Kimchi, Jewish Mother Version

I love kimchi. I love it on rice, in soup, on nachos, tacos, burritos, and quesadillas, on pasta, on sandwiches and burgers. I love to eat it plain, straight from the jar, whenever I feel a cold coming on or just want a hit of spicy heat.

I don’t so much love many of the jarred versions available at my local stores – Most of them are too sweet, or not funky enough, or the pieces are larger than I like them (true, I am a bit picky). There is one brand that I adore: Midori Farm in Port Townsend, Washington, makes amazing kimchi. Sadly, at $12 a jar, I cannot afford to eat as much of it as I’d like. Out of financial necessity, I’ve been forced to make my own. I’m very happy with what I’ve created by playing with the recipe in the New York Times’ DIY Cooking Guide. I’ve done so much tinkering that my kimchi no longer resembles anything remotely authentic.

This is my Jewish Mother Version. I use green and purple cabbage instead of napa – It grows where I live, it’s inexpensive, and I like to think my kraut- and borscht-eating ancestors smile down upon this new way to get regular old cabbage into the bellies of the latest generation of our family. I add dates and an apple for their symbolism and sweetness. I push this kimchi on my children whenever possible, and although they almost never take me up on a bite straight from the jar, they’ll eat it when it’s stirred into soup. I’m a big believer in my matzoh ball soup, and I think kimchi has the same restorative and healing powers.

Here’s how to make my Jewish Mother Kimchi – Tinker around to make your own version. If you’re new to fermenting foods at home, check out a copy of Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz for all the information and inspiration you need.

What you’ll need:

• Large stainless steel mixing bowls
• A collection of glass jars with lids
• Approximately 3 pounds of green cabbage (one good-sized head)
• Approximately 3 pounds of purple cabbage (one good-sized head)
• Sea salt, coarse grind. I get a much better price at H Mart than locally.
• 6-8 carrots, peeled
• 1-3 daikon radishes, peeled. The locally grown daikon I get through Bainbridge Barter are smaller than the jumbo daikon from the grocery stores, so I used 3 for my most recent batch.
• 1 medium/large onion, quartered, or a handful of fresh green onions, coarsely chopped. For this batch, I used my small home-grown onions, 1 white and 2 red. When my garden has them, I like to use the green tops of my walking onions.
• 1/2 – 1 head of garlic, to taste, cloves peeled. When garlic scapes are in season, I use those; the rest of the year, I use our home-grown Inchelium Red garlic.
• Fresh ginger root, peeled and cut into 3/4″ chunks
• 1 small apple, quartered and cored
• 6-8 Medjool dates, pitted
• Fish sauce – I recommend a bottle of Vietnamese fish sauce, nuoc mam. Read labels to be sure you’re getting one without artificial colors or other unnecessary additives. I like the flavor of nuoc mam better than Thai nam pla (I’ve never tried Korean fish sauce, aek jeot – I’ll have to look for a bottle).
• Tamari
• Gochugaru – Korean red chili pepper powder. Go for a brand that is 100% pepper flakes, no salt added. Since I can’t find this locally, I get it from the nearest H Mart and store the opened bag in the freezer between batches. Don’t go substituting another sort of pepper powder for gochugaru; you need this exact flavor.

What to do:

This is a two-day process.

Day One, to be done just before bedtime:

First, chop your cabbages up. Slice the leaves into thin ribbons, then cut these ribbons into whatever sized sections you desire. I like thin ribbons sliced again into pieces 1 – 2″ long, just right for bite-sized finished kimchi. Toss the solid cores into your compost.

Put your sliced cabbage into large stainless steel bowls and add 1/3 cup of sea salt to each bowl of cabbage. Toss well so salt is more or less evenly distributed. I put my green cabbage into one bowl, the purple into another, because I like how it looks. Push as hard as you need to to pack the cabbage into your bowls. You don’t need to be gentle, the cabbage can take it.

Add enough fresh water to cover the cabbage in each bowl, and invert a plate over each to keep the cabbage completely submerged.

