Have you ever thrown away left-overs with fuzzy green fur on it or forgotten about those baby tomatoes you bought on impulse hidden in the back of your fridge? Or can you remember a time when you didn’t eat everything on your plate and someone admonished you and said, “Don’t you know that there are starving people in the world?” But, how exactly do our food habits help starving people? Besides the fact that our country produces too much to begin with, we throw away a lot of food and what is more – “good food” that could actually be eaten. These are not your table scraps or peelings – I mean food that was once good and edible is either forgotten about or we can’t finish the helping we have served ourselves.  

According to a national survey, if we total the amount we waste in “good food” it equals almost one billion pounds a year. One billion pounds! This food, prior to landing in your bin, could have been shipped to your local food bank or favorite organization to help the needy. It all adds up.  Avoiding wasting food significantly impacts the environment and can earn you more money in your bank account at the end of the day.  

Shopping

1. Make a shopping list before you go to the store cuts your bill in half as you buy only what you need versus what you want.
2. On the shopping list, indicate exactly how much of each thing you need and make a quick note on what you’re going to use it for. For example, “I need five bananas for my banana bread.”
3. Go to the grocery store on a full stomach (not before). Going to the store hungry fools your eyes (and stomach) to buy more.
4. Support your local produce stores. There is always a deal on fruit and vegetables. Some local produce stores also sell smaller quantities in a bundle.
5. Be aware of the 3 for 1 gimmick. Just because the store is selling three bundles on green onions for $1.00 doesn’t mean you have to buy all three. You can tell the cashier you only need one and they will most likely charge you just for one. If they charge you the full amount, skip out or give them away to your neighbour.

Cooking

1. Plan out a weekly meal. Write out what you will eat based on what is already in your fridge, not on things you have to go out and buy. (Tip: A whiteboard on your fridge works well.)
2. If you are cooking for two, think you’re only cooking for one and it will end up being more than enough for two. Have plenty of fruits on hand. Thus, if you’re not full, you can fill up on fruits rather than have left-overs rotting at the back of your fridge.
3. Get creative and experiment with ingredients you already have.

Eating

1. Try not to eat alone. The more mouths to feed, the less goes to waste.
2. Start with a small serving of food on your plate and then go back if need be.
3. When it’s time to eat, just eat. Try not to multi-task.
4. Eat with reflection. (Tip: Look at your hand as it moves around your plate.)
5. Eat in mid-pace, not too fast or not too slow. (Tip: Listen to your mouth chewing the food in your mouth.)
6. Eat from the same plate with another. You will eat with more awareness knowing others around you are also trying to get their fill (it also saves dishes).
7. Eat simple foods on a weekly basis and save your grand meals with all the garnish for one day of the week.

Left-Overs

1. Are veggies about to turn? Put them all together in a soup or mix it with orange juice and fruit for a blended energy drink.
2. Invest in tupperware, especially for those who cook in large quantities for lunch the next day.
3. Share. Have close friends or neighbours that don’t mind coming over spontaneously when you know you’ve cooked too much or give it away in your tupperware.

Eating Out

1. Find restaurants that give you small portions that you can actually eat. Or share the main meal (order only one) and get a mini appetizer, instead.
2. Order less than more. (Tip: Keep a menu at the table to re-order.)
3. Bring your tupperware to the restaurant (if you don’t want the styrofoam) and bring your left-overs (as small as it may be) home – make a sandwich out of it.
4. Choose a restaurant with a peaceful ambience. Places with loud noises and crazy music takes away your full concentration on your food.
5. Peek in to see who is preparing your food. Food prepared joyfully is more likely to taste good than food prepared grudgingly. (Tip: If applicable, strike up positive conversations with people making your food to put them at ease and happy.)

Tip: Try not to find fault with food served to you. If you like it, eat it. If you don’t like it, simply leave it. Complaining doesn’t help anybody, especially if someone took the time to make it for you. It just gives bad feelings to everyone.

