The Launch!

The time has come...

I have finally started writing publicly: I mean FULLY public. I've been keeping 2 blogs for a few weeks now and working on a base for the public one while keeping things more personal on here. The perks of splitting up the blogs is that I have adopted a slightly different voice on the other one, or tried to, and now I can separate my day-to-day and my environmental rants. I do, however, hope that they won't be rants any longer, but rather, carefully thought-out arguments or just ideas for how to lead a more sustainable life. If would mean a lot to me if you checked it out and subscribed:

abcsofgreenliving.blogspot.com

You can also leave comments more easily on the new blog, no log-in required.
Enjoy,

i.

P.S. I'll still post here though, don't worry, this link won't expire.

P.P.S. Photo credit here.

From the Pirkka cooking magazine.

Juha helped me a lot. I almost screwed it up with x8 too much milk. But alas, quick thinking got the job done ;)

A little bit of shopping!

In recent efforts to be more ecological, I've started buying soaps without any kind of packaging. Remember the days before liquid soap? They look especially beautiful when you buy them in bulk and then have a photo shoot!






I also finally bought a new pair of shoes. I thought it was impossible to find shoes in Tampere in the summer... and it pretty much is if you're going to the average stores like Sokos or Stockmann. So instead I hit up this small shoe shop I've had my eye on called Piubello. [They don't have a website but this is their FB page.]

Cooked up a storm.

I asked Juha what he wanted for dinner and told him we had an avocado that needed to be eaten. "Salad" he says. I looked in the fridge and found zucchini and leek that needed to be eaten too. And he'd mentioned a soup the day before so I made that also.




How beautifully fresh does this broccoli look? SO fresh, in fact, that there was a worm that shat all over it. I couldn't quite enjoy my meal knowing that... even though I picked out all the shit and threw the worm out the window. No mercy in my kitchen!





The avocado was no longer edible.

Food pie.

Practice makes perfect...



I've come a long way from the store-bought, plastic-wrapped pie bases and have ventured out to make my own food pies, from scratch. (Mette and I call them food pies, but I guess it's more of a quiche or something... whatever you wanna call it, I made this a few days ago and I was pretty proud.)

Changing leaves and new ideas

I've been brainstorming about ideas for a new blog lately, but this time, I think I wouldn't replace this one with the new, but rather, keep both. Or start several... I haven't decided yet. But as you all know, I've had green on the brain recently: green living, the environment, green-eating, recycling, reusing, reducing...and all the like. So Today I had a thought and I figured I'd just blog about it: how about a blog with tips and tricks for living a more sustainable life. There are lots of blogs out there who aim to do this and quite well, but in my case, I would like to recommend material while also giving you some food for thought and small challenges along the way. Each tip could be single or have various degrees of commitment or intensity Hanna (like buying something with less plastic vs. No plastic, both of which are better than a larger amount of plastic.)
I'm sitting on the idea for now or I might start blogging and share the link later when I have a little metaphorical meat on it.

Also, I finally got a reply from that design program I applied for, 6 months ago. (don't get me started on how difficult it was to get a result out of them after they sent out emails, forgot to send me a rejection and then the office cleared out for the summer.) but in the end, maybe some courses in sustainability would be more beneficial anyway. Only time will tell!

We break a plate. I make a painting.

The subject of this post says it all. The plate broke a few weeks ago, or a few days ago at least, and it's been sitting on the kitchen counter ever since. To save the tears we cried over the broken Arabia plate, I decided to make something of it. So yes, it's a work in progress... but I'm glad to have started at least :)

Immigration debate shifts?

I read a thought-provoking article in the New York Times this morning about the effects that the Norway shooting has had on the immigration debate in Europe over the past few days.

Here's the article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/28/world/europe/28europe.html?hp

I'll post some thoughts shortly.

Whole Foods.

By now some of you may have heard about the disgruntled Whole Foods employee who recently quit his job and sent out a company-wide email with many of the company's faults. Although I don't care much for the gossip, I can see how one could become annoyed with a company green-washing down to its core and yet being so obviously oblivious to its environmental impact. You can read it here.

