You Deserve Cloth

A few words about waste: "Waste not, want not." The old adage is very useful in times of recession. . .but what about when we prosper? Well if you can imagine that every time you use a cloth napkin, no trees were killed, no waste was sent to landfill, and no bleach from that napkin touched your lips; then you can begin to feel so good about yourself in all these little tiny ways. Herein lies the essence of simply living and no matter what your pocket book holds.

Homemade Graham Crackers

This is my first hand at graham crackers. Most of the recipes do call for white flour, but it just isn't as nutritious so I mixed graham flour with Whole Wheat pastry flour and that turned out pretty good. The girls love them, and that is most important to me. Now I just want to play with neat shapes and edging. I used a combination of recipes, but mostly I followed Nancy Silverton's recipe. She came up all over the search engine when I went on my recipe hunt, so I thought I might want to try her out first.

Homemade Dough for Playing

A good number of Do-It-Yourself projects that I have taken on have the kind of results that leave me plenty of room to improve. Play dough, on the other hand, is pretty much instantly gratifying. I used the recipe below and was pleasantly surprised that the texture and color turned out magnificent and it made for an exciting evening.

1 cup flour, 1/4 cup salt, 2 Tb of cream of tartar, 1 cup water, 2 tsp. food coloring, 1 Tb of oil.

Combine flour, salt and cream of tartar. Add water, food coloring and oil. Cook and stir over medium heat. When a ball forms in the center of the pan, remove & knead.

Beginners Water Collecting. . .

The water collector has collected to capacity since our rainy season has begun. We now need to figure out an over flow collection system. I either need to come up with another container, or redirect the water to other beds, to the street drains, or into the yard. Mainly, you want the water away from the house so that it protects your house from rot, however, the water can go back into the water table on your property.

More Mystery Greens. . .

Just two weeks ago I noticed the lettuce on the left that decided to sprout, and now it is growing like crazy. I added the sprouting potatoes to the other side of the planter and they are actually much larger than shown--they are taking over the whole planter!

Mulch

Max is now spreading the wood chips around in our beds. Most people are spreading bark dust. Bark dust is the same thing as the wood chips, except they've been processed and chemicals are added. Since our wood chips will serve the same purpose without the chemicals, they are an excellent choice to the organic gardening that we are going for; plus they are free.

Grass-Fed Cooked with Homegrown

Last Spring we placed our order for one quarter of a grass-fed, humanely raised cow after watching the documentary, "Food, Inc.". If you have not seen this documentary, it is a must-see. I highly recommend reading or viewing anything that journaled by Michael Pollan.

The meal shown is the round steak cut, cooked with red and blue potatoes from the back yard, and organic carrots. Very delicious. I think the crockpot is one of the best inventions yet.

Cracker practice

My first attempt at replacing the crackers in our cabinet didn't turn out like a Ritz; but I wasn't really going for that anyway. I was actually hoping that it would taste a bit more like the Original Kashi cracker, which we love in this house. It wasn't quite as sweet or salty, but I'm eating them in my lunch anyway. The more plain flavor tastes pretty good with hummus though. The kids are still hooked on Kashi for now.

Mushroom Village

A good recyclable use for the dry, melded together, grey play-doh that normally would be tossed and replaced with brightly colored new play-doh is to make beads or mushrooms (or any shape for that matter). In this case, we squished the old play-doh into little mushrooms, baked at 300 for about 1 hour, and then we painted them. Voila! A Mushroom Village!

Mint Candy

This afternoon, I attempted to make mint hard candies using the mint essence that I made last month. My recipe was to boil 2 cups of sugar with 4 Tb of water until when dropped into water it forms a hard ball at the bottom of the cup. I then added the mint essence (2 Tb) and let it boil off the alcohol for 30 seconds or so. This mixture was poured on top of waxed paper and it hardened very quickly. So the longer it boils on the stove top, the harder the candy will turn out in the end. I will be breaking up the candy and filling baby food jars and altoid boxes that I have saved.

Downspout Construction

The downspout was cut and screwed back together so that it had one bend in it for the redirecting of the rainwater into the "collecting tank". The water that we are collecting at this point will merely be used as grey water for watering plants in the yard. I'm not certain how we will redirect the over-flow just yet as our monsoon season begins to set in here in Oregon. Maybe I will learn to grow rice somewhere in my yard?

Rainwater Collecting Begins

This is the start of our Rainwater collections. The lid is essential so that mosquito's do not reproduce, to eliminate debris, and to prevent evaporation. The spout was recycled from our old water heater that went out a few months ago.

Mint Essence

Those three jars contain mint essence, simply made of fresh mint leaves soaking in vodka. It tastes really good in coffee; but my initial intention for making it was to make my own mint candies.