October Conservation Tip

October is Vegetarian Awareness Month

Wow, I wasn't even aware that we have an awareness month....;-)
So I thought I should seize the opportunity to answer the question all vegetarians get asked quite frequently: Why are you Vegetarian? Early on this question was quickly answered, I feel sorry for the animals. During my education to become a veterinarian in Germany I had to work at a slaughterhouse, it was part of the education since a graduated veterinarian is automatically a meat inspector. Being passionate about animals before, the time working at the slaughterhouse did the rest. Nowadays the answer is much longer. "Ethical" reasons are still one of the strongest.
And it's not only the slaughtering that bothers me, it's the whole way of how animals are kept and treated throughout their odyssey. Studies have proven that pigs are smarter than dogs, science finally has attested that animals are able of cognitive thinking and have emotions....would you keep your dog his or her whole life in a crate that hardly allows your dog to turn? Never see daylight, never run or play? Would you?? Let's not even talk about how chicken, turkeys or cows are kept and treated.

Ethical reasons are just my personal thing, but environmental reasons should concern everybody.
If you google "factory farming environment" you get about 1,290,000 results in 0.47 seconds....I didn't read all of them but a fair bit and it's scary! There are a lot of different interpretations but most state the same facts, I tried to put together the ten most important:

1. About 10 billion animals, not including fish farms, in the United States are raised for dairy, meat and eggs each year.
2. More than 250 million acres of US forests have been clear-cut to create land for producing feed for livestock.
3. Globally, deforestation for animal grazing and feed crops is estimated to emit 2.4 billion tons of CO2 every year. The cut forests are badly missed in the negation of CO2
4. 70% of the grain that is produced in the US is fed to farm animals
5. The Smithsonian Institution has stated that the equivalent of SEVEN football fields of land is bulldozed every single minute to create more land for farming animals.
6. The use of fossil fuels on farms to grow feed and to intensively raise land animals for food emits 90 million tons of CO2 worldwide every year.
7. Almost half of all water used in the US goes into the meat, dairy and egg production. Between 1,800 and 2,400 gallons of water is needed to produce 1 lb of meat, only 25 to 39 gallons are needed to produce 1 lb of wheat. In other words one would save more water by not showering for 6 months than one would save by not eating a pound of meat!
8. The waste lagoons of factory farms aka Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations or in short CAFOs not only pollute our groundwater, but deplete it as well. Many of the farms use the groundwater for cleaning, cooling, and drinking.
9. The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) reports that roughly 80 % of ammonia emissions in the US come from animal waste. Atmospheric ammonia can disrupt aquatic ecosystems, ruin soil quality, damage crops, and jeopardize human health.
10. Factory farming accounts for 37 percent of methane (CH4) emissions. Methane has more than 20 times the global warming potential of CO2. (2,3,4)

To get a real visual understanding of the environmental impact, please have a look at these photos:

GRAIN- Factory Food From Above

Unfortunately, that's not it. To ethics and environment now also comes the topic of health.
With health I'm not addressing issues as too much saturated fats, cholesterol or else, as this is in everybody's own hand. No, I'm more thinking of what a "carnivores" eat with their meat that they are not aware of:

• Dairy cows can be given growth hormones, recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), in order to increase their milk production. But often this increased milk production leads to mastitis (infection of the udder) which then is treated with antibiotics...Eventually the cows productivity declines, and they are slaughtered for beef. Beef cattle may also be treated with hormones, estradiol, testosterone, and progesterone, to increase and expedite growth. The use of these hormons in dairy cows and cattle  has been shown to significantly increase the risk of breast, prostate, and colon cancer in beef consumers. Producers are not required to list the use of hormones on product labels. 
• Some zoonotic diseases (diseases that can spread from animals to humans and vice versa)  like BSE/ Creutzfeld Jacob Disease could only cause that much havoc, because someone down the factory farm aisle got the idea to feed dairy cows and cattle animal meal. Not only are bovines strict herbivores, the animal meal was from sheep that had to be put down because of Scrapie ( the sheep form of BSE). At that point nobody knew that the pathogen can jump between species, but just the idea of feeding cows animal meal is simply revolting
• Now to the antibiotics, since the 1950s, antibiotics have been used at factory farms to increase the rate of growth in animals. Today, an estimated 70 % of the antibiotics used in the U.S. are given to farm animals for non-therapeutic purposes. Since the antibiotic are long out of the body once the animal gets slaughtered all is fine, right? Unfortunately not: It is not the antibiotics directly that are posing the problem but using antibiotics in this way can lead to drug-resistant bacteria; as a result, certain bacterial infections have already become or are on their way to becoming untreatable in humans. Antibiotic resistant infections kill 90,000 Americans every year.

