Small Victories and Green Recipes

Garden Huckleberry Time

2011-07-19T19:47:00.004-04:00

The black raspberries are almost done and now the garden huckleberries are starting to ripen. The early ones I threw in the berry mixes I use for bumbleberry spread. Today I got about a cup and a half and put them into the solar dehydrator. I'll use them like raisins or currents over the winter.

Some seed catalogs call these ground huckleberries. They are of the tomato plant family. I got my first seeds from Baker Seeds, a Missouri company. They didn't do well for me. I didn't plant any last spring. But late last summer I noticed a volunteer garden huckleberry in my lettuce patch, seeded there from the compost I fertilized it with. In September I picked the handful of berries it produced because they were larger than the berries I had gotten in my first planting.

In the spring I crumbled the dried berries and got out enough seeds to start about twenty-four plants. I've got them in three different locations. The ones in my front garden have turned out the smallest, but I'm still getting some berries. The others have done very well and I'll have berries for several weeks.

Preserving Food Without Heating the House

2011-07-18T17:16:00.002-04:00

Well, 20 mm of rain in the rain gauge this morning, but no real break in the heat -- and it's supposed to be hot all through the week (with possibly more rain on Thursday). The rain barrels are full again -- it's how I've been keeping my kitchen garden (lettuce, tomatoes, basil, cukes, celery leaf, broccoli) going.

I've be religiously watering the main garden on the odd dates of the week (we can water only every other day) with city water. So with the heat I've been getting harvests: green beans, snap peas, black raspberries, greens, herbs. How to keep up with preserving it without superheating the house?

I had a couple of cool mornings with a good cross breeze so I did do some canning early in the morning (all done by 8 am!). Two batches each morning with 10 or 15 minute boil times; and I could use the preheated water to heat the jars for the second batch. One morning I canned pineapple and fruit salad; the second morning I canned black raspberry syrup and black raspberry butter.

The clear, hot days are a boon for the solar dehydrator: basil, oregano, garlic chives, yarrow, lavender, soup greens, celery leaves. I've been converting all my leftover fruit spreads (chiefly bumbleberry: mixed berries with rhubarb pulp) to fruit leather.

I froze some snap peas for stir fries while my second planting gets going and refrigerator pickled a quart of them. The excess green beans went into a fermentation pickle jar this morning. I froze some excess black raspberries (along with other berries just starting to come along: yellow strawberries, ground huckleberries, and red raspberries) for future bumbleberry spread (and possibly future fruit leather). One jar of black raspberry vinegar is steeping now and I just started a jar of blackberry liquor.

Fruit Leather Weather

2011-06-20T14:23:00.002-04:00

The days are long, the sun is warm -- and we've been have several sunny days in a row! It's fruit leather weather!

But what fruit is harvestable now -- other than rhubarb and strawberries -- in southern Ontario? Well, I'm using fruit that I harvested last year, put into fruit spreads -- and didn't use this winter. Now it's time to use up the odds and ends of the preserving shelves...

If the spread is chunky, I whirl it in the blender. Otherwise it goes straight on the silicon baking sheets (you can use parchment paper too) in the solar dryer trays. After a day or day and a half, I carefully lift the 70 percent or more dry leathery sheet off the silicon and flip it over to finish drying (the underside is the dampest part at this point).

In two days, maybe three, of sunny weather, I have fruit leather. I cut it in 3-4 inch strips and roll it up in wax paper, then stuff it cans or jars.

Solar Food Dehydrating in a Humid Climate

2011-05-31T15:07:00.003-04:00

[This post will also be published in the next issue of Greenzine, the official magazine of Transition Town Peterborough.]

Peterborough, Ontario does not have a desert climate; we're not likely to get one even with extreme climate change. So how does one dry food for storage using only the energy of the sun? With a keen eye on the weather forecast and a solar food dehydrator designed to function even if the humidity is 70 or 80 percent!

Sue Robishaw in Minnesota designed such a dehydrator – four feet by twelve feet! I didn't have room for such an installation so I adapted its principles for a humid climate solar dehydrator using the two glass panels from a storm door that I also use for my cold frame. I used cedar fence boards in the construction and made two units. I can easily move them from winter storage to any of several good drying locations in my yard.

The dehydrator works by forcing air to continuously move over the items to be dried. Outer glass captures the sunlight which warms the heat sink (black metal) resting on the drying trays; a shiny metal bottom reflects the heat up into the drying trays as well. The unit is roughly square and the drying trays are long rectangles; these are easier to handle than a large square tray. There is an inlet for air to enter the bottom front of the unit and an outlet for the air to exit the back top. There must also be a gap between the main body of the drying tray and the metal bottom. Using corrugated roofing tin provides such a gap, as do side bars on the bottom of the trays that rest on a flat metal surface such as aluminum flashing. I put detailed construction directions in an Instructable.

Any edible green can be dried in this dehydrator: I've successfully dried dandelion, garlic chives, herb leaves, lamb's quarters, spinach, and chard. Tender leaves work best; remove any ribs (such as in chard) to compost, use in a stir-fry, or preserve separately. Layer the leaves one leaf deep; feel free to combine different leaves on the tray (for a soup mix). If you start the drying early in the morning and there is a slight breeze with humidity less than 70%, you could have dried greens by sunset. I've gotten crumbly dry greens in as little as six hours. The leaves should be dry enough to crackle before putting them away in air-tight jars and storing in a cool, dark place. If you pulverize the leaves into a powder, it will take a lot to fill a jar. Use in any soup or stew during the winter for a hefty dose of vitamin A and minerals.

Herbs will dry to a nice dark green (not a brownish-green) because the heat sink keeps out the direct sunlight. For parsley, remove the heavier stalks and place the leaf bunches on the screen close together.
You can leave mint leaves on stems for ease of handling, but strip the leaves off to pack away. Sage is a “dry” leaf and will dry quickly. Garlic chives preserve their flavour as they dry; regular chives do not. Generally leave herb leaves on their stalks and strip them off the dried stems to pack away. It is best to fill a tray with one herb only (unless you're doing a “herbal blend”), as drying times will vary and it can be tedious to separate them for storage.

I've had success with fruit leathers and tomatoes, but they can take two or three days to dry. Be sure you're entering a fair weather spell if you want to solar dry these! Mary Bell's Complete Dehydrator Cookbook by Mary T. Bell has good notes on what things you should pretreat (usually by blanching) before drying. Dry It--You'll Like It! by Gen MacManiman is another good source book for recipes and food ideas.

March List for the "Anyway" Project

2011-03-01T17:30:00.002-05:00

Domestic Infrastructure - these are the realities of home life, including making your home work better with less, getting organized, dealing with domestic life, etc...

start some seeds
convert toilet to low-flush mechanism

Household Economy: Financial goals, making ends meet, saving, barter etc...

selling off a Les Paul guitar that hubby doesn't use much (ad posted)
eating down the stores through March to reduce outside purchases (challenge)

Resource Consumption : in which we use less of stuff, and strive to live in a way that has an actual future.

thermal pot cooking
walking for shopping and volunteer work (use car as little as possible)
keep the art room door closed and heating vent covered when not in use
turn down heat and hot water heat off when we are away on vacation

Cottage Industry and Subsistence:: The things we do that prevent us from needing to buy things, and the things we produce that go out into the world and provide for others. Not everyone will do both, but it is worth encouraging.

"put up" granola for the summer
make more custom-sized socks
starting next year's Christmas presents by using up my re-discovered yarn stash with a new knitting book I got

Family and Community: Pretty much what it sounds like. How do we enable those to take the place of collapsing infrastructure?

co-learning with a celiac neighbor how to make polenta (an economical gluten-free "fast food"!)
coaching a celiac neighbor in making gluten-free bread
coaching a disabled young man how to make no-knead artisan English muffins and pizza

Outside Work: Finding a balance, doing good work, serving the larger community as much as we can, within our need to make a living.

volunteer work with Peterborough Greenup

Time and Happiness: Those things without which there's really no point.

travel south!
fiction reading (second-hand or borrowed books)
continue with art journal

February Review for "Anyway" Project

2011-03-01T17:21:00.003-05:00

Domestic Infrastructure - these are the realities of home life, including making your home work better with less, getting organized, dealing with domestic life, etc...

start planning the garden (ordering seeds, etc): inventoried seeds, some old beans went into the soup pot, and I ordered some new varieties to try
convert toilet to low-flush mechanism: not done yet

Household Economy: Financial goals, making ends meet, saving, barter etc...

selling off a Les Paul guitar that hubby doesn't use much (ad posted): still here!
eating down the stores through February to reduce outside purchases (challenge): a few more things off the priority use-up list; spent less than $100 on purchased food!

Resource Consumption : in which we use less of stuff, and strive to live in a way that has an actual future.

thermal pot cooking: all soups, stews, yogurt making, and rice cooking done in this
walking for shopping and volunteer work (use car as little as possible): lots of walking!
I kept the art room closed up with the floor vent covered when I wasn't using it

"put up" granola for the summer: used up squash likely to go bad before the butternuts do and a half dozen pints are on my preserve shelf
make hot sauce from canned and stored food on hand: did this with some friends and it was a lot of fun
start making custom-sized socks: first pair done and "my pattern" written up
starting next year's Christmas presents by using up my re-discovered yarn stash with a new knitting book I got: no projects started

Family and Community: Pretty much what it sounds like. How do we enable those to take the place of collapsing infrastructure?

co-learning with a celiac neighbor how to make polenta (an economical gluten-free "fast food"!): between weather and health issues for both of us, never got to it
began planning to build an outdoor oven with neighbors: never got to it

Outside Work: Finding a balance, doing good work, serving the larger community as much as we can, within our need to make a living.

volunteer work with Peterborough Greenup's Urban Forest project (GIS mapping and data analysis): did a set of maps and reports for them

Time and Happiness: Those things without which there's really no point.

Nordic walking to enjoy whatever sunshine we have this month and get fresh air: also did some Nordic skiing and snowshoeing with a friend
fiction reading (second-hand or borrowed books): more time devoted to art than to reading!
continue with art journal: also joined the Milliande Art Community for Women while putting together a few journals; have participated in one art swap

Week Eight: Eating Down the Pantry

2011-02-26T10:31:00.002-05:00

Food eaten:
• leftover lentil soup
• leftover curried veg soup
• beef stew with local grass-fed beef, local veg, home-canned stocks (beef, tomato, and vegetable)
• beef with broccoli with more of the grass-fed beef and rice from last week's stir fry session
• stir-fried veg with shrimp and more rice

I really only cooked three things this whole week for us! We ate everything up with no waste.

I did spend some money on groceries: stock up on milk, sugar, bread, and shrimp and I got lots of remaindered produce: broccoli, tangerines, kiwi, celery as well as some root basics at the farmers market: organic mushrooms, parsnip, carrots, rutabaga, green pepper. Total spent: $25.29.

Now we'll heading into the two week stretch before we go away for nearly a month, so eating down the refrigerator becomes important!

My First Pair of Knitted Socks

2011-02-24T14:24:00.004-05:00

This is my first pair of hand-knit socks. I loved the colour way, even though the yarn is acrylic. The right one fits better than the left -- but that's to be expected for a first pair!

I adapted a pattern for toe-up-socks, using the Magic Cast-on by Judy Decker for the toe and a Plain Heel from The Sock Knitter's Workshop by Ewa Jostes and Stephanie van der Linden. I like the Magic Cast-on because I can make a less pointed toe (which fits my squarish toes better!). I like the Plain Heel because it is for a high instep and a wide heel, which I have. It also looks stronger than the more usual short-heels (which fit low insteps fine, but would be tight on me.

The cuff is K2P2 rib, with larger needles in the upper cuff to give a "larger" fit. I still have problems with the cast-off being too tight. But on the next pair I'll be adding a quarter more stitches in the last rib row to give the elasticity I need.

After the socks were done, I spent the time to transcribe the techniques and stitch counts I used into a 3 page pattern for myself -- better than carrying around a book and two print-outs! Now my sock knitting can truly travel.

I'm already on the first cuff of the next pair of socks!

Week Seven: Eating Down the Pantry

2011-02-20T15:31:00.001-05:00

Food eaten:
• pulled pork with frozen roast and sauce compounded of preserved odds'n'ends on home-made rolls
• restaurant leftovers extended with pulled pork, shrimp, and lots of veg
• lentil soup (from mix) with tomato stock, stored carrots, dried tomatoes and red peppers
• curried veg soup with squash, broccoli stems, zucchini, tomato stock, garlic sauce, quinoa, dried red peppers

I bought some flax seed and remaindered produce, spending a total of $4.27 for the week!

Week Six: Eating Down the Pantry

2011-02-12T15:28:00.003-05:00

Food eaten:
• remainder of adobe chicken in tostados and a soup using a number of home-preserved items: corn, veg and tomato stocks, squash, carrots.
• last of the fall apples and some canned fruit preserves in a fruit crisp
• last of the fall carrots in carrot salad and soups.
• pasta with home-canned sauce, frozen turkey sausage, fresh veg

This week was stock-up on a few items: makings for yogurt, brown rice, alfalfa seeds for sprouting; and I used a half-price voucher at a local butcher for some meat. Total spent: $37.82.
I really expect to spend a lot less next week.

The Kenmore is Dead - Long Live the Whirlpool

2011-02-12T15:10:00.003-05:00

Back in January our front-loading washing machine stopped spinning out all the water it should from our laundry loads. Hubby took apart things and found some stuff in drain but its removal didn't improve things.

We finally got a repairman in this week. His verdict: the tub casing was broken (and pieces of it had been showing up in our laundry!) and it would cost $400 - $450 to fix. The Kenmore had more or less begun a course of self-destruction in January. After hearing that the machine was eight to nine years old, he recommended we get a new machine. I asked what kind, he said "Whirlpool."

Hubby looked through the papers and flyers we had and searched on the Internet. A store about twenty minutes away was having a scratch-and-dent sale with no sales tax. We decided to check it out. We remembered the trouble we had getting the Kenmore down into the basement and took measurements of the doorway -- we had 26 inches of clearance if we took the door off at the top of the stairs.

We got to the store and all the machines we saw we 26 1/4 inches or more in their narrowest dimension. We didn't see the scratch-and-dent model on the floor; probably sold out. We told the salesman about our size constraints and he took us into the warehouse where there was a row of scratch-and-dent washers, all Whirlpools! Even better, they measured 24 inches at their narrowest. They were smaller than the machine we had, but we were doing maybe two loads a week. Another astounding thing was that the machine used less than 160 Kw a year, figuring that you are doing eight loads a week!

Needless to say we got the machine. It even fit in the back of our CRV. Back home, hubby finished dismantling the old machine. We'll reuse what parts we can and take the rest to the municipal recycling depot for such things.

Getting it down into the cellar was another issue, but the next morning I called my son at work and he agreed to come by after work to help get it down into the basement. He showed up at 5:30 and had even borrowed a hand-truck with his boss's blessing. We had it down and sitting on its pallet (to keep it off the floor -- high enough that even the flood we had in 2004 didn't touch the first machine) in twenty minutes.

The new machine has maybe two-thirds the capacity of the old one. I'm back to separating darks from lights...

Week Five: Eating Down the Pantry

2011-02-08T15:52:00.003-05:00

We thrived so well on this last month that we're continuing it this month!

Food eaten:
• adobe chicken with stored potatoes, adobe sauce to be used up, frozen local chicken
• rest of the chili in quesidillas one night and over rice another night
• beef curry (grass-fed beef, canned tomato-curry sauce, various fresh veg on hand) with flat bread from artisan dough
• fruit bars with preserves, stored flour and oatmeal
• pasta with mixed veg, canned tomato sauce, stored pasta, frozen sausage

Stocking up on coffee accounted for most of the $16.11 we spent this week.

Making Winter Magic Hot Sauce

2011-02-02T20:19:00.002-05:00

The snow was like magic as it graced the trees and road banks. It was magic I was able to get out of the driveway without shovelling it. Vroom, front-wheel drive and new tires does it again. I had a bag of ingredients and some jars and I was going to Greg and Mary's to have lunch and make hot sauce. My street, at least, was plowed. They thought theirs was, but it wasn't, but I got to their house all right and parked on a side street.

Homemade soup, homemade bread, homemade fruit crisp, and then we started throwing things in a pot to make winter magic: hot sauce. I had a pint of tropical fruit cocktail (mangoes, pineapple, and lime slices in a ultra-light syrup), Greg cut up a fresh pineapple, Mary and I chopped up a couple of carrots. I had them taste-test a high-heat skinny red pepper and a fat fire-roasted chipolote. One of each went into the sauce. Then a couple of cloves of garlic, two-thirds of a cup of homemade tomato paste, about 2 tablespoons of fresh ginger, and a dollop of date syrup. We had to have a little more sour, so a tablespoon or so of white balsamic vinegar went in too.

We let it simmer for a half hour or so, until the carrot coins were soft. The smell that wafted into the kitchen as we lifted the lid to stir was full of warmth. Taste tests affirmed we had the right amount of heat. Then we set it outside to cool enough to whirl in the blender. We figured we had enough for 4 half-pint jars and 1 quarter pint. Actually it turned out we had enough for 5 half-pints and the quarter pint. We added two more tablespoons of the white balsamic vinegar to assure the mixture was acidic enough to preserve with a boiling-water bath. But the taste was not sour at all.

I should have brought my jar lifter, but we were able to improvise with tongs. We pasteurized the jars while the pureed sauce was heating again to a boil. Into the jars and thence into the boiling water bath for 15 minutes. The tongs worked to take the jars out and we listened in delight as the lids all sealed with satisfying pops.

The plow had come while we cooking, but the magic hadn't left: no car in front of me and the CRV just drove through the plow-line and kept going down the snowy street and air full of fluffy snowflakes .

February List for "Anyway" Project

2011-01-31T19:33:00.002-05:00

Domestic Infrastructure - these are the realities of home life, including making your home work better with less, getting organized, dealing with domestic life, etc...

start planning the garden (ordering seeds, etc)
convert toilet to low-flush mechanism

Household Economy: Financial goals, making ends meet, saving, barter etc...

selling off a Les Paul guitar that hubby doesn't use much (ad posted)
eating down the stores through February to reduce outside purchases (challenge)

Resource Consumption : in which we use less of stuff, and strive to live in a way that has an actual future.

thermal pot cooking
walking for shopping and volunteer work (use car as little as possible)

"put up" granola for the summer
make hot sauce from canned and stored food on hand
start making custom-sized socks
starting next year's Christmas presents by using up my re-discovered yarn stash with a new knitting book I got

Family and Community: Pretty much what it sounds like. How do we enable those to take the place of collapsing infrastructure?

co-learning with a celiac neighbor how to make polenta (an economical gluten-free "fast food"!)
began planning to build an outdoor oven with neighbors

Outside Work: Finding a balance, doing good work, serving the larger community as much as we can, within our need to make a living.

volunteer work with Peterborough Greenup's Urban Forest project (GIS mapping and data analysis)

Time and Happiness: Those things without which there's really no point.

Nordic walking to enjoy whatever sunshine we have this month and get fresh air
fiction reading (second-hand or borrowed books)
continue with art journal

How I Did "Anyway" in January

2011-01-31T19:18:00.003-05:00

Domestic Infrastructure - these are the realities of home life, including making your home work better with less, getting organized, dealing with domestic life, etc...

finishing the plastic on the crawl space insulation - I'm not doing it, hubby is -- and it's dependent on weather at this point Cold weather overtook us and we didn't really get a thaw this month.
sealing up the cellar foundation Only a small amount of work done on this.
sealing up windows in the two storage areas off the kitchen Nothing done
de-clutter and organize art and craft storage Completed and a much more workable space now because of of it.
curtains on the windows of one room for sound-proofing and heat retention Done.

