Guest Post: Iced Coffee to go

So, my sister Taylor wrote this guest post over a year ago, and somehow I have not actually posted it yet. So though another summer's nearly over, here's her story of how she makes iced coffee to go with less waste and less cost than buying it at Starbucks! 

Since I'm a guest blogger, I'll quickly introduce myself. I'm Steph's little sister (by 20 months) and I am currently starting my second year of medical school. Steph asked me to write a little bit about one of my wasteless practices. I've picked up a lot of her habits, but I came up with this one all on my own.

I wasn't a coffee drinker until my senior year of college. My biochemistry professor's soothing voice at 9:30 am was enough to necessitate a daily dose of caffeine. But I quickly realized that drinking hot coffee on the way to class was not an enjoyable adventure. My roommate drank the Starbucks bottled Frappucino Coffee Drinks, so I figured I'd give them a try. You could pick them up pretty much anywhere on my undergraduate campus that also sells hot coffee. They worked great, but they cost a pretty penny.

I realized that I could just reuse the glass bottles and use my own coffeemaker at home, saving time, money, and countless glass bottles. It's a simple process: just make a cup of coffee the night before you want to drink it, pour it in the bottle, add whatever else you like in your coffee (milk, sugar, etc.), and place it in the fridge UNCAPPED. In the morning, twist the cap on, give it a shake, and you're ready to enjoy.

They're better than the Starbucks made ones for many reasons:
-You don't have to spend daily $$$ in the store
-You can make whatever flavor coffee you want, Starbucks brand or not
-You can make them the night before, meaning they are fresher than the Starbucks version that have preservatives
-You can also make a bunch for the week, and keep your fridge stocked
-You can reuse the glass bottles over and over

I currently use Starbucks Veranda coffee with Coffeemate Fat Free Vanilla creamer, because that's what I like for hot coffee too.

Now that I'm in medical school, I've started using this method for my afternoon caffeine, because at least 2 doses are necessary. I still make them the night before, and then just stick them in my backpack to drink at the library. They portable, pretty spill-proof (keep them upright though), and they taste good cool/at room temperature if you can't keep them refrigerated.

I also do this with iced tea, I just use Snapple bottles. I don't recommend using the same bottles for tea and coffee, because you can't get them as clean as you want sometimes, so you don't want your tea to taste like coffee or vice versa.

Conference Successes (eco-friendly and otherwise)

I was at a conference this last week; I can confidently say I accomplished more and enjoyed the experience more than any other conference I've been to.  I've been to a couple other smallish conferences like this before, but this time I went in knowing more people and confident enough in my science to reach out and network more than I have before.  I also did a lot of prep work and managed my energy levels well, which helped a lot. 

I spent the week prior to the conference preparing to meet people, in much more depth than I'd done previously.  I read through the list of conference attendees and presentations, and planned out who I definitely wanted to hunt down.  I also tried to note what I wanted to talk to them about.  It didn't work out exactly right, but it gave me a plan so I didn't freeze up every time I was confronted with a person whose work I admired.  My advisors also helped me organize a few meetings, which took a bit more of the pressure off.

Part of my prep work also involved pre-planning my energy management.  I'm an introvert, and at past conferences I've tried to push myself to be at every talk and go out with people all the time.  This results in me burning out by mid-week, and generally being scientifically and inter-personally useless for the last day or two of the conference. 

This time around, I sat down with the conference schedule and mapped out which talks I would definitely skip, and which I thought I could skip if necessary.  I focused on culling talks on the days when I knew I was meeting people, or early morning talks when I had plans to go out the night before.  There was no point in me going to a talk if I'm going to be too tired and/or distracted to pay attention, if I could get a bit of rest instead.  I also told friends and advisors honestly, before and during the conference, that I would be taking care of myself like this; they generally respected my decisions.  I was still exhausted by week's end, but overall I had a much easier time focusing on the talks I did attend and still having some conversational skills left by the end of the week.

I also tried to mitigate some of the environmental impact.  What I ended up doing was baby steps, if anything, but still something.  I took a few cloth napkins and a good quality plastic fork I already owned, and used those in lieu of paper napkins or plastic utensils at the hotel or end-of-conference picnic.  I did not take my own plate, which I kinda regret, but that would also have been hard to carry, especially when dirty. So room for improvement there.

I was also helped a lot in my environmental endeavours by the conference itself, though they weren't perfect.  The organizers provided lunch for us every day at the conference center, with nothing disposable involved.  They also had real cups and saucers for coffee breaks, although I started carrying my conference mug because they sometimes resorted to paper cups when the real ones ran out.  They did have a few plastic giveaways that I didn't resist (water bottle and sunscreen), but overall I was pleased with how they ran it. 