Your work for day one is complete. Leave the cabbage to brine and head to bed. 

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Day Two:

This is the action packed day.

In a food processor, pulse the onion, garlic, ginger root, apple, and dates until you have a mostly smooth puree.

In a large glass measuring container, combine and mix well:

• 1/2 cup fish sauce
• 1/4 cup tamari
• 1 1/2 cups gochugaru. If you like fiery hot things, use more; if you don’t like spicy  heat, use less. I make a version we call “kidchi” with 2 Tablespoons of gochugaru.

Add the puree from the food processor to the red pepper paste and mix well.
Set aside and turn your attention to the vegetables.

Julienne the carrots and daikon, then cut each matchstick into a bite-sized piece (or leave them long, as you desire).

Drain each bowl of cabbage, reserving the brine from one bowl for later use. I save the brine from the bowl of purple cabbage – It’s the most amazing color! Squeeze or press on the cabbage in a colander to get most all of the brine out.

Set the drained cabbage back into the steel bowls, dividing the green and purple shreds evenly so that each bowl has half of each cabbage color.

Add the carrot and daikon pieces and toss well with your hands.

Add half of the red pepper mixture to each bowl of cabbage, carrots, and daikon.

Using your hands, massage the paste evenly into each bowl of vegetables, so that each piece of cabbage, carrot, and daikon is coated with a schmear of red. Roll up your sleeves and get to work.

Beware: Do not rub your eyes! The chili powder will burn like crazy! Also, if you have any cuts on your hand, you’ll want to wear food-grade gloves, since the paste will burn any damaged skin.

Once everything is nicely coated, it’s time to pack the kimchi into your empty jars. Fill each jar by hand, pressing down with your fingers to pack the mixture in. Leave at least the top 2″ empty, more if your jar has a sloped top. You need room for a bit of brine, and to keep the kimchi from touching the BPA-coated lid (it’s almost guaranteed that your jars’ lids have a layer of BPA, and that’s not something you want leaching into your food).

When you have the kimchi packed into jars, ladle the reserved brine into each jar to fill it to the brim.

Using a wooden chopstick or similar instrument, poke down to the bottom of each jar, working your way around the edges and into various points inside. This helps the brine find its way down to the bottom, eliminating any air pockets that formed when you packed the jars. The brine you ladled into each jar will seep down into the contents, exposing the kimchi again.

Once you’ve helped settle the contents of each jar this way, add more brine. You want each jar’s ingredients to be completely covered by brine, so that nothing solid is poking out the top. Press down with your fingers or the chopstick as necessary to make this happen.

Put a lid on each jar, and set each jar into a bowl on a counter in your house that’s out of direct sunlight. You could set all of the jars into a large lipped tray, but I think you’ll find it easier to empty individual bowls…And you will need to empty the bowls, because within 24 hours, the jars will start fermenting. Brine will be forced out of the top, either on its own or each time you open the jars. Or both.

Check each jar once a day, opening it to release the pressure and to verify that everything is still covered by brine. If anything solid is exposed, poke it back under. You can add more of the reserved brine if needed, but I’ve found that a few new pokes with the chopstick almost always settles everything back down into the briny bath.

You can eat the kimchi fresh from the day it’s packed into jars, but I like to let mine ferment at room temperature for about three days. Taste yours each day and see what you think. When you like the flavor, move the jars to your fridge to slow the fermentation. Remember to open the jars at least once a week when they’re in the fridge, so you don’t inadvertently create a kimchi bomb.

This recipe makes at least 7 24-oz jars of kimchi, enough for daily consumption and sharing with friends. You could make a half-batch, no problem. But did I mention this is good on latkes? And that it keeps for a long, long time in the fridge?

B’tei Avon! (That’s Bon Appetit in Hebrew, in case you were wondering)

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DIY Laundry Powder Less Plastic

I don’t always wash my clothes, but when I do, I like to use my own DIY Laundry Powder Less Plastic.

