I love sushi.  I tried it for the first time with my husband a little over a year ago.  He thought it would be fun to try something new on my birthday.  I was very skeptical but took one bite and fell head over heals in love - with the sushi that is.  It was a thrill!  I do not eat sushi all the time but I eat it enough that it no longer feels special.  It has gone the way of most things in my life which is to say it has become a fairly ordinary activity.

As you may recall from my post, What Would Grandma Do For Fun, I manage to go to a restaurant or order take out at least once a week.  That feels like a lot when I see it in print.  I do not even want to think about how many times my husband or I grab a coffee to go in a given week but I am afraid I am going to have to.   

According to David Bach, author of Go Green, Live Rich, ”Americans spend over $134 billion a year on fast food.”  He goes on to say that packaging from take out food results in 1.8 million tons of trash in the U.S. alone every year.  And then there is all of that lovely coffee I enjoy drinking from various coffee houses around town.  Bach writes, “Every year, Americans drink more than 100 billion cups of coffee.  Of these, 14.4 billion are served in disposable paper cups, enough to wrap the Earth 55 times if placed end to end!  Plus, those paper cups contain a plastic lining made from a petrochemical that would produce enough energy to heat 8,300 homes for a year.”  I have a plastic trash bag full of take out coffee cups sitting in my van right now.  I used to think I could recycle them but probably not because of that “petrochemical” coating.

My friend Lavonne shared the following story about her mom in a comment to What Would Grandma Do For Fun?  “My mom would look forward to going to the county fair once a year because her parents would buy the kids a corn dog.  She looked forward to this corn dog all year because it was the only time her family ‘went out’ to eat.”  I bet Lavonne’s mom ate that corn dog very slowly, savoring each and every piece, not letting a single crumb fall to the floor.  That was one sacred corn dog!

Each of my grandparents confirmed that going out to eat was a special treat that really only occurred once they were young adults and were starting families of their own.  They never recall going out to eat when they were children.  I am sure this was true of most people who lived through the Great Depression.  And they never, ever would have dreamed of ordering a four dollar latte.  Come to think of it, I never would have thought of ordering a four dollar latte just 10 years ago.  I am sure the statistics on take out containers and disposable coffee cups would have looked very different in the 1930’s and 40’s!

I want to use my year of living like Grandma to help me make the act of eating sushi feel sacred - just like when Lavonne’s mom ate that corn dog so many years ago.

When something is sacred, it is special.  It is given a place of honor and deemed worthy of respect.  I will never be able to capture that special thrill I felt when I ate sushi for the first time but it can feel more special, more sacred if I choose to eat it less frequently.  And if I eat out less, order in less and give up my expensive lattes, not only will sushi (and pizza and coffee) feel special again, I will also be taking a few big steps toward living more sustainably and simply.

So here is my next Grandma Challenge.  For the remainder of my year of living like Grandma (which officially ends on June 23, 2009), I am not going to eat out or order in unless there is a truly special reason.  I will make an exception on the rare occasion that my husband’s parents offer to take me and my family out to eat.  I also will not prohibit my kids from eating out when they spend time with friends or family.

I am also going to give up coffee purchased in to go cups.  From now on, I will brew my coffee at home and tote it with me in my own stainless steel mug.  If by chance I need to meet up with someone at a restaurant, I will allow myself to buy coffee but only if I can get it in a ceramic mug or use my travel mug.  I will buy a plain cup of coffee, not a fancy latte.

Do you want to join me for this Grandma Challenge? Why or why not?  You do not have to give up all three things - eating out, ordering in and coffee to go.  You can pick one or two.  You can also decide to abstain for a shorter period of time versus a whole year.  Any duration of abstaining from something can help you step back and gain a different perspective.  I read a great little book last year called, Give It Up: My Year of Learning to Live Better With Less by Mary Carlomagno.  The author picked one thing to give up each month for one year.  It is a great way to experiment with living more sustainably and simply!

The little picture above is of some items I bought today for myself and my kids from a wonderful local bakery.  We usually do this at least one to two times a month (at my suggestion because I need want coffee).  It may not seem like a lot of waste but when you consider a bunch of people doing it one to two times a month it quickly adds up to those statistics I quoted earlier!

I think my next few Grandma Challenges are going to be hard for me and so I want to share a piece of my own story because it may help you understand why I feel prepared to take on these and other challenges throughout the coming year.

Six years ago, I was stressed to the max.  I had just started a nonprofit organization from the ground up, I became a mother for the first time, my husband and I were living in a struggling urban neighborhood and renovating our third old home.  I was working hard to raise funds for the organization which included a salary for myself and my husband because he was preparing to quit his job as a university professor to join me in a 50/50 split of parenting and nonprofit work. 

To say we had a lot of ideals we were trying to live out all at once is an understatement. 

We were on a high speed train, bound for one very big crash.  And crash we did.  My body physically started to shut down, my husband and I did more yelling than talking, and I realized the only reason my son was happy was because he spent most of his days with his grandparents.     

Drastic measures had to be taken.  We closed down the organization, my husband returned to school as a full-time student to rebuild his career, and I spent the next four years clearing out the debris from the train wreck that was once my life.  I ruthlessly tossed everything out of my schedule except the bare essentials - husband, kids, husband’s job, food on the table, a semi-clean house, and a tight circle of extended family and friends. 

