Downsizing to go green: well, duh.

EDIT: I started this post months ago, and am only now realizing that I didn’t publish it, somehow.

I was over at Treehugger the other day, and I saw something on their blog roll about how having a smaller house is greener, and anyway do we really need ALL that space? Well, duh.

I can see why Treehugger would have to post that. People don’t really think about it. Americans are trained to get the biggest, most luxurious living space that they can afford. But how much space do people really need to live comfortably? Not only space–how much car does one need, how much food does one need, how much stuff does one need? Could you get by using a little less hand soap and toothpaste, eating a smaller portion for dinner, using a little less electricity, turning the thermostat down or up a bit more?

We’ve gotten used to living comfortable lives, so much so that we have begun to take it for granted. I cringed a bit earlier today; I was cleaning up the kitchen and bathroom, and I probably went through half a roll of paper towels. I don’t think I used more paper towels than were needed to actually do the job; I am not one of those who takes paper towels in a wad and throws them away half-clean. Even so, I used something like half a roll. I prefer to use cloth towels, but all of mine are extremely dirty at the moment–in fact, they’re frequently dirty, in which case I turn to paper towels. They’re a convenience crutch: instead of stocking up on cloth towels that can be reused until they fall apart, I burn through paper towels until it’s laundry time. How many convenience crutches do I have? How many do we have as a people that prevent us from making real environmental progress?

I’m in the second full generation that didn’t experience the Great Depression. (Well, more or less.) My father was born in 1962, my mother was born in 1961, and I was born in 1983; their parents, my grandparents, were very young during the Great Depression, so you might even consider my generation to be almost three generations removed from the Great Depression, as very young children didn’t really have any control over family life and may not have even realized that they were scrimping and saving and restraining themselves. During the Depression, it was essential to save, save, save; you saved as much as you could, whether it was money or food or household product. Everything had much more value; you couldn’t afford to waste anything, and even if you could, you certainly wouldn’t waste anything because everything was valuable.

Since that time, it seems that only certain things have any real ‘value.’ Paper towels, being by nature disposable, have very little value. Being that there is now an abundance of food, it has little value; we eat as much as we want, and then buy overpriced diet food when we eat too much regular food. We consume and toss away the leftovers for someone else to handle. On top of that, we feel entitled to do so based on the amount of money we’re sporting in our bankrolls.

Can we really say that money, even money that we worked hard to earn, entitles us to do whatever we want, regardless of the long-term consequences? Consider emissions and smog. Do we have the right to fill up our low mpg, fuel-guzzling vehicles and drive around, regardless of the fact that we’re emitting greater quantities of poisonous gas into the atmosphere than needed? And please, don’t tell me that carbon emissions from cars aren’t poisonous. If you truly believe that, run a hose from your exhaust pipe to the inside of your car, roll up all the windows, and sit there for a few hours. Fast-forward to the end of this little experiment: you will die. Car exhaust will kill you. Is it right and just that people who can afford to drive cars with horrible gas mileage are allowed to do so, despite the fact that it endangers the people around them? I’ve seen the brown cloud hanging over Los Angeles, and this is after fuel emission standards were put into place. That cloud is a cloud of death for everyone in Los Angeles, from the poorest to the richest; everywhere you find a high concentration of drivers, the emissions are there, whether they are visible or not. Is it fair that people who have worked hard for their money can effectively poison the atmosphere in a whole city?

Death-carrying emissions come from other sources, as well. Consider the electricity that you use, even when you’re not actually using the thing that the electricity is using. If your electricity comes from coal, it’s producing emissions. Consider our landfills. Are we truly at liberty to fill them as we please–it’s not my land, or your land, and the effects of overflowing landfills don’t just affect the landowners. The masses of decomposing garbage create methane at a scale that has not been produced in the arc of human history preceding the modern industrial era.

I could go on and on–our food production, our water use, many areas where non-environmentalists claim that they can consume as they please because they work hard and they can afford to pay for their consumption. What I wonder is, can you really afford to pay for your consumption? Can you afford to feed everyone when our unsustainable farming practices fail? Can you afford to pay hospital bills if someone becomes sick from excessive carbon emissions? Can you afford to fix the problem when we are unable to obtain crude oil and, too late, need to switch to something that we can produce ourselves? The point I’m trying to make is that, regardless of your household income or lifestyle preference, the choices that you make concerning your own personal consumption don’t only affect you. Blathering on about how hard you worked to earn your money is irrelevant, because we don’t live in a nation (supposedly) that allows for the rich to dominate the poor and force them into unsound living conditions. No man is an island, and no family’s consumption habits are disconnected from the problems.

The solution, of course, is downsizing. Perhaps not always downsizing our material possessions (although I am looking at you, SUV and Hummer owners), but downsizing our egos and downsizing our feelings of entitlement. No one person is entitled to ruin it for everyone else, that’s simply how it is. So put those feelings behind you. Turn off the lights when you leave the room. Use the A/C and heat sparingly. Buy a fuel-efficient car. (Fun fact: fuel-efficient cars will also generally last longer than non-fuel-efficient cars.) Ask yourself if you really need to buy those itty-bitty individually wrapped things–no, ask yourself if you should buy them. Think about your choices from conception to production line to post-consumption, and remember that you have a responsibility to others, and others’ children and grandchildren, not to mess it up for the rest of us.

