I did it! I cooked, dehydrated and packed 352 meals in 2 weeks! Talking to my family and friends back home, people have been asking me, who have you met? What have you seen? Well, what I can say is that I have met some cool people and mostly I have seen the inside walls of the kitchen at my friend Audrey’s place.
But what a fantastic Kitchen!!! I feel so lucky that Audrey generously let me take over her apartment while she was away in Europe. Her apartment turned out to be the perfect place to cook and dehydrate all my food. So for two solid weeks, I reminisced of home while I turned her apartment into a tropical paradise. Four dehydrators running at once certainly creates some warmth and humidity. Apart from sharing her space with me, Audrey also helped me get 3 dehydrators from the ‘buy nothing’ group here in Vancouver. Additionally, through the Women Want Adventure Vancouver group, I connected with Verity, who also lent me a dehydrator. Verity is planning a canoe from Whitehorse to Dawson on the Yukon this year, so it was so cool to share plans, ambitions and a shared sense of adventure!
I was able to get a lot of the bulk foods (plastic free) that I needed from The Soap Dispensary here in Vancouver. They were super helpful, and made it straight forward and easy for me to get the amount (a lot) of different supplies I needed. I got my rice, pasta, herbs, spices, dehydrated soy, nuts, dried fruit, quinoa and couscous all from one place. I was also really excited to find plastic free toothpaste with fluoride (which I prefer to have in my toothpaste, but often isn’t included in plastic free options). I also managed to get some lovely moisturiser for my humidity hungry skin, which was also fragrance free… I’m thinking of the bears!!!
But the cool thing is that bulk goods are gradually…verrrryyy gradually becoming more common! I was so happy when I discovered that Save-On-Foods (supermarket) had a bulk section! Not only that, they had muesli, which I have discovered is not super popular here in Canada. But I love it! So I got my oats, muesli and coffee supply all there plastic free! And because I had to buy 15kg of muesli, they kindly gave me a discount! What legends!
However, like all attempts at plastic free life, it doesn’t come without its hurdles. One of my meals was all about the cauliflower! I was excited about it, a yummy flavoured meal eating a delicious flower. However, it was not to be. No matter where I went (no farmers markets were on), I couldn’t get cauliflower that wasn’t wrapped in plastic. So in the end I substituted with pumpkin and cabbage, which was still yummy, but not the same. As the saying goes: “We don’t need a handful of people doing zero waste perfectly. We need millions of people doing it imperfectly.“.
Soon I will be heading down to visit my friend Susan in Mt Vernon, Washington to send off my resupplies. I am so excited to meet Susan in person, she and I got in contact through the a shared love of the Inside Passage. Mathilde and I both read her awesome book about her solo journey through the Inside Passage, before we did the same trip. Her insights and honesty were inspiring, and I am so stoked that we get to meet in person. I will definitely be picking her brain about the mental game of solo trips!
The journey continues!
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Wow, Lucy – 352 meals – what a marathon effort! The mere thought of that much cooking gives me the horrors!! I’m relieved to know you will be well-nourished on your paddle. It’s also interesting to hear some of your strategies for avoiding the bears! xx
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