Organic Farm Outing

More than halfway through July. We've already gone strawberry picking and raspberry picking at our favourite (well, it's the only one I know about that is within our reach) organic farm www.organicsfarm.ca.

My freezer is filled with field fresh berries to be enjoyed throughout the year. This makes me happy.

Support your local, organic farmers. Go out and enjoy some time with family and pick your own. You won't regret it.

Next time we go out to pick, it'll probably be in September for apples. Let me know if you're interested in joining us.

Farming

Now that spring is upon us...i'm starting to get all excited about fresh local produce. I'm dreaming up various ways to grow stuff even though i live in an east facing condo (i do grow some herbs on my balcony, but i'm pretty sure that given the half day of sunlight i get, that's about all it will support). Here is where my mind is wandering to these days:

1. We have a recreation centre in the middle of our 3 building community with a flat rooftop...even though it'll never fly, i'm thinking about proposing to the board that we make it into a rooftop vegetable garden
2. There's a fair bit of land around our building waiting to get converted into residential. i wonder what it would take for the municipality to turn it into a co-op neighbourhood garden?
3. This is for real - I am so serious about this farming thing, I'm going to seek out a farm that I can spend a weekend on and work at. I'd love to see how much work goes into how a farm is run - not one of those commercial, industrial ones. A nice family run farm that believes in sustainable practices...doesn't have to be organic, but one that i anticipate is going to require a lot of hard work. If anyone out there knows of someone I can contact or if you want to contact me, that would be great.

The main thing I dream about when I own a home is what my garden is going to be like...aaah, my garden.

Mason Jars

I started saving the jars that Classico pasta sauce comes in - not exactly knowing what I would be doing with them. But, when I discovered that they have a standard thread that fits the lids you buy at any general store (Walmart, Canadian Tire, etc...), I was sure that I would find a way to use them.

At first, I was trying to come up with a scheme to get retailers to start reusing them (2nd "R" by priority) similar to the reuse of beer bottles, instead of simply expecting the public to recycle (3rd "R" by priority), but after some basic research, I realized that no sensible business person would ever go for it. (Any retailers out there...would you ever opt for re-using?)

So, when I discovered the lid thing, I decided maybe I would do some canning with them. But I was weary that maybe they were designed for one-time use (booooo!, stupid industries and their one-time use packaging). Well, my research on that was inconclusive as some people said they use them with no problems and other people said this was a no-no. I didn't want to take the chance with canning myself - anyway what would I can? - but I thought maybe someone else out there is seeking these things out and would want them and I could either sell or give them away.

Then I came across the most incredible piece of information: did you know that blenders are created with threads to fit standard mason jars? So instead of dealing with the big, clunky jug thing that comes with the blender, you can screw on your mason jar, blend away and then flip it over for storage or immediate use. I tried the jar on my blender and it fits perfectly, but I still haven't got around to actually blending anything. Doesn't this concept seem so cool? I wish I had an opportunity to try it out. If I wasn't so busy with work, I would just create an opportunity, but there's just no time right now.

The other thing that got my wheels turning was the pantry on a Food Network (Canada) program. I noticed a ton of things being stored in mason jars...it totally clicked for me! Why was I buying jars from IKEA or Kitchen Stuff Plus, when I was recycling perfectly good jars that I could reuse on my own??? I now have cereals, pastas, rice, beans and other dry goods stored in these beautiful jars. It's very exciting and makes me happy in so many ways (yeah, it doesn't take much).

Re-use whenever you can and feel good about it!

Paying for plastic bags - not a solution

Toronto will be implementing a law that requires grocery retailers to charge $0.05 for a plastic bag to take home groceries. The idea is to encourage people to bring reusable bags and therefore reduce the number of plastic bags being thrown away.