 

The S-word.

I’m all fired up right now.

I’ve been checking out TED–Technology, Education, Design. It’s an organization of sorts, full of the furthest-seeing visionaries, innovators, and humanists currently known to man. There’s a lovely documentary about them that I watched on Netflix, The Future We Will Create; it was awe-inspiring to think that so many people are continually working for the good of humanity. (I was a little ashamed of myself for being the couch-surfer that I am.)

One of the issues that is being hotly debated right now is the reform of our nation’s health care. Being an uber-liberal and a poor person, I am in favor of socialized medicine. I’m not even going to candy-coat it to take out that awful s-word. I don’t think it all has to be socialized, but I think there needs to be an option available to all people who could potentially be crippled by health-care costs. Even persons who could be considered middle class can be bankrupted by medical costs; my own parents, who are by no means well-off, racked up a hundred thousand dollars in debt after my brother was born with severe birth defects. (Possibly more; I’ve never asked for an exact figure.) My parents were left with no other option than to declare bankruptcy after my brother’s death. There were no other options for them, other than to refuse all treatment, which is a barbaric suggestion. My father racked up another $30,000 in medical bills when he had appendicitis a decade later; he was never able to own a home on his income, yet something so common that it could happen to anybody left him with half a mortgage’s worth of debt after a week of medical care. And there were no other options; what was he going to do, suck it up and die? (Which, he very well could have done anyway; since the MO of the poor in America is to avoid hospitals unless you’re literally dying, he put it off until his appendix ruptured. Why? Fear of medical bills.)

I’ve been realizing lately that, more than my passion for food, equality, and socialized medicine, I have a burning desire to see an uplifting of the impoverished in our country. Poor people work their asses off and get squat for compensation. And, America, we need poor people to work the shit jobs that they work; we need waitresses, we need grocery store clerks, we need gas station attendants. If we want to buy a fancy coffee, we need baristas to make them (and even with tips, baristas make shit–I know that for a fact). If we want to buy some new clothes, we need clerks to run the stores or tech support to help with web purchases; we need people to manufacture the clothes, people to handle the shipping. If we want our prescription drugs, we need people working the line, cleaning the machines (a thankless job that my fiancee does), packaging and shipping the bottles (another thankless job he does). We need truck drivers and janitors and teachers; I guess what I’m trying to say is that America would more or less collapse without the lower-class to lower-middle-class.

What we need in addition to the actual poor and middle-class people who work are the dollars that they spend every month. If you check out the census numbers, you’ll see that there are a hell of a lot of people who make less than $40k a year. These people don’t have the luxury of bankrolling a lot of saved dough, especially now that food cost has gone up considerably, not to mention everything else; in California, we barely got by on $40k a year. In Ohio, we barely get by on $30k. So squirreling away significant portions of our cash isn’t really an option; we have to spend every dime that comes through our hands. That means that whatever business you work at is able to make money, whether it’s directly through we poor people buying products, paying rent, or paying utilities, or whether it’s because people who get money from us pay you for your service. If it weren’t for the poor, I doubt there would be any rich people. You’d have no workforce, and you’d have nobody who was obligated to spend all of their money without fail.

So why do people act like such greedy fucking bastards when it comes to kicking in a bit more for social programs? Why do people piss and moan when workers try to get a better wage? That person who barely makes minimum wage ringing up your groceries every week or two deserves a little help because you couldn’t live without them. Those people deserve help because someone needs to do those jobs; and, because someone needs to do those jobs, there will always be people who are well below the poverty line. Or would you rather grow your own food, brew up your own fuel in your garage, sew your own clothes, make your own medicines, and craft your own lattes from coffee beans you grew in your yard and milk from your own cow? Some people find this idea exciting and romantic; but I’ll tell ya, brother, most people are absolutely not on board with that. In an age where we can’t even find time to cook simple meals for ourselves, the do-it-yourself attitude can only carry a person so far. (Plus, most places in America have a horrible climate for growing coffee, which really needs to be done on mountains in a tropical climate. That leaves… Hawaii.)

The reason that we need socialized medicine, as opposed to, say, some sort of privatized deal, is that we have seen that we can’t trust the private sector to do the right thing. We’ve seen insurance premiums skyrocket since the last health care reform was shot down under Clinton. We have seen what has happened on Wall Street, how the greed of the banking and finance industry has run our economy into the ground. Deregulation allowed for banks to sell bad mortgages to other companies, which were then repackaged as good investments and sold to yet other companies. The result? A lot of fucking hard-working Americans lost their homes when they couldn’t pay their mortgages when payments skyrocketed (or, in many cases, they should have been denied the loan in the first place), and still more Americans saw the biggest investment of their lives lose a ton of value. And as we saw, this wasn’t limited to one or even two companies; the abhorrent practices spread like wildfire. Some people literally lost half of their home value. Equity that was there was gone, vanished, because when we trusted people to do the right thing, they did not do the right thing. So the government does need to oversee health care, at least to some extent; health care isn’t a commodity that should be measured in profitability, and it’s not a commodity that should be at the mercy of the market. When we have children who die from abscessed teeth, it’s time to rethink the plan. We need a good, solid, government-run plan; not some half-assed plan because people are afraid of being socialists. It needs to be regulated by the government because people will not do the right thing. If people always did the right thing, we wouldn’t need a constitution, or laws.

