ELEMENTS IN TIME: Creating Edible Landscape

Firefox Ate My Blog! Why You Might Not Be Seeing Comments & Why I’m Throwing In The Towel...

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 13:55:03 -0700

As if there weren't enough reasons to change blogging programs, it has been brought to my attention by several readers that Firefox 3.0 has broken my blog. Yeah. Love you iWeb! And a big thank you to Firefox, too.

So... instead of losing more and more of my readers because they can't participate in the comments here (which I believe to be a HUGE, HUGE part of this blog), I'm going to take a break and focus on moving over to Wordpress this week. It's a short week, and many of you will be out vacationing and doing fun things with your families anyway. While you are out and about, I'll be indoors staring at the computer, creating a new world for us to converse about world-changing, gardening, living locally, and our sustainable lifestyles...

Seriously, though. I apologize, to all of you lovely people who come to read and share your thoughts here. Please don't be too impatient with me. I ask you to subscribe to the blog, via email or a reader, so you don't have to keep clicking back here to find out if I've posted or switched over the blog yet. The feed will automatically transfer to the new blog when the time comes. And if you really miss me, you can check out the Archive, and learn all about our journey so far.

ETA For The New Blog:

My .Mac account expires on July 9th, so I must transfer the site by then!! Yikes! I have a lot of work to do!

I may pop back here to post a Local Summer Recipe, and say a few other words here and there about gardening, local living, sustainability, or such. But probably not much.

I know some of you are anxious to hear about how our new garden is going, how the Geyserville seedlings and transplants survived, and how the fire escape garden is turning out. All that will be unveiled in the new blog! The Growing Challenge and Gardening 101 - both mysteriously absent since the move - they will make a comeback in new forms at the new blog, too!

So subscribe and then relax, have a lovely week, and I will see you soon.

Much love, and many thanks for reading,
Melinda

Above: Raisin’s new cat grass. She loves it!

Local Summer Recipe: Hearty Cauliflower Soup

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 12:12:00 -0700

Yesterday we went to the Ballard Farmer’s Market with some new local (blogging) friends - it’s becoming a regular event! I’ll tell you more about that later...

The following recipe is a great way to show off the amazing organic heirloom cauliflowers newly appearing in our farmer’s markets. And it’s vegan, for all you vegan readers!

This is our featured One Local Summer meal this week.

Hearty Cauliflower Soup
from Mario Batali’s “Molto Italiano”

Ingredients.

1/4 c extra-virgin olive oil
2 lbs. cauliflower
1 medium onion (or 3 red onions, pictured below)
4 cloves garlic
2 bay leaves (optional)
pinch of red pepper flakes (dried from last years’ garden)
4 c vegetable stock
1 c homemade tomato sauce
8 oz ziti, mezza ziti, or other small pasta
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Steps.

1. Trim, core, and cut cauliflower into florets.
2. Dice onions into 1/8” pieces.
3. Slice garlic thinly.
4. In a large pot, heat olive oil over medium-high heat until hot.
5. Add cauliflower florets and cook, stirring frequently, until it begins to become tender and light golden brown (about 10 mins).
6. Add onion, garlic, bay leaves (optional), and red pepper flakes, and cook for 5 mins, stirring often.
7. Add vegetable stock and tomato sauce, stir well, and bring back to a boil.
8. Reduce heat to a simmer and cook until cauliflower is tender (about 25 mins).
9. Add enough water to bring the liquid back to its original level, season with salt and pepper to taste, and bring to a boil.
10. Add pasta and cook at a low boil for 2 mins more than the package calls for.
11. Turn off heat and adjust consistency with water if necessary - it should be thick, like a porridge.
12. Double-check seasoning, remove bay leaves, and then serve!

Makes 4 servings.

Here, served with local greens and homemade dressing.

Solutions For Saving The Planet: What Motivates You? And How Do We Motivate Others?

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 09:05:15 -0700

I’ve been pondering. Too much, I think. But please indulge me...

My Background: The Red Button.

When I was in high school in the -ahem- late 80s, it was the end of the Cold War. Like my grandfather’s generation grew up seeing the world through the eyes of the Depression, I believe I have grown up seeing the world through the eyes of the Cold War. When I was a child I had a recurring nightmares of a nuclear war. People used to talk about that “one red button” that could instantly eliminate life on earth.

