Cathy's Sustainable Awakening

Baby Goats at Point Look Out Farm. Don't they look happy?

This week, I weeded some garden beds at Point Look Out Farm where I’m helping teach teenagers about environmentalism and horticulture for 6 weeks in Wilmington, Delaware. As I weeded around the tomato plants, I had a feeling so strong of nostalgia for farm life, and remembered why I’ve come to love having dirt underneath my fingernails. There are few things that connect you more to earth, the environment around you, and the fact that everything –not just humans – is alive. I certainly wasn’t always this aware or drawn to nature, let alone cognizant of how humans are impacting planet Earth. I recently watched a documentary called No Impact Man (see his blog here: http://noimpactman.typepad.com), a film that follows writer Colin Beavan’s year-long project to have zero impact on the environment, carried out through his radical life-style choices, as some critics claimed. 

He began his project with more modest undertakings, such as eliminating waste, shopping strictly from local food sources such as farmers’ markets, and reducing his consumption of ‘stuff’. Six months in, he turned off his electricity in his 5^th avenue New York City apartment, where his wife and daughter also partook in his experiment for a zero impact lifestyle. Why am I telling Colin’s story rather than my own? you might wonder…

As I watched No Impact Man, I found myself reflecting on my own journey to living more sustainably. Maybe some of you read my entries from my personal blog that documented my WWOOFing experience last fall out in Kings Valley, Oregon. Thrown onto a farm in the middle of nowhere, it first seemed, was really where my attitude changed about how we as humans can connect to and interact with the environment in a positive way. I admit that I may have gone from one extreme to the other during that time, finding it hard to imagine the return to eating anything out of a can, or throwing away recyclables, or (gasp) flushing poop down a water-bowl toilet. I think I even declared that I would refuse to consume non-organic cosmetics. Since then, I’ve been trying to find a happy medium where I do what I can with the time and resources that I have. But if I were to really go as far back as I can in my sustainable awakening, I’d have to thank a New York Times bestseller, Skinny Bitch. My mother gave me this book for Christmas of 2009. In January 2010, I ‘pledged to be a veg’ for 30 days. At first I had no idea what to cook for dinner, since all of my meals centered on meat before the dawn of my vegetarianism. But after reading the (I’ll admit) preachy pro-vegan text of Skinny Bitch, it was hard to just erase from my conscience the facts I had just read. Animals live in their own feces? They’re pumped with hormones and antibiotics purely for the fact that they wouldn’t survive without them, given their inhumane living conditions? Nobody’s eating any freaking food besides those grown from Monsanto seeds? And don’t even get me started on high fructose corn syrup. 

(ATTN: Those ads you see on tv that claim HFCS is the same as sugar? Let’s be smart, people, it’s propaganda!)

While the authors of this book preached veganism in a way that kind of made me question their sources, it did successfully implant two key things in my brain: 1. Pay attention. And 2. You have choices. I wasn’t paying attention to where my food was coming from, and as a result, I remained very much in the dark. After auctioning off my last package of Perdue chicken breasts to my roommates after reading Skinny Bitch from cover to cover, it became hard not to pay attention. I had the choice to buy local, hormone-free meat. But also, I had the choice to not eat meat at all. Perdue lost my dollar, along with a lot of other agribusiness companies. What would happen if all the humans paid attention, and seized their right to make positive, sustainable choices?

Chickens! at Point Look Out Farm

Being born blind to the fact that humans aren’t the only important living organisms on the planet, it’s taken some time for me to see how our choices can and do impact the space we live in. And it’s been one hell of a time re-learning to how to live.

Cheers,
Cathy

Making your own Kombucha

Once a long time ago, I was making my own kefir. A co-worker had given me some of her kefir. I liked the taste, and it was really low maintenance. It was however, a little hard to do by myself, I had to drink Kefir every 3 days or so, and well it reproduced very quickly! So I dropped it, and now that I don’t drink cow milk, I don’t really think I can do it again (but I might be wrong). In any case, it’s still only me, and that’s a lot of Kefir for one girl!

But, something else I found really good, and good for your health: Kombucha. Except Kombucha costs about 4,10$ at my local natural food store. That’s a lot of money. Then I heard of other friends who actually made Kombucha at home! So I thought I should give it a try. I looked online on how to purchase a Kombucha mother (also called Scoby). But everything I found, they cost like 25$+shipping. I thought ugh no way I am spending that much (and you know, if it gets moldy or if fruit flies go on it… what will happen?). So I looked online again and found you could start your own Kombucha mother from a regular store-bought bottle! 4,10$ to start my own Kombucha? Yes we have a deal!

