Squeeze your own

A couple months ago, I made the best purchase I can recall in a long time: a stainless steel hand citrus squeezer for a whopping $5. In no time, I was in the habit of squeezing my own orange juice several times a week, which felt downright luxurious.

More accurately, it felt simultaneously indulgent--given that fresh-squeezed OJ is a favorite of the yuppie set-- and thrifty for exactly that same reason. It felt like I was bucking the system--like haha, see if I ever pay $4 for a glass of fresh-squeezed OJ at brunch ever again! (I use 2-3 organic oranges for a glass, which according to my calculations, is about a pound...which I paid $1.40 for today at Co-Opportunity). That being said, I do appreciate the labor involved--some serious elbow-grease is necessary. But I've come to quite enjoy this little morning ritual--both the amazingly fresh, tasty result and the squeezing process itself. There's something so satisfying about squeezing every last drop out of each orange half. I must admit I've found the whole process quite grounding and invigorating. It's like a whole new juicing world has opened up to me! Of course, an added bonus is that you save a carton or plastic bottle every time you squeeze your own. And if you aren't a failed composter like me (no negative self-talk, no negative self-talk), then you compost the rinds and are totally zero-waste!

I was recounting my recent citrus adventures to a coworker the other day, and his response was "Cool, but I would never do that because it takes too long". Well, yes, it takes a few minutes, depending on how many oranges you use. You have to wash, cut and squeeze them. It takes more planning and energy than grabbing a Naked Juice from the store. On the other hand, I know I've gained a tiny bit more of a connection to my food supply and that fleeting sense of satisfaction that settles in when you are present for a few moments, concentrating on a task. Perhaps if we had a few more moments of presence rather than convenience throughout the day, we would all be a tad more grounded.

At any rate, I'm hanging onto citrus season as long as I can. My farmer's market is still selling some wonderfully juicy blood oranges, which also make for amazing mimosas, as I discovered a couple lazy Saturdays ago. This year, I luck out because I'll be catching the citrus season again in the southern hemisphere in a couple months. Woohoo! Until then...can you juice nectarines?

Late-night breakage

Does anybody have suggestions for ways to clean up large, chunky spills with something other than paper towels? I just shattered a full bottle of salad dressing and found myself using a massive amount of paper towels. But it's 1 in the morning, and the thick dressing was all mixed in with shards of glass...I guess I could have used a rag? But what about the glass shards? To add insult to injury, it was a full bottle of Annie's Goddess Dressing (you know, nectar of the gods) that I got on sale. Boo!

Long time, no...

The other day, a friend confronted me with the question I've been dreading for a while now--why had it been 1 month since my last blog post? My answer was..."I don't know--I think it's the worms." Yes, folks, ever since the worm incident, I must confess I've lost--or rather, misplaced--my green mojo. First, a quick update about the compost bin.

A couple weeks ago, I moved into a temporary housing situation for the summer before I spend some extended time abroad. My new digs are not "worm-friendly", i.e., there is no outside area, and since the little guys had been escaping, methought locating the bin outdoors was a must. So, unsure about how many were still living, I was hoping I could give them to a more experienced composter who could integrate the ones I hadn't murdered into his/her well-balanced, thriving bin. Luckily, a friend's father knew someone who was looking for a worm bin and was ok taking it "as is". So my no-nonsense friend Heather came over one night, noticed the odd make-up of the bin ("Is there supposed to be that much newspaper in there?"), loaded it into her trunk and off the worms went. It was a bittersweet goodbye: I was relieved to have their fate out of my hands, but also guilt-ridden that I had been so irresponsible with life. Especially when that life arrived on my doorstop in a clump of dirt in a cardboard box.

I don't know why "the worm incident" has left me feeling like such a failure. Although I think I now understand what former Catholics feel when they hear "confession" or "hell" because the word "compost" suddenly causes me to question the very essence of my character. Perhaps the melodrama was heightened because several years ago I adopted a Siberian Husky, loved her mucho for a year, but ultimately realized I was in no position to have a 70-lb dog in a studio apt when I was 23 and never home. I found a good home for her yet have still been riddled with guilt ever since. I'm sure the worm incident compounded the lingering feelings of guilt about being a bad steward of life. And since then, I haven't been able to muster the enthusiasm to cheer others on in their own greening.

