Déjà vu - Your Double Double will no longer be served in a Double Cup

Good news!! Finally... after many years... Tim Horton's is letting go of double-cupping every customer's double-double. It really seemed like an insane practice... Twice the litter. Twice the plastic cup liners. Twice the cost. Twice the everything.

But no longer... Timmies has decided to go the way of almost every other take-out coffee provider and use cardboard sleeves to protect the hands of Canadians. Smart, right? Less plastic, less waste, less everything. Except... you're not alone if you're getting a sense of deja-vu. We've been here before... seven years ago to be exact.

Apparently, Tim Horton's flirted with cardboard sleeves in the past... in 2013 to be precise...at least in Winnipeg. What happened to the cardboard sleeves? Did they not take off? Was it too much trouble? Oh, and it wasn't just Winnipeg... I found this article which talked about McMaster's University in Ontario... I've sent a Facebook Message to Tim Hortons headquarters asking what happened to the first double-cupping switcheroo... and what makes this switcheroo different. We'll see if/with what they respond.

Tim Horton's cardboard sleeves - 2013
From Inside Timmies site

It's kind of crazy when you think about it. All this foo-fa-rah about abandoning double cupping in favour of cardboard sleeves... annnnddd... it's all been done before. Sigh.

On the other hand, at least they've gotten rid of the practice of handing out disposable Roll-up-the-Rim cups with your porcelain mug of coffee when you eat-in. That was also kind of crazy. 

Of course, the best thing to do is bring your own reusable coffee cup but... in the age of covid-19, that is frowned upon and a bit hard to do in a drive-thru. Ah well... Maybe this version of cardboard sleeve will stick around at Timmies...

 

Fliriting with a new Producitvity app

I was trying out a new productivity app over the weekend... one called Workflowy. I've flirted with Workflowy before and always come back to Remember the Milk (RTM). But... you know, they are always adding tweaks and improvements sooo... I thought I'd give it another shot. This happens to me on a regular basis. I find myself swamped in a sea to To-Do's and I think that a new productivity app will save me. Sigh.

So I started copying all of my To-Do's and projects from Remember the Milk (RTM) into Workflowy... which is essentially an infinite bullet list. About about half way through this migration, I realized... "You know what... this isn't going to solve anything". I could already see that Workflowy was going to frustrate me eventually because it lacked some key features, like being able to edit a swack of things all at once. So, I stopped the process and began to think... there has to be a better way.

You see, the thing with Remember the Milk is... I have all these great intentions about what I'm going to get done in a week or over the next month, and I schedule thing accordingly. "I'll do this on Monday and this on Friday and I'll put that into next week... and I'll put that two weeks from now." Which, when you think about it, is kind of crazy because things always come up that throw my schedule out of whack and then I start snowplowing To-Do's and I get into this frantic mode where I suddenly have 20 To-Do's scheduled for one day and I'll start madly postponing things by a day or a week or two weeks or three months. Which means I then have 40 things snowplowed into next week... and so it goes.

Like I said... there has to be a better way. My little affair with Workflowy did open up one possibility. Because Workflowy lacked due dates as a feature, I added tags like #nextweek #soon #nextmonth #someday. My idea was that each Sunday, I could review all the #nextweek tags and then identify what I was going to tackle on Monday... and then do the same for the rest of the week. Keeping my focus very narrow. Then, at the end of the month, I would examine the #nextmonth tag contents and identify things for the coming week... Or something... I hadn't worked out all the details but... I think I'm going to import that idea into RTM.

You see, RTM can already pull out things that are due Today and things that are due This Week... but everything needs an actual due date (October 27 or whatever). And, as I've already mentioned, that doesn't work great for me. And, with RTM SmartLists, I can make up my own category of things that I want to tackle #ThisWeek. And maybe I'll be tagging things with actual months.... instead of #nextmonth, it'll be #November, or something like that.

Finally, my daily to-do list won't reside in RTM but rather in my notebook with a max of three to five items. I do tend to overestimate how much I can get done in a day... sooo... I'm going to try to shoot lower and then, if I have extra time, I can always revisit RTM and pull out some other items. Or not... maybe I'll just read a book... or pet the cat...

In the News - Canada to ban some single use plastics by the end of 2021

So, some good news. Not only is British Columbia banning some single use plastics... but now Canada is moving in that direction as well. But it's not all single-use plastics... only the top six offenders.

