Make It: Collage Writings

A small teaser for the upcoming Aggiornamento Art and Cultural Exhibition opening tomorrow night.

Chicks (and one Chicken)

List of new characters in Our Live Active Culture:

Val: An 8 month old Buff Transylvanian Naked Neck (sounds salacious, no?). She was procured for free from a family who is thinning their flock a bit. Since getting Val she has survived temperatures as low as 14F and all the while has dutifully supplied a large brown egg 5 out of 6 days. Val was promised to us on Valentine's Day (hence her name) but we picked her up Saturday.

The rest are chicks which we received Tuesday, though they arrived early Monday morning to our friend's house from McMurray Hatchery (a great resource for chicks with incredible service and excellent breeding stock by the way.)

Charlotte finalizing names

Lady: A 5 day old Pearl Leghorn who happens to be Charlotte’s favorite, this coincides well with the fact that she is the prototypical chick: fluffy, cute and most importantly yellow (Charlotte’s favorite color). Eventually she will become white, but Charlotte need not know that yet. I have also been warned by Britt’s brother (who has raised chickens most of his rational life) that she may end up suffering from a bit of a “Queen of the Roost” complex. She is also predicted to be our most prolific layer of large white eggs, so it may be a title well deserved, but only time will tell.

Biscuit: A 5 day old Rhode Island Red who is also generally yellow, but has a blushing of red on her top “coat”. Biscuit is somewhat unmemorable other than the fact that her name was inspired by the story of the Little Red Hen (in Britt’s southern version the hen makes biscuits instead of bread *shrug*) and therefore is one that Charlotte often recalls. She is supposed to grow up to be the largest chicken, in close contention with Lady. I am interested to see how she’ll turn out as Rhode Island Reds are enormously popular chickens because of their strong capacity to produce large brown eggs as well as meat.

Bird's Eye View (hyuck, hyuck)

Betsy: A 5 day old Barred Rock, she is one of two black chicks but since the other has no feathers on its neck she is easy to discern. Betsy is probably the most docile of all the chicks, she still is energetic, but compared to the rest she is markedly more subdued. She will eventually become black and white…checkered (for lack of a better word) which is the very definition of “barred”. Barred Rocks are another popular dual purpose (eggs and meat) breed.

Mango: A 5 day old Buff Araucana, by far the largest chick of the batch, Mango stands nearly a full head taller than her brood mates. She is likely to continue to distinguish herself even after everyone’s height averages out because of her pastel colored eggs. Because the exact tone of the egg shell depends both upon the individual chicken as well as the individual egg we’ll have to wait in anticipation to find out if she’ll lay pink, green or blue eggs. 

And Finally, after much suspense…

Pesto: A 5 day old Black Transylvanian Naked Neck. She was the star of the teaser comic book cover featured in last post. At the end of day 2 (after being shipped from Iowa, and then taken home in a home-made pet crate along with her 4 brood mates from our friend’s house to her new home at an undisclosed location) Pesto looked a lot worse for the wear. She was gasping and lethargic and frankly looked like she would likely die in my hands, let alone survive another day. However, after deciding to leave her be and give her some rest and then having a discussion with Charlotte about the possibility of her death, followed by night-time prayers beseeching St. Brigid (patroness of chickens) to spare Pesto if it be God’s will, Pesto seems to have made a full recovery and is just as chipper and chirpy as her friends. Praise God! 

 

Other than the fact that it would be sad to lose any of the chicks, Pesto was the one I was most looking forward to, Naked Necks are actually incredibly versatile birds who are great layers, decent meat birds (with the added benefit of having less feathers to pluck when it comes to dressing). However, because of their looks (which I find entertaining rather than offensive) they aren’t as popular as they should be. Maybe that’s part of the allure too, I have a certain penchant for “heirloom” and “unique” livestock and crops (just wait till you hear the list of seeds we ordered…)

I'm a Winner! - Update

So we received our wonderful drawing from Reading (and chickens) the other day and its, well... awesome.

(note, just so you aren't confused, the drawing is the second image)

I'm a winner!

So I was over at Reading (and Chickens) the other day and noticed an awesome little contest that she was putting together in which there was a drawing for some goodies inspired by nothing more than the goodness of her heart. The goodies were sweet, but I was much more interested in getting one of her trademark drawings, so I do what any sensible person would do: pretend like the drawing included a custom drawing and put my name in the proverbial hat. (its like a situational red herring) Since she's a nice lady, and since I was the only person who was in that particular part of the drawing that I made up, I won!

After many attempts to get me to email her I finally sat down and composed the following. It was so absurd that I figured I'd share it with you all (and posting here fulfills my part of the contractual obligation at the end of the email) So without further ado: my email to Reading (and Chickens):

 

Thanks for graciously accepting my entry into the drawing drawing that weren't even aware you were having. And to boot I won!?!?! woohoo!

