Furniture Polish

I have a couple older wood pieces around the place - a late 50's HiFi set, a similarly aged night table, a somewhat newer, solid oak dinning set.  All of them are used and all have clearly been dying for lack of a good, rehydrating polish.  But my parents run a furniture refinishing shop and I know from growing up around that business that your average over the counter furniture polish is a very bad idea, especially if you have any plans at all to refinish in the future.  All of these older pieces are going to get refinished at some point.  The problem with most commercial polish is that most of them contain silicone to keep dust away.  Silicone gets into the grain of the wood, forever to remain.  You can strip a piece all you want, it will look clean to the eye, but the instant you put new lacquer/varnish/shellac/polyurethane on it, you'll get these oily spots called fish eyes in the trade all over the place.  It isn't pretty and there's literally no way to fix it.

So I've opted for no polish at all rather than risk fish eyes on my solid wood pieces in the future.  Until two days ago when I just happened to stumble upon the easiest furniture polish recipe ever.  I mixed up a batch immediately and gloried in the results.  My good wood furniture looks absolutely beautiful.

The recipe is, 3 parts any oil you happen to have around (I used olive oil but seriously, any vegetable based oil will work) to 1 part lemon juice.  You can put it in a spray bottle, remembering to shake before using, or you can put it in a little jar and upend it over your dusting rag (this was my option since I didn't have any spare spray bottles lying around).  It goes on super easy, absorbs into the wood within a couple minutes, and there are no harsh fumes or artificial scents to foul the air.  I absolutely love this stuff

Practicing Frugality

I'm not sure why this is.  According the the Yahoo article I just read, our nation is in turmoil.  Yet my husband has a good paying job with tremendous job security, we're living within our means, and we're going to try and get a land contract on a nice little house in a decent working class neighborhood in the next few weeks.  I personally do not feel like we're in turmoil.  I actually feel pretty secure.

Here's how we do it:  

1)  One vehicle that we don't have payments on, and which is old enough we don't need to carry full coverage insurance on it.  Liability insurance alone is $56/mo.

2)  Basic cable service plus internet service.  I would love to ditch the cable tv but can't quite justify it on account of Ba'al's mental health.

3)  Our grocery budget is under $150/mo for three adults and one baby.  I shop the bargain grocery stores first, use ethnic stores for "unusual" ingredients, and buy dry goods in bulk.

4)  Everything possible, I make at home.  I can clean my house in its entirety, wash dishes, do laundry, and keep our bodies clean with cornstarch, baking soda, vinegar, and a few other basic household things I buy anyway.

5)  We buy almost nothing prepared.  95% of meals in this house are made completely from scratch, including the bread.

6)  We eat out twice a month and usually for lunch.  Lunch menus are *always* cheaper.

7)  The last movie we went to was in August, at the budget theater where a ticket is $1.50.

Yes it's stingy.  But we like it this way and we feel pretty confident about surviving and living well while doing it.

Cheap Yogurt !

This procedure comes to you courtesy of a crockpotting mom here on blogger.  I tried it yesterday and sampled the results this morning.  AWESOME yogurt for much less than cups of the stuff cost and much healthier too since this isn't laced with sugar, gelatin, and G*D knows what else.  

Pour half a gallon (8 cups) of milk into a crockpot.  A 2 quart will work but having some room to stir, a three or four quart crock, will work better.  Turn your crock to it's lowest setting, cover the milk, and leave along for 2 1/2 hours.

Turn off the crock.  Leave the milk covered.  Don't touch for three hours.

Now that the milk is warmish, scoop out 2 cups.  Mix in 1/2 cup store bought PLAIN yogurt that has "active cultures" listed in the ingredients.  I used the Great Value brand from Wal-Mart with no trouble at all.

Pour the milk/yogurt mixture into the crock.  Add up to 1 cup of powdered milk.  If you're using whole milk to start, you don't really need to add powder.  But use powdered milk if anything less than whole milk, and use the full cup of powder if you started with powdered milk or skim milk!

Now wrap the whole crock up, base and all, in a thick bath towel.  Leave it alone.  Forget about it.  Hopefully you're doing this part in early evening and you can leave it on the counter until morning.  That's best.  The longer the milk is left undisturbed, the thicker your end product will be.  After 8 to 14 hours, unwrap your crock and check on the results.  The milk should have thickened up (texture will depend on how much fat and protein are in the milk you used) and taste tangy.

You can serve it toped with honey or fruit or you can stir fruit in.  Growing up on homemade yogurt, I opt for the topping it with something option.  Mixing stuff in tends to break the protein chains and make the yogurt runny.  This is also the perfect yogurt to use in Middle Eastern and Indian cooking and it makes a rich substitute for milk in baking.  I used mine for the milk in biscuits this morning and my word!  They are they best biscuits I've every had.

New Discount Grocery in Town!

We have a new scratch and dent grocery in town and this one is close enough to where we live to actually make going there practical.  I am so excited about Extreme Bargains!  They advertise prices up to 70% off  regular grocery store prices.  Unlike Bargain Mart, which we have to drive twenty minutes to get to and which has a generous selection of sauces, dressings, and spices and very little else, EB had pasta, pasta sauce, flour, sugar, goat milk (!!!), and a wide variety of other items I would like to buy more regularly but usually don't have the grocery dollars to get.  I spent way more than necessary on our first visit but I won't have to spend much on groceries when Ba'al gets paid this week.  So we're all happy.

I've also finally gotten a sewing machine.  My last one got left behind in Wisconsin when we moved here from there almost a year and a half ago.  I did not get a new one.  I do not like the modern plastic machines that have to go to a trained professional for such simple things as a lube job and cleaning.  No, instead I went to a pawn shop and bought a 1960's model that's insanely heavy but can be lubed and cleaned by someone with few mechanical skills (moi) and then operated without spending hours hunched over a manual first (like the last machine I had which my dear Ba'al thought he was doing a good thing by buying me a brand new model).  That one ended up in the shop a month after purchasing because cleaning fabric fuzz under the foot plate was decidedly not a do it yourself project.  So we're very happy around here with the Dressmaker model S-3000 purchased for $60 (pawn shops are as good or better than thrift stores for electronics).  That price is about half what the same machine goes for on ebay so I think I got a pretty good deal.  

The same day, we got a gently used Philips DVD player from the same pawn shop.  Y'all know what that means?  Means that when we got to pay our cable bill this week, we're also taking in the cable box for the TV!  We are going to become a one service (internet) household, using the DVD player and the 'net to do all of our TV watching.  I have to put together a TV lineup this week so we know what shows to download for our viewing pleasure and what days to look for them.

Deodorant

Not only have I sworn off the shampoo bottle, I've also sworn off the deodorant stick.  I've even gotten Ba'al onto homemade deodorant.  It was easy to make, it's easy to use, and it smells ever so nice.

Mix equal parts cornstarch and baking soda.  Add a few drops of essential oils or some crushed herbs if you like (I used dried, crushed thyme, basil, and rosemary).  Mix all that together.  Then add a couple tablespoons of coconut oil or shortening.  All the recipes I've read say to use coconut oil and I'm sure it's very nice.  But the day I ran out of deodorant, I didn't have money to go out and get coconut oil so I used shortening and it worked just fine.  Both are solid to liquid fats that your skin absorbs just fine.  You want enough to make a nice thick paste:  Start with about a tablespoon and a half and add in increments from there.  Store in a pretty jar or an old deodorant stick.  Use by putting a small amount on your fingertips and rubbing in.  Within a few minutes it absorbs completely with no white marks to be seen.

What is a luxury?

I've been on a mission to cut grocery costs.  With three adults in our house now, it's a fight to keep costs down.  Cause you know, the more I can cut corners, the more I can sock away in our savings account.  A few days ago, I came across hillbilly housewife.  The site has all sorts of information on how to cut costs in the grocery budget and still feed your family filling, interesting meals.  Of particular interest are her forty-five dollar and $70 dollar a week meal plans.  I used the $45/wk shopping list this past week and got everything I didn't already have for $29, using Save a Lot.  It's a lot of food and will keep my men happy for the next couple weeks.

One of the talking points on the site deals specifically with the issue of using margarine instead of butter, though the same point applies to a lot of other foodie choices as well.  So she says that when you have to cut costs and make your dollar stretch as far as possible, it's best to go with the cheapest option available.  Yes, I can hear you saying but what about my health?  What about my family's health?  What about this, what about that?  The reason you're shopping on perhaps $50 or less a week is because you're short on money or want to save money.  So you make sacrifices now to reach some other goal.  The argument about margarine vs. butter is one of luxury economics.  When you can afford to make the choice, you choose the option that's more expensive, better tasting, and arguably better for you.  

Margarine gained in popularity during the Depression years when city people couldn't afford to buy butter.  It's time to return to that mindset.  I would love to have boughten two pounds of butter and a quart of olive oil.  Instead, I got two pounds of margarine and a quart of veggie oil.  I haven't boughten vegetable oil in *years.*  But I needed to make my grocery budget stretch and I didn't happen to have a coupon for olive oil and even if I had, it probably wouldn't have taken enough off to make olive oil comparable to vegetable oil.

