Notes From a Party

1)  I had a little costume party last night.  I was Helen Clark dressed as Gandalf.  It was maybe a little conceptual.  Made the cloak myself, and realized I don’t actually own that many politician clothes.  Which is probably good.

2)  What with it being horrendous and moist out yesterday, the apartment was a sticky oven.  I’m used to it by now, but the visitors in costumes were not amused (we had two kiwifruits!).  I turned on the air conditioning for a couple hours to preserve the peace.  I don’t think it got noticeably nicer inside, actually, but I had on a beard for a while, so I might not be the best judge.  Summer resolution broken already, but I don’t like my friends sweaty and gross, so I’m ok with that decision.

3) I found organic gin!  Got it at the ABC by the Starbucks in Bailey’s Crossroads.  Life lesson, though: organic doesn’t prevent hangovers you deserve.

4) Found some great solar lighting for my porch and juiced it up for the party.  Got some of the long hanging tubes from Ikea- can’t find them at their website right now, but Inhabitat wrote of the whole line.  There’s also a little metal patterned lantern with a green glow that I found at TJ Maxx, of all places, but it keeps people from bumping into my bike.  Nobody was out on the porch last night, but if they had been it would have been all visible.  I hung up my LED Christmas lights inside- you know, for extra class.

5) Actually houseplants make every party classy.  Stick a tea rose by the gin.

Hope you had a good weekend too!

Organic Wine and Chocolate Tasting

These notes are compiled over several evenings of eating.  V and a great friend (she comments as “hater”, because she is very sweet) helped me out with the tastings- no, mom, I did not drink four bottles of wine myself this week, it’s cool.  Here is:

Wines

Red Truck Petite Syrah, 2006 (CA, $10.99) at Whole Foods)- Spicy and fruity, nicely drinkable on it’s own.

Yellow and Blue Malbec Mendoza, 2007 (Argentina, 11.99 for a liter at Whole Foods, as opposed to normal 750ml bottle)- Fairly typical red wine. Clean berryish flavor, but nothing too exciting.  Better with food. Comes in a Tetra Pack.

Natura Carmenere, 2007 (Chile, $10ish at Shoppers in Potomac Yard)- Dark and deep and Plummy, and spicy at the end.  “Unassuming”, according to my second tasting partner- it’s not overtly fancy, but it is quality.  “Would probably go well with chocolate…oh wait…” she continued.

Orleans Hill Cote Zero, 2007 (CA, $10ish at Shopper in Potomac Yard)- Blegh.  Unsatisfying mouthful, sharp aftertaste.  Perhaps this bottle has been skunked already?  But it doesn’t taste musty or completely wrong, just sour.  Suitable for mulling, perhaps.

Of those, the Natura Carmenere is the classiest, and the Red Truck was the spiciest.  Off the top of my head, the Vida Organica Malbec at Whole Foods is pretty good, and the Rabbit something Cabernet Sauvignon in a Tetra Pack at MOM’s on Mt. Vernon is quite solid.

Chocolate

Divine 70% Dark (Fair Trade): Very creamy with a slightly chocolate powder finish.  Brings out the cherry flavor in the Natura Camenere.  Definitely our favorite.

Green and Black’s 70% Dark (organic) : Slightly oily, bitter.  It’s not bad, per say.  Maybe we shouldn’t have had the one we really liked first.

Equal Exchange 71% Dark (Fair Trade and Organic AND Kosher)- Unannounced raspberryesque taste.  I would have appreciated it if I had been expecting it.  Without a warning, it was disturbing.  Slightly oily, powdery finish.

Whole Food 365 Brand Organic- Tasted a lot like the Equal Exchange, but creamier and sweet, with a little, entirely pleasing raspberry at the end, wand less oil in the finish.  So, like the EE, but a lot better.  Top 3, depending on how you like surprise raspberry.

Vivani 72% Dark (Organic)-  Good.  Very balanced.  Not exquisite.  Top 3, though.

If you’d like some other V-day advice, try the post I wrote last year- I re-read it, and I still heartily agree with it.

Much Love, call your grandma, and have a great weekend!

The One On The Bike, Moaning “Sooooooo Coooooooold”

Positive:  It was so nice this morning, with the sun and the breezes.

