Breaking records, changing climate

A refreshing walk 'round the block on this blustery, 60-degree morning has me itching to garden. But... it's January. It is supposed to be the dead of winter. It is the dead of winter, in fact. Two days from now, the temperatures will be back in the teens.

This happened last January, too—an unseasonably warm day in between some very seasonably cold days. I biked to the train. (I considered biking today, but chickened out; we're expecting some wild weather later.) So, the occasional, drastic temperature fluctuation is not all that unusual and won't by itself send me screaming, "Global warming!" There are plenty of other weather extremes that point to climate change.

This season, Chicago broke a couple of old records regarding snowfall, or more accurately, regarding the amount of time without snowfall, while also reaching some of the coldest temperatures of recent history. I ask you, what fun is the cold without any snow? (Your answer: Why, no fun at all!)

It doesn't matter whether you're looking at snowfall or rainfall, 2012 was one of the driest years on the books, with precipitation levels hanging awfully close to those of the driest year (1962, according to climatestations.com). Only four years ago we reached the opposite extreme—2008 was a record wet year for Chicagoland.

Here and everywhere else in the world, we're bouncing back and forth from drought to flooding to drought... And if you think the rainiest years will balance out the driest years, you're forgetting something. When the heavy rain happens all at once, the ground can't hold it. The water doesn't stick around to be saved for later—it runs off! Washing out crops and sweeping away towns as it goes. So, when it's a wet year, things get destroyed, while the dry years negatively impact the navigability of important rivers, in turn affecting important things like the transportation of grain in the Midwest.

Now, I mentioned that this winter had some of the coldest temperatures. And yet, almost every summer, we hear reports that it's the hottest year on record. What's the deal? I told you, weather extremes. As with precipitation, we're reaching the lowest lows and the highest highs, but overall, the years are warmer. Look at this graph. The green line is 2012, and you can see the cold temperatures of January and February spiking down toward the blue, long-term-average line (but not quite getting there!), while the rest of the year pretty much follows—and sometimes even exceeds—the temperatures of the previous record-warm year.

Chicago 2012 mean temperature vs. record warm and average, climatestations.com

It's all bad news, folks. Something's gotta change, and that something is us.

I know that it's difficult in the dead of winter (even a warm winter) to be green. Even I want long, hot showers and the heat cranked up. I hate wearing layers! But really, the quick showers and the giant pile of blankets on the couch need to be the norm, rather than the occasional small sacrifice. And that nice hot soak in the tub needs to be a rare treat, not a weekly indulgence.

You get the picture.

Cooking in your coffee mug

This was another of those early departure mornings. Have some coffee, walk the dog, lay on the couch for a little bit before the dog wants out again, get lunches ready, get dinner going in the crock pot, and hurry-up-get-dressed-it's-time-to-go! So breakfast must go with me. (If you think I'm going to skip breakfast, you're nuts. I'd be digging into my lunch by nine o'clock.)

Now, I could take two minutes on the way to work to stop for fast food. Or, with some quick packing at home, I can take two minutes to make breakfast when I arrive at work.

One easy breakfast for the office and quick to pack at home: Handful of oatmeal and raisins, dash of cinnamon, and spoon of brown sugar all in a mason jar. At the office, add some water, stir or shake, microwave until oats are cooked.

Another easy breakfast I had never tried before today. Scrambled eggs in a coffee mug. Yes. I was skeptical, but this is for real.

It's another quick-pack: Two eggs, a piece of cheese, a pat or two of butter. At work: crack the eggs into a coffee mug. Throw in the butter. Add two tablespoons of milk or water. Scramble! Microwave for 30-45 seconds. Stir well, break up clumps. Microwave for another 30-45 seconds. Top with cheese, which will melt in about a minute while you wait for the eggs to cool off enough to eat. And, oh my gosh, it worked! And it tasted good! Like real scrambled eggs! I'll probably do this at home for a quick breakfast now.

Notes: I used water because milk is not readily available in the office, even though I feared water would be gross in the eggs, but it didn't even affect the flavor. What the water does do is help the eggs turn out fluffy. Also, I added salt, pepper, and hot sauce to the eggs, because those three things were available in the office kitchenette. Quite delicious.