Do I propose everybody should stop eating meat? No, but maybe consume it a bit more consciously.
If possible, choose meat from a farmer you know and who raises the animals properly and without antibiotics. Try buying organic. How about following the "Meatless Monday" rule.
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) published a very informative statistic:
 Over a one year period,
-if you eat one less burger a week, it’s like taking your car off the road for 320 miles or line-drying your clothes half the time.
-if your four-person family skips meat and cheese one day a week, it’s like taking your car off the road for five weeks – or reducing everyone’s daily showers by 3 minutes.
-if your four-person family skips steak once a week, it’s like taking your car off the road for nearly three months.
-if everyone in the U.S. ate no meat or cheese just one day a week, it would be like not driving 91 billion miles – or taking 7.6 million cars off the road.(7)

Small adjustments can help a lot! And thank you for reading the blog, it means a lot to me...

Over a year:
If you eat one less burger a week, it’s like taking your car off the road for 320 miles or line-drying your clothes half the time. ¹⁰
If your four-person family skips meat and cheese one day a week, it’s like taking your car off the road for five weeks – or reducing everyone’s daily showers by 3 minutes. ¹¹
If your four-person family skips steak once a week, it’s like taking your car off the road for nearly three months. ¹²
If everyone in the U.S. ate no meat or cheese just one day a week, it would be like not driving 91 billion miles – or taking 7.6 million cars off the road. ¹³
- See more at: http://www.ewg.org/meateatersguide/a-meat-eaters-guide-to-climate-change-health-what-you-eat-matters/reducing-your-footprint/#sthash.OUf3QAoE.dpuf

Sources and further reading:

Over a year:
If you eat one less burger a week, it’s like taking your car off the road for 320 miles or line-drying your clothes half the time. ¹⁰
If your four-person family skips meat and cheese one day a week, it’s like taking your car off the road for five weeks – or reducing everyone’s daily showers by 3 minutes. ¹¹
If your four-person family skips steak once a week, it’s like taking your car off the road for nearly three months. ¹²
If everyone in the U.S. ate no meat or cheese just one day a week, it would be like not driving 91 billion miles – or taking 7.6 million cars off the road. ¹³
- See more at: http://www.ewg.org/meateatersguide/a-meat-eaters-guide-to-climate-change-health-what-you-eat-matters/reducing-your-footprint/#sthash.OUf3QAoE.dpuf

Over a year:
If you eat one less burger a week, it’s like taking your car off the road for 320 miles or line-drying your clothes half the time. ¹⁰
If your four-person family skips meat and cheese one day a week, it’s like taking your car off the road for five weeks – or reducing everyone’s daily showers by 3 minutes. ¹¹
If your four-person family skips steak once a week, it’s like taking your car off the road for nearly three months. ¹²
If everyone in the U.S. ate no meat or cheese just one day a week, it would be like not driving 91 billion miles – or taking 7.6 million cars off the road. ¹³
- See more at: http://www.ewg.org/meateatersguide/a-meat-eaters-guide-to-climate-change-health-what-you-eat-matters/reducing-your-footprint/#sthash.OUf3QAoE.dpuf

(1) Compassion over Killing
(2) Facts about factory farming
(3) Collective Evolution
(4) Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer
(5) NYU Langone Medical Center
(6) Farm Sanctuary
(7) EWG Meat Eaters Guide

BC Lighthouses

Beacons of hard work and commitment

Lighthouses have always fascinated me...withstanding weather and waves, lighting the way for many seafarers, doesn't that seem grand, heroic and a bit romantic?
As we prepared for our "explore BC tour" I knew we would hit the coast and I started to research which lighthouses would be on or near our route.
In my research I stumbled over Donald Graham's books, which drew me into a completely different world:"The fact that the men and women who came before us [the light keepers] to this life were among the most ill-used in all of Canada's long and troubled labour history, who knew real hunger, deprivation and despair as constant companions in the absence of any others, who contemplate and sometimes carried out the ultimate escape from their nightmarish existence subtract nothing from their marvelous sacrifice."[1] Now that doesn't quite sound that romantic anymore.
But after reading his books I got even more interested and so I "collected" as many Lighthouses as I could on our trip.
Each of the following lighthouses has a rich history. Sometimes entertaining, sometimes cruel. To tell all the stories I read would be way beyond the scope of this blog, so I just picked some interesting tid bits.
I will list all my resources at the end for further reading.

