I try to avoid plastic, especially plastic that is designed for single use before it goes to the landfill. So I don't use bottled water or liquid soap and I haven't had a takeout meal in months. But it turns out plastic is still inescapable, because everything seems to be packaged in it:
Yogurt, hummus, salsa
Bar soap
Deodorant, even the hippy-dippy salt kind; shampoo, toothpaste, contact lens cleaner, hair gel
Hand cream -- though I paid a pretty penny for some from in an aluminum tube from L'Occitane
Medications and supplements
Toilet paper, even the recycled kind
Dish soap and laundry soap (unless you can find the powdered kind, increasingly rare)
Dry beans, rice, pasta
Oils
This is a partial list, but look around your own home -- you get the idea.
Fruit and vegetables can be found without plastic packaging at the farmer's market, but not at the supermarket, where I otherwise do the bulk of my shopping, so the farmer's market requires a separate stop at a separate location. I don't do enough of my shopping at the farmer's market: life gets in the way.
In other words, even though I cook most of my food from scratch, almost everything I eat comes into my kitchen packaged in plastic which then goes into the recycling bin a few days later.
Plastic recycling is a kind of a scam, it turns out. You can recycle a glass bottle and make another glass bottle; you can turn an old alumin(i)um can into a new one. But used plastic is more limited: it can't be made into another one of the same item. It can be used for pipes, carpets, fiberfill, and fleece clothing.
It takes less energy to make a recycled plastic product than a new one, and it's better to recycle plastic than to put it in the landfill -- but it's far preferable not to use it in the first place. How do we put pressure on the manufacturers to stop?
17 March 2015
11 March 2015
The Cooking-From-Scratch Scam
A comment about organic boxed macaroni and cheese being virtually identical to the regular kind crossed my radar the other day and got me thinking about how the food industry has taught us that we don't know how to cook.
I do almost all of my cooking from scratch, because I'm dealing with a variety of different food allergies and intolerances that make much of what's available in a box inedible, but also because it's how I learned to cook.
The food industry has created all kinds of boxed products and has taught us that we don't know how to cook. But it's not actually that hard to get all kinds of basic meals on the table.
You can make a basic mac and cheese with milk, flour, butter, and cheese. Maybe a little mustard or cayenne, if that's how you roll. You heat those ingredients while the pasta is cooking in a separate pan, mix the two together, and bingo, mac'n'cheese.
The same dish, out of a box? While you cook up some pasta, you mix milk and butter and cheese powder in a separate pan, and after the pasta is cooked, you mix them together. One ingredient less than from scratch. It takes a minute or two to grate real cheese, or to cut it up in little pieces with a knife if you don't have a grater, but you're waiting for pasta to boil anyway.
Pancakes, ditto. Egg, milk, flour, baking soda maybe a little sugar and salt, cinnamon or vanilla, chocolate chips or blueberries if you want to go all out. Or in my case, gluten-free flour, ground flax seeds, and soy milk. And it doesn't even require measuring cups; I eyeball it all.
Spaghetti sauce. It doesn't take that much longer to saute an onion and a little garlic and some celery with some dried herbs and then add tomatoes and cook down for a few minutes than it does to open a jar of prepared sauce.
Mashed potatoes? Yes, it takes longer to clean potatoes, cut them up, steam them, and then mash them with butter and milk (or olive oil and almond milk) than to shake some flakes into a pan of boiling water. But it's not rocket science.
If you're juggling jobs, kids, commutes, maybe caring for an elderly or ill family member, finding the time to scrub potatoes can seem impossible. And it takes some planning: you have to shop, you have to be able to store perishables until you can use them. The Mate and I do a lot of cooking on weekends, and make enough for lots of leftovers. Some get eaten right away, others go in the freezer for next week or next month or next year.
Which is not to say that we never eat beans from a can, tomato sauce from a jar, vegetables from the freezer, or a whole meal of Chinese take-out.
Cooking basic foods from scratch avoids a lot of the carbon footprint of shipping and production, particularly if you buy local products in season. And you get to avoid the excessive salt and sugar and chemicals that go into the bottled and boxed products. And you avoid a lot of plastic packaging.
Want to try? Pick one dish, google some recipes, pick the simplest one, and make it on three occasions. Then you'll know it well enough to throw the ingredients together without worrying about measuring precisely, to improvise if you're out of something, or to experiment with different flavors.
I do almost all of my cooking from scratch, because I'm dealing with a variety of different food allergies and intolerances that make much of what's available in a box inedible, but also because it's how I learned to cook.
The food industry has created all kinds of boxed products and has taught us that we don't know how to cook. But it's not actually that hard to get all kinds of basic meals on the table.
