Corduroy Orange

I like to reduce wasteful consumption in my life wherever I can. Even a small meal can burn through paper napkins quickly. That’s why I try to carry my own cloth napkin with me—my disposability factor drops substantially when I’m not wasting squares of paper by wiping my grubby paws on them.

Because disposability is a cultural phenomenon, it’s going to take a cultural counter-phenomenon to reverse the tide. Start by carrying your own napkin with you to lunch. If you act now, I’ll provide you with one at absolutely no cost. That’s right, it can be yours for 0 payments of $0.00. Shipping and handling is included. Simply email your name and mailing address to
sustainable_napkin{at}corduroyorange{dot}com,
and if you’re one of the first two dozen people to do so, I’ll send you a cloth napkin for your lunchtime use. These napkins are irregularly sized, but none is smaller than 12 inches square, the approximate size of your standard, 2-ply paper napkin that dissolves under the slightest spill, prompting you to use at least three of them if you need one. Banish that waste from your life forever.

The napkins are sewn from odd pieces left over from Aurora and I having converted her sister’s wedding banquet tablecloths into appropriately-sized tablecloths and napkins for the bride and groom. The edges are serged and should not fray, even under extended use. Under normal circumstances, you should be able to go a whole workweek between washes, and to last for several years.

As such, regular use of the sustainable cloth napkin could easily translate into your keeping more than 2,200 paper squares out of the landfill a year—and that’s just based on it being used at lunches. Use a cloth napkin for breakfasts and dinners, and you can save at least 4,500 paper napkins a year. That means as a group, twenty-five people have the capacity to keep more than 112,000 napkins out of the trash on an annual basis. And that’s just with 25 people… the more converts there are, the less America wastes.

These napkins will be orange in color as soon as I get around to dying them, but otherwise will have no reference to the website… so you don’t have to worry about unwittingly being a marketing tool. However, if your friends and co-workers ask you, “what’s up with the napkin?”, feel free to let them know about the site and encourage them to join the sustainable napkin movement.

I’m not selling anything, and I don’t want your money. I just want people everywhere to waste as little as we possibly can, because as a whole, we waste and throw away way too much. If there are areas where we can reduce our consumption through easy steps, it’s a no-brainer that we should do so.

Please allow 2-4 weeks for delivery.

They’re growing everywhere! Like weeds, except edible and oh, so tasty! It’s incredible. You don’t have to hunt to find them, you don’t need a secret spot, you just need to walk for a couple of minutes in any direction with a bucket in hand. And when you get there, you barely even have to put any effort toward getting them. A quart in ten minutes or less. You just ask the brambles, “could I have some berries, please?” and they gracefully lower their branches of their own accord toward the awaiting mouth of your container and the berries drop gently into it and it’s overflowing before you realize it with the largest, juiciest, sweetest berries around. It’s fantastic!

And yet somehow at Pike’s Market every produce place was selling berries for $3 per half pint.

It’s hard to believe but today marks one year that I’ve been writing Corduroy Orange. During the past year, I’ve uploaded 210 posts (counting this one) and have received 132,583 page views from 36,417 unique IP addresses; since December, I’ve been averaging more than 10,000 page views a month. It’s a lot more attention than I expected I’d be getting—thank you for reading!

I think the portion of the content that I’m particularly fond of is the knife skills instructional section. I’ve said it hundreds of times, and I’ll say it thousands more: the knife is the most important tool in the kitchen. A good, sharp knife, and the knowledge of how to use it will cut your preparation time for every meal significantly. A good, sharp knife used incorrectly can sever a fingertip. It’s worth your time and attention to learn how to use your knives in a safe and efficient manner.

Not only that, but once you are to the point where you’re cutting your vegetables to consistent sizes, the quality of your cooking will go up as a result, because every piece in your pan will cook at an identical rate, as opposed to the small pieces burning while the larger pieces are still half-raw. So, if you haven’t already looked at it, check out my knife skills table of contents and follow the links for a step-by-step guide to using your knives in the best manner possible. Then, look at my vegetable cookery crib sheet to see what order you should put your well-cut vegetables into the pan so that the vegetables that take the longest to cook get the most time. If you’d like some further assistance learning better knife skills and cooking techniques, private instruction is available in the Pittsburgh area on a limited basis. Email me for more information.

As long as I’m giving plugs for the oldies-but-goodies that are stashed in the site’s vaults, I think it’s also worth mentioning my zucchini muffins, especially as we’re entering the time of year when zucchini abounds. They are the best zucchini muffins I’ve ever eaten. For a special treat, pair them with my sweet caramelized red onion marmalade, which is really quite good. I can see you making a face; it’s the same one my sister made when I told her we’d be having zucchini muffins and red onion marmalade. Know what she did? Asked for thirds. And fourths, if I remember correctly. The cooking technique of caramelizing the onions brings out their natural sweetness, which is then accentuated with the addition of liberal amounts of pure maple syrup and/or honey.

So, thanks for stopping by on occasion to kill some time and learn about cooking. Remember to support your local farmers. If you’re not sure who they are, you can search for them by zip code at www.localharvest.org. Once you’ve found them, call them up, visit them, buy their food… they’ll be glad to meet you and tell you all about what they do. Learn your knife skills! And save the liver!

