It is interesting to me how the whole “green lifestyle” thing can grab you and take you places you never thought you’d be.
For example. two years ago, after I decided I wanted to consciously do things to help the environment, I did things like change lightbulbs, be even more cautious about saving water and recycle more. I didn’t let myself stop there. I read books and studied newspaper articles and did web research. By last summer, I had started a vegetable garden in the backyard. This year, I am baking my own bread.
I thought that lightbulbs would be enough.
To me, if you’re really researching and thinking about living green and fully trying to understand the impact of how we currently live our lives, you can’t help but want to run into the hills and just start over. Now I’m researching how landfills work and realizing that we are mummifying tons of trash each week on a planet with limited space. And we are feeding ourselves and our children food grown with chemicals and processed with chemicals and packaged with chemicals that are not only bad for the environment, but for our whole bodies – our brains and our reproductive systems. What else is more important to a human than the ability to think and reproduce?
About a month ago I had asked my 5-year old son to tell Daddy that Mommy wanted an ice-cream maker for Mother’s Day. It was an experiment to see if I could channel my desires through my child straight to the other purchasing power in the family in order to get what I wanted instead of the same gift he’s given me every special occasion for many years! It worked – I got the ice-cream maker. I also got a bread machine.
The ice-cream maker is still sitting in it’s box.
I am currently waiting for the 5th loaf since last Sunday to finish baking. We’ve enjoyed French Bread, Potato Bread, Hawaiian Bread, Buttermilk Whole Wheat Bread and tomorrow – Maple Buttermilk Bread. It is fresh, chemical and preservative free. It wasn’t packaged in plastic or shipped on a truck. No – I don’t live on a farm and Yes – the ingredients were packaged and shipped, but in much more environmental ways than grocery-store bread. The organic flour
companies tend to use more recycled content packaging than the more commercial brands. And the ingredients use much less packaging than the 2-3 loaves of grocery-store bread I used to purchase each week.
I made a point of not purchasing bread this week – I wanted us (and me) to have no other option but to make bread. And it went well. All week, I approached each day eager to look through the bread machine recipe book and choose something new. It was fun. And bread machines are so easy. You basically load the ingredients into the loaf bucket, put it in the machine, choose your bread cycle and press Start. It really is that easy – and the cleanup is great. Just some measuring cups/spoons and a little spilled flour from the countertop.
The best part is the smell and taste of fresh, warm bread. And this old-fashioned feeling that I am doing something right.
This sounds so good.