1. Being swarmed by hummingbirds when I carry the feeders out early in the morning.
2. Listening to elk bugle on the hills around our house.
3. Eating lunch at El Paisano in Capitan, where the same family has been cooking traditional New Mexican food for 62 years.
4. Watching the sun light up the mountains around my house early in the morning.
5. Watching deer come and go around the house all day.
7. Roasting fresh picked green chiles and making green chile stew.
8. All the art galleries in the area. New Mexico seems to attract artists of all kinds.
9. Going barefoot at White Sands. The gypsum sand never gets hot, no matter how hot the day is.
10. Eating green chile pistachios and chile pistachio brittle and drinking pistachio flavored wine right on the ranch where the pistachios and grapes are grown.
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These little homes were featured in a recent issue of Mother Earth News. I like what I see so far in their attempts to provide affordable green modular homes. The Clayton i-House would definitely be worth checking out if you are looking for a more sustainable lifestyle.
We lived in
Clayton homes on our farm in Texas. They have won many awards for their excellence in modular and mobile homes. The little mobile home I lived in was built in the 80′s, but had 2×4 framing with studs on 16″ centers just like a stick built house and the floors were solid 3/4″ plywood covered with carpet or vinyl. It was suffering from neglect, but with a little work it made a comfy and cozy cottage.
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I finally found a product that removes the hard water stains in the dishwasher. It is called Lemi Shine and I am here to tell you that it works!! I can finally use my dishwasher and not have to soak everything in vinegar when it comes out. The manufacturer does caution you about putting painted dishes and some other things, but for my every day Corelle dishes and glassware, it works just great.
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We love berries around here, especially blueberries and strawberries. This time of year you can get fresh berries aplenty, so we decided to put some up in the freezer. I’ve used this method with blueberries, strawberries and blackberries and it is a fairly quick and easy way to put them up.
First, I clean all the green stemmy bits out–hull strawberries, but leave them whole. Pick stems and leaves out and any mushy or too-green berries. Rinse them well in a colander. I put down several layers of newspaper, then cover those with paper towels (you can add the soggy paper to your compost pile afterward). You could also use cuptowels, but they will have berry stains when you are finished. If you are putting up a lot of berries, you may want to build a screen or perforated tray of some kind to spread them on to let them drain.
I spread the berries out on the towels and let them drain well, then spread them out on a cookie sheet in a single layer and pop them in the freezer. In two to three hours, they are frozen enough that I can scoop them into a freezer container or freezer baggie and put them in the deep freeze. By freezing them on a cookie sheet, they will stay separated so that you can just scoop out a cup or so as you need them. It also allows you to grab a handful for a nice frozen treat when the weather is hot–eat them plain or stir them into yogurt.
I have a book that was given to me years ago that I use constantly when putting up fruits and veggies. It is called
Stocking Up, by Carol Stupping, and the newest version is available on Amazon. It is a very comprehensive book on preserving foods and my version even has plans for building a storage area in a cellar for your stores of food, drying trays, home made driers–just about anything you would need. It provides information on freezing, drying and canning fruits and vegetables, preserving dairy products and meat, making butter, storing nuts, seeds and grains and a ton of other useful information. I highly recommend this book if you are growing and preserving your own food.
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Living sustainably goes beyond “green living”, at least for me. After seventeen years as professional staff in a major research university, I was looking for a change. My job was taking up more and more of my time and energy, particularly as I got more and more into grant writing, and yet it was less and less fulfilling. To change that, I have two simple rules–simplify life and spend more time doing things I enjoy.
When my kids were living at home, I cooked all the time and on Saturday nights, we often chose a country and cooked dishes from that country. In the process, I taught my boys how to cook. After they fledged and left the nest, I cooked less and less and spent more of my time doing work related tasks–reading journal articles, editing grant proposals, etc. and just snacking for meals or eating TV dinners. Now I have started cooking again and am enjoying it more than ever.
