Chickens are a fun way to start on the path to self sustainability.  I got chickens because I was tired of reading about the abhorrent husbandry practices of the big egg industries, and even though I could buy “cage free” eggs in the store, I still felt it would be better to have my own.  I had a small shed that I had built, originally for a very old and very loved horse and when she went on her way, the shed and the subsequent fence that was built housed eight cats for a time and then when the cats moved out, the chickens moved in.    

Now we have eggs that I collect every day, fresh, not treated or washed in chemicals, from hens that graze the yard, eat bugs and get to act as nature intended them to act.

This past Saturday we made a German pancake for breakfast, the recipe is on Zannes site, it was a truly wonderful eating experience with homemade whipped cream and all. Try it one morning it doesn’t take that long and is really not terribly labor intensive. It is certainly worth the effort and something everyone can take part in the making of.

Have fun making your food, savor the taste of your food and converse while eating your food.

Do you think about your food? If so how do you think about your food? Beyond that do you think about what you put your food in? How about Polyvinyl chloride or Bisphenol A. Both are in a lot of things. For instance the pipes that carry waste water from your sink, bath and toilet to sewer drains (although most plumbers will now use ABS tubing for that today, but that is a different post.), it is also in some of your food containers, packaging of items you buy and in the plastic wrap you use to wrap your food. I won’t go into why you shouldn’t wrap your food with it, the link above gives a host of information on those issues, lets just leave it at it leaches into our food. So here is my point of this post. You might think long and hard about where your food comes from: buying organic, locally grown or growing it yourself and then what do you do wrap it up in some good old PVC or BPA.

Zanne and I have been using Rubbermaid products for a lot of storage and the Laptop Lunch containers for Izzy. The problem with the Rubbermaid stuff is that it really does have a fiarly short life span compared to glass. Our next step is reusing glass containers for a lot of our storage. Don’t get me wrong I like a lot of the Rubbermaid stuff and they are pretty clear about their products and what they are made from and getting three to four years of use out of a product isn’t bad. On the other hand glass lasts a life time if you don’t break it. I will admit you could drive yourself crazy thinking about all this stuff fortunately their are a lot of people out there doing huge amounts of research on all these products. You don’t need to know it all you just need to know where to look. The ZRecs guide is a good place to start. I never trust just one source and always try to check at least three sources. Usually I check the company that makes the product, if they are forthcoming with information that is a good sign, then I will check an independent source and finally some government agency usually from Germany or Canada.

Enjoy your food.

This is my recipe and I use that word loosely because I never do anything the same way twice.  It is so easy.

Soak a pound of dry peas as directed or if you buy bulk add them two about 8 cups of hot water boil them for two minutes and then let them sit for a while. I left mine for about two hours, they still had some body to them.

I then cut up some red potatoes, red onion and carrots how you cut them is up to you. I would never presume to know how you like your vegetables cut. All these I saute in olive oil, veggie broth and a little salt and pepper until they are almost tender. I don’t eat meat but I guess you could throw in some pork or whatever you flesh eaters do.

Then I mixed it all together and let it sit on the stove on a low/medium heat for a couple hours. The flavors blend really well this way and cooking it slowly ensure you retain most of the nutrients and don’t completely destroy the fibrous attributes of the veggies. As it cooks you have to add water or broth or else you will end up with a split pea brick and that is no fun to eat.

Make and love what you eat.

But coffee can be very unsustainable. The way it is grown, harvested, shipped and processed are all topics for later posts. Today I am concerned with the end user.  Caffe Ladro is my favorite Seattle coffee place. They show great interest in providing coffee that is is fair trade, shade grown and all those things that any good environmentally conscious consumer wants in their coffee house. As I sat there with Izzy, doing alphabet games I started to count the number of cups and lids that left the cafe. I was as guilty as everyone else, there on our table were two cups, no lids mind you, one for my americano and one for Izzy’s hot chocolate. I carry a thermos to work with me every day and thought to myself how many paper cups have I saved over the past ten years by using my thermos? Of all the people who came in to get a cup of coffee only three, that I saw, had reusable containers. That makes for a lot of coffee cups used and thrown away. I kept thinking this is why some decisions need to made from the top down. If the cups were from a sustainable source like Sustainable Party then it would be less of an issue. Don’t get me wrong I am not suggesting that people should not be responsible for their own actions but there are so many things to think about in our lives. If the coffee place we go to thinks about beans and how they are processed I don’t see any problem with them making the decision of what kind of cup we use for us. It just gives we the consumer one more reason to shop there instead of the place that doesn’t think about those things.

Be responsible think about the things you buy and why you buy them.

A lot of things contributed to my becoming a vegetarian and I gave up meat slowly. I stopped drinking milk just because I didn’t like it and then red meat because I couldn’t afford it. Then my printmaking professor at Pratt Institute introduced me to the idea of being a vegetarian. We talked about it a lot but he never preached at me. I think David is most responsible for how I choose to proselytize my beliefs and that is through actions. The last thing I stopped eating was fish, that was in 1991 after reading an article in the NY Times about King crab numbers being depleted by over harvesting. I stopped eating meat all together and began to research industrial harvesting of meat, poultry and fish. This was the beginning of my interest in sustainability and now the catalyst of this interest is in the news again. I am not asking the world to become vegetarians but I ask all you flesh eaters of the world to harvest your food in a sustainable way.

Think about what you eat.