Household Economy: Financial goals, making ends meet, saving, barter etc...

selling off a Les Paul guitar that hubby doesn't use much (ad posted) Still not sold.
eating down the stores through January to reduce outside purchases (challenge) Reduced our outside spending to under $100 -- and that included some stock-up! Also decluttered the pantry and organized "oldest first" use.
set up budget for our next travel vacation The budget is set and the money is being saved so we'll have all funds available before we go so we won't be "spending ahead" via credit card. We'll still use the card, but funds will be in the chequing account to cover it.

Resource Consumption : in which we use less of stuff, and strive to live in a way that has an actual future.

thermal pot cooking Have been using it for soups, curry, stew, rice -- sometimes twice a day!
walking for shopping and volunteer work (use car as little as possible) I've been dressing for the weather and walking is no problem. I also got a lighter, more erogonomic one strap pack which is great to use.

designing reusable Christmas tags from photos I took of Williamsburg wreaths Done
learning to make custom-sized socks Did the reading and measuring, but have yet to start a pair.
starting next year's Christmas presents by using up my re-discovered yarn stash with a new knitting book I got I've knit a couple of things for myself, but other things are planned.

Family and Community: Pretty much what it sounds like. How do we enable those to take the place of collapsing infrastructure?

co-learning with a celiac neighbor how to make polenta (an economical gluten-free "fast food"!) Nothing done
begin planning to build an outdoor oven with neighbors Nothing done

Outside Work: Finding a balance, doing good work, serving the larger community as much as we can, within our need to make a living.

volunteer work with Peterborough Greenup's Urban Forest project (GIS mapping and data analysis) --> explore using iTree software for them It looks like we'll be able to do a lot with iTree.

Time and Happiness: Those things without which there's really no point.

Nordic walking to enjoy whatever sunshine we have this month and get fresh air Lots of walking and we've had enough good snow that I could also do Nordic skiing this year.
fiction reading (second-hand or borrowed books) Delightful to read to a book of short stories a friend wrote and gave me for Christmas.
making digital photo collages of our year's travels for our scrapbook Got caught up from past trips
start an art journal Began it!

Week Four: Eating Down the Pantry

2011-01-29T08:35:00.004-05:00

We had a last kick at a great dollar sale at one of our local grocers, so some money went for stock-up of Astro yogurt, frozen fish, oatmeal, soy milk, and bread. We also got some fresh stuff: regular milk, produce, ginger root, discounted wheat tortillas, and tea. I spent $34.30 for the week. Our total spent for the month was $99.87. So $100 to our travel savings for our next trip in March!

I finally got to the falafel and I'm glad I did: they were very tasty with some chutney and yogurt on tortillas.

Food eaten:
• chili with stored beans, salsas, stock, and home-canned chili meat
• oatmeal-fruit bars with canned fruit spread
• chili pie with made chili, pepper jack cheese, and cornbread topping from stored mix
• fruit crisp with canned fruit sauce and stored apples
• pasta with mixed veg, frozen turkey sausage, home-canned sauce
• frozen shepherd's pie
• pizza with home-canned sauce, artisan dough, mixed veg
• falafel from stored mix with stored chutney

The Siren Song of Seed Sites

2011-01-22T17:27:00.002-05:00

So I visited one located in Manitoba because it is almost February and I thought I'd check out a few heritage varieties...

Heritage Harvest Seed has a plethora of heritage bean varieties: bush and pole, green and dried. It's wonderful reading the historical descriptions. I decided to get a long season pole bean for green beans and old variety of pinto beans. They also have a variety of leaf celery that is supposed to dry well and seems to be more practical for me to grow.

Now I've really got to do a thorough inventory of what I have on hand before I get any more!

Week Three: Eating Down the Pantry

2011-01-22T17:22:00.003-05:00

We had a good food week -- sufficient variety and used a few more things that had to go.

Food eaten:
• remainder of lentil soup
• one frozen portion of lasagna
• canned pumpkin in pumpkin custard and pumpkin waffles
• vegetable soup with stored squash, dried red pepper, dried greens, frozen leek greens, dried zucchini, sun-dried tomatoes, canned tomato stock
• mixed-bean soup with ham stock, sausage from fridge, stored potatoes, carrots, and sweet potato, roasted red pepper spread, left-over rice, home-made hot sauce, fresh parsley growing on the window sill
• Algerian flat bread with hummus
• beef and broccoli in black bean sauce over rice: local grass-fed beef, local green pepper, broccoli, on-hand black bean sauce, stored rice
• sweet-and-sour pork over rice: frozen pork, cooked rice, fresh pineapple, vegetable odds-and-ends

The $1 sale was still on at a local grocery store, so a few more things got stocked up: soy milk, crackers for travel. I also used a half-price voucher at Almost Perfect for some hummus mix (great for travel!) and frozen asparagus and sweet potato fries. All told we spent $18.59 for groceries.

Week Two: Eating Down the Pantry

2011-01-15T10:22:00.003-05:00

We finished sorting out the pantry: consolidated food items from the metal shelves to the wooden shelves (which, of course, had more space because of the clean-out last week), got rid of a few things, and stored like with like so things are easier to find. The double row of plastic storage has been reduced to one; a container of cloth went to its more appropriate place in the sewing/art room.

Food eaten:

remainder of lentil soup
began eating venison summer sausage
one frozen portion of lasagna
pizza with homemade sauce (tomato & roasted red pepper) and crust, venison sausage, mushrooms, peppers, cheese
shepherd's pie: grass-fed beef burger, stored potatoes and carrots, frozen peas, canned cream corn
homemade artisan bread
vegetable soup with stored squash, home-canned tomato stock and veg stock, dried greens, dried zucchini, dried red peppers, quinoa, home-made hot sauce
home-canned stew with frozen peas

There was a great $1 sale at one of our local food stores, so a few items that we like to keep a stock of were bought: canned tuna and salmon, canned corn, macaroni, bread and wieners for the freezer. Another store had my favorite yogurt on special, so I bought 3 containers of that. I can make my own, but it's not as yummy. We also got more frozen fish to last us through the winter. Of course the new stuff has been stored "behind" the older stuff. With the other usual dairy and fresh produce, total spent: $35.91

Week One: Eating Down the Pantry

2011-01-08T16:51:00.002-05:00

My husband and I went through the bank of shelves in the pantry that is four feet high and eight feet wide. He moved stuff out to the kitchen table one shelf at a time and cleaned the shelf while I sorted. It took us a couple of hours but such satisfaction when it was done!

I was surprised how little there was that had to go: a couple of items past their expiry dates and a couple of pest-infested containers. I moved all of the pasta out of bags and boxes to sturdier glass, heavy-duty plastic, and metal containers. We've not seen any mice in the pantry this year (though a couple died in our trap under the kitchen sink), but this should protect some stuff that was pretty vulnerable otherwise. I consolidated a few packages of things. I also wrote on the kitchen white board things that are a priority to use up.

Food this week that used up some things:

lasagna: I had the cook-before-use lasagna noodles so I made a big lasagna with tofu, cheese, grass-fed beef, dried veg, and -- of course-- three pints of homemade tomato sauce. We had two meals of it this week and one lunch for me; two containers for two more meals went in the freezer.
corn-tomato soup: I had two lunches out of this using a corn chowder mix I had on hand with some left-over stewed tomatoes
lentil soup: I had some mix I bagged up a couple of Christmases ago as well as some dry sausage and more dried veg. With this years tomato stock we got a very hearty and nourishing soup out of it. We have one more evening meal and couple of lunches left.

Groceries actually purchased this week: milk, half-and-half (I use it in making yogurt), organic mushrooms, red and green peppers, zucchini. Total spent: $11.53 The milk and mushrooms should last us two weeks.

Eating Down the Pantry in January Challenge

2011-01-01T13:47:00.003-05:00

I've decided to join Angela Barton's January pantry challenge. I have the impetus of it being a good excuse to clear out usefully overstocked aspects of my pantry (three cans of cocoa??) and the need to free up some cash for car maintenace on my fixed income.

Also, in my case, my pantry extends into my cellar where I have nearly 300 jars (most a pint or less) of preserves from this year's harvest season. A lot of it came from my garden or in-season and/or local sources.

The only things I should need to buy this month:

pre-made sandwich bread for my husband (I prefer homemade for myself)
milk (mostly for my husband; I did stock up on soy and I have almonds to make my own almond milk)
yogurt -- unless I can figure out how to make it as cheap or cheaper than a brand that I found I can digest
coffee (for my husband; I'll use more sparingly the decaf I have and drink more herbal and green tea)
onions (I'm running low on the 10 lb bag I bought in the early fall plus what I got from my garden)
frozen peas (we'll be doing more stews with grass-fed beef from the freezer)
lunch meat for my husband

I'll be blogging about interesting discoveries in pantry contents and what I did with them, new recipes and/or uses for things, and actual week-by-week food purchases.

January list for the Anyway Project

2010-12-31T00:20:00.004-05:00

Domestic Infrastructure - these are the realities of home life, including making your home work better with less, getting organized, dealing with domestic life, etc...

finishing the plastic on the crawl space insulation - I'm not doing it, hubby is -- and it's dependent on weather at this point
sealing up the cellar foundation
sealing up windows in the two storage areas off the kitchen
de-clutter and organize art and craft storage
curtains on the windows of one room for sound-proofing and heat retention

Household Economy: Financial goals, making ends meet, saving, barter etc...

selling off a Les Paul guitar that hubby doesn't use much (ad posted)
eating down the stores through January to reduce outside purchases (challenge)
set up budget for our next travel vacation

Resource Consumption : in which we use less of stuff, and strive to live in a way that has an actual future.

thermal pot cooking
walking for shopping and volunteer work (use car as little as possible)

designing reusable Christmas tags from photos I took of Williamsburg wreaths
learning to make custom-sized socks
starting next year's Christmas presents by using up my re-discovered yarn stash with a new knitting book I got

Family and Community: Pretty much what it sounds like. How do we enable those to take the place of collapsing infrastructure?

co-learning with a celiac neighbor how to make polenta (an economical gluten-free "fast food"!)
began planning to build an outdoor oven with neighbors

Outside Work: Finding a balance, doing good work, serving the larger community as much as we can, within our need to make a living.

volunteer work with Peterborough Greenup's Urban Forest project (GIS mapping and data analysis) --> explore using iTree software for them

Time and Happiness: Those things without which there's really no point.

Nordic walking to enjoy whatever sunshine we have this month and get fresh air
fiction reading (second-hand or borrowed books)
making digital photo collages of our year's travels for our scrapbook
start an art journal

How I Did "Anyway" in December

2010-12-31T00:10:00.002-05:00

Domestic Infrastructure - these are the realities of home life, including making your home work better with less, getting organized, dealing with domestic life, etc...

finishing the plastic on the crawl space insulation - not done
sealing up the cellar foundation - begun; 1/4 done
sealing up windows in the two storage areas off the kitchen - not done
de-clutter and organize art and craft storage - begun
curtains on the windows of one room for sound-proofing and heat retention - done!

Household Economy: Financial goals, making ends meet, saving, barter etc...

selling off a Les Paul guitar that hubby doesn't use much (ad posted) - awaiting final sale
starting a monthly savings plan for charitable donations - done
starting a monthly savings plan for travel funds - done

Resource Consumption : in which we use less of stuff, and strive to live in a way that has an actual future.

Christmas baking using what I have on hand or have canned - done
batch cooking - done - see post
walking for shopping and volunteer work (use car as little as possible) - done

making some heat bags for gifts - done
Christmas baking and preserves for Christmas gifts - done

I also made some reusable bags and tags as a gift enclosing a gift.

Family and Community: Pretty much what it sounds like. How do we enable those to take the place of collapsing infrastructure?

teaching a celiac neighbor how to make no-knead gluten-free bread - done - see post

Outside Work: Finding a balance, doing good work, serving the larger community as much as we can, within our need to make a living.

volunteer work with Peterborough Greenup's Urban Forest project (GIS mapping and data analysis) - on-going

Time and Happiness: Those things without which there's really no point.

Nordic walking to enjoy whatever sunshine we have this month and get fresh air - done
fiction reading (second-hand or borrowed books) - done
making digital photo collages of our year's travels for our scrapbook - 5 done
plan some future art collage work - done and have gotten into doing Zentangles as well (which I can use in the collages)

Knitting So Far This Fall

2010-12-20T06:52:00.003-05:00

I was watching so much television this fall, I decided to do something useful while doing it. Besides, I was taken by the opening of a new shop on Water St here in Peterborough called Needles in the Hay: they stocked Briggs & Little yarn! Briggs & Little is a yarn mill in the Canadian Maritimes. They take wool from sheep herders and spin it; some can go back to the sheep farmer if he/she want; the mill sells the rest. The heathery colours are particularly nice.

When I lived in Nova Scotia, there was a cluster of sheep farmers about 15 kilometers up the road from me who I got to know quite well. I learned to spin from them; I got raw wool from them. One woman, Janetta Dexter, specialized in collecting double-knit patterns and knitting double-knit mittens from her own yarn. In a double-knit mitt, colours are carried behind the face of the knitting. This produces a very warm mitten.

She published a small booklet of just the patterns. Later she shared them and some others in Flying Geese and Partridge Feet by Robin Hansen. The patterns you see here, starting from the top left and going clockwise, are: Shining Star (front) and Fleur-de-Lis (back), vertical strip on mitt body and Peek-a-boo on the cuff, Salt and Pepper in the wristers, Candlelit Windows in reversed colours, and Northern Star.

After the third pair of mittens, I found my old stash of wool! So the green and white pair are knit from that.

After Christmas I want to start making socks. I have books, needles, and sock yarn on the way.

The Wrap is a Gift

2010-12-20T06:35:00.003-05:00

These bags contain presents. These bags are reusable and were made from off-cuts when I remodelled some old drapes to smaller curtains for my husband's studio. The tags are reusable too! I designed some tags in Inkscape, using some vintage Santas off the Internet, and laminated them. Names can be written on with dry erase markers, then later wiped off and used next year.

Turning 1 Pound of Butter into 12 dozen cookies

2010-12-17T08:07:00.002-05:00

I found this great recipe a couple of years ago on the Internet. Of course I've lost the link. But I decided to give it a try this year since earlier this fall I bought a pound of unsalted butter in stick form on special. The basic recipe calls for one stick of butter and makes three dozen cookies. I also wanted to make cookies with the cookie stamps I have: a tree of life, a dove, and flower/sun. I used one stick of butter for some oatmeal cookies earlier in the week.

Here's the basic recipe:
Cream together in a bowl: 1 stick of unsalted butter, 3/4 cup of organic sugar (or use yellow, brown or white). Beat in 1 large egg and 1 tsp vanilla. This goes fast if you can use an electric mixer.

Mix together the dry ingredients in another bowl: 2 cups white whole wheat flour or unbleached flour, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, 1/4 tsp sea salt.

Add the dry ingredients gradually to the butter/sugar mixture and blend well. I used a wooden spoon for this.

Preheat your over to 350 deg F. Line cookie sheets with silicon sheets (or parchment paper).
You can form your cookies by rolling them out, slicing them from a log, or forming into balls that you press flat with a cookie stamp. The first two methods require you to chill the dough, which make the cookie stamp method appealing. Whatever method you use, bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until cookie edges lightly brown. They will firm up more as they cool on a wire rack.

Cookie stamping: form the dough into balls and place on your prepared cookie sheet. Press flat with the cookie stamp. The cookie should go to the edges of the stamp and be about a quarter-inch thick.

Additional variations: It's nice to have a variety of cookies at holiday time, I think, so I tried two of the variations to the recipe.

Chocolate Mocha Cookies: Add 1 tablespoon of instant coffee and 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder to the dough. I used two tablespoons less of the flour so they wouldn't be too dry.

Ginger Spicy Cookies: Substitute 1/4 cup of molasses for 1/4 cup of sugar. Add 1 teaspoon of ginger, 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon, and 1/8 teaspoon of allspice to the dough. You might want to add two tablespoons more of flour as well so the dough will be less sticky. I had to flour the glass cookie stamp I used so the cookies wouldn't stick to it.

Pecan Chocolate Chip Cookies: Add 1 cup of chocolate chips and 1/2 c finely chopped pecans (I would try pecan meal in these) to the dough and drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto your cookie sheets.

The Mouse Count Begins

2010-12-17T07:53:00.002-05:00

Every fall mice invade the pantry and undersink area. We have an old porous foundation and that's how they get in. This year my husband is sealing it up so the invasion has come late, but there must still be an opening or two they can get through.

In the past I've put out mouse bait and poison cakes. The mice just seem to make a mess of them and pass on the word that there's tasty treats to be had inside this house.

Last year instead of spending money on bait I got a couple of old-fashioned traps. I had some peanut butter that was starting to go stale so a dab of that became bait. The first evening we're sitting in our living room and we hear a SNAP!. Sure enough, there's a mouse in the trap under the sink. A day later we had one in the pantry. Once the trap was sprung, peanut butter gone, and so was the mouse -- one up for them.

Last year's score: Me: 4 Mice: 1.

After the fourth mouse, we never saw trace of another.

Two days ago I saw mouse sign under the kitchen sink. Last night I set out the traps. The old peanut butter is even staler. This morning I had a mouse. The trap is baited again.

It's a great way to use up old peanut butter.

Doing a Door-crasher

2010-12-11T12:25:00.003-05:00

Today (a Saturday) Staples here in Canada had a door-crasher on 500 GB external portable drives for $40 (25-30 per store) and netbooks for $150 (25-30 per store). I went to the farmer's market and then made my way over to Staples at 8 am.

There was a good cluster of folks there already and I saw my neighbor Sherry there. She had commandeered a teenage friend of one of her kids to join the line with her so she could get two netbooks (there was a "one per family" limit). She'd driven by the store at 5 am and seen 4 people there, so she went home for some breakfast and then came back. She'd already made a Tim Horton's run and gotten a box of Timbits for the crowd of about 20.

We gabbed about a bunch of things so the time went fairly quickly. At least it was 1 degree above freezing (Centigrade) rather than the -15 C it'd been throughout the week in the mornings. Sherri's feet were still getting cold though. I was wearing my Blundstons and doing fine. That's what she want to get; another friend of hers swears by them as well.

About ten to 9 they passed out coupons for the drives and netbooks. Though people were clumped around the door, we all knew who had been there first and things were really orderly (that's how Canadians are!).

Once I had my coupon, I went to my car and had some of my coffee. Then I went inside and one clerk had a stack of drives at her register so people who just wanted those could go through the line fairly quick.

The shiny black drive is sitting on my desk now waiting for hookup to I can transfer stuff from the 320 GB drive to it. The 320 drive then becomes my private storage drive and the 90 GB drive I was using for storage and backup will be dedicated to backups (and consequently not hooked up and running all the time).

Gluten-free bread making

2010-12-07T12:08:00.005-05:00

I'd been promising my celiac friend Sherry for some time that I would walk her through a recipe for gluten-free bread dough from Healthy Bread In 5 Minutes a Day. So last week we made a date to do it this past Monday afternoon. Doing this is also one of my goals in the Anyway project.

