I guess I’m having a toasty green day

It’s been too long without a post filling you in on what I ate for lunch, so let me tell you about my observations from my yearly visit to Quiznos. Lately I’ve sort of been on this weird napkin kick, where I am hyper-aware when places have white napkins. White napkins usually mean bleach was involved, and probably none/not as many recycled components. So it always makes me at least a little happy if a food establishment boasts brown napkins, which I sort of prefer anyways because the white ones really highlight my messy eating habits…

So at lunch I was spacing out and looking at my “Made with 100% recycled material” brown napkin, complete with EcoLogo™, and noticed this message printed on the napkin: “We’re not perfect, but we’re committed to helping the environment, one toasty day at a time. Our first step is making environmentally responsible choices with our packaging.” At first I thought that was nice, then I was sort of mad, but now I have mixed feelings, and here’s why:

•  They admit they are not perfect. So many places act like they are all that and a bag of chips (child of the early 90s, yes) because they use some recycled materials, or compostable materials (although this is an issue to me– see below), and I think environmental groups must often get on these places, which is perhaps why Quizno’s wanted to throw in the disclaimer.
•  Quiznos refers to switching their packaging choices as their first step. This implies that there are other steps to come, which gives me hope they have a plan and are easing in with the low-hanging fruit. Will they grab the easy fruit and stop, or push on though? The website is nice, however, it doesn’t say anything about the steps to come. Perhaps I will email them to ask what their upcoming steps are to keep them in check.
•  If their green packaging motiff turns into a marketing thing, it could force competitors, such as Subway (who at one point was looking into composting? Whatever happened with that?), into keeping up.

Here is what I AM NOT happy about– my raspberry lemonade cup boasts that it is compostable, however, when I did some sleuthing to figure out if I could even compost this at work or at home (because of course most of these places with compostable cups don’t offer composting– see my first and second trips to Burgerville that ended in disapointment) I found the caveat– “Not biodegradable in a landfill. Not compostable in a home compost pile or device. Requires special facilities which may not exist in your area.” Ok, so I can compost this cup in my office…but even in uber green Portland not all offices have compost pick up. And I’m not even sure all of my coworkers would carry their cup back to compost. That’s a great thought these cups could hypothetically be composted, but realistically most of these special compostable cups are going to go into the bins at Quiznos. Which are going to go to landfills. Where the cups will not biodegrade. Sigh.

Alex’s Vegetarian Experience

When I told Alex about my experiment, he offered to try it with me for the month. I was surprised at first, but it makes a lot of sense: the guy rarely ever eats meat, so I figured the month would be really easy for him.

It was nice having a buddy to cook meals with. Alex and I made cheese enchiladas, he showed me how to cut up a butternut squash, and we experimented with all sorts of sandwiches. Here are his thoughts on the month:

“I haven’t cooked meat more than about a dozen times in the last three years, and most of those times have been grilling brats, so I didn’t think a month of vegetarianism would be much of a challenge. I’m most of the way there already, or so I thought.

Back in college I tried to go a month as a vegan. It was easy in some ways but very difficult in others. The dining halls were good about catering to different dietary preferences, but the selection was still considerably more limited than I was used to. I ended up doing that for two weeks, and it wasn’t that fun, but I was willing to try a dietary-restriction challenge again.

There’s a big difference between not cooking meat and not thinking about it. Three days into the month my coworker offered me some of her lunch that she couldn’t finish. I took a bite before even thinking about the fact that it had chicken in it. I realized at that point that I was going to have to be a lot more aware of not just what I was cooking, but what I was ordering and what I was eating.

I didn’t make it through the whole month. Honestly, I just didn’t care. I went out for Lebanese food with some friends and let them order for all of us. I knew they were ordering meat, but I thought that would be one course. When we got the food, two thirds of what was in front of us had meat, so I thought for a bit, but then I dug in.

This experiment was not a failure by any means. The way I see it, it’s far more important to be aware of what you’re eating and to have the ability to make conscious choices about what you eat than what you actually put in your mouth. This month definitely raised my awareness about food choices, which is a good outcome. I don’t think I’ll ever be a complete vegetarian, and I’ll never eat a lot of meat, but at least I’ll be more conscious of whatever food I choose.”

Kayleigh’s Vegan Experience

I think my favorite day of my vegetarian month was the day I found out an old friend from home was doing a food challenge as well for the month of February. This was not planned, and we had no clue that the other was taking on a similar project. What made me happy was: a) I was not in this alone (Alex had already cheated at this point) and b) someone had it tougher than I did!

