Love Food Hate Waste

We hate throwing away food. And yet... it happens. Not as often as before, but still. Every little bit that gets thrown away weighs on us.

Sometimes it's because things migrate to the back of the refrigerator and well... we lose sight of them and by the time we find them... oops... too far gone.

Sometimes it's because the produce we buy has already started down the road to decay. I'm looking at you avocados! Sooo expensive and they look fine on the outside. But when you open them up, they're all brown and icky. And then there are the bags of mandarins or oranges which have one that is has already gone off.

Or the limp stalks of celery... but those can usually get repurposed for soup stock!

Apparently we are not alone. We received a waste management newsletter from our regional district a few weeks ago. They are aiming for Zero Waste... our goal is 90% waste reduction by 2030. We are only at 67% waste reduction... but we're getting there!

They had a short article on food waste which really shocked me. One third of all food produced globally is wasted! That's just mind-boggling. That food gets wasted from the farm to the table... all along the food production route. From squiggly potatoes that don't look "perfect" to wastage in transit, to wastage in grocery stores to wastage in our fridges to wastage off the plate. 

Love Food Hate Waste Canadian stats

And look... every day in Canada... every DAY... we waste 1,200,000 tomatoes... 2,400,000 potatoes... 450,000 eggs. Every day. WTF?

That's 2.2 million tonnes of food every year... tossed. Not only is a waste of food, but it's a waste of water, fertilizer, energy, gasoline, labour, etc, etc. Oh, and it's a waste of money too... Those 2.2 million tonnes of food waste cost us over $17 billion dollars a year... and contribute to our greenhouse gas emissions...

Want some more stats?

• Canadians are among the worst of the developed nations when it comes to food waste, with about 47 percent of food waste occurring in the home
• 63% of household food waste in Canada is avoidable
• An average household throws away $1,000 of edible food per year.
  

 Sheesh...

There's a website which aims to help us waste less food, with tips on everything from how to store produce so it stays fresh longer, to meal planning and portion sizes. Some great tips for all of us... and most of them are just small steps... but make a big difference!

What Does Menopausal Self-Care even Look Like?

It's official, I've hit menopause. Sigh. I know this time of change is supposed to be amazing... or something... but it sure doesn't feel like it!

Hitting puberty, people would say, "Oh, you're a woman now." Yay.

Hitting menopause, what do people say?? "Oh, you're an elder now." I haven't heard that yet. "Welcome to the crone years." Haven't heard that either. "Welcome to the wise years." Nope... not that one either.

I'm not sure what the next years are going to bring but after watching my partner sweat through hot flashes for the last 10 or more years... I'm not holding my breath.

I'm moody, cranky, emotional, tired, exhausted and just plain out of sorts. Some days I feel more like me... other days I feel like a soggy limp dishrag with no "oomph" left for anything. I am resisting my to-do list with a fierceness that surprises me.

My partner tells me that I need to learn how to practice self-care. The menopause resources all say the same thing. I need shift from taking care of others (and everything else) to taking care of me. And... to be completely honest... I have no idea what that means. Bubble baths? Me time?

I do know a few things though. I need (like... "need") to get out in the woods at last once a week... and at this point, I would say more like two or three times a week. Just me and the woods. Because the other thing I've noticed is that this little introvert needs time away from the house. With both of us more or less cooped up together, I don't have as much alone time as before. I used to go to Starbucks for a few hours every morning for some alone time... just me and my laptop and my ear-buds... in a crowd. But... go figure... that counted as alone time.

So there's probably a few things colliding here... menopause, pandemic fatigue and a over-stimulated introvert. And yet... the perfectionist in me thinks I should still be able to race around like the energizer bunny, despite the fact that there are a lot of external and internal events that are draining little bunny. Drained battery on the me-time front... wonky hormones that are sending me on a Tilt-a-Whirl/Roller-Coaster madness... and just general tiredness from the pandemic.

Sooo... self-care... what is this critter? What does it even mean or look like? Well... here's what it looked like today...

I know that my triglycerides are a bit high. The best way to lower them is through... exercise... which is on all of the menopausal self-care lists I've looked at. I have been a bit lax on the exercise front during the winter but today, I plugged in an Amy Schumer audiobook and plodded up the Beast Hill and then extended that to a 45 minute walk. I then sat down, journalled for a bit and decided to go to Walmart for a new watch strap. My Garmin fitness tracker/watch strap has been irritating my skin of late so I have not been wearing it for the last 4 weeks. I've been meaning to run over to Walmart and get a new leather strap for the last month... but it always gets shoved aside for other errands. OK... enough of that... today I drove to Walmart, got the watch strap and two jars of my favourite pickles (no, not pregnant) and a new card game for my partner and I to play during our TV-free evenings. Done. I can now strap on my fitness tracker and at least get a handle on how many steps/intensity minutes I am doing in a day and set some goals.

This trip to Walmart felt kind of decadent... instead of sitting down and writing first thing in the morning... I headed off to Walmart for a watch strap. Pre-menopausal me would have judged this to be a frivolous trip, better tied into Friday morning's weekly shopping trip. But... four Fridays have come and gone and yet... I have failed to manage to squeeze in the Walmart errand. Enough of that I thought... 

Sooo... that's what self-care looked like for me this morning. I'm not sure what the rest of the day will bring... maybe clearing out the shed so I can dig out my bicycle in order to do some small rides (5 minutes or less) in order to acclimatize my butt to the bike seat.

I'm not really used to this idea of putting me first... it seems a tad selfish or self-centred or... self-something. But I am starting to consider the possibility that this is just a concrete example of me putting on my own mask first and then being able to tend to everything else. It's a bit of a learning curve and I'm not very good at it right now but... with some small steps, I'm hoping that I can master this... or should I say mistress this...

