OK, I give. This is a response to an inquiry in a comment

Specifically about where I get my information.

I tried responding, but for some reason I have not yet been able to ascertain I cannot comment on my own blog (REALLY?), so here goes:

I'd love to be able to give an easy answer and a link to an article about where I get my information, but, just like everything else in life, it's not that simple.

I have a Bachelors in Molecular Biology, I am a ferocious reader of everything and anything sustainability related (and really, everything else that strikes my fancy, which can be the oddest things) and have been known to dig for months until I find an answer that satisfies me. So I can't really tell you where I get my info, because it comes from books, articles, magazines, trial and error, 3am cogitations, hour long discussions with friends, random acts of cat...you get the picture?

Having been indoctrinated with the science bug early and often, when there is an actual, identifiable source, I promise to try to remember what/where it is and cite it; or, if I can't remember, feel really guilty about it until the next shiny thing pops up. 

Other than that, this is a blog of my ramblings about stuff I do/find interesting/would recommend to my friends/advise them to avoid/chocolate, so please don't base your Masters paper on it. And if you do, please e-mail it to me. I'd love to read it.

Not real helpful, I know, but honest and as accurate as I can make it ;)

On to the completely self-serving part of this post:

If anyone knows which of the myriad of settings I have toggled the wrong way, I'd be ever so appreciative if you would let me know how I can comment or reply to comments on my own blog. That would be ever so helpful. 

That's all I got for now.

Happy Pinching

Slice of rice anyone?

I had 8 quarts of it. That’s because Wonder Husband helped me cook. And by helped me cook I mean he came in from the garage, smelled that there was something cooking, scurried into the kitchen, lifted the lid, saw that it was rice, it was boiling gently, so he turned the burner down and stirred it for me.  THEN he came into the office and proudly told me. I don’t think he liked my reaction.

So yes, I had a solid, 8 quart clump of starchy mess on my hands, not the ingredient for the frittata’ I was planning to pre-bake and freeze or the fluffy rice bed for three of our meals this week.

My first gut reaction was to freak out. That’s a lot of starchy goop for two people to work through before it goes bad; can’t really freeze it as is, it won’t work as an ingredient, I season my rice when I cook it, so couldn't turn it into rice pudding (somehow the thought of cinnamon, sugar, curry and chicken stock, all melding together does not appeal, so yeah, no) and we currently have no chickens to feed it to.

And then I thought about it for a hot second. 

• It’s rice.
• I buy rice in 50lb bags for less than $20, so what we had here was probably $1.50 worth of it.
• It’s not that bad, we can bring up some chili and beans and just have rice with something, breakfast, lunch and dinner (I am NOT throwing away food unless there is just no help for it).
• It’s RICE. About a buck and a half worth.
• I am German, I have a myriad of recipes that use up left over potatoes. Rice, potato, basically the same thing, right? Actually, that sort of worked.

I didn’t freak out. I did find a cooking website to show hubbin that I am not the only person on the planet that thinks stirring rice is a bad idea (his response), and why (he thought rice is supposed to be clumpy, which I am not going to share with his mother, EVER).

We spend a week eating a lot of rice. I may not cook any for quite a while. Rice is sort of off the menu for a bit and we are both perfectly OK with that.

And we laughed about it all week, too.

Because it’s a little thing. 

And then again, it’s not that little. It kind of brought something home for us that my normal cooking pattern (cook large, prep, freeze or otherwise preserve ready to eat meals) does not:

I didn’t write it out and I didn’t really keep track and we ate things other than rice, but if I had to come up with how much we spent on food this week (and because I am writing this post I guess I do) I’d have to say, roughly estimating:

$1.50 for rice

$3.00 for the chili ingredients, and that’s generous, since all but the chili powder, beans and meat were grown right here, so pennies for seeds

$2.00 for oatmeal

$0.50 for sugar and other additives for the oatmeal

$2.00 for eggs (man, I miss having chickens, two more weeks to peeps in the mail)

Give it another $3 for my coffee half and half and maybe $3 for coffee for one week and throw in another  $10 for miscellaneous and we are looking at

$25.00 for two adults for a weeks worth of food. Rice and Beans really is some cheap food :)

That’s not that bad. My budget is $42 a week for the two of us, so we did good. Lobsters all around (no).

