Our Threshold for Taking Public Transit

We try to take public transit as much as possible instead of driving - not only because it's friendly to the environment, but also because Kaiya loves riding the bus and train! For trips within ~ 15 miles of our home, it works out well especially since we have such great access to public transit in downtown Mountain View. Beyond that, it sometimes works out and sometimes doesn't.

Here is the thought process we went through a couple Saturdays ago when contemplating a trip up to Oakland:

• Saturday morning plans: meet our friend Marna at 10am near Lake Merritt (where she lives) for a stroll around the lake + farmer's market, roll over to Fenton's in nearby Piedmont for baby Vivien's first birthday party from around 11:30am til 1:30pm or so, and then back home with either a nap in transit back home or when we got home
• Public transit options: From our general knowledge of Bay Area public transit, we knew that I had two options - 1. Caltrain to BART (Mountain View to Millbrae) , BART to Oakland, bus from Lake Merritt to Piedmont; 2. Drive to Fremont, BART to Oakland, bus from Lake Merritt to Piedmont. With Google Maps very cool public transit option, we could figure out if either of these options were feasible.
• Option #1: We knew that we would have to deal with the infrequency (only 1 per hr) and slowness (no express trains) of the Caltrain on the weekends. What we didn't anticipate was challenging connections in Oakland - the closest BART station (19th St) was 1.5 miles from the Lake Merritt farmer's market, which would mean a 30 min walk or waiting for a bus (also ~ 30 min). Total trip time to get Lake Merritt: 2.5 hrs. We could either leave at 7:10am and arrive at 9:30am, or leave at 8:10am and arrive 10:30am. Yikes!
• Option #2: On the positive side, driving to the BART station in Fremont on the front end and walking from the 19th St BART station would eliminate the hassle of transfers. On the negative side, the 21 miles to the Fremont BART from our home in Mountain View is almost 1/2 the distance to Lake Merritt. 30 min drive to BART + 10 min to get tickets + 40 min BART ride + 30 min walk = 1 hr, 50 min total trip time. A significant improvement over the Caltrain/BART option and probably would have been okay on the way there (we both have lots of energy and the novelty of the BART and walk), but probably would have been a disaster on the way back (both of us too exhausted to handle a 2 hr trip home).
• Conclusion: Feel a tad guilty for driving all over the Bay Area, but feel better that we at least considered our options and gladly trade the convenience of a 50 min drive to/from Oakland (not to mention getting from Lake Merritt to Fenton's).
• For future reference: Getting to SF on the weekends is hard enough (1 hr 15 min to SF from Mountain View) via public transit - getting to the East Bay is nearly impossible. Best just try to make sure we take advantage of our time in the Oakland/Berkeley and combine visits (see multiple friends and/or make multiple stops).

We Can Save Millions of Trees...

... By using cloth napkins at home instead of paper napkins. One stat (from the Natural Resources Defense Council) is that if every American household replaced one package of 250-count virgin fiber napkins with cloth napkins, 1 million trees would be saved from the chopping block. For more info, here is TreeHugger's analysis and a run-down of green/greener options from Care2.

At home, we have been using cloth napkins for a few years and now it feels totally normal. We have ~ 20 napkins that we use for a few meals and then just throw them in the laundry. Less garbage, fewer trees cut down, and no hassle on our part.

We were recently looking to buy some cloth napkins for Grandma, and finding super eco-friendly cloth napkin options (i.e. bamboo, hemp, organic cotton or otherwise sustainable fabric) is not that easy. We eventually narrowed it down to these choices:

• Litter Free Lunch: organic cotton cloth napkins
• World of Good: Bali cotton napkins made in Indoneisa through Fair Trade Winds

Kaiya & Daddy New Year's Resolutions

New Year's Resolution: get outside and play more!

• Visit the park more often
• Take more walks around the neighborhood
• More regular visits to the garden
• Bike rides to daycare and around town
• Go camping (Angel Island in July is booked!)
• Play at the beach
• Hit the hiking trails at Rancho San Antonio
• Visit the farms where we buy food from like TLC Ranch
• Use our Monterey Bay Aquarium membership

Kaiya & Daddy Making Mushroom Soup

Daddy and Kaiya made mushroom soup over the weekend, using portabellos, shiitakes and brown button mushrooms we bought from Far West Fungi at the Mountain View farmer's market. We feel lucky to have a great selection of fresh mushrooms so close.

