Buying Local: Week 17 & 7th CSA

These CSA boxes/bags ARE GETTING HEAVY!

That’s also because we got a melon this week! 

What We Bought:

• Mixed Cherry tomatoes
• Assorted slicing tomatoes
• Red Cabbage
• Shishito Peppers
• Tropical melon
• German Butterball Potatoes
• Mirai Sweetcorn
• Kohlrabi
• Japanese eggplant
• Zestar apples
• Peaches from St. Joseph Michigan

 

K’s homemade corn chowder used up some CSA potatoes and corn

 

What We Learned:

• More about vegetarian cooking. K bought a new cookbook so we could further utilize our boxes instead of relying on vegetables only as sides.
• Meal planning is so important in order to use what we have available without wasting it.
• Our compost game is STRONG! The last two months we have overflowed our bucket and had to have extra containers at pick up time.

 

K’s new cookbook

 

Garage Sale Finds into Framed Art

K & I have a small obsession with maps.

We already have a map of Cape Cod Bay and Washington DC in our apartment.

So when I stumbled upon a copy of the Charts of the Illinois Waterway at a garage sale, I knew I had to go back and get it. K also told me I had to go back and get it.

It has maps of the Mississippi, the Chicago River, the lock system, and the canals that helped reverse the flow of the Chicago River.

K was thrilled with the purchase. We knew right away they would make great additions to our growing map collection.

The maps hung around for a few months until I finally got around to finding frames for them, even though we did not have much wall space left anymore.

We picked our favorite two: one of the waterways of the U.S. and one of the downtown portion of the Chicago River.

They look pretty good over the TV and am happy with the purchase and placement of them. It is also always a way better story when you can say you got something at a garage sale!

How To: Stop Junk Mail

Getting stuff in the mail is awesome.

Getting unwanted stuff in the mail is not.

 

We all have experienced it. You open the mailbox and find something addressed to you or the current resident (whom you have never heard of) and have no idea why you are getting this piece of mail. You don’t even know what this company is that’s sending you catalogs.

Besides just tossing it in the recycling bin, there are a number of ways you can keep yourself from getting junk mail in the first place.

The biggest thing you can do is avoid giving out your address, but sometimes junk mail will find you anyway.

Below are some resources you can use to be removed from all sorts of mailing lists.

• PaperKarma
• National Do Not Mail List
• DMAchoice.com
• CatalogChoice
• OptOutPrescreen.com (For credit related mailing)

 

Here are some of my requests I submitted to PaperKarma. Who are you King Ranch Saddle Shop?!

 

Another way to combat the onslaught of unwanted mail is to find the sender’s phone number, any number you can find, and call them to remove yourself from the mailing list.

Be warned that it takes over a month sometimes to be officially removed from mailing lists. A lot of the time, a catalog or a mailing is already in production and printed with your name on it before you make the call.

On another note, as much as I love giving money to a good cause such as a charity or non-profit, be careful. Sometimes when you donate, your mailing information can get shared with (or sold to) other organizations. For example, post-election, K donated to an environmental organization and now we get TONS of calendars, address labels (SO MANY), notepads, and more.

If you are looking for more, check out my friend Celia over at Litterless who also wrote a great post on getting rid of junk mail.

Buying Local: Week 16

We are ALMOST FINISHED WITH AN ENTIRE BOX!!

The cauliflower is on the meal plan for tomorrow, and I eat an apple every day. Now what to do with all those cucumbers?

Sixteen weeks into this journey K has finally figured that we should take a closer look at a more plant-based diet. We shall see where that takes us.

Our CSA box runs through October and it is already time to start thinking about signing up for a fall box that would last through December. It is definitely something to consider!

What We Bought:

• Brussel sprouts from Marengo, IL
• Spring lettuce mix from Marengo, IL
• Oberweis milk from family farms around IL and WI
• Turano bread from Berwyn, IL
• Corn from the Midwest (grocery store was not very specific…)

What We Learned:

• How to freeze apples, beets, corn, and tomatoes. The apples and beets will be used in smoothies and the tomatoes for sauces.
• How to blanch tomatoes.
• K tossed some of the frozen corn into our chicken and bean quesadillas the other night and it was super convenient to have cut up corn on hand.
• We did end up getting additional corn from the grocery store, but both of us have declared that farmers market corn tastes way better.

Compostables, But No Composting at Work

The kitchen at my workplace is stocked with compostable plates and bowls.

Which is awesome.

But only if there is actually somewhere to compost them.

As you can probably already tell where this is going, there is nowhere to compost these items at work.

While I applaud facilities for going for what seems like the right choice, they need to take it a step further for it to achieve the desired result.

Our break room has 2 clearly labeled waste cans; one for recycling and one for waste. All they need is another for compost.

Since I do compost at home, I end up smuggling the occasional plate or napkin home in my lunch bag to add to my compost bucket. One less thing in a landfill, right?

 

Banana peel and compostable plate ready to head home with me

 

The next step is to talk to Facilities about providing composting services. Someone has got to be the one to bring it up? Might as well be me.