Maybe the problem is that I can't always be the cheerleader. A lot of the time I'm actually more like the kid who snuck out of the pep rally to go smoke and criticize "the system". Wait, I WAS that kid. And hey, I had good points to make--all that school spirit crap WAS really creepy, after all. So perhaps the point is, some days I like wearing my green, pleated skirt to chant "Go G-R-E-E-N!". Other days, I'm overwhelmed with how almost everything seems to be the opposite of the way it should be, how did we arrive at such a staggering mess, and who the hell ever thought it was a good idea to make kids go to pep rallies?

Worms gone AWOL

The honeymoon was short. After our initial rocky start (documented here), I thought we had an understanding. I chopped up my banana peels and leek leaves, fed them every few days, and sprayed the bedding when it seemed too dry. And in turn, they behaved and stayed alive.

I won't say I totally overcame my fears of their sliminess, but we were cohabitating, or so I thought. Then, last week, I got back from a long weekend and found a grisly sight on my balcony. I shudder to think of it now. Eek. There were a few dozen carcasses strewn all over my balcony. At first glance, I thought they were plant droppings, but within a few seconds, the disturbing truth set in: My worms were escaping, dying and shriveling up on my balcony. How horrible is that?! I mean, first of all, that can't be a pleasant death. And so dramatic! What it said to me was that the conditions in the little world I created for them were so bad that the better option was to fling themselves out of the air holes I had drilled. Agh! I took on the responsibility of life and clearly was a terrible steward of nature. For the last few days I've been walking around with a cloud of guilt above my proverbial head. I finally mustered the courage to check out what was going on in the bin (sounds lame, but remember how long it took me to open the box they came in?) and although I saw some live worms, I also saw uneaten food, which is not a good sign. I've been convinced that the worms that didn't jump to their deaths must have just resigned themselves to a less dramatic end, kind of like that old couple in "Titanic" that stays in their bed (that was the one scene that got me in that movie). Anyway, today I finally did what I should have done a few days ago and actually did some research. There's lots of composting troubleshooting info out there. The good news is, I might not have killed all my worms in a few short weeks. But now, I have to figure out exactly what was wrong in the bin. From the symptoms and my own guess-work, I've surmised that I let it get too acidic (too many coffee grinds and orange peels), and that because the weather has gotten hotter, I should have been keeping it moister. So...I'm going to buck up, figure out what I can do, and attempt to salvage the rest of my little friends. If there are any composters reading...help! (Practical advice and moral support both greatly appreciated!). I'll keep you posted...

Earth to recycling

Ah, remember those halcyon days when you recycled your bottles and cans and could feel good about doing your part? The world made sense back then, didn't it? Actually, I admit I'm idealizing the good old days. If I'm honest, I always had a lingering suspicion about whether my milk jugs, aluminum cans, and paper--all mixed together, mostly rinsed out--were actually making it from my curbside to anywhere other than a landfill. I mean, come on. Were workers really paid to sift through and separate my colored paper from my cans of black beans? As we often do to get through the day, I squelched those doubts and continued to go through the motions of "doing my part", not really knowing what could or couldn't be recycled in my area. And in the last several months, I've steered clear of even mentioning the "R" word, well, because we know we need to be focusing our efforts on the first 2 Rs--Reducing and Reusing, of course.

But, we obviously shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water. After I've reduced and reused, I still have plenty of materials that can be recycled. So I was thrilled to discover an exhaustive, invaluable resource-- Earth 911. Ever wanted to know exactly what types of plastic and glass your curbside recycling service accepts? If you can mix newspaper with white and colored paper?

This site is amazing because you simply enter in your zip code and get a list of the curbside services in your area and what materials they accept. THEN, if you have still have materials that they won't pick up--like packing peanuts, or green glass, you can search for drop off centers in your area. But the most invaluable aspect of this site is that, in addition to the basic items we all know we should be recycling, it provides recycling/reuse information for all those miscellaneous materials that would otherwise end up in a landfill or rotting out on your curb. Metal clothes hangers, inkjet cartridges, old telephones, musical instruments, mattresses, floppy disks, cooking oil, magazines...that's just the beginning. Remodeling your house? There are sites that will accept your old carpet, ceramics, linoleum, and roof shingles. What a revelation! Check it out and forward widely. This site should be at the top of everyone's bookmarks. Go forth and recycle everything!