Especially since Far West Fungi only sells at a few locations in San Francisco (including the Ferry Building) and the Mountain View farmer's market.

Kaiya had a lot of fun making the soup, especially using the hand blender. =)

An Abundance of Sustainable Meat

We feel lucky enough to have an abundance of local options to buy sustainably raised meat on a regular basis:

• Mountain View farmer's market on Sundays: TLC Ranch (sustainably raised lamb and pork) Pampero Longhorn Ranch (grass-fed beef), and a vendor that sells free-range organic chicken
• Sunnyvale farmer's market on Saturdays: vendor that can't remember the name of (sustainably raised beef)
• Country Sun Natural Foods in Palo Alto: Marin Sun Farms (beef) and free-range chicken
• Grocery stores like Piazza's in Palo Alto and Whole Foods in Los Altos

And now with the holiday season here, there are two more special events in the next week or so where even more sustainable meat is being sold:

• Sat, 12/19, 10:30am-noon, Hidden Villa in Los Altos: sustainably raised lamb and pork from Hidden Villa's working farm - more info in their Animal Program newsletter
• Sat, 12/20, 9am-noon, "Pork Prom" in Oakland hosted by Live Culture Co., Sonoma Direct and Blue Bottle Coffee: 5 lb and 10 lb boxes of pork chops, ribs and fresh sausage from heritage breed, free-range hogs from Shasta Valley Farm - order in advance!

Evening Family Outing - No Car Necessary

A few weeks ago, we went on an evening family outing to Redwood City. We were looking for somewhere interesting and new (to us) to eat - and we settled on trying Donato Enoteca in downtown Redwood City. Despite the last minute planning and limited weekend Caltrain schedule, we were able to make it work:

- Ride the Caltrain from downtown Mountain View to downtown Redwood City (5:19-5:41pm) - Kaiya loved people watching on the train

- Walk a few blocks to dinner reservation at 6pm

- Lovely dinner on the well-heated patio at Donato Enoteca, a very smartly decorated, modern Italian restaurant with an interesting menu featuring fresh, seasonal and local offerings such as a sampling of artisan olive oils (which Kaiya loved dipping her bread in); a salad of Half Moon Bay fava beans, pecorino and roasted Chioggia golden beet salad; and "bigoli" pasta with braised Niman Ranch oxtail

- Walk back to the train station to catch the train back to Mountain View: 7:07-7:29pm

Nice weekend dinner at interesting new restaurant, fun train ride for Kaiya, no car needed. =)

Sustainable Food Movement, Workers and Kids in Schools

So many interesting articles to read about sustainable food lately!

Here is another one in the SF Bay Guardian that talks about the complexities of reconciling the sustainable food movement and its impact on and interaction with the working families who supply labor for sustainable and organic farms, and those who often can't afford the bounty of local, organic, sustainable food produced by the movement.

Connecting With Your Food

Here is another article in the NY Times about connecting people to their food. Featured in this article: our new favorite non-profit 18 Reasons; SF Food Wars, an interesting group that hosts food competitions; and Urban Kitchen SF which hosts Slow Food cooking classes.

Saturday Morning Bike/Caltrain Adventures

We had a great morning!

• Biked to the community garden, dumped the compost, turned on the drip irrigation
• Biked on Stevens Creek Trail and down Evelyn Ave. to the Sunnyvale farmer's market
• Grazed and shopped for 1/2 hour at the farmer's market: yummy pretzel and crunchy sticks at Esther's German Bakery, cranberry apple sorbet sample at Scream, raspberries from Rodriguez farms, sweet baguettte from Acme, Monterey Bay line caught sablefish
• Caltrain back to Mountain View
• Biked back to the community garden to weed, lay new woodchips and harvest some beets
• Biked home pooped and satisfied

Back to the Land

Here is an interesting NY Times blog post photo + essay about Thanksgiving, sustainable food, knowing where your food comes from, Alice Water, Michael Pollan, Bob Cannard, Wendell Berry, the Edible Schoolyard project and more.