One of my absolute favorite things from The Butcher’s Guide To Well-Raised Meat is where we explain how to afford well-raised meat. So many people lament it can’t be done. I disagree. Here’s how I do it, excerpted from the book. Enjoy!

People often complain that grass-fed and organic meat (and everything else organic) is too expensive, that they can’t afford it, that it’s not for them, or that it’s elitist.  We firmly believe that well-raised meat is for everyone.  If you share any of these concerns, first consider the amount of meat you eat- generally Americans buy and eat too much meat.  You don’t need mountains of sausages or pounds of ground beef to make a sauce.  Reduce portion sizes.  It’s better for you, and it will make well-raised meat affordable.  If you would like to try something like filet but can’t get over the sticker shock, buy 1/4 pound of it and don’t make it the centerpiece of your meal.  Beyond eating less and shrinking portion size, you can also lower costs by buying cheaper cuts instead of rib eyes and strips.  And plan for leftovers – a big roast can be dinner tonight and sandwiches tomorrow.  If you buy smart and cook smart, you can make up the price difference between conventional and pastured meat.  When people say our prices are too high, Jess invites them to throw $50 on the counter and watch her work.  She can get them ten meals for half a bill.  When she first made the claim, I must admit even I didn’t believe her.  But she proved me wrong.

TEN MEALS FOR HALF A BILL

Here is Jessica’s list of ten quick, delicious, easy-to-prepare meals for four.  The meat costs only $50 and change.  If you don’t eat meat every day, that means enough meals for two weeks.

1. Ground Beef (1/2 pound) $3 Beef and Bean Enchiladas

2. Bacon (1/4 pound, or about 3 slices) $3 Collard Green and Black-Eyed Pea Soup

3. More Bacon and Eggs (1/4 pound, or about 3 slices, and 3 eggs) $5 Spaghetti alla Carbonara

4. Sausages (3/4 pound, or 3 sausages) $6 Chinese Broccoli with Sausage and Polenta

5. Chicken Thighs (1 pound) $5 Thai Chicken Stir-fry with Vegetables

6. Pork Stew Meat (1 pound) $8 Quick Pork and Chile Stew with Hominy

7. Stir-fry Beef (1/2 pound) $4.50 Stir-fry Beef with Rice Noodles

8. Whole Chicken (3 to 4 pounds) $12 Roast Chicken

9. Eggs $4 Frittata

10. Roast Chicken Bones $0 Chicken Soup

Our homes hum with electric power, and our neighborhoods are scattered with the poles and wires that deliver it to us. What’s less visible is the air and water pollution this system produces.

Generally speaking, the burning of nonrenewable resources creates greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, and emits mercury, nitrogen oxide, and sulfur dioxide that dissolve in rain particles and fall to earth (this is known as acid rain). The mercury contaminates fish in our waterways that we then catch and eat, poisoning ourselves.

Even if you don’t live near a coal power plant, the pollution travels. New England forests are being harmed by mercury smog from power plants in the Midwest, and there is evidence now that emissions from Chinese power plants are reaching the West Coast of America. That’s quite a system.

Find out where our electricity comes from and how we can do better in “Planet Home: Conscious Choices for Cleaning and Greening the World You Care About Most.”

THE QUESTION:

Dear Alexandra,
I live in a 17th Century building with very thick walls and lots of black mold. We Clorox-spray it off in the winter, but now have a newborn baby whose lungs are probably going to be black with mold before he picks up his first Gitane / or perhaps bleached with Clorox before his first sniff of blow. It’s too cold to leave the windows open. Any suggestions on getting rid of it other than Clorox?
Thanks, Daisy

THE ANSWER:

Well leave it to my old school buddy to ask an extremely colorful and yet important question. (Hi, Daisy!)

Mold can grow anywhere in your house, and it can be easy to get rid of. But you have to know what you’re dealing with. There is black mold (bad for you) and then there is black mold (unsightly but safe). It can be hard to tell which is which, but the toxic stuff is rare and tends to crop up primarily on consistently moist material that contains cellulose (paper, wood, ceiling tile etc.). That doesn’t sound like what you’re contending with on those walls. But if it is, I’d call in an expert asap.

If you know that your black gunk is the run of the mill variety, here is an excerpt from Planet Home on how to deal with mold in your bathroom. This method involves hydrogen peroxide and can work elsewhere, too.

