Part of falling away from the grid involves rethinking your purchasing power. Instead of supporting Walmart, which imports a staggering 30% of all goods that enter through US ports, aim to create local relationships and to buy products that eliminate or minimize the “distance to table” effect which governs not only food but all your purchases. With the amazing power of the internet, “local” can be anywhere in the world: support an individual or team of craftsmen rather than mega corporations.

Ever since I ran into the founder of ILoveMiceElf.com, heard her speak about her organic hands-on approach to crafting bath products, and then ordered some of her creamy soaps, I’ve been in soap heaven. Most bath products are so heavily perfumed and are filled with glycerins and alcohols and ingredients I can’t pronounce. The natural products at this website, however, are hand-crafted using only natural materials that are so good you could almost eat them. Which you shouldn’t do: I have to tell you this because you may actually be tempted by some of their flavors. The cinnamon oatmeal soap is the best I’ve ever tried, anywhere. Very creamy, great scent, and exfoliating oatmeal throughout.

According to Ms. Green, the master craftswoman, she sought to create products using only natural ingredients that won’t cause allergic reactions and would appeal to even the most hard-core natural products users. And this devotion shows in each batch. Try it to believe.

Ahhhh. I’m finally back on my laptop, after three weeks of it acting like a teenager going through puberty. First, the wireless card broke after a week of intermittently kicking me off. So, I freecycled for another (if you don’t Freecycle, read my previous post) and received two. I tell you this entire story basically to show how even in difficult situations Freecycle can brighten your day and your esteem of others. Lovely. But no, that wasn’t good enough for the computer, which promptly sent a spark to the power cord and disabled that about ten seconds after I obtained the driver for the card. Another week and countless trips to the library since, I’m happy to be back at the helm.

Another reason I tell you all this is that over the three week period, I had a lot of time to think about the importance of technology in my life. If there’s an electrical equivalent to a nasty Coffee Bean habit, I have acquired it. Sure, if all the major cities were wiped out tomorrow, and there was no grid, I’d manage. And you won’t see me typing away on some gadget while on vacation either. But most of the time, I missed being on the box, enough so to use my friends’ computers at any opportunity (mostly to post on this blog!), and to actually use my little PDA to surf the web or (horrors!) as a notepad instead of as an expensive solitaire game. What can’t you live without? Do you have a backup plan? Do you really need it?

You see, I kept very busy without my computer, managing to finish several of the books that have been collecting dust lately, cook several great meals, not to mention making the new cooker (and scrounging for its materials!), and taking a little more time to smell the roses growing in my neighborhood. So sweet. Not that you’re probably too interested in what I did, but it goes to show that the greatest thing you might dislike is the IDEA of change should your own situation receive what Hank Williams Jr. so aptly called an “attitude adjustment”.

Now, I promised you egg jello, and egg jello you will get. Yesterday, being 100 degrees with not a cloud in the sky, was a beautiful day for cooking. I decided to break out the ingredient that foiled my cooking skills on the windshield shade oven… eggs. The books I’ve been reading make them sound so easy, but if you remember my post, they came came out lumpy, liquid, and VERY messy. Will it be a repeat, or a redemption?

Not wanting to spend too much time on the ingredients, in case things went wrong, I simply broke up six eggs, beat them in the round baking pan, dumped in a small can of sweet corn, added a little milk, and shook a little Chef’s Essence on the top. Out in the sun at 10:45, and I settled in to watch Babe. Midway through the film, I went out to check on things. The top and bottom lids had glued themselves together with the eggs, and when I pried them open, everything was still liquid. I’m seeing visions of last time in my head, so I doubtfully put everything back in, and went to finish the film.

At film’s end, heartily cheered by the cute story, I went out again. And… it was solid! No way! I took it inside for a taste test. It was nice and light, and had the consistency of… jello. Wierd. At least, that was my initial reaction, but after a bite or two, I got used to the texture and liked it quite a bit. I think it would be better to think of this as custard than as a breakfast food. My mistake. Next time, I’ll skip the spices and make a sweet pudding instead, which is pretty much how it came out anyway. Highly recommended, and here are the pics. I’m finally back on my feet with this cooking thing, and the future possibilities are dancing around on the old noggin. Until tomorrow~

A little natural recipe for you… it’s not solar (unless you have ALL DAY to let the stuff get to a boil, and if you DO adapt this for solar, please share your experience!) but it’s a defacto local specialty, and looks pretty easy to make. Rather than redirect you, I’ll reprint the recipe here. Hey, you KNOW you know where some dandilions are… what are you waiting for?

