Mary Finished the Trail!

While in Portland, I also got to catch up with my friend Mary. She recently completed the Continental Divide Trail after a five month solo hike. She survived a grizzly bear encounter along the way. And lots of knee deep or higher snow in the Colorado mountaintops. In recognition of having now completed all three of the US National Scenic Trails together with the Appalachian and Pacific Crest Trails, she received the coveted Triple Crown Award. I could never imagine doing any of that in a million years.

She's put up an amazing gallery of photos on her blog Married to the Trail, where she plans to continue blogging with her reflections and experiences from hiking. Check it out!

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In search of better stuffed peppers

Every time I make stuffed peppers, the stuffing doesn't cook much.

For this version, I combined cooked orzo, cooked chickpeas, grated cheddar cheese and raw leeks, stuffed this inside peppers and baked it at 430 F for about half an hour. I figured the leeks would roast inside the peppers, but they didn't really.

Tell me what I am doing wrong. Should it stay in the oven longer? Should the stuffing all be pre-cooked? Do you have a great recipe for vegetarian stuffed peppers?

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Back from Portland

I'm back from a weeklong trip to Portland, OR with friends who want to move there, and it's easy to see why they love it. The city lives up to its stereotypes. It's like Brooklyn - with hipsters and bikes and second hand clothing stores and quality locally sourced food and craft beer everywhere - but in a smaller, more manageable size and more beautiful and spacious setting. Instead of dense apartment buildings, it's cute house after cute house with small but green lots.

When I saw Portland's quiet, bike laned streets, I understood why it's good for biking - the city is laid out in a grid, appeared not-too hilly and has plentiful side streets that look much safer than NYC's busy streets. I could see myself easily getting around primarily by bike there. But while Portland's public transportation is much lauded and some of our friends there do get by without owning a car, I found that it's more of a car city than you'd think. The light rail doesn't even go to southeast Portland and the rail and buses stop running around 12:30 nightly. Somehow, you can always find street parking, so it's often easier to just drive to your destination, especially when you're with a big group of people who include tourists who don't have bikes.

This one speaks for itself.

Food not lawns!

There are movie theaters where you can enjoy pizza and beer while watching the movie, all for only slightly more than the price of just a movie ticket in NYC.

Food trucks! Unlike in NYC, where they are mobile and elusive and require twitter to track down locations, food trucks in Portland get permanent devoted areas in parking lots called "food truck pods" so you always know where you can find your favorite late night pizza or breakfast sandwich.

The most memorable meal of the trip was at Pok Pok, a Thai street food restaurant with a a James Beard Foundation award winning chef and amazing spicy fish sauce chicken wings.

We got to enjoy two hot springs - Bonneville Hot Springs in the Columbia River Gorge just across the border in Washington, which was more of a resort and was unfortunately treated with chlorine.

Columbia River Gorge

Much better was Bagby Hot Springs, where a 1.5 mile hike into the woods leads you to an old wooden structure where you can soak in carved out logs.

When people warn you not to go to the coast because it's rainy and windy, you should listen, because what they really mean is that there will be driving rain with gale force winds that rock your car and threaten to blow you over so you won't be able to hike or see any of the beautiful views.

Also, everyone we met was super nice and willing to make time to hang out and make introductions to other people. Very refreshing compared to New York. Here are some new friends having fun climbing the columns in Cathedral Park in North Portland.

I also heard a lot of complaints about the rain and unemployment problems, so just make sure you have a job lined up and don't mind wearing a raincoat if you plan on moving there...

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Heirloom Tomato Salad

What do you bring to a dinner party at summer's end? We originally planned to bring a green salad, but like many New York area farms impacted by Hurricane Irene*, Evolutionary Organics farm had no greens to offer over Labor Day weekend. Instead, we selected a variety of their tomato beauties, as well as a cucumber and red onion from the market. The vegetables were thinly sliced and carefully layered -  a layer of tomatoes topped with a layer of cucumber, followed by scattered onions and parsley, a sprinkling of salt and pepper and a dash of olive oil and red wine vinegar. Continue to add layers until you've used up the goods and then give it a few hours to marinate. It was part of a impressive spread that included oysters, sweet roasted tomato, honey and ricotta crostini, sweet potato and bacon hash, pork ribs three ways, and peach cobbler (I regretted not bringing my camera to the party). Yum!

* Check out GrowNYC's campaign to help local farmers recover from the losses wreaked by hurricane flooding.

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Wear it out

Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.

When something starts to break, people go around saying they "need" to buy this item of clothing or they "need" to buy that household object, but there is a difference between want and need. Mindful consumption is about evaluating whether you truly need it, and whether it will be worth the expense not only in terms of your bank account, but also in terms of depletion of natural resources, pollution, and unfair labor.