A couple of weeks ago I walked her through a whole wheat bread recipe from the same book (or at least my variant on it which works really well with the organic, locally-grown whole wheat flour we get from Merryland Farms). Its four ingredients (flour, water, yeast and salt) make it simple enough that she get one of her teenagers to mix it up. We made English muffins and a baguette from half the dough; the next day she made pizza for her husband to take to work from the other half of the dough. Everything was eaten up within 24 hours!

Sherry, unfortunately, cannot eat whole wheat bread because she is a celiac. Her diet has to be free of gluten. Another friend of hers makes gluten-free loaves for her, which she carefully rations a slice or two a day. But the friend never makes pizza, and that is the one thing that Sherry craves.

The recipe is extensive: three kinds of gluten-free flour, water, xanthan gum, eggs, honey (we used organic sugar instead because she was low on honey, yeast, salt (we substituted sea salt for kosher salt), and neutral-flavored oil -- which we forgot to put in initially and had to add fifteen minutes into the primary rising. It worked out fine.

We let the dough rise for two hours while Sherry looked after some baked beans, we had tea and hot cider and talked a lot about community, sharing, and stockpiling food, she started a lasagna sauce, and we drove to Honda dealership to pick up my CRV with totally reconstructed rear brakes after the left rear brake caliper stuck and burnt out everything.

When we got back, she turned off the smoke alarms before heating her oven to 500 deg F since it was overdue for a cleaning. The gluten-free dough has to be handled gently. We found patting out thin circles for personal pizzas worked much better than rolling them out. I also did the patting out directly on parchment paper after incorporating a fair amount of flour into the intial balls. She was freezing the pizza shells partially baked, so they only took five minutes in the oven. While I was busy shaping, Sherry was equally busy get done pizzas onto a cooling rack, putting in a new pan, and setting up another pan for me to put them onto. We ended up using one piece of parchment paper four times. After that it was too browned to be reused again.

The last time Sherry had attempted to make gluten-free pizza had been an exercise in frustration: the dough constantly fell apart as she tried to move it from a board to pan and stuck to everything. Using lots of flour in the shaping and patting, rather than rolling, directly into the pan going into the oven minimized the falling apart. The dough only stuck to the shaper's hands and that was a quick wash-off after the last pan went into the oven.

We used up all the dough as pizzas. Sherry is looking forward to a dozen or more pizza meals. She can make one up and take for lunch when she's out housecleaning (she does it with green supplies like baking soda and vinegar) and she'll no longer be tempted to go off her diet on pizza nights at home!

A Thermal Cooker Trifecta

2010-12-07T11:44:00.002-05:00

Soup This past Sunday was the Quaker potluck in a space that doesn't have a stove, though it does have electrical. Rather than get out my crock pot, I used my thermal cooker for soup. It also had the advantage of being a deeper pot so there is less likelihood of leakage while transporting. Another Friend brought chili in an oval crockpot and he had some mess to clean up.

The soup was based on the harvest I have on hand: tomatoes ripening in newspaper, delicta squash in storage, canned tomato stock, lightly salted vegetable stock, dried chard, and dried zucchini slices. I add some mixed dal and curry and produced a hearty, warming soup for lunch. After bringing it all to a boil, I set the pot in the vacuum sleeve, closed the insulated lid, and went for an hour long walk. I checked the seasoning when I got back, brought it to a boil again, and set up for Meeting. The soup cooked through meeting and announcements and all but two servings was joyfully consumed. I put those two servings in the fridge and rinsed out the cooker preparatory to its next use.

Rice Once I got my thermal cooker and found out how easy it was to cook rice in it, I donated my rice cooker to a thrift store. It was also far easier to clean and you never have to worry about it burning. It takes 45 minutes to cook brown rice in the cooker. Just bring 2 cups of rice in 3 cups of water to a boil, set it in the sleeve, cover and forget it. Supper got a little bit delayed, but the rice stayed fluffy in the cooker. We always use leftover rice in fried rice, under stir-fries, or perhaps even in a rice pudding. After supper I put the remaining rice in a container and cleaned out the cooker for its next use.

Steel-cut oats Usual recipes for steel-cut oats (the oat grains are cut into pieces rather than rolled flat) call for a half-hour boil. There is also the ease with which the oats will cling and burn to the bottom of your pot. I used the same proportions of water and oats as called for: 4 parts water to 1 part oats and did up 2 cups of steel-cut oats for a week of breakfasts. I also added hemp hearts, nutritional yeast, ground flax seed, and wheat germ (a round teaspoon of each per quarter cup of oats) as I do for my usual oatmea. I brought this to a boil and set the pot in the vacuum sleeve, closing the lid. After 4 hours they were nicely cooked through. It was bedtime then, so I simply took the pot out of the sleeve and set it in our "walk-in" fridge (the enclosed porch in December - March).

I moved the finished oats to containers this morning (Tuesday) so I could used the thermal cooker for tonight's supper of Southwestern stew. To used the oats, I microwave them for 2 minutes with fruit then top with some yogurt -- a very hearty, rib-sticking breakfast!

First,, cut a delicta squash in half lengthwise...

2010-12-03T23:51:00.003-05:00

That's how my session in making squash granola begins. Kathie's recipe is an adaptation of one that uses applesauce. I, in turn, adapted hers to what I have on hand.

When I cut open a delicta squash (commonly called a sweet potato squash here in southern Ontario), I get a half cup of seeds or more. I save all my squash seeds, because you can toast them for a lovely snack, hulls and all. You can also use them instead of bought-at-the-store pepitas (hulled pumpkin seeds). Sesame seeds make me gassy, so I substitute half a cup of ground golden flax seed and half a cup of oat bran for those. I did use sunflower seeds as called for in the recipe. I didn't have any brown rice syrup, but I did have a can of date syrup from Syria.

I wasn't making the granola just for myself. I have two friends on wheat-free diets and cans of this granola will be in their Christmas bags from me. I added coconut flakes, dried cranberries and raisins to fancy it up a bit.

So to start, I cut a squash in half and take out the seeds. I set them on a plate to dry after pulling them off the fibrous stuff and rinsing them for the next batch of granola. I use seeds from previously cooked squash for this batch. I cut the squash in 3/4 inch slices and put them in a covered glass dish with some water. Ten minutes in the microwave cooks them. I let them cool while I get everything else together. I scoop the squash from the rind and mash it for the granola. I usually get over a cup of mashed squash; what I don't use for the granola will go into soup, pancakes, cookies, or waffles.

Here's my recipe:

Mix the following dry ingredients together in a bowl:
5 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
1 cup raw sunflower seeds
1 cup dried squash seeds
1/2 c ground golden flax seed (I use a coffee grinder to do this)
1/2 c oat bran
1 cup coconut flakes -- break up long pieces
2 tsp cinnamon

Mix the following wet ingredients together in a saucepan and bring to a boil:
3/4 c cooked, mashed orange squash
1/2 c honey
1/3 c date syrup
2 tablespoons olive oil

Pour over the dry ingredients and mix well. I can fit this into one fairly large lipped cookie sheet (or "jellyroll pan", though I never make any cake in it), but you may need two pans. Bake in a 300 deg F oven for 45 minutes, stirring every ten minutes.

After it is baked, add the fruit:
3/4 c dried cranberries
3/4 c raisins

This makes three coffee tins (originally holding 12 - 16 oz of coffee) of granola. You can also put it into pint jars. I'll probably do that to put them by for the summer!

December list for the Anyway project

2010-11-30T09:33:00.004-05:00

Domestic Infrastructure - these are the realities of home life, including making your home work better with less, getting organized, dealing with domestic life, etc...

finishing the plastic on the crawl space insulation
sealing up the cellar foundation
sealing up windows in the two storage areas off the kitchen
de-clutter and organize art and craft storage
curtains on the windows of one room for sound-proofing and heat retention

Household Economy: Financial goals, making ends meet, saving, barter etc...

selling off a Les Paul guitar that hubby doesn't use much (ad posted)
starting a monthly savings plan for charitable donations
starting a monthly savings plan for travel funds

Resource Consumption : in which we use less of stuff, and strive to live in a way that has an actual future.

Christmas baking using what I have on hand or have canned
batch cooking
walking for shopping and volunteer work (use car as little as possible)

making some heat bags for gifts
Christmas baking and preserves for Christmas gifts

Family and Community: Pretty much what it sounds like. How do we enable those to take the place of collapsing infrastructure?

teaching a celiac neighbor how to make no-knead gluten-free bread

Outside Work: Finding a balance, doing good work, serving the larger community as much as we can, within our need to make a living.

volunteer work with Peterborough Greenup's Urban Forest project (GIS mapping and data analysis)

Time and Happiness: Those things without which there's really no point.

Nordic walking to enjoy whatever sunshine we have this month and get fresh air
fiction reading (second-hand or borrowed books)
making digital photo collages of our year's travels for our scrapbook
plan some future art collage work

November wrap-up for Anyway project

2010-11-30T09:23:00.004-05:00

Domestic Infrastructure - these are the realities of home life, including making your home work better with less, getting organized, dealing with domestic life, etc...

getting the tin roof done on the back of the house done except 2 pieces of flashing
finishing the plastic on the crawl space insulation carry over to next month!
sealing up the cellar foundation carry over to next month!
build a cold closet in the heated basement may carry over to next year because I can't decide exactly where to put it

Household Economy: Financial goals, making ends meet, saving, barter etc...

selling off a Les Paul guitar that hubby doesn't use much ad has been posted
finding cheaper house insurance (done! and savings have gone to charity donations)

Resource Consumption : in which we use less of stuff, and strive to live in a way that has an actual future.

reduce daytime light use as much as practical we're both getting better at this
batch cooking have used my thermal cooker lots

knitting socks for myself, mittens as a Christmas gift I gave up on the sock pattern after I broke a bamboo needle; did finish one pair of mittens and started another
putting together some baking mixes for Christmas gifts made up some bean soup mix for gifts

Family and Community: Pretty much what it sounds like. How do we enable those to take the place of collapsing infrastructure?

teaching a celiac neighbor how to make no-knead gluten-free bread not gotten to the gluten-free yet, but she did learn how to make the wheat no-knead bread for her family

Outside Work: Finding a balance, doing good work, serving the larger community as much as we can, within our need to make a living.

volunteer work with Peterborough Greenup's Urban Forest project (GIS mapping and data analysis) entered one inventory area of tree points; starting to investigate use of iTree (free from the US Forest Service) for them
volunteer work with the Festival of Trees' Green Team (we sort recyclables out of the festival's waste stream, saving upwards of $3000 in tipping fees so more money goes to Hospice, Hospital, and another health agency). worked the Teddy Bear breakfast; also came home with some great reusable stuff for Christmas decor and wrapping that they were going to put in the landfill

Time and Happiness: Those things without which there's really no point.

Nordic walking to enjoy the fall sunsets and warm afternoons found a new trail that takes me to a good grocery story with an LCBO next door; also walked to my Quaker meeting twice -- these are half-hour each way walks. Feels great!
fiction reading (second-hand or borrowed books) finished two books
making digital photo collages of our year's travels for our scrapbook ran into some computer issues so had to spend time and energy on those - continue to next month

A Wandering Birthday Celebration

2010-11-18T19:03:00.002-05:00

My husband Ray had his birthday today. He started off with a good breakfast of homemade waffles and sausage. He had a late night with his garage band last night so he pretty much doddered the morning awake.

A local restaurant always sends each of us a $10 coupon on our respective birthdays and our wedding anniversary. We usually use them. We did lunch at the place since Ray didn't know if they did their superlative burgers at dinner time and a good burger with fries was what he was in the mood for. I had fish and chips. leaving the fatty batter behind, but eating everything else. We didn't have coffee; we were planning that somewhere else.

From there we drove to the place 45 km away where we got our metal roofing from and returned the chimney kit and vent closures we didn't use -- $120 refund! We continued east on Highway 7 another 32 km to Madoc and its Almost Perfect Coffee shop. Ray had their JamaicaMeCrazy blend and I had their Brazil Bahia Blue. We also had treats (to stand in for birthday cake): a date square for Ray and a caramel topped brownie for me (so much for the diet today!).

We turned around and headed back to the Peterborough. I wanted to stop at Almost Perfect to check what they had for tea (I've gotten some nice boxes of Celestial Seasonings teas for a buck in the past) and to get Ray a bag of potato chips as his final birthday treat. No Celestial Seasonings, but I got a Tazo sampler box for Christmas as well as some Tetley Red Tea.

Our last stop was the Independent grocery store for milk. The Kawartha Dairy milk is 19 cents more than the Sealtest milk at Mac's, but it is good quality and locally produced. I also found some discounted bananas for eating, waffles, and baking!

It was dark when we got home, but only 5:30 pm by the clock -- November darkness!

A 50% Off Day at Value Village

2010-11-15T18:38:00.002-05:00

Value Village is a big chain of second-hand shops in Canada. It has housewares and books as well as clothing. They take some donations, but mostly they buy from non-profits such as the Canadian Diabetes Association.

Periodically they have sales days: 50% off all their clothing, shoes, accessories, and bed and bath. A few years ago they used to have the discount on everything in the store, but they've limited it now.

Today was the pre-holiday one (they also had one at the end of August -- pre-school, I guess). They open two hours early on sale days, so I got there shortly after 8 am. I was interested in a pair of neoprene shoes I'd seen there last week. I figured if they were still there, my name was on them. They were!

I had looked at hats before too, looking for a good wool felt for winter. Lo and behold, I found a Tilley winter hat in my size! I've coveted one of these for years, but I always found the price too high. The original Value Village price was less than a third of the retail price -- and today I got it for half that. Just the savings in that one item (the hat was new enough to still have its owner manual) more than covered all my other purchases.

Matching the hat was an L.L. Bean wool cardigan. I didn't get it off the rack. Another woman was using the mirror I was checking hats in and she had the sweater in her basket but thought it'd be too large for her daughter who takes a size small. The size was marked as medium but the shoulder seams fell off my shoulders too, but not too much. Enough room to layer another, lighter sweater underneath it. The woman showed me a white cashmere sweater she had found for her daughter -- that she was definitely keeping.

I looked though the men's sweater and casual top section but I didn't find anything for my son or husband. I did find a Columbia micro-fleece top in my size though.

Nothing really appealed to me in the pajama section -- what I have right now will suffice. But I did want to get some elastic waist pants with pockets to see me through the next year of weight reduction. I found a brown corduroy and bright tuorquoise cotton that fit well. Coming out of the fitting booth, I saw an Eddie Bauer heavy corduroy shirt in a flower print on the reject rack. I tried it on: it fit and went with the cords I was wearing today. Its colours will also go with my jeans and some other pants I have. It's a "nice casual" and a good addition to my wardrobe.

I found a pair of nylon shorts and a tank top for summer wear as well.

A very successful day bargain-hunting!

2010-11-14T16:43:00.001-05:00

Peoples in other places do it, why not us?

I'm trying to incorporate 5 to 7 servings of vegetables a day in my diet -- quite an uppance from the usual North American 2 - 3 a day.

In the early days of summer, I'd just go picking in the garden and do up a stir-fry with tofu or single egg omelet for breakfast. Sprouts with a splash of dressing also are great. Really added zip to my energy level at the start of the day.

November is here and though we're currently in a warmish spell (still frosty in the morning though), I know colder times are a-coming. I had stashed a bunch of tomatoes in the freezer back in October for future canning. A few days ago I got them out, defrosted them during the day, and made pizza sauce in the evening. In the course of defrosting I poured off a lot of tomato stock -- great soup base.

I still have tomatoes ripening, chard and parsley growing, and squash in storage. Those and the stock made a great vegetable soup. I froze half of it and the rest I'm using for meals and snacks. There's no starch or fat in the soup, so it is quite low-calorie. A cup of this rounds out an oatmeal (cooked with apples and garnished with yogurt rather than milk) breakfast nicely.

Mid-November Scrounge

2010-11-13T17:40:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I made the rounds of the recycle boxes in my neighborhood. Christmas is coming and my jar stock is low, so that was my primary objective this week.

It's also been a dry, sunny week. There's frost in the morning on everything, but the sun warms things. That we've moved into daylight saving time means it's light out at 7 am again, so that makes scrounging easier too. Though I got five bags of leaves for my garden (few leaves fall in my yard) the night before -- and they were a super find since the leaves in four of the bags were already chopped up and I had to run my electric mower over only one bag of them.

I went out with a couple of bags and came back with 4 quart jars, 4 three-quarter quart Mason jars, a pint Mason jar, a jam jar, and a face cream jar (love those for my homemade body sugars!). I also found a large wire basket of the sort you find in freezers -- too big for mine but still a great bin for all sorts of things -- and a lime green Starfrit frying pan. I'm divided between keeping the pan for myself or filling it with something like the ingredients for a paella for a sprightly gift.

Not a bad haul at all!

The Jar Dilemma

2010-11-13T17:23:00.000-05:00

I have nearly 300 Mason jars that I've accumlated over the years -- yet I still scrounge for jars at the height of canning season. A major part of it is poor stores management on my part: I don't eat some of the stuff up fast enough. At least I do keep track of what is around from the past year or two and put a priority on using that first. But there is only so much mustard and ketchup two people can eat in a year.

Of course I can give stuff away as presents, and I do, with much appreciation from recipients. But once a jar leaves this house, it rarely returns. I can only hope it is being reused. But I've reached the point, with the rising price of new jars, of not using new jars for gifts.

So I periodically check the Value Village housewares section. Four pint Mason jars, often with bands and lids, which is the size I most frequently use, can be had for a Canadian buck plus the sales tax. These are the jars I use for Christmas gifts, as it were.

Another kind of jar is the non-sealing kind. We're getting fewer and fewer of these in our house every year. Some is because food manufacturers have been moving to lighter-shipping-weight plastic for things that used to come in jars. A lot is because most things that come in jars (jams, pickles, fruit, sauces) I put up myself in my own Mason jars.

But these jars are great for such home-made gifts as body sugars, bath salts, soup mix, and spice mixes. Baking mixes are a "once opened, it's used" sort of thing and they can easily be put into cleaned and dried milk bags (4 liters of milk are often sold in a set of three bags here in Canada -- nice size for something like a cookie mix).

The source for these: the neighborhood scrounge on garbage/recycle day. Sometimes I score Mason jars as well!

Money Out of Thin Air

2010-11-11T08:33:00.003-05:00

Well, not really, but it sure felt that way this week: an expected cheque for energy retrofit work arrived at least 6 weeks early and the expected shortfall for house insurance (I did not have enough in the savings account to cover the new rate which was 150% of last year's) turned into a rate lower than last year with much better coverage when I queried and found a new insurer -- and the payment system moved from a lump sum at the start of the year to monthly payments during the year -- so I had insurance savings to use for my year-end charitable donations.

Two-thirds of the cheque is going to savings that have been depleted/not added to in the past few months, about a third will be for our Christmas travel, and a little bit will be some "mad money". One reason I had felt in a financial bind (not a serious one -- I could have dipped into savings) was that I had actually pre-spent some of that cheque for a guitar for my husband. A well-deserved reward for all the retrofit work and roofing he's been doing.

We've been with the same house insurance since we bought the house. In that time we've upgraded the plumbing, laid down metal roofing, and upgraded the electrical. Maybe we could have got better rates if we had talked to them, but the "bump" wouldn't have disappeared entirely. I checked out other mainstream firms and got quotes that were about a hundred dollars over our rate last year.