Did you know microwaving uses a fraction of the energy of any other cooking method? (Besides solar ovens or other really cool alternative green methods. I'm talking about in your average kitchen, OK?) So these eggs in a mug are a green and frugal choice. And they took so little time! And dirtied only two dishes! (Mug and fork.) Perfect when you're cooking for just one or two.

So, what else can we cook in the microwave in a coffee mug?

There's the one-minute brownie, which doesn't have the chewiness of an oven-baked brownie but is more like a dense, puddingy chocolate cake. No, it's a combination of brownie and chocolate souffle. Yes, that describes it pretty well. I have made it a few times, and it is pretty good and makes for a nice treat during the afternoon slump. Making this at the office does require advance preparation, unless you always have cocoa powder and flour and things in your desk drawer. I do not, but maybe I should. Hm. Anyway, here's the recipe:

2 tablespoons each of: cocoa powder, water, and vegetable oil. 4 tablespoons each of sugar and flour. Plus a pinch of salt. 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract, optional. Mix it all well in your coffee mug and microwave 60 to 90 seconds. The center of the "brownie" should be slightly molten. Allow to cool a little bit, then eat with a spoon.  I found that more or less oil in the recipe will make the texture more fudgy or more cakey, respectively.

So now I'm on a coffee mug cooking adventure. What else can we make? There's the obvious hot cereal or soup. But that's hardly exciting. This April 2012 article from the Chicago Tribune has a few microwave-coffee-mug recipes: coffee cake, upside-down cake, quiche, and chilaquiles, none of which I have tried yet, but all of which sound worthy of trying. I think the chilaquiles will be next on my list. Len will love it! (If it turns out well, that is.)

Share with me! What have you microwaved in your coffee mug? (Besides coffee!)


(Linked with Frugal Days, Sustainable Ways #62)

A few greenies I admire

The bicycle commuters still going strong in January. 
Kudos to the cyclists still darting 'round the city of Chicago in this dark, cold half of the calendar—and to the few of you I see out in the 'burbs still biking to the train, though I suspect your commutes must be shorter than mine. Or at least I'm convincing myself of that so I don't feel so bad about covering my own 11 miles (round trip) by car half the year.

Environmental activists.
But not the shouting, bomb-threatening types. That's just counterproductive. Rather, the ones who chain themselves to trees in the path of loggers, the ones who go to the site of an oil spill to scrub the poor little waterfowl with Dawn soap, and the ones who defend pandas in court (thanks, Modern Family, for that joke)—you have passion and ambition that I have never quite mustered.

Vegans.
I could never be you. While I like to eat meat, I could live without it—if I had to. And I could live without some dairy products, because I genuinely like the taste of soy milk and almond milk. But, oh, the taste of real whipped cream. And our homemade whole-milk yogurt. (I need to write about that!) And cheese. Like a really sharp cheddar. Or baked brie wrapped in a buttery crescent-roll crust. (Or even Wensleydale, Gromit!) Plus, eggs are always a staple in our house.

The people who eat only organic, free-range, grass-fed anything.
I just bought boneless, skinless breasts for less than two dollars a pound and only paid 11 cents per egg by buying the value pack . . . but at what cost to the chickens?? Seriously though, I'll occasionally shell out the big bucks for a delicious, sustainably provided gourmet meal, but it's hard to justify going broke by choice over groceries. For widespread change

The people who raise their own organic, free-range, grass-fed whatevers.
I can barely keep up with a vegetable garden, while I have an acquaintance who essentially snuck a small farm into her backyard. I am envious.

The people who go off the grid.
First of all, I'm jealous of your resources. Of the wealth, know-how, creativity, and/or free time that enabled you to install you solar panels and gray-water system, to plot out and work that piece of land suitable for sustainable agriculture, to build a greenhouse out of recycled materials, to make the best use of your harvests, to trade your raw honey for your neighbor's grain mill, and so on. Must be nice. But secondly, and more importantly, I admire your great effort. It ain't easy being 100% green.

Adventures in Cake Decorating #2 - Sugared Grape Wedding Cake

I've come a long way since I posted my first adventure in cake decorating here (which wasn't my first ever adventure in cake decorating by far—I can recall Funfetti icing that turned gray by mistake— but was my first since maintaining a blog, and I suppose my first at trying something out of the ordinary). Since then, I made a bowling-themed cake for Len's 30th birthday, and it involved bowling pin cookies and a three-dimensional bowling ball. Really fun to make and pretty cool looking, if I do say so, but definitely room for improvement. Then I was the designated baker for a friend's very small wedding reception, and I was much more pleased with that finished product than I was when I made those baby block cakes for a friend's baby shower. And then I created a cake that looked like a book to celebrate Len's earning his teaching certificate, and I was really excited about that outcome. Oh, and so many ideas I want to try!

