Bye Bye Plastic Food Storage Containers and Bags

Every time I turn around, there is more bad news about plastic. I could go on a big rant about plastic, but I won’t. Instead, I want to talk about plastic and its relationship with my food. First it was Bisphenol A (BPA) in my plastic drinking bottles. Then it was BPA in canned food (it is used in the lining of cans) especially for acidic foods like tomatoes. So we cleaned out our water bottle collection a few years ago (replacing them with metal water bottles) and stopped buying canned food this past year. We really didn’t buy all that much canned food, mostly beans and canned tomatoes. Last summer as the local farmer’s market was coming to an end, we bought a 25 lb box of Roma tomatoes and diced them up then froze them. We also started cooking our beans from scratch.

This was a good start, but we still had a bunch of plastic food storage containers that we used for lunches. Even though I tried my best not to heat food in them via the microwave, it occasionally happened especially at work. My second confession is our somewhat frequent use of plastic bags. We mostly used larger bags for freezing vegetables. The small snack bags made it easy to pack items for school lunches. I have to admit that while I know how bad they are for the environment, they can be pretty darn convenient at times. So I rationalized my behavior by using them sparingly and reusing when possible. That was until last month when I discovered from a blog that I follow (My Plastic-free Life) that animal fat is what makes the bags nice and slippery. I have no idea how I did not know this little fact after all of these years of not eating meat!

In my fit of disgust, I made several changes on the food storage front to complete our transformation:

• I replaced the plastic drink pitcher and all of the plastic food storage containers with glass versions from the Container Store. This was an easy fix.

• I replaced Lily and Semira’s insulated lunch bags (in to which went plastic bags and storage containers) with very cool metal bento boxes from Planet Box. I had to find something with built in containers to replace the plastic ones. The kids love the new lunch boxes because they could customize the plain metal with different magnets. Lunch has become much more exciting because there are small bites of more different foods. Both kids are eating more (especially the healthy things).

The outside of the boxes with the set of magnets each kid picked.

The inside of the boxes. Each comes with two round containers (sidekicks) to hold liquids.

• I replaced my insulated, dog chewed lunch box with a metal tiffin (from To-Go Ware) identical to the one Steve bought a couple of years ago. I admit it, I made fun of Steve when he bought his tiffin. I did, however, make sure mine is a bit fancier. It has a nice bag and a set of bamboo utensils to go with it. I plan on keeping a plate at work to heat the contents in the microwave since the metal won’t work. This is the downside of the metal vs. glass option.

My lunch set comes with two big round containers that snap together as well as a sidekick to hold liquids.

• I will continue to eat the food in the freezer that is in plastic bags as long as I defrost the bags so they do not need to be microwaved. After that, all food in the freezer will be stored in glass jars. We already do this for about half of our food so I know it works. I will just need to buy more jars this summer.

After the discovery of the animal fat in the plastic bags, I decided to explore a few of the plastic bag manufacturer’s web sites to see what they had to say. What I found is such a great example of irony. The most well-known plastic bag manufacturer takes great pride in telling you their products are BPA free. Very safe! Then they have an entire section of their web site (under the heading of” Sustainability”) exposing how environmental they are including how to divert the bags from the landfill by recycling them, how some of their products are made with wind energy, and how the boxes that hold the bags are made from recycled cardboard. Really, there is no way to make using plastic sustainable! I don’t care if they are made with wind energy or whether you can recycle the box they came in. The reality is millions of these bags sit in landfills. They do not decompose EVER. And recycling is so limited because most municipalities do not take bags. And I have yet to see any of these special recycling drop-offs for food storage bags. Do these companies really think that people will fall for this? What a great example of trying to sustain the unsustainable! Oh yeah, I never did find that complete list of chemicals and other ingredients that my food has been touching all these years. Somehow I am not surprised!

I can't say that I am solving the world's plastic problems with these minor changes. If you want some inspiration on that front, check out Beth Terry's blog at Myplasticfreelife.com. She is amazing! On the other hand, I have definitely become more aware of the vast amounts of plastics all around us. This awareness has certainly led to more thoughtful personal decisions as to whether to buy a particular product or not. I just wish I didn't have to try so hard to find plastic-free alternatives for many of the products I like to use. Some days I have the energy to go the extra mile; other days I don't. I guess this makes me human.

Our Food: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Inside my refrigerator last night. No food stylist and sans cleaning!

Steve and I have been vegetarian for the better part of our adult lives (Steve for his entire adult life and most of his high school years as well). For me, I stopped eating meat during my freshman year of college and never looked back. First it was beef, then chicken and turkey. I did eat seafood for some years after that, but gave it up sometime in my late 20s. For reasons I will get into in a later post, we did start eating some fish about two years ago. Besides seafood, I haven’t touched other meat for over 20 years now.