Then I checked out the small insurance company we get our travel health insurance from. I belong to something called the Quarter Century Club for Ontario public service retirees and this firm gives that club good rates. The health insurance rate (here in Canada you need it spectacularly if you do any travel to the US) from them was definitely lower than that from CAA. I went through the lengthy phone interview and then was pleasantly surprised when the rate they quoted me for much better coverage was lower than my rate last year before added on taxes. It was a no-brainer to go with them. Then a no-fee monthly payment plan was the icing on the cake. We already do that with our travel health insurance. It really is the way to go when you're on a monthly income.

The Anyway Project for November

2010-11-10T07:41:00.003-05:00

The categories for the Anyway Project are:

Domestic Infrastructure - these are the realities of home life, including making your home work better with less, getting organized, dealing with domestic life, etc...

getting the tin roof done on the back of the house
finishing the plastic on the crawl space insulation
sealing up the cellar foundation
build a cold closet in the heated basement

Household Economy: Financial goals, making ends meet, saving, barter etc...

selling off a Les Paul guitar that hubby doesn't use much
finding cheaper house insurance (done! and savings have gone to charity donations)

Resource Consumption : in which we use less of stuff, and strive to live in a way that has an actual future.

reduce daytime light use as much as practical
batch cooking

knitting socks for myself, mittens as a Christmas gift
putting together some baking mixes for Christmas gifts

Family and Community: Pretty much what it sounds like. How do we enable those to take the place of collapsing infrastructure?

teaching a celiac neighbor how to make no-knead gluten-free bread

Outside Work: Finding a balance, doing good work, serving the larger community as much as we can, within our need to make a living.

volunteer work with Peterborough Greenup's Urban Forest project (GIS mapping and data analysis)
volunteer work with the Festival of Trees' Green Team (we sort recyclables out of the festival's waste stream, saving upwards of $3000 in tipping fees so more money goes to Hospice, Hospital, and another health agency).

Time and Happiness: Those things without which there's really no point.

Nordic walking to enjoy the fall sunsets and warm afternoons
fiction reading (second-hand or borrowed books)
making digital photo collages of our year's travels for our scrapbook

Putting the Freezer in Order

2010-08-16T20:53:00.002-04:00

I meant to do this early in the summer before I bought more beef, more chicken, more shrimp ... well, you get the idea. Now harvest is burgeoning and I knew there were some older things I want to move out of the freezer to make room for some of this year's stuff.

It's a small freezer but I filled three coolers with its contents after I unplugged it. I would have had to get out another cooler but last summer's rhubarb and strawberries went upstairs to go into rhubarb-strawberry sauce I'm canning tonight. Some of this year's rhubarb went up too. One package of shrimp and the last package of last summer's blueberries went to the refrigerator's freezer (I wanted to make room for two quarts of this summer's wild blueberries!).

I half filled a pail with hot water, put it in the freezer, and closed the lid. I went upstairs to type in the inventory I had made into a spreadsheet. An hour later all the frost had fallen from the sides. I scooped it out (one large piece I carried outside and it landed with a satisfying thunk on the walkway in a dozen pieces or so) and washed everything down. Then I played around with storage containers in the bottom of the freezer for holding smaller things.

The freezer still ended up being pretty full, but it's organized now and I have a list of its contents posted in the kitchen!

Drinking Rhubarb...

2010-08-16T14:48:00.003-04:00

The rhubarb is still growing because I water it if there's been more than 4 days without rain and I only pick a third of it when I do pick it.

We went away to the southwest the last week of July and first of August. I picked the rhubarb before we left and stuck it in the freezer. When we got back, it was ready to pick again and I got enough for a gallon of wine, 4 pint jars of drink concentrate, and a 9"x13" crisp.

I had a gallon of rhubarb wine fermenting: it was the batch that I made with some elderflowers steeped in it. It was actually ready to bottle and tasted quite fine; it should be really nice by Christmas. I've been making concentrate with some spearmint steeped in it, so I did the same for this batch of wine. The spearmint had grown like crazy too. Half of what I picked went into the new batch of concentrate.

I bottled up the first batch of rhubarb wine in glass bottles. This middle batch I put into 2 liter plastic bottles that I'll decant later into bottles I empty from wine I have on hand.

I have about 24 pints of drink concentrate on basement shelf. In this hot summer I've managed to already drink up what I made last year. I'll probably use a half dozen pints before fall really sets in. It's a very low calorie refresher (1 pint has 1/4 c organic sugar; 1 pint makes 8 12 oz glasses of beverage -- less than 2 tsp of sugar per glass). Its sweetness is much less than that of any commercial iced tea or lemonade. I get a slight lift from what sugar is in it, but not enough to raise my metabolism (make me hotter!).

The rhubarb wine is a like a dry, light white wine. The batches with elderflower steeping or spearmint steeping will probably make good spritzers.

I love drinking rhubarb!

Vitamin B-12 and Health

2010-07-20T14:43:00.002-04:00

An interesting thing happended to me the first week of June: I found out I have a vitamin B12 deficiency. I'm not a vegetarian, I'm not a vegan -- I do eat meat products once a day and I eat red meat usually twice a week.

I found out because I signed up for a program here in Ontario to get complete physicals to those who do not have a family physician. So we signed up with a nurse practicioner about 30 km away. No more sitting in the emergency waiting room when wondering if the cold I have is maybe pneumonia or bronchitis. The first phase of the complete physical is a complete round of tests -- six vials of blood -- but my insulin level is okay, so is iron, my cholestral is a little high. I'll get more definitive information on the start of heart and circulatory system when the cardiologist comes back from summer vacation. But the NP called me in when she found I had the vitamin B12 deficiency.

So why is vitamin B12 important? It impacts red blood cell development, your metalobolism (and subsequently your energy level), and your circadian cycle (sleeping through the night!). It also affects your nervous system too.

On the NP's recommendation, I went to a health food store and got a substantial vitamin B12 supplement. Since taking it I've noticed a real increase in energy (I do stuff in the morning, afternoon, and evening), sleeping better (usually a solid four hours before stirring away for a needed run to the washroom), a change in appetite so that cravings for high-energy (and often high-calorie) foods have vastly decreased, more stamina when I'm out bicycling, and less tingling in my arms and hands.

I still have to find out why my body has gotten so bad at absorbing vitamin B12. The health food store owner said that as we age we produce less of the enzymes needed to absorb vitamin B12 from food. I don't know if there is any healthy way to reverse/ameliorate that.

The Massive Diabetes Association Donation

2010-05-27T22:21:00.002-04:00

I should have taken a picture: two stuffed boxes and four garbage bags that filled the bench on our porch. All gone now, taken by the Canadian Diabetes Association, who will sell it to Value Village, who will sell it to thrifty shoppers.

One bag was clothes and cloth. Another was a bread maker: I do no-knead artisan bread all the time now and I can store the pot I use for it where the bread maker used to be. The third bag contained a rice cooker: it did the rice nice enough, but it was horrible to clean the cover and my thermal cooker does a nicer job with far less mess and a lot less energy too; I'm storing a classic cast iron Dutch oven that I just purchased at a yard sale in that space. The fourth bag was a big plastic grater/strainer thing that I never used. I'll appreciate having the storage space back, probably for food stock-up (beans that I can cook in the Dutch oven in our fire pit if the Catastrophe comes).

One box I started several months ago with a few items that never gotten taken when offered on Freecycle. I kept adding more things as I came across them this spring: travel Scrabble which we never use, a cream whipper which uses gas cartridges (my manual egg beater works just fine for small amounts of cream), an expandable plastic water carrier, and other things I don't remember because that's how important they were to me!

The last box had a wicker wine rack we never used, a light we never used, and some books I'd not yet taken in to the library for their semi-annual book sales.

The Hell of Asparagus

2010-05-26T14:13:00.003-04:00

So I had to pick the beginning of heat spell to make an opportune purchase of 10 asparagus crowns at the farmers' market.

Then I had to plant them...

... but first I had to decide where to put the asparagus bed.

Oh, did I mention that we've been having a very dry spring so the ground is turning into a brick? Each asparagus crown requires a square foot. They have to be placed 8 inches below the ground surface -- and covered over two inches at time as they grow. That's a lot of shovelling! I'm glad I didn't buy 20 or 30 crowns!

I wandered around with my tape measure in hand, finding plenty of spaces that wouldn't work. I didn't really relish digging up a 2 foot by 10 foot patch of heavy sod (I have heavy sod because we don't water our grass, which forces it to root to about 4" below the surface). Then, aha, the space between the two melon boxes spanned by a trellis and covered with boards that do a mediocre job of stifling the couch grass. I measured it: 36 inches by 60 inches. I took up the boards and on Sunday night I watered the spot so it would be softer to dig.

Monday morning I was out before 7 am. I watered the would-be asparagus patch again and then went on to water everything else that I had planted the night before because Sunday had been the big Ecology Park plant sale and I bought 14 tomato plants, 4 pepper plants, 4 parsley, a wild plum tree, and a blueberry bush and they all had to be planted before the heat got them.

I got out the big garden cart to hold the dirt that I would be layering back into the patch, a spade, a round tip shovel (holds more dirt than the spade and a longer reach for dumping into the cart), and a bin for the couch grass and bindweed roots that would go out as green waste and not into my compost heap. Our local green waste program does high-temperature composting; my humble piles can't reliably cook things such as bindweed and couch grass roots.

The watering I had done softened up the patch nicely (and the boards had hoarded some moisture in the soil as well). It's sandy loamy. I cut the long side of the rectangle between the two boxes with the shovel, then another line a shovel blade length in. I got into a rhythm of cut a scoop, throw it into the big cart, shake dirt off the roots and/or pull them out of the soil, and toss the roots into the bin.

Only two thirds of dirt was removed when the big cart filled up. So I toddled off the get the smaller cart off the shop shed wall. I got the patch dug out and leveled at several inches below the sod root line. How to keep the couch grass and bindweed invading the new patch? I had plastic corrugated board from the box my greenhouse came in two years ago, so I cut lengths of that to line the empty patch (with overlapping ends) and keep out invasive roots.

By then the sweat was pouring off me, the sun was beginning to fully hit the patch area, and it wasn't even 9 in the morning. Should I plant the roots or wait until evening? If I put down the little heaps of compost that the crowns would rest on and I dampened the roots, they should be all right. I filled a bucket with compost and made 10 little mounds. The crowns were in a plastic bag; keeping them in the cellar had kept them from drying out. I put some water over them. I laid out the crowns two at a time and quickly covered them with soil from the smaller cart. The last third of the cart I dumped in the middle of the patch and then smoothed. I soaked it down and covered it over with the melon trellis so the neighborhood cats wouldn't use it as a litter box.

I'll see if I score an asparagus heaven in two years' time!

Dandelion and Other Wines

2010-04-26T15:47:00.004-04:00

The dandelions have been popping their blooms two weeks ahead of time. I went out today to harvest two quarts of petals for a gallon (five bottles) of wine.

It's a lot of work. I'm not clear how I was able to do two batches of wine last year. Maybe I just don't have the energy I had in early May last year. Maybe my biological clock is not in sync with the early warm weather here (though it still gets cool at night).

It's important to get full-blown yellow bloom for the most flavor. You don't want to get any green leaves or stems mixed in with them either or you'll have bitter wine. I have some small scissors that are just perfect to clip the petals and leave the stem and all the little green leaves that form the outside of the blossom bud behind.

It seems this year that the blooms are smaller. Many are closer to quarters rather than being bigger than loonies. That means nearly twice as many blooms are needed to make two quarts.

I'm hoping I get good elderflowers this year. You only need twenty bloom heads to make a gallon of wine. Easy-peasy compared to the two thousand or so dandelion blooms I clipped!

Then there's rhubarb. It makes a wine that you can combine with other wines and it will take on their flavor. I know that rhubarb ade made with an elderflower in it tastes divine. Or possibly with a spearmint wine -- if my spearmint spreads like the peppermint does. (Peppermint I prefer for tea.)

All something to think about as I have a glass of rhubarb ade (from last year's concentrate) and read some of The DaVinci Code in the sun outside.

Is This Really April?

2010-04-26T15:36:00.003-04:00

It was unseasonally warm where we were on vacation: highs in the nineties (Fahrenheit) in Williamsburg, Virginia the last three days we were there. It was unseasonally warm here in Peterbrough as well. We came back the Wednesday after Easter. I hastily uncovered the garlic and the herbs. I got out the heat mat and began sprouting seeds.

It's now the last week of April. Our grass could really use a cut. The rhubarb is almost ready to pick. The dandelions are ready to pick for wine -- it wasn't until Mother's Day last year that they were ready. By Mother's Day this year they will be all fluff and gone.

I've got strawberries blossoming. I covered them one night we had frost so they wouldn't all die. Will I finally get red currents this year? I don't know. It looks like the bush is blossoming but I'm hoping it's not done it too soon.

I put my tomato seedlings in the green house -- after I fixed the vent lifter. Without venting, the inside temperature easily tops 100 F.

As far as April showers bringing any May flowers ... we haven't had any rain for nearly two weeks. The one rain we did have only half-filled one of my two rain barrels.

At least I'm not worrying that the hose will freeze overnight. It's just not getting that cold.

Eating Down the Fridge

2010-02-22T17:15:00.004-05:00

In two weeks we'll be gone away for more than a month. I want to have the fridge empty and turn it off when we go.

Yes, we'll "cheat" by throwing some things in the freezer, but that's all right and is the last resort.

Some of the things we'll have "eat down":

eggs
milk (extra bag(s) go in the freezer)
mushrooms (last will probably go on travel pizza)
peppers of all colours (last will go on the travel pizza)
andouille sausage -- one portion will probably go in the freezer downstairs
cheese
margarine
citrus
apples
broccoli
carrots
zucchini
pickles (maybe a small amount will travel with us)
canned fruit
jam
baking yeast (into cold storage for that)
hemp seeds (freezer)
salad dressing (travel with us?)
celery
roasted red pepper sauce
relish
chipolte mustard
soy sauce
fish sauce
lemon juice
frozen veg (to the freezer of course)
frozen seafood (ditto)
frozen meat (ditto)
frozen fruit (ditto)

The obvious strategy is to clear out what is not already frozen first. We may pass some things to family and neighbors as well towards the end.

Afternote: the fridge did not get completely eaten down. My husband was adamant that we not turn it off while we were away. We did lower the temperature and I was able to wash out bins and clean a couple of shelves. It was a much nicer fridge to come home to.

The Electronics De-clutter

2010-01-10T02:57:00.003-05:00

My husband has a room that he uses as an office and a studio. He took out all the old lathe and plaster and partial cellulose insulation. After building out the wall studs to 6 inches, he insulated, vapor-barriered, sheathed in OSB, applied pine paneling, painted and over-stained. The wall now look great and it is the warmest room in the house.

He's also gotten rid of a lot of other stuff. The electronics de-clutter began because he wanted to get rid of a metal secretary cabinet that had sorts of old things in it: a couple of inkjet printers with their dried-out cartridges, cables, dried-out dry-erase markers. I had a bag of obsolete computer stuff upstairs.

Then when we began putting the pile together so I could move it to the car a half dozen more boxes and things came out of the renovated room: an old music keyboard with one irreparable key, a subwoofer, a couple of speakers, a box of auxillary cards, a box of old modems and cables, a small bag of old inkjet cartridges. It filled half the cargo space of our Honda CRV.

At the hazardous waste depot they had a big box for computer electronics, another big box for other electronics, and the inkjet cartridges had to be dropped off at the station that took paints, stains, and household petroleum-derivative products.

The car left pleasantly lighter and we have more space in the house.

Winter Collages

2010-01-10T02:56:00.007-05:00

We cleaned out the attic preparatory to upping the insulation to R-50 (recommended here in Ontario). We found a lot of old barn boards and a lot of pieces of plywood panelling, the stuff that is all wood (and glue) with scribed "board" lines one side and prepainted white; the reverse side is plain medium brown grain. We recognized that some of the barn board was candidate for art work and the panelling could be used the side of small boxes or for small shelves.

I was in a local gallery which was selling packages of Japanese paper scraps, so I picked one up, thinking I could use it for collages.

I was straightening up my craft room after Christmas and I came across a stack of art gallery postcards and an old French book on animals in Africa with black ink drawings. Hmmm, collage material, I thought. I was starting a Year of Creativity too and I thought some collages might be a nice project as part of that.

I went out to the shop shed and cut up a stack of 6" x 6" pieces of panelling in the week between Christmas and New Year's. Then three weeks later I cut another stack, some of them 7" or more to a side.

I found a tin to keep the cards, paper, and scissors in. An old Olay creme jar was perfect for white glue. I had some roller-ball pens for text and signing the backs, brushes for applying the glue, and ergonomic tweezers I picked up at a Cape Cod flea market for handling small pieces.

Ideas came to me as I browsed through the art card, the book, and the paper pieces. I'd cut and layout, then glue everything together.

It's been a very artful January!

The "Root Cellar" Box

2010-01-10T02:50:00.005-05:00

I have a cold room behind the kitchen. When the cold weather arrives, we seal it off -- completely -- from the rest of the house. I stuck a thermometer in there this year. It read 40 deg F or lower while the kitchen on the other side of the wall read 65 deg F. It's colder because it has horrible windows (double panes of bare, bulky glass which will make great cold frame covers when we replace the windows next year -- they slide in wooden grooves and are quite drafty) and not much insulation anywhere. The wall between it and the kitchen is insulated and we've created a barrier + door in the 4 foot wide opening between the two.

Our basement is small and the presence of the gas furnace down there keeps it too warm to keep many root cellar crops for long. Squash does well. There's a corner where I can put a bucket of apples. But potatoes, onions, and carrots invariably sprout.

I had a large plastic box with an attached deep lid, left over Reflectix from the door, and left over insulation from the attic. I constructed a false floor in the box and stuffed it with insulation. More insulation went in the lid and sides and was covered with the Reflectix. I placed the finished box towards the kitchen wall side of the room.

I put in onions, red onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, mandarins and grapefruit in mid-December. The last of the mandarins were used (and still in excellent shape) the last week of January. We went away the first two weeks of February, turning down the heat in the house to 60 deg F. When we came back, the carrots were frozen -- they were in plastic and in the section of the box furthest from the wall. But sweet potatoes in plastic in the middle of the box were moldy (they went to the compost). The rest of the produce was fine. A key point coming out of this is to not store items in plastic. Those in cloth or heavy paper bags were fine.

We'll see how things go the rest of February.

Hoped For Heights in 2010

2010-01-01T08:57:00.002-05:00

This is the first day of January, customary for resolutions and predictions. I'm not much for either, but there are things I hope to do/experience/work for in 2010:

my first grape harvest from my vines
more elderberries
more black raspberries
more kayaking: the Otonabee from Peterborough to Rice Lake, going through some of the Trent-Severn locks, Lake Tahoe, inside the Outer Barrier Islands of North Carolina, anywhere in Colorado, somewhere near Myrtle Beach, anywhere in Virginia
using my electric bike for grocery market days in fair weather
closing off a root cellar space in our basement
set up a solar panel charging station for rechargable batteries
converting the boulevard in front of our house away from grass
insulating under the house (basement, crawl space)
installing storm doors
more decluttering!
exploring the possibility of bee-keeping
more carrots from the garden
more home-grown potatoes
a longer lettuce and greens season
more solar cooking
more solar dehydrating (if I get the sunshine!)