Fruits and Veggies

1. Try to not buy food that you only need a little bit of to begin with like celery. We only use one or two stalks in our recipes and the rest turns to mush.
2. Cutting up cantaloupes, lettuce, broccoli, spinach etc and placing them into clear bags or tupperware or glass bowls, right when you buy it, makes snacking easier and more likely that you’re going to eat them (also place at eye-level).

Dairy

1. Buy the smallest possible size. If you save more money buying something in bulk (like the long thing of cheese) skip out if you know that the other half of the cheese is just going to go bad. Or if you really want the deal, freeze it.
2. Ever left with just a little bit in your yogurt containers or milk carton just about to go bad? Add it into those blended energy drinks (of course check if it’s already bad.)
3. Place milk cartons into the side of the fridge so it doesn’t get pushed to the back.
4. Cut cheese up into small slices (or how you like to have it) for easy use.

Water

1. Invest in a water filter system for your tap or one you can put in your fridge and skip out on the plastic water bottle insanity that is filling up our landfills. Invest in an aluminum water bottle and fill it up with your water filter system.
2. Instead of running water for cold water (wastes up to 10L of water a day), store water in a jug (although most doctors warn that cold water shocks your system especially on a empty stomach and makes your food slower to digest). Leave the jug on the counter or take it out an hour or so before you know you’re going to drink it. (Side note: Drinking hot water or warm green teas help you digest easily.)
3. Fill a bowl with water to wash fruits and vegetables instead of letting the water run. Pour remaining water into your plants.

Composting

1. Put your banana peels, egg shells, and other fruits and vegetables in a compost. It’s easy to have a small bin in your backyard. Take it to your local drop-off or add it to your garden as a rich free fertilizer.
2. For people that live in apartments/condos you can start an urban compost too under your sink (and avoid those fruit flies dancing around in your house).

Secrets of the Fridge and How to Maximize It

Did you know that fridges were never as big as they are today? Fridges were small, like those ones they have in hotel rooms. People’s belief systems have changed in the last century. People used to take a lot of pride in their natural simple diets and in cooking as much as they took pride in hospitality. People relied on local produce or their own gardens. They ate fresh food everyday versus our recent TV dinners and pre-packaged ready-to-eat meals to suit our busy 21st century lives.

1. Don’t fill it up!
2. The freezer is your best friend if you do cook in large quantities.
3. Place fruits and veggies on the shelf rather than in those cooler bins so you see them.
4. Place ketchup and soy sauce etc in the bins instead.
5. Place pasta sauce (once opened) at the back of your fridge (it’s the coldest part) it will keep a little longer than usual.
6. Clean out your fridge every week (at least) and make note of what you throw away the most and stop buying it!

Raise Awareness

1. Read stories of famous people who went hungry for several days because of the lack of food in their houses.
2. Reflect on your habits and try to change a habit every 40 days. Tell someone what you are doing. Share your goals.
3. Try fasting to feel hunger pains.
4. Volunteer at your local food bank or organization.

Just a few tweaks in your shopping, eating, cooking and general food habits can have huge local and global benefits. Start with a few goals from this list you haven’t tried yet and keep striving to implement more and more every week or month. You’ll start seeing that your household garbage will reduce significantly and you’ll save lots of money too.

An Invitation

What are some ways you have saved money while preserving food?  How else can we try to avoid wasting food?  Share with us your ideas in the comments below and let’s try to actively save our food and our wallets.
image credit: clairity

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The current buzz around the sky-scrapers and overflowing landfills is to go-green. In fact, if you are still using the plastic bags at the grocery store, you’ll soon stand out if you haven’t made the switch to cloth bags.  But are you switching to cloth bags because you really want to or because stores have stopped carrying the plastic ones?

“Saving” the environment is fast becoming a trend, albeit a trend that is worth following.  Still, others need more convincing and are hesitant to switch from styrofoam coffee cups to a reusable one.  But why?  Why do we still forget the cloth bags in our car and why do we still let the water run when we brush our teeth?