That idea gave some of us an urgency to do something quickly or perish. I created a Sister Schools Committee in my high school, through the Sister Cities Committee of Seattle. Together students and teachers arranged peace parties and we invited Soviet children to come here and stay with us. Hundreds. And the next year we went there, to the big unknown USSR.

The idea was to bridge understanding between our peoples, and to make new friends. These friendships, we thought, would then be a personal motivation to put pressure on our governments to... well, not kill our new friends.

That one red button was a motivator for real, quick change. And I won’t say we school kids in Seattle ended the Cold War. But throughout the world actions like ours occurred simultaneously. We all pressured our leaders who did finally meet and come to an agreement, and we successfully pressured Congress to fight the Star Wars programs. And today we are alive.

Our New Red Button.

Climate Change.

If we don’t do something quickly, we will lose our planet as we know it.

There are other pressing issues in our world, too. Peak oil, the possibility of a global pandemic, worldwide environmental destruction and species extinction, seemingly endless wars around the world, genocide.... These are not things I take lightly. But if we irreparably change our climate to the point of no return, there will be more wars, more extinction, more genocide, more widespread diseases.

Peak oil will exacerbate the problem, as we will have fewer means of transportation and global communication, higher costs of importing and exporting and rescuing people and other species affected by climate change, higher medical costs, increased scarcity and higher costs of food, and a myriad of other issues that will confront us over time.

What Do We Do About It?

That is a big question. And I’m not alone in asking this question: some of us have had a great discussion here. Chile and I have been discussing it in a recent post of hers. Green Bean and I discussed it as it relates to what books to read for inspiring solutions here. Several of us discussed how to build a community in the comments of this post and this one. Finally, there is some discussion in the comments here about where our personal sustainability movement can go from here.

I joined two challenges this month. Green Bean’s Bookworm Challenge is one, where she inspires us to read an ecologically-relevant book for this month (and last month). Last month I read Deep Economy. This month I’m reading Fight Global Warming Now: The Handbook For Taking Action In Your Community.

And I joined Chile’s Quit Now Challenge, where she inspires us to quit an addiction we have, before it becomes more difficult to quit. For this challenge, I chose to give up complaining about what’s wrong and focus on figuring out how to make it right.

I am in a phase where I’m focussing on solutions rather than dwelling on the problems we face. Because I believe I know what our problems are, and I don’t really want or need to know too much more about the details. Incrementally we are seeing changes in food and gas prices, in fires and floods and famine, and in environmental devastation. I know it’s going to happen, and I prefer not to dwell on each increment as it plays out.

I also know we are dealing with a finite time before we do reach a tipping point in our planet warming. And I have a finite time every day to work on this.

What Are The Solutions?

I would like to focus my own life on how to make it better. And as I see it there are two main things we as everyday humans can do:

1. Redefine Normal in our own lives and lifestyles. This requires living locally and sustainably. This requires reducing our carbon output substantially.

2. Help change the world at a global scale.* Individually, we can reduce and live sustainably. But we are but a few. We need to be a bigger population, we need to form a community of like minds. We need to spread the word to others, to motivate others to change. We need a tipping point of awareness and, more importantly, of action. And we need to help mitigate the current and future damage, to help other people and species who are affected by our past actions.

How Do We Do It?

If you read some of the comments and discussions I linked to above, you’ll have read some of my life story. You see, after the work I did in the late 80s, I literally set out to change the world. (Singlehandedly, of course!) I went into a great amount of debt studying ways to create change. (This is what I mean by pondering too hard!)

