Triumphant Return

As you can probably guess I decided to take an informal break from blogging for a few months. The main reason was personal stress and really needing to take some time for myself, and only for myself. Things have been pretty much normalized in my life for the last month or two but it's really only in the last few weeks that I've felt worthy of returning to the blogsphere. Between personal reasons, balancing two positions at work with no regular hours, and a very busy December of visiting, snacking, and preparing for the holidays, I just couldn't get into the kitchen more than one night a week.

But now I'm officially working one position, I have a regular weekly work schedule, and I'm feeling oh-so-inspired in the kitchen and at home. Lately I've started re-prioritizing food and overall healthy living. I think when Ryan and I moved in together and I started talking about the ways I wanted to eat and how I wanted to keep moving away from pre-packaged foods, toxins, and chemicals and closer to an organic/local/sustainable life he didn't exactly know what to think. Now he's definitely feeling a lot more comfortable with the way we live and to be honest, I think he gets a bit excited about it all too, even if he wouldn't admit it.

Here's some of my recent initiatives:

1) Sticking to our food budget no matter what. In May we're taking a trip overseas so finances are a little tight. We stick to a strict $100 a week food budget but when we need to do a big stock up (TP, cat litter, cat food, vinegar, milk, eggs, cheese, meat, etc) it's pretty easy to go over budget. In the past we've been pretty loose with this budget but now we're sticking to it as closely as we can and really watching our pennies. Of course, this has turned into a fun personal challenge for me. We only have $30 to last us until Feb 4th so I've been having fun going through our cupboards being as imaginative as possible. Which brings me to my next initiative.

2) As little food waste as possible. This sounds pretty basic, I know, but it takes practice to figure out how to use all the little leftovers that end up in the fridge. I know composting is all fine and dandy but I'd rather see my food get eaten instead of thrown into the bin. Maintaining as little food waste as possible also means being extremely conscious of what ingredients we have in the kitchen. Growing up, our cupboards were always stocked and while it made it easy to think of something to make, it also meant a lot of stuff sat in the cupboard for months or years without being touched. Partially due to our small cupboard space and partially due to my insistence on using what we have (hopefully we won't be experiencing an Apocalypse soon) we're moving through a lot of dried foods that I purchased last winter and then just let sit there.

Cooking to my ingredients is a lot of fun for me - I love to improvise in the kitchen, which is one of the reasons it's difficult for me to post recipes some times. Often I have leftover dips, sauces, or dressings that need to be used up fairly quickly. I feel like planning strategically is a skill that has really developed in the year+ that I moved out of my folks place. The way I'm able to throw ingredients together now is such a difference and I have to say I feel pretty proud about the whole thing.

3) Composting. As I mentioned before, composting is great - if you have a place to drop it off. For the past year+ I've been collecting or compost in the window during the winter and in our freezer during the summer. I've been dropping it off at my parents place because they have 3 or 4 large composters in their backyard - but they're starting to get pretty full at this point.

I'm happy to report that my workplace has started composting through a company in my city. Because they're an industrial composting site, they're able to accept things that a normal backyard composter wouldn't be able to handle - things like meat, bones, dairy products. I work in a very small workplace so the giant bin we were given is barely half full when they pick it up every week so I consulted with other staff and now I'll be dropping our compost in their once a week. I'm still trying to get used to keeping virtually all our food scraps.

4) Reducing toxins, plastics, and chemicals in our food and life. I admit, the various plastic-free blogs have caught my interest in a big way. A few off the top of my head:

• http://myplasticfreelife.com/
• http://plasticmanners.wordpress.com/
• http://www.lifewithoutplasticblog.com/

But it's not just reducing my plastic that I'm concerned with, it's also reducing the toxins in my everyday routine. I've also been spending a lot of time exploring The David Suzuki Foundation site.

I've already been trying to do this for quite a while. In my own routine, I usually use a mixture of honey and yogurt to wash my face and when it's not -35 and super dry, I like to use coconut oil as a moisturizer. I also use Kiss My Face Pure Olive Oil Soap as my face wash too.

For cleaning we really only using baking soda, vinegar, water, and occasionally bleach. For clothes we've been using a "environmentally friendly" detergent (whatever that means) and for dishes we use regular old dish soap. For ages I've been wanting to try Soap Nuts but never remembered while I was out. Ryan's sister gave me a small sample bag for Christmas and we tested them out a few weeks ago. So far, we love 'em. I like them because there's no scent, they get our clothes clean, and they come out nice and soft without that starchy feeling. Ryan was extremely skeptical but he's behind them now - we picked up a large bag of soap nuts to last us a while.

The best part about soap nuts (besides the fact that they're actually berries)? Once they're used they can be boiled to make an multi-purpose cleaning solution, and after that they can be composted! The nuts can be used multiple times so we feel that they were a good deal. Right now we're collecting the used ones to make the cleaner.

5) Re-commitment to organic and/or local food. This was easier last year because we could split our FOOD Box with our friends. Since they're not in the city anymore, we decided it wasn't practical to get the box by ourselves. Up until a few weeks ago, I was being pretty lazy with where we were getting our food. After doing some research, we've settled into doing most of our fresh shopping from Organic Planet Worker Co-Op. They're very small, and while there is a much larger organic food store closer to us, I've found that Organic Planet tends to have fresher and better quality produce.

So that's what's been happening around here. Other little projects are constantly in the back of my mind but I'm trying to take things one step at a time right now and work within my limits. I love doing research about topics of all kinds so I'm basically doing a lot of reading, blogging, and networking right now. But I'm looking forward to sharing what's happening in the kitchen in 2011.