Notice all the "ing" words? That implies process -- now and into the future!

Last Day of 2009

2009-12-31T14:34:00.003-05:00

Hey, it's December 31st of 2009!

Looking back on the year, there are a number of things I really liked about it:

getting my first harvest of red potatoes planted under hay
getting a few melons, though they didn't really ripen as they should because the weather so unfriendly to melons this year
getting a great harvest of black raspberries (and turfing out some weed red raspberries with great satisfaction!)
exchanging my long, heavy kayak for a much lighter, more nimble one that it is also much easier to travel with
going to the first Canadian Yearly Meeting since I last attended 15 years ago and reconnecting with people from Atlantic Canada
getting a free GIS up and running for the Urban Forest program at Peterborough GreenUp
exploring the Celebration of the Arts in Scottsdale
finding lots of great organic produce at the Scottsdale Farmers Market when we visited there
hiking in Sedona
kayaking on Cape Cod
hiking in New Hampshire
spending an afternoon at the nudist swimming hole on the Mad River in Vermont
getting into doing no-knead artisan bread when we travel as well as at home
making dandelion wine for the first time in nearly 30 years
finding more and more great local stuff in Peterborough and at its farmers' market
using my solar dehydrator a lot (when the sun shone!)

Celebrate! Celebrate! Celebrate!

Time For the Last Major Harvest

2009-12-04T09:58:00.004-05:00

I took the recycling out this morning and the ground was hard underfoot. We had snow earlier this week. I think it's time to get the last of the carrots and beets in, pluck the parsley, gather the last lettuce and chard, further mulch the kale, and get mulch ready for the parsnips.

I'm next year to simply be securing down the winter tunnel cover for the lettuce, chard, parsley, and kale if I can get that set up! Hopefully where I have the garlic planted now. It's right outside our back door and fairly protected.

Then it's waiting another week to mulch the garlic so it won't heave in the January thaw!

The Back Room Make-over

2009-12-03T09:18:00.003-05:00

The "back room" is a poorly enclosed former sunporch built a number of years before we bought the house behind the kitchen. When we tore apart the entire upstairs, it was our bedroom. Once we had a proper master bedroom, it was set up as a reading/guest room with bookshelves. It was cozy with the gas fireplace. But running the fireplace was expensive and it didn't produce much heat when its fan broke. That's when we began closing off the room in the winter time and it became a storage area.

The worst thing you can do to a room is make it a storage area, especially when you're doing renovations elsewhere (my husband has torn apart and rebuilt his office/studio -- the house is subsequently warmer because the walls are now R-22, but he had to put stuff somewhere while doing it).

One good thing about my husband's renovation was that he used a lot of material that we had in storage in that room. Then we got rid of all the computer carcasses that had accumulated over the past seven years (some from us, others from friends). A former employer (who never paid) finally took away the electrical stuff my husband had been storing for him. Suddenly we could see expanses of floor.

With winter coming in, we had to seal one window whose storm plastic had gotten ripped. Earlier in the week I got rid of a lot of books, boxes, and an awkward display rack (now in pieces in wood storage for next spring's projects). While my husband cleared space in front of the window so I could work on it, I cleared out the cabinet and reordered things there.

The window has sliding glass panes with no weatherstripping (it will be replaced next year), so I sealed all the edges. When I was done I could no longer feel the wind through the window. Next I put on plastic and sealed that to the window frame. Afterwards my husband arranged stuff along that wall. All of our travel gear (other than luggage) is in one spot now. We discovered that the roof leaks in the corner opposite the window. That will probably be the last repair of the season.

I beefed up the doorway partition between the room and the kitchen. The doorway is four feet wide. We have a two-foot false wall in it that is now insulated. I'm going to add another layer of Reflectix to the door as well. We'll probably continue with a heavy blanket in the doorway for January and February.

We actually can see the floor now. The empty bookshelves may become this year's "cold storage".

Early Morning Decluttering

2009-11-27T17:30:00.002-05:00

In the last few weeks I've been waking shortly after 6 am and, rather than "sleep in", I've been getting up and spending an hour or so decluttering various spots in the house:

the bookcase in the bedroom - got rid of 8 books
the bookcase at the head of the stairs - got rid of a dozen books
the stack of books beside my bed -- I now had space for 2/3 of the books in the above two bookcases
the bookcase in the back storage room - more than twenty books and I rearranged books to have one shelf free for other storage; also got rid of a lot of extra travel mugs that have been superceded by "better" models (much less plastic)
the rest of the back room - got rid of a travel iron, a crate of Mardi Gras beads, a box a tent shelter came in, a wooden display rack, moved and went through a desk pull-drawer set
the cellar - got rid of a waffle iron, rice cooker, and tea kettle
the main attic - took out a lot of scrap wood stored up there and barn boards when we beefed up the insulation; also found a folding desk that we removed all the hardware from
upstairs bathroom - got rid of a lot of travel size products, some samples, and some things I never use

None of the stuff I listed ended up in the land fill. I Freecycled much it, donated some to an alternate library, and some stuff to the Diabetes Society. The lumber all went into shed storage for spring and summer projects. A lot of people were very happy to take the stuff we had around gathering dust.

It's a great way to start the day.

The Tankless Water Heater Saga

2009-11-26T15:51:00.002-05:00

This saga began back at the end of August. We went into Home Depot and set the process in motion to get a natural gas tankless water heater. We don't use a lot of hot water (there's just two of us) and we realized we're paying a fair amount for hot water storage. We've gotten in the habit of turning off the electric hot water heater when we go away on vacation. Over two weeks we usually save 25% of the electric bill.

The fellow at Home Depot promised to follow up perusing the stock of other Home Depot stores for us since they didn't have any in stock. We were going away for a week and we thought there might be a message for us when we got back. But there wasn't. When we finally got a hold of him, he told us that someone had been going around buying up all the tankless hot water heaters (which were on special at the time). Apparently they were getting new models on their stock list and he'd see when they were available. A week later we still hadn't heard back from him and we went on vacation again.

Down in New Hampshire we wandered into a Home Depot. They had tankless water heaters there and the fellow we talked to was an enthusiastic owner of one. It was a different brand than what had been listed at the Home Depot in Canada.

When we got back, I decided to search the Home Hardware site for tankless water heaters. They had them listed. We went to the store on Thursday. They didn't have any in stock, but there was one in the warehouse. We went with a small model and it came in the following Wednesday.

Then I called around for someone to do the install. I finally got a hold of someone who looked up the specs on the one we bought: it required a vertical vent and a kind of vent pipe not common in Canada. We really didn't want to drive a vent pipe up through our living room and master bedroom. He recommended we get the next model up that had a side vent.

We brought the first tankless heater back and rolled over the price of that into the more expensive model. It was Monday, they had one in the warehouse, it would be there on Wednesday.

We got it home and a week later the installation man came over. We opened up the box and found that it did not come with a side vent: it would have to be ordered. A further complication was that we didn't three feet vertical clearance in the basement before running the side vent out.

I decided to give up. I took the second model back. I got the money back on the credit card.

I came home and put three-quarters of charitable donations for the year on the credit card. It seemed a better use of the money.

Is This Really November?

2009-11-22T21:02:00.003-05:00

I went bicycling today. I rode to my Quaker meeting and then got on the bike trail behind Sadleir House and rode to its junction with the Rotary Trail along the Otonabee River. My bike basket fell off as I was crossing Water St but luckily I avoided running into it (I did that years ago on a gravel path and did it ever hurt!). A kind man walking his dog held my bike while I went to retrieve the basket. There were no further mishaps the rest of the sunny, blue-sky ride home.

That was definitely not a November sky, and it being warm enough to ride my bike is not the usual November day. We've had a lot of days like that. We've had days here in southern Ontario that were warmer than the second week of October in New Hampshire. The average temperature in November has been higher than what we had in October!

A week ago Thursday I went out kayaking on Little Lake. This is the first year here in Peterborough that I've kayaked so late in the fall. For some reason the water was really high. Possibly because the Trent-Severn Waterway keepers were dumping water into the lake in expectation of some heavy rain and snow/rain combo (which can really raise water levels in the upper section of the waterway). Or possibly because water had been dumped out of the lake at the end of October in expectation of November rains that never really amounted to much this year and the water level of the lake got lower because we had so many sunny days.

We did have one day and a half of heavy rain this past week. We had some frosty nights, but there's still lots of green in the yard and my lettuce, chard, and kale are doing fine (but not growing very fast).

The ground hasn't frozen up yet. I'm waiting for signs of that so I can mulch my garlic. I should mulch my lavender and thyme, but they're still thriving. My rosemary plant is in the greenhouse but it's not called to me yet to bring it in.

But this is the last week of November. Rosemary, you're coming in the end of this week! You need to keep the parsley and garlic chives (those have passed in the garden) company.

Beads and Things

2009-11-16T19:41:00.002-05:00

I've been periodically going through shelves upstairs, downstairs, in the pantry and in the back room and pulling things out, saying "I don't use this", "I don't need this"... "But someone else might!"

So I've been listing things on Freecycle lately. I stopped for a while because I was responding to first responders (probably lurkers with email on their cellphones) who were never able to pick stuff up and then I had to go to a later responder anyway who would be responsible and pick things up. I'm usually going with the later responder right up front now (like the radio or TV show that say "7th and 9th callers get the prize") and I'm liking the dealing a lot better. I'll post at night and check responses the next morning.

Things I've Freecycled in the past month:

a microwave rice cooker/vegetable steamer (I use my thermal cooker for rice now)
a waffle iron/sandwich griddle (older than our current waffle iron)
a bag of cookbooks that had been superceded by newer ones
a bundle of computer art books
a 50' length of garden hose

During my period of disenchantment with Freecycle I put a few things on the grass strip between the sidewalk and the actual street in front of my house. Folks picked up:

two coffee urns
a vanity top
pink venetian blinds that don't go with our current decor but went with someone else's
a mailbox
a disassembled cabinet

Now I've made up 33 bundles of Mardi Gras beads and offered them on Freecycle. Once they're gone I'll have a wooden milk crate for storing other things.

Latest Local Food Tally

2009-11-04T11:08:00.003-05:00

I've been amazed at what has been showing up on my shopping radar and in the farmers market over the past year. These are the things I currently buy:

mushrooms (usually cremini, though white, portabello, and oyster are availabe at the same price as well)
goat chevre and goat cheddar
ground goat meat
grass-fed beef (ground, stew, round steak, cross-rib roast)
free-range eggs
free-range chicken
apples (Empire, Cortland, and Russet are my favorites)
organic whole wheat flour (Red Fife wheat and Canadian Red Winter)
carrots
rutabagas
spaghetti squash
leeks
hemp nuts
honey
peanut butter (via a friend travelling to south west Ontario)
beeswax
hand-made soap
sweet potatoes
zucchini
sweet peppers
pears
tomatoes (usually cherry or other varieties I don't grow)
potatoes
pork
ground buffalo and buffalo sausage

Things I'm producing on my own:

tomatoes
tomatillos
lettuce
chard
carrots (colored variety only)
peppermint
yarrow
spearmint
lavender
thyme (lemon and creeping)
oregano (regular and yellow)
sage
garlic
parsley
rhubarb
black raspberries (jam, frozen, liquor, med, sauces)
green beans
red potatoes
sugar pod peas
calendula
dandelion greens and dandelion wine
cucumbers
dill
alfafa sprouts
mung bean sprouts
rosemary
green onions

Things I make "from scratch" for immediate use or storage:

bread stuffs (English muffins, pizza, loaves, buns, pot pie crusts)
wine
specialty vinegars (for salad dressing)
tomato sauce
stir-fry base
mixed vegetable stock base
tomato stock
poultry stock
dried herb mixes for cooking
relishes and salsas
fruit spreads
chili-garlic sauce
Thai dipping sauce (for spring rolls)
cookies and cakes
kefir
almond milk
mustard
ketchup

My usual shopping list for places other than the farmers market:

milk (cow, soy, and goat)
whole grain bread (for my husband)
sausage (usually a bulk buy)
cold cuts (for the husband)
tofu
vinegar (a gallon at a time)
sea salt (bulk buy 2 or 3 times a year)
unbleached flour (bulk buy 2 or 3 times a year)
yellow sugar (bulk buy 2 or 3 times a year)
white sugar (bulk buy once a year)
non-hydrogenated margarine (usually 2 lb containers, usually on special)
yeast (bulk buy)
shrimp (usually a bulk buy on special)
soy sauce (two or three times a year)
black bean sauce (twice a year)
Thai curry paste (bulk buy)
occasional citrus (lemon, lime, or Clementines)
coconut milk or cream

This Consumer Isn't Buying It...

2009-11-03T19:46:00.004-05:00

There are a number a things that I still do buy:

insulation, insulation, insulation (this year of Energy Audit retrofit anyway)
construction materials for the retrofit
construction materials for garden stuff (when I can't find something to reuse)
gasoline (only 2 gallons for the mower this year; less than 10 liters a week for the car except when we do a road trip vacation)
seeds (but I'm starting to save my own and swapping with other seed savers)
garden supplements
local meat and speciality foods I can't grow/make myself

... but I've long since given up on:

brand new outfits
commercial tomato sauce
weekly purchases of citrus fruit while in Ontario (we've bought Arizona citrus when in Tucson)
the latest computer
the latest cell phone
i- Anything
a newer car (we may die before the Honda CRV does)
a bigger house (we spend enough to heat what we have)
a different house (we'd never be able to afford the yard we currently have)
brand new furniture (we bought good and it's aging well)
magazine subscriptions (go to the library or Chapters and browse while having a coffee)
a bigger TV
electronic game systems
more and newer appliances (only replace what breaks that we use frequently)
makeup
chemical cleaners (for house and body)
pre-baked goods
boxed cereal
pre-made dinners
just about any processed food

There's a lot of excess in the industrial economy. I'm doing my best to reduce its bloat. And if I'm going to spend money, it will be with local business and producers because that's what I want to have around for my very old age and all the ages of my children and grandchildren.

Local (Ontario, Canada) Peanut Butter!

2009-11-03T19:18:00.003-05:00

A couple of weeks ago my friend Tracy told me about getting freshly ground peanut butter from a farm in south-western Ontario where the peanuts were grown. She was visiting the area soon so I put in a request for a 4 lb container, crunchy preferred.

Well, yesterday she delivered. She also had some local honey that I was glad to take off her hands. The peanut butter was scrumptious. My husband really liked it too. But we decided to use up the open jar of commercial peanut butter that we had on hand (I made some peanut butter cookies today).

The peanut butter has only peanuts and peanut oil in it. She had watched them grind it that weekend. A further miracle was that it was $2 a pound. The place was a Picard Peanuts store in Talbotville, Ontario, one of eight branches in the province. More info about the company and peanut growing in Ontario here.

Local Business: Reggie's Hot Grill

2009-10-29T21:36:00.002-04:00

I woke up this morning, noodled on the net for a while, and then decided to go to Reggie's Hot Grill for breakfast.

Reggie's Hot Grill is on Hunter St. in East City. It was opened up this summer by the guys who own the Reggie's chip-and-burger stand out by Trent University on the shores of the Otonabee. They get business the fair months of the year from users of the Rotary Trail (bikers, hikers, roller-bladers, and strollers) and visitors/students to the university. They serve great burgers and some of the crispest fries anywhere.

Their East City branch will run year-round. They serve burgers, hot sandwiches, regular fries, sweet potato fries, and basic salads. The place is really busy at lunch time since the only other places where you can get lunch on that part of Hunter St. are a sushi place (another locally owned place), Tim Horton's and Subway. Tradesmen working in the area stop in as do groups of ladies doing lunch, senior couples, and groups of teen-agers. They're also open in the evening. My husband and I had supper there one night.

They started to serve breakfast in October. They had a free coffee day last week and I enquired about the breakfast. They didn't have a printed menu yet. Today they still didn't have a printed menu, but they did list their breakfast choices on a couple of blackboards. They were offering free coffee and a hashbrown potato patty with their breakfast sandwiches and wraps and there was also a basket of local apples on the menu counter. They get their coffee from a local roaster, so it was quite good. A lot of their sandwiches had cheese in them, which I can't eat, but I got their BLT on a bagel which I liked. The lettuce was a firm green Romaine and the tomato was thick and ripe. No way that Tim Horton's can compete.

Adventures with Plumbing

2009-10-29T08:13:00.002-04:00

Our house is over a hundred years old. As such it came with some knob-and-tube wiring, 100 amp service, two bathrooms with one sink between them, and a mix of galvanized and copper plumbing. The first few years were heavy reno years where we expanded the upper bathroom to have its own sink and a bigger tub with proper shower, put in a proper kitchen sink with a standard height counter, and put in a 200 amp service with circuit breakers rather than fuse.

My husband replaced the knob-and-tube wiring and put in proper GFI outlets in the bathrooms and kitchen. For the upstairs bath reno, we took showers the day after Christmas and then tore the room apart to studs and joists. While the guys reinforced the joists that had been improperly cut through when the upstairs plumbing was first run, I played with 3-D thinking, ABS pipe, and pipe solvent. We used CPVC for the water supply. That was easy to join to copper, but not to the galvanized. We always had a minor leak where the new supply lines joined the galvanizied cold water supply.

The supply lines in the basement were a maze. I dreamed some day of replaced the galvanized with copper. We got some replacement a few years back when we had to replace iron drains that were being clogged with tree roots. The plumber that did that job that entailed jack-hammering through the basement floor also replaced our main valve and a lot of the galvanized that was attached to it. That valve never really turned completely off. He had to have the water turned off at the curb. The valve he took out was a mass of corrosion that would have soon given way and flooded our basement.

Now that we could really turn the water off we were in the position to get the galvanized replaced. My husband was working with an unlicensed plumber named Mark and he agreed to do it. So a little over a year ago I bought a bunch of copper pipe on sale. It sat on a high shelf for a year.

Finally Mark was able to come over to do the piping change early this fall. We were in the process of getting a tankless water heater and knew where it was going to go. He routed new supply lines there. Over the course of the day he and my husband took out a lot of galvanized pipe. The short pieces went to metal recyling the next week; the long pieces I'm keeping for plant supports. Mark does not get along with plastic pipe, so I had to secure the one supply fitting that went from the new copper to my bathroom plastic system. We had one full length and two partial lenghs of copper left over. Some will go from the new supply ends to the new hot water heater; the rest will probably go into the garden.

A couple of years ago we had problems with the kitchen drain. We were able to take apart the drain system where it met the main iron outlet and clean it out. We started to use strainers in the kitchen sink drains (these trap coffee grounds and up) and had no more problems until this past month. First the sinks drained slowly. Then more slowly. But the dishwasher discharge drained fine. Then it didn't. That's when we called Mark the plumber again.

My husband picked him up the other night (he was currently without a driving license) and then an hour later he was off to a music jam down the street. I was to get him if there was a problem (something that involved more brute strength than I and Mark could muster). So I started to hang out with Mark as he dismantled the kitchen sink drains. The sink drains themselves needed replacing and we were missing a washer. So off to Home Depot we went. We talked a lot lot, trading reno war stories.

He got the new sink drains in and increased the drop from them to the P-trap. But the sinks still didn't drain. He ran his snake through but it didn't quite reach the main iron outlet. It came out of the cranking case he had for it, so I fetched a garbage bag he could put the withdrawn snake into. He ran more water and listened. There was still a blockage and the running of water through the system didn't sound right. We have a cheater valve on the sink drain system so he took that off and found it was no longer working. I happened to have a spare in my plumbing supplies so we didn't have to make a dash to Home Depot, hoping to get there before it closed.