One of my favorite “cook books” is AllRecipes.com. It allows you to rate recipes, add recipes to share with others, search out recipes and see how others have rated them and, my favorite feature, have a recipe box where you can save recipes that you like. You can search by country, which is what my boys and I often did, or you can search by ingredient or any other key word. My youngest son, my mom and I must stay on a gluten-free diet, so today I am trying a recipe for Tres Leches for my wedding to see how I can modify the recipe with gluten-free flour that I get from Bob’s Red Mill. I usually have really good luck with their gluten free flour mix and we are looking forward to trying out this cake recipe. I will let you know how it turns out!!
I will write more later on the other projects I am working on for the wedding–my dress with crocheted accessories, the ceremony, the food–all done in an effort to keep the day simple, beautiful and memorable.
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I was lamenting in a recent post about having to use CLR on my dishes to get rid of hard water stains. Now I have found something that works just as good and is more friendly–vinegar!! Using vinegar to clean my dishes just doesn’t bother me like using CLR–it just seems more natural, it’s less expensive, and I always have it on hand because I use it for so many other things. I put one cup of vinegar to one quart water and soaked the dishes for five minutes, then rinsed with cold water. All the white, chalky residue was gone. I did a little searching and found a website with 1,000 more tips on using vinegar–I guess I better start buying it by the gallon!
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We have really hard well water here (104 g/gallon) and have an industrial size water softener under the house. Sodium chloride is used to soften the water, so there are higher than normal levels of sodium in the water used in the house. We still have problems with white residue on dishes that are washed in the dishwasher…I have yet to figure out the solution to that, but am looking into it. Plastic seems to be the worst. The technician who services our water softener said that there will always be some residue…our water is just really hard. I have learned a few things, though.
Softened water will kill your houseplants because of the sodium level. I can vouch for this…sorry, little croton. Plants must be watered with RO (reverse osmosis) water or with the hard water directly from the well that has by-passed the softener or better yet, from a cistern. We have metal roofs on our garage and house with a system of gutters that drain into three large cisterns. This is the best water for plants. You can set up your own
rain water collection barrel on a smaller scale if you have gutters and it really does make a difference with your plants, particularly if you are in an area that has to ration water.
There is
some evidence that there is less cardiovascular disease in communities where people drink hard water. Softened water is not recommended for people who are on sodium restricted diets. I use the hard water or RO water for my pets. I have a dog with heart problems and he does not need the added sodium.
The purpose of water softeners is to keep scale from building in pipes and appliances and so detergents and cleansers will work properly. I can tell you from experience that hair shampooed with hard water feels like it is coated in chalk dust–a nasty feeling. You definitely want softened water for washing. However, coffee made from softened water tastes awful, particularly to a coffee snob, so you better have an RO system installed in the kitchen for cooking and drinking water. You can also buy bottled water if you are a serious coffee snob (like my son).
The constant diligence required to keep softeners working and filters changed is a pain, not to mention pricey. It is worth the $29 a month to have a water company do the maintenance. When filters get dirty, there is no water in the house. And they get dirty surprisingly fast.
CLR is your friend. It takes away all the scale that accumulates on dishes, shower walls and other surfaces exposed to water. Half a cup or so in a dishpan of water, soak a few minutes, then rinse thoroughly. I try to avoid using nasty chemicals on things I eat out of, but a coating of scale makes everything look and feel dirty, like it is covered in dried milk. I wash my dishes by hand and dry them now, just like in the olden days. With just the two of us here, it doesn’t take much time and keeps water spots at bay. My wine glasses are sparkly and I don’t have to resort to CLR soaks.
Wine bottles make great waterers for plants. They provide a deep, slow soak and are a useful way to re-purpose empty wine bottles. Fill them with water, then turn them upside down and shove them into the soil. It takes about 6-8 hours for the bottle to empty–I didn’t believe it either until I tried it several times with different sizes of pots. It works like a charm and I don’t have trays full of water under my pots (or running over) like I usually have after watering. And it gives me a great excuse to empty more wine bottles.
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