Beach Clean up with Zero Waste Chicago

Cool things are happening in Chicago, and the creation of Zero Waste Chicago is one of them.

They host monthly events and this month they asked me to lead a beach clean up since I am an Adopt-A-Beach Team Leader. (Check out my other clean up posts here, here, here, and here.)

We headed down to 31st Street Beach, a beach I have not been to or cleaned up before.

For a Tuesday night, it sure was hopping. Families were out barbequing and kids were splashing in the water, trying to squeeze the last few days of summer before back to school.

A great crew of volunteers showed up and spread out all over the beach armed with bags and litter monitoring surveys.

Overall, we collected 35.66 lbs of trash, recycling, and compost!

Some highlights:

• 609 cigarette butts
• 221 food wrappers
• 200 pieces of plastic
• 135 metal bottle caps
• 110 pieces of foam
• 94 pieces of glass
• 69 balloons
• 56 pieces of paper
• 54 plastic bags
• 46 straws
• 18 band-aids
• 7 hair ties
• 1 razor
• 1 tampon
• 1 condom

 

 

Buying Local: Week 15 & 6th CSA

We have really been rolling with our box this week.

K made a tasty veggie ragu Saturday night, then we used the cucumbers in a tangy yogurt sauce Sunday, and we also tried our hand at cooking green beans two different ways.

We are going to attempt to finally get through an entire box without any of it going to waste. I will keep you updated if we accomplish that. Fingers crossed.

What We Bought:

• Bell peppers
• Red thumb potatoes
• Mix tomatoes
• Jersey mac and pristine apples
• Mira sweetcorn
• Candy onions
• Newhall Carrots
• Cauliflower
• Assorted cucumbers
• Green Beans
• Jalepenos
  

  veggie ragu sauce

What We Learned:

• Thank goodness we have compost because we are creating a lot of food waste when we don’t get to something on time.
• To use up some of the veggies from the previous week and a couple of the new ones, K made a fantastic red vegetable sauce. We ate some and then froze the rest.
• You can freeze corn! We got 6 ears of corn in our box so we are going to save a few by cutting the kernels off the cob and freezing it for later.

Up North for the Grayslake Flea Market

I made a pretty arduous flea and vintage market schedule this spring. Although I have been slacking, for the most part, I  did visit Randolph Street Market last month and over the weekend took a drive North to the Grayslake Flea Market.

It was a pretty cool, but nice, Saturday and I enjoyed walking through the outside vendors over the ones in the main hall.

This sign caught my eye right away and I just loved it! Old things are awesome and we should enjoy them!

For instance, check out this awesome wallpaper table. It would look so awesome in an entryway if I had one of them. By the time I made a second lap back through the outside vendors, this baby was snatched up. It was a steal at $125!

I did not end up getting much, but I did find a vendor who used to be a science teacher. She found the below 1970’s science posters in her classroom one year and loved the graphics so much that she kept them.

Thank goodness she did because I absolutely loved them! The “Our Environment” one caught my eye first.

After sifting through a pile of them, I purchased my three favorites. K loved all the posters when I brought them home and he was actually upset I did not buy them all!

That will probably be the only time he will be mad I did not buy something from a flea market. I hope to frame them someday when I have more walls to hang stuff on. Right now we are kind of out of wall space!

Sometimes You’re Gonna Be Wasteful

Not that I need to share this with the internet world, but I had “minor surgery” this week.

I diligently go to the dermatologist annually to keep an eye on my fair skin and my numerous moles, but this year a mole on my back decided to grow, and my doctor thought it was best to remove it.

So “minor surgery” it was. And minor surgery means major waste.

Between the individually packaged sterilized tools and the gauze, and who knows what else (I was keeping my eyes closed. I DID NOT want to see what they were doing), there was already a bunch of waste just the day of the procedure.

For the next two weeks, I have to clean and change my bandage twice a day. That’s a lot of band-aids.

I know this is wasteful and legitimately all of it will end up in a landfill. We all have to make concessions sometimes, especially when it comes to our health.

Trying to make this situation less wasteful is not something I am up to doing. I am not making my own cotton band-aids and I am not risking infection, so landfill-destined bandages it is.

No pictures for today’s post. No one wants to see my stitches!

Buying Local: Week 14

We have eaten just a bit of everything so far, but haven’t been able to fully get through any produce from last week’s CSA box. I had a couple beet smoothies and made a big batch of roasted veggies to take for lunch this week. For dinner the other night, K made some omelets with a mish mosh of veggies folded inside.

As usual, I ate most of the fruit from last week, so popped over to the farmers market to get some more this weekend.

What We Bought:

• Dozen eggs from Benton Harbor, MI
• Raspberries from Benton Harbor, MI
• Blueberries from Bangor, MI

What We Learned:

• We are getting better at incorporating our produce into basically all of our meals. A piece of my breakfast, lunch, and dinner, can easily have something from our box in it.
• Basically, any vegetable chopped up and added to an omelet is delicious!