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When I was a kid, each year my parents loaded my brother and me into a tiny car and hauled us to Florida's Disney World. I spent the days that followed singing the theme song to the ride "It's a Small World" while my family tried to plug their ears or drown me out by turning up the car radio. No trip was complete without a trinket — something to say we'd been there. One year I got a pink plastic figurine of Tinkerbell and a curious hat with ears on it. These items, though utterly commodified representations of a false world built on the bounty of a real one, contain a kind of magic. They remind. The unusual color and feel of the plastic Tinkerbell figurine remains unforgettable to me.

Today I make a new kind of pilgrimage when I travel. I visit thrift shops and yard sales that offer me interesting windows into cultures not my own. If urban and suburban landscapes had not been taken over by homogenous strip malls of national franchises, I might not be so drawn to these suburban curiosity windows. But with Santa Fe littered with fadobe homes (a nickname for fake adobe) and New York's 42nd Street impeccably polished clean for tourists of all ages, I find that clues about culture peek out from the waste stream. With a little luck, one can also find treasures to fill a home, stories to satisfy even a tourist's interest, and items to flip on eBay for a bit of extra cash.

Mikey and I have been in the Northwest for one week. We visited a Goodwill, a mom-and-pop thrift shop, and a bunch of garage sales. From these small samplings, we have an idea about the socioeconomic vitality, history, hobbies, and beliefs of the people who live here.

In Tacoma, Washington, we found a mile-long strip littered with pawn and thrift shops called Ponders Corner. The crowded, rundown stores contained enough cheap plastic goods to rival New York City's Chinatown. At a yard sale near the Canadian border, we discovered a culture on the hunt. There were guns and taxidermy heads mounted to rusty hooks for sale in a moldy garage. Inside, a retired mom proudly showed me her old china, wooden picture frames, and trinkets picked up on adventures and saved like frozen memories.

Most fascinating to me was a multi-block yard sale held in a new gated community near Tacoma. There were lots of new cars out front. The goods for sale revealed that quality was hardly of any import here. Stuff was plastic, the clothes made of synthetic fibers, the brands middle-of-the-road: The Gap and Banana Republic heaped in piles next to new plastic picture frames and flimsy kitchen gadgets. A lot of the stuff for sale still had the tags on. I wondered how these new items found their way to the trash so soon. Very different from the retired couple's yard sale with their dish sets from the 1950s and decorations older than I am.

I thought back to the trash linking the streets when I lived in New York City. Like the goods at the multifamily garage sale, this was stuff people had worked hard to make the money to buy. Yet this stuff had become trash while it was still new. I wondered, Why do we hold on to some goods forever and kick others to the curb? Do the cheap, manufactured, synthetic goods remind us of our participation in the destruction of life? Produced by sweat labor, shipped excessive distances at the cost of precious fuel, and manufactured with dirty, polluting systems, they remind us of our own demise.

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More from Wendy Jehanara Tremayne at PowellsBooks.Blog:

• Dodging Sysco
• Handsome Little Box Makes a Hearty Cup of Joe on the Road
• Wildcrafting the Northwest
• Make
  
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For seven years Mikey and I have been exploring a few pledges. We pledged to no longer make decisions based on money, to live from waste and from nature (both are free!), to make all our goods instead of buy them, and to share what we learn with others to keep knowledge free and open.

The pledges have led us to discover new ways to explore the world. We discovered an abundant life in which materials and knowledge come free of charge. June marks the start of a book tour. We're out promoting my new book, The Good Life Lab. The same pledges we made while living in New Mexico continue to guide us toward an abundant life even while on the road.

Our tour includes visiting bookstores, Maker Faires, hacker spaces, fab labs, and tech shops. At each stop we meet makers of all variety, people working with metal, wood, plants, glass, food, technology, and textiles. It is easy to notice that makers have a different view of the world than buyers of things. For one thing, makers know materials because they have to source them, so they know the origin of what they use, how materials are processed (or not), and what means of distribution delivered them. Makers are likely to know a material's viability and longevity, and the way it breaks down and returns to the earth. Consumers are not offered the same view. Consider the corporation that is mandated by law to make the most profitable decision in spite of the consequences to life (pollution, sweat labor, and the like). They choose materials differently. Makers, free of the mandate of profit, can make decisions that preserve life. If a maker makes something that becomes waste, they do so knowingly.

