08.26.08
Posted in (mostly) vegan, cooking, doing the right thing, driven, nature deficit disorder, sustainable lifestyle, working mother, yard and gardening at 10:19 pm by kimwilsonowen
I am reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable Miracle. It’s the sort of book oaty crunchy self – minus platform four inch heels (no leather, of course), a trip to Vegas or two and that spackling knife I use to cobble on my layers of (cruelty free, of course) makeup – would normally read, but I haven’t had time. I read Skinny Bitch (my choice), Fast Food Nation (book group choice), and The Cubed Foot Gardener (a mania passed from my father to my decidedly NOT oaty crunchy husband, who knew?) and I knew all I needed to know, and I haven’t looked back.
But this book has looked at me from my library’s shelves, making me feel guilty, since last year or so, when one of my book groups chose it for this year– same group that chose Fast Food Nation, although alarmist prose about our food supply is far from our stock in trade, I promise. We’re more into obscure, often unreadable works of great modern literature. For real. Anyway. Now my mom’s been talking about it and lo and behold, it’s our selection for September. When she sent me the list of where I’ll find her after she departs this earth, and possibly my lost twins too, I checked the calendar for said book group and got me a copy.
I remember about ten years ago someone really cool, someone I looked up to, asked me if I liked Barbara Kingsolver. I’d only read The Bean Trees and maybe Pigs in Heaven at that point. Both of them seemed rich in intent, but I was already sick of the Oprah Book thing– Marginalized-And-Impoverished is cool. Been there, done that. It’s not cool, and I don’t want, nor do I wish on anyone, nor do I want any longer to read about, the struggle to find individuality and follow my star or live a Great Life from– due to the blessing in disguise that I find myself on– the outskirts of societal norms of community or material wellbeing. Not unless it’s by someone like, say, Frederick Douglass or James Still or Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Thanks anyway.
Kingsolver’s work seemed sort of like, you know, to Louise Erdrich what Isabel Allende is to Gabriel Garcia Marquez. God, I am a snob, for somone who hasn’t yet managed to write a book, right? Don’t tell anyone that I LOVED The House of the Spirits when I read it in high school, until I read Cien Anos de Soledad in college.
Then years later I read Poisonwood Bible and was just blown away. I loved Prodigal Summer too, but more for the richness of biology and ecology than for the overall gripping tension and frankness of Poisonwood Bible. I’d misjudged, or she just wasn’t there yet, maybe, when I’d last read her.
Animal Vegetable Miracle is, for some reason, making my eyes fill with tears every so often. Maybe it’s because I’m depleted emotionally and physically from a near-lethal combination of the depression that lingers after the last of the fairy dust evaporates and your feet finally touch the ground again a week after you return from Las Vegas, and the horrible GI bug my little girl brought home from her new kindergarten. I mean, I thought I was heartbroken to see her suffering from it. I’m even more heartbroken to BE suffering from it, let me tell you– not just it, that passed (so to speak) pretty fast, but the relentless fatigue that lingers. I’m especially ticked since I am a handwashing FREAK — though never with antibacterials, mind you — and I never get sick.
Anyway, weakened state or not, I am sickened to read things I already knew in my gut. We have lost, or never had, our own foodways. Corporations can rob us of the genetic diversity that is the fine line between us– as an entire race, not just those poor starving heathen babies in Africa and India– and starvation. I grew up with parents and grandparents who grew tomatoes and strawberries in the garden or picked blueberries or crabapples or stuck maple trees with spiles in earliest spring and boiled down syrup on the wood stove or went to the orchard down the road for bushels of peaches in season to put up for the winter. Pulling those icy sweet peaches out of the deep freezer on the back porch in the middle of winter– that was like owning and eating frozen sunshine, just as rare, precious and delightful. (At Granny’s we also had a stack of commercial and virtually nutrient-free white bread and a stick of hydrogenated magarine on the table at every meal, but that’s beside the point).