 Gratuitous cat picture

Is this how I want to eat all the time? No. That was one boring week and I think if that happened too often there would be mutiny in my kitchen. I usually try to get some variety going. But we DO eat this cheaply most of the time. I just stretch the meals I cook out and shuffle the deck, so to speak.

No, the rice isn’t fair trade, or organic, but it is brown rice. And it comes in 50lb bags for around $20.

I buy my beans dried and either can them when I have an empty slot in the pressure canner or when I am running low.

We eat a lot of eggs, and when they are homegrown, the chickens get kitchen scraps and non-organic feed (availability and price, don’t let me get on that soapbox), so I figure between $0.10 and $0.15 per egg. That’s some cheap protein right there.

I buy meat on sale when I see it.

Oatmeal in the 50lb bag for around $20

Flour, pretty much the same, and I bake most of our breads.

We grow most of our veggies, so that cost is both minimal and hard to truly calculate, so I call gardening a hobby and the resulting foods free.

We don’t have or want any dairy animals (I do know how to milk dairy animals, I also know that I don't want to), so I pay for my creamer and the cheeses we eat: I buy a 10lb block of cheese for around $30 and slice and shred it myself and then freeze it in portions, and we get a different variety every month, so we have choices, it works and is actually rather cheap. One of those 10lb blocks lasts us about a month and a half to two months and we eat A LOT of cheese.

It also means I cook most of our meals from scratch, even if I cook it, can it and then pull it off the shelf a few months later. Still scratch.

Except Pizza. Kroger Frozen Pepperoni Pizza, 3 for 10. I am weak. And so is the husband.

Laugh about the little stuff. And it’s all little stuff.

When we are old and feeble, noone will care that my husband stirs the rice. Oh, Heck, noone cares right now. I know he does these things because he is awesome and loves me and wants to help me around the house. I can be angry and I can discourage that, or I can laugh about it, get the fun kind of wrinkles, eat rice for a week and give him grief until we both forget.

 

That’s all I got.

Happy Pinching

GAH!

OK, so I realize that there has been a whole lotta nothing going on here, it's largely related to work related travel, flu related continuous sleep and trying to get seeds into planters. I'll make it up with a long post about seeding with pics.

Planting seeds - yeah, it’s that time of year

For me that means saying goodbye to 80% of my kitchen counter. I have lights under the upper cabinets that are my surface lights most of the year, but come seedling season (early February through early May for my growing area) they become my grow lights and most of my kitchen counters turn into a mini nursery.

My calendar looks like this:

I’ve put in info about my average last and first frost dates, how many weeks before and after those dates, because that’s how I know when to seed things out and plant them into the garden. 

This calendar tells me when to seed something out indoors (‘si’ for seed indoors, in red), when to seed something directly into the garden (‘so’ for seed outdoors, in olive), when to transplant the little guys (‘t’, in bright green) and when to expect to harvest (the cells that are outlined). This helps me plan my crop rotation and to some extend also when and how I can put up my harvest.

For my little plant guys I have a few different methods of seeding them out. For example my tomatoes and all of the brassica (cole crops like cabbage and cauliflower) go into cut to size paper towel (and toilet paper :D) rolls I save throughout the year. I do this for different reasons: Tomatoes set deep roots, so I want them to be in a tall seedpod to give them the best start I can. I usually do not transplant them, but seed them in a few inches of seed starting mix and then add a little to the top as they grow. Tomatoes put out roots off their stems and this seems to work rather well for me. YMMV. The brassica are a bit different and I put them into the deep rolls because once I put them out into the garden they will be vulnerable to cutworms, so I want to give them a little bit more protection with the higher lip around the tender little shoots.