Makers know that they stand on the shoulders of others. Anyone who has ever made a thing knows that no idea is really their own. Ideas have histories; others have always contributed. That history and all the good ideas of others come free of charge to the maker. If you build the best new skateboard, a marvel of good design, you must admit that you did not invent rubber or ball bearings and you did not make the pavement the board rides on in order to function. While corporations operate for money alone and horde what they learn so they can turn it into profit, the connected view of the maker helps makers share and contribute to the commons, where good ideas can benefit us all.

I remember when I was deeply embedded in consumer culture, often after buying something, I learned that my goods were flimsy. They broke and I threw them away. I had no knowledge about where that waste went or what its cost was to the environment. The items I purchased did not come with care tags that revealed the real cost. As a maker I have a new choice.

Admittedly, while on tour I met makers who do not think deeply about the things they make — an opportunity missed. Even makers of things can make a world that does not support life. The maker culture has a chance to be a movement, but it won't be unless makers recognize the responsibility given to them. I believe that the maker movement sprung out of our disappointment with consumerism. Consumerism lacks meaning. It has no heart. Anything can be commodified and become a trend. Makers have answered an important question: Are we limited and mechanistic — consumers? Or are we unbounded and creative — creators? The maker movement says, Yes, we are creators. But another question immediately follows: What kind of world will we make?

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More from Wendy Jehanara Tremayne at PowellsBooks.Blog:

• Dodging Sysco
• Handsome Little Box Makes a Hearty Cup of Joe on the Road
• Wildcrafting the Northwest
• They Had a Broken Keyboard; I Bought a Broken Keyboard: Thrift, the New
  
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Wildcrafting in Washington

Mikey and are looking forward to hiking the Northwest in search of wild edible plants. Wildcrafting is our favorite way to explore a new place. When we head out into nature, we know we'll have an adventure, gain knowledge, and if we're lucky, acquire food or medicine that will last a winter or two. Unlike the goods for sale in the mall, those found in nature are free and so is the adventure. The knowledge obtained while having the adventure is priceless.

While in the Northwest, we hope to find plants that are not available to us where we live in the Chihuahuan Desert. Osha, for example (a.k.a. wild lovage or bear medicine), is a mountain plant that likes moist soil rich in organic material. There is little chance of it popping up in the dry caliche floor of the desert we live in. Osha resembles poison hemlock and so it must be carefully verified before consumed. Osha's pungent, celery-like smell can be used to verify it as authentic. Wildcrafters are well served by knowing the circumstances surrounding the plant. For example, bears, who use the plant to help them awaken from a winter of hibernation, can often be found hanging out near osha (thus one of the plant's nicknames).

Before heading out, we made a list of items that are needed for an afternoon of wildcrafting:

• Local medicinal plant book, earmarked to show the plants that are ripe for picking this time of year. We'll have to look for plants that store their alkaloids in the flower or leaf; plants that store their potency in the root or bark are best picked in autumn.
• Small, sharp knife; small shovel; small pruner/clipper; pair of gloves
• Sack or backpack to carry samples, variety of paper bags to separate plant samples
• Marker for labeling bags
• 20x loupe for viewing the very tiny (Bausch & Lomb makes a great keychain loupe)

Tips:

• Never consume a plant if you are uncertain about what it is.
• Check your plant guide to know which parts of a plant to use: leaf, bark, flower, seed, root, sap.
• Avoid plants by roadsides and ditches or near any kind of contaminant or waste.
• Always collect where the plant is abundant, and never collect more than 20 percent of the amount visible to you.
• Never collect in national forests or wildlife reserves.

Storage:

• Most plants can be dried in a paper bag tacked to the wall and left alone for a week or two.
• Plants can also be steeped in alcohol (vodka or Everclear is recommended) or honey to extract their medicinal properties while also preserving them for future use.

Have fun and be safe.

