New Year! Challenges and Changes Galore!

Hello, 2012!  I am so pleased to meet you.  Don't get me wrong, 2011 was amicable enough, but man, that year could be a real pain in the neck - literally and figuratively.  It was definitely time to move on, to reset, to start anew. 

Before I jump into what we've got going on here in 2012, I suppose a brief Operation Consumption Liberation wrap-up would be good.  First, my gifts wrapped in old calendar pages were a huge success with my family, which is good because I have more where those came from.  And my darling mother jumped on board and wrapped all of my gifts in old newspaper.  The paper and packaging challenge is definitely one that I intend to keep practicing every single day, though I might cut myself a tiny bit more slack in the toilet paper department!

I've been reflecting on the twelve monthly challenges I took on last year.  Which one wins the titles of easiest and hardest challenges, which one had the most and least lasting impact, et cetera. Here are the results:

Holiday cheer

I thought this was a fitting holiday e-card for my December of reducing paper waste.

A few other pictures of my reduced waste holidays:

Much Ado About Toilet Paper

Re-purpose genius: I wrote a love note on that homemade caramel's paper wrapping.

Ya know, I meant to write more about paper and packaging during the Reduce Paper Waste month of Operation Consumption Liberation.  I really did.  But here we are, December 16, and I’m still scrambling to figure out what the heck I’m going to do on Christmas Day since I’m waiting until after the big day to travel home this year. Christmas orphans get lonely, yo!  Feel free to drop by my place or invite me to dinner. (FYI: I like peppermint stick ice cream. Also, doorbells and sleigh bells, schnitzel with the noodles.)

Anyway, since my last post, I:

• Bought a car after the pokiest 4-month-long shopping process ever.
• Hosted a friend on my floor for several days.
• Got shingles. (Not contagious unless you’ve never had the chicken pox and just happen to touch one of the open blisters in my armpit—because I’m totally walking around with my armpit exposed in the middle of December—THEN you might get the chicken pox.  Anyway, the blisters itch like crazy.  For two days I felt all achy and worn down in that flu-like way for the first two days.  And since I live alone, there was no one there to make me soup. Poor shingles-afflicted, single-occupant, Christmas orphan me….)

How is that for a whine fest?  Memo to self: this post was supposed to be about paper. 

The Paper Challenge

This month is all about gift wrapping.

I can’t believe it is already December 4. The last month of my Operation Consumption Liberation challenge!  While I *may* be gearing up for OCL 2 in January, for the time being, let’s break down my December challenge: I want to reduce my consumption of paper products and other packaging (we’re talking bubble wrap and Styrofoam peanuts, people.)  I chose December for this particular challenge namely because the holiday season’s abundance of gift-wrap.  But reducing my paper waste goes far beyond skipping the fancy gift-wrap paper.  Here are a few things I am currently and will be doing this month:

To meat or not to meat?

Operation Consumption Liberation’s month of not consuming meat has ended.  Before I move on to December’s challenge, I wanted to dive into some of the ethical, environmental, and health-related questions that pop up when assessing meat consumption in the USA.  Before I started this month, I asked my currently, and formerly, vegetarian Facebook friends why they went meatless.  I only got three responses (FYI: all three are no longer vegetarians), but I wanted to share a little of what they said.

From my friend B.: “I started because I loved/love animals and couldn't justify killing them just so I could eat. Then I lived in a veggie house, so that made it even easier. I started eating meat again when I realized (as sad as it sounds) that I didn't care enough to keep not eating meat (which is a sad commentary, I think, on the ubiquity of meat in our society).”

But I love you! (Credit: Jim Champion from Southampton, UK [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons)

The reason B. became a vegetarian is the reason many people become vegetarians.  Whether you ever went to Bible School or not, chances are you still are familiar with the Ten Commandments and the commandment “Thou shalt not kill.” Yes, this refers to killing other human beings, not animals. There’s the argument that the animal world is full of predators that kill prey—“if animals kill for food, why should we hold ourselves to a higher standard?”  Still, many people struggle with the idea that the steak on their plate used to be a cow, and that this cow was bred, raised (often on unsuitable grain and supplements in the confined space of a feedlot), and killed explicitly so that humans could eat it. From a moral standpoint, eating animals presents a lot of grey area and conflicted emotions.  I do not know if I could personally slaughter a cow, chicken, or fish.  And I do occasionally wonder if I should only eat the animals I hypothetically could execute myself.  By this rule, bugs would likely make up the bulk of the meat in my diet.

Talking Tofurky

A confession about Thanksgiving:

I’ve never been that mad about the turkey.

Photo by Lee R. DeHaan

Ditto for the gravy. But the dressing, the mashed potatoes, the cranberry sauce, the sweet potatoes with burnt marshmallows on top, the green bean casserole…sign me up. I will eat that stuff until I am green in the face and as bloated as this here squirrel:

"Fat Boy" photo by James Marvin Phelps

Upon learning that November was my month to give meat theheave-ho, at least half a dozen concerned friends and family asked if perhaps I’d forgotten the turkey holiday while planning Operation Consumption Liberation’s annual agenda. I didn’t—although, upon looking at the scrap of paper on which I originally outlined my rough ideas about OCL, it appears that I briefly entertained making May my meat-free month. No, I chose November for meat-free month precisely because of Thanksgiving, the most meat-focused American holiday of them all.

“Are you crazy?” my turkey-loving friends have asked, to which I have replied with some variation of my “I’m not that into the turkey” speech above. Others, including my dear mother, have inquired if I would be eating Tofurky this year, to which I have replied with some variation of the following rant:

Soup's on!

Right before I started Operation Consumption Liberation's month of meat-free eating, I asked my Facebook friends for some vegetarian recipe suggestions.  I specifically requested fast, easy, and, above all else, filling recipes—got to get full, after all.  Now I already have at least two vegetarian cookbooks, but it’s always good to get new ideas and suggestions from one’s amigos, especially since my default for vegetarian cooking is to just make a soup.

Guess what?  My friends’ vegetarian cooking default must also be soup, because everyone’s suggestions (with the exception of one friend who suggested a recipe website) included some soupy-stew creation that is best eaten from a bowl with a spoon.  I suspect this prevalence of soup recipes may not actually be a vegetarian thing as much as an “it is autumn and the weather outside is cold and wet” thing.  Soup is kind of magical at this time of the year….  Anyway, I’m working my way through my friends’ recipe suggestions and I took pictures of the results:

 

This was an extremely filling vegetarian chili recipe from Cooking Light, which my friend Sarah recommended.  I used the wrong kind of “quick cook” barley—the flakes versus the pearls—but despite the fact that it looked like my chili contained oatmeal, the chili was pretty great: fast, easy, spicy, and super filling.