Negative: At some point after dark it dropped like 20 degrees and the breeze turned to wind, painful eye-scraping wind.  Gym shorts are irrelevant against cold and wind.  Pants are necessary.

Positive:  The cold sure numbed all those sore bits right up.

So I get a warm shower before I head out to get some more organic wine for that V-day tasting business…

A New Addition

Last night, the Gentleman Friend and I began a taste-test of organic wines and chocolates.  Difficult work, true, but next week I’ll post our impressions and recommendations, to make your Valentine’s Day picks easier.  

As if that weren’t exciting enough enough, the Gentleman Friend was convinced to sign up as a contributor here after a bottle of Red Truck.  Now we can switch his clunky euphemistic title to his handle Vaialos, and he can tell you for himself how he really feels about my composter.  Welcome, V!

It Matters at Thanksgiving, Too

I haven’t linked a bunch of the “sustainable thanksgiving” and “eat local for thanksgiving” and “meatless thanksgiving” posts this year simply because they’re everywhere already- I’m sure if you’re inclined to read news, you’ve run across a few already.  Seen any you particularly liked?

I would like to highlight an anti-sustainable thanksgiving article, though, from one of the hopefully well-meaning people at the NRO.  Normally, I try not to get worked up about ludicrous opinion pieces at small ideologically-driven organizations.  But this column has an insidious message about the importance of personal decisions that I’ve heard echoed other places, plus it’s especially ludicrous, so I’d like to address it directly and completely.

The piece: James Robbins is doing his darnedest to convince us that worrying about sustainability and environmental impact at Thanksgiving is not the point of the holiday, and useless effort anyhow.  Thanksgiving is instead, for

gathering with family and friends, feasting, having fun, and not worrying about consequences.

Family! Friends! Feasting! Fun!  No consequences!  Wait a minute, why is the conservative advocating irresponsibility?  Also, I have no idea what he means by not worrying about consequences, unless he’s the guy who ends up watching football on the couch after the meal until the magic dishwashing fairies come.

Now, my Slavic Rituals and Demonology professor (less interesting than it sounds, the way she taught it) explained how organized societies have festival days where rules don’t apply and everybody wears their pants backwards or whatever so those all those anti-social tendencies we have get let loose in an “acceptable” manner.  This is a good idea, and also really fun.  I’m all for Mr. Robbins being as anti-social as he likes on Thanksgiving.  But I will not allow him to malign the efforts of good, thoughtful people who want to live good, thoughtful lives- and bust a gut on local squash while they’re at it.  Burp.

First, James equates a concern for the environment with a denial of real celebration.  Apparently, people who buy local food aren’t enjoying the holiday as much, since they don’t just buy whatever’s in the main aisle at the national grocery chain?  It’s nice of Mr. Robbins to be concerned for their total experience, but his premise is nonsense.  I invite him to wander the Whole Foods cheese department, then come back and explain to me again how organic types are bad at eating.

Mr. Robbins’ conclusion- that since it’s one day and the relative environmental impact of buying squash is small, there’s no point (and stop ruining his mindless overindulgent fun with your thoughts and calculations!)- is a petty and cynical one (n. b., this cynicism also undermines his own thesis of heart-and-not-head felt holidays).  Yes, if one person skips turkey or buys local side dishes, carbon emissions don’t go down very much.  But they will go down.  And a lot of one persons making these decisions?  I presume you can add.

Oh, also, he’s trying to downplay your individual impact.  He says human impact accounts for 10% or less of carbon emissions around the globe.  He does not cite this, he just says it.  But, in reality, Americans control (directly or indirectly) 65% of the greenhouse gas emissions in the US.  The rest of the world manages to influence 43% of the GHG emitted.  Remember this WSJ article?  Cited!  I know it pains Mr. Robbins to remember it, but our individual choices matter.

So, go ahead, please have your sustainable Thanksgiving.  Revel in it, and be thankful you have the wherewithal and time to enjoy it.  Rejoice in the choices we have to live more sustainably, and appreciate that more and more people want to know how they can live better and softer on this earth.  Call your distant relatives and say hi.  Then, don’t eat a turkey leg for Mr. Robbins.  Maybe he’ll thank you later.