Given the recent research identifying synthetic lint particles as a component of marine micro-plastic debris, I’m being even more careful to wash our clothing with synthetic content only if it’s truly dirty, beyond what spot-cleaning can manage.

Even our cotton and wool clothing is going longer between washes, the happy result of the union between my lazy approach to housework and my desire to lower our water footprint. In this, at least, I’m not alone. Even Levi Strauss is urging people to wash their jeans less often – Apparently, some time in the freezer will freshen them up nicely. I haven’t tried that yet, but I do have room in my Freecycled chest freezer…

Still, there are times when a trip through the washing machine is in order. Life with young children, chickens, and dogs provides one with plenty of soiled clothing opportunities; there is no shortage of things wet, sticky, and stinky to step in or be smeared with.

Here is my plastic-free approach to laundry powder. This is concentrated; a full load in my top-loading washing machine needs 1 Tablespoon (maybe a scant 2 Tablespoons if things are horribly soiled). A single batch of this lasts me a couple of months, at least. I add white vinegar as a fabric softener and to reduce build-up of soap in the fabric and my washer. Several months into this experiment, our clothing, linens, and other washables are all turning out clean and fresh and ready for more, more, more wear. All of these ingredients are readily available in recyclable plastic-free packaging, and for less than the same amount of commercially made laundry detergent generally costs.

DIY Laundry Powder Less Plastic

What you’ll need:

• Borax
• Washing Soda
• Bar of Soap – Nothing beats Fels-Naptha for stain fighting, but it appears to have some petroleum-derived ingredients. Since breaking up with Fels-Naptha, I’ve been experimenting with Kirk’s Original Coco Castile and Dr Bronner’s Magic All-One Classic Fair Trade Bar Soap; they both seem to work without a lot of build-up.
• Grater
• Large bowl for mixing – Glass or metal, so you can wash it clean of all residue.
• Large jar for storage, with a nice, tight lid.

What to do:

Grate your bar of soap into your large mixing bowl. I use the fine shred section of my grater to do this, since I want the soap to be as small as possible for the next step.

To the grated soap, add:

• 1 cup Borax
• 1 cup Washing Soda

laundry powder before mixing

Stir or mix with your hands until everything is very well blended and mostly smooth, with the curls of grated soap broken down. I find that mixing this with my hands is just as good as using a food processor to blend it all together; a spoon just doesn’t work as well. I wear an old pair of rubber gloves to do this, for safety and my skin’s sake.

laundry powder after mixing

Spoon the finished mix into your large jar and keep the lid screwed on well between uses.

finished laundry powder in a jar

CAUTION: This is poisonous! Keep out of reach of children and anyone else who might want to taste some! Label the jar so that everyone who comes near your laundry area knows this is not at all edible.

Foraging in Parking Lots

The other day, we needed a paper clip for a packet of school forms. We searched through the jam-packed kitchen drawer that serves as our all-purpose storage area for anything we can cram in there, to no avail. We found a lot of things – the dogs’ vaccination tags, AAA batteries, a compass, a light stick, a headless toy deer, to-go menus for restaurants that we never eat at – but not a single paper clip.

“Hey!” shouted Ava, “We just need to go to the parking lot and look for one!”

And sure enough, when we stopped by the large grocery parking lot later that day, we found a metal paper clip. Not just any paper clip; this one was more than fully functional, it even had some decorative etching – A fancy paper clip.

Ice Cream at the Rotary Auction Dumpster - The Recycle Team dumpster crew at their favorite foraging spot: Free toys and free ice cream!

And I realized that, in my kids’ minds, the first stop for any necessary or desired item is not a store. We grow a lot of our produce and have our hens for eggs, and we get almost everything else through the barter potlucks or the generosity of friends. We forage in local woods and marshes for mushrooms and nettles and other wild greens. The girls’ favorite toys at the moment are the ones they rescued from the Rotary Auction dumpster. And now we get our office supplies from local parking lots.