It is because we don’t have a relationship with Nature that we forget simple things to help her.  When we are in a relationship with someone, we have invested something in it, our time, our energy, our love, and our awareness of that person.  We think about them.  This is what we need to do with Nature, so that helping her becomes second Nature (no pun intended.)  :)

Why is this important?

We are linked to the environment: the environment effects us and we in turn effect the environment.  We need only to reflect, to ponder, to contemplate with the eyes of the heart to seriously recognize these links we have to Nature.

Dependent, Independent or Interdependent

We need several things from Nature to provide for us a healthy state of mind, spirit, heart and body and a lot of us have come to depend on Nature for it; however, like blinking, we don’t give it a second thought, expecting it to happen for us.  In this part of the world, we expect clean fresh water to gush out through our taps and baths, we expect the air to be fresh and rejuvenating to breathe in, and we expect the land to grow healthy food that ends up in our grocery stores.

In many parts of the world, these are not expectations but a moment of celebration and many times a miracle that any of these things happen at all (and on a daily basis.) Moreover, not only do we need to nourish our bodies, but more and more of us live in closed-in spaces with hardly any green around us.  Thus, we are dependent on Nature to also give us a chance for a retreat into the mountains, or to forests, to rivers and to new terrain for silence and stillness.

We can not be independent from Nature as we need it to remain alive!  The honor and trust we have been given as someone who resides on this Earth, more and more of us are taking part in sustainable practices of our Earth most diligently, in a interdependent relationship.  An interdependent relationship is one that both parties give and take to one another.  Nature can not give all the time, nor can humans keep taking.  A balanced relationship is an interdependent one.

The Reason for the Disconnect

The environmental crisis largely arises from an actual physical disconnect of human beings from Nature and its surroundings.  Face to face human contact and touch is becoming less, as the global accessibility to information all over the world increases through fast-paced technology.  Direct contact with the environment has decreased significantly.

One of the main reasons of disconnect is a shift from simple to complex lifestyles and the second main reason is a fear of being outside.  These both lead to the breakdown of the inherent curiosity and imagination – the spirit in us.  Over the last few years, fewer and fewer children are seen outside and our playgrounds have become emptier.  Where are they?  Unfortunately, television and video games and now even the internet, children and adults (me!) are trapped for hours mesmerized and injected with false desires of a lifestyle they can not keep up with .

Children and adults are quickly “bored” in the great outdoors nowadays because the natural curiosity has been preoccupied by fast immediate images and messages, which creates an unhealthy fear: “I don’t know what to do out here!”  There is a strange comfort behind user names and passwords, a sense of confidence and courage in saying things in email you would never say otherwise.  The fear of being outside is ironically coupled with a confidence-boost in technology in young people.

Children playing outside in parks or in front yards, riding on bikes down alleyways and hockey nets set-up on the side streets will soon be a nostalgic memory of the past if the reconnect doesn’t happen soon.

Earth and Water

We are made of two key elements from Nature: Earth and water (we are 75% water and 25% flesh).  As we feel a natural kinship with our mothers who have given us birth, we tend to forget to feel the same for the “Mother” Earth.  Thus, if humans become disconnected from the earth, we become disconnected from our very nature.

Living in urban dwellings, in isolated compartmentalized spaces, separates us not only from Nature but also from meaningful interaction with other people.  

A brief glance into any history book tells us that people used to live off of the Earth in interdependent relationships; many people were hunters and gatherers, shepherds and farmers utilizing it for the necessity of survival.  Classrooms were outside, as students gathered around teachers in courtyards.  Taking care of animals was a part of a child’s upbringing.  All of these activities hardly occur in the city and leave people feeling disconnected with their environment.

A shift back towards a simpler lifestyle really is a step forward towards spiritual nourishment and a natural tendency to upkeep the environment.