Why is it so wrong to have areas of our current industry be socialized, anyway? Why is it so wrong to pay a little more so that the people who perform all of these services we can’t live without can have health care and proper nutrition? I recently read a comment, I believe on the Huffington Post, by a Canadian woman; she expressed that she was going to be a mother soon, and that it was her privilege to pay taxes so that other mothers who weren’t as well-off could afford health care, as well. Let’s back that up: her privilege to pay taxes and kick in for people who weren’t able to make as much money as she does. She’s not crying about how she has to pay more taxes, and she doesn’t seem to be suffering for it. She doesn’t seem to be a worse person for being a socialist; in fact, she is a more moral person than the people out there crying about having to pay more taxes so that a poor person doesn’t have to choose between death and debt.

I understand some legitimate drawbacks to a government-run plan; namely, that the government doesn’t always run an efficient or viable industry. I think this could be alleviated by a number of things. Firstly, lobbyists get absolutely no control over what is allowed to go into action under the government-run health care system, because lobbyists don’t give a damn about anything but helping the industry. Industry is self-serving and poisons politics; it absolutely needs to butt out. Secondly, I think people who are spending a lot of time bitching about socialized medicine need to stop bitching about it and start contributing to the conversation. Not the conversation of whether or not to have it, but the conversation about how is it best to actualize it. Through real, non-partisan discussion about how to implement policy, we can create a strong system; further, without the negativity that runs rampant through politics, more positive things can be achieved. Instead of fear-mongering, talk about the real issues and what can be done to solve those issues. If you’re not part of the solution, you’re definitely part of the fucking problem.

Socialization of certain industries wouldn’t make us the dreaded c-word (communists). You can keep all of your non-essential industries; we don’t need to socialize entertainment, technology, fashion, hospitality, or even a large portion of the food industry. We don’t need socialized diamond rings or filet mignon; we don’t need government-run movie theaters or Wal-Marts. We’re not in any danger of losing our capitalist identities, where people who have extra cash in their pocket can go out and have what they want. What we do need is to take care of the workers who make it possible for life in America to function. We can still have an America where it’s possible for the entrepreneur to go out and turn an idea into a fortune and provide basic services to those who can’t afford them. We can live in a society where we don’t treat the poor as leeches who selfishly want to suck up others’ earnings; we can be thankful that there are people who are willing to work these shit jobs so that we can have our non-fat lattes in the morning, our cocktails in the evening, our prescription drugs, our groceries, our gasoline, and our fabulous wardrobes. And we can give a little to our fellow citizens, knowing that without them, we would be reduced to figuring out how to grow coffee trees in a Midwestern cul-de-sac.

 

I like my pasta perfectly al dente, and so should you.

Snobbery is a relative thing. I’ve learned this on my twenty-six years on this planet; I considered myself a snob for along time, until my fiancee and I got together. My fiancee is much more–let’s say, discerning in his tastes than even I, at least as far as music and books go. I had thought myself a book snob for shunning Dan Brown, Danielle Steele, and most of those other authors who publish in mass-market paperback; my perception of my own snobbery got taken down a peg when I realized that my fiancee was lucky to read a living author. I don’t begrudge him this, although I do prod him to read newer books from time to time, just to see if I can interest him in some newer authors that he might actually enjoy.

As far as food snobbery goes, I fall somewhere in the middle. I do turn up my nose at neon orange Kraft Dinner. I do turn up my nose at jugs of wine. I don’t judge other people who consume these things, but they don’t meet my minimum culinary requirements. I think my basis for excluding these items from my diet is sound: there seem to be more fillers in processed food than actual food. And if you have to load up on salt, sugar, and fat to make something taste good, it’s probably not very high-quality.

Even having mid-level food snobbery of my own, I am often slightly appalled at some of the food snobbery I see on television. I see show after show reminding us, the viewers at home, that the correct way to cook pasta is al dente, and I have to say that every time I cook pasta, I worry that I’m overcooking it. My pasta doesn’t come out as inedible mush, but I think to myself, “Is this al dente enough? Is this how I’m supposed to cook it?” The proper cooking of vegetables breeds another insecurity; I don’t like my green beans crunchy and barely cooked, does this mean I’m doing it wrong?

I generally get the pangs of insecurity when my food is on the cusp of being done. I’ll taste my pasta, decide it’s too chewy, and leave it for further cooking; but, in the back of my mind, the little chef is wondering if my pasta is really perfectly done and it’s my tastes that are sub-par.

I say now, forget it. I’m tired of wondering if Mario Batali would turn up his nose at my food. I know when my pasta is done well enough for me; I know how I like to eat my green beans. If it isn’t how someone else would do it, so be it–the point of cooking is to eat food that you like to eat, not food that is prepared the way that someone decided is “the right way.” I find it interesting that, although the aim of these food shows and magazines and books is to get people cooking at home, they would alienate those whose tastes may be different or who may be sufficiently lacking in expertise that they suffer small panic attacks over whether they’re doing it right. How do you know when it’s done? When it tastes good to you.