It’s a bad news/good news sort of thing:

(BAD) We’ve reached this point where there is so much durable waste in our environment, not just corralled in landfills or recycling centers, that (GOOD) you can find almost everything you need, if you only look. Our earth now supplies not just food and shelter, but modern office supplies and more.

My kids will be the first to tell you that shopping this way is a lot more fun than any trip to the store – It’s a free treasure hunt, complete with the rush of adrenaline that comes with the thrill of discovery.  Onward, parking lot foragers and dumpster divers!

My Love Affair with Death, and How It Ended Well.

I wrote this to read during our chavurah‘s Kol Nidre service on Erev Yom Kippur. This was hard for me to write, mostly because I get very self-conscious talking about spirituality; I always feel like I’m churning out a really schmaltzy greeting card that will be adorned with pastel flowers, and maybe a singing bird.

I’m really more of an Monotheistic Animist at heart, and the word “God” conjures up an image of something very different for me than a tall white bearded man striding through some crystal cloud palace in the sky (although that is how I picture Zeus). But you can picture whatever, or whomever, you like, and make what you will of this offering.

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“Choose life!”, the Torah tells us, “I call heaven and earth to witness you today: I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse – Therefore choose life that you and your offspring may live.”

What could possibly be more obvious? It’s one of those choices that can feel so automatic, we lose sight of the presence of a choice. Our hearts pump, our lungs contract and expand, our bodies are run by involuntary reflexes. It takes us a few newborn minutes to sort out the basics, but then we’re off and living. What sort of a choice is this, then, this choosing life?

We are spirits in mortal bodies, death is coming for each of us, whether we choose it or not. And right now we are each alive, whether or not we consciously chose life this morning. And yet, we do have a choice, each of us. Life and death, they are both options at any time, every moment of every day.

You can find many essays about this pointing out that what God really meant, of course, was to choose a spiritual life, a good life, a life on the right path. But what if it also means exactly what it says? What does it mean to choose life, to choose life, to choose your own one life?

For me, life was not an automatic choice. I spent years trying very hard to choose death. I ran after it, I prayed for it, I desired its sweet and eternal embrace. I did not care if I was the one by fire, the one by water, the one by brave ascent, the one by accident; I just wanted to be the one, inscribed in the book of death.

I’m not sure it matters why, and I think it wasn’t just one thing. I think I chose a vision of the world when I was young and that vision informed my future choices about what to see and what to ignore. When I was three and my sister 6 months old, our birth mother walked out, telling us she was going to live with some other children who really needed a mother. My sister grew up sunny and literally bursting with song and dance, so perhaps I was born with my own dour personality, the opposite of hers. But from that day on, I was convinced that the world was rotten at the core, that human connections were doomed, that life was going to be nothing but suffering, that life was not worth choosing.

By the time I was a teenager, I was depressed with a goal: Death. I didn’t want a dramatic or messy suicide attempt, I wanted to be dead, already. Other kids planned for future careers, dreamed of love and marriage and children, knew they were headed for wonderful things. My secret plan was to be dead. I knew where I was headed: Not to some heaven, cavorting in the light, but plainly stone cold unconscious, forever. Nothing else seemed as alluring as this permanent and never-ending stillness and lack of presence.

That meeting with the college guidance counselor, that algebra grade, that cute boy, none of it was really important. I had no need to think of the future, to plan ahead. I knew where I’d be, and my destination required no special skills, no study or preparation of any kind. The love of my parents, the love of my sisters, the love of my whole family, my friends and my teachers; all the love that surrounded me rolled right off my death-oiled feathers. I felt only pain, I saw only the bad things, the bad people, the suffering of the world, a world seemingly governed by cruelty both targeted and random. In this gloom, Death was a kind god, and I prayed for his favor.

Until one day, one day that started out like all the others. I was fresh out of a month in the hospital for depression, a choice my parents helped me make when I couldn’t sleep any more, but when being awake was so painful, I was stepping out into city traffic, hoping that a driver wouldn’t be able to stop in time. I earned myself a release back into normal life by signing a contract promising that I would stop this dangerous behavior. I lied, but I figured that didn’t matter: It’s hard to hold a dead girl to a contractual agreement.

