EYCC: Tips from the blogosphere and DIY Frozen Pizza

Week two of no box board food products bought and oh man were we ever tempted this week. I never realized just how much we depended on fast, processed food during the week. It's ridiculous really. I'm very happy to be taking the entire month in trying to complete this change. Habits formed over years really need more than a week or two to break.

Speaking of breaking habits, some pretty fabulous bloggy-peeps have been participating in EYCC!

1. Yancy over at Five Seed has committed to stop printing receipts for her customers. I've always just thrown the receipts away anyhow- and when you order online the employer has your info there anyway... so it's a perfect and easy step! Go Yancy :)
2. EcoGrrl has suggested keeping a spare junk towel for wiping your cast iron pans- definitely a great idea to delegate one (or two) specific rags for this job.
3. Alli over at Ocean Treasures has taken a huge step and I am SO excited for her... she's going CLOTH for TP. LOVE this! Read the first step of her journey- I am in love with her anatomically correct starfish. I can't wait to read more about her cloth TP adventure and be inspired!
4. Rachel from Suburban Yogini suggests using newspaper for mopping up bacon fat instead of paper towel (perfect!).
5. Brenda of Grounding Thru the Sit Bones suggests using old cloth diapers- super absorbent! It's also great that they will have a use post diaper stage.

How about it? Have any suggestions on how to decrease paper products in your life? How has the Challenge to increase our connection with the Earth been going so far for you?


As we committed, Andrew has managed to make delicious pizza dough from scratch... and freeze two of them! As a result, we'll be able to have frozen pizza sans boxboard or preservatives. And it actually wasn't that difficult (says the person who really just watched Andrew put it together lol). Sadly, we forgot to take pictures of the process, but lets just say they were perfect and tasty!

I will apologize in advance, since Andrew insists on weighing everything... and therefore the recipe is in grams... According to google, 230g is about a cup, depending on the density of what you're measuring.

Homemade Pizza Dough:

• First: combine water, yeast and honey:
• 230g of water
• 5g of yeast
• 2g of honey

Let yeast proof for 10 minutes in a bowl.

In another bowl add:

• 375g of flour (Andrew used whole wheat)
• 8g salt
• 9g oil
• 4g of sugar

Add yeast ingredients. (you can also add garlic and herbs here- yummy!)

Let rise for 1 or 1.5 hours (Andrew's answer to my shocked face was: "Hey, that's how you develop gluten").

Put in the mixer at 2nd speed for about 8 minutes (or kneed by hand forever... Andrew's words. He loves the stand mixer).

From here you can either portion out two pizzas, freeze both OR portion out three-freeze one, cooking the other two. Roll them on using a rolling pin. With pizza ingredients make sure you bake at 500F for 5 minutes (or less) OR if you have a pizza stone, less than 5 minutes.

To freeze: roll out and place on a cookie sheet and then in the freezer (you might need to make some room while it freezes). Once frozen, take out and put in an old bread bag... or pita bread bag. Voila- frozen pizza dough :)

Blessings!

article copyright of EcoYogini at ecoyogini.blogspot.com

EYCC: Paper towel tips and an update

 Andrew and I haven't bought/used paper towel in over three years. Not once. Not even for bacon fat, cleaning the bathroom, toast or cleaning mirrors and windows. You know what? I don't miss it at all. Why does your paper towel habit matter? I wrote a detailed post about it in December 2009, but I'll give you the main points:

• If every household in North America replaced just one roll of virgin-fibre paper towel for 100% post consumer recycled we'd save 550,000 trees
• 400,000 ha of Canada's Boreal Forests are harvested each year with most for paper mills
• Typical paper towels are bleached with chemicals, use virgin-fibre and extremely wasteful.

My steps involved switching to recycled paper towels, only to be used for emergencies and then one day I just didn't buy any more. Ya know, when you don't have any as an option in the house, you eventually forget why you'd ever need it in the first place.