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More from Wendy Jehanara Tremayne at PowellsBooks.Blog:

• Dodging Sysco
• Handsome Little Box Makes a Hearty Cup of Joe on the Road
• Make Good
• They Had a Broken Keyboard; I Bought a Broken Keyboard: Thrift, the New
  
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Roasting coffee in a popcorn maker

Seven years of homesteading have shown me that most of life is spent on domestic issues related to food and drink. Mikey and I savor the details when it comes to figuring out how to get the greatest amount of pleasure from food. We are coffee lovers and admit to consuming heroic doses of caffeine. On the road, caffeine keeps us alert and safe. A mighty cup of Joe can even produce blasts of creative inspiration and epiphanies. We devised what we believe to be a near-perfect travel kit and system for making hot- and cold-brewed java while traveling.

GEAR: One super-cute, avocado-green, vintage, plastic, shoe-box-size fishing tackle box (50 cents at yard sale) contains: AeroPress for making single cups of coffee ($25 new), metal thermometer (50 cents at yard sale), Hario hand-crank coffee grinder ($30 new), TDS meter for testing water ($20), long sundae spoon for stirring (50 cents at yard sale), coffee beans roasted at home* using a Poppery II popcorn popper from a yard sale (beans $5/lb, roaster $2).

COLD TODDY: Toddy is a system for making cold-brew coffee, which has a nice, smooth taste. It is easy to make on the road because all you need is ground coffee, water, a vessel, and a filter. When traveling, we make a fresh batch daily. Simply add 1.5 cups of ground coffee to a half-gallon Mason jar filled with fresh water. Shake and let sit 24 hours before filtering. Chill. Yes, it is that easy.

HOT COFFEE: Grind bean in hand grinder and place in the AeroPress that is turned upside down on your work surface. Heat water to 175 degrees (temperature is important) measured with a metal thermometer, stir with long sundae spoon, place Aero cap on with its filter in place, and turn right side up over a mug before slowly pressing to strain.

Cute green box and coffee set up for the road

TIPS: Use a TDS meter to determine how many nonwater molecules are in the water coming from the tap you plan to use. As a rule we choose not to drink water with more than 200ppm (parts per million) nonwater molecules. Hot water can be found free of charge at truck stops, where it is regularly on hand for tea. AeroPress paper filters can be washed and reused five times or more. Fair-trade organic green coffee beans can be purchased online for less than half the price of roasted coffee and roasted in a thrift-shop popcorn maker.

EPIPHANIES: If you are lucky enough to have one, you probably drank too much coffee. You might as well catch the spark. Some of my best ideas have come this way! So grab a pen and paper and write it down.

*A NOTE ON ROASTING: We favor Poppery I and Poppery II for coffee roasting, but any poppers with a perforated metal cylinder will do. Roast time is approximately 8 minutes. If you melt the plastic top, just put a cardboard box over the whole rig to prevent chafe from flying out. Always brew outdoors. When finished, cool the beans in a metal strainer for 24 hours to prevent acids that will upset your belly. Video instructions:

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More from Wendy Jehanara Tremayne at PowellsBooks.Blog:

• Dodging Sysco
• Wildcrafting the Northwest
• Make Good
• They Had a Broken Keyboard; I Bought a Broken Keyboard: Thrift, the New
  
  Read More»

Setting out on a month-long road trip to the northwestern United States to promote my new book, The Good Life Lab, Mikey and I wondered, How do homesteaders uphold a food standard while traveling?

Driving from New Mexico to Washington

We remember an afternoon we spent at a café on Avenue B on the Lower East Side of Manhattan where we sipped coffee and tapped away at our laptop keyboards. From the corner patio table we noticed the driver of a Sysco truck making a food delivery to a run-down deli. When he was finished, he crossed the street and walked two storefronts further down to deliver the same food to a fancy, expensive health food restaurant. Witnessing this was like having a piano dropped on our heads. We realized that food eaten out is all the same. No matter how it has been dressed up, unless produce is certified organic, it can be assumed to contain pesticides and/or be genetically modified. And conventional meats are heavy with hormones that affect our own. Most of the conventional food we eat comes from a truck like the one we saw that day in New York.

