general update

It's been a long time since I posted much about plastic, or about my experiences trying to live plastic free, so I thought I should say a quick something.

I'm still mostly sticking to the resolution, although I've slacked off a bit the last month or so and allowed myself to cheat on a few key items. A prime example is today, when I bought a new toothbrush, floss and toothpaste. Dental care is one of the toughest things to do plastic-free, and I've decided I need a toothbrush at work because my poor weak teeth need a post-lunch brush.

I've also bought a few tubs of yogurt. Making my own has proven less than satisfying. So while I still make it sometimes, I also sometimes buy the plastic. Which is terrible on so many levels. But not so terrible that I lose sleep over it.

So there are some items like that, but on the whole avoiding plastic is still a major part of my consumer choices. It really is remarkably easy most of the time. Reducing plastic consumption is so easy it seems strange to me now that everyone doesn't do it. Eliminating? Ok, that's proving trickier.

There are lots of other things I've been thinking about and wanting to post about, but I didn't write any of them down, and I can't think of them at the moment. Life has been hectic. I started a new job this week, among other things. This post was mostly meant to say: yes, I'm still here, and I'm still trying to be plastic free. And I will write more again one day!

yogurt and metronomes

Hi all. I've been told I need to keep blogging. This despite feeling like I don't have much to say.

To follow up on the last post, yogurt-making attempt #4 was met with success! I haven't tried a fifth time yet, although I will need to do so soon because I am nearly out of yogurt. I think my biggest problem was incubating methods. For the successful attempt I used a cooler and I put a magic bag in the cooler with the yogurt both at the beginning and halfway though, after re-heating. I have also become much more confident in the heating and cooling process of the milk, which is speeding everything up overall. The first few times I did it I was so cautious it was taking me ages to bring the milk up to just below boiling and then to cool it down, and I was spending the entire time staring anxiously at the thermometer, checking if it was ready. But now I've got a much surer sense of when it's ready, so I just blast the heat on it, and then cool it in an ice bath. This makes the process is in general much less involved. Which only means that I am much more likely to actually go through with from time to time. Which means less plastic! Yay!

In other news, I had a terrible lapse of plastic-free consciousness the other day. I bought a metronome at a music store. Now, not only was the metronome made of plastic, but it was also (of course) WRAPPED in plastic. It honestly didn't even occur to me until I was out the store and halfway home, I was just so lost in all the beautiful instruments in the store, and focused on this idea of getting a metronome. Completely did not think it through.

I'm not sure I have the strength of conviction to keep this up. Some things have turned out to be fairly easy, like not buying food in plastic (except for cheese, I'm still buying cheese for now. But I think I may have found a good cheese supply that I will be able to get without plastic! Must go to the next farmer's market in two weeks to find out), but honestly, in order to find a metronome without plastic I'm pretty certain I would have had to really search... and it definitely wouldn't have done all the cool stuff this one did! Of course, I could possibly have found one second hand. But I didn't. Oh well.

I think that's about it for updates. I went to a conference this week and was worried I would have to be careful to avoid plastic there, but everything was already pretty plastic-free. They didn't use any disposable dishes or cutlery, and the only plastic that escaped my notice was the hanging name tag they gave me.

yogurt failure #3

I have officially failed at my third attempt to make yogurt.

Everything I've read says it's easy.

I don't think it's easy.

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. The first time I thought it was the incubation temperature, the second time the milk separated, and this time... well, I'm pretty sure it wasn't the incubation. Maybe my yogurt starter was too old?

I'm going to try one more time. Fresh milk, fresh yogurt, and making sure I'm at home for the incubation process to continually monitor temperature.

In all, it's a pretty involved process though. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to use it to replace the yogurt I buy in the plastic tubs at stores. I eat too much of the damn stuff, and I'm not about to give it up for this plastic challenge. My shopping habits (and subsequently diet) are restricted enough as it is between no plastic and no meat.

But I am going to try one more time. The yogurt has not beat me yet!

bread, cheese and yogurt - to live without? or make your own?

I bought bread yesterday, for the first time since starting this project.

It's been a bit of a puzzle. Bread generally comes in plastic bags and even when it doesn't, paper bag-wrapped French bread, say, how am I to keep it fresh without storing it in a plastic bag?

I keep reminding myself that there was a time before plastic, and many of these activities were undertaken in that time. So what did people do about bread? I'm thinking they mostly ate the bread before it went stale, and my roommate pointed out that they probably also ate stale bread. That is, after all, how French toast began, is it not? Ok, so I decided to get bread at some point and see how I did with it. But I'd been having a tough time finding some. I hadn't looked very hard, mind you, but there wasn't anything good in the Safeway, and all of the bread at the bakery down the road was in plastic bags, not paper. I'm sure I could have gone to that bakery with a paper bag, but I wasn't that inspired by the bread, and just generally not that keen. I've also been thinking about baking bread, or biscuits, or buns. I was out yesterday hunting for the ingredients to make 'nutty oat cakes' from my Nut Gourmet cookbook, actually, which brought me to the Greek food store looking at bulk nuts, where I saw bread in paper bags.

I hadn't even realized how much I had been wanting bread until I saw the little round loaf (I could easily finish that off in a day or two, I thought) in the paper bag. It wasn't even waxed paper, just regular plain paper. It was a really good loaf of bread too, multigrain, sour dough, my mouth was watering just looking at it.

So I bought it. It was the only thing I got at the store, although I did take note of the dried cranberries they sell in bulk there, and the cheaper price for bulk walnuts.

It was $4.50. For a small loaf of bread. Unbelievable.

Damn tasty bread, though. And the avocado-cheese sandwhiches I made with it were amazing.

Oh, that's the other thing. I broke down and bought cheese. I couldn't help it, I love it too much! And I'd gone without for pretty much two weeks. I saw it in the cooler and it was calling to me...

I haven't given up my yogurt habit yet, either, but I'm still on the lookout for a suitable incubator, and once I find one I really will start making my own!