The whole month when I heard stories about vegans or met people who were vegan all the sudden my non-meat plan was put into perspective. I immediately would stop complaining or feeling like I was missing out on something and would switch my by brain gears to thoughts about how awesome it was that I could have all the grilled Tillamook cheese sandwiches I could handle.

Here is my first guest blogger weighing in on her month of vegan-ism:

“Hey! My name is Kayleigh. I have known Laura forever and am super excited to be a guest blogger on Green Keen. So my vegan experience began when my officemate’s sister went vegan a few months ago, she lost weight, had more energy and felt great after being vegan for a few weeks. We looked into it and decided we needed a boost in energy and health (February is about the worst time to live in Ohio. We get a ton of snow, and sit around and eat because we don’t want to shovel snow to leave the house) So Ashley (officemate) and I decided to go vegan for the month of February.

The first few days were easy, then my meat and cheese loving husband (who is always eating) made things difficult. I would be eating my tofu stir fry or black bean burger while he had mac n’ cheese or beefy chili. His food always smelled so good! By week two of being vegan it actually wasn’t hard, I knew what I couldn’t eat. I felt really good about myself, I felt less sluggish and felt skinnier.

Over the month I ate a lot of rice, beans, salsa, guacamole, fruit and veggies. The “substitute” foods were nearly as satisfying as the real thing– I love black bean burgers, garden burgers are hit or miss (some brands taste oniony, others have rice in them that never seems to cook right). Vegan cheese is good but doesn’t melt the same and is tangier than real cheese. I don’t like ricedream, but love chocolate tofutti which tastes a lot like chocolate milk. Silk is my favorite soy milk, the very vanilla tastes like melted vanilla bean icecream.

I did cheat a few times on my vegan diet. My first cheat was about two weeks in. My mom made beef stew (forgetting I was vegan) and was really upset I would not eat the stew she made just for me. So I compromised and ate the stew. Eating around the meat was easy enough, but since all the veggies were swimming in beef it was still cheating.   I had a cheeseburger on Valentine’s day, it was so worth it! I had an ice cream sandwich at work one day, and  felt sick after eating it.

My  month of being vegan went fast, and I  mostly did not feel deprived.  I feel great, lost five pounds and have not been sick all month. Hardest thing for me  was trying to find food when I was out eating with friends, I paid a lot of money for some really terrible salads. I am staying veganish for the next few months. I am still not eating eggs, and avoiding dairy ( cheese sparingly, no other dairy), I intend to eat meat only once a week.  Eating vegan was a good experience, I eat healthy without even trying.”

Thanks, Kayleigh! It’s interesting she mentioned eating out– Alex mentions that in his post which I will put up in a couple days. Eating out seems to be the reoccurring buzzkill for vegetarian and vegan folks. I’m sure it’s a lot better in Portland than it is in Ohio– in Portland we have TONS of restaurants that are all veggie or vegan, but somehow I didn’t use this opportunity to explore them (even though I pulled a coupon for a vegan restaurant right down the street from my house out of the Chinook Book). It’s also interesting she said she did not feel sick during the month– I felt a real energy zap and also was really sick toward the end (could also be a variety of other factors, such as being super stressed out at work).

I know I mentioned I would never go vegan, but I do want to do a short cleanse that would eradicate dairy from my diet for a couple of days. From what Kayleigh says and what I’ve heard, sometimes flushing the dairy out can be a good energy-boosting thing (though I worry as at my age my bones are still growing!)

vegetarian wrap-up

So I bet you’re wondering if I had meat yesterday, and the answer is…nope. I did, however, have a bacon guacamole burger Sunday night at 9pm. Let me over-rationalize it out:

We were traveling down 26, coming back from a semi-failed attempt at skiing and I was famished. I was feeling really sick (I had a fever that was almost gone prior to skiing which came back with a vengeance when I hopped on the lift and the first cold wind hit my face) and it was a Sunday night, 9pm. Our choices for open establishments were Dairy Queen (good for ice cream, but what do you get as a course if you’re vegetarian?), and a couple of shady looking places. Long story short, we pulled in this place famous for their burgers (which made me very nervous) and sure enough they had maybe 50 burgers on the menu (including pizza burgers) and only one lame sounding vegetarian burger option. The other veggie choices were a few salads, but I saw some lettuce out which looked not so fresh and salads just don’t do the trick when you are out of energy and in the mood for something huge. So I basically had no choice but to get a burger. (This was the only time I “cheated” during the month.)