First up... Grocery check-out bags... I know that I have been using these a lot more thanks to Covid-19 and the ban on bringing my own bags into stores. And it is soooo easy to slip back into that habit even now that I can bring my own bags. But, Covid-19 is not going to be around forever and, as we learn more about the virus, experts are questioning how much touch-transfer can occur at various points. So, banning grocery check-out bags is a good start. But it leaves me wondering... does this include the check-out bags from other stores? Home Depot? Dollar Store? Corner stores? And this ban doesn't address the whole line of produce bags. I got some resuable mesh produce bags for Christmas last year and, with Covid-19, haven't been using them. Wondering if maybe now is a good time to start again? And let's not even talk about Bulk Barn and all of their filmy plastic bags as well. Still... grocery check-out bags is a good start. (Image at left from CBC News)

Next up - Plastic Straws. We've all seen the picture of a turtle with a straw stuck up its nose. We know that straws are very bad for the environment. So, getting rid of plastic straws is an excellent move. There are now cardboard straws out there as well as metal straws. I know that some people with disabilities do better with plastic straws so presumably there may be an exception for them? But gone are the days when you would automatically get a little straw with your soft drink or juice in a restaurant.

Then we have Plastic Stir Sticks. I know that Starbucks switched over to wooden stir sticks several years ago. The one thing they still have is those plastic stir stick/plugs for the to-go cup lids. Ah... I looked it up, they are called Splash Sticks. And I see them everywhere when I go walking in parks... Because, once you've got your to-go drink and are walking in the park with it... what are you supposed to do with the little green splash stick? Toss it on the ground I guess. So, kudos to Starbucks for getting rid of their plastic stir sticks... now it's time to get rid of the splash sticks as well.

Missouri Department of Conservation

And... at last... Six Pack Rings are being banned!! Hooray!!!! It's about time. We've all seen pics of animals with their necks stuck in a plastic six pack ring. No? You haven't? Here... a pic of a turtle... from the Missouri Department of Conservation no less. I know that I always, always, always, take a pair of scissors and cut each circle/opening of the plastic rings... even the small ones. But I can't tell you how many of these things I find lying on the ground. As early as the 1970s they were identified as a particularly dangerous form of marine debris. Good riddance.

We can also bid adieu to Plastic Cutlery. I started this last year for myself.... carrying around my own camping cutlery in my bag for whenever I went into a Starbucks and wanted to order warmed-up brownie. It's not hard to do... and it felt good to be able to turn down the plastic fork contained within a plastic bag. But now, it's going to become mandatory... no more plastic cutlery. There are plenty of other options out there for take-out meals. I had a quick look at ULine.ca which sells plastic cutlery... about $0.07/plastic utensil of standard weight. They didn't have a non-plastic alternative. For that... I went to Let'sGoGreen where they sell cutlery made from plant starch for... about $0.07/utensil... Mind you, that's probably in $US so... more like $0.09/utensil. Ya know, if I knew that I was paying an extra $0.06 for a set of eco-friendly disposable utensils... I'd be all over that.

Finally... we have Takeout Containers made from "hard to recycle plastics". This is your everyday styrofoam, polystyrene containers. It's kind of crazy in this day and age that any business would actually still be using these things but I you can still buy styrofoam cups in the stores! ULine Canada sells them... grocery stores sell them... and I'm hoping that they are included in the ban. As well, are the take-out containers made from polystyrene... nowadays you can get take-out containers made from sugar cane waste... so we really don't need to resort of polystyrene. And I know that if I ever get take-out again... that will be one of my first questions "What sort of containers do you use?" I'm not sure what the solution is for take-out... I have had some restaurants use hard-shell plastic containers (white bottom and clear lid). I have had some use what looks like plastic-lined paper-based boxes with little metal lid/handles. But there are other options, everything from restaurants charging and extra $1 for serving the take-out meal in reusable plastic containers to restaurants taking back their dirty usable containers the next day. There are options... At the very least, some people recommend bringing your own plastic containers when you eat out a restaurant (those were the days). That way, if you have leftovers, you just pack them in your own container and don't have to get a disposable doggie bag container from the restaurant.