Here is my abridged journey to find a career path and a life path:

I began in cultural anthropology, thinking that I could preserve disappearing cultures so that their lives were not for nought, that they could be remembered, and we could learn from them in the future.
Then I pondered law - was that the answer, to fight large corporations at an international level? Was it politics, where policy is made and unmade? Was it social marketing, which creates sustained change within specific populations?
Eventually I decided to enter the visual media world, first as an artist. But I felt this wasn’t reaching a large enough audience. So eventually I became a documentary filmmaker, thinking I could speak out with my voice to an extremely wide audience. I also studied policy and social marketing, and along with the power of emotions, they have become extremely useful in that field.
I've continued to be a documentarian, but I've also become a blogger. I found that with a blog I can interact with people on a daily basis. It is an interactive media, where we bloggers all work together with a synergy that just one person cannot create. We change and inspire one another, and we change and inspire our readers. As a group, I think we create more sustained change than any 1.5 hour documentary can. And it’s also extremely personally rewarding.
Still, every day I wonder what I should write about, what I should focus on. And every day I wonder if this is enough.

So I read more about finding solutions, about communicating, about creating sustained change in the world. Essentially, I’m still stuck on #2. How do we participate at a global level? How do we spread the word? What is the word to be spread? And how do we inspire others to change? What is the solution? How do we motivate the world’s people to save the planet?

Questions...

In addition to those really small questions I just posed (ha!), will you help me? I can’t stop thinking about this, so anything, any thoughts or ideas would be helpful!

What inspired you to change your lifestyle? Do you read about what’s happening now? Does the fear of the future scenarios help motivate you to do something now?

Or do you ignore all things pessimistic, does all that news drive you to depression or too much anxiety to do anything? Do you feel you should even bother helping others, and instead focus on preparing your family?

Or do you read my words and others’ for other reasons? Do you focus on your food sources, gardening, simplifying or frugality, rather than these global scenarios?

What motivates you to live this current lifestyle? What motivates you to redefine normal? What motivates you to act on a personal level? Do you act on a global level, and if so, what motivates you to do so?

Go Meet Your Local Bloggers!

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 13:27:41 -0700

The first step in living locally is getting out there into your community. And one of the fun ways Matt and I have done that is to meet local bloggers, people with whom we’ve established a friendship online, and who believe in similar ideals. Last month, we met Laura, from the (Not So) Urban Hennery. Last week we met up with Shannon and Jason from The Shibaguyz!

The Farmer’s Market.

After exchanging more than a few emails back and forth we finally found a time where we could all four get together for an afternoon that would begin at the Ballard Farmer’s Market. Now truth be told, when Matt and I went to this farmer’s market last month, we were a little disappointed with the lack of goods available. But The Shibaguyz absolutely love the market, so we figured we may just need a bit of showing around!

We were told: “You can’t miss us. We’re two big guys with three crazy Shibas.” Sure enough, we entered Cafe Fiore at 9:30am, and had no problem finding the guyz and their boyz! The four of us chatted over local coffee as we overlooked the farmers setting up for the market.

And then the clock struck 10am... and we were off to the races!

First to Skagit River Ranch, for meat (for Shannon and Jason) and eggs for us. The canopy was already full of people choosing these local goodies, clearly aware that you must get there early or lose out. From there, we dashed off to find fabulous soft cheeses from a creamery just down the way. When that was finished, both guyz breathed deeply and Shannon zipped off to the car to put the meat and dairy in a cooler. Clearly they’ve done this before!

Upon Shannon’s return, we were told we could slow a bit, and peruse for the rest of the time: those were the two places we had to hit bright and early. As we walked the market and chatted with our new friends and the vendors, an incredible number of people stopped to pet the pooches and talk with Shannon and Jason. Indeed, when the Shibaguyz and their boyz walk down the street, people take notice!

Between the four (er... six) of us we gathered cheeses, eggs, various meats, radishes, several types of greens, onions, garlic, asparagus, breads, milk, cream, cherries, parsley, cauliflower, and scallions. It was a good day.

And what did we learn? 1. It’s more fun to go to the farmer’s market with friends, 2. The Shibaguyz know their vendors well, 3. Having cute matching dogs is a great way to meet people at the market! and 4. Go early to the farmer’s market for more variety and quality.

Ah, but our day wasn’t finished there...

The Local Meal (Of Course!).

After a couple of hours gathering goodies and chatting at the farmer’s market, we headed over to Shannon and Jason’s place in West Seattle. I’ve been wanting to see their square foot patio garden for months, and I was not disappointed! Amazing what they’re doing with their space.

Following our garden tour we sat around the table and drank wine served with local cheeses and breads from the market.

