SustainYou

When perusing our favorite grocery store,  I came across an very large and unusual looking object, I said to myself… I must buy this thing!  The food Goddess Dana informed me that I had in fact bought a butternut squash.  This discovery led to one of the recommended recipes of the week.  Adding avocado to the tamatillo sauce and roasted tomatoes to the squash kicked it up a notch.  Multicolored Jalapeño slices on the top will bring a tier to your eye.

Yesterday we had our first big snow storm in Minneapolis.  Saturday night we had nearly a foot dumped onto the city.  It was the sight of buried cars, stuck busses, neighbors meeting and helping each other.  Neighbors helping each other. 

In the morning I dug out my car and headed into the Fremont/Gerard alleyway.   Snow was everywhere! In our 2 acre block with 16 houses, 16 garages and many more cars, there was no room for a foot of snow.  There was plenty of room for neighborhood connections.  Read the rest of this entry �

Chai Tea

Makes 2 servings

1 1/2 c water
1 inch stick cinnamon
8 cardamon pods
8 whole cloves
2/3 c milk
6 tsp sugar (or to taste)
3 tsp loose black tea

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Grab a bowl, go outside and find some nice fresh clean snow that hasn’t been shoveled or peed on or anything.

Scoop it up and take it inside. immediately drizzle with real maple syrup and consume! It won’t warm you up but it’s very refreshing after working up a sweat shoveling that foot of snow out of your driveway!

Did anyone do this when they were a kid? I can’t remember what exactly we called it.

4 Windows?

4 on side:

3 Windows?

Comment below!

I would like to report on our experience in replacing incandescent light bulbs with fluorescent bulbs. We began doing this in early 2006 and really accelerated this process last summer when it was so hot. We went back and created entries for electricity use for 2005 from past electric bills. As you can see savings are often very dramatic, and as you can see from May through December 2006 we saved an average of 28% on electricity use. We have an electric range and dryer, but gas hot water.

Our total investment was probably less than $300.  At $.10 per kwh we will probably recoup our investment in about a year. We also have a 2004 Honda Civic hybrid and have averaged 46.7 mpg over the past 3 years.

• Bottom line: these things really do work.

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A little over a year ago I had an idea, which with the guidance of some amazing friends and housemates became the Carbon Neutral Co-Op.

Last winter I was fighting between grad school in architecture & sustainable design and corporate energy work. I chose corporate energy work. I wanted to not lose sight of the values and ethics that were fostered by my mentors and friends at Carleton. I wanted to have the quest for sustainability remain a major part of my life. The Co-Op remained an idea until 3 beautiful people, Chris, Dana and Sonja-Mae agreed to live with me even before we knew where we were going to live. This started to make it seem financially plausible that it could work…
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This weekend is the last weekend of the Art Shanty Projects at medicine lake, Minnesota. It is a habitation gallery on a canvas of frozen ice.

My friend Peter created “The Cactus Conservatory – A place to engage the community in a conversation about sustainability, eco-friendly design and cactus.”

It was in this art shanty when it was -3 F outside that I looked between the cacti and saw the temp point to 93.JPG Peter’s shanty was the inspiration for the Greenhouse studio…..a studio to feed the body & mind and warm the soul with the sun.
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Matthew Adams outside his 120-square-foot house by Modern Cabana on his 160 acres near Red Bluff, Calif.

Today is my Dad’s Birthday!! 

It means a lot to me that he has been supportive of my ideas and dreams this year.  Were it not for him and my family, the Carbon Neutral Co-op would have never happened.  He was there right at the start and bailed me out at the key time I needed help with the basement habitat project.  You will soon see him make his actuarial debut coming soon to the Carbon Neutral Co-op Video podcast.

Happy Birthday Dad!!

With Love,
Your Son

Our Home: Our Food: Our minds:

Our Homes:
For the most part, all new construction in the United States uses drywall to cover interior walls.  Drywall is simply gypsum, lime and other minerals sandwiched between two layers of paper.  While some of the mineral content is recycled, it is the highly processed paper that provides a feast for mold.  It is unknown how many children and families have suffered because of mold in their walls, but it is estimated that 2 in 3 homes have mold problems.  Several pieces of drywall installed just 5 years ago in the co-op basement had mold on the back and had to be thrown out.  We didn’t used to build this way.  Read the rest of this entry �

Sustian your mind!

Logon, simile and post naked!

“Make sure when you do something you are doing it for the right reasons,” a wise, perceptive and humble man said to me last night. It was Dana’s celebration night last night. That rockstar just landed a great job at a rural land use planning (super exciting stuff — that is all way over my head. I’m sure she will tell you all about it).

What are the right reasons? I asked myself, am I doing everything to satisfy my own emotions? Is there such a thing as pure altruism and if it exists is that even a right reason for doing something? How can anyone tell what the right reason is if it is always dependent on an individual’s values?
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Coming soon…

3-10-2007

Talking with my Co-op housemates Chris and Dana, last night we pondered aloud….. Does the current trajectory of American willpower give hope that democracy will save us? Chris proposed the idea that a benevolent dictator is needed to realign humans on a sustainable path. Was Plato right when he wrote The Republic two millennia ago. Do we need a set of guidelines to guide us to the righteous path. Does the fact that humanity is witnessing global warming while emotionally reaming self interested prove Plato’s hypothesis that democracy is one step before tyranny?
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Tonight Milena made amazing yam, bean & onion burritos filled with Drew’s all natural salsa. As we speak an amazing chocolate concoction (on it’s 2nd round) is stewing on the stove. All amazingness from the Carleton farm house cookbook…mmmmm

Oh. yea to fight my Ebola I just downed an entire raw clove of garlic…eeewwww

Pull kink…pllop blup….plop…mummm water…sometimes.

One of the 6,584,321 things that have broken in the co-op is out kitchen sink. At first it was a very good zen meditation practice on patience and serenity. Pull the handle slowly, wait and you would be rewarded with water. Now pull 20 times, maybe water. Perhaps it was the French beget left in the pipes from soldering this summer… nope, bread clear…

While perusing the (cringe) local Menards store, I was tempted by the new pull out handle faucet that was only $80. Sweet! fix the problem once and for all. However I told myself “you get what you pay for.” The co-op reinforced the decision.. Surely paying $25 for a new plunger part was the responsible and environmental choice. One over-packaged part shipped from CA to MN and $25 later the old faucet kerplops.
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