Zoey Krenk

This week I tried to refoster the community with my neighbors. We used to have a fairly close relationship with our neighbors, but they have either moved or passed away. I decided to cook some bread and hand it out to my neighbors. If they invited me in we talked for a while about life and things and garden plans. I found out my new neighbor across the street is gluten intolerant and I will have to figure something out for them in the future. I had fun baking again and I got to talk to people I don’t really talk to often.

Water-Change

This week I looked at replacing milk in my life. I use milk a lot for cooking as well as to make hot coco. Big Bovine has a water hungry and water polluting industry behind it, one of the biggest behind a simple food product. I also get milk typically in plastic containers, so replacing this could lower my non-biodegradable waste.

I tried oat and soy milk since a family member had some. The oat milk I used had that fun coat your teeth effect, and neither were a good replacement in my cooking. Many of my recipes require adding milk to a thing and then reducing it with a simmer. Unfortunately this means that these lower fat milk replacements did not work. I had so much rubbery pasta this week... They also made some gross hot coco.

While unfortunately this week was a bit of a fail for long-term change, none of the product was wasted. It was pretty good with overnight oatmeal (which I usually use water in). I have a few nut milk options coming in that I can try next week. They have a higher fat content and will hopefully do the trick.

This week I made food from the canned remnants of my family garden. This year we did a bit better than other years preserving our harvest, since my father borrowed a pressure pot from a friend. This ment we could can quite a few items. Still, I am running low on things I had left, so this was somewhat difficult.

For the meals I threw together dried rosemary and oregano, tomato slices, some canned tuna that my pa caught on a communal fishing trip, pickled garlic and a side of dilly beans (pickled green beans). I wanted to stretch this out to a few meals, so I added some linguine noodles just to fill it out. Skillet cooked tomatoes are always great and they preserved pretty well, and that tunna was great. If I had saved any of my zucchini it would have been great in the pan instead of the dilly beans side but squash is fickle. The dried herbs were less than I liked and I should look into an indoor herb set up when I am out of this dorm.

While I was able to make a low carbon, low water meal (we have a well house pump so it all goes and comes from the same place) I am unable to do this on a large scale much after the growing season. If my family had had all our canned and preserved goods directly after the season it would have lasted only an extra month or so. While it would be cool to preserve more of the harvest, I can get similar effects by buying local and eating foods in season, rather than food whenever I want. I will look into this in the future

WATER WASTE:
This week I reduced my water waste by taking quicker showers. I tend to like longer showers, but this week I limited my showers to under 8 minutes. I do all my skincare and eczema-related stuff in the shower, so I didn't end up getting the time much lower. I did finish the shower before my timer went off on the last shower of this week.

The first time was pretty difficult though. I had only gotten halfway through my routine by the time the 8 minute timer went off. The average 8 minute shower uses about 17 gallons of water with my efficient shower head according to a 2016 study I found on the Portland government website. This means I saved about 40 gallons of water just from cutting my shower time in half.