we bought at a department store but it recently stopped working. This time around we decided we would go to the local kitchen goods store downtown and buy the hand-cranked coffee mill you see pictured above. It works great, and we are now using no electricity to grind our own coffee. We still haven't settled on a low energy solution for making the coffee, but we're considering a French press when our auto-drip coffee maker stops working. In the meantime we finally found and bought a replacement Hot Shots (also pictured above) to heat one or two cups of water at a time for tea, broth, hot cereals, or for whatever else we might need small amounts of boiling water. Using the Hot Shot is a lot more energy efficient than heating it in the microwave or heating a kettle of water on the stove.

We had an electric food processor that a relative gave us, but we rarely used it. We knew we wanted to use a food processor more, but we also couldn't justify using the electricity. We found our hand-crank food processor pictured above and have been using a food processor more (for example to make our own hummus as you can see in the photo) but not using any electricity to do so. We've had the hand-crank mixer the longest. It was a gift from a college friend. We would like to find one that is a little more user-friendly (the handle on this one slips a lot) but for now this one has served us well enough. We also were given a three-cups measuring cup set that included lids for grating cheese or vegetables and for hand-juicing fruits, which allowed us to also give away our electric juicer.

I really would like to find ways to do things like make toast or bake or roast in more energy efficient ways, but we haven't yet found or settled on anything. We have south-facing windows in our apartment, so there must be a way for us as residents in an apartment complex to use solar options that are non-permanent -- meaning we could put them in the window while in use and tuck them away when we're done.

Do you have any suggestions for manual powered or low energy solutions for kitchen or household items? What has or hasn't worked for you? Are there any of these devices that you share with neighbors so only one person has to own but many can benefit from its use?

P.S. I have been biking more and more as a means of transportation. I'm up to biking at least twice a week, some weeks more, and my average trip to run errands or keep appointments is between 4 and 6 miles. I've found I'm more keen to line up my errands and appointments to make efficient use of my time and get more done with each commute.

I Want To Ride My Bicycle

"The bicycle is a curious vehicle. Its passenger is its engine." - John Howard

So far so good on the bike commuting! I've managed to keep myself motivated to bike to and from campus even in the rain, and have started working bicycle commutes in elsewhere when possible, such as biking to a gathering with some classmates and acquaintances. It turns out my trip to and from campus is actually 2 miles each way instead of 1.5. I've managed to get my time down to about 15 minutes to get to campus (slightly downhill) and about 20 minutes to get back, so not bad for someone who is morbidly obese and out of shape! Hopefully the exercise will help the latter two concerns.

I had baskets installed on my bike so it makes it very convenient for carrying along my book bag, my lunch, and my change of clothes, washcloth, and towel. I bike the 2 miles in, wash up a bit and change, go to classes, and then bike the 2 miles home once per week, except there will be three weeks this semester when I will do that trip three times in a week. We're going to order another trailer hitch for the bike trailer so I can have one on my bike in case I need to take Ian somewhere by myself or in case Kathy needs me to take the trailer or I need it to cart something around too big for the baskets. Otherwise the trailer stays hitched to Kathy's bike in case she wants or needs to go somewhere while I'm gone for a day of classes.

I'm quite excited to have transformed a 180-miles commute in a gas guzzling pickup truck each week into a 4-miles commute by bicycle. That's bound to have a significant impact for the better on our carbon footprint. I feel the decision to relocate and invest in our bicycles has been a huge success in walking (or rather bicycling) closer to our talk. Here's to more and more bicycling and less and less driving!

Eating Vegetarian and Progress on the Bikes

"You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

I couldn't have found a better quote to start this post, because it's my own complicity with which I struggle. For me the complicity is with a system that inefficiently consumes far more (plant-based) food than the amount of (animal-based) food it produces. It's complicity with a system that creates through assembly-line slaughter practices a great deal of pollution and disease. If I could afford to eat local, sustainable meat from farms and animals I could get to know then I would do so in moderation, but the frustrating reality is that for anyone not at least well into middle class buying local meat is one more big stretch on top of the big stretch to buy whole foods instead of processed foods.

That stated, we do go out to eat from time to time because we've learned that if we don't treat ourselves on occasion we end up caught in a cycle where we are very strict for a while and then we binge, which is neither sustainable nor healthy. I've made a very intentional effort to get myself past this little niggling inner voice that tries to convince me that eating a mostly or entirely plant-based diet would be boring and yucky. On those occasions when we go out to eat, I find the vegetarian options and order from there. The reason for this is that I want to have some very good, delicious experiences with vegetarian options to prove to me that I can feel satisfied with what I just ate both physically and emotionally. I want to experience good vegetarian options that make me both full and happy. So far so good. We've also purchased a decent little vegetarian cook book and started buying ingredients to try some of what look like very yummy vegetarian and vegan options.

Now that we live in the same town as my graduate school, we are really taking bicycle serious as a mode of transportation. We finally got around to fixing up our bikes (with the exception of replacing the seats with more comfortable commuting options), attaching the bike trailer to one of our bikes for our son to ride with us, getting bike helmets (safety first!), and deciding to start going for family bike rides with the goal of using them as our primary means of transport around the city. It's only 1.5 miles from home to school for me. If I could once commute 5 miles each way by bike between home and work, 1.5 miles each way should be easy enough to work back toward. Here goes something!

The Challenges of Renting and Living Tiny

“Small rooms or dwellings discipline the mind, large ones weaken it.” – Leonardo Da Vinci

Our family has decided to relocate to the city where I attend graduate school. On the whole this is a huge plus because I've just cut out 180 miles of driving (at a minimum) a week from my life. That's a huge carbon emissions reduction right there. We're a mile and a half away from school, which is definitely a good biking distance for losing weight and getting in shape again. Overall, I'm very happy with this move.

In the process of looking for a new apartment or home to rent, we realized just how fortunate we are to have lived in this little cottage of roughly 500 square feet we're leaving behind. We were quite happy to live in a single bedroom apartment, but very few landlords with single bedroom apartments would rent for a variety of reasons including septic systems, insurance reasons, or in the case of the apartment complex we settled with corporate policy. While we only ended up increasing our living unit size about 150 square feet, it still feels like we're moving in the wrong direction to me.