Natural Baby

As the saying goes, having a baby changes everything. There are so many choices to make and green/natural options to weigh. I spent much time researching, planning, and shopping for the best earth friendly baby products.

I realize that not everyone wants to hear about the down and dirty baby stuff, so I created a separate blog to share what I learned about bringing up baby green.

See posts about cloth diapering, and washing cloth diapers with soapnuts.

Good Old Fashioned Percolator Coffee

Percolator heating up

Coffee snobs will tell you that percolator coffee is far inferior to other fancy methods of brewing coffee. We use a vintage Pyrex glass percolator to make our coffee, and we are very happy with the taste. The fact that there is no plastic contaminating our coffee is a big bonus.

We became hooked on the percolator after using a small aluminum pot on our camping excursions. Nothing can quite compare to coffee made over an outdoor fire. One day we decided to buy a glass percolator for home use, and we never looked back.

Starting to bubble up

You can find the vintage Pyrex percolators many places online in various sizes, and they are pretty reasonably priced. Replacement parts are also readily available, in case you break something, but we have used ours for years without any problems.

The only issue with percolator coffee is the risk of over-heating, which can make the coffee bitter. It takes some practice, but after you have the method down, you can make a pretty decent cup of coffee.

1. Add cool water too percolator.

Coffee is done!

2. Place the tube and filter basket in the percolator.
3. Add coarse ground coffee to the filter basket, 2 tsp per cup and put the basket lid on (no paper filter needed)
4. Place the glass lid on the pot and heat on Medium until it starts to percolate
5. Once you see bubbling in the top, turn to low and let it perk for 2-3 minutes.

You don't want to let the coffee boil, because this can make the coffee bitter or acidic.

The best coffees to use are smooth and low acid beans that are ground very coarse. We like to use fresh ground, locally roasted, Organic Fair Trade whole beans.

The glass percolator is easy to clean- all parts can go in the dishwasher, and stains clean up nicely with vinegar.

It takes more time than a drip coffeemaker, but we enjoy the ritual and love the clean, plastic and paper-free taste of old fashioned percolator coffee.

Saving Money on Natural Products

I'm sure we all would like to use more natural products, but many products labeled 'Green', 'Natural' or 'Organic' can be cost prohibitive.

I have done some experimenting with products, and in order to make it into our routine for good they must work well and be a good price. Here's a couple that I have found:

Tom's of Maine Toothpaste

This brand has many flavors to choose from but we prefer the Peppermint Baking Soda with Fluoride. We experimented with other natural brands without fluoride, but we noticed our teeth started to hurt after a while. This one works great and we have been using it for years with no cavities. After you have used a natural toothpaste for a while, if you use a conventional brand it will actually feel like your mouth is burning and have sickly sweet taste.

We preferred the original recipe, before the company sold out (google it for more info). The updated version was not as good, but they seem to have made some adjustments, and it is better now. It is more expensive than conventional brands, but we can buy it online in multi-packs and save money.

Seventh Generation Dish Soap

Soap is soap, and this one works just fine. I like that it is non-toxic, biodegradable, and free and clear of fragrances and dyes. I use it as dish soap and diluted for hand soap. I save money buy buying it online in a case of 6 bottles.

Upcycling!

We all know that we shouldn't be consuming so many snack products and disposable items, but sometimes the convenience is hard to resist. If you must consume chips and cookies or use plastic baggies, now there is a way to recycle the packaging.


TerraCycle (original sellers of worm poo fertilizer) started a program to 'upcycle' non-recyclable packaging.

You can sign up to join a trash collecting 'brigade' for materials like old pens or certain brand packaging, and TerraCycle sends you a postage paid box to send the trash in to be processed. Manufacturers sponsor the program by donating a few cents per item to a charity. The trash is then made into interesting products and sold at major retailers at an affordable price.

It's a great idea for fundraising and keeps more trash out of landfills. Some of the products seem a little iffy to me, like making notebooks and backpacks that are emblazoned with snack food packaging, but other programs are really great. For example, schools can collect used ziplock bags and raise money, and the bags are turned into products like cutting boards.

Seems like a win-win situation. Manufacturers take some responsibility for their packaging, less of it ends up in landfills, non-profits can raise money, and kids can learn about waste streams and recycling.

Time to Plan Your Garden!