My reasons for initially not eating meat were taste. College cafeteria food used to be pretty nasty stuff. After I hadn’t eaten meat for a while, it just seemed gross to me. Over the years, my reasons expanded. Primarily, I have compassion for animals, and raising animals for meat is an extremely inefficient way to convert the Earth’s finite resources to food.

Overall, I had a pretty decent diet growing up. My family’s German roots influenced my dietary choices. We had plenty of meals with meat, potatoes, vegetables, and salad. I drank my fair share of whole milk growing up. I also ate plenty of cheese. My diet took a turn for the worse when I first gave up meat. In my early to mid 20s, I recall eating a lot of pasta with tomato sauce and vegetarian frozen dinners. Looking back, I don’t know how I survived. The funny thing is I was pretty heavy back then. In 1992 when I graduated college, I weighed about 35 lbs more than I do now!

I have to say, our household diet today is pretty healthy overall. We eat a lot of fresh vegetables (we're members of a pretty good CSA), beans, tofu and other soy products, nuts, and grains. I do eat eggs. My taste for them waxes and wanes though. We dabbled in veganism some years ago, but that effort was short lived due to my love of good cheeses. Today, I eat some cheese, sour cream, and an occasional yogurt. In spite of that, I could never drink cow milk. The thought of drinking milk actually makes me sick. I also have a few vices: sugar (it is addicting), caffeinated tea, and Sabra hummus. Even with the our vices, anyone perusing our cupboards and refrigerator won’t find more than a few "bad" items.

It happens that I am an avid reader about food and food related issues. All of my reading over the years has been very informative, yet sometimes overwhelming. There is definitely a lot of conflicting information out there. Sometimes it is hard to make sense of it all. On the other hand, there are some things that seem so obvious: Americans eat crap, are overweight, and unhealthy as a result. The most recent book that Steve and I read is Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. This is a very difficult book to read even for me. It is disturbing/enlightening on so many levels that I can only read a chapter or two at a time. I plan on writing more about the book in the New Year when I am completely done with it.

While this isn't a full list of resources, here are some links to information about food that that I have found helpful.

Michael Pollan: Author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food. Both books are good. If you read just one, read In Defense of Food. It is a must read.

Mark Hyman: Author of Ultra-Metabolism and The UltraMind Solution. He also has a blog on his website. Dr. Hyman provides convincing evidence that good food is essential for a sharp, clear mind and, like Dr. Weil below, makes the case that basic dietary changes go a long way for overall health and longevity.

Andrew Weil: Author of Eating Well for Optimum Health and several other books about health and wellness. He is kind of a classic hippy guy. Dr. Weil is a pioneer in merging traditional with nontraditional medicine. He and Mark Hyman above point out that many of our medical problems can be treated by dietary changes instead of pills. It is kind of scary that such simplicity is considered "nontraditional."

Food Inc.: Probably the best documentary on food. Good website on how to take action.

Food Matters: Ok so they get a little crazy about raw food and vitamins, but still worth a look. There is some interesting discussion about treating serious diseases with high dose vitamins and nutrition.

The Future of Food: Watched this before Food Inc. It covers a lot of the same issues.

Happy Healthy Long Life: Great blog from a medical librarian. She follows Dr. Esselstyn's heart disease prevention diet (a pretty strict diet including no oils, which I could never do). The site is full of various summaries of research on food and health issues. No need to read hundreds of books and studies yourself! My friend Kara in Seattle turned me onto her.

Adventures in Veganism: This is a plug for a blog written by Steve's cousin who lives in D.C. He decided to be a vegan about two years ago. The site has great pictures of awesome looking food. The pictures show that vegan/vegetarian food can be great food!

So why am I writing about this? Well, to start, the issue of food is extremely important on a personal level, but also at a policy level. Second, I am often conflicted with some of our food choices for both ethical and health reasons. After reading our latest book, Steve decided that we should go vegan. Following some discussion though, we decided to try something a little different. Instead of just flipping the switch, we are going to embark on a “Family Food Challenge” during each month of 2011. I have no idea what all the challenges will be, but I have ideas for five or six. Our first challenge will be going dairy free. I think the food challenges will a good way to try something without a big commitment. And supposedly it takes a month to form a new habit.

My goal is not to alienate people about their food choices, but to discuss the challenges involved with ethical and healthy eating. Unlike Lily, who is meeting a sheep that became lunch a few minutes later, we are so far removed from our food that we have no idea where it comes from, what is in it, or what bad things result from its production.

Hopefully in the process, the Prager Family can finally purge its remaining bad habits. Cheers to a happy and healthy 2011!

Celebrating the Ethiopian New Year

The start of the New Year in Ethiopia was actually on September 11. Without getting into the logistics of their calendar, it is 2003 in Ethiopia. This year we overcame our slackness to celebrate not once, but twice with two different parties. Last weekend, we hosted the Ethiopian doctoral student who is Steve’s Amharic language tutor. He brought along another Ethiopian student who just arrived at UW. We also invited an Ethiopian family we met in the park a few weeks ago. They too are new to UW. Finally, our good friends from Kenya were able to come. Serving a traditional Ethiopian dinner to Ethiopians was a bit nerve wracking to say the least!