You can make a basic mac and cheese with milk, flour, butter, and cheese. Maybe a little mustard or cayenne, if that's how you roll. You heat those ingredients while the pasta is cooking in a separate pan, mix the two together, and bingo, mac'n'cheese.
The same dish, out of a box? While you cook up some pasta, you mix milk and butter and cheese powder in a separate pan, and after the pasta is cooked, you mix them together. One ingredient less than from scratch. It takes a minute or two to grate real cheese, or to cut it up in little pieces with a knife if you don't have a grater, but you're waiting for pasta to boil anyway.
Pancakes, ditto. Egg, milk, flour, baking soda maybe a little sugar and salt, cinnamon or vanilla, chocolate chips or blueberries if you want to go all out. Or in my case, gluten-free flour, ground flax seeds, and soy milk. And it doesn't even require measuring cups; I eyeball it all.
Spaghetti sauce. It doesn't take that much longer to saute an onion and a little garlic and some celery with some dried herbs and then add tomatoes and cook down for a few minutes than it does to open a jar of prepared sauce.
Mashed potatoes? Yes, it takes longer to clean potatoes, cut them up, steam them, and then mash them with butter and milk (or olive oil and almond milk) than to shake some flakes into a pan of boiling water. But it's not rocket science.
If you're juggling jobs, kids, commutes, maybe caring for an elderly or ill family member, finding the time to scrub potatoes can seem impossible. And it takes some planning: you have to shop, you have to be able to store perishables until you can use them. The Mate and I do a lot of cooking on weekends, and make enough for lots of leftovers. Some get eaten right away, others go in the freezer for next week or next month or next year.
Which is not to say that we never eat beans from a can, tomato sauce from a jar, vegetables from the freezer, or a whole meal of Chinese take-out.
Cooking basic foods from scratch avoids a lot of the carbon footprint of shipping and production, particularly if you buy local products in season. And you get to avoid the excessive salt and sugar and chemicals that go into the bottled and boxed products. And you avoid a lot of plastic packaging.
Want to try? Pick one dish, google some recipes, pick the simplest one, and make it on three occasions. Then you'll know it well enough to throw the ingredients together without worrying about measuring precisely, to improvise if you're out of something, or to experiment with different flavors.
09 March 2015
Lost in the Digital Debate
I've had the privilege of hearing and seeing quite a few live performances of classical music recently, and it's served as a reminder that in addition to dynamics and pitch and time, music has a spatial dimension that recordings can't capture, even high-fidelity stereo and surround-sound systems designed to give the feeling of sitting in the midst of a performance.
The length of a keyboard, the movement of fingers along strings, the arrangement of musicians playing different instruments -- these are lost in an audio recording.
A recording, whether analog or digital, is a substitute we've come to take completely for granted for hearing a live performance. We can listen to the same recording over and over and over again. Vinyl records lost quality in the repetition, the grooves worn down and the sound quality diminished over time, but CDs and MP3s retain whatever qualities they had in the initial recording, no matter how many times they're played.
Audiophiles argue fiercely over variations between analog and digital recordings, but both replace the presence of human beings with a flat piece of plastic that produces sound waves coming out of speakers. A record or a CD or an iPod can't interact with a human auditor.
Meanwhile, people are panicking about the demise of the book, as most of us move to reading on screens of various kinds, for various purposes. You might not have a Kindle, but you're reading this blog on a screen, and your email, and maybe Facebook or the news, scholarly articles or Google.
According to Socrates, written language is a lousy substitute for the spoken word. No matter how many times you ask a book a question, you get the same answer. We've moved since Socrates through stone and wax tablets and papyrus and animal skins to paper. In the past decade, we've fixated on the idea of the book as a physical object rather than a medium for transmission of language.
Watching hands on a keyboard last night, then walking home and hearing an owl hoot twice behind me and to my left, and another bird twittering to my right, I wondered what it is about ink on paper that, at this moment in time, inspires both devotion and fear of loss.
The length of a keyboard, the movement of fingers along strings, the arrangement of musicians playing different instruments -- these are lost in an audio recording.
A recording, whether analog or digital, is a substitute we've come to take completely for granted for hearing a live performance. We can listen to the same recording over and over and over again. Vinyl records lost quality in the repetition, the grooves worn down and the sound quality diminished over time, but CDs and MP3s retain whatever qualities they had in the initial recording, no matter how many times they're played.
Audiophiles argue fiercely over variations between analog and digital recordings, but both replace the presence of human beings with a flat piece of plastic that produces sound waves coming out of speakers. A record or a CD or an iPod can't interact with a human auditor.