My mother’s been saying lately that the reason food from her parents’ garden tasted so much better than any since is not fickle nostalgia or any sort of superiority of growing method, but simply that the soil was different. All those wonderful memories that today we simply cannot touch– local food, in a nutshell. We’re trying, here in the subdivision, in our own small way, with raised beds we can barely keep up with– commercial mushroom compost in His, compost from our kitchen vegetable scraps mixed with dirt off our own lot in Hers, a sort of Lowes vs. Scott County WT grow-off. We’ve had some delicious tomatoes and flavorful jalapenos, and I treasure the photos I have from last year of my vegetable-hating four year old standing out back in her panties (li’l Courtney Love), deep in concentration, shelling and eating peas straight off the vine. Finally, finally… pictorial evidence that I’ve done something right. Although sadly the peas didn’t make this year.
So the latest passage that made me cry was her mention of Leigh Van Valen’s Red Queen Effect. “In this place it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place.” That is *exactly* how I feel right now. For Kingsolver it’s a principle of survival– evolve or die, whether you are a predator fox, its rabbit prey, or the bacteria evolving superstrains immune to our antibiotics and antibacterials. For me it is– I am sick, and before I got sick I wasn’t doing too good with standing still, much less getting any where. My house was already a mess, the huge yard that gives me such pride and joy is a foot tall and in danger of being overrun by trees and shrubs that needed to be pruned desperately a month ago, my job is about to overwhelm me and I have a terrible attitude, I haven’t laid hands on a quilt or a scrapbook or even put photos up on flickr in weeks, I pour out all my creativity and patience at work and what little I have left I use to pull love and nurture out of my ass for my little girl. I leave work early to get the rest I couldn’t get yesterday when I was really in the throes of this thing because I had to go to work, and my husband says, and you’re going to sleep, right? And I say no, I am going to mow. (But then it rained, and lay down ‘just for a minute’ to chat with him after work and passed out, and so spent the evening in bed, in a nightmarish place between awake and too tired to really get up and do anything, so I slept as he directed but I still feel like shit.)
It came to me the other day… I work in a library and I never, ever read something just for fun. What the hell is this? In the words of the immortal David Wilson in one of his immortal (and regular) episodes “Sumpun ain’t right.”
And now Kingsolver tells me. I thought I was doing so good, me and my vegan raised bed gardening righteousness. She tells me “We now depend… on a few corn and soybean strains for the majority of calories (both animal and vegetable) eaten by US citzens. Our addiction to just two crops has made us the fattest people who’ve ever lived, dining just a few pathogens away from famine.”
So all that soymilk and tofu I consume and feed my family (don’t worry, they all eat meat and dairy, I’m the only vegan freak)… could be gone in an instant, right? Maybe my vegan body armor isn’t all that after all? Well eat up, me hearties, cause when the famine hits we’re going to need our massive obesity to survive on til we figure something out. You people who have slimmed down through diet and working out– you’ve got it all wrong. Hell, I’m going back to Big Macs and Edwards’ key lime pies. Where’s that 30 pounds I lost?
Meanwhile, I’m so damn tired. I think I’m just going to sit down and let life pass me by for a bit, cause I just don’t have the strength to run or to evolve right now.
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06.22.08
Posted in (mostly) vegan, cooking, sustainable lifestyle tagged bruschetta recipe at 9:20 pm by kimwilsonowen
Someone didn’t cage the tomatoes in our suburban backyard raised bed, despite my good advice… but we still got a good size haul of them, enough to freeze several quarts. And we have a few lovely red bell peppers, which are just ridiculously expensive and not even that good at the grocery store.
So, I had to figure out something to do to use some of these delicious blessings from our garden. You need:
Red Bell Peppers.
Tomatoes.
Fresh Basil.
Garlic.
Salt.
Balsamic Vinegar.
French, Italian or Focaccia bread.
Heat oven to 450. Wash and seed red bell peppers, and slice them into big chunks. Coat red peppers and pan generously in olive oil and roast in oven as long as desired– I do not like my roast peppers burned, but Carrabbas’ bruschetta has a little bit of burned pepper skins in it. It’s just what you like.
As the red bell peppers begin to smell sweet and look close to done (the skin wrinkles up), throw in some minced garlic (not too much), stir up, and roast a bit longer.