Because I Can't Say it Anywhere Else . . .

First, hi everybody.  I just got back from an experiment in how much we can live without.  We cut our cable TV and internet service for a few weeks.  Decision:  Cable TV we can live without.  Internet, we can't live without.  So, I have returned.

Second, I'm going to stray from my personal determination to not get personal in this blog.  This is going to be the one time I get political here.  I can't say this anywhere else because my pregnancy group is determined to remain drama-free.  The same goes for the groups I belong to on Cafemom.  So this is the only place I can get this out.  After today, back to no politics or other personal issues.

I did not vote for Obama.  I did not vote for him because I don't agree with his politics.  I'm trying to forget about the election right now because the whole thing makes me mad.  I took a mandatory civics class my senior year of high school.  It was a run up to the election year and my teacher took great pains to instruct us in the electoral process.  He also took great pains with the intent of the framers of the constitution.  I walked out of that POD (principles of democracy) class with a profound respect for our nation's constitution and the thought the framers put into that document, to ensure that no branch of the government became too powerful.

So.  What makes me mad is not that Obama won.  Yes, I'm disappointed that my candidate didn't win.  I'm not mad that someone else won.  What I'm mad about is that not only did a Democrat win the White House but also the Democrats swept the House and Senate.  The reason this is bad is because of the checks and balances written into the constitution.  The Congress checks the power of the White House and the Judiciary.  But with the Democrats in control of the White House and Congress, they can do whatever they want for as long as they control two out of three.  Even if we only have a Democratic president for four years, the effect of his choices for the Supreme Court (four will retire in the next couple years), and the effect of any and all laws pushed through during Obama's time will affect us for twenty years or more.  I am dead certain that when one party can do what they desire without any check on their power, this is not a good thing.

Now I'm a strange one here.  I am very "green," and for all intents and purposes aligned with the environmental goals of the Democratic party.  But I am also basically conservative.  I don't think one party, or one branch, should have that much power.  So I'm not mad because a black man won the presidency.  I'm proud of my country for being able to look past race.  I'm mad because one party can effectively dictate its policies to the rest of the country.  I don't think that's a good thing.

No 'Poo

I recently joined several groups on Cafemom about homemaking, self sustainability, and so on.  A common thread on all of them is going no 'poo, i.e. ditching the shampoo bottle.

A few months ago, I was looking at shampoo bars as a way of cutting down on the amount of packaging coming into the house.  Well, I'm still going to be getting the bars because I have two adult males in the house, one of whom will refuse straight out and the other of whom will most likely roll his eyes and tease me about it for a few weeks.  And then give it a try himself.

I have had the worst dandruff since I was a teenager.  The sort of dandruff that does not go away no matter what I do.  And strangely enough, it's the sort of dandruff that actually seems to get worse with regular frequent washings.  In reading the afore mentioned threads, it seems that many people who think they have dandruff are having an allergic reaction to chemicals in shampoo.  The cure, of course, is to ditch the bottle (or bar, although the bars tend to have fewer harsh chemicals in them).

One of the things I learned early about curly hair is to wash it as infrequently as possible.  Apparently, this is the hardest thing for people making the switch.  Using the following formula, hair should only need to be washed about once a week.  The way shampoos are constructed, they basically train your scalp to "need" washing every day or two.  So the "detox" often makes people go mad, nearly, because hair gets greasy, seemingly faster than usual.  But after about a month, it gets so much better.

So the formula is:  1/2 T baking soda dissolved into a cup of water.  1/2 T vinegar (white or apple cider) mixed into a second cup of water.  Get your hair wet.  Pour over the baking soda solution.  Rinse.  Pour over the vinegar solution.  Rinse again.  Hair can be rinsed in clear water as often as needed in between washings.  My hair is soft, shiny, the plaques of dandruff on my scalp are already (!) gone, and I don't have any of the itching that normally accompanies washing my hair.  This only needs to be done about once a week.

Clean Green

I've pretty much stopped buying chemical based cleaners.  I'm working through the remains of what I've got on hand but that's it.  Instead, I'm mostly using baking soda, kosher salt, vinegar, and borax.

My basic cleaner is vinegar and water.  I mix it up by the quart - 4 cups of water, 1 cup of vinegar.  It cleans, well, just about everything.  I use it on glass, chrome, mirrors, counters, the stove - everything.  

To conquer soap scum, add 1/2 C kosher salt to the basic cleaner and mix to dissolve.  Or spray on straight vinegar, let sit for a few minutes, and scrub clean.  Or scrub with baking soda or kosher salt in hand, then clean with the basic cleaner.  Some people have good results putting kosher salt on a cut lemon and scrubbing.  Which works best seems to depend on how hard or soft your water is.  Some experimenting may be in order.  Keep in mind none of these will clean as quickly, with as little elbow grease as, say Scrubbing Bubbles.  But they're A LOT better for the environment.

For the floor, dishes, and in the dishwasher, I use a mixture of 1 C borax, 1 C baking soda, and 1/4 C citric acid.  Essential oils can be added for scent too but I'm not using any at the moment.  About 2 T per wash cycle.

To clean out the dishwasher, I put baking soda in the detergent cup and fill the rinse cup (where Jet Dry or something similar would normally go) with vinegar.  Heck, I use vinegar for the rinse all the time.

Oh, and non-gel toothpaste polishes silver beautifully.

Fat Soluble

Fat is good.  Natural fats produced by animals and plants are good and necessary.  They soften skin, they make hair shiny, and they signal fullness to our brains.  Now, another important reason to make sure fats are included in meals:

Vegetables have fat soluble nutrients in them.  This means fats are needed for the body to make use of certain nutrients.  If you don't have fat, you don't get the full benefit of these veggies.  So it's easy to say that in order to reduce calories, we'll cut out the butter or olive oil or salad dressing on our veggies.  However, this fact about fat soluble nutrients shows how it is possible for a person to be the slender picture of health and malnourished, missing out on many important nutrients for want of a little fat.  

Now, obviously, you can't go overboard, especially with saturated animal fats.  But dressing your salad or veggies with olive oil, oil and vinegar, or a modest serving of butter won't kill you.  In the long run, you'll do your body good.

Worth While

Yes, it really is worth while to run around obsessively turning off/unplugging appliances not currently in use.  A recent study showed that the average family could trim 20% from their monthly electric bill by turning off lights when not in use and unplugging out of use small appliances.  Basically, anything with a "vampire light" that glows when the appliance is not being used is still sucking energy.  If you unplug, no energy, electric usage goes down.  So stop making excuses and just do it!  If you have lots of small appliances, put things on power strips.  That way, you have just a few switches to flip instead of lots of cords to pull.  

The Boy With a Drum

There once was a boy 

With a little toy drum . . . . .

They all marched along 

With a rat a tat tat

The boy with his drum 

And the big friendly cat

And the horse and the cow

And the mouse and the dog

And the duck and the chicken

And the pig and the frog . . . . 

I've been reciting this story/poem to Yeled whenever he has trouble settling down to sleep.  The story is charming and sweet and has a irresistible rhythm that never fails to put Yeled sleep.  It struck me, a few nights ago, reciting for about the 200th time in as many weeks, that the story mirrors closely the ideas of self sufficiency and responsible small scale farming.  My Complete Book of Self Sufficiency that I quoted a few days ago repeatedly makes the point that nature abhors monoculture.  He talks about having small numbers of many different animals, rotating a variety of crops, and growing different crops together or several different types of trees.  He recommends having cows, a horse, sheep, goats, a couple species of poultry, and pigs.  Well, pigs are out of question for us but we want to have a little of everything else.

Given the publishing date on my copy of The Boy With a Drum, I doubt the author was simply writing a charming story introducing g children.  The more times I recite the thing, the more convinced I am that the author is mirroring the experience of small farmers everywhere, raising a variety of animals and crops that suite the land.

The more times one plants the same crop on the same piece of land, the more likely that crop is to eventually fall prey to disease.  Rotation and variety are the keys to not only keeping the land healthy but ensuring that crops and animals remain disease free.  The focus of modern commercial farms on just one or two market-oriented animals or crops is one of the primary reason why our farm land is struggling.  I want to grow and raise lots of different things to rehab the land and keep it healthy.

More Kitchen Short-cuts

*** Correction ***  I made up a batch of instant flavored coffee last night and realized that my previously posted recipe proportions were wildly inaccurate.  Use 1 C instant coffee, 1/2 C powdered milk, 1/2 C sugar, and approximately 1 T of any dry spices/flavorings you desire.  Please note this will not be as sweet as commercial instant flavored coffee.  If you want a sweeter mix, increase the sugar by 1/4 C increments until you get the sweetness you prefer.

Cream of Chicken Dry Mix - 2 C powdered milk, 3/4 C cornstarch, 1/4 chicken dry bouillon, 1/2 t. dry thyme, 1/2 t dry basil, 1/4 t pepper.