What's NOT Included

 Of course, there are a whole host of single-use plastics that are not included:

• Garbage bags - but without grocery check-out bags... we'll have to buy more "real" garbage bags
  
• Milk bags - they still sell milk in bags? Apparently Eastern Canada is still big on this while the West has gone back to milk jugs. Go figure.
  
• Snack food wrappers - chocolate bar wrappers, chips bags, etc.
  
• Disposable personal care items and their packaging - toothbrushes, single-use razors, shampoo bottles, etc, etc.
  
• Beverage containers and lids - to-go coffee and drink cups with their plastic lids. Too bad... that should be the next thing to go though.
  
• Contact lenses and packaging
  
• Cigarette filters - I guess they figure the harm that filters do to the environment is better than the harm that no-filters would do to smokers.
  
• Items used in medical facilities - soooo very many items... all necessary...
  
• Personal protective equipment - masks, etc.
  

And let's not even talk about all the other packaging for everything from screws and nails to toilet paper to bags of rice. And there is no mention of produce bags which makes me wonder... where are they?

I did find an article from the Vancouver Courier which mentioned that Vancouver is banning plastic bags by January 2021 but that produce bags will be exempt. So it looks like plastic produce bags are here to stay for a while.

I looked at some produce bag alternatives... Credo Bags in Montreal, for example. They have produce and bulk bag options. But they are NOT cheap. There is always the option of sew-your-own... but that will have to be another blog post.

Suffice to say... anything we can do to reduce our plastic footprint is a step in the right direction and I am very proud of Canada for making that move.

Throwing Money Away

Every time we donate to a thrift store, we are throwing money away. Well, not really... but many times, we are donating an object that has some sort of monetary value. At least, we like to think so. I mean... it has value to us (maybe more spiritual and emotional) and so we like to think that someone else will see the value as well. We think that once we donate this object, the thrift store will turn around and sell it to some one else. Someone who will love the object and use the object. We benefit by getting rid of our unwanted items. Someone else benefits by purchasing our used item for less than new. And the thrift  store, which we hope is a charity, benefits by selling that object for more than $0. It's really a win-win-win.

But... and you knew there was a but... only about a quarter of the stuff that we donate to thrift stores is actually sold by the thrift store. What happens to all the other stuff? Where does it go? What happens to it? Because we know that every day more stuff is being dropped off at thrift stores across the country and... if only 25% sells... that means that the stores need to either expand or... reduce their inventory.

I know that at Value Village, the colour coded price tags means something. There is a four or five week rotation... and once blue tags (for example) have been out there for four weeks, that material is culled from the shelves and taken into the back. But then what? Maybe you've read the news articles about how Value Village ships our unwanted junk to Third World countries in Africa. Which seems quite irresponsible and Value Village has gotten a lot of flack for that. But... of course... there is more to the story than meets the eye.

I got a crash course in the global trade in secondhand goods when I read Adam Minter's latest book - Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale. I had read his earlier book, Junkyard Planet and got a lot of out of it... so his new book seemed like a no brainer. If you get the chance... I highly recommend both books - they are eye-opening to say the least.

So... here's the thing... there is a huge international market in secondhand goods - clothing, toys, tools, computers. And it's not always thousands of miles away. Down near the US/Mexican border, there are hundreds of savvy Mexican entrepreneurs who sift through the Goodwill Stores just across the border in the US, searching for cheap designer clothing, toys and what have you. They buy stuff for cheap, take it across the border, fix it up a bit and then sell it for a good profit. Because, let's face it, we aren't great at repairing things up here. If an appliance breaks, it's often cheaper to buy a new one than to diagnose and repair the old one. Planned obsolescence in action.

As an aside... do you remember Speed Queen? They made/make washing machines and dryers for laundromats, hotels, etc. Their machines are built to last... 25 years or longer and they now sell to the general public. It used to be that Maytag was built to last but... nowadays, not so much. Manufacturers have this planned obsolescence thing down pat... build something that will break in five years so that the consumer has to go out and spend more money and buy a new one. And we wonder why our landfills are overflowing. I got all excited over Speed Queen selling to the public but... they apparently don't sell in Canada (yet). Bummer.

Anyhow... Minter makes a point that planned obsolescene is simply degrading the planet because we use way more resources to make things not just once but over and over again. On top of that... all these obsolete or broken things need to go somewhere. But... while broken things might be too expensive to repair in Canada or the US... that doesn't necessarily apply in developing countries, or even places like Mexico. Get a broken washing machine for cheap at an American Goodwill, fix it up, and then resell it for a hefty profit in Mexico.