Now, for a little background on my opinion before I actually express my thoughts on this.
I have been anti-plastic bags for a really long time. I definitely remember having conversations with one of my classmates in University (about 8 years ago) about how wasteful I think they are and how we agreed that it was important to try, as much as possible, to "just say no" when shopping for anything. Now I also remember some time after that, I met that friend again at his house and the discussion somehow led to plastic bags again and he said that he no longer was so against them, because he actually needed some for the green bin program that really did help reduce the amount of actual garbage going to landfills.

So, at this point in my life, I live in a condo and, unfortunately, I need plastic bags to throw away my garbage. Every week, I shop at Loblaws for our grocery needs (especially in the winter with no farmer's markets around). I bring our trusty grocery bin and 1 reusable cloth bag. The bin is awesome. It's about the size of the hand-held baskets you can use at grocery stores and holds 4-8 plastic bags worth of stuff (depending on what you're buying). If you don't believe this, just think about the times that you've gone shopping and how much you are able to fit in the handheld basket and then how many bags you end up with when you go to checkout. But I digress - the point is, I do use reusable bags/bins for my groceries, but I always try and pack one or two things (especially meat) in a plastic bag, so that I will have them for my garbage bin at home, which I dispose of almost daily. Somehow, another 4-6 plastic bags find their way into my house on a weekly basis, which is why I only take one or two at the grocery store. This is much better than the "bag of bags" that I think most of us have sitting in our homes, or worse, just being thrown directly in the garbage.

If grocery stores and others start charging for plastic bags, people will still need them. And so instead of getting them for free, we are now being taxed for a necessity. Now, I'm not saying that I support plastic bags, but I don't think that this new proposal is the right solution. It's just that my only choices right now are:

• pay 5 cents for plastic bags at my grocery store -->still ends up in landfill
• buy a big box of plastic bags from my grocery store, or other retailer for less than 5 cents/bag, which will probably be more heavy-duty plastic -->still ends up in landfill
• buy "biodegradable" plastic bags from whatever retailer -->made from corn or other vegetation that should be feeding people, not our bad habits (although, i've heard that these bags start deteriorating almost immediately if they get wet, so it almost defeats the purpose of putting your garbage in "a bag")

I don't have the right solution, and I am not going to propose any** because anything that we can do right now is just too difficult to implement on a mass-scale, but the policy-makers out there have to realize that they haven't got it right yet, and they need to continue to think of a better plan. Someone needs to do some root-causing and address that. It won't be easy, but we need to work towards it. If we consider this a small step towards that ultimate solution then this is okay, but if this is politicians patting each other on the back and calling it a day, then this should be an indication of why most people don't have very nice things to say about Governments.

**p.s. okay fine, the best solution I can think of right now is to have consumers pay 5-10 cents for a biodegradeable bag - but there are so many flaws with this solution that I know that something better must exist.

Yoga

I started yoga about 9 months ago. I wouldn't say that I practiced regularly during these past 9 months, but whenever I have gone, it has felt pretty good.

The thing I noticed about the studio that I go to is how wholesome and peaceful it is. And the class environment is so nurturing and supportive.

It must be part of the whole yoga philosophy to be environmentally friendly. It just makes sense that if you are getting in tune with your breath, mind and body and the healing aspect of yoga, that an extension of that would be not to harm others or the world around you.

I like yoga.

Reusable Coffee Mugs

I work on Bay Street in downtown Toronto.
Everyone drinks coffee. I don't think you can walk 50 metres without encountering either a Tim Hortons, Second Cup, Starbucks, Timothy's or many other food retailers that sell freshly brewed coffee.

In every garbage can in the city and office building, coffee cups dominate. Although almost all the shops have moved away from styrofoam into a more "sustainable, biodegradable and environmentally friendly" paper cup, we can still do better.

I have been using a refillable stainless steel desk mug (with plastic lid) for a few months now and it is great. All the retailers always gladly fill my huge cup to the top for the price of a small coffee and at Starbucks, they even give me a $0.10 discount.