Since the location of the lighthouses in most parts reads like:" Situated on Robb Point on Surf Inlet this light guides into the entrance of Seaforth Channel when moving across Milbanke Sound." [3], and since I'm quite confident that only a very few will actually know where that would be, I highly recommend this google map that a genius lighthouse fan created if you would like to know the exact location of any of the below lighthouses:
Lighthouses of British Columbia

The first two lighthouses we saw on the ferry from Tsawassen to Swarzt Bay (aka from Vancouver, to Vancouver Island)

This is the Active Pass (est. 1885) lighthouse. Above how we saw it and below how it looked in it's early days. Quite a change....On our way through all the little islands it became quite clear why lighthouses are needed. The fog was wafting in and out at all times. Strong riptides and narrow clearance made this busy waterway a treacherous one before Active Pass was established.

From "Lights of the Inside Passage" by Donald Graham

Portlock Point Lighthouse was established soon afterwards in 1896. Low lying rocks in the area were feared in the times before Portlock Point.  One of the most scenic ones we saw but..."Today, thousands of visitors view the diminutive lighthouse on Prevost Island as they comfortably slip past the Portlock Point aboard a ferry, but most will remain ignorant of the pain, suffering, and death that occurred at this seemingly peaceful outpost."[2]

The following lighthouses are on Vancouver Islands coast. The closest one to Victoria is Trial Island (est 1906). Trial Island is one of the few BC lighthouses that survived the governments de-staffing program. It might have helped that a watchful light keeper as recently as 2009 saved 5 capsized kayakers by informing the coast guard.

Trial Island's original Fresnel lens, that was used until 1970 stands now in front of the Maritime Museum in Victoria.

Next stop: Fort Rodd and Fisgard National Historic Site, location of the oldest lighthouse in BC, Fisgard. Fisgard lighthouse got automated as soon as 1928. Time took it's toll but after it was declared a historic site 1960, Parks Canada restored the lighthouse in the 70s and early 80s to it's former Victorian style looks.

In 2009 followed another renovation and now it is a real gem.

Window details

the old staircase, unfortunately closed to the public...

and a closer look of the lantern room

Sheringham Point lighthouse (est 1912) was a bit off our path, but well worth the detour.
It's on Vancouver Islands west coast overlooking the Juan de Fuca with great views of the Olympic mountain range.

To get to the lighthouse one needs to walk through a little forest with hundreds of blackberry bushes. Our timing couldn't have been better....;-)
With it's "mainland" location and so close to Victoria, Sheringham Point was a favorite place to work for the light keepers. One daughter of the last light keeper liked it so much that she got married in the lantern room with 16 people attending in 1976.
Sheringham Point got de-staffed in 1989.

Dryad Point Lighthouse (est 1899) was the first lighthouse we saw on our journey along the Inside Passage. The first one we should have seen, Addenbrook, was so completely fogged in we couldn't even catch a glance. Located close to Bella-Bella and with a lot of First Nation heritage it's no surprise that the first light keeper was a First Nation decedent "Rainbow" Carpenter. And he was not only the first, he also held this job the longest, for 31 years!

Due to it's rather isolated and exposed location, Ivory Island lighthouse saw quite a few light keepers since it got established in 1898. To demonstrate just how rough the weather can be there I would like to quote what light keeper Sweers wrote on Christmas 1981:
 "Our only indication that we were “over our heads” came when the outer door to the radio room filled entirely with white sea water.
For a second the door seemed to resist – then the dam burst, flooding sea water and debris into the kitchen pantry, basement, living room and cistern. Neither keeper was injured by flying glass, even though I had bare feet and fled the room while it was still awash.
Andrew [Findlay] followed abruptly, since the same wave in uprooting small trees and severing larger limbs had stripped the radio room roof bare of shingles.
With an outer kitchen window shattered, we moved back into the safety of another room, but were again interrupted while ebbing the flow of water.
There is no way of knowing whether the 32-foot metal tower was knocked down by the same wave or one succeeding it, yet the DCB 10 main light shone [its] search beam hard through the living room windows for several minutes before burning out. In the confusion I had briefly mistaken it to be the beam from a ship driven off course by the storm."