How to Make Dandelion Wine

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit

Dandelions are in season during the summer and spring months, but they lend themselves deliciously to a beverage you can serve year-round. April and May are the best months to harvest dandelions for this purpose in the Northern hemisphere.[1] Try it out and taste it for yourself.

Ingredients

• 1 package (7 g) dried yeast
• 1/4 cup (60 mL) warm water
• 2 quarts (230 g) whole dandelion flowers
  • Using 2 quarts+ of just the petals can make for a less bitter wine.[2]
• 4 quarts water (3.785 L)
• 1 cup (240 mL) orange juice
• 3 tablespoons (45 g) fresh lemon juice
• 3 tablespoons (45 g) fresh lime juice
• 8 whole cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon (1.25 g) powdered ginger
• 3 tablespoons (18 g) coarsely chopped orange zest; avoid any white pith
• 1 tablespoon (6 g) coarsely chopped lemon zest; avoid any white pith
• 6 cups (1200 g) sugar

Steps

1. Wash and clean the blossoms well. Think of it as a fruit or vegetable; you don’t want bugs or dirt in your food. Remove all green material.
2. Soak flowers for two days.
3. Place the blossoms in the four quarts of water, along with the lime, orange, and lemon juices.
4. Stir in the ginger, cloves, orange peels, lemon peels, and sugar. Bring the mix to a boil for an hour.
5. Strain through filter papers (coffee filters are recommended). Let the wine cool down for a while.
6. Stir the yeast in while the wine is still warm, but below 110 degrees F.
7. Leave it alone and let it stand overnight.
8. Pour it into bottles, poke a few holes in a balloon and place over the tops of the bottles to create an airlock, and store them in a dark place for at least three weeks so that it can ferment.
9. Optional: Rack the wine several times. Racking means waiting until the wine clears, then pouring the liquid into another container, leaving the lees (sediment) at the bottom of the first container.[3]
10. After that time, cork and store the bottles in a cool place. Allow the wine time to age. Most recipes recommend waiting at least six months, preferably a year.[4]

Tips

• Pasteurization uses sixty-five degrees Celsius for half an hour to avoid changing character.
• Pick the flowers right before starting so they’re fresh. Midday is when they are fully open.[5] Alternatively, you can freeze the flowers immediately after harvesting, then pull off the petals right before preparing the wine.[6]
• It may take more than three weeks for your wine to ferment if your home is cold. Try putting the bottles on top of your water heater or behind your refrigerator for faster fermentation. Be aware though, fermentation at higher temperatures probably won’t change the taste of the wine, but can lead to higher levels of fusile alcohols, which can cause hangovers.
• This recipe will produce a light wine that mixes well with tossed salad or baked fish. To add body or strength, add a sweetener,raisins, dates, figs, apricots, or rhubarb.[7]

Warnings

• Avoid using dandelions that may have been chemically treated. Also, try to stay away from dandelions that have been graced by the presence of dogs, or that grow within 50 feet of a road.

Things You’ll Need

• Coffee filters or straining paper
• Empty, clean wine bottles
• Large beverage container to strain liquid into
• A large pot you can boil the dandelion mixture in
• A place to store the fermenting wine

Sources and Citations

• Texascooking.com - Source of information

1. ↑ http://winemakermag.com/feature/196.html
2. ↑ http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/dandelio.asp
3. ↑ http://www.thecompostbin.com/2006/05/how-to-make-dandelion-wine.html
4. ↑ http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/dandelio.asp
5. ↑ http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/dandelio.asp
6. ↑ http://www.thecompostbin.com/2006/05/how-to-make-dandelion-wine.html
7. ↑ http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/dandelio.asp

Article provided by wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world’s largest, highest quality how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Make Dandelion Wine. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

For all you Earth Day surfers out there, here’s a good site to check out, courtesy of the Stella Group in Washington DC:

Geographic Database of Renewable Energy Installations

It’s a nicely compiled state by state listing of proposed and operational energy installations.  If you’re looking for a little “been there” inspiration or want to know what sorts of alternative energy are well-suited for your area, start here!

