Freegan tree

When a shops freezer breaks, does the food all get wasted. The laws in America seem to mean so, perfectly "good" well it was food is thrown out because of the perceived health risk. Yeah it feels weird going into trash bags but saving food from felt good tonight as at least one person other than me benefited from it and my fruits of the streets of manhattan tree got some attention.

Planters

Saw a free ad on craigslist. This ended up with me guiding and balancing 4 planters full of soil on my skateboard though chinatown. Quite ridiculous but fun and now i have 3 big window sill planters that may have been diverted from landfil. Not quite what i set out to do with the salad in my window project but considering my lack of tools and space. I am satisfied and need to figure out how to make space through creative design. Too many planters and not enough windowsills...

perma frost planting

So ignoring all advice I have seeds in the ground. Well in a pot next to the heater to help defrost. The inside windowsill is the only possibility for growing at this stage as the pot out side froze solid. So if i get lucky in 5 - 10 days my first vege will be growing....

Warm up

Sick of waiting until the last frosts so have brought my seeds and am attempting despite the advice of people who can probably keep a tulip alive more than two day. My snow peas seeds are soaking and will be planted tomorrow. with a 70 til harvest estimate I mite be able to get a harvest off these before the end of the lease, June 1st. My attempt at urban gardening may extend to public space gardening. Kinda like graffiti gardens..... who knows but i don't have enough space for the number of seeds i have.

Continued food saving

My next target meat. I find it weird that i am recommending ways to save when my cooking philosophy has evolved around quality ingredients. I guess food doesn't need to be expensive to be top quality but more often than not it is. So my advice here is buy the best meat but only half the amount. Along the lines of Michael Pollans advice to push meat away from the centre of the plate and replace it with more plants. I would be interested to see a experiment that slowly reduced the meat component of meals. How slowly would this need to be done? Surely no one would notice reducing a ounce or two off a 160z steak. I imagine as you design food around the starch and veges the whole concept of whats for dinner would change from the dominant protien to the rice or pasta or brussel sprout and squash. So eating healthy doesn't need to be more expensive, my beloved lamb curry is now sweet potato and spinach. Lamb at least $10 a pound replace with Veg at around $2 a pound leaves plenty of room for savings and buying the best. Will you or I miss the meat, I think I will appreciate it more when I do eat it. Moderating meat the answer to eating well in the recession and reducing environmental impact.

Recession special savings

All over Manhattan the bars and restaurant are fighting for your dollar, prime time tables are readily available, dining and drinking deals are everywhere. Fantastic for those who still have jobs or money and difficulty for many whose livelihoods depend on the industry.
Food is one of the first places people look to save, CNN recently ran a excited piece highlighting how easy it was to make significant shopping bill savings by switching to store brands. Alternatively people could look at reducing waste. Still simple but requires a little more effort and discipline.
“In the United States, for instance, as much as 30 percent of food, worth some US$48.3 billion, is thrown away.”
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/aug2008/2008-08-22-01.asp
“The study found that £9bn of avoidable food waste was disposed of in England and Wales each year. It is mostly food that could have been consumed if it had been better stored or managed, or had not been left uneaten on a plate.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7389351.stm
Just like an industry professional the family chef is responsible for managing and minimizing food waste. A good chef keeps an obsessively organized fridge and is pedantic about rotating stock. This means they have accurate mental inventories that enable them to avoid duplicate purchases and prevent produce from spoiling.
Working on boats my menu’s often revolved around the produce that was closest to spoiling. There is no store to pop down to for fresh fruit and vegetables so you learn how to best utilize your supplies and preserve them. Also leftovers are a asset, often the basis of tomorrows meal, success being measured by whether the crew could tell if the meal contained recycled elements.
Next, portion control is so strict in commercial kitchens many products are weighed out to the gram. Don’t be afraid of not making enough, you are not going to starve your family or guests. More likely you will be improving their health
Continue to buy responsibly, carefully manage your stock, consciously control portions and enjoy good food.