Our experience that afternoon was one of the mounting reasons that led us to change the way we were living. We started wondering what healthy food really was, and we set a goal to obtain it. Today at our New Mexico homestead, we make cheese from the milk of a local cow named Princess and eat vegetables from our own garden. Wild game comes to us from the nearby open ranges along with wild-crafted plants that we forage for food and medicine. Our kitchen is a reflection of our wish to avoid highly processed foods, additives, preservatives, pesticides, hormones, and GMOs.

Cooking roadside

For the very first time since we built our homestead, this month we would be on the road traveling. Without a strategy, we'd be eating who knows what. So, we set a goal before leaving: avoid Sysco.

This strategy helped us travel 1,600 miles from home, from southern New Mexico to Seattle, without a single stop for food or drink. Traveling in a not-so-big VW sedan, we had to keep our food setup small. All our gear fits into a medium-sized plastic bin. Most of the cookware was acquired for a buck or less at yard sales. The edible goods are from New Mexico farms and our own garden; the few store-bought foods are organic.

GEAR: One 20 x 16 x 6 plastic bin to hold cooking gear, a dual-burner propane camping stove, a cast-iron fish pan (flat without edges takes up less space, and ours was 50 cents at a yard sale), a stainless-steel French press for tea, a spatula (whipper flipper acquired at a yard sale for a quarter), a set of titanium camping bowls, cutlery, one sharp camping knife, two insulated travel mugs, a cooler that we found at Elephant Butte Lake after a holiday weekend, a large thermal Mylar freezer bag that a guest left at my house (which we use to hold everything that is not in a bottle or jar, to avoid spills), and a TDS meter (to determine safety of drinking water)

BASIC SUPPLIES: roll of paper towels, olive oil, Dr. Bronner's soap, a 2-gallon jug of water

BREAKFAST and SNACKS: Variety of granolas, nuts, dried fruit, a box of hemp, a box of almond milk, and fresh fruit

Homemade tea

LUNCH and DINNER: Pork roast sandwich with caramelized apples (ingredients: pork from a New Mexico farm precooked in a Dutch oven at home, mesquite bread baked at home using foraged mesquite, preshredded homemade cheese, apples). We warm the bread on the camping stove and caramelize sliced apples in the cast-iron pan. Once the sandwich is built with all the ingredients, we warm it in the pan to melt the cheese. One half-gallon Mason jar of whey-fermented kimchi made with bok choy from our garden makes a spicy green side dish that is also a probiotic. When we finish the jar, we use the liquid in the kimchi to inoculate a new batch. We plan to keep this going for the entire road trip.

BEVERAGES: We use the TDS meter to test water we are considering drinking. We choose not to drink water with over 200ppm (parts per million) nonwater molecules. For tea, hot or cold, we packed dry coda that we wildcrafted and mint from our garden. We left home with two mason jars filled with our kombucha before we put our mother to rest in the fridge, and one bottle of homemade wine to have with our evening dinner.

MEDICINE: Homemade tincture of ocotillo for bellyache; ephedra for a stimulant and bronchial opener; grape-seed extract for bacterial food poisoning (just in case); creosote for stings, cuts, and bites; homemade sleeping pills containing kava kava, hops, and valerian root.

Cooler of healthy goods

TIPS: Hot water for tea and coffee can be obtained free at truck stops, made by warming water on the camping stove or by using hotel coffee pots to heat it. Free ice can be picked up from hotel ice machines. Maple syrup is a great all-purpose sweetener that can be added to cereal, sandwiches, and beverages. (A Minnesotan neighbor who snowbirds in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, gifted ours to us before leaving.) Earplugs are a must when you don't know where you'll be sleeping. The storage bin that holds the kitchen gear, when emptied, becomes a vessel for washing dishes.

Did I mention we are traveling with a cat and a dog? To keep everyone's belly stable and avoid carsickness, we travel with two cups of premade white rice that we mix with their food. And we travel with Rescue Remedy in case anyone gets panicky.

Arriving at our Seattle destination, we meet the arrival of a book we had ordered and shipped to Washington before leaving: Wild Harvest: Edible Plants of the Pacific Northwest. We plan to use this guide to help us to search out wild edibles in the Northwest. We are on the lookout for nonconventional food that we expect to find at farmer's markets throughout Vancouver, Portland, Bellingham, Corvallis, and Powell River. The first 1,600 miles have been Sysco free!

Cheers to good health and planning.

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