Now I get to have my wake-up juice without the guilty landfill. It's awesome. Imagine if everyone did that. Trees saved (although, more on this topic another time), energy saved (for manufacturing and delivering the cups and the packaging associated with delivery - plastic bags and carboard boxes). Would that be so bad?

Rain Barrels

I was at my friends' house this past weekend making jam from fresh picked organic strawberries. When we were finished, we sat and were chatting for a bit. Then the rain came out of nowhere and it was coming down really hard. Ed pointed out that his rain barrel was overflowing. Rain barrels - so awesome. Every household should have at least one of these. Ed pointed out that he uses the water collected whenever it gets really hot and there are bans on watering the lawn and garden. So perfect.

I have heard of really green homes that collect rain water in huge underground tanks and use it for toilets and even that have their own filtration/cleaning system so that the water is drinkable making them completely independent when it comes to water. That's pretty awesome.

Collecting rain water does double duty of saving water required from the city (a big part of the energy used by the city is dedicated to purifying our drinking water - and then people are spending hundreds of dollars to buy bottled water) and preventing it from running off into drains and rivers causing unnecessary erosion. Because our cities are over-paved, rain water does not get absorbed into the ground the way it is supposed to. It runs into our poorly planned sewers and causes flooding in our lakes and streams. That's bad. Especially in all those houses where the downspout is directed into the sewers instead of onto lawns - or rain barrels!

Backyard Farm

All winter long as I rode the GO train into work and looked out the window, there was one backyard along the way that really intrigued me. It looks like it's about 30ft wide and 50ft deep, but there's no lawn or bushes or trees, just a patch of dirt that is obviously where they grow vegetables in the summer. The entire backyard is dedicated to growing food.

Wow. Now that summer is in full bloom, it's so apparent that they have a full-blown little farm going on back there. I see corn, tomato plants, lettuces, and all kinds of other things that I can't yet identify. It's amazing. I just keep thinking how intelligent this family is to be putting their little patch of land to such good use. Imagine how amazing it is for the people living in that house to just step outside and pick whatever vegetables they want to use for dinner that night and then eat it as fresh as absolutely possible. They know exactly where the food comes from, what it took to grow it. It's so healthy and such a great relationship with the land. Bravo! I'm thinking I might knock on their door just to see what I can learn from them.

If I am ever lucky enough to own a piece of land, I most certainly would like to have my own little farm just like that.

Natural air conditioning

Now that the hot summer weather is upon us, I have discovered something amazing about living in our condo: At night, we leave the sliding door to our balcony wide open, with the screen door closed. When we wake up in the morning, our whole suite is cool and it feels very refreshing. Neither Georges or I mind the heat, so we have probably only used the air conditioning once or twice so far this year. And even when we turn it on, it's only to 25 or 26degC just to take away the humidity.

I wonder why everyone doesn't just leave their doors open at night to naturally cool the house and then I remembered that when I was living in a house, it just didn't feel safe to have your living space so exposed (to burglers, prowlers, animals, etc...). One day, if I can design my own single family home, I want to be able to cool the house naturally like this. I'm thinking really high ceilings will have to be involved.

Wasted Food makes me really angry

We had a potluck at work today.

I don't know why, but I always put a lot of effort into my dish for these things. It actually upsets me that there is an option to pay to join. Especially in this case, where you only had to pay $5. I'm sure that the people bringing in food spend a lot more than $5. I know I do.

In my case, I made a sweet and sour chicken (Hakka style, i.e. spicy). And I took the time to skewer them onto toothpicks so that each serving had a piece of chicken, red onion, green pepper, pineapple and carrot.

What really upsets me is that people say, "I don't like vegetables", so they just eat the chicken and throw away everything else. Don't people know the effort that goes into growing, harvesting, transporting and preparing the food? It's such a waste. I know it is partly my fault for assuming that everyone would want a piece of every part of the dish, by skewering them, but I am one of those indignant cooks that thinks that food should be eaten the way it was meant to be enjoyed by the chef. Unless you have an allergy, there is no reason why you should be throwing food away.