As a rule though, don't expect too much from grocery stores... they only sell what people will buy. This applies to many shops that still want to do what's right but need to pay the bills. So as a wise friend of mine once said (and it's been said before) "every purchase you make is a political decision."

Hakasen Leipomo!

I found a bakery and it's perfect! It's only about a 5 minute bike-ride away and there actually aren't too many in Tampere so we're lucky to live so close to one! They had two types of bread today: Mallasleipä (malt bread) and a regular white bread. We got the malt bread and it's pretty delicious!

Photo credit here. And no, it wasn't snowing when we went there but that's the picture from their website ;)

Extra points go to the lady serving us for complimenting the cloth towel I brought in instead of taking the bread with me in their paper/plastic bags. (Even though I didn't understand a word she said until Juha told me when we got home haha!)

A challenge you say?

I haven't written anything about the environment in a few days and that's because I took the week off. Noticing everything got really stressful and I got pretty overwhelmed so I gave myself a few days off. That's not to say I've forgotten everything but some products around the house need to be used up before I can switch and we still need running water so while I figure out some stuff and conduct some research, I've tried to stress less and keep looking for alternatives.

I've started keeping a mental list of food products that will need to be replaced. Among the worst culprits are bread and feta cheese. They come in plastic but of course there are alternatives. I'd like to find a good bakery (it's weird how I actually don't know where any of them are) and a place that sells feta and tofu by weight. I know where to get tofu and I've found a place that sells feta too! It's an Oriental/Middle Eastern store right on Hämeenkatu! (Right near Maruseki) I'll look next time to see what it's called.

Alright, so here's the challenge I was referring to in the title of this post:
Measure your eco-footprint! I used to hate these quizes and would just never do them. We had to do it for Social Context of Business once and I was dreading it. But this time, I went looking for the calculator on my own. I tried to estimate some stuff but need to learn more about heating and electricity because I'm not usually the one who pays that bill. Still, it's good to start somewhere:

Click here.

Or if that doesn't work, here's the site: http://myfootprint.org/en/visitor_information/

Part 2: Tobias

Introducing Tobias: (on a bed, at Korjaamo baari, Helsinki)


And again for a day-lit look in front of the famous Helsinki cathedral.


Some of Topi's (Finnish nickname) breathtaking photography skills...

...and some of mine.

At the mökki where we spent our Friday night in Lieso (or as we call it, Lammi)


with some local brew

and fine Finnish craftsmanship (he made it himself!) The hanging twig (not to be confused with the birch tree-ish thing behind it is called a vihta in Finnish. It's used for whipping yourself or your friends in the sauna. I think it's hilarious... and quite therapeutic. It makes the sauna smell nice and opens up your pores.)

and protection from bears thanks to Tobias' washboard abs. (That thing is actually used to roll to boats into the water. But shh.)


There was a little bit of this...

... and a little bit of that...

... and some more of this... (don't be fooled, this is a different fire!)

The next day consisted of many delicious Finnish foodstuffs.


And the night was comparable but spent at a different cottage, on another beautiful lake, with slightly less photo taking...
...and an abundance of wild animals.


P.S. Big thanks to Tobias for posting all these photos on Facebook!

Part 1: JC

The last post was about Chloe's visit and then I realized that I never posted any pictures from JC or Tobias' visit. So here is proof that North Americans have wandered to the Nordic countries! Part 1, Jean-Christophe.







P.S. JC considers picture-taking too stressful so these were the only shots I managed to get of him in Finland. Basically, he has no other proof of being here haha.

Part 3: Chloe [these parts are out of order]

Last week Chloe came to Tampere for a few days. Here are a few snapshots:






My long-lost highschool friend and rhythmic and artistic gymnastics buddy and I hung out, caught up, played Frisbee golf for the first time, went to Lauren's cottage, walked around Tampere (maybe 13km of it), made food and the like. Juha made some guest appearances. Thanks for the visit (and the pictures) Chloe :)

Frustration, disappointment and all their friends.

I had two exciting updates planned today and I started mentally working on them during my bike ride home, but instead, life happened and here I am writing about slightly-unrelated things...

