Natalie Shough

For my eco-challenge 8 I decided to meal prep. For the next seven days, I bought ingredients for burrito bowls, noodle soup jars, tacos, Qionoa salad, Risotto, and a simple breakfast (rice, beans, and eggs). I'm not a very structured person and I get tired of meals fast so I tried to create a variety of meals that have similar ingredients. I usually eat 2 meals a day and snack a lot so I made sure to buy healthy snacks that are satisfying. I just went grocery shopping a few days ago and so far I've had tacos, next I need to prep everything for the burrito bowls and noodle jars. A lot of these recipes I found online or invented myself. It's important that I get all the essential nutrients so I chose recipes that are balanced but easy to make. I'm excited to continue meal prepping, even though the process has spanned over a week.

For my eco-challenge 7, I hosted a craft night with my friends and we watched a documentary. The documentary we watched is called Mad Hot Ballroom, it's about a program that teaches low-income schools in New York ballroom dancing and then they compete. It was really amazing seeing these kids improve and seeing how finding something they were passionate about really changed their lives. It was really sad seeing these elementary school girls talking about boys and their criteria for a boyfriend is that they don't sell drugs. They mentioned in the documentary that some of the boys in the program were going down a bad path in their lives but the program changed them for the better. It was fun seeing the kids dance and rooting for our favorite schools.

For my 6th eco-challenge I decided to start a sustainability notebook. I could've done a digital notebook, but I had a refillable notebook just sitting around. Also, I feel that writing things by hand is more meaningful for some reason. I decided that the focus of my notebook would be foraging and some reflections about sustainability and how I'm trying to be more self-sustaining. The first entry I wrote was things to remember while foraging and reminders to be thankful for the environment. The second entry was more about improvements I can make in my own life. The third entry was about my eco-challenge project, etc.

For my 5th eco-challenge, I watched a highly recommended documentary, Fantastic Fungi! It was a very impactful documentary full of information. I think the most interesting parts of the documentary were how mycelium has an underground network allowing trees to communicate (it reminded me of Avatar, I guess the idea for that came from mushrooms) and how psychedelic mushrooms really helped people with depression and anxiety. Mushrooms are really cool; I'm already making a foraging guide for medicinal plants, maybe next I'll make a mushroom guide. When I watched the documentary I was at my friend's house and immediately after I went outside to look for mushrooms (I found none).

Hi! This is a report for my 4th eco-challenge where I had to watch a documentary about food. In their recommended documentary there was one about Monsanto in Hawaii. This documentary brought back memories because I remembered learning about this in middle school. In middle school I didn't really understand what Monsanto was doing in Hawaii, I just remember my teachers telling me it was bad. But it is interesting to learn about it and actually understand why people were so adamant about getting Monsanto off the islands. In the documentary, they mentioned that people were getting agent orange poisoning because of the run-off from Monsanto farms. It's crazy how a foundation created to serve native Hawaiians would allow Monsanto to destroy the land.

For this week's eco-challenge I decided to explore a new nature walk in my area. I was planning on going on a hike this weekend but I got sick so I wasn't able to go on the hike. I did notice that after selecting this eco-challenge I was paying attention to the nature around me. I found this frozen puddle while walking through the park at PSU and it was really pretty, I took a few photos. Since I was paying attention to nature in a different way than before I decided to count that as this week's eco-challenge.

Eco-Challenge 2
For this week's eco-challenge I decided to say no to plastic straws. Since I usually always say no to plastic straws I decided to take it a step further and bring my own cup. Some stores don't let you bring your own cup but Ding Tea PSU allows it! Using a mason jar was really nice because I could just put a lid on my drink if I wanted to take it to go.

I wanted to reduce the number of animal products/ meat that I eat. I misread the eco-challenge and said that I would eat 5 vegan and/or vegetarian meals every day. I thought it meant that would eat 5 vegan and/or vegetarian meals during the week, which is what I did. When I said I completed the challenge it said I had 70 meals... I don't think anyone eats 5 meals a day LOL.
Anyways, for my 5 vegan/ vegetarian meals I had: tofu stirfry two times, acai bowls for breakfast two times, around 3 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, two days I had peanut butter toast for breakfast, and I also had a vegan burger for dinner. In conclusion last week I had a total of 10 vegan/ vegetarian meals.
I learned that it's not very hard to cook for yourself and buy foods that are vegan or vegetarian. Some struggles along the way were that I was putting off grocery shopping for a really long time so I was running out of food, hence all of the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I ate. I also don't really like to cook so I think that made it harder for me.