And yes, things like clothing, electronics and used cars do get shipped farther afield, to Africa. Let's be really clear... this is not us offloading or dumping garbage on the poor Third World countries. These items are charged with hefty tariffs when they are imported into Africa. And the African entrepreneurs and businessmen who import these things have a discriminating eye. They know what sells in their home countries... and they ship what sells. And what can be repaired. For example... a car is "totaled" in an accident in Canada. What that really means is that the insurance company has decided that it would be more expensive to repair the damage given the depreciated value of the vehicle. But... many "totaled" vehicles are still prepairable. So you will find cargo containers packed with damaged vehicles being shipped to Africa. Each vehicle is also shipped with the parts necessary to repair it. Even accounting for the cost to purchase the vehicle, the tariffs and duties charged to import into Africa... the vehicles are still sold at a profit in Africa.

Some argue that when we export our used clothing, we have essentially killed the African textile industry. Perhaps. But as Minter points out, the Chinese are exporting huge amounts of cheap clothing and electronics of poor quality to African nations as well. The discriminating Africans, however, would much rather have good quality secondhand materials from North America or Europe... if it's fashionable. If it isn't fashionable... forget it. They are, of course, as easily swayed by the latest fashions as we are... and so they will also buy the cheap Chinese knock-offs of Gucci or whatever... even knowing that it won't last beyond a few washes.

As for our electronic waste... maybe you've seen the BBC piece about the toxic e-waste dump at Agbogbloshie in Ghana. So horrible how North America and Europe dump millions of tonnes of e-waste onto Africa where it is burned to extract the metals. Except... as Minter notes, the BBC piece neglected a few key steps in the process. Yes, African entrepreneurs import all sorts of discarded phones, tablets, laptops and computers from the First World. But they don't just toss them on the junk heap. First, the items are examined and repaired. If they are not repairable, then they join a parts stockpile...ready to be pilfered for usable bits and pieces. The repaired items are then sold at a profit. We might think that it would be better to just disassemble and extract all of the valuable metals from these broken devices but... is it not better for these devices to get a second or even a third life before finally being disassembled and their parts used elsewhere? And yes... if our electronics find second and third lives in the Third World, then we need to figure out a way for those countries to be able to process the e-waste in a responsible way when those electronics inevitably die their final death.

This leads to another of Minter's pet peeves... electronics that have been assembled in such a way as to dissuade any sort of repair. Apple is quite bad with this... gluing pieces together rather than using screws, not providing repair manuals, etc, etc. It used to be that the same thing happened with the Big Auto Manufacturers back in the seventies. They wouldn't provide their repair specs to independent auto repair shops... until legislation was about to be passed in one state and then, all of a sudden, Big Auto decided to work with the independents. So... it can be done... 

Minter suggests that if we really want to take climate change and the growing environmental catastrophe looming on the horizon seriously... it starts with us.

• Building things that last - this requires a quantum shift in how clothing (fast fashion), electronics (newer and better), appliances (planned obsolescence) and cars (built to require maintenance) are all manufactured
• Buying (or demanding) things that last... be it clothing, computers, appliances or cars
• Eliminating the "proprietary" nonsense that means things are built to be extremely difficult to disassemble and/or repair
  
• Repairing before replacing... there was a time when my Mom darned our socks before finally tossing them in the rag basket...
  

Finally, Minter has this heart-stopping tidbit for us... nobody wants our old stuff. The wedding china, the cute cat statues, the books, the tchotchkes that mean so much to us... ultimately everything ends up in a dump somewhere because things do eventually break to the point where they can't be repaired. And no, our children and grandchildren (or nieces and nephews) do not want and will not want this stuff. It's a hard pill to swallow because our stuff is so important to us... wrapped as it is in emotions and memories. But to someone else, that little statue of a girl that belonged to my great grandmother is just an ugly tchotchke. It's heart-breaking... we want to believe that our stuff will be loved by someone else... but odds are... it won't be. So... better to look at our proposed purchases with a more discerning eye. Do we really want/need that item... is that item going to last more than a few washes or a few years...

