Freshness: the key ingredient in a farmers market salad

I just wanted to update Sunday's post with a pic of the beautiful salad I made today with my farmers market bounty. I really liked the spinach and mixed greens. Buying lettuce is a pain at the grocery store because the bagged mixed greens are limp and go bad quickly and the loose kind gets wet from being constantly misted so it doesn't last long either. And sometimes, I admit, I'm lazy about having to wash and cut the good ol' romaine or green leaf. But my farmers market mixed greens were dry and fresh. My non-waxy cucumber was crispy and the red pepper that cost 25 cents was sweet. All around, a good salad day. I added black beans, rice I'd made earlier and a Trader Joe's chicken sausage pulled from the freezer. And there you have it ... a filling lunch. What can I say, it doesn't take a lot to make me happy!

A sprint through the farmers market

I've discovered another reason why I love shopping at the farmers market. Speed.

As I was driving down Ocean to Trader Joe's today after meeting someone for a late morning/early afternoon coffee, I saw signs for the farmers market. I glanced at my car clock: 1:58 p.m. The market closes at 2 but the row of white tents were still up, so I quickly turned around and cut through the Whole Foods parking lot.

I parked, grabbed the cotton bag from my trunk and rushed over as sellers were packing up their stands. They didn't mind me being there as they loaded boxes onto their trucks, although I didn't get any great last-minute bargains (except a free lemon). In 10 minutes for just under $10, I bought:

-- a cucumber: 50 cents (sans slick wax coating. The woman working the stand told me the wax helps them last longer, so those cucs in the grocery store could be a few weeks old.)
-- bag of four red peppers: $1 (perhaps the best deal of the day)
-- bag of fingerling potatoes: $3
-- loose mixed salad greens at $3.50 for 1/2 lb: $2
-- two tomatoes at $1/lb: 75 cents (also a good deal)
-- green beans: $2 (the organic ones were $3)
-- a small lemon from the 3 for $1 pile: free!

You'll notice I didn't buy any fruit. I knew I could get cheaper in-season fruit at the grocery store by buying what's on sale (for example, grapes for 77 cents a pound at Ralphs compared to $2 a pound at the farmers market).

But I love how quickly I bought the produce, putting together meals in my mind as I saw what was available. I'll be able to make a few salads this week with the wonderful mixed greens, plus the green beans and potatoes will go with the chicken I bought afterwards at Trader Joe's. In just a half hour, I got most of my shopping done for the week. Check and check. Now I just have to cook it!

Fishy business at the grocery store

Tonight I ate a tasty meal of catfish, corn on the cob and sauteed new potatoes. I haven't cooked with catfish before, so I was pleasantly surprised that it was flaky with no fishy taste at all. I bought it because it was a good price.

But the week before at the grocery store, I spent a good five minutes trying to figure out what fish purchase would be best for the environment and my wallet. I couldn't believe how many choices I faced: salmon from China, Chile, Canada and the US. Shrimp from Indonesia. Chilean sea bass. US snapper. I must have looked a little odd staring at the fine print on signs and scribbling notes on my shopping list, to eventually settle upon farm-raised salmon from Canada that was $4.50 for a six-ounce piece.

That was a compromise. Decent price, neighboring country. The best deal was farm-raised salmon from China (on sale for $3.99 a pound). Or I could have splurged on the deep red Sockeye salmon from Alaska's Cooper River for $24.99 a pound.

That variety of price and origination demonstrates the complexity of something as simple as buying fish in the grocery store. A while back, my coworker forwarded a Washington Post article to me about the "greenest" fish to buy but I only glanced at it because the answer made my eyes glaze over (avoid species that are overfished, but also consider the carbon footprint from feed production and fishing methods, avoid fish that has been flown in from far away). Reading it over again, according to the article, the pricey Alaskan salmon would have been the best choice. The article noted that the Seafood Watch program gave high marks to wild-caught Alaskan salmon, canned albacore tuna (I do buy that!) and farmed rainbow trout.

But that's not realistic for most people, especially families on a budget, even though I'm sure that Cooper River salmon tasted great (I was almost a bit of an Alaskan salmon expert since I worked one summer in a fishing cannery, but at the time I didn't like salmon and never ate the fresh King salmon cooked for us on Fridays. Oh youthful ignorance.).