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and store in an airtight container.

To substitute for one can of condensed soup, stir together 1/3 C dry mix and 1 cup of water (or milk for extra richness) in a sauce pan.  Cook and stir until thickened.

This dry mix is the equivalent to nine cans of condensed soup.

Add dry celery for cream of celery, dried mushrooms for cream of mushrooms, or fresh broccoli during the cooking for cream of broccoli.

The Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency

I've been reading this book, written by John Seymour and published by Corgi Books in the U.K.  Following are excerpts from the first chapter, titled The Way to Self Sufficiency.

"Now self-sufficiency is not "going back" . . . it is going forward to a new and better sort of life . . .a life that brings challenge and the use of daily initiative back to work, and variety, and occasional great success and occasional abysmal failure.  It means the acceptance of complete responsibility for what you do or what you do not do."

"it is the striving for a higher standard of living, for food which is fresh and organically grown and good, for the good life in pleasant surrounds, for the health of body and peace of mind which come with hard varied work in the open air, and for the satisfaction that comes from doing difficult and intricate jobs well and successfully."

"we will one day have to derive our sustenance from what the land, unaided by oil-derived chemicals, can produce.  We may not wish in the future to maintain a standard of living that depends entirely on elaborate and expensive equipment and machinery but we will always want to maintain a high standard of living in the things that really matter - good food, clothing, shelter, health, happiness, and fun with other people.  The land can support us, and it can do it without huge applications of artificial chemicals and manures and the use of expensive machinery.  But everyone who owns a piece of land should husband that land as wisely, knowledgeably, and intensively as possible.  The so-called "self-supporter" sitting among a riot of docks and thistles talking philosophy ought to go back to town.  He is not doing any good at all, and is occupying land which should be occupied by somebody who can really use it."

"Man should be a husbandman, not an exploiter.  This planet is not exclusively for our own use.  To destroy every form of life except such forms as are obviously directly of use to us is immoral, and ultimately quite possibly, will contribute to our own destruction."

"Man was not meant to be a one job animal.  We do not thrive as parts of a machine.  We are intended by nature to be diverse, to do diverse things, to have many skills."

Drink Special

Instead of buying gourmet coffee, which usually does taste better than the cheap stuff, add a teaspoon or so of sugar to your usual cheap grounds.  It really does make a difference.  This should be an obvious point but drink your coffee in a ceramic mug!  Plastics of any type change the flavor and make even the best coffee taste cheap and sour.

Don't buy creamer - make it.  Dry creamers are easy and cheap to make and keep for several months, as long as they're stored in airtight containers.  They also dissolve into coffee much better than commercial creamer.  Mix together equal parts sugar and powdered milk.  If you buy the powdered milk in bulk, it's MUCH cheaper in the store.  Do you have any idea how much volume one pound of powdered milk fills?  It's *a lot.*  Add ground spice to taste.  For two cups of creamer, I find 1 Tablespoon of spice is about right.  I just mixed up a pumpkin pie blend last night, it smells absolutely wonderful.  

For a little more variety in flavor, add a handful of sliced nuts to the sugar/milk mix.  Let these sit for about two weeks before opening them.  Half a vanilla bean works wonders.

In high school, I *loved* the International Cafe instant coffees.  But my money had to go towards school, piano lessons, and clothes so I stopped buying the stuff.  But now I know how to make them myself for much less money.  Take two cups of any creamer concoction you love and add an 8oz jar of instant coffee to the mix.  You can blend the whole thing fine in a food processor or blender if you want.  Voila!  Yummy instant coffee for pennies on the dollar.

Want gourmet flavored coffee?  Try tucking a couple vanilla beans into a can of your usual grind.  Or some sliced nuts and/or dried fruit.  Let these sit for a couple weeks before digging in.

I didn't have store bought hot chocolate mix until I was out on my own.  My mom always made her own mix.  I recently found a recipe that's pretty similar to what she always mixed up.  One-quarter cup cocoa powder, 1 cup sugar, and 7 cups dry milk.  Mix ingredients together in a quart jar. Put 4 Tablespoons hot cocoa mix in a cup and pour in boiling water.  Stir and cool slightly. For specialty flavored cocoa, tuck vanilla beans, sliced nuts, dried fruit, fresh herbs like mint or edible flowers (jasmine, lavender, nasturtiums, hibiscus), or coffee beans into the mix and let sit for two weeks before serving. 

Bean Sprouts

Remember the lima beans I mentioned recently?  They got planted almost two weeks ago.  As of yesterday, I have five sprouts poking up!  I planted 10 in a planter that really should have no more than two plants in it but since the beans were Wal Mart beans packaged for eating originally, I wanted to make sure I'd get at least one or two sprouts so way over planted.  I'll be thinning them out in another week or two.  I'm just so happy about this!

I wonder if I could sprout chickpeas also . . . . ?  This household loves chickpeas.

Fish Farming

I've been reading a book called The Handbook of Self-Sustainability.  It's a British book, which isn't terribly obvious but shows through every once in awhile in spelling and references.  One of the things mentioned in the book is fish farming.  Apparently, fish is one of the most economical ways to make use of your farm land.  You get more meat for the amount of food going into the fish.  It's recommended that you raise vegetarian species rather than carnivorous ones since vegetarian species can eat kitchen and garden scraps and you don't need to buy meat proteins to feed.  That book recommends a large pond where the fish grow and a small "stewpond" near the house where eating-weight fish can be moved for easy access when you want them.

Ba'al and I have been doing some research as a result.  Not only do we we have to keep in mind the type of water and climate, we also have the limitations of kashrut.  If we get the money together for a fish pond, I think we'll probably raise small mouth bass and maybe walleye as well.  We've been wanting to have a grist mill on the property as well and if we combine that with a large fish pond, we can keep the water moving by having it go through a sluiceway, turn a water wheel, and then pipped back up to the main pond.  That helps take care of the potential mosquito problem, by keeping the water moving.  That's an advantage to raising small mouth bass; they eat surface bugs and larvae.

As far as feed, small mouth bass are basically vegetarian.  They'll eat beer and wine wastes (good since I'm interested in wine making and Ba'al makes beer), kitchen scrapes, garden wastes, and so on.  I'm not worried about the cost of feeding the fish.  I'm not worried about raising way more than we can use because I can easily sell fish locally.  What I AM worried about is the cost of putting in the infrastructure.  I can see fish being a good, safe, economical source of protein for my family but it won't be the first thing we commit to.  Like it or not, putting in the fish pond and pipe system we envision will be expensive and to start, chickens and beef will be cheaper in start up costs.  But I like the idea of doing fish and if we wait until we have our land certified organic (definitely one of the long term goals) our fish would definitely be safer in terms of contaniments than practically any other fish on the market.

This self-sustainability thing is going in directions I never thought it would.

Garlic, Lentils, and Beans, oh my

First up, my planters:  I’ve had the worst sort of success with the plants I bought at Wal Mart and stuck in pretty planters on our balcony.  I’m not sure what went wrong.  I had tomatoes, cucumbers, and zucchini, all of which are practically fool proof.  When I watered them, the leaves turned yellow.  When I didn’t water them for a day, thinking they were getting too much water, they went limp.  So I’ve presently got two scrawny tomatoes that haven’t accomplished anything, and dead vines.  Nice, right?

Then, a number of weeks ago, I saw a blog post by someone who took ordinary bought from the store brown lentils and got them growing at home.  I naturally thought, “I can do that!”  It doesn’t hurt that our weather has suddenly turned very spring like, with reasonably warm days in the mid 80’s and cool nights.  So I got an empty gallon milk jug, cut it in half, filled with dirt, and planted a handful of seeds.  Three weeks later, most of the seeds have sprouted and are growing joyously.  I’ve thinned them once and expect to have to do so again in a couple weeks when the late starters really get going.

 

About a week after the lentils, my jar of farmer’s market garlic cloves got inexplicably damp.  By the time I noticed and dried the jar out, quite a number of cloves had sprouted pretty green shoots.  Considering my lentils had just started sprouting, I decided to get out another milk jug and some more dirt and plant garlic.  In addition to sprightly sprigs of lentils, I also have four gregarious garlic shoots.  They haven’t grown much in height yet but the frail little shoots popping out two weeks ago have turned into sturdy dark green leaves.  I can see more leaves developing underneath too.

Yesterday I started thinking about how much Ba’al and I enjoy lima beans.  It just so happens I have a jar of lima beans in my cupboard.  “If I can get store bought lentils to grow, I wonder if I can get store bought beans to do the same?”  I thought.  Out came another milk jug (I save them for use as storage containers), the last of my potting dirt, and the jar of lima beans.  In about two weeks, we will know the success or failure of this latest experiment.