Meanwhile, people are panicking about the demise of the book, as most of us move to reading on screens of various kinds, for various purposes. You might not have a Kindle, but you're reading this blog on a screen, and your email, and maybe Facebook or the news, scholarly articles or Google.
According to Socrates, written language is a lousy substitute for the spoken word. No matter how many times you ask a book a question, you get the same answer. We've moved since Socrates through stone and wax tablets and papyrus and animal skins to paper. In the past decade, we've fixated on the idea of the book as a physical object rather than a medium for transmission of language.
Watching hands on a keyboard last night, then walking home and hearing an owl hoot twice behind me and to my left, and another bird twittering to my right, I wondered what it is about ink on paper that, at this moment in time, inspires both devotion and fear of loss.
25 February 2015
Things I Forgot About Long Runs
It's been around 20 years since I've been able to run long. Since then, I've done some very long bike rides and hiked the Hundred-Mile Wilderness and climbed Mt. Katahdin (around 115 miles total) in seven days. But since The Offspring came along eleven years ago, and I started being plagued by chronic health problems, I haven't done anything close to that strenuous.
In my training for the Milton Keynes Marathon, I'm only running twice a week in the hopes of staving off re-injury. I'm mixing it up with weights, bike rides, yoga, the occasional swim. But there are still the weekly long runs.
And there are things I'd forgotten.
The Hunger. Oh, the hunger. When I was training for the New York City marathon in 1991, I'd do a long run and then go out for brunch: pancakes, eggs, fruit, home fries, plate after plate of food. On backpacking trips, I always lose weight -- I just can't eat enough to keep up with the calorie needs.
I've gone vegan since then, so no more eggs and cheese, and packing in the calories can be a bit of a challenge. I'm also trying to stick to real food -- no goos or weird energy bars or sports drinks -- and I'm still working on finding easily digestible high-calorie gluten-free vegan foods for mid-run. And I'm open to suggestions!
The fatigue. I'm sleeping well. Very, very well.
Black toe nails. For me, it's always the second toe on the right foot. Switching to wool socks helped with shorter runs, but that nail will be long gone before I get to the marathon starting line. No, I'm not going to post a photo.
The pain. Was training this painful when I was a quarter century younger? Did the long runs hurt this much? It's not even the whole of the long runs; only the part where I run longer than the previous longest run, forcing myself to push through and just keep moving. If running hurt like this when I was in my 20s, I've completely forgotten.
Runner's high. The best part. I'd forgotten about the euphoria during long runs. Monday's run was 13.5 miles along the River Cam towpath -- sun, wind, clouds scudding across the fields; birds of many kinds and occasionally another runner. It was glorious.
I also forgot how good it feels the day after a long run, the pain gone and the stiffness receding. I forgot how awesome it feels to be in really great shape.
And when I was younger, I took running for granted. I didn't finish every long run feeling like it was a miracle I could even get out there. Now, I feel grateful during every run that I'm able to do it.
In my training for the Milton Keynes Marathon, I'm only running twice a week in the hopes of staving off re-injury. I'm mixing it up with weights, bike rides, yoga, the occasional swim. But there are still the weekly long runs.
And there are things I'd forgotten.
The Hunger. Oh, the hunger. When I was training for the New York City marathon in 1991, I'd do a long run and then go out for brunch: pancakes, eggs, fruit, home fries, plate after plate of food. On backpacking trips, I always lose weight -- I just can't eat enough to keep up with the calorie needs.
I've gone vegan since then, so no more eggs and cheese, and packing in the calories can be a bit of a challenge. I'm also trying to stick to real food -- no goos or weird energy bars or sports drinks -- and I'm still working on finding easily digestible high-calorie gluten-free vegan foods for mid-run. And I'm open to suggestions!
The fatigue. I'm sleeping well. Very, very well.
Black toe nails. For me, it's always the second toe on the right foot. Switching to wool socks helped with shorter runs, but that nail will be long gone before I get to the marathon starting line. No, I'm not going to post a photo.
The pain. Was training this painful when I was a quarter century younger? Did the long runs hurt this much? It's not even the whole of the long runs; only the part where I run longer than the previous longest run, forcing myself to push through and just keep moving. If running hurt like this when I was in my 20s, I've completely forgotten.
Runner's high. The best part. I'd forgotten about the euphoria during long runs. Monday's run was 13.5 miles along the River Cam towpath -- sun, wind, clouds scudding across the fields; birds of many kinds and occasionally another runner. It was glorious.
I also forgot how good it feels the day after a long run, the pain gone and the stiffness receding. I forgot how awesome it feels to be in really great shape.