This Saturday we hosted four of the five Laramie families who have adopted from Ethiopia and one family in the process. We all know each other and get together with each other from time to time, but never as a group. There has always been talk of trying to get a regular gathering started so we used the New Year as our first attempt to do so. We really had a great time and agreement was reached to try to meet every few months. It is great for the kids to spend time together and for the adults to talk and compare notes about our experiences raising our children.

Steve cooked an amazing dinner. He brought home some Ethiopian spices in August and we mail ordered some additional spices and injera. We have given up making our own injera because we lack a proper pan and stove. It comes out too funky. Well, you just can’t serve Ethiopian food without injera so this creates a major problem. I have no idea why it took us so long to figure out that we could Fed Ex injera from an online source since we are big online shoppers. We now have 40 lbs of it in our freezer!

For those of you who have never eaten Ethiopian food, you should try it! It has amazing, rich flavors. Ethiopians love their spices so get ready. Not all of it is hot spicy, just spicy spicy if that makes sense. Our house smelled amazing the last two Saturdays with the stews cooking all day. Of course everything was vegetarian, à la Prager style.

Step one in cooking most Ethiopian dishes is to sauté a large amount of purple onion with Niter Kebbeh, a spiced butter, which Steve made earlier in the day.

This is the finished Yetakelt W'et (a spicy mixed vegetable stew). It was my favorite dish by far. It's full of potatoes, green beans, carrots, tomatoes, onion, garlic, parsley, and spices.

The meal ready to eat. The menu included injera with vegetable stew, two different lentil dishes, and gomen (mixed greens), shiro (a thick sauce/stew made from chick pea flour), and Steve's version of aib (a homemade cheese). Our meal was served buffet style. Ethiopians are communal eaters. If you eat at an Ethiopian restaurant, your food will be served on top of the injera. You eat with your hands, using extra injera to scoop up the food. When the food is eaten off the top, you get to tear off pieces of the remaining injera. Below is a picture of a delicious vegetarian meal we were served in Ethiopia two years ago.

Thanks to all our friends who came to celebrate! Both nights were very special to Semira. She was so excited to eat traditional food and wear one of her dresses. She is such a proud little girl who beams from ear to ear when she and her country are celebrated.

Harvestival Fun

Harvestival at Grant Family Farms was early this year. Usually it is in October during prime pumpkin picking season. Perhaps the big snow storm last year or the year before (can't remember) had the event planners thinking earlier is better, especially if you want to book some big names. Regardless of whether I am cold or sweating, a day at our CSA farm is always fun. And because we are CSA members, we get free tickets to the event. The girls usually have a good time as there is plenty to see and do for kids. This year, the chicken buses, 2,000 baby ducks, and worm composting were the big hits. For me, it was the chance to hear Joel Salatin from Polyface Farms speak.

Last year, Lily and Semira helped to paint these buses. This year, the buses are home to the chickens. They roam free during the day and sleep in the buses at night so they are not eaten by the local coyotes. This picture is for my dad. He freaks out about my $5 a dozen eggs. I keep telling him that at least I know where they come from. Speaking of knowing where your food comes from, Joel Salatin's talk was pretty interesting. Joel Salatin may sound like a familiar name, especially if you have read Michael Pollan's books (The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food) or watched Food Inc. He is pretty well known these days in the organic, local food circles. While a lot of what he said today was stuff I have already heard, food talk is still interesting and he is pretty entertaining. He's a tell it like it is kind of guy. Of course he was preaching to the choir today, but still a few points he made are worth repeating.

• Buying organic is more expensive because we are paying for the true cost of producing food. The externalities of the mainstream food system in the U.S. are endless and not reflected in the prices we pay.
  

• People can afford to pay more for food. They just need to make different choices (i.e. trading things of little or no value for things of value). Of course, it helps to eat in season, then freeze, can, and preserve the extras.
  

• Our entire food system is this country is so messed up. We are subsidizing all the wrong things...the things that are making us overweight and unhealthy (can you say corn, corn, corn, and more corn?).

• Embrace the pigness of pigs. Ok so we don't eat meat, but his point was that modern industrial agriculture ignores the natural inclinations of animals. The goal is to produce meat faster, bigger, fatter, and cheaper and that is not good for us on many levels. I have many reasons for not eating meat, but the ways in which animals are raised and killed is definitely a big one for me.

• And my favorite: RESPECT. We need to start respecting food and where it comes from. People are so disconnected from the process of growing food that the process itself and people have no soul as a result. Amen to that!
  

Anyway, it was a great day! Fun with a little inspiration.