 

In the News - When is Bread not Bread

Did you see the news article about Subway's bread quibble with the Irish state? The Irish courts ruled that since Subway's bread contains 10g of sugar for every 100 grams of flour... it doesn't count as bread. Apparently Subway was trying to get around the VAT (Value Added Tax) by saying that their sandwiches and their bread are "staple food". But the Irish system says that in order to be called "bread", the object in question can only have 2g of sugar for every 100 grams of flour. Beyond that... you're looking at cake or some other confectionary. Sooo... Subways sandwiches now get slapped with a 13.5% VAT...

Wow.

So I dug into Subway's site to see for myself... It's kind of hard to tell since, while they list the sugars in a typical 6" piece of bread, they don't list the amount of flour. Although, the carbs are there... so let's see...

A 6" 9-Grain Wheat bread has 36 grams of carbs and 3 grams of sugars. Yep, that's around 10%. And the 6" 9-Grain Honey Oat has 39 grams of carbs and 5 grams of sugars. Ooops... way more than 10%. So, yes... it would appear that Subway bread is, in fact, not bread... at least not by the standards of the Irish system.

Mind you... sugars are present in flours too, so this might not be an exact correlation. I had a look at my favourite rye bread and it contains no sugar in the list of ingredients but still has sugar in the list of nutrients. I presume that the Irish courts actually got to see the Subway bread recipes...

Here in Canada, we seem to have a different standard. Sandwiches are taxable by the GST or HST unless they are frozen, mostly because they are considered ready-to-eat with very little preparation. Whew... at least we don't have to wonder if our bread is actually bread!

Cooking at Home has Ruined our Eating-out Experience

We love the cuisine of southeast Asia... Butter Chicken, Thai Yellow Curry, Garam Masala... heck... anything with curry!

Used to be that one of our favourite treats was to eat-out at either our favourite Indian restaurant or our favourite Thai restaurant. But then... with a tailbone injury... my partner was unable to enjoy the sit-down experience at restaurants, so we switched to take-away or take-out. Still super yummy and we would alternate between Thai and Indian. Sooo good.

Now, of course, with Covid-19... eating out is fraught with issues so take-out is taking off. But, to be honest, take-out (and eating out) is expensive and... our experience with the meal prep service (FreshPrep in this case), opened my eyes to the fact that... cooking ain't that hard.

After trying and succeeding at various Indian curries... I decided to tackle one of our favourites, the Holy Grail if you will... Thai Yellow Curry. It didn't look that hard... yellow curry paste, coconut milk, tofu (instead of chicken), onions, potatoes, carrots, pineapple. Easy peasy. Or so it looked.

The trick with most of these things is the spices... and in this case... the yellow curry paste. You could make a yellow curry paste from scratch but... that requires all sorts of ingredients which I was not going to hunt down. Far better to just hunt down yellow curry paste. Can't be that hard, right? Wrong.

Mae Ploy
Best Thai Yellow Curry Paste

None of the regular supermarkets (including Superstore) carried yellow curry paste. They were well stocked with green and red curry paste... but not yellow. I finally ran a tiny jar to ground in Walmart, having seen it listed online. I was not pleased. But a bit of research revealed that my answer lay with Amazon... which had the BEST yellow curry paste... or so the reviewers said. I ordered Mae Ploy Yellow Curry Paste... and waited patiently for it to arrive.

I could have used the Walmart stuff but, to be honest, it looked more red than yellow and... I wanted this experiment to be a success. After I got the Mae Ploy (which was indeed yellow!), I tracked down a Thai Yellow Curry recipe with great reviews. The recipe looked dead easy and... it was. Dice up an onion, sautee the paste, add coconut milk (we used light coconut milk), add in the carrots... make sure to cook the potatoes separately, otherwise you'll have mushy potatoes... fry up the tofu separately... and then add in the pineapple and tofu towards the end. Serve over rice...

Verdict? OMG... super yummy!!! We licked our plates... it was sooooo good. A cooking success!! Score it a 10/10...

Except... a week or so later, my niece and sister were visiting us, and on one of our outings, we decided to pop into our favourite Thai restaurant and order take-out... it was just easier. We got Thai Yellow Curry and my sister and niece got Pad Thai (another favourite of ours)... and we ordered some veggie spring rolls (thin pastry wrapped around a veggie mixture and then deep fried). We came home and tore into the food but... the yellow curry was meh... not that great. The spring rolls weren't how we remembered them and... the Pad Thai was yucky.