I’m more concerned about that Clorox spray than I am about Gitanes, especially for the moment. Chlorine bleach is the most common cleaner accidentally swallowed by children. If mixed with ammonia, the combo releases highly toxic chloramine gas. It’s considered a severe irritant and a carcinogen precursor. And there are all sorts of environmental concerns that come up regarding what happens when chlorine bleach is released via wastewater and comes into contact with natural materials (it can form dioxins, furans, trihalomethanes, and more). It’s best avoided, especially in a home with a newborn.

The excerpt:

If you see any mold forming, particularly at the bottom of your shower curtain or on that hard-to-keep-dry crack between the tub and the wall, use a cleaner containing hydrogen peroxide or plain old 3 percent hydrogen peroxide.  Keep in mind that peroxide is good at killing active mold, not mold spores.  The gray color won’t go away immediately or sometimes ever (this usually comes from mildew that has gone deep into porous grout).  It can’t hurt to spray this area daily if you have a perpetual mold issue.

And do keep those windows open from time to time, even if it is chilly. Ventilation is key when battling mold, so is reducing moisture.

How are YOU dealing with mold?

Many people will spend the extra dollar or two on buying organic, especially when it comes to poultry.  Unfortunately, many are still using an army of questionable chemicals to clean their kitchen counters, cutting boards, and knives.  Here is an excerpt from Planet Home: about kitchen systems and keeping your free range, organic, local, delicious chicken as chemical-free as you intended.

One of the many hot-button topics when it comes to chicken – conventional vs. local/pastured vs. free range organic (local or not) – is how the birds are disinfected post-slaughter.  Conventional chickens in the United States tend to be disinfected in chlorine baths, a procedure that has long been banned by the European Union.  It’s also banned by USDA organic rules.  There are other ways of decontaminating poultry: ozone baths, eco-water baths, or air chilling.  If you’ve sought out and spent good money on a chlorine-free chicken, be careful where you put it.  Cutting it on a counter or board that has been cleaned with chlorine or any other disinfectants and retains its residue undermines your choice.  Think it through.  If you clean with conventional cleaners in a kitchen, you’re applying them to your meals, adding toxic chemicals you were trying to avoid by buying organic or low-sprayed local food.  Shift your mind-set to consider your kitchen in a holistic, systemic fashion.  Don’t compartmentalize the food from counter cleaners or even pots and pans.  If you don’t want your chicken to be contaminated with chlorine, don’t contaminate your kitchen-or any room in your home-with it, either.

So what is the takeaway here?  Think big picture. It’s never a good idea to chlorinate your unchlorinated chicken. So do buy local pastured organic poultry. And do be mindful of how you’re cleaning those much used surfaces in your kitchen.  Whatever you clean with will get into your food and your body.  Buy natural plant-based cleaners or make your own. You can just use vinegar or hydrogen peroxide. If you want something a little fancier for surfaces other than cutting boards, here’s a DIY all purpose cleaner, also from Planet Home:

Combine 2 tsp washing soda, 2 tsp borax, 1/2 tsp plant-based liquid soap, and 1 cup water in a spray bottle and shake well.  Lemon juice or essential oils can also be added for fragrance.  (Washing soda may leave harmless white reside on a surface if not wiped well.)

Plastics are everywhere in the kitchen. And it seems that there are news reports daily on the hazards of hormone-disrupting chemicals found in plastics, which get into our food, beverages, and even baby formula.

Although there are plastics on the market that are generally considered safe to use with food, there is a growing body of evidence showing that plastics need to be treated gently, washed by hand, and never, ever placed in a microwave, where their chemicals leach into what’s being heated, especially things with a high fat content, like meat and cheese.

Plastics are also derived from a nonrenewable resource (petroleum), and not all kinds are recyclable. Even the ones that are recyclable often wind up overcrowding landfills or floating around in our waterways.

It might be difficult (but not impossible) to avoid plastic packaging at the supermarket. When it comes to storing your leftovers at home, why not bypass plastics altogether–baggies, wrap, or containers–and use reliable, renewable, and reusable containers made of glass, stainless, steel, and lead-free ceramic instead.

Glass storage containers are widely available, or you can use what you already have in your kitchen: old jelly, peanut butter, or pickle jars. Glass can also go in the freezer–just make sure to leave enough room for liquid to expand.

