A few bites:

• I have another guest post–this time about sustainable packaging–on The Jew and the Carrot.

• It turns out fermentation (at least for sauerkraut) is not so tough! In college, I made a 5-gallon bucket of it for my co-op and boy did that take a lot of shredding on the Hobart mixer. It also involved sinking my arms into salty cabbage up to my elbows, finding something that would cover the cabbage and press it just so, and then checking every few days and praying that I wouldn’t kill my fellow co-opers. Then I saw some simple, 3-to-4-day sauerkraut in action this weekend. Yes, I do mean action, because once you put cabbage and salt together, it gets fermenting and doesn’t stop. Not until you’ve eaten the whole jar, that is. This is another kick in the kiester to check out Wild Fermentation.

• I sincerely hope I can upload a 10+ MB PowerPoint presentation on here. I’m devising one that could be useful in exploring the connection between food choices and climate change, or explaining the concept to new-comers to the idea. It’s pretty basic, but can probably teach anyone a thing or two. I know I’ve learned quite a bit during the process.

• For example: Did you know that the food industry uses almost 1/5 of all the petroleum consumed in the United States, and 4/5 of that energy is not used to grow the food—it is consumed in processing and transporting the food? (Thanks, Michael Pollan). And did you know that landfills produced the equivalent of 147 metric tons of CO2 in 2006, and that the EPA is trying to turn it into electricity? Yep, the EPA is talking about powering hundreds of thousands of homes with landfill gas. Does that mean it will soon be my civic duty to throw things away? Maybe I should revoke that post about sustainable packaging. If we stop throwing away string cheese wrappers and pizza boxes, as I’ve been advocating, will we be cutting off one of our cheapest sources of renewable energy? And what happened to using the sun? I was really liking that idea.

This is an odd twist on saving the world, indeed.