OK... so maybe they were just having a bad day. A few weeks ago, we decided to try a Thai place in a neighbouring town, as we were heading home after a day trip. They got great reviews and so we ordered... yellow curry with spring rolls. The spring rolls we munched on the way home and they were OK but not great. And the thai yellow curry? It was thin and watery and tasted almost exactly like the stuff from our favourite restaurant. Not great.

We cooked my thai yellow curry again and... it was amazing! Sooo... it's not our taste buds... but we have wrecked the whole take-out Thai food business for ourselves. I found a Pad Thai recipe the other day (again... it's all in the sauce) and... it was amazing. Sooo... we find ourselves in the enviable position of being able to cook better Thai food than the Thai places. Sigh.

This has been my Mom's complaint for as long as I can remember, not about Thai food, but about eating out in general. She's always disappointed when she goes out to eat... it's never as good as what she can cook at home. And now... I commiserate with her... Why pay $50 for a take-out meal when I can make the same stuff for $10... and it will taste way better?!

Spring rolls

Except for the spring rolls of course... that is our sticking point. And samosas too...

Except... as I wrote that, I opened a new browser tab and typed "spring roll recipes"... and... voila dozens of recipes. I selected one at random and the author gives two options... fry them in an oil bath in a wok (we have a wok!) or... bake them. Huh... that's definitely an option...

By the way... there are two types of Spring Rolls... the fried ones and then the cold ones which are usually wrapped in translucent rice paper and eaten cold. Two very different things. We made the cold spring rolls (a.k.a. Salad Rolls or Summer Rolls) last year and they were super yummy as well!

Suffice to say... we may be tackling the fried spring rolls next... then we can say good-bye to our favourite Thai take-out place... 

Oh, and Butter Chicken (minus the butter and the chicken)... is also on my To Cook list... maybe with Samosa and then we an bid good-bye to our favourite Indian place as well...

Slaying the Beast

Baldwin Street, NZ

No... this ain't no St. George & the Dragon post. Nor the 666 Beast.

Nope... this is something quite concrete and physical... a hill.

Not just any hill, a 26% gradient hill (a 2.6 metre gain in height (rise) over a 10 metre horitzontal distance (run)). Which might not sound bad except consider this... most regular highway hills are 6%. Anything over that gets a warning sign saying "steep hill". And the steepest paved road in the world is Baldwin Street in New Zealand with a gradient of 35%. The steepest driveable hill in San Francisco is 31.52%. Sooo... our little 26% hill is up there.

Runners use it to train on... although the "running" ceases about mid-way up the hill and it becomes more of a walk. Our 12 year old nephew figured he could run up it... nope... We have cyclists who try to bike up it and they too end up dismounting and walking. People will drive their vehicles up the hill to give their engines a work-out... our vehicle can only do it in second gear (yes we have a manual transmission). Suffice to say... it ain't for the faint of heart.

I have an on-again/off-again relationship with this hill. If I don't walk it for a few weeks... I find that it eats me up. I will need to stop once, maybe twice, while hoofing it up... just a bit of a break to catch my breath. I'm proud of myself if I can do it in under 10 minutes. My heart rate is up in the 140s and 150s after climbing his hill...

But... once I've hiked it daily for a couple of weeks... I reach the milestone of being able to complete the hill without a break. Yay! And... I timed myself a few days ago... 7:05 minutes. Not bad, not bad at all. Don't get me wrong, it's still a beast of a hill. Slack off for a day or two and... it's like losing a week of gains. This hill requires a commitment.

I had a friend out from Winnipeg (flat land) who wheezed up the hill with me a few summers ago. The hill looks so innocuous from the bottom and when she sent pictures to her boyfriend, he was like "What's the big deal?". She texted back "You have no idea!" Looks can be deceiving.

Eshima Ohashi bridge - Japan
(with a telephoto lens)

See this picture? Freaky, no? It's a bridge in Japan and it looks seriously steep, doesn't it? But... as they say, looks can be deceiving... It's the Eshima Ohashi bridge and it has a gradient of 6.1% on one side and 5.1% on the other side. That's it... From the side, it looks quite normal. The crazy steep-looking pictures are thanks to photographers using telephoto lenses...