First let's flash back to March 2012, the small, casual wedding reception, because those are the photos I have handy at the moment. We'll get to the other cakes in the near future.

As is often my MO when I want to focus all of my energy on the look of the cake, I started with boxed cake mix. I enjoy baking from scratch, but the box just saves me some time and creative energy. You can get the mix on sale for a buck, you already know that it's going to taste good (better than a store-bought sheet cake), and you can trust that it will come out looking and feeling like a cake should. I even went with canned frosting this time, too. Again, it's frequently on sale, it tastes all right, it's easy to work with, it saves me some dishes, yada yada yada.

For the wedding cake, I chose Devil's food chocolate cake and vanilla buttercream frosting. And, I started the night before the event.

Friday night, I baked one 13x9 and two 9x9 one-layer cakes and let them cool. The two 9x9s would be the two-layer bottom tier. Out of the rectangular cake, I cut four squares—two medium and two small—to make the top two two-layer tiers. Using a bread knife (useful for trimming cakes because it's long, flat, and serrated) I trimmed the tops and sides of all six squares to make them flat and even all around. (The cake scraps and any leftover icing would become a small batch of improvised cake balls.)

Then I piled on the icing—but just for between the layers at this point! When I had three separate two-layer cakes (bald except for icing in the middle), I did the crumb coat. I thinned out some icing just a little bit with some milk and spread a thin layer around every exposed edge of the cakes and let them dry out until morning.

While the cakes were baking, I rinsed bunches of green and purple grapes and then rolled them around in sugar. Some methods for sugaring grapes call for egg whites, but I found that just the water from rinsing them was enough to hold the sugar on. It will, however, give you an uneven coat that sprinkles off anytime you touch the grapes, but if you're just going for the simplest method possible... Anyway, I let the grapes dry overnight as well.

Late Saturday morning: Learning my lesson from the baby blocks, I used a lot of icing. The crumb coat helped a little bit with keeping the chocolate crumbs from mixing into the cream-colored icing, but either I'm still not doing something right or I'm expecting the crumb coat to harden more as it dries than it actually does, because crumbs still came loose unless I gave myself a really thick icing buffer. I frosted the bottom layer first and when it was totally covered, I dipped the spatula in hot water between swipes to smooth out the icing around the sides, giving the cake a cleaner look like a sheet of fondant would.

Using cardboard squares cut to the size of the each tier and covered with foil and little wooden dowels cut just barely higher than each tier, I first stacked and then frosted and smoothed the middle tier and then the cute little top tier. Then I piped a dotted border, just to hide imperfections and give the cake a cleaner more finished look. Then I carefully placed the grapes.

I transported the whole thing in a giant box and drove so carefully! One bunch of grapes fell off in transit, smearing some icing. So I just rearranged some of the other grapes once the cake was in place on the restaurant table, and no one was the wiser. Mostly.

Hypermiling, the basic techniques

Driving to visit relatives this Christmas? Try hypermiling: getting the most possible miles per gallon out of your car.

Streamline the car: Windows up, tires inflated to the manufacturer's recommendations or slightly higher, unused trunk or roof racks removed, excess cargo removed. Like, do you really need to haul your golf clubs in your trunk all the time?

On the highway, find your car's natural cruising speed and stick to it; likely it's around the highway speed limit, 55-60 MPH. Pay attention to your RPMs at different speeds, and you'll see where the engine seems to settle in. If you have a newer car with an actual MPG readout, it's even easier to see at what speed your car runs most efficiently. True, it will now take more time to get from A to B than if you were driving 75, but you will have used noticeably less gas. I can attest to that after our many road trips between Chicago and St. Louis.

Also on the highway, you can reduce the air resistance on your car by drafting behind a large truck. It's not a safe technique, because you have to follow the truck closely, and the truck drivers don't like it—probably for that reason—but we've done it. Again, if you have a car with an instant MPG readout, you could try it and see the difference. But beware: it is unsafe, you will have no way to see what's coming ahead, and it's probably illegal. I'm just saying it works.