I was free again to look for a carefully careless stumble that would stop my heart, but I also had family counseling sessions to attend. On this day, I decided I’d had enough of therapy. I stood up, announced that I was leaving, and I headed for the elevator, off to see how I might cast my life away.

What happened next was most unexpected. I punched “lobby” in the elevator, and I was suddenly standing on holy ground, my soul flooded with a heavy and very unfamiliar knowledge that I was beloved by the universe.

That even I deserved to live. That maybe I was nothing special, but that no one was; we’re all the same that way: Imperfect, intentionally so.

That I was truly, really and truly, as deserving of life as every single other person on the planet.

That it didn’t matter how stained or tattered my soul felt, it was still a soul just like every other, a fragment of the light and breath of something eternal and unifying.

That maybe all of life was just suffering, but it was life, all at once mundane and seemingly individually insignificant, and precious all the same.

That sure, maybe my life sucked, but it was mine, my very own, perhaps not destined for worldly greatness, but to be treasured for itself because it was a life, a conscious life.

That it was not a cosmic mistake, this life of mine, that it was of value, beyond value, and meant for me, yes me, really for me, completely messed up and horrible me.

That I could, I should, live it, the way I wanted to, no reason to strive to another person’s goals or measure. That there was love and beauty and joy and delicious irony and light to witness and enjoy.

This was nothing, nothing at all, that my rational atheist self had ever wanted to hear. But some hidden starving part of me drew it in and came to life. And suddenly, I wanted to live. I chose to live. I was not also immediately visited with a trouble-free psyche and a cheerful disposition; I was still very much the sad girl I had been seconds before. But, for the first time, I wanted to go on.

Every day I’ve lived since that moment of clarity has been a choice made consciously. I haven’t done very well in choosing a life in pursuit of some of what this culture tells us is important: A solid high-paying career, for instance, and expensive things. But I have chosen life, over and over again. It’s not that I ever contemplate any other choice, it’s that I’m aware of choosing my life: The life I want, a life of experiences and connections and joy.

Here I am, more than 20 years later, still stunned and blinking in the pure light of the love that flooded me that day. I’ve had hard days, weeks, months, years since then, but never once have I wanted again to choose death.

And when my first daughter was born, and I held her body in my arms, I knew what it meant, that we choose life so that we and our offspring can live by holding fast to God. The room was glowing in light that didn’t come from the candles alone, I was holding a newly human living spark of God, a new soul come to the world to continue on this messy, painful, wonderful life. I knew for a golden second that as much as we hold fast to God, God holds fast to us, each of us, all of us.

I still see the the bad things, the cruelty, I feel the others hurt and alone, I feel their pain in my own body and heart, and I choose that pain, that awareness, that connection, this life. I choose life so that I may live, and my offspring, and theirs, a long river of souls stretching through time connected through our hearts and hands, holding fast to each other, and held fast by the eternal compassion and love of our Source.

Treats Less Plastic: DIY Kettle Corn

DIY Kettle Corn

Yes, you can make your own kettle corn at home, no special equipment necessary, no heroic clean-up measures required.

Buy your popcorn, oil, sugar, and salt in bulk and you’ll avoid all plastic packaging – It’s a Treat Less Plastic! Not entirely a healthy treat, but what’s a childhood or life in general without the occasional handful of crunchy-salty-sweet kettle corn?

What you’ll need:

• Large pot with a lid.
• Hot stove (or a campfire, if you’re daring).
• Potholders.
• Large bowl.
• 1/2 cup unpopped popcorn kernels.
• 1/4 – 1/3 cup sugar, to taste. The pale beige organic sugar crystals will give you a see-through coating on the kernels that tastes like the kettle corn from the fair. Sucanat or rapadura will give you a mildly caramel-flavored brownish kettle corn.
• 1/4 cup oil that holds steady in high heat; I use grape seed oil.
• Sea salt to taste.