I’ll eat what I like, thanks.

 

Agitated.

I used to be a writer.

If you read through my rather verbose postings on this blog, you might laugh–used to be? What are all these words you are sending out into cyberspace? And I guess it’s true that I still write, but I used to write other stuff besides blogs that almost nobody reads. I used to be one of those poem-writing people; just like everyone else, it seems, in the free world. But I liked my poetry; I had finally gotten to a point, in my early 20’s, when I was finished with conventional clap-trap and was really starting to make some headway with “skill.” And then, I stopped. I don’t know why.

Maybe I stopped writing poetry because I stopped reading poetry. In fact, for a long time, I stopped reading full-stop–something I can barely imagine, because reading is as natural to me as breathing. Even though I started reading books again, I haven’t read poetry in a very long time. I wrote something today, and it seems that I am back to the utter crap stage of writing after so many years of not doing it. I think this has made me afraid to try again, afraid that I won’t be able to recapture what I had. Afraid, maybe, that I don’t feel enough without the constant turmoil that I used to experience. Life has become relatively quiet for me; I cook, I read, I blog, I obsessively check my Facebook, I cuddle with my man, I pet my cats. Quiet, but mundane. Have I lost it? Am I afraid to find out? I honestly don’t know.

I’ll have my self-serving moment and end with a bit of old verse. It’s not my best, but it feels appropriate.

James and Junk

Slink onward,
eyes bruised and
blood mixed with finest junk.

Chance fate and
chance again.
Dance its mad tango
daring it to take you
with unfinished business.

Who is the dark angel
spurring you to
climb out of the empty bathtub,
shivering with fever,
and write?

 

Checkpoint.

I was re-reading my first posts to this blog last night, and my page with my statement of purpose. I thought it was a good time to reflect, take some inventory, and see how I’ve been doing.

I started this blog because I wanted to write about what I have been doing to make my life less impacting on the environment. One of the better things that has happened since I started this blog is that my boyfriend has found a steady job that isn’t a totally bullshit job. (By bullshit, I mean that things have happened this year like–he was given a job and then put “on call” for whenever they needed help; he was given a job that required him to drive incredibly long distances, all over central Ohio, even though he was promised an office job; and he was given a job by the US Census that was supposed to last for three months and lasted for three weeks.) He’s working a steady job now, though, so we finally have income coming in, and can finally start paying off the money we racked up while living off of our meager credit. Yay, employment!

One of the things I’ve wanted to do this year was start recycling more. This has been–on and off. We don’t have recycling pickup, so we have to haul all of our recycling over to Kroger. I have to admit that I have been incredibly lazy about this, and when the can fills up, I generally spend several weeks just using the trash can because it’s convenient. We probably have five or six bags of recycling that have been stuffed into the hall closet for months. Although I recognize that we could be doing better, I have to say that I feel good about having done some recycling this year. We’ve probably taken 15 bags of trash or so to the recycling center, and we have the bags that we currently have stockpiled. That’s 20 to 21 fewer large bags of trash that we’ve kept out of the landfill already. We could have done better, but we also could have done nothing at all!

Another thing I wanted to do this year was quit smoking. I’m in the process of quitting right now, and it’s been a really hard road for us. It’s hard enough to quit smoking, but we’ve spent most of the year in a state of hopelessness and depression (especially me). We haven’t given up, though. We went two weeks without smoking, then another week. I’m hoping this next week will also be smoke-free.

One success that has been absolute has been my total reduction of chemical house-cleaning products. I wash my dishes with eco-friendly, biodegradable dish soap; I clean the house with a mixture of castile soap and water, then rinse and disinfect with vinegar. I’ve also cut down quite a lot on paper towel usage by purchasing more dish towels, which come in handy for that inevitable weekly coffee overflow. Although I still wash my dishes with those disposable green scrubby things, I have a habit of cutting them so that I only use as much sponge as I need, cutting down on waste when it inevitably gets dirty and has to be thrown out. I make my scrubbies last 3 – 4 times as long, depending on how many pieces I get out of one. (I’ve also been cleaning more often; although the apartment is by no means spic-and-span, it’s not quite the pigsty I usually live in.)

One issue that has still been plaguing me is food. Part of the reason I haven’t been actively seeking out solutions to the issue of food has been that I have basically become a hermit. There are so many options, but that would involve… leaving the house. And meeting new people. Both of which I have been semi-afraid to do these past couple of years. I wanted very much to join a CSA this year, but the money wasn’t there when it was time to sign up.

One positive thing that I have done with my food habits is to go part-time vegetarian. When I was working at Starbucks and buying groceries on a very limited budget, I only ate meat every once in awhile–meat was expensive, and therefore, a ‘treat.’ I’ve gone back to that way of thinking, because I truly don’t need meat every day. Even though I still buy the non-organic stuff, I spend a lot less money on it; I also tend to only buy meat when it’s on sale, half price. When I’m not eating meat, I’ll load up on mushrooms and/or beans for protein. Or peanut butter sauce for noodles. (mmm!)