...hey

It's been a crazy year.  I dropped off the map with this blog, in part because I didn't have any new zero-waste adventures to share, but mostly because I got hit with some mental health issues at the end of last semester.

I may blog about that more at some point, but the summary is: grad school is really, really stressful and sometimes that messes you up. It is always stressful, but especially when you are trying to balance three research projects and an NSF proposal and unnecessarily early concerns about thesis project selection.  For me, that stress overwhelmed my ability to cope and keep working at the necessary rate, and so my brain and body started going into a shutdown mode around Thanksgiving.  I finally got help in January, and am in a much, much better place than I was 6 months ago, but this blog managed to drop off my priority list. 

I may widen my blog post topics in future, we'll see, but for now I'm feeling celebratory, so here are a few things that happened this semester that I'm happy about:

• I FINALLY FINISHED MY PAPER FROM MY UNDERGRAD THESIS!!! (Reviewer comments don't exist yet, shhh) but submission will happen this week. AHHHHHH!!! 
• But seriously that paper has been a shadow over my life for the last two years.  I started the project almost exactly four years ago (minus two weeks).  And it is finally almost gone.
• I learned how to set boundaries.  In my personal life and my professional life, I am finally learning how to tell people NO and say how I want to do things.  I am learning how to tell people that they hurt me (that's in my personal life only, thank goodness).  This has been a lifelong lesson coming.
• I'm grappling with my faith and my identity. I started claiming my faith under somewhat hostile circumstances, at school and in my head (and at church, though that was more subtle).  Twelve years later letting go of those things means redefining who I am and where I stand with God. 
• I'm finally managing to actually send messages on this online dating website.  No one has replied, but getting myself to be proactive about dating is a major step for me.

 So woohoo! Here comes summer and adjustments and new and continuing dilemmas, but today is a good day.

Wardrobe Update, Part 1: Where do I start?

I've posted a few times about my weight loss and subsequent wardrobe loss.  That process has now gone on for more than a year, as I slowly ceased to fit into most of my old clothes.  Or, more accurately, I slowly stopped being able to convince myself that each piece was fitting anymore.  I've now taken at least 3 international suitcase loads of clothes to the thrift store.  There's another grocery tote full in my room right now waiting to be donated.  (I still don't know I managed to own that many clothes to begin with.)  The process has been cathartic, but also terrifying.  I've had many pieces for a long time, because my height and weight haven't changed much in ~10 years.  I had a set of conference clothes I was confident wearing.  A set of sweaters I could stand by in winter.  I don't like change.  And I don't like shopping.

Clothing and fashion frustrate me, and always have, because I don't understand the rules (and I have some, um, choice opinions about the attractiveness of many 'fashionable' styles).  I explain my lack of a fashion sense by the fact that I wore a uniform to school for 13 years of my life.  I didn't have a big social life, so after school I'd either wear my uniform to things like piano lessons or choir rehearsal, or I'd throw on a baggy t-shirt and jeans.  That slowly changed in high school, but not by much.  The t-shirts just got less baggy.  In high school, we used to joke about wearing our uniforms in college because then we wouldn't need to think about clothes in the morning.  I ended up wearing a "uniform" anyway - most days I wore sneakers, jeans, a t-shirt, and a hoodie.  On a SLAC campus, that worked fine for me.  It doesn't work so well for grad school in New York City, so I've worked on adapting, but I'm still mostly mystified.

The one thing I've learned in the last 5-6 years is that most current fashions do not suit a petite, pear-shaped woman whose BMI sits around the border between 'normal' and 'overweight'. Skinny jeans? Not my friend. Cropped pants? I look like a hobbit.  Loose, slouchy tops? I lose all definition on my upper half, and look bigger than I am.

So I tried to do research.  I had in my head that I wanted a capsule wardrobe.  Simple and small, right?  I spent time compiling wardrobe tips for capsule wardrobes in my size and shape.  I learned a lot about what I should and should not wear (boot cut/flared jeans! empire waist dresses! focus attention at the waist and above!), but most of those capsule wardrobes were geared towards women in business and women who already had an eye for fashion.  Plus, it involved finding 20+ pieces that were all different (2 pairs of pants, 1 skirt, 1 dress, etc) but that all magically go with everything else.  Great for those with a closet base for that wardrobe, and the eye to make the combinations work.  But the shopping and the combining were too daunting for me.

Then, I found Into Mind.  She blogs about taking "a minimalist approach to personal style", and creates a capsule wardrobe via a different method.  She mentions the "Modular Approach" described above, but she focuses her capsule wardrobe around the "Uniform Approach".   Basically, about 2/3 of the clothes in her primary wardrobe are dedicated to her 'uniform' for the season - a particular outfit outline where she owns 3-4 versions of each part of the outfit (4 pairs of shoes, 4 tops, 4 bottoms, etc, where each category contains similar items of different color and/or different style).  Most days, she mixes and matches the 'uniform' items to create her outfit for the day.  The other 1/3 of her capsule wardrobe provides variety, either through mixing with 'uniform' pieces or through a completely different look.

