Sustainability and Farm Shares

Lately I've spent a lot more time thinking about the health of our planet and what impact I want to have.  Now that I have moved across the country and have my own apartment, stipend and plenty of decisions to make, it is the perfect time to think about the lifestyle that I want to have now and in the future.

This past week I have been reading the book No Impact Man and briefly suspended my television hiatus to  watch the documentary Food, Inc.  No Impact Man is written by an author in NYC who did an experiment to see if he and his family could live for a year with gradually diminishing environmental impact across different categories, such as waste and transportation.  Food, Inc examines the way that Americans eat and where our food comes from, along with the potential implications of the current food system on the environment and our health.  Both of them are thought provoking and it is just the start of my research on the topic.  As a geologist I frequently here about or think about the global carbon cycle from an academic perspective, but I don't think I had stopped recently to consider my own lifestyle.

I have, however, settled on one step to take as a beginning.  As I was researching urban garden plots, reading the chapter of my book on sustainable eating, and talking to one of my peers, I stumbled upon the idea of joining a CSA program (CSA = community supported agriculture).  A CSA program provides revenue for farmers at the beginning of the season when they need it the most for planting and other costs by having consumers purchase a farm share at the very beginning of the season, typically sometime between February and May.  Then, throughout the growing season, the consumer who purchased the share receives a weekly allotment of produce directly from the farm that they support.  Not only is this a way of supporting local agriculture, most of the local farms offer organic or very close to organic produce and the carbon impact of shipping food across the country and around the world is eliminated.  In addition to vegetables, you can also find farm share programs that involve fruit, eggs, dairy, meat, or even fresh flowers.  Together my roommate and I purchased a small share from one of the farms here in Massachusetts (http://stillmansfarm.com/csa.htm).  From the third week of June through October we will get to pick up our shipment of fruits and veggies fresh from the farm at our local farmers market for roughly the same amount of money that we would spend on produce here in the city.  We get local, conscientiously grown food...plus an incentive to eat our fresh veggies!  I may live in the city, but I'm still a Midwestern girl at heart who loves the idea of garden fresh vegetables and eventually wants a goat and/or chickens someday.

I would encourage you to look for a CSA in your own area if you are at all interested.  They can be found across the country with a simple Google search.  Do something good for your local economy, the planet, and your own health.  If not, find another step to take to reduce your impact on the Earth and research the impact you are having on the planet.

BEE #7: Modern Pastry and Sunday Wanderings

Last Sunday was beautiful.  The weather has been unseasonably warm for November, generally in the high 50s and low 60s.  I made plans to hang out with two of my friends from GCF, so we met up near Park Street after church.

Street performer in Boston Common

The afternoon started with going out to eat.  Then with the beautiful weather sticking around we decided to go on a walk through Boston Common and the Public Gardens.  The trees had started to change, but were not fully ablaze yet due to the long stretch of warm weather.  We stopped to watch a wedding party taking pictures and later a street performer with a crazy one-man band get-up singing a song about chocolate and talking to his plastic chicken.  You never know what you will find when exploring Boston!


After that we went to the harbor to enjoy the boats and the water. Nathan made friends with a couple of seagulls, we watched planes land and take-off at Logan airport across the harbor, enjoyed conversation, and considered taking Sunday afternoon naps along the water.

Boston Harbor with friends

Modern Pastry

Finally, we decided to walk to the North End to visit an Italian bakery.  This was a new area for me to explore!  In Boston, the North End is essentially Little Italy with loads of awesome looking Italian restaurants and bakeries.  There is an ongoing debate between whether Mike's Pastry or Modern Pastry is supreme in the North End.  I have heard people argue passionately for both sides in just my short time here.  We decided to go with Modern on this day, since Becca prefers that one.  We arrived at the bakery and found a line out the door, which I always consider a promising sign.  After all, Garrett's Popcorn in Chicago required waiting in such a line and it is superb.  We waited patiently and finally got inside, where we were greeted with a case full of tasty looking treats.  I opted for a cannoli filled with ricotta and a "Lobster's Tail" (flaky cream filled pastry) to take home for later in the week.  I was quite pleased with my choices- they were pretty yummy.  Now I'll have to try Mike's sometime so I can make my own decision on which camp to join!

My cannoli

BEE #6: Cambridge Beginnings (The Friendly Toast and the Charles)

Last weekend was less of a single adventure and more of a compilation of smaller adventures.

On Friday I had to attend my first of four Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) seminars, which are required  for all students funded by NSF grants.  Basically they are two-hour sessions that use case studies to foster conversation on ethics in research.  The topic for the first one was why fabricating data and/or lying about your results is not how research should be done.  And yes...the conclusions that you just drew and assumptions you made just from reading that last statement are the same conclusions you draw after discussing it in depth for two hours in heterogeneous small groups.  But I suppose there were good points made by some and that some people probably needed the reminder.  I was reminded not to lie about my results, learned how to use the BU shuttle to get from the main campus to the med. campus, and was rewarded with a beautiful view of the Boston skyline from the fourteenth floor of the Medical School building, so I am counting it a success.

My beautiful city as seen from BU's med campus

Saturday morning I went out for breakfast with a group of people from GCF at the Friendly Toast in Cambridge.  Not only did I realize how much I already love these people, but I found a new place that I would HIGHLY recommend for breakfast.  It gets pretty busy after 9 though, so come prepared to wait or get there early!  I had two very large toffee crumble pancakes, which I could not finish because they were just too big.  Other people at the table had everything from pumpkin pancakes to waffles with pomegranate molasses to a build-your-own omelette and everyone seemed to love what they had.

