I'd just like to begin this post with a proclamation to write more! Everyday and often.
The Tears for Fears throwback in the title is not an accident folks, I'm just one of thousands of young, idealistic, overeducated post-Gen X Canadians bursting to gripe about my environmental woes online. Maybe I want to stand out or maybe I just have more gripes than most. Or, maybe I'm tired of hearing about people who can squeeze book-deals out of the documentation of a year without Walmart, new shoes or plastic bags. Here I am, toiling away in warm-fridge slush, up to my bamboo sports bra in worm castings, boiling my diva cup reading Wendell Berry essays by the light of a beeswax candle, seven devoted people (if that) reading my dubious blog and not a book-deal in sight. I'm no patron saint of environmental ethics but I'm giving it a valiant effort and might as well blog about it.
About an hour ago it happened, I caved into the pressure being hurdled at me by the strange smells being emitted from my kitchen, and my fridge is now back in the loving arms of Hyrdo Ottawa. While this accoustic fridge train has been a great ride, I just got off at the last station. My friend Bedford says that after 21 days of doing something everyday, it can either turn into a really good, or a really bad habit. This experiment lasted about that long, with similar results.
I don't want to leave it on a sad note, so I'll begin with what were the lows of this unplugged session of my life:
1) Far Too Many New Roommates-if any of you can fathom the particularities of the tiny granny flat that I exist in, you'll know it's not big enough for one human, hundreds of contained, compost-eating red wrigglers, and several dozen large ants. Three is a definite crowd and one of those parties needed to move on. (me being the sole bread-winner and rent-payer, I was not going anywhere) Although I cannot be certain that it was my powerless fridge situation that caused the precocious little creatures to move in on my turf, the timing sure was uncanny. What was a self-proclaimed all-creature-lover to do? At first I welcomed the little buggers, but when it seemed like they were reacting famous battles on my ceiling I had had enough, and the bloodshed began. I was stomping ants like it was harvest time. How had my little power-saving endeavour come to end in such gore? Did these ants deserve to die because I wanted to proclaim myself an uber-environmentalist preparing for life back on the land? Those ants, environmental martyrs, every last one of them. May they rest in peace as new matter for my worms to decompose.
Ok I'm pretty sure this blog was never intended to be so graphic, but it is a well-known fact that everybody poops, especially red wrigglers hopped up on old red-thai curry. I must press on.
2) Simply put, my veggies were starting to taste like the compost smells. Combine this with a cramped space in the middle of winter and my litte house has begun to smell less like patchouli and more like a bum. A powerful motor pumping cold air into the fridge all the time will fix that. Farmer's market fresh.
What good could have come from this experiment?
1) Hello? Obviously the impetus for this blog, which you will now subscribe to. And love every minute of it. (uh...)
2)A happy exercise in life-shake-ups. I needed a little boost of how things once were (modern refrigeration is less than a century old) Plus I realized how dependent on this device we have all become. I do admit, it keeps veggies and yogurt delightfully more fresh than warm ziplocked-ice-blobs. Think about all the houses on your street, and all the shops and grocery stores nearby, the motors running refrigerators are endlessly humming, using up resources to keep our veggies(which were trucked in on a refrigeratorated flatbed from a gazillion food miles away spewing fossil fuels along the way) fresh-tasting and ant-free! That is a lottta motors, folks. It was a great learning journey, more exciting than having the entire BBC Planet Earth series on hold at the public library, and I'm glad I went on it.
Well I must get back to my fridge re-organization before the almond milk I begrudgingly purchased freezes (future book-deal: my year without tetra-paks). I'll be back to shake up your life and gross you out tomorrow!
Friday, February 27, 2009
Saturday, February 14, 2009
My Fridge Goes Accoustic: Week 2
Oh the demanding blog life I do lead! A week after the most modern labour-saving device has been virtually removed from my life (it still serves as a discernable place to display magnets) and I am spent! The power that has ceased being sucked out of my wall socket is now being sucked out of my daily rhythm. This seems to be an integral part of the radical paradign shift I believe is necessary if this lack-lustre environmental movement is going to take hold. So onward I press!