Fresh strawberries

I have always been an advocate of fresh food, but I have recently experienced its importance first hand.

Last weekend I went strawberry picking at an organic farm. We ate a couple while we were there at the fields and they tasted incredible. There were the normal ones you get in the grocery store, but they had an incredible sweetness and tartness, and also these small warped ones that tasted so sweet, they were like candy.

At home, while I was washing off the dirt and taking off the stems, I would pop a couple in my mouth to get that fresh strawberry taste. It was sooo delicious. I froze a lot of them so that I will have the berries all summer long. And I kept some of the less ripe ones in the fridge to eat over the next few days. Now, I tasted those ones and thought, maybe they won't have the same sweet deliciousness as the super-ripe ones, but that was not the case. They were a little more tart, but the flavour was still very explosive.

Today, I am on the last of these fresh picked unfrozen berries - so this is Day 5 from being picked. They just don't taste the same anymore. They have taken on that blandness of grocery store strawberries. I don't know if they are that bad, but they have definitely lost a lot of the amazing character they had the first couple of days. I really shouldn't be surprised, but I am. It has really made me wonder if any of us know what really fresh food actually tastes like anymore.

I'm really glad I freeze my berries right away. I wish I could eat them all the same day, but this is the next best thing. This way, I also make one last batch of strawberry jam in the late Fall to remind me of summer. The smell in my kitchen is unbelieveable...almost makes me wish for Fall - but not quite.

Earth Day

Today is Earth Day, so I guess I should post something.
The truth is I have TONS of stuff I want to post on this blog, but the whole eco-thing is everywhere now, that it's easy to get lost in the green crowd.

Today, I want to talk about the economy of driving downtown to go to work. $1.20/L here in the GTA. I think it might have dropped to $1.19. I'm wondering why there are still soooo many cars on the road. Do they really have no alternative? Is there anyone really still driving from the suburbs all the way downtown just to go to work? Let me do a little bit of simple math on how much I save by not driving to work:

One way driving distance = 34.4km (google maps)
I drive a '97 Honda Civic - as fuel efficient as a conventional car can be at an average of 7L/100km (includes city and highway driving), so it's about 2.4L of gas per one way trip

Therefore at $1.20/L of gas, each trip costs about $2.90
Parking costs $8.50/day

So, total transportation cost/day = $14.30
That translates into a monthly cost of ~$286-$329 (20-23 day work month)

Instead, I take the GO train which is a 1km drive from my house and pay $159/month for a pass. I know most people don't live as close to a train/bus/subway station as I do, but come on. We can't just solely blame this on bad city planning. (Maybe, I'll do a post on that next.) The train ride also offers the luxury of sleeping or reading or thinking for an extra 40 minutes each way, rather than dealing with the nonsense of traffic (and trust me, it is stop-and-go almost all the way on the DVP any time of the day, but especially in morning/evening rush hour traffic). The one time I had to drive down there, I'm pretty sure it took way longer than the train and I would never do that unless obligated to. What are all those crazy people doing on the DVP? And why is there only one person in each of those cars?

Okay, so it wasn't much of an eco-post, but I'm just putting it out there.
Take public transportation!!! Carpool!!! A little inconvenience is worth the extra cash! Isn't it?

Soap Dispensers

In the past, I have spent good money to buy a nice soap pump dispenser for my bathroom. Inevitably, something would break and then, my nice soap pump would have to be thrown away to join all the other useless garbage in landfill.

In the past, I have also bought the brand name soaps that come in their own pump-y bottle and then re-used this bottle by filling it up with refill soap. Hilariously enough, these bottles have never broken on me.

So, the lesson is - do not buy those stupid overpriced fancy soap pumps. The one you get for free with the liquid hand soap you buy is better quality and serves the exact same purpose. Does it really matter if the bottle says "vanilla spice" and you have filled it up with "orange spice"? No it doesn't.
And, when the day comes to replace one of these "free" soap pumps, it can be recycled, instead of adding it to landfill.

