Garden party

We do a Lammas Festival party every year to celebrate the garden and the first harvest. (Held a little early this year due to other scheduling problems. )

As we were setting up and cleaning up the week before, I started digging around to see what paper plates and plastic glasses and utensils we still had left over from the last one.

Stop.

When you switch over to a more sustainable way of living, it's not just about how you do things and what you buy. You have to rearrange the synapses. It took a slow grinding of the gears for me to absorb the inconsistency of seasonal-local-sustainable served on throw-away plates. So we headed to the thrift store and picked up a giant load of cheap glassware. We got bamboo plates, which we will use til they're unusable, and then compost. We pulled out all of our forks, and just kept washing them all day when we ran out

There are days when I think how silly it is for this one little two-person household to try to save the planet. And then I look at the trash we ended up with yesterday. Namely, none. We gave a party attended by more than 50 people, and did not generate any trash. The food went into the compost. The bottles went into the recycling. The tableware went into the sink. Fifty people from 30 households observed this, including a large percentage of young people, whom we are trying to save the planet for.

Seasonal. Local. Organic. Whole. And trash-free.

Word.


Chamomile-Raspberry-Ginger tea
5 tablespoons chamomile or 6 teabags
1/4 cup fresh raspberries
2 large pieces of candied ginger, diced
4 cups boiling water
2 cups cool water

Steep the chamomile, raspberries and ginger in the boiling water, about 2 hours (until water is cool). Add cool water. pour into ice-cube filled glasses. Garnish with fresh chamomile flowers.