Chop up fresh tomatoes and get most of the seeds out. You want about twice as much tomatoes, or three times as much, as you have of the red peppers. Slice up fresh basil, as much as you can get– no more than about 1/4 your quantity of peppers– very, very fine. If you don’t have enough fresh basil you can supplement with dried.
When the peppers are roasted, pull them out of the hot oil to cool. Throw the tomatoes into the roasting pan, add a bit more olive oil, slice up the roasted pepper slices very fine and throw them back into the pan, and roast the tomatoes with the red pepper for a little bit.
Start adding basil til it looks like enough. Roast a few more minutes. Taste to make sure you have enough basil.
While roasting, stir together some more olive oil with some more minced fresh garlic. Slice plain French or Italian bread, or focaccia bread, or both, pretty thin. Lightly soak both sides of the slices in the olive oil/garlic mixture and put on a cookie sheet. Roast with the bruschetta sauce until very lightly crisped/browned but still tender. Put any leftover olive oil/garlic mixture into the sauce.
When the bruschetta sauce appears to be roasted well enough that the flavors have blended and the juices have come out, take it out of the oven and add a splash of balsamic vinegar and a sprinkle of salt, and taste. Continue adding small splashes of balsamic vinegar and sprinkles of salt until it tastes good to you. It may also need a few more splashes of olive oil. Olive oil is good for you and also holds the nutrients into the veggies and makes the consistency of the sauce so much more pleasing.
Serve warm in a bowl with a spoon to spread on the rounds or slices of toasted bread. Damn, damn, damn good!
I imagine it would be almost as good with a can of diced tomatoes, canned roasted red peppers which are very cheap at the dollar tree, and some fresh basil from the produce section… and we have frozen tomatoes we can use for this, this winter.
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06.21.08
Posted in alternative energy, doing the right thing, public libraries, sustainable lifestyle, you can make a difference tagged alternative energy, energy crisis at 9:04 pm by kimwilsonowen
This is a slightly longer version of the little article I wrote for my library’s monthly Reference Notes–
Every time we use a cell phone, a computer, an electric light, heat or cool our home or drive to work, approximately 80% or more of the energy (depending on where we live in the world) comes from non-renewable resource fossil fuels. Our appliances, even when not in use, are leaching power for tiny lights or clocks or sleep mode or pilot lights.
Demand for fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, and coal) is rising quickly, and production is becoming more expensive. The Economist points to nationalist and political tensions and the challenges of accessing oil in difficult terrain.
In spite of our concerns about the environment and global warming, pollution’s toll on our health, rising costs, and dependence on foreign resources in unstable regions, America’s cars and houses are getting bigger and bigger. The decline of urban quality of life and business opportunity creates suburban sprawl. We commute to work and school, and drive across town to get groceries that have been transported across our nation or around the world. Families relocate to find jobs or affordable housing, and we lose small local communities and must drive long distances to spend time with friends and loved ones.
Meanwhile, rising superpowers China and India extend American-style fossil fuel burning amenities to their immense populations.
Soaring gas prices are a major problem for working families who are also facing the foreclosure crisis and rising food prices. Each year Americans die because they cannot afford to heat or cool their homes. In Fueling our Future, Robert Evans notes that pollution from fossil fuel burning has been linked to heart disease and cancer, and a 2001 study at Harvard linked it to infertility and early menopause as well. The International Panel on Climate Change found that as the earth’s temperature rises worldwide drought is not certain, but likely (Evans 13).
For those of us not profiting from the fossil fuel energy industry, this is all a bit of a worry.
In The Citizen-Powered Energy Handbook, Greg Pahl’s expert sources predict that a horrific energy crisis could be upon us any time between 2010 and 2037. Visions of California’s rolling blackouts, or of the gas lines of that made the US look like a struggling Communist bloc nation during the 70’s dance in our heads.
A comfortable lifestyle using less energy and using energy that does not create pollution or greenhouse gases and does not depend upon tense relationships with antagonistic foreign nations is possible now.
But energy is a commodity-to be produced, bought and sold in the greatest quantities and at the highest profit possible. This model is not just incorrect for our energy future (no pun intended). It is a dangerous gamble.