The sinks still didn't drain. We went into the cellar and he found a maintenance outlet along the long horizontal length of drain. He took his snake outside and got it threaded back into its cranking case. I listened by the main iron outlet and let him know when the snake began clanging in it. There was nothing on the snake when he withdrew it, but the blockage would have just gone down that 4 inch pipe once the snake pushed it there.

I went up to run the water and he listened. The drain was flowing again. Upstairs he listened again. We both listened as we heard the chug-chugging of air coming into the cheater valve and helping the flow of water downward and out.

I drove with Mark to an ATM machine to get his $40 bucks. It was worth it.

We still have to get that tankless water heater in and the old one out... But Mark doesn't have a gas certificate and the utility company owns the old water heater. But we do have that high tub we want to replace with a shower that's easier to get in and out of as we get older!

More Manure Chronicles

2009-10-27T11:25:00.003-04:00

I saw another ad for "well-rotted horse manure" on Kijiji. It was at a place here in town, so I emailed the person, asking for directions and what would be a good time to drop by.

That was back in September. I never did make it to the place in amidst harvesting and preserving everything in my garden that could be subject to a hard frost while we vacationed in New England the first two weeks of October.

I kept the email from the horse-owner, so when I got back I asked if any was left. Oh yes, there was. So Monday morning I went to the place (it's about 10 minutes from my house) with my tarp-lined CRV and loaded up. This stuff was well-rotted: absolutely no manure smell. They had used coarse sawdust for the horse bedding and the result was a nice crumbly dark brown product. It was much lighter than the stuff I had gotten in Marmora and I quickly got a good pile of it into my CRV.

On the way home I stopped at Costco to stock up on calcium tables, vitamin D, and soy milk. The stock should last me into the winter.

When I got home, I topped up my yard waste compost pile with a tub of it. Another tub fertilized the rhubarb, elderberry bushes, and saskatoons. Then I topped off the one planting box I've been filling with more leaves and a good layer of the horse manure. More went on a three other raised beds and my small square planting boxes. I still have a cartful (inside the tarp -- just hauled it out of the CRV and into the cart) to dispense on my black raspberry row and my clump of red raspberries.

By then the sky had cleared to a brilliant blue so I went out for possibly my last kayak ride of the summer. It was a little windly on Little Lake but the trees still have some exquisite color.

A New Kayak: An Exercise in Appropriate Scale

2009-09-20T07:49:00.003-04:00

I learned to kayak in a small (8 and half foot long) kayak. I bought one for my son too. We went across the river to the US to do it since they were available as well as cheaper there. We lived very close to the St. Mary's River and in the summer my son lived on the river -- he even had a tree house along the shore. I'd take a book and a kayak on the river with water or juice to keep hydrate, paddle up the river, then drift down towards home while reading. I even took it on a canoing trip -- I could make more distance faster than two paddlers in a canoe, with all my camping stuff packed behind me and between my legs.

I took the kayaks with me when my husband and I moved to Peterborough. Again we were close to a river -- this time the Otonabee, and where it widened into Little Lake as it joined the Trent River Canal System. Though the Kokopas turned on a dime, they didn't track well and they didn't really have much space for stowing the accoutrements of a touring weekend. We decided to get longer kayaks that tracked well and had more space. We sold the Kokopas to a friend who we got interested in kayaking.

I never did go touring with the Sun Dolphin 14 SI. It tracked great and you could build up a nice speed with it, but it took me four strokes to do the turn that I managed with one stroke in the smaller kayak. It weighed nearly twenty pounds more too. We built a special shed against the house to store them in and bought Wheel-ez carts for them that worked great. But getting one on top of our Nissan van was quite the chore for me. Once it slid off the rack to the side, bounced on the ground, and left me with a burning bruise on my right arm. Another time it took the mirror of our friend's vehicle when we lost control of it getting it on his rack.

We went to Honda CRV, whose top was lower, and we got stackers that worked great for securing the kayaks, but it was still a chore getting them up there. I bought a wheel device that help slide one onto the rack when I went out by myself. I found myself carpooling with our kayaking friend a lot more than doing solo car jaunts with the kayak. After my husband broke his shoulder one winter, he kayaked a lot less.

I began thinking that I'd like to build myself a smaller, lighter kayak. A retirement project perhaps. I retired and within six months broke my wrist. That was at the end of summer so no fall kayaking last year. This year I was still in recovery (gardening and yard work are great physiotherapy to build up strength though) and I went out a few times. Getting my husband to go with me was complicated by the fact that one of our cart wheels developed a fatal leak. I tried for weeks to find an inner tube for it or a replacement tire. I eventually replaced the cart with another Wheel-ez that had foam-filled tires and kept the old one for spare parts.

We planned to take the kayaks with us to Vermont since we'd be in the Mad River valley, but the good weather forecast turned bad, so we decided not to. The weather turned out to be very good, but we would have had to do considerable driving to find places to kayak in the first week of September that didn't involve white water (we are definitely quiet water kayakers).

We did decided to check out the Labor Day weekend sale of the major kayak dealer in the valley. I saw a 9 and half foot kayak with spacious entry, comfy seat, and bungy gear hold-downs. I asked if I could sit in it. The seat was very comfy, it felt very right, I was in love. We bought kayak cup holders and the Heritage Featherweight. The dealer would keep it for us until we picked it up on Friday, the day before our departure.

My husband found a bag of straps and rope in the CRV's storage well, so we had sufficient means to secure it. It took a couple of tries to get it right -- it started to slide off the car on way back to the resort. In the morning, we set up the straps so we were hooking onto the kayak rather than the rack bars (which were a little too large for the strap hooks) and wrapped the straps closely to the kayak. We used ropes to stabilize the front and back. The thing didn't move a millimeter at our top speed on the I-89. Our GPS guided us on a "back roads" route through eastern Ontario so we didn't have to contend with tractor trailers whipping by us at 120 kilometers an hour while we were holding to 100 (our optimum travel speed for gas mileage).

We discussed where we would store the new kayak. The extension we had built on the workshop shed that had held the Kokopas now held lumber. I figured I could store the Heritage upside down on a couple of saw horses while we used/moved the lumber in one bay.

It turned out we weren't getting any rain at home for a few days. We got home early enough on Saturday that after unpacking and harvesting things from the garden, I had time to try out the kayak before supper time.

It was a breeze getting it on the new cart. I figured out how to secure it with one of the supplied straps, loaded in my lifejacket, paddle, and water bottle in the new cup holder and off we went. This kayak weighs 18 pounds less than the Sun Dolphin and when positioned on the cart at its balance point (the seat) tows down the block, around the corner, across the railway tracks, and over the intersection with little effort.

I couldn't fit the broken down cart behind the seat like I could with the Sun Dolphin, but I could stow the wheels and strap there and slip the folded down cart frame under the rear gear hold-down. The new kayak was actually more stable to climb into with water underneath it than the older one. I quickly pushed off from shore and began appreciating its tracking ability. Being the weekend, there were a few motor boats on the lake. One stroke of the paddle and I was right angles to their wake though my travel path had been paralleling theirs when one of them sped by. The kayak playfully bounced on the wake rather than lumbered as the 14-foot one had. I was even more in love.

By Monday I knew I'd rarely use the older kayak. I hauled it out of its storage space, cleaned it up and t00k some photos. The next morning I got the photos on the computer and posted ads on Kijiji and Craig's List. I listed the old boat and its paddle for a hundred dollars less than what I had paid for the new kayak. Shortly after noon I got a phone call and the fellow came by after work. He was a solo canoeist but his knees couldn't take doing it anymore. He was a taller fellow and the kayak fit him fine. He lifted it: it was lighter than his canoe. He'd found something that was the appropriate scale for him. He had come prepared with cash and a rope to secure the kayak to his car. I gave him some scraps of pipe insulation to cushion on end of it. At four-thirty he was happily driving it to its new home.

My first attempt to put the new kayak into the storage space failed: the keel banged up against the mid-support and I didn't have enough of the kayak out of the space to leverage it up and over. A couple of old two x sixes remedied that by making a ramp up and over the mid-support: my Heritage kayak had a new home and I didn't have to finangle another storage space for her.

I've been out in the kayak 5 times since I brought it home. That equals in one week the number of times I had the older one out all summer. Granted, this summer's weather has not been the most conducive and this week's has, but the effort involved with dealing with the larger one cut down on spontaneous sorties on the water. Now that I've got a kayak that is appropriate to my shortness, age and strength, I'll use it a lot more. I may even make an overnight or weekend trip with it-- after all my Hennesy hammock and sleeping bag could stow quite easily in the front. I'd have to pack like a backpacker would, but why not?

Thoughts on "The Omnivore's Dilemma"

2009-08-31T22:24:00.003-04:00

I read the book that succeeded this ("In Defense of Food") first, but having enjoyed Michael Pollan's writing, I grabbed this when I saw it in the library.

I enjoyed following his journey of discovery about food and his own life-stance towards food. The section on Joe Salatin's Polyface Farm is entertaining and heartening -- especially as it follows his awful discoveries about industrial food. It's good to know that truly ecological farming can be done, though many would say it's not practical in face of the world's current population. But industrial farming isn't either -- not in the long term in view of dwindling petroleum supplies and the pollution it causes.

His sortie into vegetarianism is interesting, particularly his thought processes in backing out of it. He nicely teases out the shaky philosophical foundations of the animal rights movement -- it views rights as applying to individual animals, much as human rights apply to individual humans. As long as individual animals survive, it doesn't matter if the species that the animal belongs to doesn't. Doesn't that seem to be the underlying assumption for placing economic gain over ecological practicality?

There are good ecological reasons to be vegetarian or vegan, or to at least reduce the amount of animal flesh and animal products as currently consumed in North America, but there are locales in North America where such a diet cannot be locally sustained. The hills of New England are conducive to pasture and the animals to convert that grass to food that humans can digest.

We are all going to have to do a lot more local eating in the future and for many some of that will involve meat and animal products. I can get local wheat, local hemp hearts, local buffalo, local emu, local vegetables, local maple syrup, local honey, local cheese and local eggs, but I've not seen much in local dried beans.

I'm content to live the omnivore life and its dilemma.

Heatless preserving

2009-08-17T21:14:00.004-04:00

... at least heatless for the house!

Obviously, solar drying is a great way to preserve food without using a stove. I find it works great for greens, herbs, flowers and zucchini slices. It works wonderfully to finish off granola when you've toasted all the ingredients separately in a stir-fry pan. I've done melba toast and pita "crackers" in it too.

Steeping liquors and vinegars requires no heat too. Easy recipe: put the fruit in the jar. Add sugar and vodka for a liquor (layering the sugar with the fruit, then covering with vodka. Add vinegar for a fruit vinegar. I made black raspberry vinegar and a tarragon-based (with a few auxillary herbs) vinegar and I use both in salad dressing.

Last year and this I made a lightly salted green vegetable stock. Either put through a food grinder or food processor: 1 part leek, 1 part celery, 1 part parsley (which can be varied a bit with a little bit of thyme and oregano). Salt just so you can taste the salt and pack in jars. This stores nicely in a cool dark place.

When the Sunday before my trip way turned into a hot, humid day and I was faced with nine cucumbers, I knew it was time to try lacto-fermentation. I sliced the cucumbers very thin (about 1/8 of inch or less), sprinkled them lightly with salt and layered them in canning jars. They're down in the cellar and I won't know how they'll come out for a few weeks.

I had a basket of ripe peaches as well. I skinned them, sliced them, layered them in jars with some sugar and filled the jars with brandy. Once a week I'll have to shake them to get the sugar dissolved. Over the winter I should have some yummy brandied peaches and a peach brandy liquor.

For next summer, I'm going to be sure I have some gallon jars on hand to use as "crocks" for lacto-fermented beans as well as cucumbers. With a crock you can layer the stuff in as you harvest it. Talk about convenience!

First August Preserving Marathon

2009-08-15T13:51:00.003-04:00

With stuff coming to fruition, this is when the harvest crunch comes in the summer. Plus I'm away for five days next week so I'm trying to get "get stuff done"!

We've finally gotten several days in succession of sunshine. This means I can use my solar dehydrator for things other than herbs and greens and have them actually dry. The dehydrator I built, though, is very good at maintaining warmth and the air flow if clouds come by or move in for an hour or so. And I can leave the trays in it overnight even if we get a shower.

Things I've dried this week:

Cremona mushrooms (done in a day and a half)
kale and chard (done in a day)
calendula flowers (done in a day)
green pepper (sliced thin -- done in a day and a half)
celery (sliced thin -- done in a day and a half)
rusk (done in a day)
zucchini "chips" (done in a day and a half)
yarrow (done in a day to a day and a half)
chamomile flowers (done in a day)
sweet dark cherries (three days)
almond meal (from making almond milk - done in a day)

My black raspberry liquor finished steeping, so I bottled it. I drained a couple of pints of last years' rhubarb sauce and made a spicy black raspberry spread (adding some cinnamon) with that pulp and the steeped black raspberries.

Yesterday I harvested everything I could before going away: rhubarb, cucumbers, green beans, snow peas. The snow peas were a small enough amount we had them in our pad thai supper, along with some of the green beans. The rest of the beans and the cucumbers went into dill pickles (with my own dill, hot red pepper, and garlic). I made rhubarb ade concentrate and then used the pulp with a couple of past jars of raspberry sauce (which had come out gluey from an overabundance of pectin and/or fruit) to make a Rhubarb Raspberry spread. I took the last jar out of the water bath at 10:15 pm and was glad to shut down the stove for the night.

Things cooled off well overnight. This is an odd day, so that means I can water in my town. With today and the next two days being hot and my pole beans starting to wilt, I thought it best to thoroughly water. I've got jug and bottle waterers all over and a couple of soaker hose lines. I started shortly after seven and was done by 11 am. I used water from my rain barrel for the kitchen garden. While the "outside the fence" garden got its soaker hose run, I decided to strain and bottle up my black raspberry vinegar. What to do with the berries? I decided to make a savory sauce with them that we can use with meat in the slow cooker. I actually cooked the sauce in my thermal cooker rather than heat up the kitchen with a long simmer. Then it was time to move to watering the main garden. I have a Y junction there, so I can start the soaker while filling jug and bottle waterers in the squash patch, for some of the tomatoes and for the peppers. I also do some wand watering on the lettuce, ground huckleberries, fall snow peas and zucchini.

I had breakfast and got all my jars from last night labeled and put away.

About 1 pm I checked on the sauce and ran the immersion blender on it. Then it was time to adjust the seasoning: more light brown sugar, some salt, and juice from a quarter lime. I gave my husband a taste and he approved. I brought it up to boiling again and put it back in the thermal cooker to "simmer" some more. I decided to blend it to a smooth sauce rather than leave it a little chunky and put it up in a quart bottle.

The Heat Is On

2009-08-14T16:22:00.003-04:00

We had a July cooler than most years this summer and a lot of rain. Now the rain has slowed and the temperature has soared. I see signs of ripening on my tomatoes. We're running the ceiling fans all during the day now. I'm drying lots of stuff in my solar dehydrator. Tomorrow and Sunday we're supposed to hit 30 deg C and it will feel like 40 deg C (getting near 100 deg F!) with the humidity. Nights are still cooling off -- well below 75 deg F. Days like that are for sitting in the shade or indoors with shaded windows and a fan to move the air.

I might have gotten my last big picking of rhubarb for the summer unless we get more rain. I juiced the rhubarb this morning and put the pulp in the fridge. I won't can it until this evening when it starts to cool off. I'm reusing some heavy raspberry sauce (more like glue!) with the rhubarb pulp for a usable waffle/cookie bar spread. I'm really looking forward to some healthy cookie bars all winter long and my husband will be happy to see more baking.

I've got cucumbers I've got to do something with too. I think I'll try some lacto-fermented dill slices. I can start them tonight and put them in the cellar on Sunday. On Monday I go away for five days, so I'll have to advise my husband on what to harvest. I've got neighbors who can come in to take away some stuff too.

But going away means the heat is one to get some stuff done. So yesterday I did the last painting of the shade frame I constructed last week. This morning I finished putting pavement sand on the walkway I put in the week before that. For supper tonight I'll be picking all the baby green beans and snow peas I can for our shrimp noodle dish. The tomatoes and melons have been fertilised. Tomorrow I plan to water everything, really making sure the developing fruits will have sufficient moisture.

Rhubarb and Raspberries

2009-08-10T08:49:00.004-04:00

Well, the last of the first flash of black raspberries is done. By hoarding pickings in the freezer, I was able to accumulate enough for a gallon of black raspberry melomel (honey-based fruit wine) as well as a hearty mixed raspberry shortcake on my son's birthday. The very last picking went into bumbleberry spread.

I tried making a berry spread earlier this summer based on apple juice concentrate and no sugar. The strawberries washed out in colour and it took a long time to cook down.

Some low-sugar fruit spread are based on apples (so it's more like a fruit + apple butter), but local apples don't come in until mid-August (green ones, too).

I have a six plant rhubarb row. When I pick a third of it, I have enough rhubarb for 4 pints of rhubarbade concentrate plus a small rhubarb crisp, or 4-6 jars of rhubarb sauce plus some left over rhubarb sauce. I love rhubarbade as a summer drink that is an alternative to lemonade or iced tea. Making it this year I used up some runny orange marmelade that had been sitting on my preserves shelves. I also steeped elderflowers in the concentrate before its final heating and jarring. Once or twice I threw in a handful of black raspberries to cook with the stalks.

The first few batches I threw the leftover pulp once the juice is extracted into my compost. Then my frugal nature clicked in and I thought: this pulp is already cooked, it is smooth, it is acidic but not overly so and its flavor is mellowed down. Why not use it as a neutral base for fruit spread? I put it in the fridge and when I produced some cherry pulp a few days later from making the cherry melomel base, I combined the two with some additional sugar and produced a rhubarb-cherry spread. This will be excellent over waffles or in the middle of cookie bars.

Then I made a rhubarb BBQ sauce with it. And two batches of bumbleberry spread. "Bumbleberry" is simply any mixture of berries. The first mix was strawberries and black raspberries The second mix was black raspberries, a lot of blueberries, cherries, and a few red raspberries. I use a cup of sugar per 4 half/pint jam jars. This is much less than regular jam recipes, but enough to preserve the berry color in the spread.

Here's the recipe for the first batch:
3 - 3 1/2 c rhubarb pulp
3/4 c. black raspberries
1/2 c. strawberries
3/4 c. raw sugar (more to taste if pulp not sweet)
1/4 c. lemon juice (to ensure enough acid)

Mash berries with sugar and lemon juice. Heat to a boil, gradually adding rhubarb pulp. Add more sugar to taste if needed.

Put into 4 half-pint jars, being sure to remove any air pockets, with 1/2 inch head space. Process 15 minutes.

Last year we had rain all summer and I had rhubarb all summer. It looks like the same is happening this year. Last year all I preserved was rhubarb sauce that I'm still eating. This year I have a lot more useful items on my preserve shelves!

Black Raspberry Rhapsody

2009-07-21T22:34:00.003-04:00

I started picking black raspberries on July 6th. I put a cup of them into a jar with apple cider vinegar. I filled the jar with the next picking and then began a jar of black raspberry liquor.