Hey! Sounds like the way I work! I (sort of) know what I like, I don't want to think too hard in the morning.  I like the idea of having fewer things in my closet, but knowing that what I have suits my lifestyle and my body.  I just need to update my 'uniform' to grad school life in NYC, and then maybe I can stop thinking about this quite so much.

What did I decide on for my uniform? Did I survive my shopping trip? Did I break the bank? All this and more to come...

Hello there sunlight

About 2 hours ago, I submitted my NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Proposal.  I'm excited about the project, which I will actually start next week, and I have a halfway-decent chance at getting the Fellowship. 

I'm now climbing out of the hole that application made in my life - the sunlight greeting is an exaggeration, I will admit, but my life has been far more work than fun for the last few months.  The NSF hasn't been the only big work thing looming over my life, but it was the biggest deadline.  Now that it's over, I can do things like grocery shopping (not wasteless unfortunately, but now I have food in my cabinet again so I'm accepting that for the moment). 

I definitely started myself off onto the wrong foot this semester.  I've been running nonstop since I went to France for a conference in August, to the point where even taking time to have dinner with friends or cook or relax on my own felt hard.  I got a few moments - weekends or days away where I intentionally left the computer behind - but overall, I have been a little ball of stress.  And it's affected my life in a lot of ways.

For one thing, I haven't been shopping the way I want to.  In some ways, that's been good because I've been using up things in my cabinet.  On the other hand, I've had a CSA share in my fridge for 2 weeks and I should probably deal with that, but I haven't felt like cooking for a while.  I finally ran out of things in my cabinet and had to go to the neighborhood grocery store, rather than to the CoOp I'd rather shop at but which is far away.  And, particularly in the last week I've just been eating out.  My wallet's not thrilled with me, nor is my conscience. 

I also learned that when I don't get to spend time with friends, especially when I'm stressed and really do need to talk, I become a giant crankypants.  The day before a midterm several weeks ago, I nearly yelled at one of my officemates (of which I have 6, which is a whole other issue) and had to cut myself off midway through a loud, frustrated outburst in response to him.  At which point I walked to a nearby park, sat down, cried, and realized that I was not ok.  I've been spending more time with friends and with myself, but I need to give myself permission to continue doing so.

In short, I've learned that work will expand to fill the time I give it.  I'm hardly the first person to learn this lesson, I know.  But it was hard to be in the middle of it, knowing that I needed to relax and slow down but feeling trapped by the need to get everything done.  I could have asked my advisors and collaborators to give me a week or two off, but I wasn't willing to.  My classwork is mediocre, so I feel like I have to prove myself with research, but the lack of hard deadlines within that is messing with my head.  I'm impatient to get things done, and wanting to impress, but I need to stop biting off more than I can chew.  Otherwise, I'm gonna burn out. 

Anyway, that's me.  Hopefully regular posting will now resume, and there will be one less thunderous looking graduate student on campus. 

I wish I was canning

At the beginning of the summer, I decided that canning was going to take up too much time, so I didn't invest in a canning kit and jars.  I figured I could freeze what I needed.

Well, I'm taking up half the freezer.  I was so used to my old roommate never using the freezer, I forgot what it would be like to seriously share it.  One of my roommates is also freezing food for the winter, and we're running out of space fast.  I'm not sure what we would do if our third roommate were using the freezer in any significant way.  She's moving in a few weeks, so she hasn't added much, but I could see it getting bad if three of us wanted to use significant amounts of space. 

But here's the problem.  I have 5 weeks left in my CSA.  In those 5 weeks, also I need to do the following things:

1. Finish the paper from my 1st-year project.  That WILL happen by Friday.
2. Finish the paper from my undergraduate project.  My 2nd-year project is with a group that is co-lead by of my coauthors.  She's apparently complained about this enough that my PI says my first month is just finishing this old paper.
3. Apply for an NSF fellowship (this assumes the shutdown is resolved before that deadline).  I have no idea what my research plan will be.
4. Grade 2 undergraduate midterm exams.
5. Take my own midterm exam.

I really, really wish I had learned to can this summer.  I did learn that after one or two long, rough tries at a complicated recipe, I can make it pretty efficiently.  I figure canning would follow the same thing.  But I've run out of time for trials.  I'll have basically 1 evening per week to cook.  That already takes several hours, especially if I invite a friend over for dinner, and the thought of trying to learn a new skill on top of it makes my head spin.  So I'm either going to have to start giving veggies away, or figure something out to keep from wasting them.