There are seasons of life that are busier than others, but when I look back on my life six years ago, I know that much of the busyness and stress was there because of choices I made.  It took four years of soul searching to learn to integrate a new set of choices into my life.  These choices have helped me slow to a speed that feels more like a train chugging along at a reasonable pace.  I can take in the scenery of my life at this speed.  When I was on that high speed train, every moment went whizzing by at breakneck speed.

I still have my days and weeks and months where I feel like I have jumped back on that high speed train, but now I know how to hit the emergency stop button. 

Many of you have kindly expressed concern that I may stress myself out by making too many changes at once.  However, I feel prepared to take on the challenges of this year because I will hit that emergency stop button whenever I need to.

I did not really intend to pose a new Grandma Challenge today but I guess I just did.  Slow down.  It is the first step I had to take to begin living a more sustainable and simple life.  I think my grandparents probably have a lot to say about the pace of modern life and I plan to ask them.

What do you think?  Do you want to slow down?  What can you do today to begin that process?  Cut out one weekly activity?  Take one day off each weekend?  Or maybe just grab a good friend and have a conversation about slowing down and take one, small step in that direction.

I am in the midst of another Grandma Challenge that I have not had a chance to write about until now.  I am challenging myself to learn how to “put up” food for the winter.  This is one of those “big” challenges I mentioned in my post about slowing down. 

Although I am a fan of healthy, unprocessed food you would not have found me in my kitchen “putting up” food last summer.  Putting up food is something my grandparents used to do.  Putting up food is something my mother used to do.  I never thought I would find myself doing it with any seriousness.  

I need to learn to never say never. 

When I asked my grandparents about canning, they pretty much unanimously replied, “We canned everything!”  

I know this to be true because I can recall the homemade canned goods in my Grandma and Grandpa Pickies’ root cellar.  The cellar doubled as a tornado shelter.  I have a handful of vivid memories that involve running to the cellar for protection from potentially inclement weather.  After a few minutes of excited conversation and speculation about the possiblity of a tornado headed our way, there was nothing much left to do but count the rows and rows of canned food. 

Most of the food my grandparents’ canned or stored came from their own gardens or other local sources.  Interestingly, my Grandpa Pickies told me when he was a child his family did not put up much food by way of canning because their “oil stove” did not get hot enough to bring water to the right temperature for food preservation.  Of course I had to ask, “Well, then what did you eat during the winter months?”  He recalled lots of potatoes, oatmeal, milk and some eggs.  I am sure he ate other things but his point was that eating became very simple during the winter months. 

This Grandma Challenge is definitely going to challenge me but not in the way you may expect.

I am totally sold on the idea of eating more seasonally.  In fact, I am pretty sure it is better for me and better for the environment for a number of reasons that I hope to write about in the future.  However, as you may have noticed from my last post, I am learning that eating seasonally requires some work.  Okay, I am learning that it requires a lot of work.  I feel myself balking against it and embracing it at the same time.

I like to think of myself as a modern woman and this is where I balk.  I feel hesitant to admit this but for a long time I have measured my level of modernity by my level of domestic responsibilities.  It is a crude but simple thought process that got lodged in my subconscious somewhere along the way - fewer domestic responsibilities equals a more modern woman.  And to be even more vulnerable, I will admit I have seen the day I could get back to work outside of my home as the day of my liberation.  Needless to say, I haven’t been looking for ways to increase my level of domestic responsibilities.

Eating seasonally scares me because I feel my attitude shifting.  I am beginning to connect to the fabric of my home in a whole new way.  I am beginning to understand that what I bring into and allow to flow out of my home has tremendous implications both locally and globally.  My friend Megan, who is currently living in Nigeria, recently wrote the following comment in response to my post, The Sacredness of Sushi:

“I am really digging Pepsi Lite out here. The problem enters the picture due to the fact that Pepsi Lite is only produced in a plastic bottle. The “rubbish” existing as far as the eye can see in Nigeria is heart-wrenching. They have not developed any sort of recycling system yet so the plastic bottles, containers, and bags litter creation everywhere. Good-bye Pepsi Lite, hello glass Coca Cola if I really need a “mineral,” as we call it here.”

I live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world.  I think a great deal of the garbage that is floating around the world is because of my disposable lifestyle being exported to places like Nigeria.  Like Megan said, Nigeria has not yet developed a system whereby they can manage the impacts of disposable products like we can in America.  I am not so sure we actually manage it all that well either.  Up to this point in my life, I have just tossed anything and everything in the trash and been grateful that it somehow magically disappears with the weekly trash pickup.

Suddenly, I want nothing more than to spend a day learning how to “put up” my own food because the more I get my hands on my food, the more I feel differently about my disposable lifestyle. 

I want to encourage the exportation of a culture of sustainability.  I want to support the export of products and systems that genuinely improve the lives of others, not clog their landscapes with pollution.  My friend Megan’s Nigerian neighbors can probably teach me a thing or two about sustainability.  I want to learn from them before their culture is completely overrun by my disposable lifestyle. 

This project is forcing me to examine a lot of my core values.  I am beginning to understand how my everyday, ordinary life fits into a bigger picture.  I know I can continue to have my career goals, but I need to rethink where they fit in the context of my commitment to issues of sustainability and simplicity.  I feel privileged to be on this journey.

What do you think?  Did your grandparents eat seasonally?  Do you want to eat seasonally?  Does the work of it intimidate you?  Do you think it would make your time and choices look different?  Does it make you feel overwhelmed?