Every day or so I pick more black raspberries. Sometimes I eat them out of hand or over granola or in a shortcake (my husband loves them in a shortcake). I asked my neighbors if I could pick theirs and they said yes. Their patch is the progenitor of mine. Canes leaned over the fence between us. When they struck earth on my side, they started a new plant. Up in the kitchen garden last year I had ten tomato plants and at the end of the summer I had ten black raspberry plants started in amongst them. I moved them to the main garden to keep company with the others that had come over the fence.

A cup or two of black raspberries can enhance many things besides vinegar and vodka. I made some mango black raspberry sauce for winter waffles. I added some to my rumtopf. I made a fruit cocktail with mangoes, white nectarines, black raspberries and a navel orange. I kept one picking in the fridge and with the next picking I had enough to make 4 jars of black raspberry jam.

When I was a child, my favorite ice cream was black raspberry. Crystal Springs Dairy's soft ice cream stand had it on alternate Thursdays in the summer and I ate it all summer long.

I don't have the same love affair with red raspberries. They don't have the depth of flavor, the depth of colour, that black raspberries impart to things. I did have access to a wonderful red raspberry patch in Nova Scotia. They would start to produce the week before my son's birthday at the end of July and loved having red raspberry shortcake as his birthday cake. I even got enough raspberries for a gallon or two of wine.

I started a red raspberry patch here in southern Ontario. My neighbor gave me some canes. But they're not the best. They heartily put energy into propagating by root extensions, but produce few seeds (and the berries that surround them). This summer they showed hearty blossoms, but most produced fruit of maybe three seeds or less. I cut them all down, bundled them up as green waste. Soon I'll have all the roots dug up. I left the red raspberries that are producing fruit. They can spread if they want -- but they'll have to compete with the black raspberries I'll be putting in.

The harvest is noticeably diminishing in the black raspberry patch. But today I noticed a few new canes had blossoms on them. They did that last year too. And in another month I'll have another black raspberry harvest...

The Great Cellar Refurb, Part 1

2009-07-20T07:21:00.003-04:00

The cellar is small in width, depth, and height (even I at 5' 1" can bang my head on duct work). Strictly speaking it is a tall crawl space. But we have our laundry, freezer, water heater, furnace and storage down there.

In the spring we put in a hanging grow light over a fold-up camping table. Later I built a much shorter table so that we could use a gravity-fed waterer for the plants on it. I got longer chains for the grow light. When we're not growing things on it, it will be a platform for winter storage of vegetables that I built stackable bins for. Now we just needed a unit to put the water on.

Just a week or so ago, a neighbor put out a disassembled shelving unit on the boulevard. It was actually sawed off a hutch unit, but it was all wood. I reassembled it with an additional shelf, all spaced to hold canning jars. I painted the whole thing blue with acrylic enamel we had on hand. My husband found another shelf unit while sorting through our main floor storage room. I put two more shelves in it with everything spaced to hold canning jars. I painted that blue too.

Then we had to rearrange what storage we did have for home preserves to fit the units in. The metal shelf unit by the stairs came out. In its place went the unit from the neighbor. I commenced to moved all of the older preserves into it and put the two kettles I use for water bath processing on the top shelf; they're very handy to get at from the stairs. That freed up space on the bigger shelves along another wall for things that had been on the metal shelf unit, though an old enamel processor went to Freecyle.

We moved the top shelf of the metal unit down and put the unit between the stairs and the grow light table. The gravity fed waterer went on the moved top shelf. Other planting things will go on the other shelves.

The main unit I had built two years ago for home preserves had a decided lean to it. I took everything off, placing it either on top of the washer and dryer or in our wheeled laundry bin. I determined that the lean was due to the lay of the floor (it is rough cement). Rather than having it against the wall, I turned it 90 degrees and found a spot where it was horizontally level. If I put in a board brace to move its top away from the wall (which was not vertically level), then it would be vertically level as well as more stable. My husband found a piece of old paneling in our storage room that just fit the back of the unit. Jars won't fall out and that stabilizes the unit more too. The second new unit went across the end of the older unit to form a T. Everything is accessible.

I sorted the remaining preserves into older and this season's . The older preserves and empty jars went into the second new unit. This season's preserves went into the older unit. Now I don't have to search for the older stuff and I have plenty of empty space for new preserves.

Part 2 will be the wall shelves and the double bank of shelves on the other side of the stairs!

An Afternoon in Marmora

2009-07-20T06:29:00.003-04:00

This is a week late, but possibly better on reflection.

I saw an ad on-line for well-rotted horse manure in Marmora, so I contacted the advertiser and arranged to go there on a Monday afternoon to pick some up.

I cleared out the back of the CRV, flipped up the back seats, and laid in a double tarp (reuse from a lumberyard -- it had covered lumber) with the sides up in a box. I tossed in a shovel and my gloves and was ready to go.

Along the way I got gas (prices had nicely dipped that day), some cash, and made a stop at Almost Perfect (bargain frozen food and shelf stuff -- stock continually varies) on the outskirts of town, where I picked up some Jones soda for fluid replenishment as well as some de-alcoholized beer. Always make multiple stops on a trip. Marmora is about 60 km away, so I made note of places I might want to stop on my way back -- if I had the time and energy.

The place was on the other side of Marmora, but not as far as the directions had led me to believe. A teenager was in the yard waiting for me and opened gates so I could take the CRV through.

Well, the manure was not "well-rotted". Somewhat aged, yes, but mixed with clay soil. It was an improvised compost pile that was much too high to really break down. The stuff was heavy, but I did manage to get it a foot deep into the CRV. After forty-five minutes, the back end of the vehicle was noticeably down. Darker clouds had moved in and I had felt a few drops. Time to go. Gates were opened for me to get out but no one collected the $5 from me that I was supposed to pay, though I delayed in the yard a bit. Oh well, they had really advertised to get the pile down, which I had indeed made a dent in.

There was a bit of horsely smell about the car, but not bad. I opened a bottle of Jones soda.

Driving through Marmora, I noticed they did indeed have a little downtown. So I found a nearby parking lot and stopped. It wasn't even 2:30 yet, so I could "sight see" a bit.

The downtown was two blocks long. It had a bank, two dollar stores, an internet cafe, an ice cream and fudge shop with outdoor decor stuff, a sports shop, a couple of restaurants, a convenience store, a Sears catalog place, insurance agency, and a few other offices. Not bad for a village of under 3000 in population. The big grocery store, hardware store, building supply and gas stations were on the highway that ran perpendicular to the downtown street. The place was a center for farmers and cottagers in the area.

The older dollar store advertised itself as a local dollar store. After I visited the other one (which had just opened), I think they were advertising themselves as that because the newer one was part of a small chain (which I'd never encountered before -- but it did have a more diversified stock and a franchise look about it). I made purchases at both. I'd been wanting to go from heavily adhesived labels on my home preserves to things I printed off on plain paper and then glued on myself, which would be easier to remove the next season. I found glue sticks and mucilage to make that happen. I also got some parsnip and rutabaga seeds for late planting (fall crop) as well as nasturtium. We've put in a new door and were planning to paint the panel bevels a different colour than the main door and I found acrylic paint for that. Some aluminum oxide sandpaper, coloured wire and scissors completed my purchases.

The internet cafe had home-made lemon spritzers, so I had one while perusing an issue of Canadian Gardening in one of their comfy chairs. I and two lads on the computers were the only ones there. The shop next door was a computer business, run by the same folk who ran the cafe. I imagine on the weekends the place is busy, but I enjoyed the quiet of a Monday afternoon.

Then I explored the other side of the street. Normally I don't eat ice cream because of my casein intolerance, but a small cone of Kawartha Dairy ice cream (made with real cream) I could handle with a couple of enzyme pills. It was Bordeaux Cherry in a sugar cone and it was delicious!

By the time I finished the cone it was nearly 3:30. Time to go home. I went from the parking lot to the visitor center in the park next door to use the washroom preparatory to the drive back.

When I got home, it took nearly an hour to unload the manure: three garbage cans, a garden cart, two large bins and a recycle box and trug in a garden wagon. Nothing got in the car. I put the tarp over the garden wagon and pulled down to the main garden. Then I went in for some supper and ibuprofen for my left wrist.

Over the following week, I set up a wire compost bin to hold the manure so it will break down between now and next spring. I turfed out two non-productive strawberry beds and mixed in some of the manure in them. Watering and mixing daily has gotten them to a near-plantable state. I still have to move two and half garbage cans of manure (along with sand to temper the clay mixed with it).

Delightful Orange Flowers

2009-07-07T07:56:00.003-04:00

I got these from a Quaker friend in Hastings. She was renovating her bed of them and of course had extras. I may have to do the same with them in the next year or so.

I got this plant from my son and his girlfriend for Mother's Day. I planted in the groundcover to fill the pot.

The first preserving marathon of July

2009-07-05T22:05:00.003-04:00

Saturday I went to a local U-pick farm for strawberries with my neighbor. Before I went, I loaded up my solar dehydrator with yarrow, yellow oregano, and peppermint. I also bought a stack of interlocking brick, promising to bring the cash for them by 2 pm, from a neighbor across the street.

The picking went well. I got 8 liters of strawberries for $13. After I got them home, I walked to the nearest ATM for cash and found it was still out of order from earlier in the morning. I walked on into downtown and got the cash. The neighbor's yard sale was still set up, so I told her I'd bring my Honda CRV over to load the bricks up once they cleared the driveway. She said to wait until her husband got home and they'd help load.

I went back home to address strawberries. First I had to hull and halve them. I was making Strawberry Margarita Preserves and Spreadable Strawberries. Both required peeled, cored and chopped apples. I did the preserves first: a batch of six half-pints. It was a good half-hour of prep, a half-hour of cooking down, and then another twenty minutes to process them. During the cooking, I got the strawberries and apples ready for the spread. During the processing, I began cooking the spread. That took nearly an hour to get down to the thickness I wanted. I had plenty of time to prepare a dozen half-pint jars (in two pots). It turned out I had only enough to fill 8 half-pint jars and I could fit them all into my larger water processor. While those were processing, I checked on my solar dryer. Most of the yarrow was dry (this in a day with some cloud, but under 60% humidity and steady breeze, which helps with the dryer's air circulation) so I brought it in to strip from the stalks and put into a quart jar.

The processing finished (I use a wind-up timer for all my canning -- so handy!) shortly after I started stripping yarrow. I got the jars out and did some general clean-up, then it was back to the yarrow. During it the bricks came...

The neighbors loaded half the bricks in their pickup truck and brought them over to our house. There were 5 of us unloading so it went fast. My husband went with them to load the rest of them while I went back to the yarrow. I helped them unload the second half of the stack. We got 160 regular sized brick and 60 plus half bricks. I might convert the heavy traffic area of my main garden from gravel to brick just to make it easier to move various carts around.

I decided not do my asparagus pickles after supper that night. I was fast asleep by 10 pm.

The next morning,I added more yarrow to what still had to dry and picked some calendula flowers as well. I cut up my asparagus and set up its brine soak. I also mixed up a batch of no-knead artisan oatmeal bread. I opened a couple of pints of poultry stock, added short asparagus ends, carrots, a garlic scape and mushrooms and got soup stock going in my thermal cooker, I set aside longer asparagus ends (which weren't woody) for vegetable kabobs. Somewhere in this I cooked my husband and I egg sandwiches on the last of our homemade English muffins and had some coffee. I also labelled and put away the strawberry preserves and spread.

I got the 6 half-pint jars heating for the dilled asparagus and readied the pickle liquor. I rinsed the asparagus and decided I had to use the larger pot for the initial heating of it after all. While it was doing that, I picked my dill weed and garlic chives. A sixth of dried cayenne pepper went into the bottom each jar, then I packed in the asparagus spears along with dill fronds and chive lengths. It turned out that you can fit more heated asparagus than raw asparagus in a jar. I had two jars left over. I also had a surplus of snow peas, so I took enough of those that had little peas inside them and packed them into one jar. I had just enough pickle liquor to fill that jar. I processed them all together since they both had the same processing time.

While that was going on, I formed up two loaves and a half dozen buns from the oatmeal dough. They would need about an hour to rise.

I drained the stock. I cut up the carrots and threw them back in to the soup pot. Then I added more tender asparagus ends done in 1/8" slices, a can of creamed corn, a can of corn, a can of white meat chicken and a half cup of wild rice. After bringing it to a boil, I set it in the thermal cooker. By then my son had come over to help my husband install a new door on the room he's converting to a music studio. I told him there'd be a lunch of soup and homemade bread shortly after one.

I'd promised my neighbor I'd help her install two brackets to hold her upside-down tomatoes. I went over to her place to find out when we could do. She told me she had to go out on an errand but would come over in a half hour to get me for the job.

I did some kitchen cleanup. The sink was now overflowing with drying bowls and pots. I made an oatmeal cake to bake while the bread was baking. I made depressions in the buns and filled them with Black Forest Preserves. Once everything was in the oven, I set the timer for 35 minutes for the cake and sat down on my deck outside the kitchen with some rhubarb ade and crossword book,

My neighbor's errand took her an hour and when she came over, I still had ten minutes on the cake. She said to come over when my baking was done. After the cake and buns came out, there was still another ten minutes on the bread. It was shortly after one when the bread was done, but the beauty of soup in the thermal cooker is that it can be left on its own. Besides the guys were in the middle of hinging the door. I got my 18v cordless screw gun and some screws and went over to my neighbor's.

When I got back, I cut up the last of the artisan boule and dished out soup. I did clean up then cut up the oatmeal cake into serving size pieces. Some went into the freezer and some I put in a container for dinner's dessert (strawberry shortcake!). I bagged up the oatmeal loaves and put them in the freezer too. The buns went into the refrigerator's freezer.

I decided to relax until it was time to bring in stuff from the solar dryer and make dinner. After my son left, I went to a nearby store for chicken and cherries that were on special. I'll be making meloml with those -- but that will wait until Monday.

I stripped down the rest of the yarrow and now have a quart jar of yarrow leaves and flower for tea and poultices. In a couple of weeks I'll dry another quart. That should suffice for the winter. You shouldn't drink yarrow tea every day, but it works much like echinacea if you drink tea of it during the first stages of a cold or flu. I started a jar of calendula flowers. I was really pleased my solar dryer preserved the colour of the petals-- they'll look fantastic on salads in the winter and they also make a good tea. I'll pick those as they come and dry them (when I'm not putting them fresh into salads).

The day is over and it had started to rain (again!). But it was a beautiful low-humidity weekend with moderate temperatures -- perfect for a preserving marathon.

Using the Forage

2009-06-27T11:15:00.003-04:00

Yesterday I went out for my usual early morning Friday walk and saw nothing to come home with.

That was all right. I wasn't "shopping" for much anyway and I was in the process of de-cluttering anyway. This week I had a number of projects on the go that used the stuff I've foraged in the past few weeks.

Emergency watering: rain did not come as expected mid-week so the drip waters I made from kitty litter jugs and water jugs came into use. The grape vines, blueberry bush and pole beans were very happy.

I decided it was time I had a good salad garden outside my kitchen rather than have to go to the main garden to get salad fixings. I used eight of the concrete blocks I'd foraged to build one, using the lasagna method of a 6-sheet thick layer of wet newspaper over sod, then layering in compost and garden soil to a depth of 8". I also filled the cement block holes with the same compost and soil for salad complements such as radishes and peppercress. So the stack of bagged soil and compost is cleared from our side entry walk, as are the concrete blocks!

Once set up this is a prime spot for cat deposits unless the little beasts are kept out. I bought a T-bar post to support one end of a 6' by 4' fence panel built of reused lattice and new fence boards. The other end of the fence panel is secured to my shop shed corner. I had improvised a barrier with some green fence netting and a foraged small cement pillar to keep cats from my tomato and herb beds. That was easily transferred to serve as an interim gate from the T-bar to the kayak shed. The permanent gate will be of reused trellis and new fence boards as well.

More of the trellis will be a shade for the new greens. I already have shade supports built and painted from last season. The rest of the trellis will probably be made into portable cat barriers to protect the melon and bean areas.

When it rains here, it pours -- and the one rain barrel we have fills very quickly, then we see a lot of water going out the overflow. I picked up a plastic barrel that had a clamp lid. I reused the main hole in the lid for a hose from the first barrel's overflow. I filled around the hose with some leftover window screen. I drilled/cut another hole in the second barrel and installed more hose for that barrel's overflow. I had plenty of hose from a Friday forage to do this. Some of the pipe insulation that I took off the solar oven when it failed there as a gasket works fine as hose gasket (to keep out the mosquitoes). I may eventually put in a tap (I have a couple on hand from some other previous use) on the second barrel, but for now it is easy to lift the unclamped lid and get a pail or watering can of water. I've also got a remainder of old garden hose I can use to siphon water out of the second barrel. I used two thinner concrete blocks I had foraged to support the second barrel.

I also finally sealed (with a can of acrylic sealer I got in a remainder sale) the two framed pieces of fretwork hardboard from a yard sale, put the piano hinge on them that I got another yard sale and set up a new screen in the gazebo. That nicely cleared some clutter from the shop shed.

Living With Less Plastic

2009-06-17T12:54:00.004-04:00

It's ubiquitous, it's obnoxious, it's strangling the planet -- that's plastic. Our economy is addicted to it and its convenience. I have no statistics on how much the average person uses (misuses, has to dispose of) but I know it's too much.

Here's what I've done in the last two years to shrink down my "plastic heap":
1. Filter my own tap water and drink it from stainless steel bottles. A lot of times I don't filter it, but in the summer our local supply picks up a noticeable taste from some plants growing in it. The big filter jug in the refrigerator cuts down our need to run tap water until it is cold in the summer as well.

2. Switch from plastic clothespins to bamboo. The plastic ones were disintegrating anyway -- literally falling apart in the storage bag after a few uses on the outdoor dryer.

3. Don't drink carbonated drinks. A great health measure in many respects anyway.

4. Buy a big bag of flour in a paper bag and bake my own bread, English muffins, hamburger buns, sausage holders and pizza. The flour is stored in food-safe plastic buckets. I think about four months of storage evened the amount of plastic used to store the flour and the amount of plastic I was recycling from bread product bags and bulk food store bags. My body doesn't miss the bread product preservatives at all!

5. Make my own kefir from goat milk (in a wax board carton). Kefir requires only a glass jar, growing culture, and room heat to develop. This is easier and requires less heating than yogurt. No more plastic yogurt containers!

6. Grow my own sprouts. No more plastic bags or containers for these!

7. Buy apples in bulk from the farmer's market.

8. Use good quality bar soap for washing and shampoo (lasts a lot longer than liquids -- and no more plastic bottles!)

9. Re-use plastic containers or glass containers with lids for storing leftovers. (No more plastic film!) Also do the same for lunches away from home.

Things I want to do over the next year:
1. Switch from plastic for freezer storage to glass or soy-waxed paper.

2. Keep refining the list of what I can to best replace what I buy in the way of condiments (often in plastic containers!).

3. Make my own salad dressing.

4. Get all my soil amendments and mulches in bulk in my own containers. This ended up being my biggest use of plastic this spring. I'm still expanding my garden so I need more compost than I produce at this point.

The big June planting

2009-06-11T17:37:00.004-04:00

It's the second week in June and finally temperatures are above 5 deg C. at night. The tomatoes are demanding release from their pots, as are the squash and cukes.