Grrr!

(p.s. my CSA list is the same as it's been for weeks, so I'm just not posting it)

Summer Goals Recap

I had 5 goals for this summer. How did I do?

1. Work hard and efficiently at research.  This is why I'm here.  Subgoals:  Get the paper from my undergrad project submitted and through revisions (that depends a bit on collaborators and reviewers).   Get the paper for my current project finished by the time I go to a conference at the end of the summer (in France!)

The first half of this, I think I did alright on.  There were definitely some questionable days, but I'm overall pretty happy about how I did.

Subgoals: not met.  I mostly blame collaborators on the undergrad project, because they didn't get back to me for the entire summer until 3 days before I left for my conference.   For my current project, I'm getting close, and since I have to turn a write-up into my department next Friday, I'm pushing to finish the actual paper by then and just turn it in to the department as well.

2. Get my NY residency squared away and transfer all my mail, etc, up here.  I'm no longer a dependent on my parents for tax purposes, so I'm ready to transition away from MD being my primary residence.

Yeah, didn't happen.


3. Get my savings in order.  I set aside some money throughout this year, but didn't do anything with it besides stick it in the bank.  I have a mutual fund that is wanting for contributions, and I want to open a retirement account.  Subgoals: talk to HR since they sent me a letter about retirement plans, and research said plans.

Accomplished.  I opened a Roth IRA, and had a phone conversation with a Vanguard rep who talked over some of their offerings with me.  For the most part, it wasn't anything I hadn't seen on the internet, but it was nice to actually talk with someone and hear things laid out for me specifically.   I haven't contributed to my mutual fund, but I'm not sure whether I will, since it's not tax-deferred. 


4.  Sort some personal stuff out that's currently keeping me from dating anyone, and some other stuff that's screwing up my relationship with my parents.  These might be the same stuff; I'm not yet sure.

Sort of.  I've identified some of the issues with my parents, and I'm working on strategies for improving that relationship.  Related to dating...well, I'm making progress.  I think I'm nowhere close to getting everything sorted, but I'm starting to be ok with going forward and continuing to work on myself, rather than stall.  That could be good or bad, we'll see.


5. Eat or preserve everything in my CSA share each week.

Not perfect.  Maybe 1/3 of the weeks something's gone bad before I could eat it, but it's gone pretty well aside from that.   I've done very little preserving, but that will be changing in the fall since I plan on freezing a lot of things.  

CSA Week Something: Classes have started, but I made good pasta sauce

Argh.  Radio silence was due to vacation combined with a conference in Europe, and then having less than 24 hours between landing and my first class.  And tomorrow I start teaching!

This week, we got:

• Corn
• Tomatoes (1 large, 3 medium, 5 purple-y and 5 yellow plum ones)
• Cucumber
• Zucchini/Summer Squash
• Basil
• Lettuce
• Arugula
• Bell Peppers
• (Chili Peppers) traded for a bell pepper and another squash
• Edamame
• Potatoes

 I did some major cooking last week, which made me happy.  A friend left the city semi-indefinitely and we decided to have a small get-together at my apartment, so I made lettuce soup and chicken, and she brought some food as well.  My share partner Chris took the cucumber, squash, basil, arugula, and potatoes.

After Tuesday, I made a couple big batches of food from Grandma's recipe book :)  First up was corn pudding - I boiled the corn on Wednesday, ate one ear, and sliced the kernels off the rest.  On Thursday night, I mixed the fresh corn with a can of creamed corn and made a half-size batch of corn pudding.

Also on Thursday, I made my Grandma's pasta sauce recipe.  My mom sent it to me last week, and I realized I'd gone hunting the internet and came back with a crappy sauce recipe, when I have a "Grandma's Recipe Book" sitting on my shelf from last Christmas, filled with trusted recipes.   So a much simpler recipe and 4 hours later, there's a lovely dish of pasta sauce in my freezer, ready for lasagna this winter.

I ate the tomatoes that didn't go into the sauce (the 10 smaller ones) with mozzarella cheese, basil from the plant I got from the CSA months ago, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar.  So tasty, and so easy.

Finally, I started my freezer prep for the winter.  Or, well, I guess I started that before I left for vacation, but I'm now doing it consciously.  I LOVE bell peppers, and last year I learned to love chili, along with other dishes that need onions and peppers once they're gone from (or questionable at) the farmer's market.  So I freeze them.   I've got a couple containers of chopped bell peppers, and one of chopped onions, for chili and similar things.  This year I also decided to try freezing some thin strips of onions and peppers for stir-fries and omlettes, so I've got a container of those as well.  I could easily fill our entire freezer, but I think my roommates would not appreciate that.  I think the department freezer has some space, though....hmmm ;)

CSA Week 8: Saucy

No veggies from last week since I was gone!

