Smells Like Green Spirit

So…I’ve promised myself that I am not taking up any more hobbies, because between making art, learning how to play drums, teaching myself French, watching movies, and reading, I have no time for anything new. Nothing new, you hear me?!

But… I think if I had a flat roof, I would defy my promise to self, and make a rooftop garden. Because I have the awareness of a cave person, I had never heard of rooftop gardens until recently! But they sound so cool!

Square mile after square mile of our cities are covered with cement and asphalt, generating heat and emitting smog out into the atmosphere. Yuck! Did you know that because of this, cities can be around 5 degrees hotter than the land around them? That was one thing that was so wonderful about my roadtrip through the midwest a few months ago…just the rolling hills of beautiful farmland.

The Advantages

Here are the exciting advantage of rooftop gardens:

*It reduces the CO2 emissions of your home, absorbing all the bad stuff you’re putting out there, and improving the air quality.

*It insulates your home (cooler in the summer, warmer in the winter…can’t beat that!).

*It creates a natural habitat for birds and butterflies.

*You can grow fun things like herbs and tomotoes and zucchinis!

*Since there probably aren’t as many trees blocking your roof as there are blocking your yard, it’s the ideal environment for plants to get full sunlight.

*I’ve never used self watering planters, but the website gardeners.com has a list of self watering products to make your rooftop garden even easier. (Note: I’ve never bought anything from them.)

*Rooftop gardens reduce stormwater runoff.

*It can double the life of your roof.

*I’ve heard that the city of Chicago also offers tax breaks for rooftop gardens…I’ll write more on that later!

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I want to start this restaurant review off with this: often times, I do not like vegan food. When I’ve bought vegan cheese at the supermarket, it tasted like feet and death. When I eat fake meats, unless it’s Smart Bacon, it just feels wrong on some level, and tastes either mediocre or bad.

My fella would never have knowingly (I don’t think) set foot in a vegan restaurant, so luckily I didn’t know that’s what this was when I suggested we go there today. A glance at the window, which read, “Karyn’s Concious Comfort Food,” led me to mistakenly believe it was an organic restaurant or something, and it wasn’t until we sat down that we realized what we’d gotten ourselves into. But I’m really glad we did!

The Menu

Nothing on Karyn’s menu has any meat, fish, chicken, dairy, or refined sugars, and they swear “you won’t even miss it!” Appetizers include several pizzas, some hummus and some guacamole, and we ordered the grande taco salad. They have several salads including a wilted spinach salad, several soups including a potato soup, and decadent sounding baskets of deep fried veggies. Entrees include the slab of ribs, the “Southern Comfort” (beans, rice, greens and cornbread), a raw plate and grilled polenta, hot sandwiches like the jerk or steak sandwich, and wraps like the grilled veggie.

The Grande Taco Salad was awesome. I hope heaven has at least one river that flows with whatever they made the soy cheese sauce with, and the guac was pretty killer too. The soy “taco meat” didn’t really imitate real meat, but combined with the chipotle sauce and a jalepeno, I forgave it.

I ordered the spaghetti and meat balls, and though it was good, the meatballs tasted very healthy. I don’t exactly mean that as a compliment, but it’s not exactly a knock either. The “buttered” garlic bread was thick and rich. If it wasn’t clogging my arteries, it had the nice flavor of something that was. I wouldn’t order the meatballs again. They were just okay. they should call them something else: spaghetti and greenballs, spaghetti and healthnuggets. Then I would not have been so saddened by the tempting ruse that I might be chewing on a meatball like substance, when really it was only meatball shaped.

My fella ordered the meatloaf. Again, the “meat”loaf tasted very healthy. It was good, but not the best vegan meatloaf I’ve ever had. The mashed potatoes, however, I wanted poured over my head from a chalice made of gold every evening: they were scrumptious and so good they felt naughty.

From the display of desserts, we chose the carrot cake. It was very very sweet, and very very good. Yum. And yum again.

The Service

Our host, and the gentlemen filling our water glasses were very nice, and very professional. My fella thought our waitress was bad/weird, but I think maybe she hadn’t slept the night before and was just very hungover, and didn’t really care if some people came, sat and waited for a long time and then left, which some people did. I think she was having a bad/weird day. It happens to all of us.

Pros
*C’mon! It’s gourmet, comfort vegan food!! Get in there!!
*Nice location next to art galleries in River North.

(Sort of) Cons
*Although parts of my review might seem harsh, I shouldn’t have expected fake meats to taste real. They didn’t taste real. And that’s not a bad thing.
*I’m hesitant to let one experience decide what the service at Karyn’s is like. I’m going to give the place another shot, because it’s gourmet, comfort vegan food! (Did I mention that yet??)