For example, this was my old backpack. When a hole first started appearing over a year ago, most would run out and replace it with a new backpack right away. This particular backpack company also offers a lifetime warranty where you can send backpacks to be repaired, but when I called to ask about the specifics about this, it was very unclear as to whether the rips in mine fell under their warranty policy or not, and I wasn't willing to go a month without a backpack to find out. Instead, I repaired the hole with needle and thread, and later when the mended stitch no longer held, with safety pins, and eventually just went around with a giant hole in my backpack. Was it unsightly? Yes. But was it still functional? Actually, yes, it was. As long as I had an umbrella when it was raining. Finally, I decided that it was time, and that I wanted a new backpack that would carry my groceries more securely. My old backpack saw me through high school AP textbooks, treks lugging my computer and notebooks around my college campus, and NYC bike rides weighted down with a lock and groceries, so it lived a long life, and it got a second life when I donated it to the textile recycling stand at the Greenmarket.

Likewise, I got a new computer this winter. My previous computer was an 8 1/2 year old dinosaur purchased for my college freshman year. Over the years, it was repaired with a new keyboard, motherboard, and hard drive. But for probably the last three years I had it, it was plagued with slowness, frequent freezing and poor internet connectivity. I dealt with this by using my then-boyfriend's computer (which he wasn't too happy about) or getting things done on my computer at work, or simply having patience. I resisted getting a new computer, since I recognized that I didn't absolutely need one. I originally planned on waiting until it died a nasty death. I finally decided it was time this winter, when I wanted to be able to blog easier and do demo recordings of my music. I went with a refurbished macbook, which is rated as having adequate environmental controls. Luckily my old laptop was a Dell, which you can recycle at Staples, but Staples will also accept non-Dell electronics for a $10 fee. Electronics Takeback Coalition has a useful guide to electronics recycling here.

The delayed gratification involved in mindful consumption also makes me appreciate it all the more when I finally buy something new. How do you feel about mending broken goods and making do?

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Elements of a Minimalist Bedroom

I am a minimalist in that I don't like buying and owning too much stuff. Just the idea of it weighs me down. The more things you have, the harder it is to clean your home and to move homes. It doesn't make sense for us to deplete the earth's resources so that we can acquire things that we don't really need and that force us to have larger homes to house all that stuff. Each time I move, I take it as an opportunity to figure out what else I can get rid of. I've also learned a few tricks over the years on how to manage with fewer things in smaller spaces. I will admit I have many kitchen things, but in general I aspire to minimize my belongings. This is how I live in a 70 square foot room. (Note: many of these photos are from my previous apartment, which had better light.)

- While keeping my mattress on the floor means I lose storage space under my bed, I also like the simplicity of it and not having a bedframe to move around when I change apartments.

- A storage container doubles as nightstand, covered by an attractive sheet.

- Rather than use a duvet, which I find cumbersome to remove for washing, I just keep my comforter between two sheets.

- I don't have a desk. In the past, I used a tray table, although my current room doesn't have room for that, so I usually bring my computer to my bed or the living room coffeetable.

- I don't own many books (since I do my reading via library loans), I don't own any DVDs (that's what the internet and netflix are for); and I recently made sure all my CDs were burned onto my computer so I could recycle them all at Best Buy.

- You can just see the black suitcase standing hidden behind the door, which serves as storage and also doubles as extra surface area in a room short on it.

- In the past, I have also used boxes for storage instead of buying more shelving furniture.

- I like to hang a plastic bag rather than having a garbage can. You're going to have a plastic bag inside the can anyway, so why bother buying another piece of plastic just to keep it in?

- I try to keep as many of my appliances as possible plugged into one power strip, that can easily be turned off whenever leaving home to avoid using phantom power.

- I periodically reevaluate all my clothes to give away anything I have determined that I no longer like to wear or consider useful. 

Do you have any tricks for simplifying your home and eliminating unnecessary furniture and "stuff"?

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Sneak Peek of my new apartment

Yes, as I have mentioned, I moved AGAIN earlier this summer. Such is the way of life of a twenty-something New Yorker. This time I moved out of a craigslist roomshare so that I could live with my best friend Jamie. The apartment hunting process was extremely painful. You may think that working with a broker will be helpful. In fact, the search process involves refreshing craigslist searches every hour for two and a half weeks, calling every lead, visiting multiple apartments each night, working with multiple brokers and mostly seeing apartments that would be fit for a couple but not roommates because of our nonprofit salary price range. We applied for four apartments, two of which the tenants decided not to move out of, and one of which the broker was incompetent and waited a week to tell us the landlord picked another applicant.

The unfortunate thing about New York real estate is that it's more expensive to live with a friend than strangers because it usually involves signing a new lease, which landlords use as opportunities to raise the rent exorbitantly. So you can either live with craigslist roommates in a decent apartment at a more reasonable price, or have an awesome friend as your roommate but not as nice an apartment.

So, we ended up in a railroad apartment, where I pay more than one should to live in a 70 square foot room with no window. BUT, at least we have a cute apartment with lots of plants. We managed to stay in a good area in Williamsburg, even if it's not my favorite part of the neighborhood. And Jamie is my favorite.

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