My strategies and changes include:

• Using rags for everything cleaning related: including mirrors, toilets, bathtubs etc. I just have a system where I clean the toilet last, so that I'm not spreading toilet germs in the bathroom. Also, mirror and faucets get cleaned first to avoid streaks (vinegar and water seriously works the best).
• We use plates for all snacks, sandwiches, crackers etc. I figure the energy required to wash the plates is significantly less than the chemicals and processing required to make paper towel.
• Bacon fat: we just don't sop it up. I know- gross eh? But we rarely eat bacon... An option I have considered, however, is using a baking rack to allow the bacon to drip onto a plate underneath. Another option would be to dab the bacon with a cloth napkin to soak up some fat that way. We also pour the fat into a jar.
• Cat grossness: if the cats make some gross mess on the floor, we usually clean it up using a rag and the strongest eco-cleaner we have around (usually a 7th Generation spray). But if we have to pick something up (ew!) I usually grab some toilet paper and flush it....
• Napkins: we use cloth.

Seriously, I have no idea why I ever thought paper towel was necessary and that cloth alternatives and rags would be difficult to manage. 

UPDATE for: Decrease Paper Week 1
Well, our grocery shopping has been interesting. Instead of buying box board packaged mac and cheese, pizza and frozen goods, we've tried a few from scratch alternatives.

 

mmm Growler. The mug is so you can get a feel for the size...

1.  Andrew made pizza dough from scratch and actually even froze one! They turned out delicious. Now we just have to make MORE.
2. Mac and Cheese is our next step... maybe tonight?
3. I bought granola (from La fourmi bionique) with no box board packaging (I could make my own, very easy, but a bit time consuming... so didn't happen yet).
4. We bought yummy yummy beer from the market in Growler form (2 litres) from Granite Brewery at the market. No box board for the bottles (since it's one big jug) and the bestest yummiest beer- The Peculiar. It does mean that we have to drink the entire 2 Litres upon opening... Also we had a bit of a problem with the Irish Stout- was completely flat. This supposedly happens due to the nitrogen needed to keep it creamy in draught form, which doesn't translate to jug form.

How has your challenge been going?

article and photographs copyright of EcoYogini at ecoyogini.blogspot.com

A walking reusable roadshow and Rockin' Bags

Living a non-disposable life means a lot of things. Once you make that decision to truly live *with* Attachment and Presence to your life and your surroundings there's really no going back. All of a sudden the blinders are off, you see all that is around you, you're connecting and it's no longer cool to just 'get that to go please'. Now you see where the waste doesn't go (away)...

It's wonderful, refreshing, fulfilling and... sometimes a colossal pain in the...asana (haha, yep I totally made that lame joke).

Trying to live a non-disposable life can get pretty tricky. I have a non-disposable, reusable option for almost everything and walking to work can be a total musical roadshow. Kinda like that puppet on Sesame Street (before they went PG) who sold letters. Remember him? Lefty the salesman. 'Do you want to buy a Klean Kanteen? How about a glass container? Yes?'

Walking to work I sound like a klinking, klonking traveling musician all bundled up with scarf, mittens and hat.

My reusable arsenal for work:

• small plate, fork and spoon (always left at work in my desk-cleaned)
• lunch in my stainless steel lunchbox and/or a few glass containers
• Klean Kanteen water bottle
• Klean Kanteen coffee carafe (yay Yulemas and delivering excellent gifts!)
• Loose tea options in mason jars (kept at work)
• coffee and tea mugs complete with attachable strainer (left at work)

Walking to the ferry with a stainless steel lunchbox, glass containers, water bottle and coffee mug PLUS my work bag gets to be a bit much. And such a colossal pain.

Part of my solution won't be switching to plastic... but a better carrying bag. Months ago I purchased this beautiful purse from LoveMe Boutique made by Toronto based Mariclaro. I heart my purse VERY much and was surprised at just how beautiful these bags truly are... the website really doesn't do them justice for some reason. Since my regular work bag (of two years) broke a few months ago, I've been searching for a sustainable and practical solution, other than another Lulu, made in China with petrochemical synthetic materials bag.