You can double each ingredient to make a large batch. Yes, that will seem like an obscene amount of oil, but you’ll need that much to keep the sugar from burning and to get an even coating of sweet and salty crunch on the kernels.

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What to do:

1. Put your large pot an a burner set to just below high and add the oil and 3 unpopped kernels of corn.
2. While you’re waiting for these first kernels to pop, make sure you’ve got the rest of your popcorn kernels and sugar ready to go, a large bowl waiting nearby, and that pair of potholders on your hands.
3. Once the three test kernels pop, pour in the rest of the kernels and the sugar. and pop the lid back on. Immediately start shaking that pot like crazy, back and forth, round and round, back and forth. Don’t stop! Not even for a second!
4. Once the popping has slowed down and you’re starting to really worry that things will burn, whisk the pot off the heat and quickly pour everything into that large bowl you’ve got waiting.
5. Sprinkle on sea salt to taste and toss it in with a spoon (you’ll burn your hands if you try to toss the salt in bare-handed).
6. Let cool.
7. Eat.
8. Store any leftovers in a large jar with a tight lid.

Update: DIY Dishwashing Powder

I’ve tinkered with my DIY Dishwashing Detergent a bit.  My first few dishwasher loads were lovely, but then something happened and my glasses started to come out with a dusty white film. I’m all for life less plastic, but I want clear glasses, too. What to do, what to do.

Reducing the amount of dishwashing powder didn’t seem to help. If I go below 1 teaspoon per load, the dishes come out with food still attached, and the film is still there.

I can’t add more vinegar than what the rinse aid cup will hold, so that’s not an option. Although the vinegar is very important – Don’t forget the vinegar! .

My answer: I fill the dishwashing detergent cup with baking soda, leaving just enough room for 1 teaspoon for my DIY dishwashing powder. This added baking soda seems to do the trick, and my glasses seem to be coming out without the film.

Baking soda, the answer to many problems. It’s almost creepy how useful the stuff is.

Sweet Corn for a Sweet New Year

It’s traditional to eat apples and honey for Rosh Hashanah, to make concrete (and edible) your prayers for a sweet new year.

We’re waiting for a chance to pick up some local honey from our friends’ hives once it’s been harvested, and we just picked some apples in a friend’s orchard this afternoon. But to celebrate Rosh Hashanah eat-local-style, we had fresh sweet corn from my parents’ garden.

It may not be traditional, but it was so, so good. I’m up for creating new traditions so that our holiday cycle and harvest cycle can mesh up in sustainable ways…If ripe corn and Rosh Hashanah fall together again, I’ll be very happy to celebrate this way.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

I wrote this a few years back to share during a Rosh Hashanah service with a “Prayers of the Heart” theme.

This morning was long and filled with tears, and my Lather, Rinse, Repeat mantra came in handy yet again. We’ve switched to tree-free-paper wrapped bar shampoo, but I’m carrying those plastic bottle words of wisdom forward.

Wishing everyone a Shana Tova Umetukah, a good and sweet year. May we all be inscribed for many more rounds of lather, rinse, repeat.

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I’d love to think that the prayer of my heart would come wrapped it words of great beauty and poetry, but mine revealed itself to be much less flashy.

One regular old day over a year ago, while driving along Madison Avenue past the library, heading from one daily errand to the next, three words leapt from my heart, then repeated themselves until I spoke them aloud:

Lather, Rinse, Repeat. Lather, Rinse, Repeat. Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

This has been my prayer ever since, these words my heart gleaned from a shampoo bottle. This prayer of mine is descriptive – It sums up my life as mother of two young children fairly well – And it’s hopeful. Yes, there is the lather, but there’s also the rinsing, and then there’s the promise of the repeat, of the second bite at the apple, the chance to change the next cycle.

