Broccoli Anyone?

We can get any food we want, in almost any location, in any season.  It has been this way my whole life.  Have you ever stopped to think about how amazing that is?  When there is snow on the ground outside, I can buy strawberries, peppers, zucchini, summer squash, avocados, and almost anything else I desire.  Part of this is due to the ability to ship food across the country, and part of it is due to the ability to flash freeze and package.

There is a wonderful book by Barbara Kingsolver called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle recommended to me because I want to become a farmer... well, maybe not, but I do enjoy many of the farm tasks like growing vegetables, composting, and moving dirt around.  The book is about the author's family and their attempt to eat only locally grown food for an entire year.  They scour the local farmers markets, grow a surprising amount of their own food, and make it through the year.  The winter of course, is the hardest part as surviving on what can be stored from a fall harvest is tricky, not to mention that root cellars are no longer on the must have list in a new home. (Believe me, I've checked.)

One way of preserving summer and fall vegetables is by freezing them.  Yes this takes energy, not to mention valuable space in the freezer, but things like kale and broccoli don't keep in a root cellar, even if our Wakefield apartment had one. (Which it doesn't, I've looked.)  So I embarked on a project.  Over the summer, my mom has a market garden, though due to COVID, she did not participate in the market, so there was a bounty.  Every week I went grocery shopping in my parent's backyard, picking raspberries, (okay, Stephanie did most of the picking.) kale, spinach, and many other things.  We don't go though all of that in a week, so I started to preserve them.  I'll give the steps I took to freeze things below.

Typically, we  also get an assortment of frozen vegetables when we go food shopping, but they come wrapped in plastic.  While things like broccoli are not strictly in season right now, I thought it is at least better to buy the unpackaged stuff rather, so we tried it.  We now have a re-usable bag full of frozen broccoli and a little less guilt about how it got there.  In the future, we will either grow it ourselves, or buy locally grown and preserve it.

Preserving the broccoli.  This system will also work for other vegetables like kale and spinach.

1.  Cut the vegetable into the size you would like to have later.  I use the broccoli florets and keep the stem for broth.

2.  Blanch or steam until 75% cooked.  Don't cook it all the way because when you reheat it, the veggies will get soggy and gross.

2.  Place a single layer of broccoli on a silicone baking mat which is in turn placed on a cookie sheet. (Now I want cookies).

3.  Let it freeze completely.  I usually leave it overnight.

4.  Place in a reusable bag or container and return to the freezer.  

5.  That's it!  Just take them out of the freezer and add to whatever you are making at the last minute because remember, they are already mostly cooked.

Processing, steaming, and placing in the freezer took about 15 minutes, so this is an easy one!

In the end, we still bought out of season, but have plans for something better next year.  We still have raspberries from last summer in the freezer.  I take them out now and again to make jam or a topping for some delicious dessert.  Maybe I'll do a post on raspberries sometime.

Thoughts on Sustainable Architecture

I quit my job to pursue this most necessary ambition called sustainable architecture.  Once in a while you come to a point when the thing you are doing stops being the right thing.  William McDonough says that there is a difference between asking the question "Am I doing it right?" and "Am I doing the right thing?"  I've been asking myself the second question since I graduated from architecture school in 2012.  My thought back then was I'll learn this profession, the ins and outs, the ways of construction, and then I'll transition to the sustainable way of doing things.  This would allow me to understand conventional construction and to be able to make a case for doing things differently.  I don't know if that was the best way, but it's what I did.

Seven years in, I finally hit that point.  If you are keeping track, that was two years ago. (2021-2012 = 9 years.) Yeah, writing that out was for my benefit... despite a very good architectural education, my math is... passable.  

Anyway, a couple of years ago, I signed up for this new sustainable building standard called Passive House, and my views about how we construct buildings changed forever.  Passive House is a German standard of building developed by building scientists.  The developers understood that there are very obvious ways that buildings gain and lose heat, and those directly impact the energy use of the building and the comfort of those living inside of it.  If you can keep a building from losing heat, then theoretically you don't really have to heat it because humans, appliances, etc. are all producers of heat.  Scientists came up with all kinds of equations to calculate heat loss through the building envelope (walls, roof, floor).

There are five components of Passive House.  I'll list them and then move on, but you can find more information here.

Super-Insulated Envelope

Air-Tight Envelope

Thermal Bridge-Free Construction

High-Performance Glazing

Heat Recovery Ventilation

So I went to school; online and then to NYC where a firm was hosting a week-long class to get certified as a Passive House Consultant.  (I had previously been LEED certified, but the highest rating on that system does not require a net zero building.)  The online portion was easy enough, but the in-person class was the most difficult week I have ever had in architecture education.  This is mostly due to the fact that it was actually mechanical engineering education with LOTS of math. (My favorite, remember?)  I passed the test though, and am now a CPHC (Certified Passive House Consultant). You can see my name listed on the PHIUS (Passive House Institute US) website under Massachusetts.

Fast forward to 2020. After two years of trying to convince my architecture firm that we needed to push the envelope (pun intended),  I had reached the tipping point.  All of the projects going on around me seemed inappropriate.  Nobody was moving in a direction toward sustainability, and I felt like it was no longer "the right thing" to work on projects that didn't take the environment into consideration.  So I quit my job and figured out a way to work on more sustainable projects.  I'm currently working freelance for a couple of different architects and pursuing sustainability at all costs.  

So here are my thoughts:

I use the word appropriate quite often.  It is not appropriate to leave a place worse than I found it.  I learned that in preschool.