 

I’ve already devoted a considerable amount of thought to the issue of pollination, which may very well need to happen after the birds, bees, and butterflies have disappeared until spring.  If these lentils and beans happen to be self-pollinating varieties, then I have nothing to worry about.  They will take care of themselves regardless of where they are growing, indoors or out.  If they need some external mechanism, I may find myself pollinating with a Q-tip or situating them in front of a briskly blowing fan.  Needless to say, I am very much hoping either for self-pollination or for flowers to occur before fall truly sets in! 

I am at least guaranteed successful garlic at this point.  I have a tendency to forget garlic when I go shopping so having the capability of growing garlic inside practically the year around makes me quite happy.  Even if I don’t get any produce from the other experiments on this go around, it makes me quite happy to see pretty green growing things inside or out on the porch.

Housing Codes and Local Laws

Another mini-rant to start the day.

I've been washing clothes only and drying them in the apartment.  Inevitably, that means a few pairs of pants or heavy shirts end up on the balcony rail.  Well, about a week ago, I got a letter from the office telling me that it's against the local fire code and "community standards" for me to do this and asking me to remove the clothing post haste.  Ironically, there wasn't anything on the railing that day.  Apparently, it's okay for families in the complex to dry their children's swim suites and pool towels on the rail but not okay for me to dry Ba'al's pants out there.  Somebody please tell me the difference!

Myself personally, I have a feeling this has more to do with someone's fear that the complex will start to look like a getto than with fire codes.  The complex is old and something is always falling apart (don't even ask me to get started on what's been going on this summer) but the buildings look nice and the grounds are well manicured.  The complex next door to us is literally falling apart and is a trash heap in comparison to where we live.  The rents are similar though.  We're totally getting a good deal here.  It's just irritating to me that here I am trying to save money and do something good for the environment and they're coming down on me like a ton of bricks.

One of the boards I go to regularly is for families trying to live eco-friendly.  Recently, a woman came on looking for ideas to reduce her water usage.  One of the suggestions made was to stick a bucket under the shower while the water is warming up.  That water an be used for watering plants, soaking dishes, really anything you don't need hot, hot water for.  The original poster liked the idea but the suggestion led to a discussion about gray water.  It turns out that in many cities, it is illegal to recycle gray water (water with soap in it) into your toilet.  How crazy is that?  One of the best ways to reduce a city's dependence on water is *illegal*!

Recycling

A couple weeks ago, Ba'al picked up a booklet at one of the farmer's markets put out by a local earth friendly coalition.  It is basically a list, broken down by category, of all the things that can be recycled locally and where to take said things.  Among the surprises:

Boulder Running Company, to which one can take worn out athletic shoes for recycling.

Many dry cleaning facilities accept plastic sheeting and wire hangers for recycling or reuse.

A program that accepts old cellphones and refurbishes them for the families of deployed soldiers.

The number of retailers, Whole Foods and Wal Mart included, that take in plastic shopping bags for recycling.

*Many* companies recycle ordinary household batteries

The local Renew store is also featured in the booklet.  I *love* Renew.  People who are renovating bring in their old appliances, extra tile, fixtures, cabinets, really almost anything you can imagine that would go into the building of a house or office.  People who need something can then purchase these things for much less than retail.  It's fabulous.  The link contains a list of Renew locations.

The one thing that REALLY bugs me.  The only "full service" recycling facility *in*the*entire*city* is about fifteen miles north of us.  There are plenty of bins located at various retailers close to us but none of them take all the basic household items.  Wal Mart has bins but only takes office paper and newsprint.  King Souper has bins but only takes office paper/newsprint/junk mail and "tin."  So we've got boxes in the back of the truck and make the trek up to the very most northern part of town once a month or so.  

Now I know why

We were at the Pontiac, etc dealership yesterday to get a VIN check on one of our vehicles (an oddity in CO motor vehicle law:  All vehicles must have a VIN inspection prior to registration, apparently to help prevent thieves from registering stolen cars in their name).  So Ba'al and I wandered around the showroom while waiting for our car.  We looked at a hybrid.  Nice, but neither of us really wants to drive an SUV.  Looked at one of their V8 sedans.  Also nice but our next new vehicle is going to have alternative fuel capability.  

At that point, a salesman wandered over and asked if he could help us.  Ba'al asked if he had any flex-fuel vehicles.  The guy says he's got trucks.  Ba'al asks about family cars.  The guy asks why we're interested in such vehicles.  We say economy.  Guy quotes us a (ficitious) current E-85 price.  Completely stupid of him to then argue with me about local prices.  We'd just filled the car not an hour earlier at the station near our house that sells E-85.  I know exactly what we paid.  Then the guy starts into a lecture, well practiced by the sound of it, about how you lose efficiency, etc when you use E-85.  I walked away.

In our house, major financial decisions go through me.  Therefore, the moment I walked away, that salesman lost a potential customer.  The vehicles Ba'al drives at work (Tahoe's) run exclusively on E-85, which is one of the reasons why his department is not in a complete panic yet about the price of fuel.  On the average night, he drives around 200 miles and uses approximately 10 gallons of fuel.  That's darn good milage in any vehicle and anecdotal evidence completely contrary to the party line about losing efficiency.  Finally, the family car is primarily my car.  I do not need, nor do I want a V8 sedan.  The more V's under the hood, the less efficient the car is in stop and go traffic.  Since 90% of my driving is and will be in stop and go city traffic, I want a smaller vehicle and a just-big-enough-for-the-size-of-the-vehicle engine.  That maximizes in city efficiency.

Walking away from that conversation, I told Ba'al I now understand why people are so wary about flex-fuel and alternative fuel vehicles.  The  car lot salespeople convince potential buyers that these vehicles are sub par compared to the big flashy V8's.  What it really is is salespeople losing out on commissions when someone decides to go for the smaller, less expensive flex-fuel option.  Has nothing to do with vehicle efficiency or any of that jazz.  It's all about the pocket book.  Therefore, anybody who is considering flex-fuel or alternative fuel options for their next vehicle purchase, do your research before you go shopping.  The salespeople aren't there to help you pick the perfect vehicle for you.  They're just interested in the biggest commission they can possible make off of you. 

:=D :=D :=D :=D

We got our first share of milk today.  It is awesome, I think.  I haven't actually drunk any of it yet, due to the veg and beef soup I started making at about the same time.  If anything, the half gallons we got today have even more cream than the jars we saw during the farm tour a month ago.  These jars have a full two and a quarter inches of cream on them.  I've already made my first batch of butter.

The easiest and oldest method of butter making involves putting cream into a sealed container and shaking.  I have a lump of butter and about a cup of buttermilk, the real stuff, not the skim milk sour, cultured buttermilk sold in stores.  The butter turned out amazingly golden yellow.  I haven't seen butter this color since I was a little girl on my parent's farm.  Once I open the second jar and make another batch of butter next week, I'm going to make a soft buttermilk cheese as well.

Larga Vista Ranch also sells grass fed, grass finished beef.  We bought twenty lbs of stew meat and chuck roast in addition to picking up the milk.  A pound of the stew meat made its way into the afore mentioned veg and beef soup.  It has way more flavor than super market beef and since the owner uses homeopathic treatment for most of the illnesses his animals contract, it's also completely free of drugs and hormones.  I am so very glad we learned about what Doug and Kim are doing!  Not only is my family eating better, I've also learned a lot of things from them related to what I want to do with our own farm in the future.

Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1935

I did some poking around this morning after getting curious about the comment Hot Chocolate made to my last post.

When the Agricultural Adjustment Act was proposed, it operated on the primary assumption that if fewer farm products were produced, it would actually lead farmers to receive higher prices for their crops.  It's a reasonable assumption.  After all, vast tracts of land in this country are almost magically fertile and produce an abundance of food.  What this assumption fails to take into consideration is that, as in many countries with highly productive lands, the issue is not supply and demand.  The issue is transportation to markets that actually *need* what the farms produce.  This is why we have chronic oversupplies of food stuffs and yet still have children and families who are malnourished for lack of access to wholesome food.

The AAA proposed cutting production to increase prices.  One of the ways the bill did this is still with us today in the form of a program that has helped increase the fertility of land; farmers receive a subsidy for allowing a certain percentage of their land to lie fallow, that is unplanted and unused even as pasture land, each year.  By letting land rest, it is able to replenish minerals drawn out by our typical farm crops and restore itself.  A good thing, right?  A program that lets farmers do the right thing for their land without penalizing them for it.

The more controversial part of the bill is what Hot Chocolate referred to.  In the 1920's and 30's, cotton production was at an all time high.  Pork prices at the consumer end were at an all time low.  For these two products, and these two only, the AAA of 1935 (there was an earlier AAA that was stricken down as unconstitutional) encouraged farmers to produce less.  Cotton farmers were encouraged to plow under a quarter of their total crop.  Pig farmers were encouraged to slaughter a percentage of their herds.  For these efforts, the farmers received a subsidy.  Trickle down economics worked also; as less cotton and pork made its way to market, the consumers paid more which meant the suppliers paid farmers more.  Not much more but it did help.  The Agricultural Adjustment Act ONLY affected cotton and pork.  NO other food stuffs were subsidized by asking farmers to produce less.