My fridge has taken on new life! The existing insulation is quite convenient and snow...well that is free and abundant in this part of the world.
Now I don't know if my karma was off or the moon was not in my favour, but after weeks of sub-zero temperatures the mercury decided to go up 20 notches the day I started to depend on frozen air. While I basked in the mini-February thaw and rode my bicycle to work sans-long underwear, I thought about the contents of what used to be my freezer melting away on my front lawn. When I got home that day it I realized it was not the thaw I had to contend with, it was the Toyota Tercel-sized squirrels who inhabit most of Hintonburg. There they were, scattered across my front door, the plastic-bag remnants of the frozen-end remnants of most of the bread I had eaten that winter. I guess I didn't need it anyway, I do work at a bakery. The squirrels got to eat some delicious rye-whole grain sourdough and I got rid of those weird butt-ends of the bread that I didn't know what to do with in the first place.
Once the temperature went back down, the freezing part of this master plan was a cinch. But the refridgeration part was a different story. The system I had initally implented proved to be dismal at best. First thing, I had read somewhere that leaving the fridge door open a crack is the best way to go. Much like a carbon offset, this really just sped up the rapid warming of the cooling system that I tried to put into place. Despite the fact that I had to change the dirty snow water every 5 hours to keep my flaxseed oil from going rancid, and my loaf of spelt sesame bread became soggy all over, the snow-in-the-crisper-drawer method has not got me all the way down. So, putting full faith in my ability to fix this warm slushy mess, I boldly purchased a tub of organic yogurt and a litre of goat's milk for my morning yerba mate. Now I couldn't let these delicious investments go off, so I promptly gathered all the plastic vessels (yogurt tubs, used ziploc baggies etc.) I could find. Fortunately, I have little faith in municipal recycling programs and keep such items around in case I can find a way to give them new life. I filled them with water and plopped them in the snow overnight.
You know something? I've been tired of bending over to find my food in the fridge ever since I moved into this place, and since the freezer was unoccupied it was time for my yogurt, crisp new carrots and purple kale to find a new home. Once the ice-blobs had frozen I put them in the freezer section with all my cold food scattered around them. I have to say, it's pretty cold in there! And I don't have to bend over to a) search for food in the (newly dark) cavity or b)reach my hand into the cold wet snowy mush that I used before.
Some people have asked me what I'm going to do in the summer. Since my house will be warm I'll get to switch off the electric heater that keeps me toasty right now, and plug my humming white beast back into the grid. I'll just switch from warm to cold in the energy that I suck.
Now I think we all know this blog is about more than just fridgeless living and ice-blob making. It's a way for me to dispense my disillusionment with urban environmentalism. We are constantly being overpowered by greenwashed corporate messages telling us to buy the new more energy-efficient version of the latest widget we already have, but we all need to step back and take a look at actually making some change to your daily lives. I'm not saying go unplug your fridge and turn off all the lights and sit around chanting mantras, but maybe just think about the impact of the things you buy, or the power that you use, or the food you eat. I am by no means changing the world, in fact the power that I'm using to run the computer at which I type my blog about powerless fridges most likely cancels out any power-reducing gain....but it's forcing me to think in new ways and that is more powerful than any greenwashed granola bar I could find in the organic section at the Superstore.
I suppose my rant is over for now. Stay tuned for more updates on my fridge! Watch for more reflections on some of the other urban homesteading projects I have on the go (I can thank my friend Gabe Camozzi for that inspiration) they include: home-made yogurt, sprouts, sunflower shoots, vermiculture, the strange soymilk machine I found at a thrift store, and my tireless efforts to power the Button Brigade into a profit machine!
My fridge has taken on new life! The existing insulation is quite convenient and snow...well that is free and abundant in this part of the world.