I also use origami seed pots with planting mix (made over the winter from newspaper pages, while watching the rare but of TV), the little pods that expand in water (rarely) and I do this in the foil turkey roasters with the clear lids, because they are taller than the little seedling greenhouses, so I can let the seedlings grow taller while still keeping them protected from the predation of Felis sylvestris catus:

Around this house those are the prime predators of indoor seedlings, despite the laid back image they are trying to project... That is just to lull us into a false sense of security, so that they can then POUNCE onto any and all baby plants and devour them, only to 'give them back' at 3am :D You may not need to protect against those, so YMMV ;)

 

One thing I do not have marked in this calendar is the hardening off that needs to happen to any seedling you take into the great outdoors. I usually do about a week, week and a half worth of it prior to planting them out, depending on what plant it is. At that point our back patio becomes the plant nursery. It provides a bit of shade and overall a gentle introduction to sun and wind and a bit of rain.

Because I have this plan with the growing season and how long each plant takes to mature I can plan around my garden and if I am behind by a week or two (like right now…) I can prioritize easier. Another thing I have been able to do with this plan has been to adjust how things work in my particular micro-climate. Just because the seed packet says something will take 90 days to mature does not mean that it’s exactly 90 days. It may be 80 days in my backyard, but 112 in yours. It’s all about learning how things work :)

How much do you think you can eat?

That's the question I am currently wrestling with.

And I don't mean in one sitting, but over the course of the next year. There are some vegetables I no longer buy, so I better start enough seeds to get enough plants to cover at least this years consumption. Better yet, 2 years worth, because there are such things as crop failure and spoilage of preserves to consider.

So... here are my basic considerations:

There's 2 of us, we both pretty much like the same vegetables (Phew, lucky, right?) and we have enough planting space to accommodate our needs.

Husband likes celery (yick), but he tends to forget that we have any; I keep it in the crisper and as far as he's concerned that's like cloaking it with the shields up; so I plan on 5 plants, and cutting as he eats it, leaving them in the ground and growing.

Why don't I' just buy it, you ask? Because he never, ever eats a whole bag, so it goes bad when I buy it, because organic celery is rather expensive and it's one of the dirty dozen, so there is no way I'd buy it non-organic and I can't stand the smell of it, so I wouldn't process it like I do other veggies we can't use up immediately. Cut and re-grow will take care of that.

Now that those are out of the way, here is my trusty little spreadsheet:

Yeah, that's a lot. Remember, planning stage. Also, adding chickens to the equation, so there will be some tweaking as I get closer to spring, to at least partially feed the little raptors.

If you look at the headers there, you see that I have 'need', 'have' and 'seed out'.

'Need' is a number roughly representing how much we need to feed ourselves completely (tomatoes and cucumbers, watermelon and zucchini among others) or at least supplement our diet (Garlic, we fear the sparkle) for one year, so that includes enough to not just eat fresh, but to eat all winter, too. Plus we share, but that's a different story altogether.

'Have' is the number of planned plantings  (you thought I was crazy) and yes, there's linkage and formulae going on behind that entire thing that sort of identify me as a nerd.

'Seed out' is just simply 'have' multiplied by 1.25, because I never get all of my plants to make it. Except when I do. Then there is MORE sharing.

Last year: 25 zucchini plants, NO zucchini. Fat chipmunks, obese squirrels, pouting, reluctantly indoor cats, no zucchini. None of those things are going to happen again, just so we're clear ;)

Another factor you are seeing here is my good intention, there is a percentage buried there to account for my row against hunger. Last year did not pan out, if we have normal harvest this year I am contacting small local charities to see if there are any families that could use a 'CSA-like' box. Not sure how that will pan out, and not making any commitments, but I am planning for it.

Well, it's actually time for me to seed out the first little guys this weekend, the crops listed here:

The Winter/early spring crops.