Use it up. . . . or do without

I read an interesting article yesterday about how warehouse clubs like Sam's Club and Costco are doing a booming business these days.  People perceive the prices at these stores as being inherently cheaper, even though that may not be the case.  But the point that really struck me, in light of the Great Depression food research I've been doing, was an expert quoted in the article saying that when people buy large quantities of food stuffs, they tend to eat MORE of what they bought rather than conserve it for long term.  This is precisely the reason why I've seldom bought fresh produce at Sam's Club.  The quantities are just too large for two people to consume in a reasonable amount of time without wasting.  Though, with my freezer suddenly no longer filled with meat, I am strongly considering loading up the next time we go and freezing my bounty.  But it's more fun to do that with farmer's market purchases and better for the farmer and the environment too.  :=D

Back in the days before World War II, pre mixed boxes for baked goods were pretty much unheard of.  Women either baked completely from scratch or had their own pre-mixes in jars or bins ready when they needed them.  The mixes had flour, leavening, dry flavorings, and shortening in them and only needed to be mixed with water or milk, eggs if necessary, and liquid flavors like lemon or vanilla.  I've become a huge fan of these mixes after stumbling across the list posted at Grandma's Pantry.  

I have the brownie and cornbread mixes in my cupboard and have used each successfully several times.  The brownies are tender, moist, and impressively chocolate-ly.  The cornbread is moist and dense but relatively bland, which I improved by adding honey along with the eggs and milk.  In the next couple weeks, I'm going to also make up the basic cake mix, pie crust, and hot chocolate mix.  I suspect the later will want the addition of non dairy creamer to more closely mimic commercial hot cocoa mixes but if one doesn't mind a "thin" tasting hot cocoa, this mix looks pretty much the same as what my mom used to make up by the half gallon jar.

As for storage, the best option would be glass gallon jars.  If you don't have many lying around, having ransacked your home for recyclables, I've had great results with washing out gallon milk jugs and filling them with dry goods.  The jug does need to be completely dry, of course, and I found filling them easiest with the use of a paper cone to funnel the mix in.  Most of the mixes mentioned here can be stored for three to six months (you use shelf stable shortening like Crisco) in a cool dark place, like the back of a cupboard.

Use it up, wear it out, make it work or do without

Such was the philosophy of our predecessors who lived through the years of the Great Depression.

In light of the increases in basic cost of living expenses, Ba'al and I have made some radical changes to the way we shop for food.  We buy nearly all of our fresh vegetables at farmer's markets.  I freeze about half of what we buy for future use and present the rest as creatively as possible for as many days as possible.  Most of our cans and dry goods, we buy at a local "scratch and dent" grocery.  You can't be the sort of cook who makes the same seven meals every week if you want to shop successfully at a discount grocery but if you're somewhat flexible and creative in your cooking, you can save a ton of money at these stores.  For specialty ingredients, we go to Whole Foods or a local natural food store called Mountain Mama.  I do buy some bulk items at Wal Mart or Sam's Club but there are only a few select items I buy there now.

Notice I haven't said anything about meat yet.  That's because we have reduced our consumption of animal protein to twice a week.  Yup, just two meals a week include poultry or red meat.  This is a HUGE change for my red meat loving husband but we've committed ourselves to eating smaller amounts of higher quality meat instead of animal protein nearly every night of the week.  In addition to eating less, we've also committed to buying kosher meat.  It's more expensive but more in line with our religious beliefs.  As a result, we're eating more creatively.  We had Doro Wat for our Shabbat dinner last night and leftovers of that tonight with a tomato flower salad.  Tomorrow, we're having eggplant parmesan with eggplants I bought fresh off the farm on Thursday.

Lunch the past three days has been soup.  It started as a pasta and bouillon soup on Wednesday.  Thursday, I added farm fresh veggies.  We had the same thing yesterday.  After dinner last night, I added our cucumber and tomato salad leftovers to the soup and served that for lunch today.  By the time Ba'al had his mid-afternoon snack, the pot was, at last, empty.  I love never ending soup pots!  They make lunch so much easier.

The challah (egg bread) made for dinner last night has been snacks all day today and will be breakfast tomorrow, served with cream gravy.

I have become VERY conscious of using everything I make and not letting anything go to waste.  With food rapidly becoming more expensive every time we shop, it's important to use every useable scrap.

**********

In that vein, I've started a braided rag rug.  It's material is old sheets and things I have lying around.  My sister is also sending me some similar weight materials she bought but has no use for.  I could donate the sheets or Freecycle them but I desperately need area rugs and making my own is better than buying them.

Recycling glass

We saw a really cool product on an HGTV program tonight.  On the show, they used it to cheaply cover up old tile without adding to landfill waste.  We're thinking about it as original coverings in one or more bathrooms:  Recycled glass tile.  Eco Friendly Flooring makes recycled glass tiles ands sheets, they also produce reclaimed wood flooring, cork and bamboo flooring, and recycled metal tiles.  

Crop Management

I've been doing some research about crop management.  I want to grow teff for my hay crop.  Everything I've read says teff is similar to timothy hay, which is really good feed for horses.  Considering the number of horses in our area, that's a great cash crop if we decide not raise many animals ourselves.  However, teff is nitrogen intensive.  It sucks nitrogen out of the soil, just like corn does.  And I've been planning to not grow corn for precisely that reason.  So for a day or so I was starting to wonder if teff was a wise choice.  

Ah, but there's good news.  Amaranth, a seed crop I also want to grow for it's seed (high protein seeds, nutritious leaves) is also a nitrogen fixer.  That is, it puts nitrogen into the soil.  Grown in rotation with teff, amaranth will restore what teff takes out.

And there's more.  I also want to grow quinoa.  Guess what?  Quinoa is also nitrogen intensive.  But I want to grow lots of beans and beans are, yup, nitrogen fixers.  

So it looks like we'll have a five field rotation system.  An N taker, and N fixer, an N taker, an N fixer, and one lying fallow every year.  Giving one field off every year also helps the land recover from the demands of nitrogen takers.  The fallow field I'll turn out my nurse cows on because they can make enough milk to feed babies on rough forage.  

Grey Water and Rain

This is one of those things that seems so simple and obvious and yet, apparently is the *new* and *experimental* thing to charge big bucks for.  I'm assuming that by the time Ba'al and I are ready to build, the costs will have come down a great deal.

A grey water system is a water reuse system.  Water from showers, sinks, and washing machines drains into a cistern.  The cistern then feeds through a filter and into the toilet.  Once it goes through the toilet, the water then goes into the septic system.  We want to add an extra step by putting the grey water first through a radiant floor system, and then into the toilet.  

Grey water systems save a household 30% on their water bill on average.

We also intend to install a rainwater cistern.  Basically, we'll put barrels under the downspouts and this water will be used to help irrigate the garden.  That alone should save us a great deal of money and be far kinder to the local environment by reducing our reliance on a drilled well.

Dairy Girl, Part Deux

I stand corrected.  I got a couple of my facts wrong yesterday.  I wrote that Holsteins in commercial dairy operations produce for around 10 years.  The reality is that this Holstein is lucky to produce for FOUR years.  It is cows in smaller, less aggressive dairy operations that produce for ten to twelve years.

We visited Larga Vista Farm today, near Pueblo, CO today.  They have a cow share program going that allows owners of shares in their cows to receive raw milk.  Basically, in most states, it is illegal to sell milk that has not been pasteurized.  However, if I buy a share of a cow and pay room and board fees for the care and upkeep of my cow, then I am entitled to receive the output of that cow, milk, as a raw product.  Having gotten my start in life on fresh milk, I've been wanting to get it again.  There are a number of farms in our area who have share programs in place but most of them do not at present have cow shares available.  I'd be willing to drink goat milk but Ba'al most certainly isn't.  Larga Vista is the only farm within drivable distance that has cow shares available at the moment.

One of the things I very much appreciate about the operation Kim and Doug run is that they don't put the calves on milk replacer after three days of life.  Instead, they separate mom from calf and put the calf with a cow in their nurse herd.  They don't milk any of the cows in the nurse herd; the job of those cows is to be wet nurses to the calves for five or six months.  I think this is awesome!  When I get my Dexters, I'm going to do the same thing.

The milking herd is Gurnsey and Gurnsey mix animals; relatively small but put out a high volume of milk with lots of milk fat.  The average animal in their herd produces 5% milk fat, roughly double that of cows in commercial operations.  The milking herd receives no grain.  They are on pasture land, hay, and a milking time treat of dry molasses.  The result is about three or four inches of cream at the top of the jarred milk and said cream is golden yellow.  

It costs $40 to buy a share and $34 per share in room and board per month year around.  We're going back down in a couple weeks to sign our contract and get started.  In the meantime, I need to find a butter churn.