And when I was younger, I took running for granted. I didn't finish every long run feeling like it was a miracle I could even get out there. Now, I feel grateful during every run that I'm able to do it.
01 February 2015
Never Enough
"Sustainability" is, as Timothy Morton points out, useless at this point: we can no longer sustain the way of life that has led to rising sea levels, drought and forest fires, and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. We need to make drastic changes to the way of life that has brought us to this point.
The problem for individuals is that life is full of lousy choices. Organic apples from Italy, or conventionally grown ones from an orchard a few miles away? Contribute to greenhouse gases or to killing the bees?
Taking the train rather than flying seems like a no-brainer, but somehow short-haul flights from the UK to Europe, this year at least, are significantly cheaper than train tickets.
Going vegan helps. Avoiding food waste helps. But on an individual or family scale, it's a drop in the bucket. Not owning a car helps, and it's feasible in the UK, but when I move back to the US in a few months, the lousy choice will be between driving or not seeing family members. Avoiding fast fashion helps, but it's hard to say "no" to cheap clothing that a kid will outgrow in a season. And I don't have to live on the minimum wage.
Fiona Houston writes engagingly in The Garden Cottage Diaries about her year living in the conditions of a person in 1790. She's partially retired, though during her year she returned to the 21st century for a few hours a day to check email, write about her experience, and work on some other projects. Still, she could take the time to tend a substantial garden and spend hours each day preparing food, heating water for cleaning, or walking several miles to town and back to buy milk and cheese.
Real change is possible only with large-scale, government-enabled projects. But we've elected a government dedicated to gutting the EPA, ignoring science, and allowing climate crisis to deepen. I don't know what the world will be like when my son is 50 years old, or any grandchildren that come along. I'm afraid to imagine it.
The problem for individuals is that life is full of lousy choices. Organic apples from Italy, or conventionally grown ones from an orchard a few miles away? Contribute to greenhouse gases or to killing the bees?
Taking the train rather than flying seems like a no-brainer, but somehow short-haul flights from the UK to Europe, this year at least, are significantly cheaper than train tickets.
Going vegan helps. Avoiding food waste helps. But on an individual or family scale, it's a drop in the bucket. Not owning a car helps, and it's feasible in the UK, but when I move back to the US in a few months, the lousy choice will be between driving or not seeing family members. Avoiding fast fashion helps, but it's hard to say "no" to cheap clothing that a kid will outgrow in a season. And I don't have to live on the minimum wage.
Fiona Houston writes engagingly in The Garden Cottage Diaries about her year living in the conditions of a person in 1790. She's partially retired, though during her year she returned to the 21st century for a few hours a day to check email, write about her experience, and work on some other projects. Still, she could take the time to tend a substantial garden and spend hours each day preparing food, heating water for cleaning, or walking several miles to town and back to buy milk and cheese.
Real change is possible only with large-scale, government-enabled projects. But we've elected a government dedicated to gutting the EPA, ignoring science, and allowing climate crisis to deepen. I don't know what the world will be like when my son is 50 years old, or any grandchildren that come along. I'm afraid to imagine it.
23 January 2015
And Then The Pain Disappeared
Twenty years ago, I injured my iliotibial band while training for a half marathon. I went for physical therapy but it didn't take and for years, I couldn't run more than about two and a half miles without pain. I gave up running and I gave up triathlons (because running), but I took solace in the fact that I could still hike and swim.
Three or four years ago it occurred to me that maybe they'd come up with some new ideas about treating ITB problems. So I googled and found out that, indeed, the stretch and massage protocol in use in the 1990s didn't help a lot of people, and they were recommending strengthening instead. So I joined the gym and after a few months on the weight machines found I could run three miles, three and a half... four....
And then, in a fit of optimism or insanity, I signed up for a marathon.
During my eight-mile run yesterday, my ITB started to feel stiff. And then the outside of my knee started to ache. This is a bad sign: it gets so painful I can barely walk, to say nothing of running.
But then I remembered what my yoga teacher said a few weeks ago: if you have stiffness in your body, a frozen shoulder, you can use your mind to let go.
I was kind of pissed at the time; I've been working on recovering from a shoulder injury since a car accident three years ago, and he was saying all I had to do was think about it relaxing? But I was also intrigued.
But during the run, I recalled what he'd said, and since I was three miles from home, it was getting colder and darker, and the only other option was to walk home across the fields, I decided to try. I put all my mental energy into relaxing the hip.
