Potatoes

Continuing on my "prepared foods" binge, our next topic of discussion is potatoes.  Well, I guess we could call them hash browns... hashed browns?  You can buy them in the frozen foods section of the grocery store, but I like my potatoes out of the ground with a little dirt on them... I can hear my dad saying "man up" already.  

Anyway, I do buy potatoes in the store, or more recently, receive them in our CSA.  Hash browns are half of my breakfast every morning and since we are trying to do better on the zero waste front, I decided it is probably just as easy to make them myself vs. buying them pre-shredded and in plastic. 

Actually, I started this little adventure by making home fries.  I would chop the potatoes into small cubes and par broil them...you know, those were pretty good.  I'll just give you the recipe:

Home Fries:

1.  Cut as many potatoes as you want into 1/4"-1/2" cubes. The smaller the better if you like crunchy home fries like me.

2.  Put them all into a pot, and fill the pot with enough water to just cover them.

3.  The goal is to par broil them, meaning soft, but not falling apart.  Usually they come to a boil and need about 5 minutes.

4.  I keep enough to cook for one meal now, and put the rest in a container in the fridge for the rest of the week.  

5.  Mince some onion and throw it in a skillet with some oil (this is optional, but adds a lot of flavor).  Add some cumin, paprika, salt, and anything else that feels right.  (I stop just shy of the kitchen sink.)

6.  Add the potatoes and get everything well coated.  The longer you cook them, the crispier they get.  

Add a couple of eggs and BAM there's breakfast! (Just try not to bam those eggs all over the floor...)

Anyway, back to the hash browns.  If you have a food processer this should take all of 5 minutes.  If you don't, well, this might not be worth it.  It probably isn't worth your time to sit there and grate 2 full potatoes.  Then again, if that's what you have, go for it!

Hash Browns: 

1.  Wash the dirt off the potatoes.  Seems obvious, but Stephanie had to train me on that one. (that was for you Dad... cue the Tim Allen grunt.)

2.  Cut the potatoes in half so they fit in the food processer with the grater attachment.  (I know this is a silly step to have, but I've got to have more than one step in the process right?)

3.  Grate the potatoes...

4.  Dump some into a pan with some oil and cook on medium heat.  

5.  Place the rest of the grated potato on a silicone mat on a baking sheet.  Spread them out into a single layer.  Don't skip the mat on this one, believe me, they will stick to the pan.

6.  Put the sheet pan in the freezer and give it 4 hours.  When they are frozen, take them out, break them up, and put them in a silicone ziplock bag.  Place back in the freezer for tomorrow.

7.  Quick! back to the pan it's going to burn!  Flip the potatoes and finish frying them up.  Add salt to taste.

8.  That's it!  You have just made breakfast and frozen prepared hash browns for the week! 

Food processer!

Hash browns in the skillet

Frozen hash browns

 

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.

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

I Use One Pen

There is something about the feel of a pen in your hand that bolsters the imagination.  When pen hits paper, all manner of ideas, expressions, and beauty can come out... Unless your pen has run dry and all that comes out is circles of dented paper as you scratch furiously across the page to get this final gosh darn word out so you don't have to get up off the couch and walk all the way over to where you keep the pens!  Obviously I'm speaking from experience here...

The last time my pen ran out and I grabbed the cheap plastic replacement off the shelf, I thought that it's too bad I have to throw this old one out.  Then, when this next one runs out of ink, it also goes to landfill.  It would really be better if I could use one pen and refill it: so the research began.

Now, as a designer, there is something you should understand.  The first part of this post about the feel of a pen in one's hand was not an exaggeration.  The pen, for a designer or artist, is an extension of the brain, facilitated by the hand.  Juhani Pallasmaa, in his book called The Thinking Hand:  Existential and Embodied Wisdom in Architecture, displays the active role that the hand (and by extension the pen) takes in the design process.  Basically with experience, the muscles begin to do the work of the designer before the designer has truly thought it through.

Anyway, I'm sure that was more information than you cared to know, so I'll move on.  So what is the most sustainable way to write on paper?  We aren't really sure, and Google isn't telling, but we know that the cheap plastic pen that you get at the bank or hotel isn't it.  There are lots of options available out there.  For us, the most interesting version is a re-fillable pen.  Unfortunately I'm not crazy about fountain pens, but lucky for me, there are rolling ball refillable pens out there.  Some pens have refill inserts that you can buy, but that still has the single use straw.  I searched through all of the pen options and was about to buy a rolling ball with a refillable reservoir, when the lightbulb in my head turned on.  I already had a rolling ball pen with a replaceable cartridge!  It had gone dry years ago, but it was a graduation gift from the RWU librarians, and I had kept it. 

I quickly took it apart and found that the single-use cartridge inside also had a removeable cap.  I did some research, and as it turns out, you can (carefully) drop new fountain pen ink into the reservoir and the pen will start working again.  I found some ink at an office supply store, used an old eyedropper container, and filled it up.  I put too much and got ink on my desk, but I was prepared for that with a mat I made from scrap fabric.

In the end, the pen works perfectly.  I was able to take something that had been sitting around for years and revive it!  I have been using it for months without any problems.  The ink doesn't leak, and the pen writes as well as it always did.  So now, I use one pen and only one pen for 100% of my note taking, thank you card writing, doodling during a boring meeting, and designing.  I do have other art pens that I use for the cards I make for Etsy, but that's why this blog is called Better, Not Perfect.  Over time, I'll figure out ways to make those pens more sustainable, but for now, at least the pen I use the most is better.

PS--from Stephanie: reading this over, I wanted to know why there is a piece of toilet paper in the last photo, not because I'm opposed to the aesthetics of it (although...), but because it's single-use.  Nate claims that he saves it and re-uses it at each filling.  I said there's a better way...

"She dipped her pen into the ink again... She started to write and then stopped and frowned at the pen.  She pulled an orange dahlia penwiper out of her pocket.

'What are you doing?' I said.

'Wiping my pen,' she said.  She stuck the pen into the dahlia and wiped it off between the layers of cloth.  

'It's a penwiper,' I said. 'A pen wiper!  It's used to wipe pens!'

'Yes,' she said, looking at me dubiously. 'There was ink on the point.  It would have blotted the paper.'

'Of course!  So you wipe it on a penwiper!...  You've solved a mystery that's been plaguing me since 1940" (Willis 311).

Willis, Connie. To Say Nothing of the Dog. Bantam Books/Spectra, 1998. 

Look for a future post showing off the orange dahlia penwiper I'll crochet from some orange yarn I have leftover from a previous project.  Also, if you've never read Connie Willis, let me take this as an opportunity to highly recommend her novels.  (The novellas and short stories are more of a mixed bag.)