I don't think it is appropriate to design a structure that uses more energy than it can produce, or at the very least, more energy than absolutely necessary.  Our resources are finite, and furthermore, they are dirty.  

The building occupants have to pay for the energy a building uses for as long as the building is standing, and it is inappropriate to design something that gives them a higher cost of living or of doing business.  (Passive House, despite its name, is not limited to residential structures.)

I don't think it is appropriate to specify materials that, in the process of construction, expose the builder to harmful chemicals that will likely cause cancer later in life.

I do think it is appropriate to create shelter from the elements.  I think design has an amazing power to change the way people live their lives, or at least to help them live comfortable, healthy lives.  

I do think there is an appropriate way to create that shelter, using the sun, the environment, and the building to mutually benefit each other.

I think that by existing, I have an impact on the things around me.  As William McDonough says, design is a signal of intention.  What then, is our intention, and what kind of an impact can that have?

I think Passive House is a good baseline for design.  Start with a building that produces the same amount of energy that it needs to consume, and that is the starting point.  Then the design is not about reduction and conservation, but about how we want to live our lives.

The above statement should be available and accessible to everyone.  It should not cost two or three times as much, because the right thing should also be the easy thing.  

If being environmentally conscious does cost a little more, we have to find a way to prioritize it.

Find It Used

I have a problem... I admit it, I can't stop looking at Craigslist!  People give away good stuff all the time and all you have to do is go pick it up.  

To be clear, we are not advocates for having lots of stuff.  Quite the opposite in fact.  We purge our apartment often.  We don't want lots of clutter, and we don't want to spend money on items we will not use all of the time.  That said, when we do need something, we are starting to realize the true value of buying used items.  

Stephanie and I are coming to see the benefits of this as we realize more and more that buying new stuff doesn't really benefit our quality of life.  What we really want is the service of some item to gain time, accuracy, or efficiency, but the item itself doesn't necessarily have intrinsic value to us.  It takes lots of resources to create something new, so we are trying to become consumers not of the latest and greatest, but of the older and useful.

The nose of a kayak my parents bought used for me (yard sale!).  The swans in the distance were neither friendly nor happy to see us.

We started our journey (before the pandemic) at Goodwill.  We were moving to our then-new apartment and purging our old ones of all the items that we had picked up over time.  This was eye opening for me because I realized all of the things I had spent money on and how few of them we actually worth keeping.  Someday I'll do a post about buying only what you need and only when you really need it... or maybe it will be part of this post, because that's a really good idea... yeah, okay, here goes.

Only buy what you need when you really need it:

This is such an important part of the whole picture.  Creating fewer items in a more global sense means that fewer resources are dedicated to the making of things.  If I can curb the need to make a cheap plastic snow shovel every winter, or fewer candles because I'm using the whole thing, or a new kitchen scale because I bought one that someone else was done with, it means that the resources to create the item are not used.  

Anyway, back to the original post... Since we were already traveling to Goodwill, we decided to take a look around.  I bought a couple of work and workout shirts, and Stephanie got a couple of pairs of pants.  We spent a total of $10.00 and did not have to buy new.  Craigslist is a whole other adventure, though.  It's like used online shopping.  There are definitely questionable items on there like a woman from Cambridge with a post for three bags of apples.  "I have four bags," she said, "but I'm keeping one of them, so you can have three."  It really is a world of amusement.  Stephanie and I draw the line at food (in case anyone we know is reading this).

Our new philosophy for buying things is as follows:

1.  I need a thing

2.  Do I really need this thing?  Let's wait a couple of days and see if there is a solution to the problem that I already own.  (This is also great for keeping to a budget.)

3.  Do I need to own this item, or can I borrow it?  The library has a host of things you can borrow including a laser measure (which I find useful), telescopes, a guitar, a knitting kit etc.  You can also borrow from a friend.

If all of the above doesn't work:

4.  Can I buy it used?  Goodwill, Savers, Habitat for Humanity Restore, Craigslist and Ebay are all places to buy used items.  (Ebay sometimes sells new stuff, so be careful.)

Sometimes this means we have to wait a little while.  The thing I need may not be available right away or not as fast as it would be from a certain giant e-retailer that shall not be named.  I know this is a difficult thing, but not having exactly what we want exactly when we want it might be a good thing sometimes.  The above process certainly cuts down on buyer's remorse.

Stephanie's wedding dress was used (bought from Rent the Runway), and my suit was used (rented from Men's Warehouse).  Photo credit Val Messer Photography.

In the end, we have bought (or obtained for free, or borrowed, or rented) clothes, a kitchen scale, books, an office chair, bobbins, tongs, a water carafe, a tent, wine glasses, silverware, Stephanie's wedding dress and shoes, my suit, a kitchen table (most of our furniture), teapot, a tennis racket, kayaks, and candle holders.  It is also interesting to note that both of our most expensive possessions (our cars) are used.  Many people buy their most expensive item--their home--used.  I think that sometimes there is a stigma about getting used items, but its not necessary.  

Of course, we do buy new things.  I just bought a new laser measure because I found that I needed one more often than Stephanie could reasonably get it from the library, and accuracy is really important.  So, we are getting better, but as always, not perfect.  

2/7/2021 Quick Update:

Stephanie and I really enjoy a blog called Frugalwoods, and "Mrs. Frugalwood" did a very nice post about the same topic.  Frugalwoods blog

She also wrote a book, which we would also recommend:  Meet the Frugalwoods