If you’d like a replacement for plastic wrap, try a reusable wrap, or opt for was paper coated in non-genetically-modified (GM) soy wax instead of petroleum-derived wax.

This way you won’t have to worry about what’s migrating into your food or hope the plastic currently considered safe doesn’t become tomorrow’s must-avoid.

Find more info on keeping your home plastic-free in “Planet Home: Conscious Choices for Cleaning and Greening the World You Care About Most.”

Many people complain about the price of organic food. An organic apple costs considerably more than its conventional counterpart at a supermarket. But here’s what is expensive about conventional apples: the ecological toll of the chemical sprays used to grow them plus the health toll of those sprays both on the orchard workers and the people who ingest their residue.

And if you knew that the farmer down the road—who maybe has known your family for generations—was struggling and needed to charge a bit more to stay afloat and to compete with the larger corporations that are able to charge less per pound, wouldn’t you be willing to pay a little more? That relatively little price difference will provide us, our families, the farmers, and the earth with a huge bonus along with a sweet, healthful snack.

Larger farms will sell produce more cheaply by externalizing their costs onto society and the environment. They don’t pay the cost of polluting the water with pesticides, or for the soil erosion they cause, or the impact of petroleum-based fertilizers—we do! The price difference can be made up by limiting packaged foods—they add up—shopping wisely, and buying a farm share.

If you’re going to buy conventional produce, keep in mind that some fruits and vegetables are more contaminated than others. The Environmental Working Group has ranked pesticide contamination for almost 50 of the most popular fruits and vegetables, and have come up with the “Dirty Dozen,” a list of 12 fruits and vegetables you should buy organic whenever possible:

celery, peaches, strawberries, apples, blueberries (domestic), nectarines, bell peppers, spinach, cherries, kale, potatoes, grapes (imported)

Find more tips like these in “Planet Home: Conscious Choices for Cleaning and Greening the World You Care About Most.”

Well I made it through Week Four of the super fantastic cold-water washing/eco-detergent/air drying challenge. Because I have been trying to make this both an urban and a non-urban (i.e the yard of my parents’ house) experience, Week Four was meant to be a non-urban one. But we didn’t go upstate. So it was another odd attempt to air dry in my New York City apartment. If you have been following along, you will recall that I have always been a cold-water washer (unless I’m doing sheets for allergy reasons) and an eco-detergent user. So really this challenge for me has been about air-drying. My previous weeks of urban air-drying involved a drying rack with PVC ropes too smelly to leave inside, followed by a week when the amount of laundry I hung on my shower rod broke it.

This week was pretty uneventful. The weather has been insanely hot, so the clothing we’re wearing is pretty skimpy. This means less laundry. I was able to go a full week and a half until I had two stuffed loads – one mainly sheets and towels. I had installed a new shower rod but still haven’t managed to purchase a different drying rack, so I made use of the shower rod, and did the usual drape everything all over the apartment scenario. I cheated on the towels. They weren’t getting dry and were on the verge of smelling. But at least 1 dryer load for 2 wash loads is better than 2.

The organizers of this challenge – Seventh Generation – sent me some end-of-project questions to fill out and I thought I’d share them and my responses here.

1. What was the easiest part of the laundry challenge and why?
Cold water washing and using the eco-detergent. I have already been doing these for years.

2. What was the hardest and why?
Several things.
*Figuring out how to air dry inside an apartment. I see how it can work and work well, but I don’t yet have the right equipment and the dryer is a very useful and lifelong habit. It’s a real mind shift.
*Weather! Line drying outside on a sunny, lightly breezy day was, well, a breeze. But add some clouds and some downpours and it’s really hard to figure it all out. I’m usually only upstate for 2 days at a time and it can take longer than that to line dry if the weather isn’t perfect, which it rarely is.
*Time You need to have a lot of it to make it work. Some days I hardly have enough time to sleep. Putting the clothes from the washer directly onto hangers to dry saves some time. I’ve been doing that.

3. What techniques will you continue to use, now that the challenge has concluded?
I’m going to give up warm water washing my sheets. I do it for allergies, but if/when they’re not acting up I’m not going to turn up the temperature to kill the dust mites. I’m dedicating myself to figuring out the right air drying equipment for my small urban apartment and creating a system for how to make it work for me. I have already started this process, but it will take more than a month of laundry (I only do 2 loads a week). In my current apartment, it may also mean 2 loads of wash and 1 dryer load. I am not confident I have adequate ventilation to air dry completely wet towels in my apartment. That said, if and when we move – and we do have vague plans to – I will take air drying into account. We want a little outdoor space for many reasons, and I will add being able to line dry to the list.