The last thing, I suppose, I’d like to take stock of is our energy consumption. Because of, ahem, certain factors, I was not permitted to buy the number of fans that I would like to have purchased early this summer, so we did run the air conditioning a bit more than I would have wanted to do. Now that we have a second fan for the bedroom, I’m proud to report that the A/C has been totally off, and the apartment is far more comfortable. We’re thinking about moving in the next few days, so I’m hoping that we will get a place that isn’t as ridiculously hard to heat and cool as this one.

The verdict: although there’s still lots of room for improvement, I think I’ve been making some positive changes to reduce my carbon footprint. I plan to continue my efforts and make further changes where I can!

 

A happy kitchen accident: spicy (vegan!) garlic-tomato-black bean sauce.

(Note to vegans: You may want to skip the meat discussion in this paragraph–the sauce I made is vegan but the enchiladas we made were not!) Having roasting and/or simmered roughly ten pounds of pork shoulder the other day, I’ve been looking for creative ways to use up said pork shoulder. Today, I am cooking pulled pork enchiladas–well, my version of pulled pork enchiladas. I decided to make enchiladas because I still have tortillas aplenty from the tacos I made the other day, plus a small brick of Monterrey Jack. What I didn’t have, what I never have in the house, in fact, was enchilada sauce–but the lack of a sauce has never before stopped me from making anything. When I don’t have sauce, I improvise.

My aim wasn’t, in particular, to make a sauce that closely mimicked the traditional red enchilada sauce. Mostly because I don’t KNOW how to make the red enchilada sauce, although I could probably have taken a stab at it if I had some milder dried chiles. I wanted to make something tasty and wet that I could drown my tortillas in. I started with a Mexican-food staple, tomatoes–only, I actually started with a large can of whole tomatoes, which I dumped directly into the blender, juice and all. I followed this with about ten of the little baby inner cloves of garlic, the ones that are small and kind of a pain in the ass to deal with. Meanwhile, I had 6 – 8 dried, skinny arbol chiles in the microwave, nuking in some water to soften them up a bit. I drained these, and they went into the sauce, seeds and all. I ground everything up until it was smooth.

I initially thought that this would be the main composition of my sauce–tomato and chile, with some spices added in. But when I was finished buzzing up the tomatoes and peppers, the sauce fell pretty flat. It was spicy but totally flavorless otherwise. I thought it may have been partially due to the fact that I had not yet added salt or spices, but I was still casting my mental nets for another ingredient that would add some dimension. Then, lo! I happened to glance over at the can of black beans that I was going to use for the filling. I rinsed them and added them to the sauce instead, along with a healthy dose of salt, pepper, paprika, and cumin. The result was lovely; the beans added a depth of flavor and thickened up the texture quite a bit. The sauce was delicious over the enchiladas, but I’m betting it has some other awesome uses (my man already suggested using it in breakfast burritos). My regret was that I didn’t have any cilantro, I think it would have greatly complimented this sauce.

The recipe:

1 large can of tinned WHOLE tomatoes, with juices
1 can of black beans (whatever the standard size can is)
5 regular cloves of garlic or a bunch of those little tiny ones (or more, depending on how much you like)
6 – 8 dried arbol chiles, plumped up in boiling water
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp paprika
1 tsp black pepper
1.5 tsp kosher salt
1 tbsp olive oil

Optionally, add in half a bunch of cilantro.

Grind everything in a blender over medium speed until smooth. (High speed aerates it a little much for my taste.)

Note: For different flavors, experiment with different dried chiles. If you like a milder sauce, you can use fewer dried chiles, milder dried chiles, or none at all. If you decide to go no-chiles, you could use roasted red peppers instead to give it a little more flavor dimension. (Hmm, I bet those roasted canned tomatoes would be killer in this recipe… if they still make those.)

 

Carnitas: the holy grail of Mexican food.

I suppose that everyone has their different holy grail of food. For me and my man, our preferred food is Mexican, and our requirements for fantastic Mexican food are relatively simple: fresh tortillas and/or the proper torta bread, fresh taco toppings (Mexican-style toppings, no dairy), and damn good meat. In Mexico, the taco is all about the meat; the toppings available are not nearly as plentiful as in the states, so the flavor of the meat is crucial to an awesome taco. You won’t find ground beef tacos in Mexico as far as I know; I haven’t seen one to this day. You will find tongue, beef cheek, steak, chicken, battered and fried fish, and pork carnitas. Carnitas, a bit like our American shredded barbecue pork (but more awesome), became our taco meat of choice after visiting a little place in Ensenada, Mexico, called Dos Hermanos. Sadly, we only dined on their fare once before moving back to Ohio (and out of short driving distance), but that one experience is embossed on our memories as the perfect carnitas experience. Tender, juicy, yet crisp on the outside, flavorful, and completely delicious.

I have been trying to replicate the carnitas experience ever since that trip. For whatever reason, I didn’t do any basic internet research before starting my experiments, which is fine–except that I might have had real carnitas a lot sooner and not as much basic pulled pork. (Not that I don’t love me some pulled pork. In fact, I have the remainder of the 10 pound roast that didn’t go into the carnitas pot slow cooking in the oven.) Pulled pork is like the fraternal twin of carnitas–it, too, is slow-cooked deliciousness, but it lacks for certain applications, including tacos.