Before going into what tutorial I used, what are the benefits of Kombucha? Well from what I read on the bottles, it has probiotics, which are awesome bacteria for your guts (and other places where you might need good bacteria). It also has yeast inside. It should help with digestion, and intestinal health. Probiotics also help keep away yeast infections! As a vegan it’s a good way to get those probiotics too. Of course as with any natural products, there are some precautions to take, among others, have clean hands and clean utensils. To be sure if you want to try it at home, I recommend you look online at what the very little research has shown! Also I encourage you to splurge and buy a bottle and try it first, to see if you like it or have any allergy.

With that said, I followed these instructions, and after one week, I had Kombucha!!!

I took some pictures along the way.

First step align all ingredients (Green Tea, Sugar, Jars for the tea, cheesecloth to put over the jar)

Two bad things can happen to Kombucha mothers: fruit flies or fungus! So it is important to have clean conditions when you brew the tea, and to cover your culture to limit contamination (Kombucha cultures produce gaz, do not close the jar!). I used cheesecloth folded in 4, hoping that would prevent fruit flies from coming in. But I saw a youtube video advising to use an old T-shirt to keep fruit flies away. Up to now, I haven’t had any problems!

First you brew some sweet tea (the original website was quite useless for measurement, so I winged everything. I think I put like 3-4 tablespoon sugar.Then you add the bottled Kombucha (once the tea has cooled down)

Then you wait for a week and check out if it’s ready. I got a glass straw for that purpose since I don’t have straws.

Here are pictures of the Kombucha mushroom (which is not a mushroom, this only how most people describe it). I’m sorry they’re blurry, I’ll try to take better ones next time! 

So I’ll report back in a week to tell you if the production is still going. 

Until next time! 

Sophie

Where did it all start? Sophie's story

Where did it all start? Well, it all started with a cup. A menstrual cup that is. Yes good start on a new blog, uh? But it’s true, I started being aware of the environment and what I could do on my part with a menstrual cup. See my best friend was in this student women’s group and they sold Diva Cups. At the time there was this policy of satisfaction guaranteed. I have never been unsatisfied though! It’s been 6 years now, and still loving it! (I might write another post on benefits of a menstrual cup later on a separate post)

My friend, though, seemed to me so intense at the time: she was using glass containers, bamboo utensils, using homemade cleaning products, buying more organic foods, making most of her food from scratch (and it looked good!)… Wow, for me it was of a “she’s really neat but I’ll never be able to do that”. Well here we are and I do that (except I kind of fell of the wagon of homemade cleaning products…). I realized as I tried the cup that maybe it was worth pursuing the other options. Although it was a money commitment to try those new ways, it still worked so wonderfully with the cup, the other options might surprise me. I also met other people who were into the more natural, less negative environmental impacts. This led me to believe maybe they were not crazy, and that it might be worth a try!

So after the cup, came the natural household products. To me it seemed easier and cheaper to do that. Easier because there were less product change involved. Cheaper, because well you (ok I) don’t buy that many cleaning products during a year so it was a small money commitment. It was still expensive in the sense I transitioned from dollar store cleaning products (yes I just flinched too) to natural products I could find in grocery stores. Before I switched, I always needed to wear gloves to do the dishes. My hands would look horrible after washing without gloves. But as I switched to natural products, my hands looked so much better, I did not even need gloves anymore! I think that contributed with getting over (very progressively) with my hating cleaning the dishes!

Things got cleaned in the same way as they did before, but my hands looked much better! I thus started being hooked up on natural things. I started to read more about it online… (to be continued)

Hey there!

Welcome to our blog! We (Cathy and Sophie) were roommates once, turned into friends with common visions of life. We decided to open a blog to document our journeys to healthy, holistic oriented lives. We will be sharing articles that we read, recipes that we make, and activities that we do on our paths to better health and balance in our lives.

Sophie is a recent vegan and Cathy is a vegetarian (but a vegan enthusiast). We have both been making our ways towards eating more healthy food, as well as having natural products for our homes and for ourselves! In the next posts we will share how everything started for us and what brought us to this path. We pretty much had opposite ways to get to the place we are at now, but you’ll see...

A final word on the title of our blog: it was important for us to reflect the fact that our ways of life are works in progress. We do not think we have found the only way to live or the only way to eat. We’re still making trials and errors.  Just as scientific studies are often changing or finding new information, we’re open to learning new things.

Feel free to drop by and leave us comments!

Until next time,

Cathy and Sophie