I just got home from teaching English and on my way, I decided to stop by the Armas Maitokauppa (click for pictures) and see if they had milk in stock. (You would think, judging by their name: the dear milk store, that they would always have milk but it comes in on Tuesday and it's usually gone by the time I check later in the week.) They did indeed have milk so I got all excited. ***

***Sidenote: They bring their milk from their farm and milk their own cow so it's pretty fresh AND it comes in a glass bottle... thus the excitement.

So I inquire about the milk, they have some: in a small glass bottle labeled 'kyyttömaito' and in a plastic thingy... round, white, tub-looking thing labeled 'ruokamaito' (food milk.) I was a little nervous to get foodmilk, considering I didn't know what that meant and it came in plastic so I sprung for the bottle.
How much?
2€

Now don't get me wrong, I'm totally willing to pay more for fresh, glass-bottle milk but this bottle is only 0,25L... hardly enough to last one meal. I didn't think too much about it but then, of course, I had to ride my bike home and thoughts do tend to fly through your head even if unintentionally. So I get home and I'm pretty upset. Juha asks if that's the bottle I mentioned on the phone and says: you paid 2€ for that?
I don't want to talk about it.

So I proceed to go sit in the bathroom with the light off and think about it some more... I feel discouraged. Yet I know that this is normal when you're trying to change your habits and when the whole world seems to be pushing you in a completely different direction. So instead of wasting too much time being discouraged, I decided it was high time to make a list of accomplishments to date, and set some goals which I can measure... instead of continuing to feel discouraged (which I do, so I'm hoping this will help) and trying to do everything at once.

My list of accomplishments so far:
+ rode my bike to work every day for the past 2 weeks (minus the days I didn't go to work and that one day after I sat at work wet and cold for 4 hours.)
+ stopped taking the elevator (minus once when I went to bring the vacuum cleaner from the basement)
+ have become hyper aware of the use of plastic in our day-to-day lives, to the point of borderline-panic attacks in the bread section at the grocery store (well that was only once, but now I'm panicking less and using awareness as a substitute.)
+ I've starting looking at various websites for ideas on how to reduce waste in many aspects of life and trying to gather ideas before embarking...

This last 'accomplishment' is probably the one that's making everything very challenging. I haven't fully defined what I'm going to do, minus the vague notion of 'reducing waste' and I've read tons of ideas which I'd love to put into action, yet I feel limited by resources, a language barrier and the fact that I live in a small city where I do not feel some things are readily accessible (which basically means resources and language barriers.)

... but alas, I have a picture post coming up from Chloe's visit and I promise it'll be completely unrelated to the environment, minus our trip out to the cottage and pretty pictures of a setting sun.

Here's a picture of some owls and apples to cheer me up:

You can click on it and go straight to the shop!

Rain rain, go away, come again another day!

I rode my bike to work today. And it rained all night, all morning, then not so much in the afternoon while I sat in the air conditioned office with wet clothes for 4 hours. Then it rained again on my way home...

[Photo credit here.]

Needless to say, it was a tough day.

I was really happy to have Mia and Ville help me out with a project though! They came over and together we made 3 posters for every floor at work. 'What about?' you may ask... about composting! I've noticed we don't have any compost at work and when looking into it, it turns out the cleaning lady stopped using them because no one paid attention to which garbage goes where. We tried to go for a fun but relaxed approach that would make people laugh, and ultimately, compost!

I'll post about whether or not it worked later. [Mia and Ville, don't kill me for putting these online but our names are not on them ;) Thank you sooo much!!]

Strawberry Ice Cream

Today is your usual Tampere Sunday: hot, care-free but a little happen-less. So to keep boredom away, I decided to spend the day trying out some new stuff in the kitchen. I went grocery shopping this morning, and although the market was closed (Sunday! Why? It's open every day of the week when I'm at work...) I still managed to get some fresh Finnish strawberries (plastic-less since I brought my own containers) from the stand outside Stockmann.

This is what ensued...






Then I threw that in some Tupperware (which I already owned) and put it in the freezer. Now, we wait.


**UPDATE**
It's ready!