So Many Books To Read, So Little Time...

I always seem to get excited about something and then I go overboard with it...
That's what is happening now with my new "Green " life, I have my library working on getting me a ton of books I want to read - I actually have two going right now:

"Better Off Flipping the Switch On Technology" by Eric Brende
This young couple try and live an "Amish" type life with no modern technology, I am enjoying the book so far. I have always had a interest in living around the Amish. I find them to be very interesting, but I doubt I could go that bare bones...

"American Wasteland" by Jonathan Bloom
Talks about how wasteful americans are with our food, I've only just started it so can't comment on it yet.

I hate having two books going at the same time! But I am so wrapped up in all of this I want to learn as much as I can "Right Now"....

I also really can't wait to read "Sleeping Naked is Green" by Vanessa Farquharson. To be honest I don't really like technical books, I would rather read an enjoyable easy read book.

If you have ready any goodies that you can suggest I'd love to take a look at them : )

Going Vegetarian...

I have to say it has been a bit easier then I thought moving away from meat.
I did not tell my family early last week what we were having, just cooked it up and put it out on their plates and they ate it.
We have been doing pretty good, We did have hotdogs one night.... : (
We are using a number of the Boca Foods & MorningStar Farms "meats" to help us replace our need for the meat on our plate.
Some are better than others, We tried the MorningStar chicken nuggets tonight, Not our favorites. We loaded on BBQ sauce and they were edible but not really what I was hoping for. I really need to write down the ones we try and which brand we like better so as not to keep buying the ones that are so so.... This week at Target the MorningStar products are on sale for $2.99 each but so far we are liking the Boca brand a bit better.

No More Paper Plates

I'm pretty proud of myself.... I have done away with paper plates!
I used alot of paper plates in the past because they were so much easier for me and required no washing of the dishes. We wasted soooo many plates just using one for a sandwich and tossing, such a waste!
I went to the Dollar Tree and looked around for a light weight plate, I was hoping for a pyrex type but they didn't have any of those. They did have a Coke-Cola plate not sure what they are made of but they are really light which I was looking for, I paid $1.00 for each plate and bought 4 of them. I am really trying to NOT buy new things, I want to buy used but this time I really wanted to stop the paper plates useage a soon as possible and these worked for me.

What Awakened Me To This New Journey

Sometimes things just jump out at you which makes you think "What the heck have I been thinking or doing for the past say 26 years"?...
That is the kinda feeling I got when I read about the Johnsons Family and then found Bea's blog "The Zero Waste Home" . I have always hated my disposable generation's attitude of "buy it new,use it up & throw it out"! I have to say I have been apart of that mind set also for many years which is strange to me because both my parents lived thru the depression as children and always treasured each thing they owned, used up every once of food that we had, fixed things instead of buying new, ect. but I think they had is so hard that they gave me way to much stuff of everything that I never valued things but in my heart I always new it wasn't a good thing to be throwing out so much stuff.
One story that comes to mind is when we used to gather my uncles & cousins together and all make a trip to the dump, those days you could drive right up to the massive pile and dump off your garbage, you would also see the huge holes they would be digging to burry all this junk and I don't mean just household garbage there would be ovens, chairs, couches, anything you didn't want was at the dump and had to be disposed of. My family would always do some "Picken" and find some great treasures we would take home with us. My father always said what a shame that so many people threw things out that could easily be fixed or just given a fresh coat of paint and would be as good a new.
Anyway, all this has given me a renewed excitement to try and NOT throw out so much things to load up the landfills & to find ways of using up what we have!

Paper Towel

Okay I will admit to you all right now I am a major paper towel user : (
This is one area that I CAN really make changes... What I have done so far is get out the dish towels my mother-in-law gave me for Christmas and am using them to dry my hands, dry dishes ect. which has been going very well.
My biggest problem area for using paper towel is for getting rid of dog waste! I have a number of dogs and need to pick-up alot of dog waste over the course of a day. Yes, I have been also using a dreaded plastic bag to assist in my pick-up so that even adds to the problem area since I want to move away from using plastic bags altogether.
I have been looking into dog waste composting, not sure if that will work for me or not still thinking that over.
I will be reseraching the web for other ideas on how to stop using so many paper towels.
I did find this site which has alot of ideas & tips:
How to Live Green

Where To Start....

I am busting at the seems to start everything I am hoping to change in my life (see "About Me" on the side of this blog).
But where to start.... My first goal is to try and eat only vegetarian meals. I am not a very good cook to begin with and I have to say we eat very limited vegs. (corn, cream corn, peas & stringbeans and all are canned). Our fruit intake is even worse, I hate to say it but we seldom have fruit to eat. We always have some kind of meat at lunch & dinner. Seldom do we eat breakfest at all. Soooo you can see this will be a big undertaking trying to change our way of eatting. I know it won't happen over night but any changes I can make will move us into a more healthier way.
My first step has been to get some very beginner vegetarian cookbooks from our local library & since I am hoping to get my daughter to become involved with my journey I am going to get some children cookbooks also:
Kids Can Press "The Jumbo Vegetarian Cookbook"
"Vegetarian Cooking For Beginners"
Both books are very basic but that is what we need at this time to just really get an understanding of being a vegetarian.