Anyhow... our hill is kind of the reverse... it looks not too bad but... it sucks you in, this hill, and yet... 26% is only 19°.  Which doesn't seem very steep at all. When I worked in forestry, we'd regularly climb 100% (45°) slopes. Sometimes 130%. Anything beyond that and it gets seriously dicey. Back then, I would have considered a 26% slope to be on the low end... as compared to 100% where I'm scrambling up holding onto bushes and shrubs. It's all relative I guess.

But, the thing I've noticed is... if I can slay the beast first thing in the morning, the rest of the day seems to fall into place. In climbing the hill in the mornings, I have, in many ways, gotten the hardest thing out of the way. After beast hill everything else looks small in comparison.

It kind of reminds me of the productivity hack to eat the frog. Not a literal frog, mind you. This is a trick to tackle the item on your to-do list that you shun/avoid/procrastinate.

Maybe it's the biggest or the hardest or the one with the most uncertainty attached to it. It's the thing I don't want to do but that I need to do. If  I can do that one thing first... eat that frog first... well, after that, everything else looks easy.

Oh... and Mark Twain also said... if it's your job to eat two frogs every morning... it's best to start with the biggest one first! Charming.

I need to keep reminding myself of that every day. What is my frog for the day? Other than the hill. Usually it's to get some writing done. And, if I can get some good solid writing done first thing in the morning, well then, the rest of the day falls into place... but if I don't... it seems like everything goes sideways. Which is why I like to have slayed the beast hill first thing in the morning (the biggest frog)... I've at least eaten one frog, and that is certainly better than eating no frogs!

Preserving the Bounteous Harvest

Right then... all that planting we did in the spring for our Covid-19 Victory Garden has... well... born fruit. A lot of it... and not just fruit, but vegetables as well. Right now, our fridge is bursting with parsnips, prune plums (Italian plums) and tomatoes. The question now becomes... what, oh what, do we do with it all??

Option 1 - Freezing - Easy

This is an easy option. Overwhelmed by dozens of zucchini the size of your forearm or calf? Shred them, squeeze out excess moisture and measure 1 cup amounts into freezer bags. (Cause zucchini loaves need 1 cup of shredded zucchini). Label (always, always label!) and then pop into the freezer. Easy peasy.

There can be more prep involved as well. Freezing tomatoes is easy but first they should be blanched and the skin stripped off. Actually... almost all vegetables benefit from some blanching before freezing.

Fruit is better - we flash freeze our raspberries and blackberries on cookie sheets and then toss them into freezer bags. But... freezer space is at a premium sooo...

Option 2 - Canning - Moderate to Challenging

We've done a fair bit of canning in the past - things like jams, jellies and chutneys which are all moderately easy. All of those can just be mixed up and processed in a pot, put into canning jars, sealed and once the seal goes "tunk" or "tink"... depending... you are good to go.

We've also canned some apple and/or pear sauce, as well as some tomatoes... all of which need a water bath after being sealed.

While we have a pressure canner... we have yet to use it. Too scarey... a friend told me too many stories about people missing chins and noses after prematurely opening a pressure cooker and/or pressure canner. Sigh...

And... as anyone looking for canning supplies right now (September 2020) knows... they are like hen's teeth thanks to Covid-19. I must admit, I saw this coming back in April and stocked up on some more canning jars so we are well equipped. We just need to get off our butts and do it... maybe some plum chutney again this year.... mmmm... so good.

Option 3 - Drying - Easy?

Our experience with drying things has been limited to herbs. Things like dill and oregano and thyme which we will cut, bundle with string and then hang in strategic locations around the house. We kind of end up looking like an herbalist's shop... We have tried drying them in the oven as well but that seems to take an awfully long time for very little output.

For a few years now, my partner has been rumbling about getting a dehydrator... and this year... I bit the bullet and bought a 10 tray dehydrator from Cabela's. Woo-hoo!

Now... we aren't going to be making any jerky or any other meat products but... there are all sorts of possibilities before us... we could dry zucchini... or parsnip... or plums... or herbs... or tomatoes!

That is going to be our first experiment... drying tomatoes... We had hoped to use our little cherry tomatoes, but... the manual recommends blanching and de-skinning the tomatoes... which I really don't want to do for cherry tomatoes. But... some other people online have success just cutting the cherry tomatoes in half and dehydrating them that way... so that may be one of our first experiments.

After that... we might do prune plums... and maybe even some parsnip chips...