Contact Info
738 N Wells St
312-587-1050
Website: www.karynraw.com

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It seems like the best place in the Chicago area to buy a used bike besides Craig’s List (which I haven’t done), or a farm auction in Wisconsin (where my friend’s dad buys bikes for $10, but which I would have no idea how to go about doing…) is Working Bikes.

Working Bikes is a non profit collective which, besides selling used and refurbished bikes at reasonable prices, ships bikes to low income people in countries like Nicaragua, Cuba, Kenya, and Ghana to meet their transportation needs…pretty cool, huh?

Mostly run by volunteer staff, Working Bikes funds much of its operation from bike sales at its storefront, located at 1125 S. Western Ave, where you can also buy things like bike locks and bike helmets.

Location and Hours

1125 S. Western Ave

(312) 421-5048

Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday: Noon - 5 pm

Check out their website : www.workingbikes.org

They suggest you get there early on the weekends, especially in the summer months, as the bikes go pretty quickly.

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My friends and I drove out to Berwyn yesterday to see the Spindle. Never heard of Berwyn? It’s a largely depressing looking suburb west of Chicago, that has about two cool things in the whole darn place, one of which is scheduled to be destroyed in about a month by the powers that be, because there just aren’t enough Walgreen’s in the world, and those that exist just aren’t big enough.

Located in Cermack Plaza, the now deceased former owner of the plaza used his own money to commission artists to create works of art for the shopping center. One of the most interesting of these pieces is the Spindle, created by Dustin Shuler.

Strip malls are the bane of the American landscape. Sure, they are functional, but they are depressing eyesores. Does it really take that much more effort and money to make a strip mall even slightly pleasurable to visit or look at? One of my favorite things I remember from art history classes was the strip mall that artist Vito Acconci was commissioned to make beautiful…which I couldn’t find an image of to throw here, but look it up!

The Cermack shopping center already has a Walgreens in it…but they are planning to tear down the Spindle to create a larger, free-standing Walgreens. It hurts the heart!

Visit the Save the Spindle website (www.savethespindle.com) and help save a tiny bit of culture and whimsy in this world!

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The EPA’s Green Power Partnership was created to encourage businesses to switch from conventional fossil fuel based energy systems to renewable systems. You can visit their website to find lists of companies who are utilizing renewable energy systems.

Say, what are renewable energy systems?

Know exactly what renewable energy sources are?

These days, our choices are solar, wind, geothermal, biogas, biomass, and low-impact hydro generated green power.

Just a Bunch of Renewable Hot Air?

Looking at the list of companies that are using renewable energy sources, first I was suprised. So many companies whose products I would hesitate to buy (Pepsi, Johnson and Johnson, Starbucks), were listed as parters. Had I underestimated these companies?

Sure, every little bit helps, but some “award winning” companies listed on the EPA Green Power Partership website use as little as 3% renewable energy. Impressive enough to really be award winning? I’m not so sure. But, at least they’re doing something? Sure. We as consumers can let companies know that we appreciate what they are doing by supporting the products of companies that use renewable energy, and by encouraging companies to use more of it!

Goin’ All the Way: 100% Renewable

So, as some companies only use a small portion of renewable energy…what companies use 100% renewable energy? Well, the EPA has published a list appropriately called 100% Green Power Purchasers.

Some of those listed as 100% Green Power Purchasers are:

* Whole Foods
*Pepsi Co
* The EPA (Thank goodness, right?)
*NYU
*Coldwater Creek
*The City of Bellington, WA
*The City of Santa Monica, CA
*Burt’s Bees
*Tazo Tea

There weren’t a whole lot of places listed for Chicago or llinois specifically, but those listed are (none of which I’ve ever heard of):

*FPC - Construction
*Farr Associates - Construction
*Goodness Greenness - Food and Beverage
*Saint Xavier University
*PepsiAmericas

The website also lists the top 25 purchasers of renewable energy, which doesn’t by any means suggest they use even 50% green energy…

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All Business for Now?

When I first stumbled upon Indie Energy at www.indieenergy.com, I was looking for something that we could sign up for at our home. The website doesn’t clearly state whether or not it would provide renewable energy for a residential building, but it looks like it might be geared more towards businesses and larger projects. Which is still pretty cool, but do any of you know of a business that provides renewable energy to homes?

On Indie Energy’s website, they list several projects they are working for as the Hubbard Street office complex, the Church Street Village Apartments in Evanston, the Greenwood Live/Work lofts in Evanston, and, most interesting to me, the BooCoo Cultural Center and Cafe in Evanston, where one of my friends runs the cafe.