Now I don't know if my karma was off or the moon was not in my favour, but after weeks of sub-zero temperatures the mercury decided to go up 20 notches the day I started to depend on frozen air. While I basked in the mini-February thaw and rode my bicycle to work sans-long underwear, I thought about the contents of what used to be my freezer melting away on my front lawn. When I got home that day it I realized it was not the thaw I had to contend with, it was the Toyota Tercel-sized squirrels who inhabit most of Hintonburg. There they were, scattered across my front door, the plastic-bag remnants of the frozen-end remnants of most of the bread I had eaten that winter. I guess I didn't need it anyway, I do work at a bakery. The squirrels got to eat some delicious rye-whole grain sourdough and I got rid of those weird butt-ends of the bread that I didn't know what to do with in the first place.
Once the temperature went back down, the freezing part of this master plan was a cinch. But the refridgeration part was a different story. The system I had initally implented proved to be dismal at best. First thing, I had read somewhere that leaving the fridge door open a crack is the best way to go. Much like a carbon offset, this really just sped up the rapid warming of the cooling system that I tried to put into place. Despite the fact that I had to change the dirty snow water every 5 hours to keep my flaxseed oil from going rancid, and my loaf of spelt sesame bread became soggy all over, the snow-in-the-crisper-drawer method has not got me all the way down. So, putting full faith in my ability to fix this warm slushy mess, I boldly purchased a tub of organic yogurt and a litre of goat's milk for my morning yerba mate. Now I couldn't let these delicious investments go off, so I promptly gathered all the plastic vessels (yogurt tubs, used ziploc baggies etc.) I could find. Fortunately, I have little faith in municipal recycling programs and keep such items around in case I can find a way to give them new life. I filled them with water and plopped them in the snow overnight.
You know something? I've been tired of bending over to find my food in the fridge ever since I moved into this place, and since the freezer was unoccupied it was time for my yogurt, crisp new carrots and purple kale to find a new home. Once the ice-blobs had frozen I put them in the freezer section with all my cold food scattered around them. I have to say, it's pretty cold in there! And I don't have to bend over to a) search for food in the (newly dark) cavity or b)reach my hand into the cold wet snowy mush that I used before.
Some people have asked me what I'm going to do in the summer. Since my house will be warm I'll get to switch off the electric heater that keeps me toasty right now, and plug my humming white beast back into the grid. I'll just switch from warm to cold in the energy that I suck.
Now I think we all know this blog is about more than just fridgeless living and ice-blob making. It's a way for me to dispense my disillusionment with urban environmentalism. We are constantly being overpowered by greenwashed corporate messages telling us to buy the new more energy-efficient version of the latest widget we already have, but we all need to step back and take a look at actually making some change to your daily lives. I'm not saying go unplug your fridge and turn off all the lights and sit around chanting mantras, but maybe just think about the impact of the things you buy, or the power that you use, or the food you eat. I am by no means changing the world, in fact the power that I'm using to run the computer at which I type my blog about powerless fridges most likely cancels out any power-reducing gain....but it's forcing me to think in new ways and that is more powerful than any greenwashed granola bar I could find in the organic section at the Superstore.
I suppose my rant is over for now. Stay tuned for more updates on my fridge! Watch for more reflections on some of the other urban homesteading projects I have on the go (I can thank my friend Gabe Camozzi for that inspiration) they include: home-made yogurt, sprouts, sunflower shoots, vermiculture, the strange soymilk machine I found at a thrift store, and my tireless efforts to power the Button Brigade into a profit machine!
Sunday, February 8, 2009
there's no turning back now: the day I unplugged my fridge
Well here it is for whoever is out there. The day I decided to unplug my fridge, ponder it a while then write a blog about it. Let me tell you a little bit here. I'm newly 26, live by myself, work at an organic bakery and cafe where everybody seems to be saving the world by drinking organic Santa Cruz root beer and eating vegan brownies. (More on that later)....and I live for thinking outside of every box.