Finally, A Farmer’s Market for Lazeabeds

There are a couple of great farmer’s markets in Alexandria, but nothing for those of us who hate greeting the day until it’s having a midlife crisis.  I slept through the Old Town Farmer’s Market (City Hall Plaza, 5-10:30am Saturdays) for a few months, and now I’ve moved I’ve been sleeping through the Del Ray Farmer’s Market (Oxford and Mt. Vernon, 8am-12 Saturdays).  As of last Wednesday, though, I have no more excuse to not get my fresh, local veggies.

The Upper King Street Farmer’s Market just opened up, Wednesdays 2-7pm at 1806 King St, which is right near that big metal hat sculpture in front of King St. Metro.  It’s open every Wednesday through October 29th, which is great, because that means Halloween is on a Friday this year.

Target’s Organic Experiment: Oof

That collection of awkward but eco-friendly clothing has now hit the sale racks at Target, so here’s your last chance.  The Target at Potomac Yard didn’t seem to have much of the collection to begin with, but there’s a significant amount on store clearance left.  Unfortunately, none of those blue tiger tee shirts.  Those were a little neat.

But I did find a couple of boy’s bad hippie pun organic cotton tee shirts- and since little boy large is just about my size, I am the proud owner of a “Wind Power Blows Me Away” shirt.  Because, you see, it does.

Target’s Eco-Friendly selections, while still sparse, are cataloged on their site all in one section.  Note the disparity between men’s and women’s clothing offerings- dudes totally get tons of tee shirts and button downs, ladies get…a “sleep shirt”?  Guess they had the animals prints from Rogan for a month, so no complaining.  I can’t find my new awesome wind shirt listed on the site, but it’s at Potomac Yard.  There’s one on corn ethanol, too (“Ethanol is Corny”, aarrgh), but I can’t get behind that.  Ethanol and that pun, that is.

Hm, maybe I could get the ethanol shirt anyway and wear it with my mustard and pumpkin skirt, to create the most annoying eco-friendly outfit in the history of fashion?

Target’s Ec(l)othing Line

Speaking of oddly fictional-sounding names, Rogan Gregory has designed a line of clothing made from organic cotton, hemp, bamboo, and linen that Target will get on the shelves tomorrow. Like, 100% organic cotton, not like “we were thinking really hard about organic cotton when we made this”. They’ve even put up a little video (mid-page) with the design team and pictures of solar panels and windmills, so you know it’s environmentally friendly.

I’m stoked they’re using their purchasing power to make organic cotton viable for mass-production, and that they’re slipping it into the mainstream mass “fashion”. Unfortunately, Rogan seems to equate “nature-friendly fashion” with “animal prints”, which aren’t so much my thing, and some of the clothing looks pretty typically trendy. But I’ll check it out, and use my purchasing power to encourage this sort of behavior if they have anything nice. If you’re avoiding them because of their typical bad big-box ways, consider reconsidering for this, if you like any of the organic stuff. Positive reinforcement works best with babies and dogs, so hopefully it’ll do well for Target, too.

More detailed information and pictures of the “looks” are here, along with pricing information.

More On Meat

Found a couple interesting articles on the environmental impacts of eating meat today. First, from Wired, an argument that eating meat is an ethical issue because of its impacts on the global food supply. Livestock require lots of food to eat and big areas to hang out in, so that prompts deforestation, decreases farmland, and drives up grain prices. There are plenty of other things driving up food prices (corn-based ethanol, argh), but the rising demand for meat is certainly one of them. After describing food riots in a dozen countries:

Even before this crisis, food experts said the world could not feed itself in coming decades if growing populations in developing countries insisted on a meat-rich western diet. That time may already have arrived — and largely without climate-change induced agricultural disruption. Add droughts and years of failing harvests, and things get seriously scary.

So maybe it’s time for taste to take a back seat to conscience. I know that sacrificing meat for veggies won’t solve the problem on its own, but it’s certainly just as meaningful as using compact fluorescent bulbs or cloth shopping bags, and I do that without hesitation.

I dig. Fauxsage for dinner it is.

Ok, so cut back on the meat, check. And when we do get meat, organic free range meat is neat! Right? No. The BBC makes a case that organically raised beef and poultry might produce more greenhouse gases, consume more food, and produce more waste that’s harder to clean up than livestock sequestered indoors.