Mariclaro has ridiculously fabulous bags. They are all hand cut and sewn using recycled materials (car upholstery, seat belts, tarps) in Toronto. My purse is uber sturdy, comfy and beautifully made. I've been drooling over this Aries Sport Bag for months now and have finally just decided to just suck it up and buy it. (It's like this one, or more like these, but green, orange and mostly off-white- etsy takes the bags off once you order them). All are one of a kind, which is another little cool bit. This bag should fit my bottles, lunch tin AND my agenda and work stuffs, with an over the shoulder strap perfect for walking. It's really too bad they don't have any yoga mat bags...THAT would be cool. Maybe in the future? :)

I'm also hoping this bag will help out during my copious amounts of work-related travels that are happening soon. In January I made a few trips around the province and had to bring another slew of reusable containers, including my yoga mat. Travels to come:

Yarmouth and Clare Nova Scotia for a week
Ottawa for a week (training! any fabulous yoga studio suggestions while I'm there?)
Montreal for a week (WOOT! CASLPA conference here I come! Roseanne, we are so meeting up for coffee- right? Oui, Oui!)

How about you my yoga-eco-peeps? How are you managing the adjustment to a non-disposable, connected life?

article copyright of EcoYogini at ecoyogini.blogspot.com

Earth Yoga Challenge: Decrease Tree-Products

I'm hoping these themes will not only focus on ways to help the environment, but will help us reconnect as yogis and people with our everyday lives. A simpler life.

This first theme will definitely result in a de-cluttering and reconnection that we can use part of our yoga practice to help forge new habits and routines.

EYCC: Decrease dependence on Unnecessary Tree Products

In order to reconnect with our lives and planet, it's not enough to simply replace our non-eco 'stuff' with more barriers created by their eco-version. Instead, in order to connect we need to try removing what gets in the way. For many reasons, these barriers have been perceived as conveniences, but pile too many and instead we can barely see over the mound of 'convenience'.

Looking at our kitchen, I realized that Andrew and I accumulate a lot of paper products. For us, this is mostly box board like pizza boxes, Kraft Dinner boxes (yes we eat KD, LOVE it), beer boxes...  Yes, we compost them, but that's not the point. It's waste and trees and extremely unlikely the paper used for these boxes were post-consumer or required minimal energy. I also wonder about the state of the fertilizer produced from box board covered in toxic inks...

 The shameful pile of box board waiting to be composted. I'm embarrassed to show it... but in order of fairness I am sucking it up.

I announced to Andrew that I'd really like to try to decrease our use of boxboard packaged products.

While problem solving as to how this would look, practically instead of just committing to a vague 'We'll try to avoid food packaged in boxes' (in my experience not a successful strategy), what resulted in a list of activities that involved eating less processed and frozen meals.

Lisa and Andrew's EYCC for Feb 2011:

• Make our own pizza including the dough (make enough dough to freeze for convenience)
• Make home made mac and cheese
• Andrew will make and freeze his own taquitos and samosas for convenient food ready meals
• Granola and cereal stuffs will be bought bulk or be homemade (depending on time)

As you can see, not a whole ton of things to complete, but just enough that we *hopefully* won't be buying lots of pre-made frozen food and become one step closer to freezing our own meals. This also allows us to eat healthier and save money. Wee!

Say you're just starting out on the Earth Yoga adventure, what would be a really fantastic place to start? The best thing we ever did was cut out paper towel from our vocabulary. Holy Goddess, but did I ever depend on paper towel. Looking back, I can't believe how wasteful it was and how difficult I 'thought' it was going to be, functioning without it. Seriously though, do you need to mop up your mess, clean the bathroom, or eat your piece of toast on paper made from our disappearing forests? Here are some different options that might work for you this month:

General

• Cut out paper towel (post coming this week on some tips and support)
• Avoid ridiculously over packaged items (like toothpaste that is also packaged in a paper box)
• Switch to post consumer recycled toilet paper.
• Go to cloth wiping (hmmm, not quite there yet myself, but definitely interesting- post to come)
• Print on both sides of the paper at work. (my reports are always always double sided now)

Yoga specific:

• Stop printing receipts for classes unless specifically asked.
• Use an online method to tabulate class passes (it could be as simple as an excel spreadsheet)
• Send out electronic newsletters instead of posters and flyers. 
• Use towels instead of paper towel in your studio bathroom.
• Switch to post consumer recycled TP and tissues.
• Go paperless as a studio.
• Spend some time outside near trees- meditate on their presence and our co-dependence. 