I broke down an asked a friend who is half Mexican how to make carnitas. He sort of laughed at me, which is understandable; I am a gringa, after all. He then told me that I needed to get a huge metal pot and put it over a fire in the back yard, then melt down a huge tub of lard and cook my carnitas in it. I was also told that I had to stir the pork with a two-by-four, or it’s not authentic.

This exasperated me. Partially because it was only half the information I really needed, and partially because I don’t have a backyard where I could start a fire for my big metal pot. So I endeavored once again to make carnitas in the oven, and once again I made pulled pork. Then, I found this blog, and the heavens opened up and angels sang and whatnot.

I basically followed the directions listed on the blog, which is a miracle for me because I generally don’t follow any recipes at all, whatsoever. (I did use four pounds of lard instead of three pounds, because the bucket I got held four pounds.) I was worried because, about an hour and ten minutes in, all I had was grey, tough meat; I thought it was going to take a lot longer than the two hours-ish. But, miraculously, while I was making the salsa, I started getting a smell that was NOT the nasty smell of melted lard (and trust me, it is a nasty smell). I went to check on the meat, and lo–in not that much time, the outsides had started to turn slightly golden and the meat was getting tender. I cranked the heat up on the meat and it did, indeed, get golden brown and delicious. It sort of reminds me of my great-grandmother’s pork chops, which were floured and always cooked in bacon fat. Delicious.

Since the cooking method has already been chronicled over at The Paupered Chef, I won’t relive it here. I will, however, talk about how to build a Mexican-style taco, as opposed to an American-style one.

Firstly, tortillas. American-style tacos usually use those crunchy taco shells or else flour tortillas. Mexican-style tacos generally come on fresh corn tortillas–two tortillas, to be precise. You can find these in your regular grocery store; before serving, warm up a dry, clean skillet or griddle to medium high and warm the tortillas on it. I personally prefer flour tortillas to corn ones, but I haven’t found a decent flour tortilla in Columbus yet.

Next, the meat. When Americans think of taco meat, we think of ground beef that has been browned in taco seasoning. In Mexico, as I’ve said, there is a variety of meats–none of which include ground beef, to my knowledge.

On top of the meat, the fresh toppings. Here, you can see a wee tiny bit of correlation between Mexican-style and American-style tacos. American taco staples include tomato salsa, taco sauce, chopped onions, lettuce, cheese, sour cream. Both salsas are usually from a jar. Mexican tacos are much fresher and omit the dairy; on a Mexican taco, you’ll find chopped raw onions, cilantro, green cabbage, fresh pico de gallo (tomato salsa), and various sauces which can range from mild to OMG. No cheese, no sour cream.

When we make tacos, I always make fresh salsas. I have two staple salsas for tacos: fresh pico de gallo and a chipotle-based hot sauce that I usually have on-hand for all sorts of things. Making the pico de gallo is easy. Seed and chop two medium-sized tomatoes; add to that half a medium-sized onion, finely chopped; then a handful or so freshly chopped cilantro. Salt, add the juice of a lime if you like, stir.

Making the hot sauce is easy, as well; my version is fairly close, I think, to the hot sauce you find in taco stands, although I think mine is quite a bit spicier than the one we got at the last stand we visited. The spiciness level and flavor depend on what sort of dried chiles you use. The smaller and skinnier the dried peppers, the hotter the salsa. To make the salsa, I take, oh, probably 10 – 15 chiles and soak them in boiling water, at least for 5 minutes (it’s going into a blender so they don’t have to be super soft). I also take a can of chipotles in adobo and put the whole can into the blender. I don’t know how large the cans can be, but I definitely use one of the smaller-sized cans; it’s probably not much bigger than a small tin of mushrooms or a small tin of evaporated milk. Add to that about half a cup of vinegar; I use cider vinegar, but you can use rice wine vinegar if you want a milder one. I wouldn’t use red wine vinegar or any vinegar with a strong flavor association, like balsamic (eww). De-stem your dried chiles and put them, seeds and all, into the blender with a splash of your soaking water. Grind until fairly smooth. (You may want to sample this sauce before dumping it onto your food. It can get preeeetty spicy.)

To finish off the taco, you can squeeze lime juice over the top. If you want little side snacks, Mexicans often serve tacos with pickled cucumber or radishes.

Mexican Tacos. This:

Not This:

 

Personal responsibility.

This isn’t exactly a “green” blog post, but it’s something that’s been on my mind of late. I’ve been reading some blogs about fat acceptance, because I, myself, am overweight. Maybe it’s not “PC” to be a fatty, but it’s something that I’ve always struggled with; I’m coming to accept that I don’t need to work myself to death to be x amount of pounds, because being the ‘ideal weight’ for my height would be a full-time job. Because of the feelings of insecurity, hopelessness, and failure that have come from the desire to be what other people have told me all my life that I should be, I’m heavier than I’ve ever been. So, I’m stopping that train of thought now. My current goal is not to be ‘thin;’ I’m going to be healthy. Reprogramming my brain is going to be difficult, but it’s better than starving myself to fit some goal that isn’t necessarily even based on sound medical science.