There is a phenomenon in the oceans known as a rogue wave. For reasons until recently unfathomable, occasionally, a single ENORMOUS wave would arise from its surrounding brethren and cause devastation to anything whose path it crossed. Sort of like a 90 foot tsunami without the underlying earthquake, and out at sea. According to the History Channel, recent advances in marine science have allowed us a better glimpse into possible causes. They theorize that these waves, defined by being more than twice the size of any surrounding wave, are caused by undercurrents which slow down the wave and basically cause water to pile up high. Other waves also overtake this slowed wave and add to its strength and content, pushing it forward with great power. Here’s my oversimplified diagram:

To me, this seems like the perfect analogy for changes in your life. We are all just flowing along like waves, each on our own “wavelength” but still in accordance with the greater tide. Occasionally, we are slowed down by currents flowing in another direction, currents which underly our own existence and form the foundation of our own flows. History, media, physical laws. These base currents are traveling in their own wave pattern, and so they interact with each wavelength, or individual, differently depending upon where in their period the two collide.

Obstacles in life be they physical, emotional, or intellectual can cause us to literally slow our roll here on earth. It can be frustrating. What I like about this analogy is that when you slow down, your momentum and that of others actually catches up with you and feeds you force and strength. What you might perceive as a breakdown in the flow is actually a period of recharge for you to gain whatever strength you require. If you are trying to get your landlord to let you install drought-friendly landscaping, and he or she insists on calling you that “garden nut” no matter how many good reasons you supply about how much money this will save their business, you can either be frustrated or you can use that to your advantage. After all, now you have a big folder of solid reasons that xeriscaping makes sense at your disposal. A folder that you can take to local businesses at which you already shop and show them why it is in their interest to consider such installations at their storefront. You can start a business that outsources the work of it, and you make money and the world gets a little more responsibly beautiful BECAUSE your landlord frustrated you by asking for fifteen sources and still saying no.

Or, if the last scenario seemed too user intensive to you, how about this one? You sit down at your computer, frustrated by the recent response, and you start searching for that perfect source. Along one of the twisted lanes that Google weaves, you discover a chat room of people frustrated just like you. You start talking about what you’d REALLY like to happen in the world. It makes you start thinking a little deeper about it, and you realize how much you love plants. So much, that you might like to get a plot at the community garden. You get one and get to know people there as well as staying in touch with people from the chat room. When a big-city developer comes in and wants to turn your community garden into condos, you rant about it in your chat room, and someone, a lawyer, offers their services to save the garden free of charge. Garden saved. A garden that you weren’t even involved with until your landlord said… NO!

Rogue waves are the result of the interaction of many different energies, just like social progress. It can feel overwhelming to think you are only one wave in a big old ocean, but rest assured, there are other forces at work that you can’t necessarily see, and that just might work to amplify your cause in strange and unpredictable ways. You’ll never know until you put it into motion.

A broken wireless internet card has been all that’s between me and a few postings here lately. So this post will be a little down & dirty on formatting. But it’s been a busy few days nonetheless. Yesterday, I found my journal from the wilderness trip that I did in college, complete with a grocery list of the food supplies that thirteen of us carried into the woods for two weeks. For your enjoyment, I’ll reprint that list below. Besides the obvious humor in peeking back in on my newly minted adult mind (I left home for the trip on my 18th birthday), I truly enjoyed refreshing the inspiration for what eventually led me down the road to this blog. You see, even though it was a very important time in my life, it wasn’t until I read my old words that I remembered the daily excitements of it, no matter how hard I’d tried to remember. Reading ten pages of foods I wanted to eat when I got back to civilization, listed as I sat alone in a field of blueberries on my two-day “solo” at the end of the trip, was as entertaining and revealing as any life lesson I could hope to relate from the experience without aid of a book.

What does this have to do with off-grid living, you ask? By keeping a journal of my progress throughout that trip, I created a living document that I can return to multiple times in life, that others can also use, should they have the opportunity, to inspire and learn a lesson or two about the experience. Of all the myriad papers I wrote in college, this first one, the one I wrote for myself, is the most relevant and important to me. When you start your walk away from the grid, or even just a new project along the way, you have a prime opportunity to keep a journal of your activities. It’s easy to wonder why you bother when taking time from your day to write something down that already happened. This is normal. The gem of journal writing is best recognized after that journal has sat in the back of your closet a few years, and you honestly can’t remember who your inspiration was when you were (insert age here). That’s when the refresher course can save you having to make mistakes over again because you’ve wandered off your path.