We have plenty of lather – Rushing to appointments, always 10 minutes late; meltdowns in the bulk department of T & C; frustration and anger on all sides; tears of sorrow; screams of panic and fear; restless, unsettled nights; crazed laughter and running dances that almost always end in injury.

We have plenty of rinsing – Clear water showers and baths, and dips in the salty sound, and the sort of rinsing that comes in moments of shared focus – On the beauty of a bug, on the colors of the setting sun caught in the rain clouds above our yard. Love rinses us, and joy, and our smiles through the lights of our Shabbat candles. I even get moments of rock-solid conviction that all is right, that all will be right with the world. And then, just when I start to melt into peace, or just before I’ve even caught my breath, it’s time to lather up again.

It can be a quick cycle, and sometimes it feels like it’s going to spin out of balance, but there’s hope in my prayer. Lather follows rinse follows lather as day follows night follows day. There’s a chance with each cycle to try something new, to tweak only one tiny bit, or to shake things up at the root, knowing that the next chance to try the same thing again will come soon if this change doesn’t go so well. And when I don’t have the energy for any changing, at least I know that soon, very soon, there will be a rinse to renew me, or a lather to wake me up.

I remind myself every day that this, too, shall pass – Both the moments of exhaustion and frustration, and the moments of clear joy and peace. This past year has brought so much lather, I have learned that it is possible to live with the soapy taste in my mouth and the sting in my eyes, to go for longer than I thought possible between rinses, or to get by with just a bit of rinse, just enough to clear my vision, but not enough to wash my hands clean. And this has been OK. In truth, it has been a blessing, and it makes my heart sing out its shampoo bottle prayer. Sometimes my prayer has all the supplication of a “please” in it, beseeching for the next rinse; sometimes it has all the wealth of a “thank You”, in gratitude for the cycle itself, for the repeat, repeat, repeat.

These Days of Awe bring the best rinse of the year. The rinse of the shofar, of our voices raised together and held in silence, the rinse of clarity that comes with fasting; all of this resets the whole pattern, leaves me praying for another year of lather, rinse, repeat, for myself and for all of us.

Lunch Less Plastic

Until last year, we had hot lunches to go with our homeschool days. You know, I’d lock the girls in a closet to prevent them from socializing while I cooked up something tasty. Kidding. Just a little homeschool joke there.

Actually, we were frequently so busy out of our home, socializing with the entire community, we packed a lot of lunches. But I packed everything into our large stacked tiffin containers, and we’d eat from the same containers, sharing our family germs back and forth.

When Ava went to school-school for the first time last year, I had to rethink lunch. She needed food that she would eat while surrounded by the sights and smells of her classmates’ lunches, including the school lunches that used to set off her involuntary gag reflex.

We found a PVC- and lead-free fabric lunch box with a lid that Ava props up as a scent shield, so she can smell more of her own lunch than those around her. I pack her food into smaller tiffins and natural waxed paper (natural as in compostable unbleached paper coated with vegetable, not petroleum, wax).

Lunch less plastic is possible, it doesn’t take long to pack, and it’s tasty.

Here are a couple of the girls’ recent lunches less plastic:

This was today’s lunch for A  & M:

In large rectangular tiffin: Brown rice cake, sheet of nori, Old Amsterdam cheese wrapped in waxed paper.

Medium round tiffin: Fresh concord grapes from Lake Chelan. The girls’ grandfather picked them himself and their grandmother delivered them to us in a recycled cardboard box.

Small round tiffin: Home-baked gluten- and dairy-free chocolate gingerbread cookies. The only refined sugar in the cookies is in the scant chocolate chips, and I use blackstrap molasses to up the iron content.

Plastic alert: The rice cakes and nori both come in plastic packaging. I can recycle the rice cakes’ outer bag. I reuse the inner plastic to scoop poop when we walk our dogs, and the nori’s zippered plastic bag is handy for other dry good storage at home.

What about the cheese? We are so lucky – A friend of mine on the island orders bulk cheese each month through a chef friend of his, and we can share his order at prices below retail. He’s happy to wrap our portion in waxed paper if I provide him with a roll of it. Plastic-free cheese, and good cheese at that! Heaven.

