Earth Day seems to have influenced the Boy Wonder: "Mom, when I'm a grown-up, I'm going to make a law that says that people need to make sure they recycle and stop buying so much stuff. Oh, and quit buying big big cars to drive when they don't really need to. And so they stop littering. And share more, 'cause the earth is the only place we have to live and we shouldn't ruin it for everyone."
The downside of his enthusiasm is that I'm having a hard time getting on board with his youthful optimism that me remembering to bring my cotton bags to the farmer's market (met with an arm pumping "YES! Go mom!!") is going to do all that much to further his goals. The upside is that I now have a much easier time convincing him that running out to the compost pile twice a day is something both important and useful and he's actively whittling down his "wish list" of hoped-for possessions ("Mom, I don't really need magnet toys since I already build with my Legos and they seem more useful for having fun.") He's more eager than ever to help in the garden mulching and weeding and generally helping our little sprouts along. Our conversations on the matter of environmental issues have been a useful lesson to me in taking joy from small events in the face of larger and vastly more grave concerns.
One of my abiding interests, conservation-wise, also fits nicely in with my general obsessions regarding food and food preparation. To wit, we're building a solar cooker. I've long found the idea tempting, for we don't air condition much (by U.S. standards, anyway) and I am always motivated to reduce generation of additional heat during the long and humid Philadelphia summer. Now seems like a good time to act on the interest.
On the one hand, I think that using a solar cooker could be a useful tool for busy family cooks much in the same way that slow cookers are in the sense that even less time could be spent fussing and monitoring food as it cooks. On the other hand, there is a greater need to let go of control, to eat the food when it is ready and not demand a certain time for dinner, that could prove problematic for families that rely on split second timing to accommodate everyone's work, sports schedules and general busyness. Because Brainiac and I have promised each other that we'd actively avoid this approach to life - so far quite successfully, I think - I have high hopes that adding solar cooking to my food preparation repertoire will be highly successful experiment.
Not to mention all the new recipes to try (did you see? Beer bread!). There's not to much making a virtue of a necessity when I think I'll enjoy the process so much, eh?