Also you'll find that these "free" soap pumps come in all sorts of fancy shapes now. I really like the Method brand, which has the added bonus of being fully biodegradable and a brand dedicated to the environment. With that said, I'm not sure why Method has not launched any refill products. I am using their bottle as my kitchen dish soap dispenser. It's perfect.

Bottled Water

Stop drinking bottled water.

Bottled water is not regulated.

There is no flouride in bottled water.

City water - at least the city I live in, has meticulously inspected H2O that many people around the world envy and we use it to flush our toilets, and run down the drain while we do dishes, wash our hands and take showers.

I've been hesitating to write this post because recently in the news there have been reports of lead in the water in older homes where the older lead pipes are starting to degrade. So, okay fine, drink bottled water, if you're afraid there is lead in your water. But lead pipes are a thing of the past.

I drank water straight from the tap until I was in my late teens - no filtering, no boiling, just turn on the tap, fill my cup and be refreshed. Then Evian became the "it" thing with Hollywood celebrities and all of sudden, everyone had to drink bottled water. This must be one of the most obviously unstainable consumerism focused items in our overtly consumerism-focused society.

You know, if you're out and you're thirsty and there's not a water source in sight, go and get that bottle of water, or if you're going to the beach or the park, yeah it's convenient, but don't buy bottled water as your exclusive source of water. It's just crazy.

And now, Dasani (Coke) and Aquafina (Pepsi) are going to be labeling their bottles with "PWS - Public Water Source". Yeah, they make millions and millions of plastic bottles, fill them up with city water, people drink them and then the plastic bottles get thrown away! And recycling is not the answer. Recycling is a poor answer to this problem.

I can keep blabbling about this, but I'm just getting more and more upset and incoherent with every word I write...I'm sure I'll talk about this again in a future post.

Tissue Paper and Paper Towels

For some reason, I always thought that toilet paper and paper towels were made with recycled paper. After reading that this is not always the case and most of us may be wiping our butts with the rain forest, I checked the labels on many popular brands and was horrified to find that there is not even a single mention of any percentage of recycled content.

So, I'm checking the labels now. I've bought a no-name brand that uses 100% recycled paper. I haven't actually used it yet. But it looks perfectly soft and white and woven with fancy patterns, just like any brand I have ever used. It doesn't look like sandpaper or the tissue paper like versions that you sometimes find in public washrooms.

Even if it's not "kitten-y soft" or for "bare bottoms", would that be the worst thing in the world?
I don't know, but I guess I'm going to find out.

Everything's gone Green - have you?

For some reason, I am actually a bit outraged by the current trendiness of "going green". Being environmentally friendly was always somewhat of a priority for me, but it never seemed to be a topic at the forefront. Yet, every single magazine had a green issue recently - Or maybe it's because April was Earth awareness month (Earth day is on April 22nd).

I really hope that this is a trend that is not going to go away. But since "eco-chic" is all the rage, I thought I'd take advantage and do a little ranting.

There is soooo much going on in the world right now, I don't even know where to begin.

Let me start with this:
On the news just now, some anchorman was talking about Sheryl Crowe. He was throwing stones at her because she is asking people to reduce their use of toilet paper, but asks who she is to talk about toilet paper when she tows her entourage around with her on a tour bus from city to city to do her shows.

and

I just read an article about Prince Charles, a long-time environmentalist. The unforgiving British press were apparently going on non-stop about why he was going to fly somewhere to take a ski trip. So much so, that to make a point, the Prince actually cancelled his trip. And once he did, the mocking news bulletin was that he cancelled his trip to save the world.

I myself live in North America. I am surrounded by the luxuries of electricity, clean water, and an over-abundance of cheap plastic goods. I am blessed and fortunate to be where I am, with what I have. No, I am not about to give all that up, but let me ask you:

Just because you can't do EVERYTHING, does that mean you won't do ANYTHING?

