Plastics Are Bumming Me Out

Last week at an after-work reception, I met Lisa Boyle, the co-founder of Plastic Pollution Coalition.  We talked about food when we met, not plastic.  At home, I looked at her card and thought, "I'm actually really good about not using plastic."

That may be a true statement, but it weighed on me like it may have been uttered from a space of denial. I'm a fairly responsible consumer, I don't drink many bottled drinks, I have a stainless steel water bottle, I shop at the farmer's markets with my own bags, how much more Southern California can I be? What's in my kitchen that is plastic?

Well, just about everything. Even worse, silicone heat-safe spatulas are invaluable to me while baking. They do everything, and well. Uh oh.

I flip and scrub my vegetables with plastic.

Top 8 most-used kitchen items, or, the last items in the moving box.

There have been a few travelin' posts up in my social medias lately.  These correspond with work trips to Washington, DC, Boston, and a move between apartments taking place this week.  During a moment of frazzled procrastination, I hovered over the last open box of kitchen items, to be shut the morning of moving day, and observed.

The last things used and placed into a box marked "kitchen" were:

Top three kitchen maintenance must-haves.

Just three things?  Yep.

You do not have to be a brand fan in the kitchen to reach the pinnacle of functional kitchen tools.  Some of my most durable kitchen instruments were thrift store finds that I compare to their similar best-in-class items, and here's why; I maintain what I've got with three items below.

Rescued thrift store knife, dollar store cutting board.

1. A diamond-dust knife sharpening steel.  This is not the straightening steel with narrow grooves that came with the 14-piece butcher block given as a wedding gift in 1975.  Used once a week, (or more) a diamond-dust sharpening steel creates a half-straightening half-sharpening life for knives in between professional sharpenings.  This steel turned a Goodwill fiddycent find into my loving compadre's favorite knife in the kitchen, and one which I will stand up to my favorite Global 5-inch vegetable knife. I use a Wusthof sharpener, but I found this Henckel's on Amazon for $45.

The math: $.50 knife + $45 steel = $45.50 for a $75 knife + maintenance for all your other knives.

Holiday gift ideas. Or, kitchen items I can't live without.

In matters of gift-giving, I have learned over the seasons to not look for the thing that my fellow food lovers do not have, like a triple-speed, dual-direction immersion blender with 64 attachments, but to update the standbys in their kitchens with heavy-duty stylish pieces.   Below are some workhorses, must-haves and multitaskers, a few of whose price tags I justify by believing that they become someone's faithful kitchen companions for decades. 

Staub tea kettle. Okay fine, this is one that I am living without.  I've wanted it for years, but the German in me already has a Le Creuset tea kettle that works fine, so it goes against my grain to buy another tea kettle.  This hefty cast iron thing of beauty does not whistle, but its design alone makes it an impressive kitchen addition. About $120 at Sur la Table

Craft day.

Materials for one crafty afternoon:
  One cabinet door
  One paintbrush
  One small jar chalkboard paint
  One box chalk
Optional:
  One beer

Method:
Find an unused cabinet door at your friend's restaurant and take it home with you, taking care to determine the closeness of the friendship when gauging permissions required to leave with property.

A better bag.

Last time I took a field trip into my bag, it weighed over ten pounds. While watching the first debate between two candidates for California's next governor Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman last night, I dove back in to my provisions.  It turns out already being irritated (by pre-scripted and unpossible banter) makes for a perfect time to rid the handbag of irritating things. So thanks, future governor of California. You removed exactly six pounds from my daily schlep.

Previously, the bag weighed 10.4 pounds. It is all in a new, lighter bag and now weighs 4.2 pounds. One change however, the computer now lives in its own bag to split the weight across my shoulders. So, the net loss of weight is actually only three pounds, but I'd like to think it's smarter weight, not harder.

The highlights of new contents:

One pair sunglasses
One pair reading glasses
Small pile o' change
One orange reusable shopping bag (the stores I've been to in Denver don't offer bags for  purchases anymore, which is a lovely vote for the environment but one a shopper must prepare for)
One knitting project
A stack of papers, tickets, notes - I should probably buy a notebook
One cloth handkerchief, my vote for the environment.
A set of headphones
Two individually wrapped hygienic towelettes
One package Shesheido rice paper oil blotters.  My father once apologized for passing down the Reinhardt nose.  I need to get my mother to apologize for the oil-slick T-zone genes on that nose.
Dental floss
The only business card that remains is the dude at the Santa Monica Apple store. Thankfully, I enrolled in the best educational deal around, Apple's One-to-One classes so I can formalize my lack of knowledge into a student-teacher format. Poor guy.
One roller ball pen and sticky notes pad, which if I go crazy I can also lose and use the iPhone notepad feature, but I'm just not ready for this kind of advancement yet.
Hair ties and a hair clip
One Stila lip tint.  Even though this represents very little weight, I am very proud of the fact that I removed three of the four lip treatments from my bag.  This felt a little like addressing an emerging psychological disorder; painful, but relieving to face facts.
One wallet containing cards and never enough cash.
Not shown: iPhone, which I used to take the photo.

My shoulder hurts.

One of two things happen when I reach into my handbag.
1. I cannot find what I am looking for.
2. I get stabbed by my Army-issue can opener attached to my key ring.

Occasionally, both will happen, and that is especially irritating.



So, today, I played a little game of Operation on my bag. The bag and its contents weighs 10.4 pounds, which represents 9.8% of my body weight, and contains the following:



One NYC cab receipt
One Grand Spa LA receipt - sauna this past Sunday
One business card for a nails joint in Santa Monica, CA
One key card from the New York Hilton from a stay a month and a half ago
One business card for a dude at the Apple Store, Santa Monica, CA
One pamphlet explaining the benefits of Apple One-to-One education program and other random informational documents secured by a Starbuck's java jacket
One receipt from Banana Republic - sweater I am intending to return
Three day-pass tickets for public parking in Santa Monica, CA
A pile of change
three hair ties
One EcoLips lip balm
One MAC lipstick in Skew color
dental floss
One LipTints SPF8 tinted lip balm
One package Shesheido rice paper oil blotting papers for face
One tube of Bliss lemon hand cream
One pill case used as a jewelry case, with two pairs of earrings, one ring and one bracelet inside.
Two jump drives, one 1 gig, one 500 megs and was a freebie from the Playtex booth at the BlogHer 2010 conference in NYC
One sunglasses eyeglass case, with sunglasses
One reading glasses eyeglass case, with glasses
One digital camera
One Blackberry cellular telephone
One Samsung Epic cellular telephone
One wallet containing cards, receipts, cash and a Stila lip tint
One bag organizer for purses containing a mini LED flashlight
One Leatherman multi-tool
One package of "sleep aids" that I have no idea what they're doing there.
One MacBook Pro and charger, not seen in picture because I am using it to blog.
One Moleskine notebook
Two rollerball pens
One small pad of Post-It brand sticky notes
One 4 gig SD mini storage card
One handkerchief
My set of keys that have grown to janitor size

I did some math. That's too much stuff. I will be paring down this week to things worth getting stabbed in the hand to retrieve.