The four of us had a wonderful - and very long! - conversation about all sorts of things... local food sources, local businesses worth checking out, a little personal history and dog and cat chat, and of course some discussion about saving the world... We had a fabulous day!

And there it was: Life With the Shibaguyz... For A Day.

Questions For You:

Have you met local bloggers? (And if not, why not?)

Would all you Seattle area bloggers be interested in a get-together sometime in the coming months?

What about all you northwest bloggers - does it make sense to come together and have a meeting of our great minds?

Local Summer Recipe: Scrumptious Melt-In-Your-Mouth Low Fat Yogurt Pancakes

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 22:11:28 -0700

I’m addicted. I started making these about three weeks ago, and I keep making them. Even... when I’m home alone, eating breakfast all by myself. I admit it, it’s true.

They aren’t bad for you, but they taste like they must be. No oil, no butter (except a little to cook them in). And what’s more, they’re easy to make out of local ingredients!

I promised some new friends that I’d post a recipe for these, so here they are... mmmmm... in all their goodness!

This is our featured One Local Summer meal this week.

Scrumptious Yogurt Pancakes

Ingredients.

1/2 c. all-purpose flour (slightly more if you like thicker pancakes)
1 1/2 T sugar
1 t salt
1/2 t baking soda
2 large eggs
1 c yogurt (vanilla or plain)
1 t vanilla (leave out if using vanilla yogurt)

Steps.

1. In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, salt, baking soda).
2. In another bowl, whisk together wet ingredients, just until mixture is a uniform color. Lumps are fine.
3. Pour the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients (eggs, vanilla, yogurt) and whisk just until mixed. Lumps are fine.
4. Let mixture sit for several minutes to several hours, depending on your time frame. The ideal would be to have bubbles form from the baking soda reacting with the yogurt (see photo below).

5. Coat with butter a pre-warmed pan, on med-low heat.
6. Use a 1/2 c measuring cup to pour pancakes onto pan.
7. Wait to turn pancakes until they are golden in color on the pan side, and on the upper side they form bubbles (see photo below).

8. Turn over the pancakes once the bubbles begin to become solidified. The second side will take less than half the cooking time as the first.

9. Served here topped with frozen local berries warmed with a bit of syrup.

Makes 8 good-sized pancakes, enough for 2 people.

My First Bus Ride In Years

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 17:35:36 -0700

It was 10:28am. "I'm going to miss it." "No, you'll make it," Matt says. I dashed down our two flights of stairs, swinging open the front door to see the corner of... Was it? Yes - the bus! I ran across the street, saved by a red light. The bus had no choice.

I peered into the closed door. The driver smiled and opened it. "Thank you!" I said. I swiped my bus pass for the first time. I was on.

Now instead of wrestling my way through Broadway, light by light, street by street, car by car... I had a half hour without worrying. A free half hour! I brought my book and glanced at it a few times, but mostly it stayed in my lap. The bus was quiet in the morning, full of commuters who treasure the silence before they enter the chaos of a Friday's work day. I spent my time looking out the window, watching people, seeing my new (and old) city in a new light.

For a while two women came onto the bus and took over the bus with their voices, on cell phones and talking loudly to one another. A woman with a child arrived and sat behind me, "hi bus," "hi bus," they cried together.

I watched the window washers coming down after cleaning a building. An elderly woman in a wheelchair with a gripping claw on her cane, picking up cigarette butts and plunking them into trash cans. Three young women cuddled together at a bus stop to keep warm in the unusually cool weather.

Little community gardens in back alleyways, container gardens in doorways, and wow, the number of other buses I noticed! I felt intimately the transition of communities from Capital Hill to Downtown to Pioneer Square to the International District, Central District, Rainier Valley, and finally Mt. Baker.

When we reached the downtown bus depot, the mood changed. Downtown commuters were replaced with neighborhood folk who all seemed to know one another. Laughing and joking and complaining about the cold, I was in the midst of a wonderful micro community.

And then at 23rd and Jackson, together they all disembarked. The bus was silent, with just five of us spread in different corners.... Soon it was just me and the mother and the child.

"Wake up my dove it's almost time to get up my love," she said.