Maybe the things that I do are minor and insignificant, but if all of us did it and all of us were conscious about the decisions we make in our every day lives and how they impact not just our immediate space but the global space, how minor and insignificant would it be? I always think about the Chinese saying that goes something like, "how many snowflakes does it take to break a branch on a cherry blossom tree? Just one. (The last one that landed before the branch broke off.)

My snowflake consists of:
1. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle - IN THAT ORDER!!!
2. Reusing plastic bags at the grocery store and everywhere else. When it comes to plastic bags - just say no.
3. Turning off lights and the water when not in use.
4. Public Transportation/carpooling/walking - yes, I own a car. It gets 100km per 7 litres of gas and has a mere 35 litre tank. Thanks to circumstances beyond my control, it only gets driven once a week for 20 minutes.

I welcome all comments - positive, negative, accusatory, praise, counter-arguments and support. Let's start talking about this great green (and blue) earth of ours.

recycling in york

i went downstairs to do some recycling. it was a big cardboard box full of more cardboard and some other stuff that i was going to sort in the recycling room.

when i got to the ground floor, micky, the building manager came running to me as soon as i got off the elevator. for a split second, i thought maybe she was coming to help me (since i had raja strapped to me with the baby bjorn and i had a big box full of stuff. but it was soon apparent that she just wanted to bitch at me, as usual.

she asked what i was doing and was quick to mention that i could not throw paint cans in there. i insisted that paint cans are recyclable, but she said no. hey, that's fine...

so i went back upstairs and printed the webpage from york region indicating that they were. when i brought this down to her, she still wouldn't budge...then after consulting someone, she started telling me that i had to rinse it out first and blah, blah, blah. like she was telling me something i didn't already know. there was no acknowledgement that i had told her something and that she was wrong. instead, she just tried to turn it around on me.

grrr...it drives me crazy when people cannot own up to their mistakes.

Things gone wrong at the condo: The loud fan

So, after I mentioned that Raja's hands were freezing in the morning, the Vineyards got someone to fix the loud fan in our bedrooms.

The mechanic/electrician was kind enough to come at the end of his shift (it's going to be mega cold tonight). When he took everything apart, he found an empty beer can (the tall kind) in the fan.

Yeah, so not only was someone drinking on the job while they were working on my unit, they decided to throw their garbage in here as well.

Will the list of "things gone wrong" ever end?

The Official Unofficial Move-In Date

So, the Vineyards has finally given us a move-in date: December 27, 2006.
Of course, this could still change as the date approaches, but it shouldn't be delayed too much more than that.

Georges and I have started looking around for furniture. Here's the plan for our living/dining room:

We plan to get an expandable dining table so that it can seat 4 people on each side and one person on the end for a total of 10 people.

I like it...and I'm getting pretty excited about being in a brand new place with brand new furniture.

Gelato = Good, Gelato deal = mm-mmm Good

Yesterday, Denise and I decided to go for a walk at lunch to enjoy the great weather we are having. Along Wellington, we discovered a really great meal deal at Solferino. It's a gelato cafe that Denise was already aware of, but what we found out together is that it probably has one of the best kept secret meal deals in the city. We got a healthy bowl of vegetarian chili, a latte bowl (with foam art) and a small gelato for less than $8 (tax incl.) . The chili is a genuine home made version with big chunks of peppers, carrots, garlic and a variety of beans and it even has a little spicy kick. I admit, I have had better lattes before, but the presentation was beautiful. I had never even heard of foam art before, but the frothy milk was designed to look like an apple with a star shaped flower carefully sprinked on top (with cocoa or some other sprinkly thing). But the best part is that gelato was included in the whole deal as well - I cannot actually attest to the taste of the gelato, because Denise and I shared the meal and the gelato was her portion, but I don't doubt it was delicious based on their stunning display of assorted frozen delights and the constant line-up out the door.

Denise and I have decided we must return there sometime soon - maybe because she bought this time and I definitely would use the opportunity to pay her back as a great excuse for another delicious excursion.