Mushrooms can save the world

I had thought that while I'm always learning about a gardening incrementally, I'm probably not likely to have any more blow my mind kind of lessons about the subject. I was so wrong.

A wee while ago I was at a compost workshop which was pretty interesting, but the most exciting thing I learned that day was after we'd finished the workshop and were talking about inner city community gardens, soil contamination and how to fix it. Apparently, a great way to clean up contaminated sites such as old petrol stations is by planting mushrooms.

The speaker said there are some groups in the US that decontaminate petrol stations by using human hair (which is very absorbent) to mop up any remaining oil and they impregante the hair with oyster mushrooms spores, as this is the type of mushroom which sucks up the most heavy metal contaminants. Once the mushrooms have grown everything is bundled off as hazardous waste.

The idea also came up in an amazing Ted talk, about a mushroom burial suit to speedily dispose of your body:

Wow.

It's a topic that some people are super into, and I haven't even touched on mycelium. (Which people get even more excited about!) There's an info-dense website called Radical Mycology for anyone who wants to read more about the idea.

Building Green

I come from a family that has more than its fair share of over-achievers. One of the most notable over-achievers is my cousin Catherine who initially trained as a solar engineer and worked on solar cars and planes for awhile before deciding she really wanted to study medicine instead. So she went to Stanford and studied medicine, then surgery. (She also had her daughter in her second year of med because, you know, it had the lightest work load). She now works in robotic surgery. I'm very proud to be related to her.

But from my point of view, her coolest project is underway at the moment. She and her husband (who is equally as smart and geeky) are building a 'green' house. But for them, throwing on a few solar panels and making sure they used insulation was never going to cut it. Oh no. They calculated the 'embodied energy' - the water and energy used to create something - of absolutely everything they built with to make sure they used the lowest energy materials. Catherine and Paul blog about their progress, but be warned it is super sciency. If you're interested but just want the summary, here's Catherine's TED talk on the topic, which has some very interesting comparisons of building materials, retrofitting compared to starting fresh, and even whether a paper towel or cloth is better to use when wiping up a spill:



For those not familiar with TED, it's an amazing resource. A regular meeting of minds, it started as a conference in the fields of Technology, Entertainment and Design. Now it extends far beyond that. It is meant to promote interesting ideas and new thinking, and thinking beyond your own field. Many of the talks are available to watch on their website. As they term it 'Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world'.

7 kgs saved!

Just thought I'd quickly mention the One Million Women website/project. It's a project that aims to get one million Australian women to each save one tonne (1,000kgs) of carbon emissions through changes to their lifestyle over the next year. Obviously, the aim is to cut Australia's total carbon emissions by one million tonnes this year and this group decided to take matters into their own hands.

So far nearly 5,000 women have signed up and it probably won't reach one million, but it's still an inspiring idea that I encourage all women to get involved in. (I do think it's crap that it's just targeted at women, but so be it.) I've been signed up for about a week and have already saved 7 kilos of carbon emissions, although that's just the tip of the iceberg as more changes are coming. I was unsure about signing up because not a lot of info is provided upfront about what lifestyle changes you would actually have to make. I already lead a pretty green-conscious life and am a renter so can't change my home much, but I was definitely able to make enough changes to save a tonne and then some.

Of course it's disheartening to think that all it takes is one business person or politician flying Melbourne to Sydney or Canberra regularly to wipe out all my savings, but it's also important to look at an action like this as a political statement. The more people who sign up to something like this or who make lifestyle choices like installing solar power or buying wind power, the less governments can argue that people aren't willing to make sacrifices to help the environment and the more likely they are to take the big picture action that is really needed.

Just a couple of the ways you can save, and how much carbon this would save annually:
Washing clothes on cold cycle and sun/air-drying - 400kg
Installing water-saving shower heads and having 4 minute showers - 875kg
Switching off appliances on standby at the powerpoint - 150kg
Walk or cycle 5km more a week instead of driving solo - 52kg

Sorry if this is a little earnest for some, posts on all the things we've been building in our back yard to follow soon!

Veg Out and a week that was far from a vegging out week

Wow, what a whirlwind of a week. Last week was the Students of Sustainability conference and it was an incredible experience. So many passionate speakers and interesting ideas (along with a depressing reality-check about climate change and the world's responses to it). I had intended to post daily with something that blew my socks off each day (and there always was something) but unfortunately we spent the week rushing home to interview for new housemates in a desperate rush, which was pretty exhausting and time-consuming. So I think I will try to do a few posts about it, starting with my favourite activity: an excursion to Veg Out community garden down in St Kilda.


I so enjoyed seeing what people were growing (all far more successfully than me), but it was also such an interesting story about how the garden had come about and then become an indispensable part of the St Kilda community. Some community gardens I've visited are really just a patch of personal backyard for a large number of people but they aren't a truly community-oriented garden. This garden is open to the public, numerous groups (like the war veterans who live in a hostel closeby) have a plot, and what I found most striking was that it had no high fences within the garden - it all felt open and welcoming.