This week, we got:

• Tomatoes (1 large, 2 medium, and a dozen plum)
• Potatoes
• Rosemary
• Onions
• Cucumbers
• Summer Squash
• (Red loose leaf lettuce) Traded for Yukina Savoy
• Bok Choy
• Sweet peppers

I boiled the Yukina and Bok Choy for dinner last Tuesday with my share partner Chris.  He took home potatoes, a cucumber and the zucchini.  I kept the rest, most of which went into a somewhat successful attempt at making my own pasta sauce.

I think the sauce failed mostly from a lack of garlic and herbs; it came out tasting mostly tomato-y and not very spaghetti-sauce-like.  I also wonder if including the plum tomatoes had anything to do with it, since I know the medium-sized tomatoes are supposed to be better for sauce.  Aside from that, though, making the sauce turned out to be more straightforward than I had anticipated, so I think I'll try again. 

CSA Week 7: relative simplicity and late postings continue

This is actually about last week's share.   I'm at my parents' house this week, hence I'm discussing last week's veggie adventures while my friend Charity takes my half of the share this week.

Veggies from week 6 did not all get eaten.  I forgot to eat the tomatoes before they went bad.  And I hadn't eaten the lettuce, either, but I incorporated it last week.

Last week, we got:

• Basil
• Beets
• 6 Cucumbers
• 4 Squashes
• Lettuce (Green Romaine and Green loose-leaf)
• Swiss Chard
• Red Onions
• Green peppers

Lettuce soup made an appearance yet again - I had some left over from the previous week, so I made a giant batch and froze some.  I simultaneously like lettuce soup for simplicity and flexibility, but it's starting to get old, so I need to figure out something else because the lettuce just keeps coming.

I sauteed some squash, but most of the squash, cucumbers, and green peppers all got eaten raw, dipped in ranch dressing or garlic scape hummus.  It was a lazy week where veggies were concerned, and I didn't feel much like cooking.  It also helped me eat healthier at my desk, which has been a challenge lately.

My favorite dish of the week was roasted beets with ricotta cheese.  Even though the beets took much longer to roast than I had anticipated, that was a delicious lunch.  Cheese is tasty, but who knew it could be a very filling protein component to a meal? (Answer: probably half the internet, but I think the story of this blog is me figuring things out that half the world already knows).   And beets.  I've eaten beets before, all pickled, and though I liked them they were more accents.  As the center-piece to a meal?  SO. GOOD.  And super easy to cook, too. 

Disposable to Reusable, Part 2: Hygiene

When I talk to people about trying to live a more sustainable lifestyle, they almost always ask me for advice and/or say 'oh it must be so hard!'.  The first thing I tell them is to start where they can, and that the easiest place to start is by picking something that's supposed to be disposable and replacing it with a reusable thing.  So here are some of the ways I've switched from throwing away to reusing!

In part 1, I talked about switching from disposable bags and containers for shopping, cleaning, and food.  But what about more, um, personal areas?  Disposable products are marketed everywhere, but they aren't the only option.


An easy start is cutting tissues out of old t-shirts.  This is a great way to use old t-shirts that have gotten soft and snuggly - your nose will appreciate it!

I also have an old decorative bucket that I toss the used ones into until laundry day.


I bought some handkerchiefs at rummage sales, although some were free from my Dad.

Yes, you may object that you're putting something you've blown your nose on back into your pocket or purse, but who hasn't done that with a tissue at some point? There's a lot of cloth in these things - careful refolding prevents using the same spot twice.


Recently, I started shaving with a double-edge safety razor that belonged to my Grandfather. It works just as well as a plastic disposable or cartridge razor, although it takes some extra effort.

Going along with that, I also don't use shaving cream: I just use my regular bar of soap.


***************************
Ok, any squeamish males should stop reading now, personal details below...


For women specifically, we can cut out a significant chunk of trash and cost with reusable feminine hygiene products.  I started with a menstrual cup.

From SquawkFox, who has a list of top-10 reasons to get one

The Diva cup does come packaged in plastic, although its much less than tampon wrappers and applicators, and the hard plastic might be recyclable where you live. 

From a personal standpoint, I find the Diva cup way more comfortable and less hassle than tampons and pads.  It takes some practice to get used to inserting it and removing it, but it deals with heavy bleeding much more effectively than tampons.  Plus its made of silicon, rather than scratchy cotton.  You do have to take care of it, cleaning it with soap on a regular basis and boiling it at the beginning and end of your cycle. 

I back up my Diva cup with cloth pads.  These have more up-front cost if made by someone else, but some people do make their own.  I bought mine from Pleat and Moon Bees on Etsy.