Conserve momentum #1: Keep plenty of space between you and the vehicle in front of you, even more than the recommended one car length for every 10 miles per hour. The extra space will allow you to coast a bit before braking—if you even have to brake at all—as the flow of traffic changes. Give yourself enough space in slow-moving traffic, and you may be able to simply roll along the whole time without ever hitting the accelerator.

Conserve momentum #2: Coast to stop signs and red lights. For some reason this annoys other drivers, like they're in a real hurry to get to that red light. So what? It uses far less fuel than keeping your foot on the gas until the moment you have to slam on the brakes while also preventing fender benders caused by people having to slam on their brakes at stop lights. If the light turns green while you're coasting toward it, even better; you won't have to accelerate as much to get back up to cruising speed. At stop signs, if you can continue rolling until the car before you departs the stop sign, then you're right there to stop for a moment and go, avoiding the stop, roll, stop, roll, stop.

Shut your engine off at any stop more than 20 seconds. Unless you really have to worry about whether your car will start again, there aren't many good reasons to keep the engine running when you're not actually driving. Deny it all you want, prolonged idling does indeed use more fuel than turning the car back on, and by "prolonged" I mean about 20 seconds or more. This is such an easy, no-effort, no-brainer way to conserve fuel at railroad crossings, stop lights with an obvious rotation, drive-up ATMs and slow-moving drive-throughs, not to mention the times you're waiting in the car while your buddy runs into the store. And when you're about to leave a parking space, wait to turn the engine on until you are actually ready to move.

Advanced technique: Engine-Off Coasting. In other words, consider coasting to be another form of idling. Yes, I am suggesting you take your foot of the gas, put your car in neutral, and kill the engine. You do this by turning your key just enough to shut the engine off and then turning it back to the "run" position. You know, the key position just before you'd click it over to turn the engine back on. And just roll. We are mimicking the engine-off coasting of a hybrid vehicle.
BUT: For goodness sake, don't turn the car all the way off—you'll lock up the steering! Also, while we frequently employ this method in our automatic-transmission, power-steering car, you should understand that it is really best suited to vehicles with manual steering and a manual transmission. You can lose power steering when the engine is off, making it very tough (but not impossible) to turn the wheel, and the jumping between drive and neutral and back while the car is in motion may damage automatic transmissions. 
 On a hill, gravity will take you. On a flat or uphill surface approaching a stop, the friction will gradually slow you down. When it's time to hit the accelerator again, first turn the engine back on, then pop the car in drive and go. Obviously, traffic conditions must help you determine if engine-off coasting is appropriate, but in general, according to an ecomodder.com forum, the hierarchy of slowing/braking techniques from best to worst is:
     1) coasting in neutral, engine off (i.e., roll to a stop);
     2) coasting in neutral, engine idling;
     3) regenerative coasting (hybrid vehicles)
     4) regenerative braking (hybrid vehicles)
     5) coasting in "deceleration fuel cut-off" mode (in gear, above a certain engine RPM)
     6) conventional friction braking (non-hybrid or hybrid)

There are quite a number of other hypermiling tactics that you can find with an online search. Determine what's compatible with your vehicle and your route (e.g., city-driving methods vs. highway driving methods) and try it.

Make it game! Track your fuel efficiency—either by watching your car's MPG readout, or by the old-fashioned way of writing down your odometer's reading and the number of gallons you put in every time you fill up and then doing the math—and see if, with every trip, you can't get your miles per gallon higher and higher and higher...

Shared at the Preparedness Fair 

The Best of Homemade Holidays

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You know we’re big on DIY. Because often, doing it yourself saves you money. It makes use of the scraps and surplus—recycling, upcycling, reusing, repurposing. And, it’s personal. And that personal touch makes things extra special—whether it’s the perfect little storage unit for specialty teas, a piece of art your house guests can admire while you fiddle with the TV reception, or a thoughtful gift that brings a little bit of your world into someone else’s, it’s something that is uniquely yours.

Like, I’m making a toy for my baby nephew (no spoilers!). Is it something I could have bought? Yes. And would he have loved the store-bought version? Absolutely. But this homemade toy will be extra special (to his parents at least, until he’s old enough to understand), because someone custom-made it just for him. I’m also planning to make something I saw on Martha Stewart’s website. Just a cute and practical stocking stuffer for the women in my life, an inexpensive but thoughtful way to add value to the gifts I’m already giving them.

