2.28.10
What is an EcoGriff? An EcoGriff by definition is a mythological beast with the body of a lion, head of an eagle and the wings of a dragon that is concerned about the environment! What a specimen to behold!
Not really. This EcoGriff is a graduate of Canisius College as in the Canisius College Golden Griffins. We would scream at sporting events, “GO GRIFFS!” So I cleverly changed Go to Eco and Griffs to Griff and so on. After writing this, it does not really seem all that clever. It is pretty lame actually. Oh well….
I am pretty new in caring about the environment. About 5 months ago my wife said we should buy a compost pail. Here is how this conversation went:
Wife: Let me read this to you.
EcoGriff: No, every time you read something to me we are doing something because of it.
Wife: Seriously, listen…..
Moments after the paragraph she read...
Wife: We should get a compost pail
EG: No
Wife: It is says in here that it is easy, get the laptop
EG: No
Wife: Seriously, we can greatly reduce what we send to a landfill.
EG: So
Wife: We will have fun doing it.
EG: Be “we,” you obviously mean you.
Wife: I will take care of it.
EG: No you wont. We cant even keep plants alive and you are going to be able to decompose them?
Wife: Exactly
EG: No
So, the next morning we were at the garbage transfer station picking up a compost pail. It s basically a big green plastic garbage can that had the bottom cut off and some holes drilled into it. I guess it is a good way to repurpose the old cans. It still smelled like dirty diapers in the afternoon sun!
Long story short, I really got into the whole composting scene. Have a little pail on our kitchen counter that we use to transfer the stuff! Oddly enough the compost was working and turning into beautiful soil. This created out next problem. What were we going to do with the soil?
Okay, so if you followed last conversation I had with my wife, the next one was similar so I will spare you the details, but basically we have an urban garden now in our back yard!
We are now buying most of our produce at a farmer’s market in town. We buy 75% of what we eat at home is organic. We have a two year old and I just can’t justify paying the prices for organic bologna, hotdogs and Cheetos, nor would I deprive my son of such goodness!
We have come a long way in a short period of time. I do not claim to be an expert (actually, I do claim to be an expert, but I am not), but we want to do our part to leave this world better than we got it. We want to be good examples for our son.
Enter our next challenge (granted our urban garden was just planted 2 weeks ago so that is still a challenge, but I digress). Meatless March! Yes, I said meatless. We are going to attempt to be vegetarians for the month of March. We will still eat eggs and cheese, but no meat.
In the great scheme of life, this is not a real challenge, but in the scheme of my eating habits it will be. Unfortunately for my wife, she is challenged mostly because of my eating habits. I have what we will call a small pallet.
I do not like most veggies at all cooked or raw. I focus to the basics: lettuce, celery, carrots, peppers and cucumbers. That’s about it. This may create a bit of challenge for my wife in the cooking area. She will most likely need to try to slip some stuff past me and tell me what it was later. I am pretty sure there will be some meals or sides or meals that I will be choking down! Like my son, I like bologna, hotdogs, and Cheetos!
We will also try to do this in a healthy way so that we do not carb ourselves to death or put on a ton of weight using the “I did not eat any meat today so this sleeve of cookies if fair game” mentality.
I will be posting our journey through Meatless March as well as our other ideas on how be green and normal. Yes, I said it. Green and Normal, not Green and experts or Green and Tree, etc. It is about being unassumingly green. This blog will chronicle one family’s journey to become green.
Best,
EcoGriff