Dairy Girl

Once upon a time, I had a boyfriend/unofficial fiance who lived in Southern California.  He turned out to be an abusive bastard and I eventually left him for Ba'al.  But while we lived together, his friends quickly decided to call me Cheese or Dairy Girl.  He and his friends were all lactose intolerant to one degree or another; of the entire group, I was the only one who regularly consumed milk and with great relish.

I am a farm girl.  I lived on a small dairy farm in Wisconsin until I was almost eight years old.  I vividly remember going out the the barn before bed for a before bed snack of milk no more than five minutes removed from the cow.  Problem is, most dairy cows are engineered to do nothing more than produce enormous amounts of milk for a relatively short number of years.  The average Holstein (the black and white cows that are the primary provider of milk in this country) only produces for about ten years.  Some smaller breeds, like Gurseys, Jerseys, and American Shorthorns live longer, produce richer milk, but need fairly rich forage to do so.  Colorado has anything but rich pasture land for cows of this nature.  

Our dreams of a self-sustaining farm actually got their start a year or so ago when we learned about the Dexter breed.  Dexters are rare and endangered and are classified as a miniature breed.  Most stand no more than four feet tall at the shoulder.  Most are red in color although we've seen some that are black and white.  They produce a large amount of milk relative to their size (around 10 gallons a day) and can do so on poor, scrubby forage.  They don't need grain (unlike Holsteins) to produce well.  They are also a duel-purpose breed.  They can be used for meat as well as milk.  Where most breeds, in our sort of climate need an acre per animal, Dexters can flourish on about a half acre each.  So they pretty much seem to be the ideal breed for us.  

We also want sheep.  We think we're going to raise Navajo-Churros; a breed native to the American Southwest.  As with many breeds that are now rare or endangered, NC's are duel purpose.  They turn out six pounds of wool per animal or more, they fill out well for low fat meat production, and the ewes are good milk producers.  The ewes also give birth easily with little intervention and are generally good mothers.  They tend to produce twins or triplets which helps us build a herd and make some money selling lambs to other farms.

Now any farm that has cows and sheep needs a good herding dog.  And we've got one picked out.  We want a Canaan Dog.  They are from Israel, developed from the wild dogs native to that region.  They're medium size, tough and hardy, and bred to herd, being loyal and protective.  They excel in field competition.  Ba'al wants to do the training since he would like to show the dog in herding and field competitions.

The Hair's the Thing

So I've been looking at our rooms in a whole new way, thinking about ways to eliminate plastic from our life.  One of the major offenders, of course, is the bathroom.  I need to see if I can find a shower curtain solution that doesn't involve a plastic curtain.  Not sure if that's going to work, and  be pretty at the same time, but I'm going to look around and see what's out there.  Ba'al and I have already agreed to switch to bar soap after our current bottles of gel are empty.  A few times, we've gotten shampoo bars and really liked them but the ones we've purchased in the past have been quite expensive.  

BASIN makes wonderful soap and shampoo bars.  I love Egg Noggin and Hair Nut.  However, when a small bar that lasts approximately a month costs $7, it's hard to justify buying the bar on a regular basis.  There are a few other companies making shampoo bars as well.  Basin seems to make them because they're luxurious.  The other companies mostly seem to be making them for their eco-friendly advantages.  

I'm inclined to start buying my shampoo bars from Burt's Bees because although their bars aren't much cheaper than Basin's, at least I know I can find them locally.  Basin is available on line and at three stores in California, Florida, and Minnesota.  Burt's Bees, well, practically every big box retailer has a shelf of their products somewhere.  Anyway,  BB has two bars I would like to try, Baby Bee Shampoo Bar, and the Rosemary Mint Shampoo Bar.  The Baby Bee bar is listed as out of stock on the website but the Rosemary Mint bar is listed at $6 even.  The Basin bars are 65 grams, the BB bar is 98 grams.  Of these two, I say go for the Burt's Bees product.

Next, J.R. Liggett.  I had some trouble getting into their website and almost decided to not include them in my quick and dirty survey of the available options.  I looked at their Original bar as a representative of the four formulations they carry; it is 99 grams for $6.49.  Ba'al has used their shaving cream in the past and really liked it.  They are a very old company still using the original company recipes so they do have staying power.  I know some of their products are available at Bath and Body Works (where we've gotten the shaving creams for Ba'al) but I don't know how widely their other products are carried.

Last today, Vermont Soap.  I like their choices.  They have boxed bars for $4.29 for 99 grams.  But you can get their Eco Brick, a brick of soap you cut into bars yourself for $36 dollars.  This works out to $3/bar if you slice the brick into 12 bars.  It appears they only have two choices, though, an unscented bar and an aloe and lavender bar.

Of the three bars that weigh the same, I'll probably go with Burt's Bees.  It's not the cheapest but it is the most widely available without having to order on line.  In my mind, ordering on line negates some of the benefit of choosing a bar shampoo in the first place because of all the additional shipping packaging.

However, there are non soap options also.  The Hair Boutique has a very nice page about using dry ingredients found in any kitchen to clean hair without water or liquids.  Cornstarch absorbs grease but can be drying.  Other flours are less drying but can color light colored hair.  Eggs can be used, either by whipping whites to stiff peaks or by creating a masque with egg yolks.  The one that's most intriguing to me is making a scented cornstarch with rose petals or other flower petals.  Since I have a jar of rose petals in the back of a cupboard, I'm thinking about trying this one out.  Just need another box of cornstarch and a pretty jar to put it in.

 

Heat

We've been obsessing about heating options.  For the past several weeks, Ba'al and I both thought that an old fashioned wood stove of the parlor stove variety would be perfect for our home.  We found several that we liked, replicas of classic designs that we both agreed would fit in well with our overall aesthetic.  Then we found a potbelly stove that had been designed for use in train cars.  Ba'al, being a lover of all things related to railroads, fell in love.  I liked it too.

Then, last night, we heard something about pellet stoves somewhere.  Ba'al spent a good portion of the night researching various pellet stove options.  Corn pellets (made from corn cobs) are cheaper than wood pellets (made from sawdust) but harder to find.  The cost of a pellet stove is similar to the retro wood stoves we found.  A ton of wood pellets costs the same as 170 gallons of propane and lasts about the same time.  However, pellets burn with far fewer emissions than any other viable heat source.  I think we have found the heat source for our yurt.

For the basement level, which will be dug into either an existing hill or a manmade one, we are going to put in radiant floor heating.  This leads us to yet another choice.  As mentioned before, we want to use a tankless water heating system.  However, a tankless system probably isn't practical for radiant floor heating.  We have to talk to someone who knows about these things to be sure.  The sites Ba'al looked at today recommend a particular water heater as being especially good for radiant heat systems.  So do we put in a tankless system and a traditional tank?  One big and one small tankless system, with one dedicated to the needs of heating floors?  Suck it up and buy a really big water heater tank?  I'll post the new links later this evening.

We're Going Tankless

Per Hidden Potential on HGTV, we have decided to go with a tankless water heater system.  The systems do cost significantly more in upfront costs than traditional heater tanks but pay for themselves within a year or two.  A tankless system heats water on demand and the good ones can run many water using appliances at once - four showers and a sink in summer or two showers and a sink in winter.  Considering that our home will have one shower, one shower/bath, three sinks, a dishwasher (maybe) and a washing machine, I think a system of this sort will be more than adequate.  States that have energy incentives (like our fair state of Colorado) also will give tax rebates for the installation and use of tankless systems.  In fact, one of the websites Ba'al was on tonight calculated that the wasted dollars in heated/unused water in traditional tanks in the state of Colorado cost users over a million dollars in the last two years.  The two companies we are most impressed with are featured over in the links list.

Oops

This is rapidly turning into a recipe blog, which is one of the things I did not want it to be.

Last night, we were watching Designed to Sell on HGTV.  The couple whose house was up for sale is very "green" and one of the products the designers brought in was compressed paper countertop.  I keep forgetting to show Ba'al the Enviroglass website in our What we're Looking at list.  But the compressed paper made me show him.  We also looked up compressed paper.

Enviroglass makes countertops from glass bottles and resin.  There's another company on the east cost that does the same thing but their selection is somewhat limited and the choices available aren't as interesting as what Enviroglass offers.  The other benefit to Enviroglass is that they basically custom make every countertop slab.  They also make the same product as a terrazzo-style flooring.

There are also several companies making compressed paper countertops.  I'm mildly interested in these but not so much that I want to go with this over resin and glass.  The countertops are made with layers of paper and renewable wood bound with resin.  Interesting but I have a hard time believing these will really stand the test of time.  All the companies we looked at are in the list of links over there.  

I guess I'm leaning towards the glass and resin option in part because we've lived in apartments for so long that I was lots of color when we build our house.  Bits of colored glass looks perfect.

We also caught an episode of What's with That House that included a self-sustaining house in Arizona.  The homeowners had some interesting ideas but the bathroom went just a little too far by having a composting squat toilet.  As told to Ba'al last night, that's just a little more self-sustaining than I care to go.  I'm a wanna be hippie but I want some comfort in the bathroom!