Boocoo Cultural Center and Cafe

Boocoo just opened in July, on 1823 Church St in Evanston. The founder of Boocoo played in bands for years, and now wanted to create a cultural center in Evanston where bands can record their music, where you can take all types of classes you’d expect from a top notch cultural center, and where you can eat delicious and healthful foods! Boocoo chose to use Indie Energy to save operating costs, using a combination of geothermal and energy recovery ventilation.

Support local businesses that use renewable energy! As the consumers, we are the ones with the real power (the power of our pocketbooks) to encourage change in businesses.

Check out Boocoo’s website at boocoo.org!

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I live in a house that’s been converted to three apartments, and the mail man slides all of our mail through a little slot in the front door. The other two apartments are occupied by the family of the owners of the home, and every day when I come home, one of them has separated our mail, always generously leaving me with all the junk mail.

It drives me insane! The amount of junk mail I get every single day!! I fully believe that a talented carpenter could build one fine home per year out of the freakin’ junk mail I receive.

Thankfully, there are companies out there who can help us!

The Direct Marketing Association

The Direct Marketing Association’s website will take you off of the mailing list that many companies use. You fill out their little form, and pay a fee of $1 (to help protect their system from fraud, so they say). Within 30 - 90 days, you will stop receiving all mailings from companies who are a part of the association.

Pros

* Only costs a dollar!
* Companies who are a part of the DMA are required to use their mailing list, so it really will make a difference.

Cons

*You might stop receiving “junk” mail you want, like catalogs (shop online, man), coupons, or announcements of new businesses in your area.
*It won’t stop mail coming from those who aren’t a part of the DMA, political candidates, local merchants, alumni associations, and mail addressed to “resident”. Poo.

Credit Card Applications

With the amount of identity theft that goes on, and how hard this process is to reverse, it is SOOOOO important that you stop silly credit card applications from coming to your home! If you ever decide you really need another credit card, you can just go online later and easily find one million sites that want to give you one.

The reason we get credit applications is because the four major credit reporting companies share our info. Boo to them!

I stopped credit card applications from being sent to me by calling a little number that appears in the fine print in the applications.

1-888-5-OPTOUT

I opted out several years ago, and have totally stopped receiving all credit card applications, and I recommend you do the same!

You can also opt out by mail, by writing a letter to all three credit reporting agencies, but I can vouch for the phone number working just fine. Here are links to the websites of the reporting agencies in case you wanted to check them out:

Equifax

Transunion

Experian

Here are some other options to check out, though those listed above should really do you right…

stopthejunkmail.com for 19.95, this website opts you out of junkmail listings, and plants a tree!

optoutprescreen.com another place to opt out of mailing lists

and for our friends in the U.K…mpsonline.org

Well, until next time, dear reader! Save a tree and get rid of annoying junk mail!!

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Hey there, internet friend and/or creepy stalker.

It’s been almost a month since I started this here blog as a way to encourage me to be good, to encourage me to make some changes, to jump start me in making a change to either help the earth, or at least stop doing my worst to ruin it.

So, how have I done? Well, thank you for asking! The main changes I’ve made have been in eating vegetarian-ly, educating myself about all the green issues you probably already knew about because yes, actually, I have been living in a cave, and taking little baby steps to reduce my carbon feetprints.

Vegetarianism

I’ve tried twice before to be a vegetarian.

The first time, all I ate was cookies and grilled cheeses, and that lasted about 6 months before I got really ill, and ran into a hamburger joint in near tears.

The second time I knew what I needed — actual vegetables — but the only vegetable I liked was broccoli. All I ate was broccoli and rice and beans for another six months. I had no energy what so ever, and again, I ran back to my old friend the hamburger.

I couldn’t give up though. I was telling my fella one night how I felt like vegetarianism was a better choice for me morally because I don’t want to support the meat packing industry, and really it makes me sad to think of eating cute little animals. He pointed out that I was obviously a liar, since I ate cute little animals about every time I opened my mouth. He had challenged my honor to a duel and I couldn’t just sit back and let him!

This time, I’m taking it slow. I’m letting myself eat meat still once every week or two. It feels like I’m addicted to meat, because after a week or two of veggin it up…I start to obsess over eating a huge chunk of animal. I must be vitamin deficient, or maybe my body is seriously addicted to meat. We’ll see how this develops.

Carbon Feetprints

Call me stupid (Hey, stupid!), but I somehow didn’t know that the energy we use in our homes and stuff contributes to our carbon footprint. So, one big change I’ve made is now turning off lights and fans and air conditioners when I leave the room. Not exactly an earth shattering change, but it’s a little something.