Solarious is my off-grid energy journal, which doubles as a repository of great ideas and inspirations I see along the way. No doubt, I’ll be looking back at this great experiment in alternate living one day with similar emotions as to the trip in college. Of course, this is a different forum from an 18 year old’s diary, and personal details are necessarily a bit more brief here. But the point is that when you have that day (and you will, we’re all human) when you wonder, “How the heck did I get here? Why is this so important to me that I’m willing to forgo thirty minute showers, an Escalade, and Big Macs?” you’ll be able to go back and talk to yourself from a more rational mindset and check yourself back into the program. Unless you’re superman and you never have doubts or forget anything, in which case, stop reading now and start saving the world. The rest of us hapless humans need people like you on the case!

Here’s the grocery list (for 13 on a zero-impact trip of 2 weeks) from Project WILD: (1=can, mostly)

1 sweet peas
1 maple syrup
1 butter
2 tuna
1/2 bagels
Bag rice
3 blocks cheddar
1 strawberry jam
2 spaghetti
3 tomato paste
1 lima beans
2 bags prunes
1 smoked eel
1/2 bag peanuts
2 blocks monterey jack
Bag cous cous
Bag refried beans
3 boxes graham crackers
2 packs pesto sauce
4 cans tomato sauce
3 bags pita bread
Bag veggie chili mix
Bag grits
Bag animal crackers
Bag oatmeal
2 beanie weenies
11 bags cocoa mix
Bag banana chips
1 pineapple
Bag macaroni
Bag granola w/ raspberry
1 fishsteaks
2 pinto beans
1 mayo
Bag tang
1 soy sauce
Bag cream of wheat
Box rye crackers
1 english muffins
7 oranges
2 bags dates
1/2 bag raisins
bag pancake mix
1 apple butter
1 sardines
1 hot sauce
1 black beans
3 cans carrots
1 peanut butter
1 can mandarin oranges
bag jell-o
1/2 bag apple rings
1 spice kit
Bag pretzels
1 dijon mustard
1 green beans
13 pop-tarts
Bag plain granola
Bag mashed potato mix
1 onion
Bag apricots
1 marshmallow fluff
1 “mystery can”
11 packs spiced cider
1 vegetable oil
1 honey
1 honey mustard
3 slices bread
Bag powdered milk
Bag tortillas
Bag fruit punch mix
Bag lemonade mix
Bag brown sugar
2 cans corn

And iodine for water

Whoever said that art and science must remain separate should see the statistical artwork of Chris Jordan. His pieces are actual representations of statistical usage of different products in our world. Here’s a detail from his work, “Energizer”, 2007.

You’ll be shocked to see an ocean of soda bottles, airline cups, or plastic bags, and even more so when you realize these pictures depict only a few minutes or hours of annual consumption! Mr. Jordan stresses on his site that the pure scale of these works dictate that you should try to see them in person, and I couldn’t agree more. They are on display at Paul Kopeiken Gallery in Los Angeles, and other spots around the country. For those concrete thinkers in your life who need a visual nudge in the green direction, this may be your ticket.

Here are full instructions for building your turbine

This guy builds a nice wind rotor for home power generation.  He claims to get 1000 Watts Average in 20MPH Wind.  Either way, the design is attractive, scalable, and doesn’t look like it will scare the neighbors too much.  Check it out!

Read More about NanoSolar’s breakthrough here

PopSci’s Best of What’s New 2007

NanoSolar has long been a favorite of mine for their commitment to producing inexpensive solar cells with more durable materials than traditional solar cells.  They have funding from some of the biggest names in the business world, which probably explains why they haven’t had to go public yet.  When they do, I’m going to be standing in line (probably a long one!) to get stock.  Their PowerSheet technology, printed in a process similar to running a newspaper press, recently snagged Best of 2007 honors in Popular Science’s annual contest (see a nice Flash demonstration of the technology at the link above).

The most exciting news is that the NanoSolar process has been officially declared cheaper then coal.  That means there’s no excuse not to own some of these panels once they come off the production line in 2008.  The first commercially produced line of panels were auctioned off, sent to the Smithsonian, used in power plant settings, and other socialy important applications.  But NanoSolar for the masses appears to be just around the corner.  Keep an eye on this!

Diy Solar Air Heater from Soda Cans

Here’s another project done right.  Again, this one comes from the resourceful mind of a car enthusiast who spent too much time in a cold garage.  I guess when you’re already in the garage, it’s easier to put construction projects into action!   Using only materials had around the house, he built something that warmed the air, and learned a lot in the process, too, from the people who commented on his experiment.  Read the full story above.