Converted

I am now officially converted to the sourdough way of life.  As described last week, I've been nursing a jar of sourdough starter over the weekend.  Today I used it.  Twice.  I made biscuits and gravy this morning and just finished a batch of pita pocket breads this evening.  Both turned out spectacularly well.  Yeled is grouchy tired and Ba'al getting ready for work so I don't really have time to post the recipes and descriptions right now but I will in a couple hours.

Oh, and I started another batch of injera today.  We're going to have a lentil stew for Shabbos dinner.

10:39

We had biscuits and gravy for breakfast this morning.  For the biscuits, I used 1 cup of starter, 1/3 cup oil, 3/4 teaspoon baking soda, and 1 cup of flour.  Mixed the whole thing up until there was no dry flour, and put it by spoonfuls on an ungreased sheet.  I've seen rolled biscuit doughs using sourdough starter also but I prefer drop biscuits, especially in the morning.  I'm a fairly lazy person at heart and the last thing I want to do at seven in the morning is roll out dough.  These biscuits tasted good even this afternoon when they were cold.

The pita breads are impressively good.  I was mildly amazed, considering I've eaten commercial pita bread most of my life, at the flavor of these pitas.  There's a depth of flavor completely missing from store-bought pita.

Use 1/2 cup starter, 1/4 cup warm water, 1/2 Tablespoon sugar, 3/4 teaspoon salt, and 1 cup of flour.  Mix together and knead well.  Put in a greased bowl, cover, and let sit in a warm place until the dough has doubled in size.  This will probably take around 2 hours.

Add 1/2 cup flour and knead until smooth.  Divide into three equal parts.  Form each into a ball and then roll into a 1/2 inch thick round.  Cover and allow to rise.

Preheat oven to 475 degrees.  Bake pita rounds on a nonstick sheet for about 10 minutes, until the rounds are puffed up and just turning brown.

Once they are cool enough to handle, cut in half and open with a knife.  This allows the steam to escape so the breads don't become soggy.

Teff

Teff is amazing.  I have to clean and finish dinner so I can't elaborate right now.  But I will be back later to explain.

9:54 pm

So teff.  I made a classic Ethiopian dinner tonight, doro wat and injera.  Doro wat is a chicken stew simmered long and low with onions, garlic, and tomato puree.  I used chicken leg quarters that have been hanging out in the bottom of the freezer for a couple months.  I buy them cheap every once in awhile but have trouble coming up with uses for them because Ba'al doesn't like bones in his chicken.  By the time the stew was done, the meat was literally falling off the bones.  The last time I made this recipe, using beef, I had trouble getting the stew to thicken up.  I'd been planning to thicken it with cornstarch.  But last night, one of the pages I read about teff said it is also used as a thickener.  So a half hour from the end of cooking, in went 1/4 cup of whole teff.  It thickened the stew beautifully.  I am so impressed.

Injera is a sourdough flatbread.  The recipe is 1 1/2 cups teff flour mixed with 2 cups of water.  You mix this up, put in a bowl, cover with a towel and let it sit on a countertop for up to three days.  By this afternoon, this stuff was seriously scaring me.  I've never made sourdough anything and the sour smell coming from the bowl was a little frightening.  When the batter is thin, bubbly, and sour smelling, you cook it by the 1/4 cup in a hot pan, the same as pancakes.  Cook until the edges curl up and burst bubbles cover the entire surface.  That's it.  They come out dark brown and sour tasting.  With a thick spicy stew like doro wat, it's delicious.

I learned last night that there are only a few places in this country where teff is being grown.  I can't understand why.  It's highly prolific, thrives in low water conditions, and grows faster the hotter the weather.  An experimental station in the Kalamath Valley Oregon run by the University of Oregon gets  three cuttings of teff grass over the summer.  Teff is classified as a grass.  It produces five tons of grass per acre and can be fed as hay and grain to animals in addition to the seeds being used for human consumption.  I don't care what I have to do.  When we get our land, I'm finding a source of seeds and growing this stuff!

Quinoa

We bought a box of quinoa pasta the other day.  It's actually really good.  I found out from reading the box that quinoa is the only "grain" (it's not actually a grain, more closely related to grasses) that has complete protein chains.  In other words, unlike, say beans and rice, they don't have to be combined with other grains to get complete protein chains.  According to the stuff I've been reading tonight, it would probably grow well around here.  It's also closely related to amaranth, which would also grow well in this area.  Both plants need warm days and cool nights, which we have.  The other interesting thing is that the leaves of both amaranth and quinoa are edible and highly nutritious.

I added the Seeds of Change website to our links list and ordered their catalogue.  They have organic amaranth and quinoa seeds available.

Hummus

The hummus also turned out beautifully.  I started with chickpeas and oil in the blender.  I don't know about other blenders but mine did not do well at all.  So put everything into the mixer bowl with the wire whisk attachment.  It took a little longer but worked nicely.  Yeled's is plain, the adult stuff has salt, garlic, and coriander in it.  I stuffed the finished product into a tomato for a late night snack and woke up not hungry for the first time in a couple weeks.

For the chickpeas, I soaked 2 cups of dry peas for 12 hours.  Then I poured the peas and water into a pot, added more water, and simmered them until they were tender.  I let them cool for several hours in the fridge.  Then pureed the peas with oil, salt, dry garlic, and coriander until I had a smooth paste.  This recipe will not be as smooth and evenly pureed as commercial hummus but that doesn't bother me.  I like the more interesting texture.

Forgot to Mention

This on Thursday:  Yeled is now six months, two days old.  His half birthday was on Thursday and came and went in grand style.  First, there was our computer keyboard deciding not to work.  We bought a new one.  Then, we spent three hours seeking semi-emergency care for Yeled Thursday night when I started thinking about his diapers and realized he hadn't had a good pee in 24 hours.

The urgent care facility our practice runs took a look at him, catheterized him in hopes of pulling something out of his bladder (totally unsuccessful) and then told us to take him to an ER.  Children's Hospital ER doctor was NOT impressed that he'd already been cath'd.  Apparently, that's something only reserved for high fever with suspicion of UTI cases in children Yeled's age.  The doc took one good look at him and told us, before even doing an exam, that he looked really good and had probably just been a little unhappy in the tummy.  She had us do a log of diapers and nursing times for 24 hours, which I finished at 1 am this morning.  He nursed ten times for an average of ten minutes each time (he's always been an efficient nurser) and produced a more than acceptable number of wet diapers.  All that confirms that he just wasn't feeling well during the day Thursday and nursed just enough to keep himself hydrated.  Yeled is taking a nap with Abba as we speak.

I'm cooking beans.  Navy beans simmering with salt and garlic for our soup tonight.  Chickpeas simmering plain for hummus.  I've got a bunch of little red bell peppers.  I'm thinking about roasting those in the oven and throwing those into one batch of hummus for the adults in the house.  The plain stuff will be for Yeled to play with.  He already loves avocado and is completely not interested in oatmeal or rice cereal.  I'm hoping that by introducing as many non-standard tastes as possible, he will be an easy to please young eater.

We got a thunderstorm with hail last night.  Fortunately, the pots of veggies I'm trying to grow are hung far enough under the overhang that they escaped without much damage.  Now to water them and take care of my kitchen.

Adventures in Sourdough

I have started starters.  The other day, I never did get my sourdough starter going.  But it's going now.  

Next to it on the countertop, I have teff and water soaking.  I've been making a lot of African recipes lately and those require culturally similar bread to eat the dishes with or on.  My bread of choice is injera, a sourdough flat bread made from teff flour.  I've been wanting to try this recipe since Passover.  The plan is to get this dough all bubbly over the next couple days and to make our favorite meat and onion stew on Sunday afternoon.  I'm already looking forward to it.

Then there's the bread bowl.  I've got challah rising overnight.  It's the strangest bread dough I've ever worked and I'm a little scared of it right now.  The creator of this particular recipe wanted a stiff dough (stiff dough braids easier) and eliminated nearly all of the liquid from the recipe.  When I started to knead it, the dough was crumbled, like a cobbler topping.  Very odd.  But it did  become more elastic with kneading so fingers crossed that this will work.

In addition to the stuff on the counter, there are two bowls in the oven.  One is dry chickpeas.  I want to make hummus.  The dry peas have to soak at least 12 hours, than need to be boiled until they are tender.  It would be easier to use canned peas but this is so much more fun.  Plus, I can control the salt content more easily.  The reason for making hummus is that I have a sourdough pita bread recipe.  Pita and hummus sounds most excellent right now.

Finally, a bowl of dry navy beans.  Ba'al mentioned the other day that he wanted a white soup.  Well, I've got chicken sausage in the fridge and the beans soaking.  Tomorrow, I'll make a bean and veggie soup with bits of sausage in it.  Hopefully, there will be challah to go along with it!