I’ve also been using my hair dryer less, letting my hair air-dry for a while and then using my dryer minimally, just to make sure it doesn’t dry all wavy and crazy looking. (Believe me - not a pretty sight.)

I’ve been good about not using my car very often, but I still need to get a bike. I was mugged walking home from a bar a few weeks ago, and so my fella’s been making me take taxis home at night, not something I like to do. But, if I had a bike…

Edjumakation

The greatest change I’ve made is learning more. Learning how to contact my alderman to let him know of things that I think need to be changed. Learning about making conscientious shopping choices to help make a tiny change in what businesses rule our world. Being able to tell my friends where to go in Chicago to recycle.

Final words of Wisdom?

I still have a long way to go. I need to buy a bicycle. I want to learn more about the business and politics that really affect our life and environment. I want to learn more about the people in our world who have made a difference, and about what different cities do. I want to get more involved either in a volunteer or non-annoying activist capacity.

Wish me luck?? Hey, thanks! And thanks for reading!!

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I am lucky enough to live in South Ukranian Village in Chicago, where I get to throw all my recyclables in a fancy blue bin in my alley, where the city picks up all my stuff for me. Yay!

But what about you, poor soul, do you not have a fancy blue bin to call your own? Fear not, for the City of Chicago has so kindly opened up 15 new recycling drop off facilities just for you.

Where are these awesome drop off sites?

Open 7 days a week during daylight hours, the locations are (drumroll, please!)

1. City Facility Campus - 1424 W. 39th St
2. Near South - 1758 S. Clark
3. Calumet Park Beach - 9801 S. Avenue G
4. Auburn Gresham - 7811 S. Racine
5. Household Products and Electronics Collection - 1150 N. North Branch
6. Chicago Center for Green Technology - 445 N. Sacramento
7. North Lawndale - 1817 S. Pulaski
8. West Pullman - 11615 S. Indiana
9. Pasteur Park - 5825 S. Kostner
10. Marquette Park - 6734 S. Kedzie
11. Riis Park - 6110 W. Fullerton
12. Portage Park - 4243 N. Neenah
13. Kosciuszko Park - 2732 N. Avers
14. Rainbow Park - 3111 E. 77th St.
15. Far North Side - 6441 N. Ravenswood

What do they accept??

• Glass jars and bottles
• Aluminum cans, foil and pie tins
• Tin or steel cans
• Cereal boxes, paper towel rolls, other cardboard including corrugated cardboard
• Plastic bottles and containers (#s 1-5 and 7)
• Junk Mail
• Magazines and catalogs
• Telephone books
• Paper bags
• Office paper and file folders
• Newspaper and inserts

Throwing all my recyclables together sounds suspicious…

So, apparently there was a big stink about the “blue bag” program, where recyclables in blue bags were just thrown together with regular trash, as in maybe the blue bags were just all for show.

The difference now is that regular trash is separate from recyclables, and I guess there are people that separate all the recyclables…

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My friend Alla just moved here from Decatur, Georgia, where she used to consistently shop at a huge, independent farmer’s market. Trying to find something similar here in Chicago, and sharing my dislike of Whole Foods’ high prices and sweeping takeover of independent stores, she asked me if knew anything about the business practices of Trader Joe’s.

Here are a few things I’ve discovered:

• Trader Joe’s does not take part in slotting fees like Whole Foods does.
  • Slotting fees are essentially little bribes that companies pay to have their products placed in key points in grocery stores, such as eye level, to ensure maximum selling power.
  • Slotting fees mean that items that might be better quality or price are often relegated to the lesser noticed areas and shelves, such as the very high or very low ones.
• Trader Joe’s endeavors to advertise more through word of mouth than through paper advertising, which creates less waste, and is far less annoying
• Trader Joe’s bases its product selection on customer demand and product quality, which is pretty cool, although (and I hate to say this!) sometimes the breadth of selection can seem a little lacking.
• On that note, the selection of fresh produce could be better. But hey, this gives more incentive to shop for produce at a Community Supported Agriculture farm.
• Some people get irritated by all the packaging on the fruits and veggies. (Though I sheepishly admit I don’t remember noticing this.)
• TJ’s is less expensive than Whole Foods. (but, honestly..what isn’t?)
• I hear TJ’s is anti-union, much like Whole Foods.

It seems like Trader Joe’s is a good option as far as grocery stores go!

www.traderjoes.com

CHICAGO LOCATIONS

• 1840 N Clybourne Ave 773-274-9733
• 3745 N Lincoln Ave 773-248-4920
• 44 E Ontario St 312-951-6369

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