So, I read my previous blog post to Mark, and his first response was “Good luck!” And of course, I got a bit frustrated because that’s the sarcastic (for those playing along at home, yes, he was being sarcastic) response I dread when I talk about trying to be greener and eat more healthy.

But after we talked for a while, we came up with an initial game plan:

1. Salads for dinner – Three years ago we implemented the plan of having a pitcher of water on the table for dinner every night. This has become so ingrained that we will sometimes end up with two pitchers because he puts one on at the same time as I do. So, the new plan includes salad every night. I am in charge of the salad.
2. Getting a new food processor – The only one we have is a tiny 3-cup model that I got when I was in college. It has served us well (okay, it really has served us just okay, but we’ve been too cheap to get another) for the 13 years we’ve been married. But I want hummus! And other things you can make only in a nice big 9+ cup food processor.
3. Getting rid of the bread maker – Of course, in our tiny kitchen, getting a new appliance means getting rid of something else to make room. And the fact is that we never use the bread maker. We mostly use it for kneading, and we have a dough hook on our KitchenAid mixer, that we use more often. Neither of us like the bread mixes you can get and bread baked in it tastes dull and boring. Do you know anyone who wants a bread maker? Hardly used!
4. Getting rid of other things we don’t use – Finally, we’re going to go through our clothes, the kitchen cabinets and even (gasp!) my books and the storage shed; giving away or selling anything that we don’t use. This should free up a ton of extra space!

Determining a game plan is a great way for me to feel like we’re on the way to where I want to be. Then reading about the cynicism of Monsanto and the loss of heirloom seeds and the pro-corporate greed of our “representative” government is a little less depressing.

I am reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver right now. And at the same time, I have been regularly reading The Zero Waste Home (a blog).

What’s interesting to me is that I started both of these reading projects by reading some reviews and comments about them. And the comments I read went along the lines of “this is impossible!”, “what you’re asking me/us to do is not possible except for crazy zealots,” and “I don’t believe that your kids are all that thrilled by this plan for (zero waste or growing all your own food) as you imply they are.” And I admit that I read both the book and the blog with those thoughts in mind myself, kinda like I was watching a train wreck and couldn’t stop myself from rubber-necking on the side of the tracks.

The problem isn’t that the ideas in these books/blogs are impossible – clearly they are possible as at least two families have made it happen. But the problem is that I don’t like to feel guilty and I don’t like to feel hopeless and that’s what both of these things do to me. I know for a fact that my home is still going to be producing waste and buying food from the grocery store a year from now. I know, with relative certainty that my son, husband, and I are all still going to be eating cookies, chips, and french fries in 2012. And I’m fairly confident that while I’ll have a garden again this year, I probably won’t be able to get much enthusiasm from my son or husband for eating what I grow.

So here’s what I need:

1. A step-by-step plan for moving from my cluttered, waste-heavy, junk-food laden lifestyle into something better
2. Easy steps and hints for how to get a picky 3-year-old and an even pickier husband to eat those things we all know are better for us.
3. Clear support for how to get myself to stop my own junk food frenzies and move into the 5+ fruits and vegetables, and so on I know I should be eating

And it’ has to be easy and fun would be good too. How can I move from knowing i should to taking action? Telling me all the reasons I shouldn’t let Jaryth eat Doritos isn’t helpful. I already am dreading visiting his doctor in March, I don’t need that guilt/dread from anyone else.

I’m hoping that once I get past the obligatory “the world is ending and all America grows is bio-engineered corn and soybeans” lecture at the beginning of Kingsolver’s book, it will go into more concrete examples of how she moved into that mode. But I’m betting it won’t.

I suspect that the only way I’ll be able to create a how to Guide for junk-food junkies who wanna become gaia-friendly is to write (and do) it myself. And that is FREAKING hard!

Jaryth liked licking the icing. I also learned that marshmallows must be eaten on a stick (courtesy s’mores we had last summer). He yelled “stick! Stick!” over and over until Mark gave him a toothpick.

So, I’ve started cooking again. I figure it’s not good karma for me to let Mark do all the cooking forever. ☺

But in order to facilitate this, I’ve started looking at online recipes. And I have two questions:

1. Why does Cooks.com get listed so often when their recipes are all the same?
   I did a search for something the other day, and was excited to see that there were like 20 recipes listed on Cooks.com. Of those 20, there were exactly three different ones. Three!?! I think Cooks.com is one of those user-generated content sites, and it’s obvious in this situation that there are no editors doing anything there. I mean, how many times do I need to read the same recipe? Even if they have slightly different titles, they are the same and once I’ve decided I don’t want the first copy of it, finding it again 10 more times just makes me leave the site without using any of the recipes. Lame!
2. Why do people, when rating recipes, give a recipe a 5 star rating and then proceed to explain how they completely changed the recipe?
   For example: “This was an awesome recipe! My family loved it! I replaced the chicken with tuna, added tomatoes and green onions (for color), and got rid of the garlic and onions (my family doesn’t like them). Oh, and I used cauliflower instead of potatoes.” And this is on a recipe for chicken-potato pie. It sounds to me like she made tuna-cauliflower pie.

Any suggestions for great, easy recipes are welcome! Please comment.

Buttery Sticks - Margarine is for losers!

Yummy!

It’s sad when marketing has decided that “margarine” isn’t yummy sounding enough.

Psst: Nucoa people… Buttery sticks makes it sound like I’m about to use twigs that have been basted. And, personally, I’m not a huge fan of twigs.