I've added new links in the What We're Looking At list.  We have decided that a green house without green energy is rather pointless.  Ba'al also discovered tonight that Colorado has incentives and rebates for people using green energy so the equipment shouldn't be as cost prohibitive as it otherwise would be.   We've been looking at several companies tonight that make very quiet vertical (don't have to be oriented towards the prevailing winds) wind turbines.  They're very expensive but the state will probably help us with the cost and the local power plants will buy any excess energy we generate.  We also want to put up a couple of solar arrays.

Last, a radio program we listened to while running errands included a statement about our dependance on oil going so far as the clothes we wear.  I'd completely tuned out the fact that manmade fibers are mostly made from a petroleum base.  So we decided that we're going to make more of a point of buying clothes made from natural fibers.  I'm not prepared to stomach the cost of organic cotton but we will buy regular cotton, along with wool and linen.  The only exceptions to our new natural fiber rule are A) thrift store finds and B) the manmade fiber is less than half the total content of the garment.  

Prototype

I did a prototype cloth diaper insert last night with a pillow sham belonging to a quilt I got rid of last summer and an old hand towel folded in half inside.  The gDiaper inserts are huge and I think a cloth insert can be a little shorter front to back because with all that cloth, the diaper looked pretty bulky on Yeled this morning.  But it worked well.  Even Ba'al agreed that cloth inserts were a good idea.  He still thinks that overnight vinegar soaks are a little strange but he does understand why they're a good idea.

We're taking recycling to the drop off point today.  Colorado confuses me.  In Wisconsin, where we lived before and where I grew up, recycling is mandatory and has been since I was eleven or twelve.  Here, it's optional.  I just don't get that.  It's a well established fact that recycling is good for everyone.  It cuts garbage costs, cuts landfill use, and reuses things that we use every day anyway.  So to me it doesn't make sense to allow recycling to be an option anywhere in the country.  It should be mandatory everywhere.  I rarely see recycling bins anywhere in this city.  There's a bunch of bins in the Wal Mart parking lot but they only recycle office paper.  Our apartment complex doesn't have any bins at all.  So we have to drive our stuff down the the WM drop-off point, which sort of defeats the purpose of the exercise since that wastes gas.  Oh well.  We're driving our mid-90's truck on almost straight E-85 right now so our costs are around $2.80 a gallon instead of a dollar more.

Woot!

I made cloth baby wipes today.  I feel so "green."  We had a bunch of random pillow cases floating around that belong to sheet sets we no longer have.  So I cut them open and then into 8 inch squares.  I just get one wet before I change Yeled's diaper and toss it in a caddy (half of a gallon milk jug) when finished.  Once Yeled and I have our baths later tonight, I'll leave some of the bath water in the tub, add vinegar, and toss the used cloths in to soak overnight.  According to what I've been reading about laundering cloth diapers (got a plan for those too, lol) the vinegar soak should get rid of most of the odor and stains.  In a couple days, I'll have a bunch of reasonably clean cloths to wash with the next load of laundry.

So diapers.  We bought a box of gDiapers a couple months ago.  I  love them.  They have these flush-able inserts that are about the coolest thing ever.  Unfortunately, the inserts are super expensive.  I've got a couple inserts left and I'm going to use them as a template for cloth inserts that will fit into the gDiaper cover and liner combination.  I'll use cotton for the outside, with a cotton batting core.  On paper, it looks like it will work.  We'll see if it will actually work on Yeled's baby butt.

One Down, Many To Go

The first experiment in new money-saving measures was an impressive success.  I washed three police shirts, two police pants, three other random pairs of pants, a denim skirt, and about a dozen shirts in early evening yesterday.  Put them on hangers and hung them to dry on the bathroom shower curtain rod about eight pm.  Everything was completely dry when I got up at six-thirty, except for the uniform pants which were damp where they'd been folded.  Those are out finishing up on the balcony railing.  I'm rather pleased with myself right now.  My laundry dollars now stretch twice as far with little in the way of extra work.  Pants and shirts have to go on hangers at some point anyway!

Now to get a sourdough starter started.  I've got lots of recipes, ranging from regular old bread, to pita, to challah and biscuits to try out.  According to The Glycemic Index Revolution, sourdough is better bread because it doesn't digest as quickly thus preventing one's blood sugar from spiking and dropping constantly.  Since I have issues with low blood sugar from time to time, this is a very important point to consider.  I also appreciate the duel advantages of not having to buy baker's yeast and, more importantly, bread.  

Let's say I get twenty-five pounds of whole wheat flour and ten pounds of white flour to mix in.  I'll spend around thirty dollars on flour.  Another ten for twenty-five pounds of sugar.  A couple bucks for a box of salt.  Our water bill is around fifteen dollars a month.  So about sixty dollars total for all these supplies.  Thirty-five pounds of flour will keep us in bread for about three months.  I'd spend at at least the same amount on already-made bread as I did on supplies and with wheat being one of the things going up in cost, I'm sure the bread on store shelves is going to go up in price significantly.  The base goods (flour, sugar, etc) will increase somewhat also but not as much as the finished product.  So, off to make sourdough starter.

In a large jar with a screw lid (I'm using a quart canning jar), stir 1 cup flour and 1 cup water together.  Leave the jar open on the countertop for up to three days, until the flour and water mixture gets bubbly.  Add another 1/2 cup each flour and water, stir to mix, cover with a porous lid (I just took a nail and hammer and punched holes in the lid, and put in the refrigerator.  Add 1/2 cup each of flour and water on a weekly basis.  What you do with this starter varies by recipe so I'll post details as I try new recipes.

The Things I Can Do

First, hello world.  I'm pretty notorious for starting these things and losing interest after awhile.  I promise to do my best not to completely neglect my project this time.  I can say for certain I will not post every day.  I'm the mother of a six month old boy, hitherto known as yeled.  There's just not enough room in the day to blog all the time.  

I do have good reason to show up here every few days:  My husband, hereafter described as Ba'al, and I recently had a long discussion about the current state of the economy.  He's a federal police officer and has been for long enough that his job is reasonably secure.  But we both realize that his salary will almost certainly not keep up with the costs of basic living.  So we developed a plan.  We're now on a hard-core, no frills budget that will allow us to bank around $800 to $1000 a month.  Over the next three years, we will use this banked income to pay off our past credit obligations and establish a down payment fund.  By the end of that time, we'll have saved up enough for a hefty down payment on a piece of land.  We're hoping to get twenty to thirty acres.  A year to two years later, we should be able to put a temporary house up on that land.  After that, well, we'll see what happens then.  Right now, we just need to get to a point where we can grow much of our own food and build equity.  This blog is all about how we're going to accomplish our goals.

I have a second, more personal challenge.  As I noted in my profile, I grew up with a sense of conservation that many people are just now discovering.  What annoys me about green=trendy is that it costs so much to be green if you do it the trendy way.  I can't afford to buy brand new $20 organic cotton onesies for Yeled.  He grows too fast.  I can go to one of the many thrift stores in town and buy nearly new organic cotton onesies for $2.  I cannot justify $5/lb organic strawberries shipped in from G*D knows where.  I can afford to go to one of my many farmer's markets and buy strawberries picked that very day from a farm just a few miles outside of town.  Yes, I understand what makes "organic" theoretically better for my body.  I also understand that if that organic produce is not from the same area I live in, the costs and pollution of transportation outweigh any benefit to my body.

Since we're on this hard core budget, I need to cut costs wherever I possibly can.  And cutting costs, incidentally, can also be very very green.  If you make your own pasta, you don't pay $3 a box.  You also don't add the packaging into a landfill so you save money, eat a better product, AND do something good for the environment.  My personal challenge is to find as many of these green cost-cutters as I can.  

Besides the fact that these short cuts save me money, and the fact that they're environmentally better for all of us, there's the fun in it all.  Yes, fun.  I take a great deal of pleasure from figuring out new short cuts, finding new uses for things I already have, and getting really good deals in unexpected places.  Example:  We just got a solid oak dinning room table.  It is the sort of table that grows with a family.  It seats four in it's present configuration but has three extra leaves and can expand to eight and a half feet long.  Like I said, it's solid oak and in beautiful condition.  We paid $80 for this table, leaves, and chairs in the local D.A.V thrift shop.  Do the happy dance with me!  My family will never have to buy another table.  When we first saw the set, it was marked at $148.  When we went in a week later to buy it, there was a tag sale going on and the table had the right color tag on it to get 50% off.  How much fun is that?!

To get to the title of the post, I've begun a list of things I can do to save money and help the environment.

• Ruthlessly turn off all lights when not in use.
• Unplug appliances when not in use.
• Limit use of the A/C by utilizing fans and open windows as much as possible.
• Figure out a cloth diaper system practical for our small apartment and shared washing machines.
• Make fabric wipes for Yeled's butt.
• Line dry clothes instead of paying for dryer time.
• Recycle everything that can be recycled.
• Get and use a self-contained compost bucket.
• Buy used clothes, furniture, and household items.  As a sign in a local antique shop reads, "buy green, buy antique."
• Instead of buying pre-made kitchen things (like pancake mix, pasta, and so on) make these things at home.  Why buy them if I can make them myself?