How To Ruin a Good Idea

Walmart ran the first recycling program in Lawrence. The Walmart on South Iowa included a separate building with drive-up parking. The long building had a series of large openings with roll-up windows, one window for each of the various types of materials – white paper, newspapers, mixed paper, cardboard, chipboard, aluminum, and separate boxes for different numbered plastics. 

Under each window was a large cardboard box to catch the deposits. Walmart employed cognitively challenged people who watched to make sure only the appropriate materials went into each category. The employees took pride in their jobs and policed the contributions vigorously. Consequently, all the recycled materials were clean and, consequently, totally recyclable. When a box was full, they emptied it into the appropriate bin and replaced it. During the hours the center was open there were always people unloading their recycling materials and placing them in the appropriate boxes.

Then the City of Lawrence instituted its own recycling program. The city provided each household with a rolling container for all recycling. Happy residents threw everything into the container. Consequently, the recycled materials were contaminated with everything from greasy pizza cartons to dirty diapers. These recycled materials were, of course, not recyclable.

Walmart, which had done a fine job of handling recycling responsibly, closed their recycling operation.

You can count on human beings to make a good idea unworkable through our love of convenience.

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer

The Pause that Refreshes

Do you drink Coke? I do. I’m not one of those folks who drink a Coke for breakfast. No, I’m horrified that these people understand so little about what their bodies need to function. However, there are times when I feel the need for a treat and times when my stomach is queasy and those are times when I want a Coke – a Coke made in Mexico.

I first heard of “Mexican Coke” when we went to Arizona for the winter. We looked up other people from Kansas who live there. Some we never sought out again, but others became dear to us. They are musicians, good musicians who play at a small—batch brewery on Sunday afternoons.

We became fans and attended regularly. The bar pays them and expects that increased patronage will offset the band’s fee. That makes sense, but I’m not a fan of beer drinking, but I noticed the bar’s menu board which listed, in addition to their several brews, Mexican Coke. 

I tried a Mexican Coke and found it tasted so good it became my drink of choice when we went to the Sunday sessions. Then the brewery’s hard benches became a deterrent, and our attendance became sporadic.

A few weeks later I found myself wanting a Coke, specifically a Mexican one. I thought I’d have to go to a Mexican tienda to buy it, but I soon learned that most grocery stores in Arizona carry it. Now that I’m back in Kansas I can buy it here, too.

Mexican Coke bottle

There’s actually a controversy nationally about the difference between Mexican-made and U.S. made Coke. Mexico uses cane sugar but the U.S. uses high-fructose corn syrup to sweeten their Coke. Moreover, there’s a trade war over it. The controversy spawned two appeals to the World Trade Organization. 

Afficianados of the two kinds argue over taste. “Mexican Coke doesn’t have that ‘chemical’ taste that U.S. Coke has.” “Nonsense,” the U.S. group respond, “sweetness is sweetness whether it comes from cane sugar or corn.”

Those who favor Coke heche en Mexico argue that the traditional curvy glass bottle is more aesthetically appealing than an aluminum can or plastic bottle. Some even claim that Coke’s taste is adversely affected by aluminum cans or plastic bottles.

Yet another argument is that the choice of Mexican over U.S. Coke is an ideological choice, a protest against globalization

This hubbub amuses me. I drink Mexican Coke for one reason only: it tastes better. After a couple of sips of U.S. Coke, I don’t want any more of its metallic aftertaste. Mexican Coke is sweet and smooth, like a good bar of chocolate, and distinctly preferable. In fact, I’m sipping one right now.

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer

Going with the Grain

For many years I’ve avoided refined flour, bleached or unbleached. My attitude toward refined flour started when I noticed that grain moths never show up in refined flour. They know there are no nutrients in it and that it would not support life. I noticed also that whole wheat flour in the cabinet had to be protected from grain moths. If moths got in the flour, they would thrive and reproduce.

Why then, do humans go to a great deal of trouble to remove the nutritious parts off wheat so we can eat whitebread, muffins, biscuits, croissants, and scones? Why do we eat pasta made from refined flour?  This stuff is just starch. Its nutrition is the equivalent of library paste.