Everything else came home without plastic packaging, including the flours and other cookie ingredients – I buy those in bulk; the flours come in unbleached paper bags, and I use glass jars for the cocoa and chocolate chips.

I forgot to put their snack into that first photo shoot, so here it is. These are some of my new Rawbecca bars (thanks to Liesl for the name), wrapped in that same waxed paper. Today’s bars are chocolate chip orange, made from raw almonds, Medjool dates, prunes, unsweetened cocoa, cacao nibs, sea salt, and orange essence. No refined sugars at all, and they’re plenty sweet and full of good things for growing bodies. The girls start school early each day and have a morning snack break; one of these bars tides them over until lunch.

A lunch and snack from last week:

In the large rectangular tiffin: Organic corn tortilla chips and mozzarella cheese wrapped in waxed paper (our DIY string cheese).

In the medium round tiffin: Blanched home-grown green beans tossed with a splash of lemon juice and tamari.

In the small round tiffin: Dried cranberries and cacao nibs.

On the side: Rawbecca bars wrapped in waxed paper. These were Orange Creamsicle bars, made from raw almonds, Medjool dates, orange zest, sea salt, vanilla extract, and orange and lemon essences.

Plastic Alert: The tortilla chips come in a paper bag with a plastic liner. We need to work on making our own! The mozzarella comes in polyethylene plastic that I wash very well so it can be recycled.The tamari comes in a glass bottle with a plastic lid.

Everything else came without plastic packaging, either from our garden or the bulk department or in glass bottles with metal lids. Of course, I’m guessing that the bulk almonds and dates are shipped to our local grocery store in plastic bags, but at least this is a start.

So, what are you doing for school and work lunches? I’d love to hear about it – The more lunch less plastic ideas we share with each other, the better for all of us and our planet!

No Impact Week: Giving Back

Our Giving Back Day lined up perfectly with our local Harvest Fair, the main fundraiser for Friends of the Farms, an island group working to preserve and enhance local farming.

Harvest Fair cider booth, photo by David D Campbell

We signed up for two volunteer shifts: 2 1/2 hours in the pie sales booth followed by 2 hours helping fair-goers sort through their trash, separating items into worm compost, hot pile compost, recycling, and landfill buckets.

We started the day trying to keep the slices of blackberry, cherry berry, and apple walnut pie from Blackbird Bakery from blowing off the table in the gusts of wind, or from being drenched by the first heavy rain of the season.

The downpour cleared around noon, pie sales picked up, and then the sun came out and warmed everyone up. My friend Beth brought her young goats by the booth, and they tried to eat the yellow flowers off the tablecloth. Our human visitors were happy to stick with pie and more pie, all proceeds going to Friends of the Farms.

Ava counted back customers’ change and Mira ran our zero waste booth trash system. We set up boxes for compost (mostly errant pie crust bits and a few paper napkins), recycling (the paper pie boxes and the polyethylene plastic wrap the Health Department mandates when pie slices are sitting out), and trash (the plastic wrapper from the compostable forks). In return for their labors, they earned official volunteer shirts and, even better by my reckoning, a sense of belonging to the Harvest Fair and the local farming community.

Harvest Fair volunteers in their official shirts

When our pie booth shift was over, the girls enjoyed the fair with their dad and some good friends while I had a great time digging through garbage and helping people think about waste in new ways. I really do love diverting waste from landfills. It’s immediate gratification and a better future for my kids and everyone else’s, all at the same time.

As much as I love diverting waste, I love volunteering at events like the Harvest Fair. It may not be paid work, but the Harvest Fair gives real world support to our local farms and farmers, and we all reap the benefits. Being a tiny part of that feels so good and it’s just plain fun.

Having fun at the fair, Ava version: High Jumping

Having fun at the fair, Mira version: Screaming for local ice cream

Having fun at the fair, Rebecca version: Sorting waste