Soon they walked of the bus hand in hand, "Thank you! Say bye!" And the woman and the girl who said “hi bus” were off.

I was alone for the remaining two stops, nearing the end of the line. Finally I pulled the chain, thanked the bus driver, and walked the remaining two blocks to tend our little garden.

It was a short ride. 32 minutes. The car ride would have taken at least 20. But I arrived at my destination in peace, not having contributed as much toward global warming, not having paid $5 in gas, and having learned more about this wonderful new (old) city I now call home.

Why Buy Green Web Hosting For My Blog?

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 11:53:43 -0700

I started to answer all of your comments from yesterday’s post, and it got to be pretty long. So I figured I’d put it all in a post where it’s easier to read. Sorry for the technical talk, for those of us who could care less about all of this.... feel free to ignore this post!

A Few Pros And Cons Of Different Blogging Programs.

So, we’ve learned that iWeb is definitely not working for me nor for many of you. And I’ve learned from all of the comments in the same post about different blog programs that you all have tried. Basically it boiled down to Blogger, Wordpress, or Typepad.

Blogger. Blogger seems to be a great, easy program. And for those of you who want inspiration, it can look beautiful: check out Christa’s and Rhonda Jean’s blogs. A lot can be done with Blogger, and the Google folks are improving the program and features all the time. You can even have your own domain with Blogger, which I just learned researching for this post! And it features unlimited bandwidth. But you do have a limited amount of storage at Blogger, so you have to pay for additional storage if you use up your space with pictures and/or video. Or host your photos at another source, like Katie does at Flickr (a program that also has some other fun qualities).

Typepad. From what I can tell, Typepad is somewhere in between Wordpress and Blogger. It has some really nice templates, unlimited space, and a good tag system. It also lets you create standalone web pages. But, while cheaper than a hosting service, it’s not free. If you’re interested in Typepad, Deb G has a beautiful Typepad blog to check out.

Wordpress. A lot can be done with Wordpress’ free software, too. I personally like Wordpress themes, and from what little I’ve done messing around with the program, it seems like they’re pretty easily customizable without knowing a whole bunch about CSS or HTML. It is not as intuitive as iWeb or Blogger, but I think I’ll get used to it fairly quickly. I love that you can create standalone web pages, and I like the tagging system. But the best thing about Wordpress, is that you can host it on your own website easily and smoothly... at least I hope so!!

Why Buy Green Hosting If I'm Just Switching To Wordpress?

1. A blog hosted through Wordpress isn't green hosted. It's a great program hosted by good people, but I'm looking to go one step further for the planet.

2. I want my website and blog hosted on the same domain. Thus I couldn't use the free Wordpress account, as it would be on the Wordpress server (eg, elementsintime.wordpress.com). My blog and my website would be in two different places, so I couldn't directly connect the blog to my site. Not a huge deal, but this is the situation I have now, and I have to do some weird HTML writing to get it to work, plus it takes a little more time to load that way... I want to deal with one company and one site only - my life’s too complicated.

3. I want to keep my domains: www.elementsintime.com & www.elementsintime.org . You can have Wordpress "map" your domain to their hosting, for a fee of $10/yr if you already pay for domain registration, or $15/yr if you don't. This means Wordpress is essentially a host, and you can use your own domain. But this is a new service that is not very well supported. Plus it does not include all the features I need in a website. And:

4. If you have too many hits, or you use up too much space, you do have to pay for it on Wordpress. (See the "Upgrades" page in Wordpress if you have a Wordpress account.)

5. Video capabilities are limited on Wordpress. Since I'm a documentary filmmaker, I do upload video to my site so that clients can take a look (and occasionally you guys, too). Wordpress has a limit as to how much you can upload at a time (75MB), which can become an issue when dealing with video.

6. I also need FTP capabilities for my video work. FTP stands for file transfer protocol, and is a quick and easy way of uploading, downloading, and transferring files to and from your site.

7. When I host my own site, I can design my website however I please. I can combine Photoshop, iWeb, Flash, and whatever else I like on my own website. With a Wordpress site, it's much more difficult to get creative.

Hope that helps answer your questions! Did I miss anything?