So I live by myself in a meagre little house, very small by most standards. It could be described as slightly larger than your average treehouse, with running water and a futon to call my own. It is my ideal living situation for the time being, gives me plenty of head space to do the darndest things...like remove the power from what could be considered a staple of every North American kitchen, the refridgerator.
Maybe it's because I like to call myself a forward-thinking environmentalist, I lust over home-made peach preserves, drool over a tasty batch of saurkraut, and cohabitate with a few hundred red wigglers who turn my food scraps into something I'm planning to barter with at the farmer's market...whatever the reason, I can't seem to get enough do-gooding for the environment. I need more than organic spritzers and vegan brownies, that seems so '04 to me. Not just because it's "good for the environment", I think my efforts excite me because they force me to think outside my own comforts, and live dangerously!
Let's talk logistics then, you may qualify for fridge-freedom if you exist in your own urban space in the same way I do:
a: you live by yourself, or have very eccentric and adventurous roommates
b: you work at a restaurant or cafe where you eat a lot of your meals
c: you have a strange affinity for getting yourself off the grid (then back on to it through a blog)
d: you have a pile of snow outside your door keeping everything under it bone-cold without the use of any electricity or smog-creating devices
e: you once called yourself a "vegan" and still purchase very little meat or dairy
Once you can establish one or more of these charateristics, let us begin by describing the contents of my fridge. If you consider yourself any kind of planet warrior, concious eater or vegetarian, you must admit you have peeked into other people's food vessels and taken a moment to silently judge their moral worth, an act I shall not begrudge you of at this moment.
My compact energy star 4000 contains the following items, trucked in from all over the world but purchased idealistically at the local health food store:
1. an over-priced jar of almond butter
2.flax seed oil, a lingering habit from my days without animal fat
3. leftover rice, chili and lentil soup from the cafe
4. miso paste
5. organic butter, a present to myself when I graduated from veganhood
6. a half (soon to be quarter) of an expired berry pie from the bakery
7. a large bage of beets and carrots I've been working on all winter
8.a jar of olives, a bottle of lemon juice
9. greens plus powder
10. half a dozen free-range eggs (which I've heard are stored outside the fridge in Europe anyway, is this true?)
As you can see, my fridge has been blasting away, sucking up power all winter to keep these measly items cold. I need it no more!
So I took everything out, performed a deep clean with some hot water, Dr. Bronners soap and white vinegar. I removed the vegetable crisper drawer and filled it with some snow, put it back in a higher position in the fridge and buried said items in this white stuff. I've left the door open a crack to avoid that broken-down fridge stink which tends to develop, and pulled the plug. It was immediately more quiet in my little house, as the fridge created a constant hum which had previously gone unnoticed.
As for the frozen items, I'm a soupy girl so I had to figure out a way to keep the 5 tubs of carrot-squash soup I made last month frozen. Easy! I just plopped them in a plastic tub and stuck them outside my door, where the temperature is -5 degrees and falling. Same goes for the berries I still have leftover from the summer, which I bought in bulk and froze for use in my daily smooties.
So there it is! I must admit I borrowed this idea from the recent issue of Briarpatch magazine, and I'm a little bit nervous about how it's going to work. It might not be for everybody, but it's worth a shot in the middle of winter.
I guess this urge to make a change sprung out of my own personal disdain for the growing use of biodegradeable plastic bags in shopping centres. You can't just replace one bad habit with another, all the corn that grew to make those bags was most likely drenched in chemicals and pesticides, and probably did a number on the bio-diversity of the soil where it was grown. I'm not an expert but I'm pretty sure if everyone would just make the small little change and put their groceries in a bag that already exists, and commit to using it everytime they shopped, we wouldn't need to create more plastic out of anything. This is a small little change that is forcing my to think outside my own little box, and think outside my fridge too.
I'm not going to save the world, but I'm going to change my own. I'll keep you all posted on the progress, at least that's the plan.