The last lighthouse on our journey through the passage was Boat Bluff (1931), safe guarding the very narrow Tolmie Channel with fast flowing tidal currents. The average weather at Boat Bluff sounds really tempting: "Boat Bluff gets more rain during the summer than any other British Columbia ligthstation, and during the dark winters, it is constant rain, snow, and then more rain."...;-)

And just to proof this right Boat Bluff disappeared before our eyes into a fog so dense it was almost a drizzle.

Sources:

"Keepers of the Light" by Donald Graham [1]
"Lights of the Inside Passage" by Donald Graham
Lighthousefriends.com [2]
fogwhistle.ca
Map of Lighthouses of BC
"Points of interest along the Inside Passage" BC Ferries brochure [3]

September Conservation Tip

It's that time of the year again, it's time for

  OCTOBER UNPROCESSED 2014

What it is all about?

To raise awareness how much processed food we are eating, Andrew Wilder, author of the "Eating Rules" blog, came up with the idea to cut out any processed food, starting with three simple rules:

1. When you eat grains, eat only 100% whole grains.
2. Don’t eat high fructose corn syrup.
3. Don’t eat hydrogenated oils, trans fats, or anything that’s been deep-fried. 

That was 2009...
A year later, in October 2010 he tried again, this time trying to get more people to join him by taking the pledge: October Unprocessed. 415 joined him.

In October 2011 over 3000 took the pledge. It was my first year to sign up and it changed our eating habits quite a bit...annoyed comment of our son: "Why don't we have any junk food in our pantry anymore?" 

October 2012 saw more than 6000 taking the pledge!

Last year, October 2013, 15.500 people took the pledge!!!

Can we beat this in 2014? Let's try.

Here is all you need to know:

To learn more about Andrew and his mission, check out his blog:

eatingrules

Ready to take the pledge?

Take the pledge

Want to follow along?

eatingrules on facebook

Need support and/or want to communicate with like-minded folk?
Join the facebook group:

October Unprocessed 2014 facebook group 


This is the fourth time now that I'm taking the pledge. In these years our eating habits have changed quite a bit. To the point that the challenge is ALMOST no challenge anymore.
There is one food item though, I'm really fond of although I know it's not good for me, the one item that makes October Unprocessed a real challenge for me. I can hear my family and friends murmuring the name while they read this, they know me...it's.....Nutella....

And you can't make home made Nutella, right? That's what I thought until a friend suggested searching the internet for a recipe....I really didn't think there was a good tasting recipe out there, but the Brown Eyed Baker proofed me wrong. 

Here the recipe slightly adapted but with all the credit going to the Brown Eyed Baker:

The ingredient list is surprisingly short

You will need:

2 cups of  hazelnuts
1 cup of powdered sugar or 3/4 cup of liquid honey
1/3 cup of Dutch processed (or any other unsweetened) cocoa powder 
2 tablespoon hazelnut oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon of salt, sounds strange, but don't omit it 

all my ingredients are organic, but that's just me. I could not find hazelnut oil in any store so I ordered it online, quite pricey but you won't need much.

How to:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Spread the hazelnuts on a rimmed baking sheet and roast in the oven for about 6 to 10 min. I usually shake them up a bit half way through. You need to watch them, every oven is different, my first try burnt.....
Once roasted give the nuts in a glass bowl

Now comes the tedious part...once the nuts cooled down sufficiently to be handled, cover the bowl and shake it, hard...until the skin around the nuts loosens.
Pick out the "clean" ones and put them in the food processor. Repeat with the remaining nuts. Once you done it should look like that:

Time to let the food processor work. Let it run for a few minutes, until the hazelnuts release their oil and the nuts are transformed into a smooth paste.

Once that stage is achieved add all the remaining ingredients. If you are using honey instead of sugar make sure the honey is liquid and add it to the running food processor.

Let the processor run for a few more minutes until the paste becomes loose and shiny.

That's it. It will make about 1 1/2 cups and stores well in a mason jar. It does not need to be refrigerated and regarding to the Brown Eyed Baker it should be good for a month....I can't vouch for that because it never gets to be that old in our house...;-)

Now enjoy it on a home made bread with home made butter and you are ready for October Unprocessed 2014!