Our Lifestyle Choices

We all play an important role in building a sustainable future.  What and how much we buy, significantly impacts Nature, as well as where we live, how we move around and what we eat.  By making better choices we will have to rethink our relationship with Nature in our daily decisions that will lead to preserving her.

For example, we are always in the midst of choice about many different things in a day.  But, before we can switch from eating take-out to eating from your garden or hang drying your clothes rather than using the dryer, it’s important to understand why you are making different choices.  It will be in those very moments of choice that a caretaker of the Earth can make beneficial changes to their lives with awareness of our actions.

Cultivating a relationship with nature is the necessary first step to establish a more interdependent relationship between you and your environment.

Importance of Reconnection

Harmonizing with the rest of Creation, reflecting on the natural order of the cosmos, and reconnecting to the earth and water in you, will bring back that peace in your heart that you were born with.

Education – What can you do?

Education is important to go ahead with a green life.  You want to commit to a green earth but you might not know how to truly do it and make it meaningful.  

You’re “Going Green” because everyone else is doing it but that’s not what you should do.  Organic fruits and shorter showers might be a stepping stone to greener living but to truly balance yourself with the rest of creation is the bigger goal.  When you truly balance with the Earth, going green will be as natural as breathing and this recognition enables you to do things without having to make a choice because it is as natural as breathing. 

The wise scholars say to do things for 40 days to make it a habit.  Try small steps everyday until it becomes second nature for you.  :)  Thinking about others, reading about how others live and looking at the environment as a friend to take care of who gives you all that you need, is a step towards building your relationship with Nature.

Last Thoughts

Nature can not be understood as a separate subject you study in elementary school or university.  It is not separate from us physically, as we know we are made from Earth and water.  It has to be understood as a whole – as a living thing.  Rebuilding our communities of Nature is essential and can be done with constant direct experiences with Nature.  It is important to keep experiencing the beauty of Nature, especially for young children, rather than inform them about the problems concerning the human-nature relationship.  Being aware of problems too soon can cut children off from their roots.  There is an inherent urge to bond with the natural world – focus on this first and the environmental activists will have strong supporters without any appeal of their own.

Here are some ways to cultivate the green in you:

1. Make an intention to build a relationship with Nature and become more environmentally-conscious.
2. Go outdoors everyday rain or shine.
3. Hike in the mountains or forests at least once a week.
4. Take photographs of the natural elements and reflect on them.
5. Sit and stare at the ocean.
6. Breathe clean air literally.  Take in big breaths and let them out.  Smell the air.
7. Find out the names of things. Pick up a small book of tree, bird or local animals in your neighbourhood and know the name of the plant you walk by.  Giving something a name, makes it important to you.
8. Grow a garden – get your hands dirty!
9. Keep a window open and feel the breeze enter your lungs.
10. Be in touch when you are walking about.  Touch leaves, rocks, flowers (don’t pick them), run your hands through grass, the bark, the water, etc.
11. Go berry picking in a farm!
12. Run around in an open field barefoot.
13. Dress warmly and feel the element of wind on your face one day.  Fly a kite.
14. Go bird-watching, watch animals in nature and note observations.
15. Travel to places of people who have less than you and learn how they get by.
16. Make perspective drawings of a certain tree by the season.  This means you have to come back to the same spot and find the tree and reflect on its changes every season.
17. Look for designs or patterns in nature: circles, squares, triangles, lines.
18. Hug a tree for a long time.
19. Busy studying?  Read your textbook under the shade of a tree.
20. Busy working?  Have a plant on your desk that you water everyday.
21. Busy with family?  Have children take part in outside chores, use green in your food.
22. Busy cooking?  Know the names of herbs and spices you use everyday and its history.

An Invitation

What are some ways that you have built your relationship with Nature?  What do you do to keep in touch with Nature?  Share your comments below and let’s find ways to help each other reconnect.

I hope you find balance with your environment today.

image credit: tracitodd

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