That's all I have for now,
Happy Pinching

Crunchy Sales Girl confessions…

OK, so my day (and evening and night and weekend) job is B2B sales. I work for a candle manufacturer in Ferndale, MI; Coventry Creations, to be exact. It's sort of a new-ish and simultaneously recurring development in my life and I love it more than any other job I've ever had. That's not to say it's easy, but few things worthwhile ever are :). 

I have been accused (mostly by DH) of having this job only to finance my own candle Habit (yes, that capital H is on purpose, trust me) and I can’t even say that that is an incorrect statement. I love our candles, they all smell fantastic, they burn beautifully and even before I get to set them on fire they throw their scent, so that when I walk through my house I move from scent island to scent island… just a hint every now and then and it’s lovely, they don’t give me the horrendous migraines I get from most other artificially scented...well, anything, and perhaps most importantly, they work.

But this is not about the candles, it’s about oils. 

 For a while now I’ve been working hard and diligently toward eliminating extraneous chemicals from our home. There are so many reasons for this that I will list them at another time, most likely in more than one post; migraines and chemical sensitivities are just the very tip of the iceberg.

 I am using glass instead of plastic as much as possible, we’ve completely eliminated Teflon from our lives, our toothpaste is fluoride free if we buy it, but mostly it’s home made any more, our soap has no more than 6 ingredients, all of which the average 5^th grader can pronounce and I clean the house almost exclusively with Vinegar, Baking Soda, Soap, Alcohol and Water. 

So what does this have to do with Coventry Creations Oils, you ask? Well… Here are some of the things I use them for:

Our deodorant (no antiperspirant at our house, that’s a soap box speech for another day) - there’s a whole journey here, one that involves mixing different kinds of oils and wax and a little bit of this and a little bit of that and filling up old containers and having to heat things to apply and, and, and, and finally we came back to an old standby:  90% alcohol with a few drops of oil of choice in a spray bottle. Give it a quick shake and apply after shower and as needed in between.

Room Freshener – 90% alcohol, a few drops of oil of choice (do you see a pattern here?), mix 1:2 with water and put into a spray bottle. My couch has never smelled this good and I love that I am freshening my rooms and clearing/ charging them at the same time.

Wood cleaner - I use mineral oil with a drop or three of my oil of choice (OK, for anything cleaning related I use Sacred White Sage or Peace) and I clean away. I’ve been doing that for a few years now and my wood seems to love it. We have a lot of wood. Most of our floors and the paneling in the great room are wood.  I’ve also never had any kind of that icky, gunky residue one gets from plant based oils. Now as a disclaimer, I would not use this mix on food preparation surfaces, and I did check how it would react with my wooden areas in little spots before I started using this mix wholesale, so if your finish does not love this don't sue me, I have no money. Check a little spot first.

Closet freshener – I have those little unglazed ceramic disks on a string; no clue where I got them, sorry; and I ‘load’ them with some oil every once in a while. Like when I stick my head in my closet and it doesn't smell amazing any more.

I also put a drop or three of oil on my furnace filter when I change it out (which I am slightly OCD about, what with having cats and all) and every now and then I put a drop or two on the inner part of the toilet paper roll. DH says that this is a waste, but we're talking about the guy that can't smell the k-lit box ;)

One thing I would NEVER do, and I mean never, it’s just wrong on so many levels, is put a little cotton ball or two, with a few drops of Witches Brew Love Spell Oil in the forced hot air heat outlet in the bedroom. That would just not be right, what with DH being completely unable to resist ;}

Still on my list of things to do is to make my own laundry soap (not detergent, different animal altogether) using one of the oils as the scent. I hope to get that wonderful, heady scent of Blessed Herbal Prosperity Oil into my clothes; it smells so clean and crisp and simply does something for me (could this be my childhood hero, Scrooge McDuck, coming through???).

There are infinite ways to use these oils, and I have pretty much replaced artificial scents in our home by using a few of them. I’d love to hear your ideas for household uses, I’m in this to learn after all…

Happy Pinching