angel sanchez

For this week I wanted to share my adventure at the eco cafe I went to a couple weeks ago for the volunteer activity. We made plant based dishes including vegetable miso soup and a dehydrated onion cracker, topped with a hazelnut cheese sauce, topped with sauerkraut. Most of the produce used was sourced from a local farm and all of the waste we produced from it was bundled together to use for compost. I am new to vegan food and I was surprised with how it tasted.

This week and last week the weather was really nice so I decided to get off a couple stops early from the max stop I usually get off at and walk to campus. Usually I would get off at pioneer square and take either the green or orange line to campus but I decided to get off at the goose hollow stop and take the twenty minute walk. It takes roughly around the same time to get to school and the walk isn't too bad so I decided when the weather is good I'm going to take that walk.

This week I had some leftover herbs that I had no plans of using but because of that they were starting to go bad. What I did instead of throwing them out was that I put them in my oven on the lowest temperature and basically dehydrated them to create dried herbs. Soup season is here guys and putting herbs into vegetable based or meat based stocks really amplifies the flavor of them. Just remember dried herbs should be added early because the flavors tend to be more dormant and need time to be released. The herbs I dehydrated were thyme, parsley, basil and some dill that I had left over from pickling. I'm also planning on making some tomato sauce later this week and I'm excited about adding the dried thyme and basil. Dill is a little powerful and not as versatile as the other herbs in my opinion but because they are now dried, the shelf life is now longer than when they were fresh.

Yesterday my family finished harvesting the last of the tomatillos that we had in our backyard garden and i thought i would share in this weeks eco challenge as part of eco-friendly gardening and food waste. They're kind of similar to tomatoes and are used often in Mexican cuisine, usually in salsas. If you ever go to a Mexican restaurant and have green salsa know that they're most likely going to be made with tomatillos. My family plants them every year and freeze them whenever we have too many. We also sometimes give them away to friends and family just so they don't go to waste but I want to try pickling some of them just to see how they taste. They're not usually eaten raw so it should be interesting to see how they turn out.

This week's reading made me reflect on my personal plastic use and how that may impact the environment. I was reflecting on the products I use most that contain plastic and looking around my room I noticed all the empty bags of chips in my trash can. I go through a bag of chips at least once a week. What stood out to me the most from the reading was the fact that plastic is a relatively recent invention that began to gain popularity in the 1950’s. The fact that we have generated this much plastic waste in no more than 100 years is terrifying. It's already an alarming problem that is still in its infancy and I can't see how we as a society can keep wasting this much plastic. It's also alarming that the seafood we consume is most likely to have plastic in them through contaminated and polluted waters. I've been working at a grocery store for the past three years and the number of reusable bags I have been seeing has fortunately increased since 5 cent paper bags were implemented instead of free plastic ones. Unfortunately, the amount of plastic we use for storage and a lot of the products that we sell use large amounts of plastic.

yesterday I was craving some cucumbers so I went to the store and decided to buy the organic ones. I'ts nothing big but this is probably the first time I've bought organic products willingly. Since my project is based around food preservation I want to get in the habit of getting organic products. I'm starting at grocery stores now but I'm excited to visit farmer markets later and hopefully find some quality products and meet people in that side of the industry.

I figured and easy and quick change I can make to my personal sustainability efforts was to switch back to public transportation. Around January of this year I bought a car which made getting to school much faster and easier for me. the commute to PSU from Forest Grove on the max is about an hour and thirty minutes compared to the forty minute drive. But now gas is super expensive and that combined with parking fees is too much for me. luckily my max card isn't expired and all I have to do is add funds to it online. The downside is that I have to wake up earlier for my morning classes and I am not a morning person whatsoever but it honestly wasn't that bad when I would take the max. I also don't have to worry about parking and getting my car broken into which is fun. My first time riding the max since last school year was Monday and I hope to continue it for the remainder of the year.