Before we go any further, let me concede that plenty of homemade items turn out to be useless, pointless, tacky and, when given as a gift, rightfully unappreciated. You know, the hand-print ashtrays, the tea cozies, the patchwork sweater vests… I’m not endorsing that kind of DIY here. If, upon finishing any of my current projects, I realize they’re actually not so great, I’m running out to the store. And it might be Christmas Eve.

But we have indeed given and received many well-thought-out and thus treasured homemade gifts. It’s all about knowing your audience and producing quality goods. Perhaps this “Best Of” list will inspire you. These are a few of my favorites among the gifts that we have made and those that someone made for us. (It should come as no surprise that a lot of them are food.)

Apple butter

Other fruit preserves

Spice blends

Cake balls

Fudge

Cream caramel

Oreo cookie bark

Cranberry white chocolate biscotti

Salsa

Bread of the month

Family recipes

Christmas tree ornaments

Blankets

Cutting board

Recorded family memories

Customized picture frame w/ photo

Scarf

And this is going way back, a Barbie house.

Easy Green Christmas

This is not even close to an original idea. It’s not even a one-dimensional idea—the phrase “green Christmas” on its own just means it’s not a white Christmas, i.e. an absence of snowfall leaves a wintry backdrop of the green (and the brown) of the earth. The 1950s comedy single “GreenChristmas” by Stan Freburg is about making money off of the holiday. The song by the Bare Naked Ladies has to do with envy.

And then there’s our bailiwick, the environmentally friendly shade. Oodles of print and online articles exist with titles like “How to Have a Green Christmas” and “Tips for an Eco-Friendly Holiday.” So, among the plethora of green holiday tips out there, what could this one little blog bring to the table?

I’ll tell you.

I’ve sifted through those oodles of articles, filtering out the pointless, the “well duh,” and the positively unattainable for the average person, to give you my favorite easy yet impactful choices for this holiday season.

If you’re buying new strings of lights, spring for the LEDs. At the very least, put your decorative lights on timers so you can’t forget to shut them off at night. Oh, and maybe go smaller this year. No reason to duplicate the Griswalds’light display, and do you really need four inflatable santas on your lawn?

Streamline your shopping errands. This sounds like an idea that should have been on the “well duh” list, but I know too many people who do too much driving back and forth and home and out and round and round again and—whoops! we ran out of gas on our fifth trip back to Walmart. Yeah. So, plan the most direct, no-backtracking, round-trip route. Just do some research online first and organize your shopping list by store, for Pete’s sake!

Embrace regifting. Seriously. When it’s appropriate. But don’t force it. And be considerate.

Shop local and give your friends and family a taste of your hometown. Some personal examples? Local microbrews and organic dog treats from a local small business.

Give battery-free gifts. It’s a win-win-win.

Rethink wrapping paper. Experts say we Americans are throwing out an extra million tons of garbage weekly between Thanksgiving and New Year’s day, and you know the cause. “…The ribbons! The wrappings! The tags! And the tinsel! The trimmings! The trappings!” (Dr. Seuss’s How The Grinch Stole Christmas) But trying to reuse wrapping paper is ridiculous. It wrinkles and tears and just doesn’t look good the second time around because it’s so flimsy (well, the cheap stuff we have is too flimsy; I don’t know about yours). And you can’t recycle a lot of it for the same reason: too low quality to make it through the process. But, gift bags can survive many reuses, and the tissue paper to fill them is supposed to be all crumpled up anyway!

Another wrapping idea: Swaddle your gifts in cloth. You can reuse something old (say, a colorful fabric remnant or Christmas sweater) or you can make it part of the gift (a handmade scarf or a new kitchen towel—great for wrapping food gifts). Or, there’s the old standby, the Sunday comics—read, reuse, then recycle!

Got a real pine tree in your living room? Recycle it. Your community might use old Christmas trees for mulch, for erosion prevention, for wildlife habitat restoration… lots of things! Earth 911 has some tips and a link to find your local “treecycling” resources.

Lastly, the Sierra Club has a somewhat fun holiday survival guide with DIY gifts, fresh recipes and even facts to back you up when the dinner table conversation turns to “you greenies,” whether you’re educating your “skeptical of green stuff” brother or just “preaching to the choir” to your progressive nephew.

(Link back to Frugally Sustainable's Blog Hop!)