This ties into a discussion I was having with my friend the other day. We were talking about what a shit time we had as children; neither of our parents were exactly the beacons of love and support that many other kids had. I relayed stories to him about my father; my father used to tell me that if I didn’t stop eating, I’d “be as big as a goddamn house.” Or, if I didn’t stop eating, I “wouldn’t be able to fit through the door.” (I think I was in middle school at the time.) Now, looking back, I wasn’t that big. I was overweight, but I was a fairly active kid and I wasn’t the ginormous fatty that my father made me out to be. The pressure from my father sent me into a rather odd eating disorder; for years, I wasn’t able to go into the kitchen without him yelling at me: “What are you doing??!” Apparently, I also made grunting noises when I ate, which I never actually heard but I still listen for to this day. Eventually, I wasn’t even able to eat in front of my father comfortably. I would sneak food into my room and feel ashamed of eating. When I was old enough to purchase my own food, or when my grandmother would buy food for me, this turned into binging without purging; eating was such a secret, highly pleasurable, taboo thing for me that I used it in the same way others used drugs. In college, when I was extremely depressed over the death of a close friend, I lived off of Double Quarter Pounders with Cheese; comfort food, for me. It goes back to that original eating disorder; even though my portion sizes are still screwed up today and I still have trouble with food management, I can say that I don’t binge anymore, and I’m thankful of that. (Now, if I could only quit smoking. . .)

It would be very easy, I told my friend, to dump all of this on our parents. My dad was a right bastard about a lot of things, and one of the biggest was my eating habits and my weight. I could say it’s all his fault and use it as an excuse; I’m fucked up because of my father. But I’m a grown-up now, and one of the benefits of being a grown-up is that I have a chance to know my parents as adults, as well. I know my father was ineptly expressing concern over my weight. The fact is, people don’t have to go to parenting school before they have children; it’s possible to have parents who have no bloody clue how to raise children, coupled with the fact that they have their own problems that they don’t know how to deal with. My father was a single father, trying to raise a daughter, scrape up enough every month to both pay the rent and continue his drinking habits, and totally withdrawn from his family because of some serious emotional problems. When I was a child, I didn’t see into his world; I wasn’t capable of seeing into his world, and now I can. So, it was shit luck that I was in that situation as a child; but another advantage to being an adult is that I can see what happened and let it go. I can see that my father was wrong, and I can see that I was not, and am not, a terrible person for being a fatty. Now that I’m an adult and can see these things, and make decisions accordingly, it’s increasingly difficult to place any blame on my situation now on what happened when I was a child. If I don’t change it now, it’s my fault for not doing what I need to do.

I was seeing some other things recently in the new blogs I was looking at that made me wonder where the level of personal responsibility is in our culture. I saw people outraged over things that just seem silly to be the focus of rage; a lot of these things had to do with how women are portrayed in the media. Apparently, we aren’t objects, sluts, or inferior for daring to have a vagina; I can agree with all that, since I don’t find myself to be an inferior person. Honestly, though, crying about advertisements, news stories, television shows, and movies doesn’t feel like a step in the right direction–in fact, if anything, it makes us look like hysterical idiots and reinforces stereotypes. (Tip: It’s not an accident that hysteria shares a root with hysterectomy.) So I pose this question: so fucking what if people portray women that way? I grant you, it isn’t a kind portrayal, it isn’t accurate, and it gives people the wrong ideas. Crying about it in the blogosphere, though, or trying to silence the people who put those images out there isn’t helping matters a damn bit. If we removed all the suspect imagery of women and gays and transgendered persons and minorities from the media, there would be a big gaping void because the people who are crying about it aren’t putting enough positive imagery out there to counter it. If you don’t like the way that women are portrayed negatively in the media, put some positive images out there. Write a screenplay about fat women that doesn’t depict them as the ugly girlfriend or the fat friend who accidentally breaks chairs or eats a whole pie by herself. Write a novel about the realistic gay man. Design a fashionable plus-sized clothing line so that the fatties don’t have to wear ugly clothes that don’t fit. If you’re worried about what your children might think, limit their exposure to negative images and counter that with positive; teach your children what’s good. Start a foundation for people with low self-image due to unfair stereotypes. Put something good into the world and take personal responsibility rather than sitting behind a computer being outraged, nit-picking at ads that you think might have some sort of negative overtones toward a specific group. Fill the void.

The world is not fair, and we can’t expect the world to work around us just because we are pissed off about something. After slavery ended, up through today, black people have worked hard to fill the positive-image void with literature, art, music, thought, and passion. There are still people today who discriminate against blacks, but the American view of black people has shifted drastically from less than a person to Presidential material. They fought their battles against real injustices, but they also strove to create positivity to counter all of the negative. I hope we all move to do that.

 

Nor any drop to drink.

Lately, even though we don’t pay for our water in this little apartment, I’ve been sort of thinking about water conservation. To be honest, even though I know there are lots of things that threaten our water situation, water conservation has always seemed like the biggest load of bull just due to the fact that it’s naturally recycled; but since I do know it’s not bull, I have been taking a few steps toward water conservation. Okay, two steps, and one wasn’t even on purpose.

The first thing that I did was install an aerator on the faucet. I picked one up at Wal-Mart for a couple of bucks; I did this only to find out that our faucet already had an aerator on it, such as the one pictured in the link; I like the new one better because it actually seems to allow less water through at a time, yet it feels like more because the screen is larger. It’s a very easy install; I did it myself and I don’t usually fiddle around with plumbing and such. I wanted to install the aerator because I have to hand-wash our dishes, so I wanted to use less water while doing so.