So I live by myself in a meagre little house, very small by most standards. It could be described as slightly larger than your average treehouse, with running water and a futon to call my own. It is my ideal living situation for the time being, gives me plenty of head space to do the darndest things...like remove the power from what could be considered a staple of every North American kitchen, the refridgerator.
Maybe it's because I like to call myself a forward-thinking environmentalist, I lust over home-made peach preserves, drool over a tasty batch of saurkraut, and cohabitate with a few hundred red wigglers who turn my food scraps into something I'm planning to barter with at the farmer's market...whatever the reason, I can't seem to get enough do-gooding for the environment. I need more than organic spritzers and vegan brownies, that seems so '04 to me. Not just because it's "good for the environment", I think my efforts excite me because they force me to think outside my own comforts, and live dangerously!
Let's talk logistics then, you may qualify for fridge-freedom if you exist in your own urban space in the same way I do:
a: you live by yourself, or have very eccentric and adventurous roommates
b: you work at a restaurant or cafe where you eat a lot of your meals
c: you have a strange affinity for getting yourself off the grid (then back on to it through a blog)
d: you have a pile of snow outside your door keeping everything under it bone-cold without the use of any electricity or smog-creating devices
e: you once called yourself a "vegan" and still purchase very little meat or dairy
Once you can establish one or more of these charateristics, let us begin by describing the contents of my fridge. If you consider yourself any kind of planet warrior, concious eater or vegetarian, you must admit you have peeked into other people's food vessels and taken a moment to silently judge their moral worth, an act I shall not begrudge you of at this moment.
My compact energy star 4000 contains the following items, trucked in from all over the world but purchased idealistically at the local health food store:
1. an over-priced jar of almond butter
2.flax seed oil, a lingering habit from my days without animal fat
3. leftover rice, chili and lentil soup from the cafe
4. miso paste
5. organic butter, a present to myself when I graduated from veganhood
6. a half (soon to be quarter) of an expired berry pie from the bakery
7. a large bage of beets and carrots I've been working on all winter
8.a jar of olives, a bottle of lemon juice
9. greens plus powder
10. half a dozen free-range eggs (which I've heard are stored outside the fridge in Europe anyway, is this true?)
As you can see, my fridge has been blasting away, sucking up power all winter to keep these measly items cold. I need it no more!
So I took everything out, performed a deep clean with some hot water, Dr. Bronners soap and white vinegar. I removed the vegetable crisper drawer and filled it with some snow, put it back in a higher position in the fridge and buried said items in this white stuff. I've left the door open a crack to avoid that broken-down fridge stink which tends to develop, and pulled the plug. It was immediately more quiet in my little house, as the fridge created a constant hum which had previously gone unnoticed.
As for the frozen items, I'm a soupy girl so I had to figure out a way to keep the 5 tubs of carrot-squash soup I made last month frozen. Easy! I just plopped them in a plastic tub and stuck them outside my door, where the temperature is -5 degrees and falling. Same goes for the berries I still have leftover from the summer, which I bought in bulk and froze for use in my daily smooties.
So there it is! I must admit I borrowed this idea from the recent issue of Briarpatch magazine, and I'm a little bit nervous about how it's going to work. It might not be for everybody, but it's worth a shot in the middle of winter.
I guess this urge to make a change sprung out of my own personal disdain for the growing use of biodegradeable plastic bags in shopping centres. You can't just replace one bad habit with another, all the corn that grew to make those bags was most likely drenched in chemicals and pesticides, and probably did a number on the bio-diversity of the soil where it was grown. I'm not an expert but I'm pretty sure if everyone would just make the small little change and put their groceries in a bag that already exists, and commit to using it everytime they shopped, we wouldn't need to create more plastic out of anything. This is a small little change that is forcing my to think outside my own little box, and think outside my fridge too.
I'm not going to save the world, but I'm going to change my own. I'll keep you all posted on the progress, at least that's the plan.
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