Earth 911

UPDATE--5/23
Maybe because of all the attention they got on Oprah's Earth Day special, Earth911 has totally revamped their website in the last couple weeks, so much so that I thought I had the wrong site when I needed to look something up today. Unfortunately, it is much less user-friendly. You can still get the info you're looking for, it just seems to be a little more obscured.

Self-medicating

Symptoms: pasty skin, buggy eyes, coffee breath, muscle atrophy, slack jaw, prolonged staring out of windows. Diagnosis: office-itis.

A couple of weekends ago, I was suffering from an advanced case of office-itis. I couldn't remember the last time I had been outdoors, breathing air... not counting, of course, the 30 second walk from apartment to car, and then car to office. I was answering my cell phone "Thank you for calling Market Wire, this is Rebec -- DOH!"

So I dug my hiking shoes out of the back of my closet and headed for the Malibu Creek State Park. I picked an amazing day to go -- not a cloud in the sky, warm, with a slight breeze. I'd never been there before, and I couldn't get over the fact that just a few miles from the smog and traffic and concrete of L.A. there was all this nature. Just sitting there! Every few minutes I would stop and go, "WOW. Wow. This is so beautiful!"

After a relaxing afternoon filled with real, live oxygen, I headed back to the parking lot where I saw something that got me really excited. It was a sign for the ParkLINK shuttle. Apparently, the parks department offers a FREE shuttle to the Malibu Creek recreation areas, and it circles all around Malibu Canyon on weekends. There are park and ride lots, or you can catch it from a couple of different metro buses. This is fantastic because it means next time I'm itching for a hike, I can hop on a bus -- and no aggravating traffic or extraneous fossil fuel usage will bring me down from my natural high! Take THAT, office-itis!

Celebrating the ripples, big and small

In celebration of Earth Day (a couple days late--that's how I roll), allow me to indulge in some old fashioned sincerity, Oprah-love, and at least one metaphor. In the last few months it seems that the whole world has "gone green", doesn't it? Frankly, it's hard to keep up. Numerous major magazines have put out their "green issue", giving various advice about what we can all do to lessen our footprint, and several green-themed tv shows are debuting. There's no doubt that green has gone mainstream, which is what we want! On the other hand, I've been noticing a little voice in my head that fears what's on the other side of this trend: over-saturation, backlash, and worst of all, an unthinking substitution of extraneous "eco-friendly" products rather than a deep look at our consumption habits. You know, "green" shopping. So it was with conflicting feelings that I watched Oprah's Earth Day special the other day. Was she simply going to tout green weddings, carbon offsetting, and biodegradable water bottles? Much to my surprise and elation, Oprah opened the show by advising people to say "neither" to plastic and paper and to bring their own bags! She proceeded to give out reusable bags to every audience member--produce bags as well as larger grocery bags. Woohoo! The rest of the episode was--ok, I'll say it--what I would have written if I worked on Oprah. With the help of Treehugger's Simran Sethi, Oprah moved on to the cover all the basics--refillable water bottles (she even gave out Sigg bottles, like the one I use!), non-petroleum based cleaning products, CFLs, using fewer paper napkins, refillable coffee mugs, buying recycled paper, reducing packaging, and stopping junk mail. Simran even mentioned that she tries to take her own container for take-out!! It truly was "Going Green 101", and I was pretty ecstatic...can you tell?


As much as people poke fun of Oprah's influence on our culture, it's extremely heartening to think of the ripple this is going to create. The however-many millions of viewers she has will at least think a little bit differently the next time they're at the grocery store and are considering buying a cup of noodles wrapped in styrofoam, cardboard, and plastic. The most exciting element of the show was that she highlighted "What families like yours are already doing". We got to see that there are mainstream families (read: not liberal-looking Californians) out there who have recently been inspired to move towards more sustainable habits. It was refreshing for me to be reminded that underneath all the media hoopla and the trends, the "basics" are sinking in on a very grassroots level. It was also very cool to see how excited the audience got when they got an insane amount of green swag--reusable bottles, bags, smart power strips, CFLs, green cleaning products. So maybe they were just excited to get free stuff. But those couple hundred audience members undoubtedly left psyched about everything Oprah taught them and will go home and give the reusable bags and refillable bottles a try. And they will influence their friends and family and so on. Today, I am grateful for the small ripples that all of our actions are making, and the huge ones, like when a big rock hits the pond.

What ripples have you noticed lately? Talk to me!