appropriate comic

i've been procrastinating a bit on school assignments today and came across this comic that pretty much sums it up (click on it to go to the original site and see it full size):



(from subnormality/viruscomix)

tomato late blight :(

i love tomatoes. mother grows hundreds of different tomato plants, of many different varieties, in her garden every year. due to her influence, i have become more and more interested in fancy heirloom tomatoes. this year i was very excited to order some new-to-me varieties of tomatoes from terra edibles. saving seeds from heirloom tomatoes is fun and rewarding, and both my mother and i have been coordinating our seed orders to maximize tomato diversity between the two of us. i was especially looking forward to having fresh cherry tomatoes from my backyard, and if i managed to produce enough romas, i wanted to try my hand at making homemade ketchup.

a week or two ago i noticed my tomato plants were starting to go brown at the shoot tips and on the fruits themselves. i took this to be a sign that they were overdue for staking. in the past i have always staked my tomato plants, but this year i thought maybe i'd experiment with just letting them sprawl. after seeing them become so unhappy, i assumed it was because of the way i had heartlessly let them drag in the dirt. i immediately tied them up off the ground, hoping that it wasn't too late for them to recover from my horrible mistreatment.



alas, they continued to get worse and worse. i began to realize that something else was going on other than just general dragging-in-the-dirt unhappiness. then i discovered that tomato late blight, a disease i have never before encountered, is making its rounds throughout the city (it has been an uncommonly wet year, and this disease is spreading to areas where it never occurred before thanks to climate change). from a quick google search, i learned that once this disease becomes apparent in one's garden, there's not a whole lot that can be done to stop it. the key is to take preventative measures, and obviously it was too late for that for my crop. sadly, i had to remove and destroy every single one of my tomato plants. it's just not fair, especially since i have a friend living only a few blocks away whose tomatoes are beautiful and completely unaffected. why me?


poor, poor romas.

what i have learned about tomato late blight via google:

• heirloom tomatoes are more susceptible than hybrid varieties.
  
• prevent moisture from remaining on the leaves as much as you can; plant tomatoes in a sunny location, prevent splashback of rainwater by mulching around your plants, avoid watering in the evening, and drip irrigate if possible.
  
• STAKE YOUR TOMATOES so they are not lying on the ground.
  
• avoid crowding tomatoes too close together, and consider removing lower leaves which are more susceptible to splashback.
  
• remove infected material as soon as you see it to avoid spreading the disease to other plants. DO NOT COMPOST diseased plant matter; it must be disposed of by burning or bagging and dumpstering.
  
• grow plants in a different area the following year, if possible. i am going to attempt to grow mine in pots on my patio, rather than in the garden itself. this will mean i will not be able to grow as many tomatoes, due to the extra expense of buying pots and soil (boo).

what i do now

sometimes i find myself overwhelmed by the sheer number of lifestyle changes i have yet to make in my daily life. i see so many people who believe that upgrading their lightbulbs and recycling their plastic is as far as they need to go to do their part, but i find it hard not to see myself in the same light: i have been raised in the same culture of entitlement as everyone else. there are many north american consumer habits which i find difficult or impossible to break, or haven't even discovered within myself, let alone examined and deconstructed. i feel guilty, uncomfortable, and ashamed whenever i find myself in a situation where these shortcomings within myself are made obvious to me.

the fact is, i'm a busy girl. i'm also the type of person who is easily overwhelmed to the point of panic and tears when i have many things going on in my life at once. i'm working toward a degree in biology and spend much of my free time during the school year studying. i have an active social life. i cook most of my food at home, from whole ingredients. i use public transportation or my bicycle to get around, including shopping for groceries, commuting to and from school, and visiting or going out with friends. i grow and maintain a small backyard vegetable garden all on my own.

all of these, and numerous other smaller lower-impact details result in extra invested work or time on my part, and they add up. as much as i wish i could improve my footprint in every aspect of my life all at once, it is not realistic to expect that of myself. at the same time, i try very hard not to allow myself to become complacent with comfort and convenience. i continually re-evaluate my goals and accomplishments and push myself to take further steps to reduce my impact wherever i can. but i'm not perfect, and sometimes i think i need to be gentler on myself (and others) and remember to acknowledge that i am improving my way of life, slowly but steadily, every day.

so here's my list of lower-impact lifestyle changes i have already accomplished, or am working towards right now in my daily life:

• living car-free, taking public transportation, and riding my bike.
  
• preparing the majority of my food from scratch using predominantly whole, unprocessed, and unpackaged ingredients. working on incorporating more local-based, seasonal foods whenever possible.
  
• growing my own garden in the summer, and preserving as much home-grown fruit and vegetables as i can for future/winter use.
  
• diverting all vegetable-based kitchen waste to my compost.
  
• purchasing only secondhand clothing for myself, mending clothes, and recycling clothes into patches, rags, or creative projects when they are no longer wearable.
  
• purchasing (or inheriting) high quality secondhand kitchen/household/gardening items and furniture whenever possible.
  
• sharing a house with roommates.
  
• using reusable cloth shopping bags, including reusable bags for produce and bulk purchases. choosing loose, unbagged produce and bulk groceries over prepackaged items, even when the prepackaged items are a better deal (as is often the case with vegetables packaged in plastic net bags or clamshells). taking my own reusable containers to restaurants for takeout and leftovers. reusing glass jars, plastic yogurt containers, and ice cream pails for storage purposes.
  