I got my first local tomatoes in my CSA shipment yesterday, accompanied by a healthy bunch of cilantro, some thai basil, and some corn (among other inclusions). As far as I’m concerned, though, those (along with a couple of garden-fresh hot peppers) are the most important parts for today, as I set out to make salsa.

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I think about where my food comes from, and I try to get it from as local a source as possible: my backyard, my CSA, an orchard that I visit, a farmer whom I’ve met, the local co-op. But even so, it’s not possible to get everything from these places and I wind up buying some of my food from the Giant Eagle (the local Pittsburgh supermarket).

Even so, this video from Local Harvest opened my eyes to some concerns I hadn’t even realized. For instance, a box of breakfast cereal contains, on average, 1100 kilocalories of nutritional value but takes 7000 kilocalories of energy to produce.

Take a three-minute break and watch the video. Learn how much energy (and oil) is being devoted to trucking food from one end of the country to another and turn it into cellophane-wrapped convenience. Learn how opting for locally-produced and minimally-processed foodstuffs can make a big difference to some of the biggest issues facing us today: greenhouse gas emissions, oil dependence, and environmental sustainability.

Thanks to Troy Bogdan of Pure Earth Organic Farm for sending this video my way.

Speaking of CSA, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the merits/value of CSAs vs. farmers’ markets. I used to belong to a CSA, but found that the quality, selection, and price were not competitive with just going to the farmer’s market very week.

I’m very happy with the quality of the produce I get from my CSA from the Kretschmann Farm.   It’s always fresh, clean, and delicious.  The variety follows the seasons and the plantings.  When Don Kretschmann doesn’t have a particular crop (such as strawberries or blueberries), he works with other farmers to provide them for us.  Additionally, he makes well-raised chickens available for us, too, though he specifically grows produce.

It’s true that you don’t get to pick what’s in your basket, but on the other hand, you don’t have to shop for it either.  Once a week, I know that I’ll have a delivery of some of the freshest vegetables and fruits available that I only have to travel a mile from my house to get.  I don’t have to worry about getting there early before the variety has been picked over: my crate is earmarked specifically for me.

It’s the best way I can think of to make certain that I’m eating seasonally and locally without having to tax my schedule to make certain I have the produce I need.  I love my CSA.

I’d like to publicly thank my mother-in-law (thanks!) for sending me a link to an outstanding guide to the sustainability issues that surround many types of seafood. Check it out at www.blueocean.org/Seafood.

My previous guide to such issues was woefully inadequate. While it fit in my wallet and was thus convenient, it ranked a relatively small number of seafood species into three categories with no background information as to how those recommendations were made.

The internet being free of space constraints, the Blue Ocean guide ranks a large number of species into five categories and describes the issues surrounding production/capture of each type. I haven’t had time to examine the page in too much depth just yet, but I certainly plan to. I can tell already, though, that it’s a valuable resource, and so I thought I’d publicize its availability immediately.

Over the past couple of weeks, as I’ve been making salads with the loads of fresh greens that I get from my Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) share, I’ve gone foraging into my yard for mint leaves to add to my salad mix.  A couple dozen whole mint leaves tossed into the lettuce mix for a salad for two is about right to give you an occasional and enjoyable kick of flavor without the mintiness overpowering your salad.  Plus, it’s cheap and easy to do, because mint grows darned near everywhere!

I’ve just found out about the Harvest Awards from the Glynwood Center. I’m not really familiar with the center or what they do, but the awards seem like a great way to give recognition to some of the most important people in our lives: the farmers who grow our food. If you know of a farmer that deserves some recognition for what he/she does, please consider going to

Nominate Someone whose work you admire
Glynwood Center is calling for nominations for the 5^th Annual Harvest Awards which recognize innovative farmers, organizations, and businesses that are supporting sustainable regional food systems. Please help us recognize outstanding work by nominating someone whose work you admire in the following categories:

The Glynwood Harvest Farmer Award is awarded to a farmer who has developed a sustainable farming operation and built effective relationships within his or her home community and other places where the food is eaten.

The Glynwood Harvest Good Neighbor Award is awarded to an individual or organization that has helped sustain regional agriculture in new and effective ways.

The Glynwood Harvest Connecting Communities, Farmers, and Food Award is awarded to recognize outstanding work that unites farmers and other community residents in building a local food system.

These categories are not intended to limit the nature of the nominations. We welcome nominations even if the “fit” is not precise. We are particularly interested in projects that demonstrate one or more of the following:

• The farm, food, and health connection
• How sustainable agriculture can further social justice
• The key roles being played by younger leaders

Nominations must be postmarked July 10, 2007.

I know that summer doesn’t officially arrive for another eleven days, but as far as I’m concerned, it got here yesterday. During the course of an afternoon bike ride, I found a bumper crop of black raspberries at one of my foraging patches, with several berries already ripe! It’ll still be days before the majority of the windfall starts turning from red to purple, but to taste the few berries I was able to pick was sunshine on my tongue.