It's my favorite time of year again! Time to plan the garden for spring!

How hard it that, you may wonder? I may be strange, but I look at it as a yearly experiement, trying new things and researching what works together. It's as complex as you want to make it, but to maximize the health of your garden, and get the best yields, there are some steps to follow. I start in late winter, when it is cold and dreary and you need something to look forward to.

1. Select your seeds- peruse your seed catalogs and find the best varieties for your zone and site. Pay attention to disease tolerance.

• Try Heirloom Varieties: Bakers Creek is an excellent company with a nice website and catalog.
• Save Your Seeds: Even better, use your own seeds! See the book Seed to Seed for all about how to do just that.

2. Research- find out what growing conditions each plant needs and group together by light, water, soil needs as well as bed rotation and preferred companions.

• Rotation: To avoid pest and disease problems and to give the soil a break after high feeding crops, it is important to rotate plants of the same family each year. I highly recommend the book The Vegetable Gardener's Bible, I refer to it each year to plan my garden.
  
• Companions: Plants have friends that they like to hang around with. They may help each other grow in some way, or help deter pests. They also have plants they don't like like to hang around with. There is a good chart here and lots of good information in Gardening reference books like the one mentioned above.
  

3. Plan your beds (This assumes that you have an existing garden and have kept good records of previous years) If you are starting from scratch, there are plenty of pre-designed garden plans out there. I think it's fun to do myself though, and everyone's garden is different.

• Organize: Number your beds for easy record-keeping and refer to previous year's garden plans.
  
• List: Write down a list of the plants you want to grow, and group by family. Next to each plant, write the bed numbers that are possible for that rotation and preferred growing conditions as well as it's preferred companions and/or plants to avoid.
  
• Puzzle Through: Look over your list and plan each bed. It make take a couple tries and shifting plants around to get the right mix.
  

4. Draw your Garden Plan - Draw a map of the garden from your list. Include number of plants and spacing (more research!)

5. Wait Anxiously for the Ground to Thaw- This is by far the hardest part of this whole process. Hopefully you are starting some seeds indoors and that will help with some of the cabin fever (starting seeds is a whole other post, stay tuned!).

Homemade Natural Deodorant

I know I'm not the only person out there who is not satisfied by the stuff they sell in the stores.
Many people have tested the different deo options, from Grist testing green' deodorants to Crunchy Chicken declaring her love for The Rock crystal deodorant. Even my sister wrote a post last year about her quest for a good natural deodorant.

So, I began my own quest, and it took almost half a year of trial and error to finally settle on something that worked for me. My criteria for a keeper is something that is cheap, easy to make at home, easy to use, doesn't irritate my skin, and of course it has to keep me smelling fresh as a daisy.

Homemade Lotion Bar Deodorant
After some research on the web, I found some basic recipes that I could combine to make a solid deodorant. I bought a lotion bar kit that included cocoa butter, beeswax, oils, and even the plastic deodorant tubes. I followed the included recipe, but I added aloe, baking soda, and cornstarch (mentioned in other recipes) and some lavender and tea tree essential oil.

Pros: Smelled nice, felt nice, easy to apply with the tube.
Cons: With the price of the kit and ingredients, cost about the same as natural deodorants in the stores.
Conclusion: It worked well for a while, but after a few weeks of use, I developed a rash and was unable to use any kind of deodorant for several days. That pretty much defeated the purpose, so I stopped using it. I started using it in summer- that may have something to do with it, or it might be the essential oils. I'm sure other people have come up with recipes that work for them, so feel free to experiment.

Baking Soda
While I was recovering from the previous method, the only thing I could use was baking soda. I was surprised by how well this simple, cheap method worked. I found I had less odor even in hot sweaty conditions than with previous deodorants I had tried (even the chock-full-of-chemicals ones). I kept a cup of baking soda on my dresser and brushed it on with a makeup brush.

Pros: Unbelievably cheap, easy, and works!
Cons: A little messy, I ended up with white powder on and around my dresser as I tried to apply the necessary amount.
Conclusion: Baking soda is the way to go, it absorbs odor and wetness, and surprisingly lasts all day. It never irritates my skin, and I like that it doesn't have a fragrance.