Beyond salmon, this paragraph was insightful, although following it would require changing my fish-eating habits (Sardines? Uh, do I have to?): "For an easy way to cut your seafood-related emissions, try to shift your diet toward farmed oysters, mussels and clams, shellfish that don't require processed feed. (They eat plankton instead.) Many experts also recommend that you make like a European and learn to love smaller, schooling fish such as sardines, anchovies and mackerel. They're easier to catch than big bottom-dwelling carnivores such as cod and haddock, meaning less fuel is expended to harvest them. (Plus, since they're lower on the food chain, they're naturally more energy-efficient.) Generally speaking, fish with abundant populations are easier to harvest, meaning that choosing fish from well-managed stocks is likely to cut your emissions as well."

So for now, I'll try to do more research into this confusing subject (the article didn't take into account mercury levels, for example) but in the meantime I think US or Canadian farm-raised salmon might be the best compromise.

The art of consumerism

The toothpicks in this piece by Chris Jordan represent the number of trees used in one month for mail-order catalogs

Tonight I caught the last minute of a news story about artist Chris Jordan, who uses Photoshopped images to depict American consumerism. He turned to Photoshop when he realized that his real images weren't shocking enough to get across his message. A snarl of cell phone chargers didn't scream out mass consumption, it just looked beautifully futuristic. But an image of 8 million toothpicks to represent the number of trees used in one month of mail-order catalogs, well, it makes you pause and think while also being beautiful. This statistic reminded me of my earlier post about calling Gaiam and asking to be taken off their mailing list. Not two days later another catalog arrived in my mailbox from some company called Viva Terra. I hadn't gotten their catalog before and didn't ask for it. I suspect Gaiam sold my name to the company since they both sell eco-friendly products. So many trees wasted on junk mail we don't want.

Another of Jordan's images was a bluish sea with hints of color dotted throughout. The statistic he shared was that the U.S. consumes 2 million plastic bottles every five minutes, which is enough to fill eight football fields ... every five minutes. These wall-sized images are meant to create an impact. From far away it's a pretty picture but as you walk closer you see that it's made up of thousands upon thousands of items (his focus is not just environmental. As you walk closer to a row of orange vertical panels, it turns into folded prison uniforms representing every person in jail in the United States). His point is that the collective is made up of individuals. "It's each one of us," he said in the interview.

His images are beautiful, while also making the statistics that accompany them feel more real. The reaction is "Wow, that's a lot of (fill in the blank)." I thought that was pretty cool. See images from his project, Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait.

Will too much carbon consumption make me fat?

On Monday I listened to a personal trainer talk about how to train properly for the new rugby season, which started tonight. He said that if you're working out hard, you need to eat enough calories to give you energy and quicken your recovery. Then he wrote a shockingly large number on the white board: 4,000 to 5,000 calories a day.

With rugby season underway, my calories are not the only number going up. My carbon consumption is also on the rise. No longer will I be taking public transportation to work once or twice a week. No, from now until November when the season ends, it'll be zero times a week. I need to drive to work on Tuesdays and Thursdays so I can drive to practice afterwards. And on Wednesdays, I need to drive so I can get to the gym in time to meet my workout partner and have enough energy for a good workout. No more jogging three miles from work to the train station and calling that my exercise for the day. Now I've gotta kick it up a notch and spend my evenings at practice or the gym or at the stairs or doing sprints.

Oh well, c'est la vie. My summer public transportation habit was nearing an end anyway. In about three weeks we'll start getting busy at work and I probably would've stopped taking the train then. It just came sooner than expected. So starting now, let the carbon counting begin!

Reducing junk mail one call at a time

What's a good definition of waste? Catalogs that go directly from your mailbox to your recycling bin, perhaps with a brief stay on a side table, ignored amid the other catalogs full of things you don't need.