On Friday I got the boxes prepared for the melons and pole beans. I built a four-sided 6 foot high teepee trellis for the beans. I put potted spearmint and peppermint in the melon and bean boxes (hoping the strong scents will confuse the flea beetles and squash bugs). Then I went away for the weekend.

On Monday, I hustled plants out of pots in the early morning: tomatoes by the kitchen, tomatoes in the main garden, basil and marigolds to keep them company, the two Christmas lima bean plants and the Blue Lake pole beans at the trellis, the cukes by the shed, the squash plants and corn seed in the 3-sisters box.

I watered everything to settle them in place then gathered up my tools and a morning glory and sunflower plant that I had promised a friend. It was a quick job to plant those in her garden. We had a nice visit, then I went off on errands: a splitting axe to address the pieces a major trunk of box elder was now in, big -- but carryable-- bins for green waste that I can't readily compost, a year's supply of garbage bags, an entry stone for my shop shed, more plastic fencing for trellis or to keep cats at bay and some soil tests at greatly reduced prices.

Then on Wednesday I put out the red mulch plates and spiral supports for the tomato plants. They look like some art installation now.

Solar Oven Saga

2009-06-04T20:12:00.003-04:00

I set up the solar oven at 10 am in the morning

It worked!

Maybe too well: the pipe insulation I used as a gasket material melted, the double pane window cracked when it hit the nail sticking out of the melted foam insulation, the meat thermometer blew its bottom off and I nearly burned my fingers lifting the pot cover to check how the orzo was doing. This was all by eleven-thirty in the morning. At least the candy thermometer was surviving; it read close to 250 degrees F.

I stripped off the gasket stuff, pulled out the nails and used a couple at the bottom of the window to keep it from sliding. At twelve-twenty I had overcooked orzo, but a good cold rinse made it edible for a pasta salad.

I decided to try cooking some rice, but a lot of intermittent cloud started to move in and I gave up on it at two-thirty.

I lost less than $2 in materials (the thermometer was a 25 cent yard sale purchase and I used two lengths of pipe insulation) and gained a powerful solar appliance. The double-paned window cost $3 at the local ReStore and everything else was reused material: 2" foam insulation scrap, 1 1/2" insulation scrap, the green plastic corrugated box my greenhouse came in last year, and tarp material used for lumber bundles. I bought the dark granite ware pot at the hardware store for $10.

I don't know how long the tarp material will last. I may have to upgrade to something more substantial -- such as aluminum flashing painted with high-temperature paint. It certainly works fine as a heat absorber in my solar dehydrator.

The foam insulation sure keeps the heat in and carries the cooker through an occasional cloud. I'd like to get a true oven thermometer for it, especially if I decide to set up a reflector for it to try baking. I'll keep an eye out for one at yard sales.

Canned Goods Inventory

2009-06-01T12:33:00.000-04:00

Thinking about jam made me think about all the stuff I still have on my canning shelves. I have three sets of shelves I use: one upstairs for frequently used stuff to cut down on trips down the cellar, a unit I specially built to hold pints, and one shelf off a larger storage unit that is good for quarts, but that I also use for pints and half-pints stacked double.

I set up another spreadsheet in my canning log workbook to the 2009 inventory. I used last year's inventory plus new items from last summer's canning log to start this year's inventory. I record the date, name, number of jars made, and jar size in the canning log. I drop the date for the inventory.

I found items I never entered in the canning log. I found some items whose quantity had not changed from the last inventory -- those are things I won't put up this year and that will have to be consumed.

I was surprised to find that I've started canning nearly six weeks before I began last year. The rhubarb is doing really well this year! It did really well last year -- I still have 18 pints of rhubarb sauce (I was putting up a batch nearly every week until September).

I was pleasantly surprised to find that I still have 6 pints of tomato stock left. That should just do me for the occasional soup until the new crop comes in. Much as I love roasted red pepper spread, I doubt that I'll buy red peppers especially for it this year -- I still have 8 jars and the makings for another six on my canning shelf.

I should make borscht, I should make spring rolls, I should make more pasta, I should eat more pickles. I don't need to buy condiments of any sort this summer. I could have veggie burgers for lunch every day all summer long and probably not run out of relishes, mustard, and ketchup. I've got plenty of fruit to last me until the local crops (including some berries of my own) come in.

I've got 90 quarts of food stashed in 231 jars in my cupboard! Almost fifty different things. (I really practice my belief that variety is the spice of life.)

I made the 12 columns after the inventory small so I could border them and have a list with boxes to check off as I use or begin to use (then stashing in the fridge) them. Some items I had to end extra boxes to by hand, but not many. It's posted on the fridge beside the freezer inventory.

Hey, it's lunchtime!

Jammed up with Jam

2009-06-01T06:29:00.000-04:00

or how much sugar does this house need anyway?

I have jam from three years ago. It's lovely jam. It's delicious jam. It was my first year back into serious preserving and I went overboard and made two batches of it. The first batch I used too many raspberries and it came out very stiff -- it rescues wonderfully as a syrup for pancakes, waffles, cake, fruit-and-yogurt when diluted with water, to go from a half-pint to nearly a full pint. So I have even more of the stuff on hand. I also made some Black Forest preserves that I still have a few jars of.

I didn't make any of that jam the second year. Instead I made an orange marmalade that turned out runny (and is turning out to be a wonderful base for other stuff), a blueberry-lime jam, and a single jar that stayed in the fridge all season of honeydew-lime-mint marmalade. The blueberry-lime jam has aged beautifully. I'm enjoying it now on English muffins and kefir.

Last year I made four cups of the honeydew-lime-mint marmalade, a spiced pumpkin butter, and a batch of strawberry-rhubarb jam entirely from my own produce.

Of course I can use it for gifts and my son expects at least a couple jars of sweet stuff at Christmas. My husband rarely uses it -- he takes his sugar straight in his 2 - 5 cups of coffee a day. Do I use more than 2 tablespoons a week? I doubt it. I prefer a low-sugar diet. An 8 oz jar contains 8 tablespoons. A jar will last me a month or more. Most recipes make 6-7 jars of stuff (sometimes more).

So how much sugar does this house need? I just bought a 20 kilogram (44 pounds) bag of sugar. A pound of sugar is two cups. A kilo of sugar is sufficient for a batch of wine but not for most jams and definitely not for jellies. At up to 2 tablespoons a day, my husband averages 5 cups a month. I might use 2 cups a month for baking (cookies, crisp toppings) -- except in November/December when I do mega-baking for the holidays that lasts us through January. I usually go through 3-4 pounds of sugar for the baking. A 2 kg bag of sugar usually last us over a month except during preserving and holiday baking months -- then it doubles.

I have at least 20 jars of various jams on my shelves. If I made nothing this year, I'll probably still have 10 jars left next spring.

But of course I'll make something. It looks like I may have a bumper crop of raspberries this year if emerging bloom is any indication. But maybe I'll make WINE instead. If I invest twice the fruit and the same amount of sugar, I get a gallon or 5 bottles of wine. Now that I'll use!

I've already got two gallons of dandelion wine on the go. I've got three gallon jugs left for wine starts this summer. With one I want to do a cherry melomel (honey wine). That leaves two for other fruit wines.

I'm betting that bag of sugar will last past Christmas.

Shipwreck BBQ Sauce

2009-05-31T16:02:00.000-04:00

What do cranberry mustard, apple-rhubarb chutney, spicy tomato sauce, roasted red pepper spread, runny orange marmalade all have in common besides their original recipes being in the Bernardin home preserving book? They're ideal components for a shipwreck BBQ sauce for ribs, chicken, pork, and tofu!

"Shipwreck" originally was a way of using up odds and ends in the fridge. The first iteration of the sauce was just that. I also had some chipolote ketchup and mesquite smoke on hand that I could throw in. I made up about half a cup of sauce which was great for ribs for two in the crock pot.

Then I thought about the odds and ends I had in my canning pantry that would be entering their second or third year on the shelf -- and I still had some remains of odds and ends in the fridge. And my husband said he wanted that sauce again on the next batch of ribs and he thought it would go great on chicken. So I put together 6 cups of sauce and canned it in 3 half-pints and 6 quarter-pints. The half-pints are ideal for the occasional 2-person crock pot meal in the winter. The half-pints are for company meals.

Ingredients
1 pint of spicy tomato sauce
1 pint of apple-rhubarb chutney (or another chutney)
1/2 pint of roasted red pepper spread
2 tablespoons cranberry mustard (or other mustard)
1/3 c orange marmalade

Method
Combine the above in a deep bowl and blend with an immersion blender. You can also just do the chutney, marmalade, and mustard in a regular blender and combine with the two sauces in a bowl. Now taste. Need more spice? Add something like chipolote ketchup (which will add a small touch of sour). Need more sour? Add malt or apple cider vinegar. Like it smoky? Add any smoke flavoring you have on hand (one drop at a time! -- then retaste).

When you're satisfied with your blend, you'll probably have about 6 cups of sauce. Prepare your jars while slowly bringing the sauce to simmering boil. Fill jars, seal, and process for 10 minutes.

Last May Friday Forage

2009-05-29T10:17:00.000-04:00

We've had more than two inches of rain over the last two days, with about an inch of it last night, so there were a lot of soggy newspapers set out for recycling.

With the uncertainty of the weather, I went out Thursday evening during a lull in the rain. I came back with a stack of plastic pots. I'll have enough now to give away rhubarb divisions in the fall or next spring (my original plant needs dividing again). I also found a closet pole and some galvanized round duct down the street.

Just drizzle is forecast for today and it was mild at seven this morning. I set out our recycling (a lot of soil and compost bags -- I think I'll be eliminating that over the next year; the stuff isn't the same quality as what I can get at the Ecology Garden bringing my own containers), then I set off with my grocery trolley.

I ended up doing a figure-eight route, dropping off one load at the house in the middle of it. I got: 2 10-liter water containers (excellent for emergency storage), 5 one-gallon or more kitty litter containers which will make excellent drip waterers for single plants or small areas around the garden, a rectangular planter with enclosing fiber box, a salad container which will make an excellent seedling greenhouse and a Mexican glass pitcher. The last item I was guided to by another forager out looking for wine bottles to turn in for deposit money. It had a crack across the bottom of it but it doesn't leak. It will make a fantastic planter for flowers (forget-me-nots will go well with its blue) on one of the decks, though I may use it for beverages first.

Cleanliness is Next to...

2009-05-27T12:33:00.000-04:00

Now that I've got my garden hose permanently on to a shut-off sprayer, I can clean my hands whenever I want. But it does use a lot of water and will often wet my jeans and feet as well as my hands. And the sprayer is close to the garden, but outside its fence and it's not close to the greenhouse at all.

So last week when I spotted a discarded laundry tub on the boulevard down the street, I had an "Aha!" moment and brought it home. I already had a spare pail with no lid kicking around as well as one of those large detergent containers with a push-button spout.

I shifted the potting table over to the edge of the cold frame behind it and had enough space to fit the laundry tub between it and the sage. The bucket has a good hand and fit nicely under the tub's outlet. I had previously rinsed out the spouted container so I filled it with water and put it on the potting table's edge so it hung over the sink. You just need a little water to rinse off the compost before grabbing the hoe again or whatever. I had a sprayer bottle as well that I could put in there for getting garden gunk off of tools or rough-clean vegetables. The used water can be cycled through the garden. The finishing touch was a sturdy stainless steel soap holder that I picked up at a yard sale the following Saturday for biodegradable soap when I've not resisted the urge to mess about the soil with my bare hands.

Now I did have a old bathroom sink hanging out by the sprayer hose. It'd come from the far back of the yard when I put in the shade garden. I decided to see if I could set it up by the greenhouse. The trick was elevating to the old machine part that was holding. I had a quartet of of 4x4 chunks and a couple of bricks that provided a stable base for it on either side of a square bucket. I nailed a horizontal support for the sink edge to the kayak shed which is opposite the greenhouse. The second detergent container still wasn't very stable, so I ran some covered wire through a piece of discarded hose to make a tether that held the back end of the container to the shed wall. The covered wire is easy to detach when I need to refill the container.

Thoughts on "In Defense of Food"

2009-05-25T22:11:00.000-04:00

This book by Michael Pollan follows up on his previous "The Omnivore's Dilemma". Basically he says that any of the world's myriad diets suffices for human health -- except the Western diet, with its emphasis on refined foods and not much diversity from wheat, corn and soy.

I like his rules for being sure you're getting real food in a store:

never buy anything with more than 5 ingredients in it (more than that and likely the manufacturer (not the farmer!) is replacing some of what they've refined out of it)
shop the outside perimeter of the store -- most of the manufactured stuff is in the center aisles of the store
never buy anything that makes a health claim (does the humble carrot make a health claim? -- not!)
get out of the supermarket whenever possible -- shop the farmers' market or your garden
don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food
avoid foods whose ingredients are unfamiliar or unpronouncable
avoid foods that include high-glucose corn syrup

I've been doing more and more of the above over the past ten years. I might have ten items on my pantry shelves that violate the ingredient rules.

I found out long ago that rearranging the food pyramid -- aim for ten servings of veggie/fruits a day, keep grains to five servings or less -- was the only way I could manage my weight and gain a feeling of well-being.

Variety is not only the spice of life, but it's the very stuff!

To Screw or Not To Screw

2009-05-23T23:56:00.000-04:00

They cost over $5 a pound and you need either a good arm and lots of patience or a strong powered screwdriver to put them in, but my hubby and I use wood screws in most of our wood construction, especially any framing.

When we close in pipes behind the shower, we make sure we can access them again. That means planning a structural piece that looks good in the finished room and securing it with screws. Because after you do the fix, you can screw it back in again, and don't have to worry about wrecking the look (or structural integrity) by yanking out nails to get in there again.

I've yanked out my share of nails when repurposing wood. It can be hard -- and dangerous -- work. That you can knock lots of nailed together things apart with a few strong whacks of a heavy hammer doesn't reassure you about the structural strength of things put together with nails.

Well, yesterday we decided to dismantle one of the two horsehoe pits we don't use. Out came the 18V cordless screwdriver and out came the screws. Only two were bent; the rest went into the screw box for that size. An hour later we had 4 6 foot 2x 6s, 4 corner posts, a 2 foot length of rebar, half a cubic yard of sand on and under the tarp cover by the garden fence and the area reseeded to clover.

Yeah, we'll just keep screwing around.

Market Day and the Great Gilmore Garage Sale

2009-05-23T23:13:00.000-04:00

Every Saturday (all year long!) is farmers' market day here. From mid-October to May they hold it inside a big building. During the nice months it takes up most of the parking lot just outside the building.

Some of the lovely things you can buy there:

veggies, veggies, and more veggies (a lot of them organic)
brown eggs, white eggs
emu meat and oil
buffalo meat
organic beef
pork
cheese (cow and goat)
locally roasted and ground coffee
locally made goats' milk soap
baked goods and ethnic foods
crafts: pottery, wood, jewelry, knitting
sprouts
lamb
fruits
mushrooms (sometimes up to 5 different kinds)
sweet potato fries (from local sweet potatoes -- yes, you can grow them in southern Ontario)
apples, apples. and more apples (and cider from them in the fall and winter)
and right now plants of all sorts are everywhere

They also have a much smaller scale market in the downtown on Wednesday mornings during the outdoor months.

A more recent tradition is the Great Gilmour St. Yard Sale on the fourth Saturday of May (so it usually falls on the weekend after the long weekend). Gilmour Street is in one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city. For two city blocks and little bit, the majority of yards are selling their own things or things for some non-profit group. Parking or driving on the street is impossible while the sale is going on. You simply park one or two blocks away. I did so and went out on the street with my grocery trolley.

An hour and half and $3.75 (CDN) later I had:

a leather satchel big enough for legal size papers with lock and key
a good wire strainer
a meat thermometer (for the future solar cooker!)
2 stainless steel magnetic clips to hold memos or drying plastic bags on the fridge
a long magnetic knife holder, which may be strong enough to hold tools in the shop
a good-sized piano hinge
a sturdy stainless steel soap holder, ideal for my garden hand-washing station
3 pint canning jars (with rings and lids)
15 half-pint canning jars (with rings and lids)
4 quarter-pint canning jars (with rings and lids)
an aluminum pot big enough to hold most of the jars with lid. It's a good size for blanching and scalding things. It has a bail handle and grab handle on the back edge -- great for pouring out water.

I don't think I'll have to buy any more canning jars this year. Usually I get a few to take care of those that leave the house as gifts.

I was parked near the bulk food store I usually patronize, so I decided to take one of my jars in and get baking yeast. I could only get it in the usual plastic container or take the whole pound in the original packaging. I'm baking bread often enough now that I decided to stock up and got the full package.

I decided I might as well get the supplies I need for cherry melomel which I'll be making in the next month, so I went into the wine shop next to my parking spot to get wine yeast, pectic enzyme, and another fermentation lock.

Then it was off to a book discussion group with a brown bag lunch.

I stopped at another yard sale on my way home. I got two sturdy cart wheels for $2 and a couple of ornately cut hardboard screens for another $2 which I could put together with my piano hinge for a nice room divider. Serendipidy!

Friday Forage

2009-05-22T10:16:00.000-04:00

Friday is garbage/recyclables/green waste collection day in my neighborhood. This past weekend was the May holiday weekend in Canada and the traditional start of gardening, though there are a lot of folks like me who start earlier. Plastic plant pots are accepted as a recyclable here and I was hoping to intercept some for reuse, so I went for a walk around my block with my grocery tote cart. Jackpot! I came back with 24 small pots and 5 trays for holding them and the water that spills out the bottom when you water them. They went into the greenhouse. I also got a couple of 2 liter pop bottles to use as waterers or upside down planters. I also got some lengths of one foot wide 1/8" green plastic mesh. This is sturdy stuff that will be effective barriers to keep cats out of planters and squirrels off of beds.

The successful foraging revved me up to actually reuse some of the things I've accumulated for reuse. I set up a 2 gallon container with a push-button nozzle that formerly held detergent to hang over a reused laundry sink with a reused bucket under its outlet as a quick, easy, water-economical hand-washing station in the garden. Using the spray nozzle on the hose is wasteful overkill for hand-washing, though that nozzle will be great for rough cleaning root vegetable before taking them into the house. The bucket underneath means that the soil-laden (as in organic gardening residue) water can be reused to water the garden or shrubs.

The bucket under the laundry sink had been used for wood scraps in the shop, so I needed a replacement for that. Some 5 gallon containers that I filled with water after painting them black to use as a heat sink in the greenhouse had gone bust, so I cut the top off one to use it as a waste bin. I even reused the handle from the container's top by wiring it to the bin's side with a scrap wire tire lying on the shop floor.

I have a small tray of pegboard hooks of various types and sizes in the shop. Currently what pegboard I have is populated with these to my liking. I was looking, however, for a better way to hang some of our outdoor/garden decor. I have a clay angel face I would love to have on my garden shed door. The shed is made of double layerRubbermaid plastic. How to hang it? I got out my cordless drill and put a single hole in the outside plastic layer. In went a pegboard hook and now I have a wind-resistent way to hang my angel face. I found the hooks also fit into the holes in my T-bar pots that I use for fencing and trellis. A colorful Mexican sun now graces the corner of the fence. A hole big enough to hold a hook doesn't effect the soundness of aluminum siding, so the large enameled metal sun we got on our last trip to the Southwest is now hanging on the wall facing the deck.