I’ve made whole wheat bread for many years, buying whole wheat flour in 25-pound bags. But recently I accidentally ordered a 25-pound bag of whole wheat berries instead of flour. My first thought when the bag arrived was that we could feed the berries to our chickens. But I asked Laurie’s opinion and she said that cooked wheat berries have culinary uses. This triggered a memory from my childhood. Every year when Dad harvested wheat on his farm, his sister Janet, would beg him for some wheat berries to cook. Dad indulged her, but we thought her eating habits strange.

Now, I wondered whether I might be missing something. Being rather cowardly, I gave some berries to friends to try. Everyone loved them, so I cooked a cupful and made the cooked berries into a salad, adding diced cucumber, tomato, green onions, and red pepper, with lemon juice and vinegar as a dressing. The result was much like a tabouli salad, but chewier. It was delicious!

Now I’m sold on cooked wheat berry salad and have some berries cooking right now. I haven’t whether to make a salad with an oriental slant or an Indian-inspired salad with curry. Whichever I decide, I expect it to be good.  I'm having fun going with the grain.

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer

The Mayo Caper

After studying the condiment aisle filled with plastic containers, I decided to rebel by making my own condiments. The mayonnaise jar in our fridge was almost empty and I decided to start there. I scoured the internet for recipes. 

I’d heard how difficult mayo can be. There’s the situation where the mixture just won’t emulsify. I’ve read about a way to rework the ingredients to give emulsification a second chance. I’ve also read that one is advised to throw the failure away and start over. This information deterred me. As a Depression baby, I am ingrained with frugality and can’t bear thinking about throwing food away.

I was also intimidated by the descriptions of using a wire whisk to beat the oil one drop at a time into the other ingredients. How long would a person have to wield a whisk to incorporate the oil? Five minutes? Ten minutes? Even longer?

So I came to the internet search expecting confirmation of these concerns. To my amazement, however, I learned about mayonnaise made in one or two minutes using an immersion blender. My immersion blender has become a major kitchen appliance, right up there with the stand mixer, and I know how easy it is to use. No whisking is required. One merely has to hold the blender and watch the miracle emulsification occur.

Whisking was no longer an issue, so I just needed a recipe and, if possible, advice from someone who makes their own mayonnaise. Mayonnaise recipes abound, so I just had to try them until I found one I loved.

My first attempt made a thin mayo and tasted overwhelmingly like olive oil.  I learned that lesson, and ditched the olive oil in favor of safflower oil for my second batch.  Linda’s son Ben shared his recipe and I used those ingredient. This batch was a little thicker in consistency, but it didn’t seem zippy enough in light of my lifetime consumption of Miracle Whip, 

The third time’s the charm, and this third recipe seemed almost perfect to me. There's more acid, both vinegar and lemon juice, so the taste is zippier, not Miracle Whip zippy, but coming close. The consistency needs tweaking just a bit. I had difficulty mixing it into my coleslaw dressing, but it spreads nicely for Dennis’s sandwiches. Before beginning to tweak the consistency, I need to know more about the chemistry of emulsion and that calls for research.

How can one resist the plastic tide? One plastic jar at a time, that’s how. I won’t be sending any more Miracle Whip jars through the so-called “recycling” which will end up in the dump. This will hardly make a difference, but it’s all I can do. There’s a bonus for me, though, because I’m having fun learning to make mayonnaise and look forward to learn about making mustard when the plastic mustard container in our fridge is empty.

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer

Off To the Dump We Go, Part Two

Walmart ran the first recycling program in Lawrence. The store on South Iowa included a separate building with drive-up parking. The long building had a series of large openings with roll-up windows, so the facility could be closed up at night. Inside the building a line of large cardboard boxes sat beneath the windows, one for each of the various types of materials – white paper, newspapers, mixed paper, magazines, cardboard, chipboard, aluminum, tin cans, and separate boxes for each of the different numbered plastics. 