I was also channeling the physical therapist who worked on my shoulder last year. He'd say, "loose, loose" while he was drilling into a pressure point with his knuckles and causing me exquisite pain. (And when I say "exquisite," I mean "excruciating," but for some reason the medical profession likes the other term.)
And I felt both of my hip joints relax, and more motion come into them as I ran, and both my feet straightened -- I've always been pigeon-toed -- and the pain in my knee disappeared. I spent the rest of the run telling myself to stay loose. I stopped to walk a couple of times, but mostly I just kept trotting along, trying to feel like water flowing home.
I still can't really believe it. But I got home from the run and walked up a flight of stairs without pain, and I'm still pain-free today (though a little stiff). And hopeful. Incredibly hopeful.
Three or four years ago it occurred to me that maybe they'd come up with some new ideas about treating ITB problems. So I googled and found out that, indeed, the stretch and massage protocol in use in the 1990s didn't help a lot of people, and they were recommending strengthening instead. So I joined the gym and after a few months on the weight machines found I could run three miles, three and a half... four....
And then, in a fit of optimism or insanity, I signed up for a marathon.
During my eight-mile run yesterday, my ITB started to feel stiff. And then the outside of my knee started to ache. This is a bad sign: it gets so painful I can barely walk, to say nothing of running.
But then I remembered what my yoga teacher said a few weeks ago: if you have stiffness in your body, a frozen shoulder, you can use your mind to let go.
I was kind of pissed at the time; I've been working on recovering from a shoulder injury since a car accident three years ago, and he was saying all I had to do was think about it relaxing? But I was also intrigued.
But during the run, I recalled what he'd said, and since I was three miles from home, it was getting colder and darker, and the only other option was to walk home across the fields, I decided to try. I put all my mental energy into relaxing the hip.
I was also channeling the physical therapist who worked on my shoulder last year. He'd say, "loose, loose" while he was drilling into a pressure point with his knuckles and causing me exquisite pain. (And when I say "exquisite," I mean "excruciating," but for some reason the medical profession likes the other term.)
And I felt both of my hip joints relax, and more motion come into them as I ran, and both my feet straightened -- I've always been pigeon-toed -- and the pain in my knee disappeared. I spent the rest of the run telling myself to stay loose. I stopped to walk a couple of times, but mostly I just kept trotting along, trying to feel like water flowing home.
I still can't really believe it. But I got home from the run and walked up a flight of stairs without pain, and I'm still pain-free today (though a little stiff). And hopeful. Incredibly hopeful.
19 January 2015
Oh My God You Guys, I Signed Up For A Marathon
I ran New York in 1991, half a lifetime ago, and I've been saying for years that I'd run another when I was 50. That used to be a really distant target.
Fifty came and went. But the stars seem to be aligned right this year. After years of exercise only to get back to some kind of base fitness after each illness, I've managed to get a little farther. The injuries that have plagued me for years are leaving me alone. Maybe it's because I'm on sabbatical, and I don't have the commute from hell, and when I need to rest... I can rest.
I was going to sign up for a half marathon first, but the race I had in mind filled up. I found another ... and there's both a half and a full marathon on the same day. And runners can change their registration from one race to the other. So I went hell-for-leather and signed myself up for the marathon.
I may have to switch to the half. I may not make it to the starting line at all. I signed up to make sure I have a spot in case I'm able to get there. And I'm going to give it a try.
I'm signed up for the Milton Keynes marathon on May 4, and I'm fundraising for Sustrans, the rough equivalent in the UK of New York's Transportation Alternative. Sustrans advocates for sustainable transit -- bike lanes and good public transportation network. If you're interesting in supporting Sustrans and my run, click here for the marathon web site.
May the Fourth be with me?
Fifty came and went. But the stars seem to be aligned right this year. After years of exercise only to get back to some kind of base fitness after each illness, I've managed to get a little farther. The injuries that have plagued me for years are leaving me alone. Maybe it's because I'm on sabbatical, and I don't have the commute from hell, and when I need to rest... I can rest.
I was going to sign up for a half marathon first, but the race I had in mind filled up. I found another ... and there's both a half and a full marathon on the same day. And runners can change their registration from one race to the other. So I went hell-for-leather and signed myself up for the marathon.
I may have to switch to the half. I may not make it to the starting line at all. I signed up to make sure I have a spot in case I'm able to get there. And I'm going to give it a try.
I'm signed up for the Milton Keynes marathon on May 4, and I'm fundraising for Sustrans, the rough equivalent in the UK of New York's Transportation Alternative. Sustrans advocates for sustainable transit -- bike lanes and good public transportation network. If you're interesting in supporting Sustrans and my run, click here for the marathon web site.
May the Fourth be with me?
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