do you really eat that?!!

Besides creative gardening and penny pinching soap making, I make food stuffs too....

These are milk kefir grains. I am new to kefir making so you all can follow me along in my journey :)

And these are water kefir grains. They came to me dehydrated, so they'rehanging out in spring water with cane and brown sugar to come back to life. A few more days and I can attempt my first batch. I am anxious to try kefir soda!

After hearing and reading some yucky information about preground coffee (my not so secret addiction) I jumped to whole beans. Then I bought some green beans online. This is a cheap bunch I found to practice on. 

And here's my first attempt at roasting. Now I have been told to use an air popcorn popper, but I don't have one of those yet. When it comes to stuff like this, I have the patience of a two year old. So I plopped a handful in a pan, and cranked the gas burner on high......snap, crackle, pop....chaff floats, apartment fills with smoke. I continue to stir and soon my variety green beans are toasty brown and a few black. I dumped them in a bowl and rushed them outside, they were still smoking! Stirred and cooled, I dumped 'em into a strainer, and tapped and gently shook, watching the chaff float away like blackened snowflakes..... brought them in, ground them, and drank them. Not bad, but next time I will let them sit 24 hours as recommended to let the gasses escape and see if the flavor gets better ;)

Those coffee grounds. They are endless in this house. I mentioned my addiction. There are so many uses. Here are grounds that have been used, scooped from their home in an unbleached filtet and into a canning jar, bathed in olive oil, and stirred up a bit. Tada! Body/facial scrub. Smells lovely, and a little birdy (so little I am surprised she's even heard of this) told me this scrub is good for cellulite! 

speaking of dirt.... *edited with "recipes"*

The outside is coming along, more has been done since I last took photos. I do have to admit, that I got a little girly, when I was out there by myself cleaning up. If it has more than 6 legs, it's way to creepy for me. The more legs, the louder I scream. There were entire communities of spiders. I got the heebie-jeebies, but I dealt with that. I had on work gloves, as armor. It was the dead thing that put an end to it. It was a big pile of fur, couldn't even tell you what it used to be......ick.


So that's when I focused more on the inside. Scrubbing, painting, all that jazz. But really, rather boring. I have yet to give this place a little of my personality. Mostly because it still doesn't feel like home.


In the mean time, I have been making things. Things that save money, reduce plastic waste, and stuff that has less ingredients than fingers I have on one hand, AND I can pronounce ALL of them! BONUS!

these 4 things, and the Oxi Clean is optional, cost is considerably less without it.....

(this was the first batch I made with the Zote. It's working well, but I think I am still partial to the smell of it made with Fels Naptha, which seems to be found easier anyway, when shopping for the ingredients)

*I will not take full credit for this recipe, but here is how I make my laundry detergent.

2 cups Borax

2 cups Washing Soda (or baking soda)

1/2 cup Oxi Clean

1 (14 oz) bar of Zote or 2 bars Fels Naptha

 

I first shred my soap bar in the food processor, then I chop it, you want it in fine crumbs so it dissolves easily. Pour it in a large bowl, add the Borax, washing soda, and the optional Oxi Clean, mix together, and then scoop it into several mason jars.*

.....and you have home-made laundry detergent. It makes a LOT more than this pint sized jar. I gave the neighbor well over 2 cups, and I have 4-5 cups of it left myself. With using just 2 tablespoons a load, this stuff lasts forever!

 

 

I could never figure out how to do a cost per load comparison, so thankful I have a friend that makes this as well, and CAN figure it all out! With her numbers, she states that commercial laundry detergents cost about 20 cents per load. This homemade stuff, TWO CENTS PER LOAD! And it takes 5-10 minutes to make. Do not tell me you can't spare 10 minutes a month!!


I began to think....if I can make laundry soap/detergent.....why not dish soap?! I looked online and "holy smokes" there are many recipes for that too!

I am still working on the recipe for this one. I like to take ideas for others, and change them a bit, to make them my own. My first batch was way to thick and got chunky. I added more water to the pan, boiled it, and threw the thick soap mixture back in. Loving that through this trial and error, I don't have to throw it away!

 

*Once I get the quantities of this down I will post the recipe. It contains Ivory bar soap (fun part is putting it in the microwave to make soap "snow" before you measure it out. Also has a little Borax and water in it. You boil the water, add the soaps, stir until it's all melted and dissolved. Then you pour it in a glass bowl, or jar to let it cool. As it cools, whisk it around once in a while, because it seems to separate until it's fully cooled. *

 

sometimes we TRY to make fun things too, like this sidewalk chalk. Looks really pretty, took 457 years to dry. Ask my 5 year old, it took at LEAST that long. And then, to top it all off, it just crumbled. Total fail. I've not gotten over the disappointment of that one to try again. Someday....

*This fail was made from corn starch, water, and food coloring. I forgot how hard it was to mix the corn starch and water, haha. You all remember Oobleck?!!*

 

 

I have some essential oils coming in the mail. With those I am going to attempt a "greener" way to make my household addiction. Those super nifty, easy, convenient, disinfecting wipes! I'll keep you posted. (pun intended. It's late, what can I say?!!)

Roots

"you're not in Kansas anymore....." seems to be a phrase I am hearing a lot when I describe what I hear/see/experience living in a city. I am a country girl at heart. Not cowgirl country, don't own a pair of cowboy boots, though I desperately want a pair. I didn't grow up on a farm. But there were open fields, and garden plots....and livestock just a walk or short drive away.


And then we ran into some personal circumstances which made us move out of the area. My safe, small, "Kansas". A place where being "green" was the normal thing to do. Where there were a plethora of health food stores, co-ops, other mom's that used cloth diapers. A place that has just recently banned the use of plastic shopping bags!


And then there's here. I actually had to search out a recycling bin. I had to put my recyclables out a few weeks in a row, making the lot of it more obvious than the week before for the garbologist to take it. And I refused to look, because I am afraid it was just dumped in with the rest of the trash.

This place has over 100,000 people living here. There is not one health food store. The organic food sections are laughable. Natural cleaning supplies, yeah, riiight.

I have no yard to plant a garden, and even if I did, I would be afraid to dig and plant. I mean who wants to slice a carrot or potato to find it's grown around a hypodermic needle?! Pretty sad when you're afraid the dirt is too dirty to use.

But this is where I am, so I've been trying to make the most of it...

 

This was HOURS of clean-up, and at least a dozen HUGE contractor bags full. Some so heavy we had to hoist them onto the bed of a pickup truck to get them to the curb. At least it's progress.

 

About the garden.....dirt's too dirty. I am on the second floor. No one recycles here. Ok, empty formula cans, some twine, and creativity......

 

........And I have my own version of a container garden!

 

 

Since seedlings seem to be fairly rare here, and very pricey, all the plants were started from seed, something we'd not done before.....or at least not in recycled egg cartons in the house, and then on the porch before. It was a great learning experience for the smallest child, and made for great memories. Who could forget hearing him tell Daddy all about "picture-cynthesis" when he got home from work?!


Besides planting things, and cleaning things up......I also make things.....but that's a whole other post ;)