Ecofrugal news items

As it happens, there's been no big news in our ecofrugal life this week, so instead I thought I'd share a roundup of news stories from the outside world. There's no particular thread linking them except that they all relate to money or the environment or both, and they were all interesting enough to catch my eye.

Story #1: The Skybrator   

Three weeks ago, a story popped up on The Guardian about a new, innovative design for a wind turbine. Actually, it's not really a turbine at all; it's a ten-foot tower that oscillates in the wind and turns that motion into electricity. This design has all kinds of advantages:

1. It's much smaller than a traditional turbine, so it can fit into smaller spaces where there isn't room for a full-scale wind farm. It could be deployed in cities or even in suburban backyards, perhaps as a complement to solar panels, since the wind is usually stronger at night when there's no sunlight. There are currently plans to fit it on top of existing streetlights along highways and power them directly, sending excess energy to the grid.
   
2. Because it has no blades, it doesn't pose a threat to migrating birds and other wildlife.
3. It's quieter than big turbines, and the noise it creates is at a frequency barely detectable to humans.
4. It's unobtrusive, eliminating the "it's ugly" objection so often raised to traditional wind turbines.

And if it happens to resemble a giant vibrator, well, that's just another selling point as far as I'm concerned.

Story #2: The Rise of Non-Dairy Cheese

It was a big breakthrough in our quest for a more plant-based diet when we learned how to make a non-dairy cheese that actually tastes like, melts like, and stretches like the real thing. Prior to this discovery, we'd tried all kinds of different commercial cheese substitutes available in the store and found all of them distinctly lacking in taste, texture, or both.

But apparently, according to a recent story in Eater, there are much better non-dairy cheeses available commercially that we've never tried. In fact, the entire field of vegan cheesemaking has undergone a revolution in the past five to ten years, all without our knowledge.

According to Eater, these days there are three tiers of products sold as vegan cheese:

• The stuff found in most grocery stores, like Daiya. It's "made from a combination of fat, starch, and flavors that have been emulsified and solidified," and it has a texture that a vegan chef interviewed in the article describes as "melted crayon."
• Cheese made from cultured or fermented plant milk, usually cashew. This is made somewhat like traditional cheese: by adding enzymes to the plant-based milk to create curds and whey. The article says this type of cheese has "some of the funky notes and textural complexity" of the dairy-based kind. It says the best-known brand is Miyoko’s Creamery, which I've seen at the Whole Earth Center but never tried, mostly because it costs somewhere on the order of $20 a pound. Yet even, this, apparently, isn't the true top tier of vegan cheese. That honor goes to...
• Artisanal vegan cheese. This is made just like traditional cheese: you make a nut milk, then let it ferment to form curds, drain off the whey, and mold it. Eater says this type of cheese "oozes, stinks, and blooms as convincingly as its dairy counterparts, " although its texture tends to be on the soft side. It's sold mainly at vegan cheese shops (yes, those exist, apparently) at prices I shudder to contemplate. (The online ordering section for Riverdel, a "vegan cheesemonger" in Manhattan, shows selections ranging from $4 to $18 for a quarter-pound. Yes, that does work out to $16 to $72 per pound.)

All this is interesting to hear about, but from an ecofrugal perspective, not actually all that useful. Based on my calculations, our homemade mock-zarella costs roughly $9.12 per pound, half the price of most higher-end vegan cheeses, and it's been good enough for every recipe we've tried it in so far. I admit that it would be nice to find a vegan cheddar that's equally good for use in our Cheesy Rice Casserole and Potato Apple Skillet, but not so nice that we're willing to pay twice as much for it. We'd be more inclined to try modifying the vegan mozzarella recipe with more cheddar-like seasonings (perhaps the ones from this cheddar substitute on the same vegan blog) and see how it serves us.

Story #3: The Wedding Industry Strikes Again

Finally, a story I feel somewhat ambivalent about: I learned today that Netflix has introduced a show called Marriage or Mortgage. The premise is that a wedding planner and a real estate broker both meet with engaged couples and compete to convince them that they should spend their life's savings on their dream wedding or their dream home, respectively.

The reason for my ambivalence is that, if I'm being truly honest, I have to admit I would probably enjoy this show. It's mindless fluff, obviously, but it's my kind of fluff. Yet I must also admit, even more shamefacedly, that a good portion of my enjoyment would come from my own feelings of smug superiority. I would watch the couples struggling to choose between the Most Beautiful Day of Our Lives and the American Dream Home, and I would think to myself, "Ha ha, I got my dream wedding and my dream home without going broke over either one!"

But underlying this smugness is an important point: both weddings and homes tend to be oversold. Admittedly, I would say a home is always a better investment than a one-day event, no matter how special, because it's a tangible asset that will, you can reasonably assume, grow in value, and one that you can sell to recover the money if you have to. But if HGTV is any guide, there seem to be lots of Americans out there buying way more house than they really need, and overextending themselves on their mortgage as a result. A childless couple does not need a five-bedroom house; a family that never entertains does not need a formal living room and dining room; a person who never cooks anything more complicated than a pot of spaghetti does not need a gourmet kitchen. And the same thing goes double when it comes to weddings; people are assuming they "need" a four-figure dress and a limousine and a videographer and all the other stuff we didn't have and didn't miss, without really stopping to think about what they want.

Ultimately, I think, this would end up making the show more frustrating than enjoyable for me. I would always be wanting to yell at the screen, "You don't need all this stuff!" (At least I wouldn't be alone; the reviewer for Wired had exactly the same reaction.) Every episode, I would be hoping for just one couple to push back against the show's assumptions by announcing that after seeing just how much house and how much wedding they can buy on their budget, they've decided they can afford both by just scaling back a bit. But based on a Chicago Tribune article (via NNY 360) about the show, which wonders why "no one suggests the possibility of buying a home and then having a small wedding there," this hope would never be fulfilled.

Has anyone, I wonder, ever made a reality TV show about small weddings? About having the day of your dreams without spending away the down payment for your first house? Or would that never work because these shows all rely on the "wedding-industrial complex" for their advertising dollars?