Just Say No to Weed Man

Our yard is over-run with robins at the moment. They are having twitter fests in the trees and hopping around the lawn, enthusiastically pulling out reluctant worms. It's a happy little vignette but one that could hide a horror.

Last week, there was a knock at our door. It was a socially-distanced representative from Weed Man Lawn Care services. The 20-something gentleman was offering a FREE! lawn care estimate. I paused briefly and then said "No, thank you". But it's FREE he said with some desperation. They have a variety of lawn services and there was no obligation on our part to accept any of the services offered. He said we could just take the flyer and then toss it in the recycling if we didn't want any of them. I thought it over and again said "No, thank you". I don't think he was pleased with me... and walked away with a slump to his shoulders. I'm sure he looked at our moss-ridden front lawn and thought that we really, really needed some lawn care!

Maybe it could do with some aeration... or some fertilizer... or even some broad-leaf herbicides. We are, after all, a bit over-run with dandelions which are starting to burst into flower. Not to mention quack grass and a few other nameless weeds. But we aren't really "lawn people". We don't really care if it's a smoothly manicured sheet of uniform green or not.

Here's the thing. Let's say we were to say "yes" to some moss killer or even weed killer. The operative word in there is "killer". An herbicide is really a biocide. It is poison. There's a reason why Weed Man tells you to keep children and pets off of the lawn after it has been treated with "herbicide". There's a reason why you should cover up all skin surfaces and wear a serious respiration mask (not just a paper mask) when you are using any biocide. This stuff can make you seriously ill and/or kill smaller creatures.

We had some next door neighbours who moved here from the Okanagan a couple of years ago. The husband was in Stage 4 kidney failure and was hoping for a kidney transplant. He had worked for a landscaping company... spraying herbicides and pesticides and other biocides. Remember the Monsanto court case in California a few years ago? A couple sued Monsanto for millions and won. Monsanto, by the way, makes one of the most popular weed killers... Roundup... deadly stuff.

So, no... we don't want herbicides and pesticides and any other biocides in our yard. Poison that gets sprayed on the grass and then soaks into the soil where the worms eat it... and then the birds eat the worms... or feed the worms to their young. And then the birds die and get eaten by the cat who then gets sick. Nope... not interested.

It might seem a small thing to spray some Roundup on the weeds in the driveway but... each small step leads to another small step in a cascading series of small steps. Just say No to biocides.

P.S. It appears that Weed Man has been getting into trouble in the past few years with some shady sales practices. Never say "Yes" to a "FREE" quote... Just say "No!".

Moving Away from the All or Nothing Approach

All or Nothing

I've always been an All or Nothing type of gal. I would sink all my time and energy into one project, to the exclusion of most everything else. Much of this was driven by my desire to just get it done. Have it be finished and complete so that I could wrap a fancy bow around it and be able to say "DONE!".

Needless to say that has not always worked well. There are very few things that can be wrapped up neatly and declared to be finished. At least not within a few days or weeks.

Because, the thing is... I would go all or nothing for a while on a project and then get kind of bored with it and be distracted by shiny new projects and turn my attention elsewhere. Even though the project wasn't finished...

I guess you could say I was a sprinter... but a sprinter trying to run a marathon at full sprinting speed. That generally does not end well.

Small Steps Every Day

Lately, I've been trying a new approach. I might have five areas or projects that I am working on. In the past, I would just try and get one project fully (sometimes only mostly) complete before turning my attention to the next. But this time, I am trying my Small Steps approach by working on each project for a little bit each day.

I have decided to try this in one hour chunks of time, more or less. An hour for writing, an hour for helping my partner with a project she is working on, an hour for working on a new book, an hour for chipping away at revamping my other blog site (which just moved to WordPress - ugh!) and an hour for yard work. What with cooking and eating lunch from 11 am to 1 pm (we eat our main meal at lunch), that leads to a relatively full day.

So far it seems to be working quite well. Every day needs some tweaking as there are always other things that impinge on a schedule like that. But I am trying to bend with the stream, go with the flow, and just adjust on the fly. 

Priming the Pump

(Image by David Reed from Pixabay)

The thing that I've discovered is this... If I don't already have the next step in mind for the project, I can get derailed quite quickly.

For example, if I don't know what I am going to do out in the yard, I am totally overwhelmed by the gazillion tasks out there and decide to just keep working on another project. It's the uncertainty thing and trying to make a decision. Yard work is usually in the afternoon and by that time, my decision-making battery is running on empty. But... if I know what my next step is... if I've primed the pump, so to speak... then I have a plan for what I am going to do out there.

We want to plant some radishes in the greenhouse. OK. What do I need to do that? Well, the beds in there need water. So my first step is to dig out the garden hose from the shed and reattach it to the faucet so I can water in the greenhouse. I had a look in the shed the other week and it is in serious need of decluttering and organizing. But... all I need to do is get out the garden hose. That's it. Shed decluttering can come later.

I also know that the truck has a service appointment on Monday. Just an oil change and changing out the winter tires for summer tires. The tires are also in the shed and a bit buried at the moment. So that is definitely going to be a priority for the weekend. But all I need to do is get out the summer tires.

Overcoming Inertia

The other thing that I've noticed is that once I get going, I'm fine. It's just getting over that initial hump of inertia and uncertainty. But, already knowing what I am going to be doing... that lowers the inertial hump quite a bit. As does... starting with Small Steps... just put on my gardening clothes, then my boots and then go outside... All I need to do is find the garden hose. That's it. One step at a time.

And priming the pump doesn't have to take a lot of time. It's as simple as selecting a recipe for tomorrow's lunch and then pulling whatever I need out of the freezer.

Small Steps just make everything easier...