Through Cottonwood, Inc., Walmart employed people with developmental disabilities who watched to make sure only the appropriate materials went into each category. When a box was full, an employee emptied and replaced it. 

Sitting beside the recycling building were three dumpsters for glass containers, one each for clear, brown, and green glass. The green and brown dumpsters smelled strongly of beer.

This system had two great advantages. One, disabled people found useful employment. Two, the recycling was sorted by citizens as they deposited their materials, under the watchful eyes of sharp-eyed employees.

Then, when the city of Lawrence decided to begin weekly curbside recycling pickup, Walmart closed the recycling center. And that’s when the whole concept of recycling fell apart. Now, those who chose to recycle didn’t need to sort anything. Citizens simply put all recycled materials in one big bin. I suppose the sorting fell to city employees or other hapless person. If someone chose to toss a dirty diaper into recycling, who was to know? If newspapers and other paper materials got wet, who cared? If the peanut butter jar wasn't clean, so what?

No one should blame the Chinese for refusing to sort through our garbage in order to reprocess the salvageable materials. They quit taking our stuff.

Once again, Americans’ love of ease and convenience was our downfall.

The Sierra Club, in its July/August issue, assesses the recycling nightmare in an article titled “Trash Talk,” and concludes that the recycling system is broken. The article’s advises us to put everything in landfills until we can figure out a better way. I recommend that we look to Walmart for a workable solution.

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer

Off The the Dump We Go, Tra-la

Plastics don’t rot the way organic things such as vegetables, cotton clothing, or dead humans do. Plastics just break into smaller and smaller bits. That’s why sea creatures aren’t the only life forms consuming plastic; bits of plastic are in our drinking water, our table salt, and even mothers’ milk.¹

But wait, we recycle most of our waste materials, don’t we? No, actually, only about 14 percent of solid waste is recycled. (Estimates vary from 10 percent to 17 percent.) The remainder ends up in landfills, rivers, the ocean, and beaches.

And what happens to the materials we do recycle? As an article in the New York Times explained:

“In the past, the municipalities would have shipped much of their used paper, plastics and other scrap materials to China for processing. But as part of a broad antipollution campaign, China announced last summer that it no longer wanted to import ‘foreign garbage.’ ”²

China let us down and other Asian countries have followed its lead. They are shipping tonsof trash back to the countries where it originated, including the United States, Canada, and Mexico. ³

What will we do with this trash? To get an idea of the problem, I watched an NBC story on line.⁴ The story left me even more distressed and I wish everyone would watch it. Then maybe we could take on the real problem, which an unfortunate blend of our lifestyle and the politically powerful plastic manufacturers.

1. “Plastic in Your Drinking Water, Table  Salt & Mother’s Milk,” earthdecks.com

2. “Your Recycling Gets Recycled, Right? Maybe, or Maybe Not” , May 20, 2018, New York Times.

3.“Malaysia has started returning tons of trash to the west: 'we will not be the dumping ground of the world'”, Newsweek, June 20, 2019.

4.“Recycling Breaks Down: US Struggles to Keep Plastic From the Dump”, NBC, Aug 13, 2018, Broadcast by Chanel 4, Washington.

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domethem strongerr

Plastic Kills, but Who Cares?

Dead whales wash up on beaches. Why did they die? Could it be the 48, 67, or 88 pounds of plastic in their stomachs?*

Photo found on the internet.

Whales aren’t the only ones dying. Plastic kills millions of sea turtles, sea lions, seals, fish, and sea birds each year. Either they mistake it for food and eat it or they become helplessly entangled in large pieces of plastic such as nets, bags and fishing line.

Well, heck, who cares about dead whales, anyway? We need our conveniences. Manufacturers must enjoy the profit from low shipping costs of plastic containers.  Humans are the most important species and we can’t be expected to look out for other species. They will have to look out for themselves and deal with our plastic waste.

* Whales are also dying because their food cannot thrive in warmer ocean temperatures, so the whales starve. But that issue is for another day.

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer