Gardeners' Holidays 2021: Berry Fest

Technically, the Gardeners' Holiday for June 2021 should have been last Sunday, on the summer solstice itself. But we spent that whole day out of town celebrating Fathers' Day with my dad, so we weren't able to spend any time in the garden or eat anything harvested from it. So this year's Berry Fest is coming a week late.

Fortunately, there are still plenty of raspberries left on the canes to celebrate. We're harvesting between half a cup and a cup per day right now, and there are still lots of berries left that have yet to ripen. We'll probably be gathering in this first crop for another couple of weeks at least before it peters out, and then we'll have the second harvest to enjoy in September. In fact, if anything, the canes might be growing a little too well; the area inside our raspberry trellis is turning into a bit of a jungle. Brian went out today and pulled a bunch of stray suckers that had sprouted outside the boundaries of the bed, but when it's time to prune out last year's canes, we'll probably have to remove some of this year's as well just so we can reach everything.

We also have a new berry harvest to celebrate this year. Despite the fact that two of our honeyberry bushes perished last winter and we only replaced one of them, we have already managed to harvest about half a cup of berries off the four survivors. The bird netting we put over the plants seems to be succeeding in keeping away marauders (both two-legged and four-legged), but the gaps in it are big enough to allow us to slip a couple of fingers in to pick the berries that appear biggest and ripest. We aren't yet getting a large enough crop to justify taking the netting off completely and covering the ground with cardboard so we can shake the berries down onto it, but according to the FAQ at Honeyberry USA, we can expect to reach that point in another year or two.

And, to round out this fruit fest, we're beginning to get our first few plums of the season. Most of the ones on the trees are still green, and most of the ones that have fallen on the ground haven't been in any shape for eating, but a few of the ones we've gathered from around the base of the Opal appeared to be full-sized and close enough to ripeness to make them worth trying. We also picked up a bunch of slightly smaller or harder ones that looked like they had at least begun to blush before they fell, so we are keeping those outside the fridge to see if they ripen up enough to eat. 

At any rate, it is a reassuring sign that there are plums on the trees that are surviving long enough to ripen. Despite weekly spraying with copper fungicide, we haven't completely licked the brown rot; we're still seeing quite a few plums either drop prematurely or turn into brownish "mummies" on the branch. But at least there are some that have stayed healthy and haven't been toted away by squirrels. I'm not counting my plums before they're hatched, but there is at least a chance that the harvest from the three trees — first the Opal, then the Mount Royal, and finally the Golden Gage — will keep us in fresh fruit until our second crop of raspberries comes in.

As it happens, we're not actually doing anything special with all this fruit today in honor of the Gardeners' Holiday. We haven't yet managed to find an ideal alternative to whipped cream for a raspberry fool, and failing that, the most satisfying thing I could think of to do with all these berries was to eat them straight up. But we are including a little of our garden produce in tonight's dinner: some summer lettuce for a salad and one tiny fingerling zucchini, the first of the season, which we can fry up with a little garlic as an appetizer. And the raspberries will get their star turn next month, as Brian has already turned one batch of them into jam for this year's anniversary cake.

While he was at it, in fact, he even made some jam from berries that weren't actually grown on our property. He has now gone back to working on campus part of the time, and one afternoon during his lunch break he decided to wander off in search of the nearby pawpaw patch he discovered a few years back. The pawpaws weren't ripe yet, but he discovered there was a large mulberry tree right next to them and gleaned about a pint of fresh berries from it. (Pro tip: full-strength vinegar turns out to be good for removing mulberry stains from a handkerchief that's been used as a berry container.) After we scarfed these down, he decided to go back for a second batch and try turning it into jam. He didn't can it, just cooked it down and stuck it in the fridge for future use. So if we really want a fruit-based dessert to make our Berry Fest dinner complete, we can always try a bit of that on some toast.

The curse of the auto flush toilet

Last week, Brian and I took our first honest-to-goodness overnight trip in over a year. The vaccines arrived too late to allow us to make our usual trip to Indiana for Christmas last year, so to make up for it, he took a week off and we drove out to visit his folks for a few days. It's a twelve-hour trip by car, so we naturally have to make several stops along the way — usually just one for a meal, but quite a few to use restrooms. And so I had my first reminder in over a year of one of the biggest problems with public restrooms: the capriciousness of auto flush toilets.

I'm not the only one who finds these thing annoying. Search "why are auto flush toilets so bad," and you'll find multiple threads on Reddit complaining about them (usually in very bad language, so you've been warned). The problem is, to know when to flush, they rely on an infrared sensor that is, in theory, blocked when someone is seated. So every time the light hits that sensor, it assumes that someone has just gotten up and flushes. But in reality, it's almost impossible to enter a stall, sit down, do your business, get up, and exit without uncovering the sensor multiple times, resulting in multiple flushes. In some restrooms I've visited, the toilet regularly flushes at least once before I even sit down.

Now, there are several reasons to be annoyed by this. Maybe you don't like loud, unexpected noises, particularly when you're in a public place and partially disrobed. Maybe you don't like having your bum sprayed with water. Maybe you're a parent whose small child gets freaked out (not unreasonably) at having the potty suddenly threaten to suck them in while they're sitting on it. But for me, the most frustrating thing about these "phantom flushes" is that each one of them wastes water — according to the EPA, at least 1.6 gallons (the current federal standard) and, in the case of some older models, more than four times that amount.

How much waste does this add up to in total? There don't seem to be any recent studies on this point, but according to Grist, a 2010 study (no longer available online) found that water use in one office building increased by 54 percent after it installed auto flush toilets. Multiply that by all the 27 million toilets in the U.S. that use these infernal inventions, and you're talking about a lot of wasted water. Think about what you could do with all that extra water in a place like California, which lives in a perpetual state of drought. According to a 2015 Los Angeles Times op-ed, eliminating auto flush toilets just in the state's two biggest airports, LAX and SFO, could save 80 million gallons per year. Replacing all the auto flush toilets in the state with manual ones would save billions of gallons.

And yet the EPA, which has a mandate to prevent water waste, does not propose this solution. Instead, it suggests that these 27 million toilets should all be replaced with WaterSense models, which use less water per flush. And admittedly, wasting 1 gallon of water on each phantom flush is better than wasting 1.6 gallons. But it would do nothing at all to eliminate the phantom flushing problem. A manual flush toilet that uses 1.6 gallons of water for one flush per use is still a lot more efficient than a so-called WaterSense toilet that uses 1 gallon each for three or four.

A real solution would be to make better sensors that don't go off until the user is actually done with the toilet. My first thought on this point was that maybe instead of an infrared sensor, the toilet should have a sensor under the seat that detects a person's weight, so it would only flush after the person has actually finished and stood up. But I quickly realized there were two problems with this. First, apparently some people prefer to stand up to wipe, which means they might not be done before the flush occurred. But more seriously, apparently many people never sit down in public restrooms at all. Again, I couldn't find a recent study, but a 1991 study in Britain found that fully 85 percent of women — 85 percent! — prefer to "crouch" over the seat to avoid contact. (Another 12 percent routinely covered the seat with paper, leaving only 2 percent who dared to allow their bare butts to make contact with the seat.)

So here's my new idea: don't put the sensor on the toilet at all. If you want to have an automatic flush toilet, have it be triggered by the opening, or perhaps the unlocking, of the stall door. That would absolutely guarantee that the toilet won't flush until the person is done using it. You might still get a few phantom flushes from people who only went into a stall to change clothes or something, but it would be far less than the number we're getting now.

Unfortunately, I don't have the engineering know-how to make this work, nor the connections to get such an invention distributed. But anyone who does is more than welcome to steal the idea. I'm happy to forfeit any financial gains from it in exchange for the benefits of less wasted water all over the country, and less annoyance to me and millions of others every time we use a public restroom.

In the meantime, I guess I'll have to make do with the low-tech solution outlined in the Grist article: covering up the sensor with toilet paper or a Post-It as soon as I enter the stall, and removing it when I leave. So, essentially, turning the auto flush toilet into an overly complicated version of a manual flush toilet. This won't always work, because as I noted above, there are some toilets with sensors so oversensitive that they flush reflexively pretty much the second you walk into the stall. But at least it will reduce the flush rate to two per visit — only twice as many as necessary — instead of three or four.

Money Crashers: Income Inequality in America

My latest piece for Money Crashers is one that I really had to sweat over. It tackles a vast and complex issue: the growing gap between rich and poor in America. It took a lot of research and many rounds of editing to get it right.

But I'd like to think the end result is worth the effort. This piece delves fairly deeply into the four biggest questions about the income gap in the U.S.:

• Just how big is it? The short answer is, it's bigger than in most developed nations and still growing. But the article breaks down the answer in more detail, covering gaps in income vs. hourly wages, how income inequality is tied to wealth inequality, and how inequality in this country is inextricably linked with racial inequality.
• Why is it a problem? I explore the many ways inequality is tied to other problems in society (as a cause, an effect, or both). Among other things, I discuss the connection between high levels of inequality and high rates of poverty; how inequality can both cause and be caused by poor education, high crime rates, and poor health outcomes; how inequality can erode social trust and, at high levels, general happiness; and the case for and against inequality as a drag on economic growth.
• What's causing it? There are lots of answers to this question, and I can only skim the surface of the biggest ones: technological change, globalization, immigration, "superstar effects" (i.e., a few talented individuals or companies scooping up a big share of the money to be made in a given field), the decline of labor unions, the stagnant minimum wage, extravagant compensation for CEOs and other high-level executives, and other government policies such as tax cuts, deregulation, and the weakening of the social safety net.
• What can be done about it? This is the biggest question, and the toughest to answer definitively. But I point to a few changes that could obviously make a difference, such as changes in the tax code, improvements in education, a higher minimum wage, union-friendly laws, more regulation of the financial sector, changes in immigration policy, and a greater emphasis on full employment at the Fed. You can argue about how much impact each of these changes would have, and even about whether some of them could do more harm than good, but they're all important to include in the conversation.

I won't attempt to claim that this article is the last thing you'll ever need to read about income inequality. But I think I can sincerely claim it would be useful to make it the first thing you read to get a grip on the subject.

Income Inequality in America – Definition, Causes & Statistics

Lidl is the new Aldi

Brian and I used to be pretty big Aldi shoppers. It was our go-to store for staples like breakfast cereal, oats, cheese, butter, chocolate chips, orange juice, canned beans, peanuts, and dish soap. Their produce section was a bit hit-and-miss, but there were occasional great deals there, and it was also a fairly good place to pick up extras like organic, Fair Trade chocolate bars. I used to say that of all the strategies I used for saving money, shopping at Aldi was probably the most useful.

Yet over the past few years, we've found ourselves shopping at Aldi less and less. It started when we got our Costco membership in 2017 and gradually discovered that this store offered better deals than Aldi on many of our staple items, such as oats, chocolate chips, peanut butter, canola oil, and even (sometimes) cereal. The cheap raisin bran wasn't always available at Costco, so we still had a good reason to visit Aldi regularly — but then Aldi raised its cereal price too, and Brian switched to homemade granola for his everyday breakfast. And, around the same time, we started weaning ourselves off dairy products — first switching to almond milk and then discovering homemade vegan cheese and coconut whipped cream. Aldi does sell almond milk at a pretty good price, but I tried it and didn't like it, so this dietary sea-change eliminated another major incentive for us to visit the store. 

We still found it worth our while to stop by occasionally on our way down to Princeton to pick up a few items that were cheapest there, such as canned beans, dish soap, and (when available) canned pumpkin for the cats. But after the pandemic brought an end to our weekly Morris dance practices, it was no longer really worth making a special trip just for those few items. In the entire past year, we've been to Aldi only twice. Once Morris dance practice resumes (which may have to wait until fall, since our summer practice spot is still off-limits to visitors), we might go a bit more often, but it still won't be part of our regular round.

However, more or less by happenstance, we've discovered a new store that seems to offer many of the same benefits Aldi used to have. In fact, it undercuts several of our current go-to stores on staple items we buy regularly. It's a newcomer to our area: Lidl.

Lidl, like Aldi, is German chain that's making inroads in the U.S. Both are discount stores that focus heavily on their own store brands, though Lidl offers more name brands. And both are known for offering sustainable items (such as organic produce and Fair Trade coffee) at low prices. So when Brian learned that a Lidl had moved into the site of a former Acme in a nearby shopping center — one we needed to visit anyway to pick up some supplements from GNC that are no longer available at Rite Aid — we decided to make an expedition of it.

Based on what I knew of both stores, I was expecting Lidl to look a lot like Aldi: modestly sized, with a limited selection of products and a smattering of non-food items. What we saw when we walked in the door was rather different. It looked much more like a typical supermarket — and a pretty nice one, too. Right near the front was a substantial produce department and an on-site bakery, featuring fresh loaves of organic multi-grain bread for $3.99 and croissants at 85 cents each. Beyond that we could see what turned out to be a well-stocked seafood case, featuring clear and prominent labels for certified sustainable products.

Still farther along, we could catch glimpses of the meat department, in which we would discover a remarkable variety off both free-range and conventional meats. We couldn't find any free-range chicken drumsticks to compare against Trader Joe's price of $1.99 per pound, but there were whole organic chickens from Farmer Focus at $2.99 per pound. There was grass-fed beef, both steak ($6.49 for a 10-ounce ribeye) and ground. And there were even some non-meat selections, including Beyond Burger at $4.84 per pound (a better price than we'd found for it anywhere else) and the store's own plant-based ground on sale for a mere $3.61 per pound. (Sadly, it was in a non-recyclable plastic package, but pretty much all meats and pseudomeats are.)

We initially walked in without a shopping cart, since we were only there to explore and weren't planning to buy anything specific. However, we quickly realized we would need one when we spotted strawberries (not organic, but beautifully ripe) at $2.28 per pound and bags of four avocados at $2 each within our first two minutes of exploration. And the more we walked around the store, the more things we found to load into that cart, including:

• A 40-ounce jar of honey for just $4.49, $4 off the regular price and significantly cheaper than Costco's. (This deal required me to sign up for the store's loyalty program, but it was easy to do with my phone). 
• A half-gallon carton of store-brand almond milk for $1.79, 20 cents less than we normally pay at ShopRite. (We only got one just in case it proved as off-putting as Aldi's, but I tried it today and it's fine. A trifle on the sweet side, maybe, but otherwise unremarkable.)
• A five-pound bag of whole-wheat flour for $2.29, 70 cents less than the usual price at Shop Rite. 
• A 95-cent bar of Fair Trade chocolate, which is about a third the price we normally pay (though it wasn't organic, so that could account for the difference).
• 
  Two gallons of distilled water (used for medical purposes) for 80 cents each, about half the price we've seen at drugstores.
• A couple of cans of beans at 50 cents each.
• A pint of dairy-free ice cream for $3.49. This was not an outrageously good price (though still lower than most), but it was mint chocolate chip, a flavor I haven't found in any other dairy-free brand. I tried this last night and can confirm that it leaves nothing to be desired in taste or texture.
• A pair of reusable face masks for $1.99 that I grabbed because they looked like they might be more breathable than the cotton ones we have now. These "one size" masks turned out to be too big for me, but they were okay for Brian.
  

We also discovered good deals on several things that we didn't buy just because we didn't happen to need them at the moment. Chocolate chips were $1.72 per pound, less than the big bags at Costco (though those are made with sustainable cocoa, while these were Fair Trade but not organic). Pasta was 75 cents a pound, and unsalted peanuts were $1.85 per pound. We even found Brussels sprouts for $1.99 per pound, 50 cents less than we normally pay at Trader Joe's. (The one thing we didn't find any deals on was cereal. Although Lidl's website claims the store offers a raisin bran that actually meets our 10-cents-per-ounce standard — something Aldi hasn't managed in years — it wasn't immediately obvious where they were keeping it.)

However, some of Lidl's deals weren't as good as they appeared at first blush. For instance, large eggs labeled as Certified Humane on the shelf (though not on the package itself) were $2.25 per dozen, or slightly cheaper if you buy a package of 18. That's not the best price we've ever paid, but usually we have to wait for a sale to do better than $4 a dozen, so this price would be pretty remarkable if it was legit. But unfortunately, when I checked the website of the producer, Hillandale Farms, I could find no confirmation that it was. However, there was another brand on the same shelf that was $2.39 and did say Certified Humane on the package, so this is still the best non-sale price we're likely to find anywhere. It beats the pants off Trader Joe's, which charges $4 per dozen for eggs that are organic and "free range" (a term with no legal meaning) but don't meet the true gold standard.

This labeling glitch leads me to suspect that when shopping at Lidl in the future, we'll have to be careful about double-checking the packages, rather than trusting those convenient but possibly misleading labels on the shelves. But given that we have to check the packages in most stores anyway, that isn't really an extra effort.

And with these prices, you can bet we will indeed be shopping at Lidl in the future. In fact, it will probably become a regular addition to our grocery rounds, possibly even taking the place of Shop Rite. The main thing we buy there now is almond milk, and Lidl has that for less and isn't really any farther away. So Lidl will probably become our new go-to store for staples like almond milk, flour, and canned goods, with Shop Rite getting our business only when it happens to have a good sale. (Maybe not even then, since lately Shop Rite has been running out of sale items and refusing to issue rain checks on the grounds that, hey, there's a pandemic. Well, sure, the pandemic isn't over, but there are no major disruptions in the food supply at present, and other local stores aren't having any trouble honoring their promised prices.)

As for poor Aldi, well, we'll probably continue to stop by a couple times a year to stock up on seasonal items, like canned pumpkin in the fall and maraschino cherries (used for making cordial cherries) at Christmas time. But for our everyday needs, Lidl has gone over big.