From Pleat on Etsy

From Moon Bees on Etsy

Moon Bees pads cost less because she makes hers out of undyed hemp/cotton fleece. It looks like she's only making dyed cotton pads now though.  Pleat's are prettier and her regular/overnight pads aren't as thick, but they're a little more costly.

Disposable to Reusable, Part 1: Food, Kitchen, and Shopping

When I talk to people about trying to live a more sustainable lifestyle, they almost always ask me for advice and/or say 'oh it must be so hard!'.  The first thing I tell them is to start where they can, and that the easiest place to start is by picking something that's supposed to be disposable and replacing it with a reusable thing.  So here are some of the ways I've switched from throwing away to reusing!

Two of the easiest places to switch to reusable items are in the kitchen and on shopping trips.  

Reusable grocery bags are the base level.  If you do nothing else, do this.

I have more, but they're in the wash.  FYI, its a good idea to run these through the wash after every one or two uses.  It keeps bacteria from building up on the bags.  That's why I use cloth bags, instead of the plastic ones.

I made rags out of t-shirts I'd cut up for other purposes.

I also have some made from old towels.
 

I picked up cloth napkins from yard sales.

I actually have 6 more of these white ones, but they're stained.  Colored ones are better for hiding stains.

Then reusable produce bags and cloth bags for produce or bulk foods.  I'm actually known at my farmers' market for bringing my own produce bags all the time -  almost everyone else uses plastic ones (!!!)

The mesh bags are these from Flip & Tumble.  You could also make your own if you're savvy like that - my Grandma made my cloth ones out of her quilting scraps.  The rice bag came from a friend - I told him about my shopping habits, and he said he'd bought rice in this cloth(ish) bag, but wasn't going to reuse it.  So now it's mine!


Finally, I fill glass jars with dry goods instead of buying pre-packaged foods and spices.

Some of these jars used to hold other things, and I've reused them, while others I bought new.  Many spice jars in particular were purchased already filled, and I just refill them when I run out.

Look out for Part 2 next week!

CSA Weeks 5 & 6: Slow and Unexciting

I had little to say last week, and figured I'd have more this week, but that hasn't been the case.  Everything from the last two weeks has been eaten, and everything from this week will be eaten this weekend, but I haven't been branching out too much.

Last week's share included:

• Red leaf lettuce
• (Oakleaf lettuce) Traded for more turnips
• Sweet Japanese Turnips
• Collards
• Chard
• Cilantro
• Green onions
• A cucumber
• Summer squashes 

I roasted the turnips with olive oil, salt, & pepper, like the kohlrabi a few weeks back, with similarly delicious results.  Lettuce soup occurred again.  Boiled chard.  The collards turned out ok - I cooked them with Trader Joe's chicken sausage because apparently adding meat helps the flavor, but I have yet to master the art of cooking greens slowly without drying them out.  My share partner Chris took the cucumber, squashes, and half the onions.


Then this week, I got:

• Cucumbers
• Summer Squashes
• Japanese Turnips
• Kale
• Lettuce
• Green onions
• An herb that I think is a form of mint
• Tomatoes

 I say "I think" because Chris did the pickup this week, due to me being down with some weird illness, and he didn't read the list at pickup.  I say "I got" instead of "we" because he's going away, so he told me to keep everything.  Thus far, I've cooked kale with onions which took a lot of effort and water to keep from drying out while I cooked it.  And I've been snacking on the cucumbers at work.  The rest is waiting for the weekend, when I have visitors coming in.

And the winner is....

Secret.*

I'm disappointed, but I've given up.  I posted before about struggling to find a more eco-friendly deodorant.  Well, nothing eco-friendly was able to keep me from smelling funky by 3 pm, and one of them gave me a rash.  Here's the breakdown:

Homemade, coconut oil and baking powder

I smelled like a cookie, which I didn't mind but it was kinda strong, and I couldn't tell if other people noticed.  Nonetheless, the baking soda gave me a rash and further experimentation is on an indefinite hold.  I threw it away, which is why its not in the photo below.

I also tried 3 other semi-'natural' deodorants:

Tom's deodorant, Tom's deodorant/antiperspirant, Lush bar, standard brand-name.

Aromaco deodorant bar from Lush

Smell's good and mild, but applying it is a pain (literally, it's hard to get it to melt so it scrapes over my skin).  And doesn't really last.


Tom's of Maine, aluminum-free deodorant

Like the smell (lavender), but it fades by mid-afternoon.  And reapplication only helped for an hour or so.


Tom's of Maine, Naturally Dry Antiperspirant

Unscented.  Literally lasts about an hour.  I smelled gross.