Baking Soda and Aloe Gel
The winning combination at last! I decided to try rubbing on a bit of aloe before brushing on the baking soda. This helped with the mess, and made sure I got enough on. Plus the aloe feels nice on my skin. I tried aloe right from the plant, but for efficiency I ended up with aloe gel in a bottle. My latest experiment has been mixing the aloe and baking soda into a paste, and storing in a jar. This works well too, is quicker to apply and travels well.

Pros: Still really cheap, easier to use, soothing to the skin, and works really great.
Cons: Sure, you have to get your hands in it, but it's a small price to pay for something that works this well.
Conclusion: I'm going to stick with this one, it works great for me!

Shopping List: 

• Aluminum Free Baking Soda
• Aloe Vera 100% Gel (no coloring or fragrances added)

Update: Safe Home Air Fresheners

I love it when people comment on my posts! It reminds me to provide updates for my ongoing experiments.

In my earlier post about making your own oil diffusers I suggested using...

"Porous wood to use for the reeds- bamboo, skewers, dowels, even interesting twigs or branches from your garden (I plan to try this later this year!)"

...but as I found out, (and a comment pointed out and reminded me) bamboo skewers don't work very well to draw up the oil.

The reeds that they sell in the stores do work really well, if you can find some on sale. However, I am always looking for the natural and cheap options, so I stuck with twigs from plants in my yard. They cost nothing and I like the natural look. I found that the best ones were from a Hydrangea, but you can use any light, porous wood.

Fall Gleaning for Apples

A couple weeks ago, we spent a lovely fall afternoon picking apples, and came home with a big bushel full of the fresh crisp fruits for practically nothing.

It was the Annual Gleaning Day our local orchard. Every year, at the end of the season, they allow people to "glean" all the apples that are left on the tree. There were also pumpkins, squash and gourds, but we had our hands full with apples. All they ask is that you donate something to local food pantries (You are also limited to one bushel of apples and you have to purchase a basket for $3, but I can think of a million uses for a nice bushel basket!).

The apples that were left were not "perfect" like you see in the grocery store, there were some spots and knobs and misshapen fruit, but the taste is amazing. A cool crisp apple freshly picked from the tree is pure heaven. We have been eating them fresh for weeks, and I also made applesauce and canned some slices for pie.
I will be marking the calendar for next year's fall gleaning. It's a great way to get inexpensive healthy food, support your community, and it's a great way to spend an afternoon outdoors!

Where Have I Been?

I know, I haven't posted in a while, actually a really long while.

What have I been doing that could possibly be more important than this? Well, I'll spare everyone the personal, but I will tell you how I spent most my free time for the better part of two months.

CANNING!

When the the garden is at its peak, and fall is around the corner, putting up food is almost a full-time job! I spent my nights and weekends slicing, dicing, stewing, boiling, pickling, mashing, straining, and watching and waiting for the canners to finish processing. It's a lot of work, but I find it fun, and definitely rewarding to see the colorful jars fill the shelves in the basement.

I managed to put up about 100 jars, which will supplement our winter diet and cut down on the grocery bills, but it would not be enough to live on. I've heard of people canning several hundred jars of food, and I imagine that would surely be a full-time job!

Now it is November, and the urgency is gone. The garden is done, save for a few late fall crops of turnips, beets, and kale. There are a few boxes of green tomatoes and winter squash that could be processed, but they can sit a little longer while I spend some time writing posts again.

We plan to expand the garden for next year though... I'll need to find more jars, and maybe a team of helpers!

Kale: My New Favorite Greens

I'm not sure why but I never thought I liked kale. This year I have an accidental bumper crop of it, thanks to a mesclun mix that I planted this spring that turned out to be mostly red kale and arugula.

In the spring, the tender small leaves made their way into salads, but as the season progressed and the plants grew bigger, I wondered what I would do with all those giant kale leaves.

At first I tried cooking with it, drying it, and freezing it. Later as the lettuce gave way to the heat of summer, I tried using the smaller leaves in place of lettuce.

Kale and Potatoes

This is a pretty simple (but delicious!) recipe, basically mashed potatoes with kale, meat, and onion.

1. While the potatoes are cooking, fry up some bacon or sausage.
   
2. When done, remove from the pan, take out some of the fat, then fry up some slices of onion.
3. When the potatoes are done, drain the hot water over chopped kale. Let sit a few minutes until the kale is tender (while you mash the potatoes with butter and milk).
4. Add kale, crumbled bacon or sausage and onions to mashed potatoes. Season to taste with salt, pepper and garlic.