Week Three: Back In the City

Life is busy and I hadn’t managed to buy a new rack before it was time to do my weekly two loads. We didn’t have much laundry so I vowed to dry as much of it as possible in the apartment.

The weather was dry so I hoped that would help speed things up in my ventilation-challenged apartment. As I put wet clothes on hangers, I was feeling stressed. I have many work deadlines this month and though I wanted — and want — to get into what could be sort of zen about the experience, I was rushing so I could get back to work, annoyed by how long it was taking. I reminded myself that my annoyance was nothing compared to lowering the amount of energy I use.

I smoothed the hanging shirts with my hands so there would be less wrinkles once dry.  Then I pushed the hangers to the side to make room, and tossed a pair of jeans – the last item — over the bar.

The bar came crashing down. I broke it. It fell on me. I was laughing and crying at the same time. I so badly wanted this to work but once again I failed. I resituated everything in other corners of the apartment, then got back to work.

Tomorrow will be Week Four and my conclusion/assessment of the project. Stay tuned. And feel free to post comments.

Week Two: Outdoors

We went upstate to my parents’ house that weekend. I brought the PVC-stinky stand, and set it up outside in their yard to let it offgas overnight. The following morning, I put the first load up. It happened to be some of their gardening clothes and sheets.

My first attempt was anything but graceful. I’d prefer a line to a tippy stand. (Later I was informed that I didn’t open it all of the way. I’m not sure how this is true but my PVC ropes are less taught in pictures than those belonging to other participants of this challenge. Oops!)

Getting the sheets on there was not too easy. And my family was more than happy to mock my attempts. I was fascinated to learn that both my mom and stepfather remember line drying as one of their chores growing up, yet neither offered me tips as I wrestled with the stand.

Just as I finally had everything on there, my mother got out of the pool with my daughter and announced she was going to put their damp towels in the dryer! I diverted her from the machine and hung the towels. This was around 5 p.m. The wind picked up and I was feeling positive. Fifteen minutes later, the sky opened up. It was pouring.

I enlisted help and moved the rack underneath an overhang on the back porch. I worried about the other load waiting in the washer – clean and wet – to be hung. Rookie mistake. I vowed next time to check the weather before outdoor drying. And to read some instructions.

By 11 p.m. the sheets were actually dry but nothing else was. It rained for two more days. I bet that when we left, the remaining damp items were transferred into the dryer.

Week One: Indoors

My first indoor attempt was curtailed by the drying rack Seventh Generation sent me to use. I opened it and set it up. It took up half my apartment. No matter. The metal base seemed sturdy enough and the ropes on top some sort of plastic. It didn’t seem big enough for all I had stuffed in the washing machines. Before I even went down the hall to get my two loads of wet laundry, I noticed the undeniable stench of PVC/vinyl, AKA “The Poison Plastic” coming from those ropes. This is not something I ever want to be breathing, even if it meant air drying less clothing than I promised I would.

I quickly boxed the thing back up, opened the window wider, and turned on a fan. I hung as much of the wet laundry as I could over every part of my apartment – on hangers on the shower curtain rod, on the backs of chairs etc. – but had to dry the rest. Not an entire failure but a failure nonetheless. This wasn’t that different than what I normally do. I always air dry my more delicate clothing and that’s about all that will fit draped around my apartment.

That night, I started researching different drying racks (wood, especially FSC-certified, are expensive, IKEA has a cool looking and inexpensive metal rack, and Project Laundry List sells tons of great options). I also posted on Facebook for advice from friends who urban air dry. I got and am still getting great responses and even photos. Some people dry in their closets! (Mine has no room.) Some put delicates in the oven on low and, in the winter, stand in front of it to warm up at the same time! They figure short time baking uses less energy than putting a load in the dryer. So I may have failed overall, but I gained inspiration and how-to advice for my next attempt.

Meanwhile, I noticed my daughter stole my clothespins, set up a line in her play area, and was drying her doll’s clothes. Her line was tidy and well arranged. Educating the next generation = success!