And with that $20 spent, I decided to cut my losses and slink back to chemical, unrecyclable (but cheap!) Secret.

Although actually, with the new expansion to recycling, I might be able to recycle the container if I clean it first.  Not ideal, but better than tossing it.



*The brand is really irrelevant, it was just on sale.

Um, a Green Thumb?

Here's my burgeoning garden:

Basil & Dill, Peppermint, a currently blossomless petunia(?), and a sun-loving flower of unremembered name.  Also pictured: a window that gets direct sunlight!

I moved a month ago, from a sunless 1st floor apartment to an 8th floor apartment where the living room, at least, gets plenty of light.  So I decided the time was right to introduce some plants into my life.  My green thumb is pretty pale, so I hope they survive.  I consider this practice for a real garden someday when I'm not living in a city.  For now, I'm just excited because I have green, growing things perking up my living space :)

I initially had peppermint, cilantro, and two flowers I've forgotten the name of.  I think the one in the little pot is a petunia; the maintenance guy at my last place gave it to me when I moved out.  The tall ones I bought, but the name now escapes me.

There wasn't much rhyme or reason to my selections.  The flowers were supposedly hardy even when lacking water.  I like peppermint tea.  I make recipes that call for cilantro.  I didn't do much investigation about whether these plants survive well in an apartment.

Ultimately, the cilantro didn't survive.  Something infested the leaves, and some ants started a nest in the soil.  So out that went, and in went basil and dill from my CSA.   I think I'm due to get one or two more plants through the CSA, and those will fill out the left-most pot in the picture above.

CSA Week 4: Socializing via vegetables

Everything from last week got cooked! Including very delicious roasted kohlrabi, thank you Miser Mom for inspiration :)

This week we got:

• radishes
• a cucumber
• 3 garlic scapes
• scallions
• a dill plant
• (lettuce) traded for another bunch of yukina savoy
• choose 3 mustard greens -  I picked yukina savoy, chard and kale

This week the share didn't include as much food compared to the first three weeks.  All the bunches of greens were pretty small, and two shared meals took out almost everything for the full share.  I cooked the radishes and made garlic scape hummus again for my vegetarian friend Sloane on Tuesday night. Then my share partner Chris and I sauteed kale & scallions and boiled yukina savoy on Wednesday to go with dill & basil chicken.  The cucumber is headed for a July 4th picnic today,  the lonely chard went home with Chris, and that's the end of this week's share.

When I signed up for the CSA, I planned on cooking with Chris some weeks, but didn't really think about sharing my veggies beyond that.  In reality, it has given me so much more than vegetables.  I've fed friends at least once, and typically twice, from every delivery.  And that's been a huge blessing in my life.

There's the frugality reasoning - even when I add a protein and grain I'm coming out ahead of a restaurant meal (frequently a friend will bring one or the other, so I'm providing even less).  But the primary reason I love sharing my CSA is that inviting people over for dinner lets me spend time with them.  As a somewhat-socially-anxious introvert, it gives me an "excuse" to ask someone to come over.  Sometimes its hard to call someone and say "hey, can we hang out?" unless I know them well and have something specific to talk about.  Saying "hey, can I feed you dinner?" feels like a lower bar somehow.  Plus, acts of service is a big way that I show people I care about them, so I get to love on my friends.  In return, I typically get quality time with them, a major way that I feel loved.  So not only is the CSA good for my health, its good for my heart too.

CSA Week 3: Almost didn't happen!

Everything from last week got cooked! Yay!

I went with my friend Abigail to the Cloisters Tuesday afternoon, but when I left, both downtown trains from there were running with serious delays.  For a while I thought I wouldn't make it, and my share partner Chris was unavailable.  I'm usually one of the first to pickup at 5:30, but this week I only made it with 10 minutes to spare before it closed at 7:30!

This week's share included:

• Romaine Lettuce
• Red Russian Kale
• Swiss Chard
• Bok Choy
• (One pot of cilantro) swapped for more Bok Choy
• Kohlrabi
• Broccoli
• Scallions
• Garlic scapes

Cooking occurred on Wednesday instead of Tuesday this week, both due to my train issues and because Chris and another friend, Maria, came to dinner on Wednesday. I made sauteed Kale and a new version of the lettuce soup from 2 weeks ago.

The basic lettuce soup recipe is still this one.  I used regular garlic instead of green, and scallions instead of onions.  I also cooked the rice longer, because it didn't get all the way cooked last time so the leftovers from the bottom of the pot had lots of little gritty bits.  Fully cooked rice plus less liquid in the end made for a thicker soup, but it was still really good.

My favorite recipe of the week is definitely White Bean and Garlic Scape Hummus.  Abigail pointed me towards it; it is filling and awesome.  I'm actually eating it with pita bread as I type this post. The recipe was simple and called for ingredients I had around; I used lime instead of lemon juice because my roommate left one behind when she left for the summer.

