The elusive Pacific razor clam, in all its glory. (Photo by Ted Alvarez.)

You know what would make supermarket food taste better? Making grocery shopping more like clam digging. Imagine having to paw through a bin of wet sand to find your onions, or thrash through icy waves for a chunk of Parmesan. Challenging, yes, but think of the feeling of accomplishment as you sit down to dinner.

I thought about this last Sunday as I stood knee-deep in the Pacific, wind-whipped and sandblasted. I’d come to Washington’s Roosevelt Beach on the second clam-harvest weekend of the year to up my foraging game: Having already tackled blackberries, mushrooms, and dumpster donuts, the coveted Pacific razor clam seemed the logical upgrade. The animal kingdom is a whole new ball game, even if the animal in question does look kind of like a stray pancreas.

My personal carbon offset plan has bogged down with a serious case of the Couldas.

For those of you just joining us, I’ve been on a personal quest to nullify the carbon dioxide emissions from a trip to Texas last October. All 1,858 pounds of it. Rather than buying a dubious carbon offset for the trip, I wanted to slice enough emissions from my own lifestyle to atone for my sins against the climate.

How’s that been working out, you ask? Coulda been better.

I could have cut back to once-weekly showers, saving gallon upon gallon of water. After all, it takes gobs of energy to gather, treat, and deliver fresh water on demand. I could have gone vegan, lifting resource-intensive and methane-spewing meat products from my conscience. I could have given up my apartment and my job in favor of a life spent illegally squatting in the woods and eating raccoon gristle. All that power I’ve been sucking to keep my food cold and my computer humming? Off my balance sheet.

Perhaps it won’t shock you to learn I didn’t do any of those things. That’s why, to date, I’ve managed to offset just 789.5 pounds of that mighty 1,858-pound total. Well, that’s the official tally. I’m hoping you’ll give me some credit for a side project I’ve undertaken. More on that in a minute.

A good night's haul: baked goods saved from Seattle dumpsters

It was 8:30 p.m. on a recent Sunday when it clicked. I was standing on a dark sidewalk outside of a donut shop -- the donut part is key -- getting ready to venture into my third dumpster of the evening, when I at last saw diving for the brilliant enterprise it is. And I owe it all to an unassuming black trash bag.

As you well know if you read my last column, I didn’t quite get the hang of the whole diving thing at first. I was actually kinda repulsed by the idea of picking through sodden food refuse in back alleys, even if it meant rescuing perfectly good eats going to waste in commercial trash bins for superficial reasons. But I appealed to you, dear readers, for help, and then I picked myself up for another go.

I’ve come up successful on four dumpster dives now. I’ll get back to that donut shop in a minute, but first, the tales of other dumpsters I’ve known, and the lessons I’ve learned along the way:

Perhaps I should have seen this coming. The very name "dumpster diving" makes the nature of the activity pretty clear. It doesn't hide behind a sanitized euphemism, like, say, "gently used snack gathering." It's right there in the title. Dumpsters -- you dive in them. But as I stood behind a neighborhood bakery, peering into a slimy abyss of trash, there was only one thought in my mind: Somehow I thought it'd be less putrid. I admit, I was reluctant when Grist first suggested that I investigate the dumpster-diving phenomenon firsthand. But now that good old-fashioned garbage-picking has gone all …

Photo: plastic_batFor my mother, sweet vindication came as an early Christmas gift this year on page 59 of a lifestyle magazine. This particular magazine, which specializes in snappy home décor, delicious cookery, and other ways to make your life more fabulous than your neighbors', ran a spread on stylish new ways to wrap presents. There, nestled between the hand-stamped parcel paper and the wrapping designed by local artisans, this anonymous magazine (okay, it was Sunset) featured a present swathed in newspaper. Regular old newspaper, left over from last Sunday's pile. Sure, they tucked a sprig of redwood greenery into the …

Pig out: This week, the Greenie Pig opts out of disposable junk.Somewhere on the California coast, between redwood territory and the Bay Area, lies the world's most self-righteous coffee shop. My boyfriend, Ted, and I stopped there two summers ago for some much-needed caffeine. But as we queued up to order, handwritten signs confronted us from all angles. "We don't use disposable cups, utensils, or flatware," they sneered. "BYO or get out, you earth-hating douchebags!" OK, that's not exactly what the signs said. But that was the spirit of the message, and the coffee shop did, indeed, decline to serve …

I've become quite the calorie-counter lately. With the holiday season upon us, I'm really tightening my belt, carefully calculating the number of calories I'd consume from all kinds of daily choices and sniffing out ways to trim the buggers from my diet. Like many a calorie-counter before me can attest, it's frustrating work. Of course, by "calorie," I mean "pounds of greenhouse gas" and by "consume," I mean "emit into the atmosphere." Forgive me for the diet-speak, but perhaps you'd understand if you were hauling around a load of excess carbon like I am. After traveling from Seattle to far …

Photo: Elisabeth Kwak-HefferanFarm to table? Please, so 2009. Forest to table is where it's at right now. And while foraging one's own nettles, berries, or chestnuts (or paying top dollar for them at hip restaurants) has both foodies and greenies all in a tizzy these days, no other gathering activity has quite the cachet of mushroom hunting. Hey, what's not to admire when your commodity of choice is delicious, valuable, tough to find, and, in the hands of amateurs, may cause profuse vomiting? Mushroom foraging, like all foraging, is by no means new. An elite and secretive society has existed …

Forgive me, Earth, for I have sinned. You see, a dear childhood friend of my boyfriend's got married last Saturday. Our attendance was a foregone conclusion -- there was no way Ted could miss his bro's big day. Problem was, we live in Seattle, and this wedding was in Marfa, Texas, a tiny town a full eight hours' drive from Austin. We had to travel -- a lot -- to reach this blessed event. With travel come carbon emissions, and with carbon emissions comes guilt. If it helps, I feel really bad about it. Perhaps the most hardcore greenies out …

I have a mystical sort of reverence for people who make their own jam. Like those who turn old pillowcases into cute outfits for their kids or whittle their own four-poster beds out of driftwood, their skills inspire both admiration and envy. What are my meager domestic accomplishments next to such down-home expertise? Jam seems advanced. Lately, my inferiority complex has gotten worse. Jam-making used to live in the realm of Quaint Things Your Grandma Did, along with sewing buttons or knowing how to use a hat pin. Now it's suddenly hip. So in my newfound Greenie Pig spirit, I …