Found a link about
this blog on fark.com today and was surprised by the negative tones of the other fark-ers comments. Poor woman. All she is trying to do is help the Earth. Admittedly her way of doing it might seem a bit extreme to some people (if you don't feel like following the link, I'll just tell you- she's trying to eliminate all plastics from her life) but I think that the more people we have trying out extreme changes to help the enviroment, the better our odds are of living on this Earth for more than another few hundred years. Anyway it really got me thinking about the plastics we use in our house! Here's the plastics I've used so far today, that I can think of:
Lid of to-go coffee cup from Coffeehouse... could have brought my own cup if I could ever remember to do that
Pen- what's the alternative here? Is a wooden pencil really better? Maybe a refillable pen so I never have to throw it away?
Plastic bag the home-made bread is being kept in, in the fridge- this is a re-used bag but I shouldn't have it in the first place, I should start bringing my own little (cloth?) bags to WinCo with me for things like salt and yeast. How hard is that, really. Maybe I could just take the empty glass jars I keep them in to the store with me, with their weight clearly labeled on them, and make the cashier subtract the weight of the canister from the weight of the item? Boy talk about annoying the hell out of an inept minimum wage employee.
Plastic disposable lighter
That's all I can think of, aside from major things like the plastic components in the laptop and fridge. Anyway tomorrow I'm going to make an effort to use nothing plastic and disposable! And I'm going to take those stupid bags to Fred Meyer to recycle them because they are honestly just taking up a huge amount of space and diminishing my cred.
Other things....
Kenney brought over the airlock and hydrometer for my homebrew setup! The only things I need to find now are some tubing (oh no plastic!) and some yeast! Hells yes. He's borrowing our bottle capper and when he brings it back he'll bring over some homemade cider. Also I gave him some rosemary- we had to hack the rosemary bush back a few feet recently and throw a bunch in the compost, because it was about to devour our house, but at least somebody is using some of it.
Turned off the internet- too expensive, barely works, and a bad habit anyway.
Recently got completely addicted to
Salem Freecycle! May be better than
Craigslist Free Stuff certainly more stuff is listed on it. Haven't listed anything yet (what do I have that I don't need?) but hopefully I'm going to go pick up 45 lbs of wheatberries soon! Wheatberries? What can you do with wheatberries? Well, eat 'em, and give 'em away to other people who also will eat them, and if all else fails, I imagine they'll make good compost.
http://salemdiet.blogspot.com/ NOBODY TOLD ME ABOUT THIS GUY. I missed it. Shit. Where does he live, like, five blocks from here? Maybe I'll invite him to the next dinner party we have? Should I invite a random stranger to my house? The answer: yes, always.
Speaking of dinner- Matt made two batches of home-made bread and they were DELICIOUS. Soon I will get him to post his recipes, although I think they are just from Joy of Cooking but with Smart Balance instead of butter and soy milk in place of milk, in the given amounts. The first batch was plain wheat bread and the second was cherry-oatmeal bread, the recipe for which called for raisins and not cherries but works either way evidently.
Kyle made up a great dish, too-
Slice up some sweet potatoes and yams 9maybe 2 or 3 of each?) into 1/2 inch rounds or maybe even 1/3 inch
layer 'em in a pan
put on some agave nectar (we use a lot of agave nectar around here)
throw in a bunch of fresh ginger
cook in the oven until it's done and then ingest
HOW TO MAKE SHRUNKEN HEADS:
We're having a circus this summer (more on this in the future) and so I'm making some shrunken heads as a kind of a sideshow exhibit, one of those pay $1 to see the horrifying stuff type of booths, and here's how I'm making them:
You're going to need an apple and some whole cloves and some yellow food colouring. Also, a knife. For the later parts of this project I'm going to be using some mod podge, electrician's tape and doll's hair, and some rice and a needle, but you don't need that stuff yet. For now, just carve a face into the apple. You can peel the whole thing, but I left the skin on most of it and just peeled the face part- we'll see how that turns out, I thought it would add an extra bit of gruesomeness. Don't worry too much about making it look good- it will all shrivel up anyways. Just give it big blocky features. I made one of mine making a scared face. rub salt all over it. drop some yellow food colouring in each eye socket (this was my own idea and i don't know how well it will work yet but I thought it might look extra spooky)
Throw em in the oven! Probably put some tin foil down so you don't get salty apple juice all over the damn place.