I boiled half the broccoli last night, and let the rest go.  There weren't any good specimens by the time I got to pickup, and this one was ok but wasn't going to last any longer.  Chris took bok choy and chard, and I've still got bok choy and kohlrabi to cook this weekend.  Anyone have good suggestions for Kohlrabi?  I haven't ever cooked it before.

My "No Moving Home" Fund

Despite knowing the importance of an emergency fund, and growing mine this year, I am pretty confident that I won't need it.  After all, grad school is a stable source of income and support, and I have good medical insurance (seeing as I'm still on my parents' plan for now).  So I thought of my emergency fund as a nebulous thing that I wouldn't need for 5 more years, just in case I can't find a postdoc position or there's a gap between defending and my start date.

But this semester I started thinking about whether I'm going to stick all the way to the PhD.  Maybe I'll leave and just teach? Maybe something else will come up?  Classes have sucked and I know that's a big influence, so I'm not going to make that decision until I have my Master's in hand (another 1.5 years), but the thought is there.

Simultaneously I've been thinking a lot more about my relationship with my parents lately.  And how much I do not want to move home (visiting can even be a challenge).  And then it occurred to me, that this was the reason to have an emergency fund.  So that I can continue to live on my own for several months while I transition to a new position, if my path changes that drastically.  In the same way that some folks build up an "F You" fund so they can leave their job with some security, my emergency fund is my backup plan to stay independent if I choose to pursue non-academic goals.

I feel like the money I'm socking away "just in case" has more of a purpose now, and that gives me more reason to stick money in the account. There's probably some discipline to saving with no purpose, but I'm glad to have an idea of where this might go.

CSA Week 2: More green leafy things

Quick update from last week: I've already failed in my goal to cook everything from the CSA.  Gingery garlicy stir-fried joi choi was delicious, and made over the weekend.  The scallions and some chard stalks went into an omelet yesterday morning.  But the radishes, alas, did not make it. 

This week's share consisted of:

• Bok Choy
• (Green Leaf Lettuce) swapped out for more radishes
• Green Onions
• Kale
• Radishes
• Swiss Chard
• and a little pot of Cilantro

My share partner Chris took kale, chard, and one bunch of radishes.  I kept the rest.

I have never cooked with radishes before, so the new experiences continue.  At pickup I thought I would cook 2 bunches, which is why I traded the lettuce in, but then I chickened out.   I made 'skilled-cooked radishes with pan-seared radish greens' with my bunch, which turned out to be way too tangy for my taste.  I think I could have handled either the radishes or the balsamic vinegar, but together it was a little much. 

I also made stir-fried bok choy.  One of my roommates is leaving for the summer, and she told me I could take some tofu she hadn't had time to cook.  I haven't cooked tofu before either, so I found a simple recipe for pan frying it in soy sauce.  Paired with the bok choy and some brown rice it was quite yummy. 

Green onions will go into meat sauce tomorrow.  There are probably better ways to use them, but I'm heading out of town for the weekend, so after dinner with a friend tomorrow I need something easily freezable.

That was easy.

I have a retirement fund! Registered on a whim (sorta) on a Saturday night in less time than it will take me to post about it.  Woo!

It wasn't truly on a whim because I've been thinking about getting my retirement funds off the ground for a while now. This is basically half of my summer savings goal.  For right now, the amount matters less to me than actually starting the account.  Which is a Roth IRA at Vanguard, in case you're wondering.  Their STAR fund has a $1000 minimum and waives the $20/year fee if you register for electronic statements, making it easy for me to jump in and start saving.  

Get Rich Slowly calls the STAR a "mutual fund of mutual funds, a safe choice for beginners."  Right now, I'm don't want to be hands-on with my money.  I want to set it and forget it, as much as possible, because there are so many other things going on in my life.  Plus, I have little desire to get involved with the stock market, and little knowledge* about investing. 

Opening the account was simple and straightforward.  I needed my Social Security Number and bank info (and money in said bank account).  It took me about 10 minutes.  And starting it is the thing.  It's there, its easy to access.  I can set up a regular payment, and start seriously saving.  

This feels like the first big step I've taken into adulthood.  I'm taking control of something that's not school or one of the basic needs in life.  My parents always handled savings.  I knew they were active savers - I saw them meet their financial adviser, and they talked about saving for retirement, and I heard them talk about our college funds - but I wasn't really involved.  Now I'm looking to the long term for myself, which makes me feel kinda weird, actually, because I know most other people my age aren't doing that.  But I feel good about this - I'm starting to take charge of my future and claim my independence.


*a dangerous thing, I know.