Yes, I will admit, it's not 100% like the "real" Nutella, but it comes pretty close and the hazelnut aroma comes out even better than in Nutella. The consistency is a bit coarser. To make it smoother I tried honey, which gives it a slightly different taste and does not change the consistency much. I just like honey better than sugar.

Exploring Beautiful British Columbia

We are just back from an amazing trip through British Columbia. Although we covered more than 4200 km in two weeks, I still think we only scratched the surface. So much to see, so much to discover!
Our first stop was Vancouver and here we did what every serious tourist does...;-)

We roamed the downtown streets,

visited Canada Place,

watched "Fly over Canada"....if you have a chance to see the show DO IT, it is absolutely worth it!!

And of course we visited Gastowns' famous steam clock and had a delicious lunch on Granville Island.

After our big city hunger was stilled, we took the ferry to Vancouver Island.
The fog wafted in and out of this dream-like landscape. What a wonderful attunement to Vancouver Island.

Portlock Point, Prevost Island

From the Ferry we went directly to Victoria, BC's capital and a really charming city.

First, of course,  the obligatory tour of the Parliament Buildings. We were quite blown away by the fact that the architect who designed the buildings was just 25 years old as he submitted his plan. A truly amazing building, we even got a chance to peak into the assembly room...I rather expected them to agonize over the teacher strike....;-)

A stroll through the beautiful alleys of Victoria followed and

after a glorious sunset over the harbour we enjoyed

the view of the Parliament building at night!

The next day led us to more explorations around the south and west part of Vancouver Island.

Fisgard Lighthouse, the oldest lighthouse of BC

Lighthouses have always fascinated me and there will be a separate blog on all the BC lighthouses that we saw on the trip coming soon!

We ended our loop in Crofton to catch the ferry to Salt Spring Island.
The BC mecca of organic food and cheese has one of the best farmers markets I have ever been to.

Foxglove Farm

Fresh, colorful, yummy and friendly. Following the advice of our host the night before we were at the market right when it opened. This way we got the chance to chat with the vendors and I could take a few photos. Half an hour later it was elbow to elbow and as we were leaving the island more and more people poured towards the market.

Beautiful flowers, pity I couldn't take a bouquet

Julie MacKinnon Ceramics, 

I'm sipping my afternoon coffee out of one of these great white  cups as I type...

For a cheese connoisseur like me, a visit to Moonstruck, my very favorite cheese maker here in Canada, was a must. And I was not disappointed. Cows can be cows here...and chickens chickens
.

A lovely place where you can see that their cheese is made with love!

After this organic, culinary highlight, it was back to the "mainland" of Vancouver Island again. All the way up to Telegraph Cove where a new adventure was waiting for us the next day.

Although we had to be at the pier at a rather early hour for a Sunday, it was well worth it.
After a two hour boat ride along amazing islands and inlets, we arrived at Knights Inlet and had a few very exciting hours!

More about the bear tour with Tide Rip Bear Tours on a "bears only" blog soon, promise!

The following day we spent on the Northern Expedition, a quite luxurious BC ferry, that took us from Port Hardy to Prince Rupert.

Half of the day was in fog and drizzle, but the other half was just fantastic.

What a landscape...truly mind blowing, and you guessed right, there will be a special blog about it coming soon...;-)

Exhausted from that visual marathon, we had a good night sleep in the Black Rooster in Prince Rupert, followed by a hearty breakfast and a cowpuccino at the Cowpuccino. Life can't possible get much better.

And with town quarter called cow bay, a window shopping tour was in order.

But not only the cows rule here, stunning murals are to be seen a plenty.

A visit to the Museum of Northern BC with it's unique First Nation artifacts, concluded our visit in Prince Rupert. It was time to head in the general direction of home.

On our way home we had two more stops planned.
The first of the two was Fort St. James, a national historic site, situated on the scenic shore of Stuart Lake.

Very well preserved buildings manned by welcoming staff who shared their wealth of knowledge about the respective buildings in a really interesting way.

We learned more than I would have liked, like how one skins a moose, or how many beaver furs you would have had to pay for a winter wolf fur, but I guess it really represents the days of Fort St. James.

The last stop is not yet a historical site, but a place you have to see should you be in the area.
The Ancient Forest
For more information, please scroll down to my August Conservation Tips.

Conclusion after two weeks of exploring super, natural BC? When can we go again?!!