We have also been using a lot less water from toilet flushings, because our toilet has actually sort of broken. The toilet still works, but the chain that leads to the stopper has snapped off (cheap piece of shit–no pun intended). We are going to be fixing it soon since company is coming, but in the interim, I’ve only been flushing periodically or when, ah, dropping solids into the bowl. I haven’t noticed anything being grosser or more germy, so I may actually continue this policy once the chain is fixed; I’m mostly the only one home during the day, anyway.

The third thing I’ve just started today isn’t actually about water conservation at all, so let me switch gears. I have horrible allergy problems that are exacerbated by owning two cats, to whom I am allergic. I’m not big on the idea of making my body dependent to allergy medication, and I don’t seem to be in totally dire straits; I get itchy eyes and my nose is stuffy, but not every day and rarely severely. I’ve begun a saline nasal rinse this morning; basically, I mix up warm water with these little packets that came with the neti pot that I bought, but kosher salt apparently also works fine. I don’t even use the neti pot anymore, because I find that it doesn’t work as well as I’d like for it to work; the people that made my fine neti pot recommended that I use their squeezy bottle, which would have cost me an additional twelve bucks, but I have foiled them and purchased a cheaper version–a 3 oz bottle already filled with saline solution, which I used and then just popped the top off of and refilled.

Back up, back up, you might be saying–saline nasal rinse? Neti pot? Well, a neti pot is a device of Indian origin (India-Indian, not Native American Indian); it looks like a teapot with a long spout, a bit, and you use it to pour water into your nose. Yes, you use it to induce that “I got water up my nose in the pool” sensation, only there is hopefully less chlorine and it is a bit more controlled. When used properly, the neti pot will send water through one nostril and out the other, rinsing away allergens and, well, snot that is plugged up into the upper reaches of your nose. If used regularly, it is said to help improve sinusitis, allergies, hay fever, colds; and, since it’s natural and doesn’t require me to become a Claritin-junkie, I’m going to be giving it a shot. My first experience this morning was exceedingly snotty, but otherwise it wasn’t uncomfortable or painful. I don’t really feel a difference yet, but this is one of those things that you have to do habitually for it to have an effect.

A funny video to demonstrate nasal irrigation:

 

Updates, exciting new projects, etc.

I’m horrible at blogging, I have to be the first to admit. I don’t always update frequently; I usually abandon blogs. Even though I’ve gone on hiatus from writing, I haven’t gone on hiatus–thinking, I suppose, and studying, and doing.

Life has changed quite a bit in just the past week. We went from being unemployed bums at the end of our credit to being employed and nearly enrolled at the Ohio State University. I still, still have not finalized what I’d like to study. I know I would like to do something environmental; what that will be, I honestly don’t know yet. My interests, my fierce curiosity, lies in human consumption. I would love to find ways to cut down the utter tonnage of garbage that we create as a society, but to do it in a sneaky way so that people won’t balk at it. As a nation, I doubt we will see eye to eye on the green issue anytime soon–the trick, I think, is to try to meet everyone’s point of view. Can we consume less as a nation and still have the creature comforts that we have come to rely on? Can we find ways to lower consumption and keep sales up and costs down for corporations? Interesting ideas to ponder.

I haven’t done much lately to sort of ramp up my environmentalism. We’re still recycling, we’re still using natural cleaners and still cooking from fresh rather than making a bunch of pre-packaged stuff (although not every single day). But being employed has opened up a really exciting prospect–basically, I have demanding that we decorate the apartment, since we probably won’t be moving out in the near future. The walls are white, everything is bland, and our second bedroom is basically a big closet at the moment. My top priority is turning that room into a reading room/library/study. I’d like to get a proper bedroom look going on, and I need to do something to make the living room more… live-able.

I’m not one to do department store designing; not only is it wildly outside of my budget, but it’s … boring. I have never liked a matchy-matchy room. So my plans are to make things and salvage things to try to bring my rooms together. One thing I probably will buy new is a papasan, although I will try to rescue one if possible; I love, love, love papasans and they’re great to curl up to read in. There is a piece that I want to make based on something I saw in the film High Fidelity; in the scene where Rob Gordon is in Marie de Salle’s apartment, she has a room divider made of old windows, and I really, really want something like that. I am thinking… well, I’ll draw you a picture, in a literal sense:

Area rugs are soo bloody expensive, so I’m gonna take an idea I got from Apartment Therapy and ‘upcycle’ some old clothes. The link I followed from AP is at Nesting blog, although theirs is for an upcycled bath mat, and mine will be a much larger sort of area rug. Here’s the picture from Nesting Blog:

(Also, mine won’t be pure white. And it won’t be made out of towels.)

I’m also planning on making my own pillows, bedding, etc etc etc etc etc. For my larger projects, I’ll be posting pictures and whatnot–and I’ll post pictures when I’m finished!! (Before and after.. as much as it will shame me.) I also have a special project in mind for my boyfriend, but I’ll have to see if I can pull it together.

So! Exciting times ahead! I’ll keep you posted!