Sustainable Reading

When Bel at Green out Every Window invited me to participate in the Earth Day Reading Project, I loved the idea immediately. Share three books that have most inspired you to choose to live more sustainably. Fiction, nonfiction, graphic novel....it's all about what has made motivated you to turn ideas into actions. Full rules and a great list of gardening blogs can be found here at The Sage Butterfly.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver inspired me to action almost immediately.  We had begun to garden and had a compost bin. We were buying less "processed crap" with all the coloring, additives and packaging, but weren't quite sure what else we really could do. After all, we live in the suburbs...it's not like we can feed ourselves from this tiny bit of earth, right? Within a year of reading this book, I realized the power that comes from reconnecting with our food sources. I love Kingsolver's fiction, but her sharing of her family's commitment to eat only locally for an entire year (no bananas!) changed how I think about food.

I picked up a copy of the Kitchen Garden Planner at a bookstore's going out of business sale. We lived down in Florida and had asked (and received) permission to plant a small garden plot in the back yard of our rental. I dreamed of what I might do with a home and yard and garden of my own. As it turns out, I plant squash in the flowerbeds. All of my planted space is a kitchen garden, each year more beautiful and each year more edible.

I know, I know. Insert joke about garden gnomes here. But the interior of this book is filled with amazing illustrations detailing the many ways sentient being  might live in harmony with nature, might balance needs of self with needs of the system of which we are all part. When I was a child, I discovered this book next to a rocking chair in my grandmother's guest room. She had placed it there purposely so a little girl weary of grownup conversation might find some magic with which to amuse herself. Whenever I harvest herbs, I think of the gnomes in this book. If I ever make my own dandelion root tea (not unlikely, these days), I will credit this book for the inspiration. 

So that's three. I considered including Bill McKibben's Eaarth, for its influence on my planning and thinking, but there is no action yet I can directly attribute to reading the book. Square Foot Gardening was also a strong contender for the Top Three, because he makes it easy to get started with gardening no matter where you live. I appreciate that he thinks growing things should be mostly fun.

Ruthlessly Purge Your Cookbook

Everyone should have a collection of "Tried and True Recipes"

It's funny how your favorite "go to" recipes can change.  I finally started my own recipe collection a few years ago and it had literally exploded out of its binder of late, despite repeated applications of duct tape.  I had been putting off purging and reorganizing because I couldn't find a replacement binder.  Mine has a little flap on the front that makes it easy to change the "cover page" and I use that to place the recipe I'm using so it doesn't get splatters or spills on it. After approximately two years of fruitless searches in various office supply stores, I remembered that we live in the Age of the Internet and found an exact replacement at Amazon.com.

Wilson-Jones "Smart View" Binder

The last time I reorganized my recipes was four years ago when I recognized a need to move away  from the time-intensive, fancy (and costly) meals that were a hallmark of our days as Childless Newlyweds. Ah memories of Friday nights with courses and cocktails! That first cookbook was organized primarily by main protein (Pork, Chicken, Beef, Fish, Vegetarian) and I don't search for meal ideas that way anymore.  Instead of looking for recipe ideas and then buying ingredients, I tend to look at what we have on hand and what we've gotten from our CSA and create meal plans around that.



I love making piles.

So, I pulled out my recipes and began to sort them into eight piles, grouping together things that seemed most alike and  tossing anything I hadn't made recently or didn't care to make any more.  A lot of recipes including "cream of" went into the recycle bin!  I continued to reshuffle things until I had eight piles that were roughly the same size.  I ended up with Soup, Veggie Main Dishes, Easy Meat/Slow Cook, Breads & Muffins, Summer, Winter, Apps & Desserts, and Holiday & Gifts.

Use Scotch tape to easily change categories when the need arises.

See that duct tape holding the old book together?  I should have taken a picture of the front -- it was more duct tape than binder.  One bit of foresight I had when I began my own Recipe Binder was to put a bit of Scotch tape on the main category page.  When changing categories I didn't have to toss the fully functional divider pages; instead I just pulled off the tape, put some new on there and wrote in new categories.

The interior pockets are used for the few recipes I have printed on cards that I'm too lazy to re-type and for recipes that I want to try but haven't yet.  Take a look at your own favorite recipes.  If the book is too full of things that are too complicated or have the wrong ingredients, you'll never use it.  Purge and organize to make it an easily-accessed source of inspiration for healthy and tasty meals!