That's why I called Gaiam today and asked to be taken off their mailing list. A year ago I ordered curtains off their website and have been getting their catalog since. Initially I'd look through it and saw things I considered ordering, like composting trash bags. But every catalog has the same items so after a while I stopped looking at it. I'd meant to call them when I got their Summer 2009 catalog. Then they sent me another Summer 2009 catalog merely a month later. I guess I was supposed to get excited by 20 percent off their already-overpriced organic cotton sheets and bedspreads. No, it just bugged me that it came while the first one was still being ignored (on my side table). The catalogs say they are made with 30 percent recycled material but still, for a company promoting green living, the word hypocrite comes to mind. The slogan on the cover says "Simple Choices Make a Difference." Yes they do. I called the 800-number on the back and it took just minutes to be taken off their mailing list. And now both catalogs are in my recycling bin.

But on a good note, I brought my car to the Toyota dealership today for an oil change and they told me they were no longer mailing their coupon flier. It came up when they asked for my e-mail address. I always hesitate before giving companies my e-mail because I don't want my inbox to be inundated with "special deals" every week that really just involve them getting you to spend more money. They probably are trying to save money during the recession but I liked that they were reducing their paper waste ... and that I didn't have to do anything to get one less thing I don't care about mailed to me (and no, I didn't give them my e-mail address).

Sunday is a pro-Earth day

Bunches of basil come big at the farmers market

I had a good environmentally friendly day today.

First off was a 25-mile bike ride along the San Gabriel River trail. The path starts three miles from my house so I biked to the start and didn't have to use my car. To get to it, I went past the Sunday farmers market at PCH and 2nd Street so on the way back, wanting a break, I stopped and figured I'd pick up some fresh produce. I had only a small backpack with me so I couldn't fit a whole lot. I picked up a $1 bunch of basil (which at the farmers market is huge ... I had to squish it to fit it in my bag) and a tomato. My favorite stand was one selling juicy and flavorful organic strawberries, blackberries, nectarines and peaches. I knew I couldn't bike home with a pint of strawberries -- at least if I didn't want them to turn into mush at the bottom of my bag by the time I got home -- so I bought a nectarine and ate it as a snack before I got back on the bike. Organic isn't cheap, not even at a farmers market, so it cost 90 cents, but it was a good fresh treat to refuel me before the last three miles home. I hadn't been to the farmers market in forever, probably since last fall, and it was busier than I remembered it. I overhead someone say that it was the busiest she'd seen. It was probably the combination of all the fresh summer produce (lots of bright red strawberries and tomatoes) and the great weather. Luckily it had been cool during my ride but by 11:30 the clouds had burned off and it was a sunny day in the high 70s, low 80s.

Then this evening I carpooled to a meeting, picking up two of my teammates. It was at a park, which added to the happy-being-outside theme of the day. We went out to dinner afterwards, which I'm not sure is good or bad for the environment. We'll call it green neutral except that I put the rest of my salmon Caesar salad in a styrofoam to-go container. But all in all, a good Earth friendly (and healthy friendly) day.

Not every day is a good day to take the bus

I thought about taking public transportation to work three days this week but decided against it on Wednesday because I planned to go to the gym after work and didn't want to get home too late (it's a bit slower than driving). So Tuesday and today I took the train to work, but Wednesday I drove and got a flat tire. Hmm, maybe there's a message in that.

Jokes aside, I'm proud that I took the train twice this week. When summer rolled around, I started sporadically taking it again, as I'd done last summer, and this week is my first double. If I'd gone for the triple maybe that mysterious nail or whatever it was wouldn't have lodged itself in my front passenger tire. But luckily the tire just needed to be patched and not replaced. It took a half hour after work and I got to the gym late (irony noted), but all in all it wasn't so bad.

What I really learned this week is that I need to plan out my public transportation days better. I forgot about my book club meeting when I decided to take the train on Tuesday, so by the time I got home I was going to be late so I decided not to go. Then today I planned to run from my office to the train station after work, which saves time because I get my exercise as I'm commuting home. But I'd forgotten that I'm starting tomorrow at a school and needed to bring some stuff home with me. So instead of heading out for a three-mile run at 6 p.m., I sprinted to the bus stop (carrying my bag with my unused running clothes in it). I got stuck in the no-bus dead zone and caught a 16 bus 10 minutes later. I swear that was the slowest bus ever so by the time I got home I was hungry but still had to run. I definitely got that message. I'm not going to take the 16 bus in the evening because it's so unpredictable. It saves time to run to the train station and take the Red Line to the Blue line. So next week, I'll try to plan better.