I felt extremely guilty that the calendar still showed February, however, I am pretty sure I didn’t have meat the last day in January, and I most definitely didn’t consume meat after 9pm on Sunday the 31st. So we decided the month was up and it was ok.

Here is my summary for weeks 3 & 4:

Week 3 I had a hankering for Arby’s for some reason (probably that one tv commercial I saw). I haven’t had Arby’s in a couple years, but it just sounded.. good. I also wanted McDonalds every time I walked past, something I haven’t had in a while. I knew this was ridiculous, so I didn’t act on any of these weird urges.

Week 4 I decided I could perhaps go vegan for the last week. I thought about it seriously for a couple of hours, never acted on it, then proceeded to eat cheese everyday and have a few eggs.

So what did I learn from this experiment? I would never go vegan. I don’t need to eat red meat all that often, but I really did miss my turkey and ham at first. I learned how to make sandwiches I love sans meat, and that I like pears. I love guacamole but am not a fan of Chipotle’s. Some restaurants are awesome at catering to vegetarians and vegans and making their options clear, where some menus you really have to hunt and they don’t offer a lot, if anything. It’s a lot easier to go veggie by eating at home. Mexican is super easy to go vegetarian with. I learned protein is sorta hard to come by for me, and that I still don’t like tofu.

I’m not going to officially stay vegetarian, I am, however, now more aware of all the times/situations I ate meat before, which I think will help me make better choices going forward.

I guess that’s it for now. Later this week my friends Alex (who said he would do the vegetarian experiment with me this month) and Kayleigh from Ohio (who just so happened to be doing a vegan experiment the same month) will be guest blogging about their experiments so all three of us will be able to compare.

grad school, cheese…

With summer a comin’ (at least here– the flowers are starting to bloom, I’m not yet convinced about the East coast) I have decided to make Summer ’10 one of learning and perhaps starting my own environmental project(s) of sorts. I’m not sure how this will work out, and how I define “work out”, but I want to do something great, or try some new environmental experiences. I remain vague because I haven’t quite figured it all out yet.

For the past year or so, I have been entertaining the idea of grad school. At first it started out I was looking at green MBAs, or MBAs with some sort of twist. This was inspired by my undergraduate business degree, which I decided has great value, but isn’t what I want to do with the rest of my life. So I put my fancy schmancy diploma dreams on the shelf and continued to work, participating in sustainability discussions/lectures/research whenever I could. But the more I pressed on, the more I realized I wanted to be in a program with other people as jazzed about these issues as I am, and then I started realizing that schools would (gasp!) cover your tuition costs in exchange for helping out with the undergrads in environmental fields of study, which actually sounds mega fun.

So I decided I would be a fool not to at least apply to some places of interest and see if they would offer me a golden ticket to work my tail off for an MA, or MS, or whatever else. And if not and I check out these programs and love them and financial aid loves me back, then off I’ll go. Hence my “Grad school ’11!” quest begins.

I want to start up some mini-projects, or at least a trystuffandlearnathon, to have something to chat about in an interview besides my non-profit energy efficiency work experience. It’s relevant, but not far outside the box enough to blow their socks off in an interview.

I guess that is my news that I wanted to share in this blog as a reference point to my future self of “that day I officially decided to go to grad school.”

In other news, the vegetarian thing always becomes a topic of conversation with new people I meet. I think it comes up because a lot of social interactions are based around food, and a lot of dinner conversations are going like this: me: (orders veggie plate) other people: “Oh, are you vegetarian? I was vegetarian for 3 years. I didn’t think it was that hard. Sometimes I eat vegan for a week just to cleanse.” me: *feels silly that I’m only doing this for 30 days and am sort of making a deal out of it and casually tries to cover all the cheese on my plate* A few days ago I was considering going vegan for the last week, but then I remembered I just spent a chunk of change for a chunk of fancy cheese that I am not willing to sit and watch get hard, and that was unfortunately enough to rationalize myself out of doing it. Now that there are only five days left of the experiment, I sort of want to try it a little longer. I’m finding so many other dinner options (they all contain semi-local and super fresh Tillamook cheese) and lunch has gotten easier and cheaper.

Let me know if you recommend any grad school programs or have any vegan recipes I should give a try this last week. For dinner tonight: making some cheese enchiladas with local chips and salsa. Yum!