• engaging in a minimal (well, nonexistant) beauty regimen: no makeup, no shaving supplies, no hair products, no deodorant. my toiletries consist of a toothbrush, toothpaste, and tongue scraper, hemp hand lotion, a loofah sponge, plain unscented bar soap, and a solid shampoo bar which i purchase unpackaged from a local store.
  
• using a washable, reusable menstrual cup.
  
• making and using my own laundry soap.
  
• bartering for skills and homemade items with friends, such as massage therapy for yardwork or knitting. assisting friends with projects, cleaning, and yardwork, and receiving assistance and company in return.
  
• seeking out and enjoying low-cost, low-impact sources of entertainment, such as going for walks along the river, exploring the city by bicycle, hiking, swimming, and camping, cooking meals together with friends, doing craft projects, writing letters, recycling/refurbishing items in creative ways, playing board games, etc.
  
• reframing tasks commonly seen as "chores" or "work" into "hobbies": gardening, cooking, preserving, sewing/mending, etc.
  

edible oddities

there are a few things growing in my garden that are a little out of the ordinary, foodwise. there are certainly many people who know more about edible flowers than me, but for those who have never eaten a flower before, they make very pretty garnishes for salads and such. my favorite edible flower is the nasturtium. they have relatively large, brightly coloured fancy flowers, and aesthetically pleasing round leaves. both are edible. they taste sort of peppery/hot, a bit like a radish.


(the one on the right is the nasturtium flower! the other flower is a marigold. i'm actually not sure if those are edible or not).

the other edible oddity that i am growing this year is radish pods. i find that my radishes often bolt (go to seed too early) when the weather is hot and dry. i used to just pull them out, write them off, and start over when that happened. then i discovered that radish seed pods are edible! when mine started to bolt this spring, i left them in the ground to do their thing. they are now producing tons of pods. i like them, almost more than radish roots, because you can simply pluck them and eat them; they taste almost the same as their belowground counterparts. no need to pull up, remove greens, or clean dirt off. the tips are a little fibrous so i usually trim them a bit, and they get quite tall/gangly so you have to watch to make sure they don't shade out any of your other plants, but other than that, they're quite neat!

what to do with windfall apples: applesauce!

the apple tree in my backyard produces a huge crop every summer. i thought maybe this summer i'd get a break, since last year we had so many. but no! i've been watching the apples ripen for the past week or two, waiting for them to get to the perfect stage of ripeness. i was determined to get to them before they started falling off on the ground, as has happened in past years. then i missed a couple of days due to being so busy, and when i checked up on them, sure enough, i discovered that the apple windfall has begun!

these are the apples i rescued this afternoon from the ground surrounding the tree. it is a small fraction of the total number of apples the tree has produced, which are yet to be dealt with:



what do i do with blemished apples such as these that have been bruised from falling onto the ground? make APPLESAUCE! it's relatively simple to do, converts them to a form which is easy to preserve over the winter, and the apples need not be perfect or even that nice.

i'm lucky enough to have inherited an old-fashioned applesauce strainer:



first, i wash the apples in the sink. then i cut the apples into halves or quarters, removing the seeds, stems, bruises, and other ugly bits (i leave the skins on -- i think i could probably leave the seeds in too, as the strainer's holes are small enough to keep them out of the sauce, but i believe they add a slight bitter taste to the finished product). i cook up the apples in a pot on the stove with juuuuust enough water to keep them from sticking to the bottom:



once they're good and mushy, into the strainer they go! i mash them through with the large wooden pestle:



my captivated audience watches in wonder:



and finally, the finished product! these particular apples are sweet enough that they do not require any added sugar. some people put a bit of cinnamon into their sauce but i don't bother.



i usually just freeze the applesauce in whatever suitable-sized containers i have lying around. i also freeze a fair bit of sauce in ice cube trays, similar to the way i do my pesto. this is especially convenient for baking; applesauce makes a great vegan egg substitute in baking, especially cakes, contributing extra moisture, fluffiness, and a bit of binding action. two or three cubes are approximately equivalent to the mass of one egg. it's also quite common to can applesauce, but this is something i haven't yet gotten around to trying, as canning things is a lot more work than just freezing them.

basil/baby spinach pesto

i made a small batch of basil/baby spinach pesto tonight. made from 100% local ingredients!

my pesto "recipe" (i don't actually measure any of the ingredients for pesto, just blend to taste):

1 handful basil (i had a handful of baby spinach from thinning my garden, so i threw that in too)
3 garlic cloves
1/4 cup hemp seed oil
3 tbsp hemp seeds

the result:



i like to freeze things like pesto in ice cube trays. once frozen, i remove them and put them in a container or reusable plastic ziplock bag. then, when i want to prepare something that requires pesto as an ingredient, i can take out exactly the right quantity with no fuss.

pineapple-raspberry popsicles

i used the raspberries i picked from the garden today to make pineapple-raspberry popsicles :D

i blended a few handfuls of clean berries with a cup or two of pineapple juice, then froze them in molds. i'll take a photo soon and add it to this post.