Kale Chips

I found a recipe online, and lots of people raved about how delicious they were, so I decided to try it. Of course now I can't find the recipe to link to, but it involved soaking in salted water, then draining and dehydrating. I put them in the dehydrator overnight and it stunk up the house something awful! I ended up moving it out to the porch to finish. My sister said she liked them, but I wasn't so sure about the taste.


Preserving Kale by Freezing

Freezing was pretty easy to do, and I found the kale held up better than spinach. You can find general instructions for leafy greens here.

By trial and error, I found the best method (that worked for me).

1. remove mid vein from bigger leaves
2. tear into large pieces (about the size of your palm)
3. blanch and cool
4. use a salad spinner to remove excess water
5. lay out on wax paper on a cookie sheet and freeze for at least 1 hour
6. pack in freezer bags, remove air and label

I will have to report back later in the year and see how the frozen kale works, and try out some recipes.


Kale as Lettuce

Once we tried small kale leaves in place of lettuce, we realized how versatile this vegetable really is. It adds a nice crunch and an interesting flavor, and I'm sure it has more good stuff in it. It also holds up longer in the fridge compared to leaf lettuce. Kale made its way onto turkey sandwiches, burgers, BLTs (I guess they would be BKTs) and chopped for tacos or burritos or whatever else called for something green.

Composting is Cool

My worm bin and my compost pile are working their magic and providing lots of good fertilizer for my plants. I keep meaning to write a post about my adventures in composting, but there's so much good info out there already:

• Rot 'n' Roll -How to start composting from Grist- highlights all levels of commitment to composting

• Vermicomposting from Mother Earth News- focuses mostly on outdoor worms
• Books about Composting on Amazon

Exfoliating Beads Bad

Yet another reason to make your own face scrub:

Plastic ain't fantastic, reason No. 4,972

"...tiny exfoliating beads in many facial scrubs are made of polyethylene, and once the beads get washed down the drain and make their way to the ocean, it's time for Nemo and friends to get ill. (Of course, polyethylene's also a suspected carcinogen, and as a plastic, its production is fossil fuel-intensive.)"

I find that the baking soda and oatmeal scrub does a fantastic job of cleaning and gentle exfoliation. I think the special exfoliating beads are just another marketing gimmick to get you to buy the latest and greatest. So, you scrub yourself silly, then you need to buy their special moisturizer, then you're oily so you need the special cleanser... and the cycle begins. Sometimes simple is better.

I Love my Garden!

I know I haven't written much lately, but my excuse is spending most of my free time canning and freezing (and eating!) the bounty of beans, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, cabbage, and onions growing in my garden.

It's really turned out to be fun! I love just walking through the garden every day and watching things grow. Going produce shopping in the backyard is pretty amazing too!

I also love to see the variety of life when I walk through. By not using any chemicals and maintaining a healthy growing environment, all kinds of living things feel welcome. Yesterday I spotted this little green frog sitting on a pepper.

My garden is also host to...

• big fat earthworms that aerate and fertilize the soil
• frogs, toads and wasps that prey on bugs
• wildflowers that attract bees and other pollinators

Sure, I occasionally have not so welcome guests stop by, like the hoard of Japanese Beetles that descended on the pole beans, or the bunny that (so far) only nibbles on a few low hanging beans. We are maintaining a balance with hand removal and deterrents like spraying with compost tea (or dog hair in the case of the bunny) and keeping the pesky critters under control.

Without chemicals, and not too much labor, the small plot produces more delicious healthy food than we can eat, and I also get the pleasure of watching the wildlife that make my garden their home!

A Touch of the News

• School fundraisers go green trading candy bars and magazines for greener things- "...fair-trade coffee, metal water bottles, hand-made soaps, and recycled-content wrapping paper"

• Questions have been raised over the safety of sunscreen, especially those that contain oxybenzone. More research needs to be done to prove one way or the other if it is harmful, but for now, I'm sticking with my Badger Sunscreen

• Natural insecticides containing pyrethrins (and the synthetic pyrethroids) were supposed to be safer according to the EPA, but are actually responsible for 1/4 of all pesticide related health problems.
  

'This Lawn is Your Lawn' - Great Video!