The garden used to be a bowling green, so it has some quirks like the original lights and bunkers.



It's positioned in the shadow of Luna Park which makes for an odd juxtaposition as the sound of rollercoasters and screaming children is quite loud, but the garden still feels peaceful.



It was great to see flowers, succulents and vegies all planted together.



We spent the day digging up vegies that had been grown to help feed the conference-goers and I had fun chatting to others about their vegie patches or plans for one. One of the best personal things to come out of the week was a reinvigoration of my gardening enthusiasm. My friends suggested I get a t-shirt printed with my most succint explanation of why my enthusiasm had been dropping: 'Aphids ate my mojo'. But hopefully I'll have some new garden projects to show you soon as well as some more environmental posts about the conference.

Casseroo

No, not a typo, just one of the many ways of cooking kangaroo. For some reason it's more fun when the dishes have roo names like Vindaroo, Rooritos, Roogan Josh, Kanga Bangas, etc. We don't really eat much meat other than kangaroo because it's better for the environment (kangaroos have paws rather than hooves, so they tend not to degrade the land as much, their feed doesn't need watering, and they produce less methane than cows) and it's cheap and healthy. I thoroughly enjoy serving Roo Bolognaise to guests and trying to change their minds about the idea of eating kangaroo, it's particularly funny to ask friends visiting from overseas whether they would mind if I served them the national emblem for dinner.

Last night we tried a version of the Beef and Guiness Casserole with Dumplings recipe that appears in my favourite cookbook, 'Everyday Cooking' by Michele Curtis and Allan Campion. Turned out brilliantly. Roo can be chewy if you cook it wrong, but with slow cooking like this it was great, plus the meat has a rich flavour, which worked well with the heartiness of the recipe.

Dice roo steaks. We used about 800 grams, which was two packets.
Coat in seasoned flour (flour mixed with salt and pepper)
Cook in a heavy bottomed pan over medium heat with a touch of oil until golden brown.
Add a 400ml can of Guiness, a chopped onion and a couple of chopped garlic cloves, and 2 cups of beef stock. (Or vegie if you'd prefer - they don't make roo stock in cubes yet!)
Bring to the boil, then simmer for an hour.
At this point add dumplings, then simmer for another hour.

Dumplings:
To make the dumplings, combine a cup of bread crumbs and a cup of self-raising flour.
Rub 75 grams of diced soft butter through.
Add salt, pepper, and some herbs. The recipe calls for a tablespoon of chopped parsley, but we used oregano because it's in the garden.
Add an egg and enough milk to bind the mixture.
Knead to form a dough, then roll into 3 cm balls.

I think this would also make a great pie filling (without the dumplings). It was such a perfectly cosy dish for the first cool evening in a long time!

These are a few of my favourite things

Forget whiskers on kittens and girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes, I'm talking about PROPER favourite things. Like Sauvignon Blanc, and getting a greenie kick out of re-using and buying local. Which is why I was pretty excited by one of my purchases from the market this morning.

ReWine sell good cheap cleanskins, and if you bring back the bottle, they will refill it - and even charge you $2 less than the first bottle cost! Sure, I was meant to be fruit and veg shopping, but at $11 a bottle who am I to resist such a temptation? (Plus they have a generous hand with the tasting glasses.)
I'm all for recycling, but it often feels like people forget the idea of re-using. Travelling in South America it was the norm to trade an empty glass bottle in when you bought a new full one, and it brought home to me how easy it really would be to re-use glass bottles many, many times before recycling them. So an exciting find!

Taking comfort from...

1. Regrowth.

Even as my plants fry again, it's good to see them sending out shoots and refusing to go down without a fight. It's also a particularly pertinent reminder that one day the burnt areas of Victoria will regrow. It's scant consolation given how many lives have been lost, but I find it helps. I've hiked through areas that were burnt out in the fires a couple of years ago, and although the snow gums will take a long time to recover, it's amazing how much has grown in a few short years.

2. Cyclists.

I cycle everywhere, and so I always get a buzz from the peak hour cyclist rush in inner Melbourne. This picture is in Canning St, which is pretty much a cyclist highway at peak hour thanks to low car traffic flow and good traffic lights. Somehow seeing this makes me feel like maybe one day more people will get the fact that it's really not that hard to cut their car use. In other exciting bike news, it was wonderful to see creation of bike lanes slip onto the government's economic stimulus package. Score one for the cyclists!

3. Our water bill.
Which totalled to 70 litres per person per day. We've been using a laundromat for the past year, so our water use is actually a bit higher, but still, with the government urging us all to cut our water use to 155 litres per day, it did make me feel good.