So- what will it be? Choose one, two or three different things to commit to Change this month and post it in your comment below- wherever you're at in your Earth Yoga state will be perfect.

Please leave any other ideas or suggestions that I haven't thought of here, on twitter using the hashtag #earthyogachallenge or write a post and link it back (using a link in the comment below for others to find it :) ).

Blessings!


article and photograph copyright of EcoYogini at ecoyogini.blogspot.com

Earth Yoga Challenge for Change: True Yoga Connection

Yesterday as I cruised along the harbour on the HRM ferry, checking out the sunset and mentally preparing for my 20 minute walk home, I listened to an segment on how an 86 year old man in B.C. wants to save Mary Lake. This man, Bob, visits this rare piece of protected forest, tweets about the lake (BobMcMinn) regularly and has spearheaded a campaign to raise enough money to purchase Mary Lake and keep this precious part of our world protected (they are far from their goal and still need help!).

Spending so much time surrounded by nature, this man 'gets' it. He understands the necessary connection we all must feel, that our survival depends upon, with our planet. Our children (and I would argue adults) have been theorized to be suffering from 'nature deficiency disorder' (Richard Louv, 2005), and spend significantly less time exploring nature. A variety of reasons, ranging from 80% of our populations living in urban centres, fear of 'stranger danger' and allowing children unsupervised outdoor time to a drop of 25% in children's unstructured play opportunities (think organized sports instead of fort building).

As a yogini, this disconnect is doubly important as the entire *point* of yoga is connection. As I don't perceive my body as being separate from my surroundings, the air I physically embody, the food I eat and beauty I see, I can't begin to assume that connection should only occur between my mind and body. Connection is meant to continue with myself, my surroundings and ultimately the Divine.

What does this mean practically? It's all well and good to sit here theorizing about how yoga should focus more on ecological-type connections, but how as yogi(ni)s (and non-yogi(ni)s :) ) can we bring this into practice? Lets face it, visualizing the earth and air we breathe in a square box studio surrounded by concrete and honking horns isn't really connection.

It is time for a change, a bit more of a self-commitment. We commit to going to work, to practicing asana, to washing the dishes. We can commit to Connection.

Earth Yoga Challenge for Change
(*although I despise the word challenge, this really is a bit of a call out to you my readers... so the name is staying... and I like alliteration lol).

How does the EYCC work?

We read about ways we can change our habits, bring ourselves closer to valuing our planet and it's resources as something sacred and essential for human life. But do we ever implement these changes? Habits often require more commitment, conscious practice in order to break. Therefore, simply reading and thinking 'hm, that is a good idea' isn't enough for Change.

What we'll do, in a supportive and practical way, is commit to a change (or a few) bi-monthly that we feel appropriate. It will become part of our yoga practice in a concrete way and every instance of moving towards change will remind us of how we're coming closer to connecting with ourselves.

Each week I'll post a theme on change, every Sunday with a range of options and ideas. We'll check in together to see how we're doing via twitter (#earthyogachallenge) that week, commenting on the themed post or writing our own blog posts and linking back to the theme here at EcoYogini. So many of you have fabulous insight and ideas on how you've made certain changes in your lives and I know I learn so much from your comments and suggestions. It makes it easier to take those steps.

First theme will be tomorrow- What say you my EcoYogi(ni) readers (and non-yoga readers) are you too hip to be cool, or are you ready to full embody your practice? :)

article and photographs copyright of EcoYogini at ecoyogini.blogspot.com