wow

"A more recent study by the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that Americans generate roughly 30 million tons of food waste each year, which is about 12 percent of the total waste stream. All but about 2 percent of that food waste ends up in landfills; by comparison, 62 percent of yard waste is composted."
A better way to save on the food bill = stop throwing it away

wait

After hunting for seeds and getting setup with pots, soil and compost it seems I need to wait a little longer. No, no, no, too early wait, april. The compost lady doesnt understand that the lease runs out on june 1st. I need to start early if i want to be able to enjoy any harvest but she is right it is going to snow tomorrow and seeds are not going to germinate yet. I did some research and people do try winter gardens in ny with limited and varying success. My revised plan is going to try and begin with indoor windowsill salad growing......

pots

I went for the $1 planter but came back with two pots.So i may have to go back to the building my own planter concept.

topic

I have got a bit off track. Should probably start a new blog for my gardening project but dont know whether i will. In these troubled times all i see and read is about the rescue bill or how bad things are, mistakes, the pain ahead etc. Sick of it. We brought it upon ourselves, dont blame the bankers, we are all part of the society that allowed or accepted financial institutions to operate us into a mess. Anyway my topic is food and waste, so..... One of the first and eiasest ways to save money people think of is the grocery bill. Already we spent a tiny percentage of our income on these essential items, well eating is essential. I am concerned that the premium priced foods, organic local, sustianable whatever are going to be the first to go, a shame after the success of movements that started to move the agricultural industry in the write direction. Keep paying a premuim for real food, try to waste less of it. I recently discovered that the average american consumer will turn half of what they buy at the supermarket into landfill. So my recommendation is to shop a little more regulary, be very careful with portion control, keep track of what is lurking in the back of the fridge and design meals around what needs to be used.
Pontentially this could save you much more than the stardard school of thought, buy store own brands. No enjoy and respect good food.

+12

Wow spring will arrive one day. I have climbed out on the fire escape for a inspection of my available growing space. Conclusion very little. The high note was seeing a wire I hadn't noticed before, looks as though it may have once been used to hug something to the windowsill. The screws that attach it on either side seem to go into wood. Not very confident about this being able to hold a lot of weight. Picked up some garbage and tested it unfortunately it has been returned to the street. Saw a post on craigslist during my job searches selling a planter for $1. Not sure weather this will make my project too easy or ruin the concept. After being able to walk outside in less than 5 layers of wool for 2 days I feel it is time to sow the seeds. Well not yet but I dont want to be late.

Minus 10

It hurts your eyes to walk outside. To save power in these high heating cost days and time for frugality. The whole of new york could unplug their fridges or and freezers. An outside windowsill will maintain an acceptable freezer temperature and an inside windowsill with the correct insulation (cardboard maybe) and ventilation (how far window is open) could work as a cooler. I struggle using a mini fridge with a ice box incapable of keeping ice cream from melting, sucks. Why would anyone go to this kind of inconvenience? The reality is it doesn't save a lot of power, so for fun maybe. Fun this is the reason for my lastest green venture. Trying to grow a salad in my windowsill. Decided i want to get the material for building my planter box from the trash.

Negative 8

Snow and ice surround the sad looking few stalls that make up the market. Barely more than apples and pears are available, how can the green market driven restaurants create a dish let along a menu to the standard required of a NYC restaurant that wants to last more than a few months? My only purchase today was a hot cider, mainly to get some feeling back into my fingers. So my only purpose of the trip was to drop off our food waste for the lower east side ecology center to turn into compost. I keep on telling myself that soon the bounty of spring will bloom vibrancy back to the market. In reality it is a month or two away, so hard after enjoying a real summer in New Zealand. Before spring arrives I need to be ready, as i am planning to grow a salad in my window sill. I like the urban nature cycle concept, I can use the compost created from my diligent food waste disposal methods (mostly the good work of the LESEC) to feed what ever edible plants will grow with no space or gardening skill.