Put the oven on the lowest setting possible and just leave it on all the time. If you have to cook something at a high temperature, remember to take the apples out and set them on the counter while you do this and put them back in once it's cooled back down.
I think after about 42 hours or so of oven I'll take them out, stick some string through them and hang them above the stovetop and leave them for 2 weeks. Then I'll start adding details like teeth, eyeballs, stitched lips, and hair. YEEES.
HOTTUB DEBATE: WASTEFUL TOXIC EYESORE OR MAD GANGSTA GOOD-TIME MACHINE?so the other night we were hangin' out, allie brooke logan and zach and jeff were over, and we were all playing loaded questions in the living room, and somehow the idea of a hot tub came up. we were all in agreement that hot tubs are fun. we also all agree that a hot tub is a great thing for at least one person in the neighborhood to have, and since they don't have the space over at the D St house, it falls to us and our huge-ass patio. We all greatly relish the idea of hangin' out in some bubbly water, and drunken naked hottubbing is a subject I am sure you are all familiar with and in favour of and so I will not address in detail here.
I found somebody on Freecycle who has a functioning hottub that we could have for free if we come and pick it up, and even if there is something mildly wrong with it, I am pretty confident that we would be able to fix all but the most major cracks or engine problems. We could either put it on the back porch where all the firewood is now, or Kyle was thinking, there's a big area of the backyard which is just ugly stupid muddy grass, but it doesn't get enough light for much of a garden there- maybe we could build a little gazebo type deal and put it out in the yard? Bury the cords?
BUT THE DOWNSIDE:
1) they use a ton of electricity (i read that it's like $18 a month, but you can lower the cost by keeping the temperature turned way down when not in use and keeping it well insulated, which we oculd do)
2) they look like redneck peices of shit- this is why i like the idea of building some type of gazebo structure/hedgerow thing around it- i don't want the neighbors to think i'm a hot tub kind of a person! it's kind of emberessing! plus- the aforementioned nudity!
3) they use awful caustic chemicals. i did find
this site advertising cleaning agents which don't contain chlorine. according to their copy the water is even greywater safe if you choose to drain the tub, which would be cool, because i wouldn't feel so bad about:
4) wasting water- yuck! what a hideous waste of water!
then again...
And last but not least.
I have a copy of the C.I.T.Y. petition which I am circulating amongst my friends. I only started earlier today and I have already gotten 20 signatures. That is nothing compared to 187 voter registrations in one day, my old record, but it is still something. This petition is easy to pitch to people and everyone has seemed very receptive of the idea. Later tonight I am going to take it over to the Rafns house and maybe to the Schulte compound, maybe even to the bar sometime next week. I hope this thing passes because I've already promised a lot of folks fresh eggs! :-)
A lovely photograph from Miss Allie Learn (click for better res) taken at dinner at the D St house. Elizabeth on the left and Matthew on the right. Classy.
The greenhouse! Still needs plastic. More on that in a minute...
This is where we chop the firewood, because we're hella mountain men.
Some beautiful flowers growing out back.
And here are some irises that popped up the other day! What a suprise! We thought that was just a random shrub!
What will be the tea garden, and on the right, part of the crown of an oak tree that Fenderson rescued from certain destruction. It is beautiful and complex. We don't quite know what to do with it, to tell you the truth. Something will come up, I'm sure.
This is going to be the main vegetable bed. This is kind of an "action shot" meaning that we didn't finish what we were in the middle of because we got distracted, so you, lucky reader, get to observe the process of turning shitty old lawn grass into sexy funky dirt to grow things in. This is largely done with sticks with pointed ends and compost.
Speaking of compost- here's the inside of the compost bin! I had to brave some stinky smells to take this picture but we are pretty proud of how much kitchen scraps we have been able to throw in here. We have been very disciplined about it. Peelings, gross leftovers, stale bread, anything. We are not cooking the eggshells before we throw them in because we are lazy but we are pretty sure it will work either way. We shall see .
These are only a few of the many compost bins. This whole fence you see behind them will be covered in beans, peas and scarlet runners. Maybe even hops!
Some of the flowers, cut and inside on the piano. Also here you can see a globe which has the USSR on it and a Japanese float from a fishing net. Yes.