After breakfast, we had some picture-taking fun then walked from the restaurant, which is near MIT, down to the Charles in hopes of seeing the regatta that was supposed to be occurring.  While we didn't see the regatta, we did see plenty of sailboats out on the river and I got another beautiful view of the city from a different perspective. :-)

Across the Charles- a view of Boston from Cambridge

Finally, Saturday afternoon I got out of the city for a while and attended my adviser's fall party.  I got to meet his wife and adorable children and enjoyed some quality bonding time with my labmates while proving that we fail at identifying apple varieties based only on taste and that peanut butter/chocolate dessert bars should be eaten in the largest justifiable quantities. :-)

Yet another successful weekend.

My office + Bonus City Picture #2

When I was an undergraduate, all of the geology majors had a drawer in the main room that we hung out in, learned in, did labs in, sometimes slept in, and often ate in.  Now that I am a graduate student, I have moved up in the world and I get my very own desk!

When I arrived at BU, I was assigned a desk in one of the smaller grad. offices adjacent to the graduate student lounge and shared by four or five other grad. students.  However, offices at BU are seniority based...so that assignment didn't last very long before I was displaced by one of the more senior students.  Now I have a desk in a cubicle in the biggest grad office, which houses the desks of ten geology grad. students.  Honestly, I was a little bummed at first to be moving down the hall and away from some of my adviser's older students, but then I realized that my new office is much quieter- so I'm pretty happy with the change.  It's nice to have a work place that I can decorate with my own stuff!  (For any of the Olivet people reading this...if you look hard enough you just might recognize a rhinestone stapler or creepies from Jamie or my graduation gift!)

My cubicle in the grad. office!

Bonus City Life #2:
Like I said before, walking down the streets of Boston you never know exactly what you are going to see if you are observant.  On Friday I was walking home from school since it was a gorgeous day, and I spotted this across the street:

Food truck!

At home this past summer I watched a LOT of shows on the Food Network.  One of those shows was the Great Food Truck Race...and this truck (known as Roxy's Gourmet Grilled Cheese) was one of the trucks competing!  I decided that since it was dinner time I might as well add to my list of adventures and make my first food truck memory at a truck featured on the Food Network.  I ordered the "Green Muenster"- a muenster grilled cheese with bacon  and guacamole.  It was delicious!  As I waited for my order I also got a sample of the special of the day, which is perhaps the most odd grilled cheese I have ever eaten.  It was a local cheese with almonds, chocolate covered bacon, and mango.

Boston Exploration Excursion (BEE) #1: Haymarket

This is the first post of what I hope will be an ongoing, intermittent series.  While I'm here in Boston for a while (probably five years!) I am hoping to have opportunities to explore some of the local sights, culture, restaurants, etc.  BEE posts will give you the opportunity to explore Boston with me from afar!

BEE#1:  Haymarket, Quincy Market, and Boston Harbor

My roommate, one of her friends who came into the city for a visit, and I decided to check out the discount produce market known as Haymarket, which takes place on Fridays and Saturdays year round.  According to a local tourism website about Haymarket, people have gathered here since about 1830 to buy and sell produce!  It resembles a farmer's market with tents and handcarts full of produce and lots of people jostling around to purchase fruits and vegetables.  

Haymarket Produce Stands

Vendor at Haymarket

However, there is one big difference.  The produce for sale is stock cleared out of warehouse stores across the river to make room for new shipments, so it is ripe and needs to be used or frozen quickly but is also sold at incredible prices.  As we walked around we saw everything from garlic to oranges, onions to cantaloupe, carrots to mangoes, and much much more.  To give you an idea of the prices, I got two pounds of white mushrooms for $3 and three small plastic containers of red raspberries for a total of $2.  My roommate got 8 pluots for a buck or two and a large eggplant for $1.  You have to do a bit of picking to avoid overripe produce...but it's well worth it!  We're going to have fresh mushroom pizza tonight, and I froze half a quart of red raspberries.  Another cool thing was one of the vendors let us try an Asian fruit called longan.  It has a tough covering, but once you peel off the covering it looks like the inside of a grape with a pit!  We all thought it was pretty good.

After we were done at the market, we walked over to Quincy Market and Faneuil Hall, which are nearby.  This is one area where I will return to explore more later, but this time we stuck with Quincy Market.  Quincy Market opened in 1826 and more information about it's history and the surrounding area is available here.  

View outside Quincy Market (The crowd is watching a street performer.)

Quincy Market is a long building with two wings lined with food vendors selling basically every type of cuisine imaginable.  For dinner, I ate veggie Mac n' Cheese from one of the vendors.  It had onions, mushrooms, peppers, broccoli, and cherry tomatoes and was delicious!  The center of the building is two levels filled with public seating.  We sat upstairs to eat and enjoyed people watching as well.

Inside Quincy Market, looking down from upstairs seating area

Boston Marina

 Finally before heading back to our apartment via the T (public transit system), we walked out to see the water.  I have never lived near the ocean, so being within an hour of a beach and the ocean is superbly exciting!  We walked through Christopher Columbus Park where an arts festival was going on to a marina on Boston Harbor.  The view was beautiful, and you could also see planes coming in over the water to land at Logan International Airport across the harbor.  Here is a look at the view:

Boston Harbor (plus large plane landing at Boston Logan!)

More adventures to come in the future!