Scientists and entrepreneurs with excellent ideas are struggling to gain a financial toehold to launch and improve sustainable, pollution- and waste-free technologies to run our homes, industry and transportation with renewable or sustainable resources.
Resources at Montgomery City County Public Libraries sum up the advantages and disadvantages of renewable or sustainable energy.
At this time it actually costs more fossil fuel energy to create biomass and biofuel than they yield. They produce carbon dioxide and may compete with food production for land. If they are managed as commodities like fossil fuels energy, consumers risk the same vulnerabilities we face today- severe weather and other events can result in shortage and drive up price
Hydrogen fuel cells are incredibly efficient, but cost more to produce than they yield.
Solar power is endlessly renewable and free of pollution but requires large surface areas to yield power even approaching the scale of fossil fuels.
Many are opposed to the stately ranks of giant sculpture like windmills needed to produce wind electricity on any great scale. Storage of any renewable energy produced is an important issue still to be solved. Daytime and evening demand must be more carefully balanced with renewable energy resources to insure an adequate supply.
Nuclear power and our long term dream, nuclear fusion, are incredibly efficient, with no greenhouse emissions. Much like the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on a purely statistical basis this seems to be our best bet. Evans details ways nuclear power production has become much safer (124-26) But the millennia-long legacy of nuclear waste, the dangers of uranium mining, and the tragedies at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island make many wonder if it is worth the price.
If we don’t own profitable stock in an energy trader, what can we do?
Evans states that we must reduce demand / consumption and work for greater
efficiency (174). In the wake of the 2001 energy crisis, California’s efficiency mandates and credits for using alternative energy created both great grumbling and great opportunity.
California is now a worldwide model for reduced consumption, but its hugely profitable Sempra Energy, for example, is still building infrastructure for and trading huge amounts of natural gas in the unregulated energy industry. Efficiency and reduced consumption are key, but not enough. According Evans and Pahl’s sources, the transition from mostly oil, coal and natural gas to mostly renewable energy must go forward quickly.
Sustainable profit is possible.
Even as pollution caused by China’s industrial revolution - fueled mostly by coal and other fossil fuels - spawns whole ‘cancer villages’ within China and washes up onto America’s shores, the richest man in China is worth 4.8 billion dollars because he can barely keep up with demand for his solar modules.
But until policymakers and consumers make a move on a massive, nationwide scale, our best chance for improving our health and saving our endangered ice caps, species, and pocketbooks is one family, one business, one building at a time.
Montgomery Public Library offers many excellent books on creating homes, buildings and lifestyles that employ alternative energy or greatly reduce dependence on fossil fuel energy, from Solar Power your Home for Dummies (690.83 DEGUN) to Eco-Renovation the Ecological Home Improvement Guide (643.47 HARLAN).
Greg Pahl takes it even further. He supports the Community Supported Energy (CSE) Model. Consumers can choose local energy just as they are choosing to purchase local food to improve nutrition and reduce environmental toll, animal cruelty and disease outbreaks (for more on the advantages of local food, see Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, 641.973).
Pahl notes that hydroelectric power on a massive scale is very powerful, but major sites in America have already been developed (causing great disruption and damage to the environment. However, on a local,community scale, where geography and river flow permit, hydroelectric power would be excellent and environmentally benign (Evans 104). Evans even mentions burning solid waste or capturing methane gas from landfills (102).
Solar power is also much better suited to a distributed application. On a community or local level, fields of mirrors the size of Rhode Island would not be necessary for solar power to make a huge difference, and in places like Arizona, peak production would coincide with peak need.
My money is on solar power, based on an episode of National Public Radio’s Science Friday program. But local communities can make the best decisions based on their unique resources, geography and values. Community energy requires greater responsibility, but it also keeps 3 to 4 times more money circulating in the local economy than absentee ownership (Pahl 267).
“Local communities… tend to be better stewards of their immediate environments because they know that if they are going to continue to thrive they need to conserve those local resources… While the global free-market economy has repeatedly demonstrated that it has no soul or compassion, most communities by contrast are blessed with both (Pahl 268).”
Take advantage of the resources the library offers to learn how to live well while consuming less. Learn about the various options and voice your informed opinion within your community.
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