Housing animals gives humans control. The diet can be precisely manipulated to maximise growth and minimise polluting gases.

Animals do not waste food energy on running about and keeping warm. Their manure can be collected and burned as a fuel, avoiding damaging evaporation and seepage into rivers.

In the future, it is hoped that sealed barns would have exhaust vents where the harmful gases could be captured before they entered the atmosphere.

This combination of precision husbandry and species advantage is what puts commercial indoor poultry sheds at the top of the climate chart.

Peter Bradnock of the British Poultry Council says: “Organic poultry meat has about 45% more global warming potential than indoor-reared poultry meat.

My first reaction: Well, *expletive*.

We have to keep the animals indoors and still for us to reduce emissions? But that makes them sick, and unhappy, and unhealthy, and and and. The way they raise non-organic pre-meats today, they inject them full of hormones and feed them weird stuff to fatten them up. Plus, do poultry farms really feed their birds to maximise growth AND minimize emissions already? Or are they just focused on maximizing growth? Most farms don’t have biomass heaters or other waste collection/conservation systems in place to actually get rid of the emissions: the article points out that they might, later. So for now, they’re just pumping the animals full of chemicals, and keeping them immobile in a barn so the greenhouse gases probably aren’t reduced, but they are all emitted from the same general area.

Do any of these environmentally friendly barns exist? And are the animals in them treated humanely?

With none of those questions really answered for now, I’ll have to pick my poison: emit more gases (maybe?), or eat healthier food. I’m sure the meat-makers, if they are interested in their carbon impact, will find a way to raise healthier meat in a less greenhouse-gas intensive way. Maybe that will be indoors. Maybe it will be humane. I’m not holding my fork.

Conclusion: I’ll keep buying hormone-free chicken, and free-range if I can find it. Same with beef. Until I find one animals from one of these wonderful indoor gas collection barns.

Spread the Earth Day Love

I’m back, and I’ve got a few changes coming here for you soon.  Photo Albums!  And such!  But today, it’s Earth Day, and there’s some love to be sharing.

My plans for Earth Day were mostly to trick people into drinking some organic wine and watching The Day After Tomorrow (still the best climate change movie ever produced, ever, sorry, Gore.)  Well, some aspects of that would have involved more necessary trickery than others.  I’m having a hard time finding anyone who finds that movie to be as much of a work of genius as I do.  But given school and work, film and wine will need to happen later on.  I’ll definitly pet my sprouts, though.  That should be plenty earthy.

For a small celebration, though, I want to share a few links to blogs I’ve been reading and enjoying.

A More Perfect Market had a recent post on the problems of landholders cashing in on their forests- the ‘greenies’ and government are making it harder for them, and who’s it helping?

Bean Sprouts has a recipe for Goat Cheese and Roasted Vegetable pasta.  It’s part of her eating-vegetarian challenge.  Since goat cheese is delicious, how challenging can this be?

At Climate Progress, the talk is usually wonky and political, but for Earth Day they’ve posted a discussion of why we shouldn’t focus on saving the planet, but instead on saving ourselves (massive weather changes being way more damaging to people than the huge spinning ball of molten rock we’re allegedly concerned with).

Crunchy Chicken is doing a lot of good work, all the time, but the one that catches my eye is her series on highly attractive men on the environmental movement. This time, it’s Guillermo from LocalHarvest, a website dedicated to local farming. Good pic(k).

Eco Samurai is brewing beer at home for all the environmental, and delicious, reasons.

Eco Warrior collected some interesting ideas for making planters from things that aren’t planters.

Garden Punks has a great series of instructions and photos from their most recent garden design. Rather inspiring, but I’ll have to be content with rearranging my planters in attractive groupings for now.

No Impact Man gave a wise commentary on the recent and possibly counterproductive debates between some climate policy types (including Nordhaus and Shellenberger, who wrote “BreakThrough”) on Climate Progress.

People and Nature has collected a list of things to do outside, especially with kids. Makes me want to find a child to make go outside. In the legal-est way possible.

There’s plenty of Earth Love in these parts- well over 24 hours worth.  Fortunately, when you’re a sustainability blogger, every day is Earth Day (cheesy grin).