My wife seems to think a portrait of me would be fun because I'm kind of the personification of a cartoon character as it is. (fat beardo who is often holding either a baby, a dachshund or both)

However, a fun project that I sometimes subject my family and friends to is the aesthetic version of mad libs (don't have a name for it yet, maybe you can assist in that avenue). Essentially you ask 3 separate people for 3 separate words which you them must incorporate into an image (or object for that matter, but the internet hasn't come so far as to be able to deliver things of the 3rd dimension through fiber optics...yet)

To give some semblance of sense to the would be image it is permissible (read:recommended) that you give the prospective word giver a category to refine their seemingly random word choices.

To further complicate things, other individuals can supply the categories as well.

Since that is highly convoluted, lets set a scenario:

(cast of characters: Artist: a woman who percievably loves reading and chickens, Person 1: her husband a man who loves women who love reading and chickens, Person 2: her son, lover of reading sentences which include exclamation marks, Person 3: Joey, [as noted above] a fat beardo who is often holding either a baby, a dachshund or both)

Artist (to person 1): Give me a category of nouns.
Person 1: Things you'd find in the back of the fridge.
Artist (to person 2): Tell me something you'd find in the back of the fridge.
Person 2: That sticker that explains how the fridge works.
Artist: Hm...very accurate, thank you.
Artist: now give me a category of verbs
Person 2: things you'd do to a penguin
Artist (to person 3): Tell me something you'd do to a penguin.
Person 3: um.. cuddle it, I'm not sure there are any other possible answers to such a question.
Artist: touche', now give me a category of places
Person 3: places you'd never want to work
Artist (to person 1): Tell me a place that you'd never want to work
Person 1: hog rendering plant
Artist: *begins diligently working on a drawing of Joey cuddling a fridge sticker at a hog rendering plant*

See? Isn't that ingenious? It has all the esoteric class of fine art, but all of the shenanigans of blog art.

(rereads the above email)

Ok, on second thought, just post and illustrate the above email, that would be super entertaining.

I'll post it on my blog if you post it on yours!

Its Snowing Outside: Perfect Time to Work on the Garden

As I write this post I am looking out my window onto my backyard which is covered in 6inches of snow and I'm thinking "perfect time of year to work on the garden."

Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to go trudging through the snow to plant seeds or anything but late Autumn and early Winter are crucial times to work on your garden; although, its not what most people think.

The first lesson when it comes to gardening is that making an effective garden is a year-round activity, at least if you want it to be healthy and fruitful. Sadly the majority of hobbyist/backyard gardeners only think of their garden when they walk by the potted plants at Lowes in early Spring. But if you haven't done anything with your garden by then, its too late.

You may recall from some of my dumpstering exploits that I procured a reasonable amount of lumber by which I was able to make two nice new garden beds. Because last year I spent way more money buying dirt and manure trying to fill the bed than I could have ever imagined (let alone the fact that nothing makes you feel more like a fool than buying dirt) I vowed to utilize only free sources to fill these new beds.

An added benefit to using this approach instead of buying commercial top soils and fertilizer is that you can have a healthy organic garden which can produce as well, if not better. To achieve this free, organic, biodiverse soil for your garden bed you first have to understand few things. Well... really only one thing actually: decomposition.

For decomposition of organic materials (the crucial ingredient in any good soil) you need: life (worms, insects, bacteria etc.), water (to encourage the life and to expand the cellular structure of the organic material) and time (often much less than you'd think if you have enough of the other two).

Soil is simply a combination of minerals, decomposing organic matter, water and filler material. If you look at your average commercial bag of topsoil and you'll often see manure, humus, peat moss and vermiculite. Translation of all of those things? Rotting stuff and filler. Just because it is simple though does not mean that it isn't vital in fact Colorado State University is currently engaged in a global campaign to revitalize soil. Plus, as President Roosevelt once said during the Dust Bowl crisis in America, "A nation that destroys its soil, destroys itself."

When starting a new garden bed there are several schools of thought in regard to preparing the site, many people will recommend things like tilling, either by hand or with a powered tiller. This is a good idea, as it loosens the soil and introduces air into the soil (something that many people neglect to realize plants need too). However, I'm a bit of a pragmatist when it comes to work, in as far as I don't care to do more of it than necessary. That being said, I prefer the "lazy man's" approach to preparing the site: laying down cardboard.

Charlotte helping flatten out the cardboard scraps.

Cardboard is easily sourced from.. just about everywhere, dumpsters, your own packaging refuse, or any grocery/department/liquor store will gladly give you more than you can take.

(photo credit)

The cardboard that I laid down in our new beds serves a few important functions. First of all, it creates a barrier for preexisting weeds so that they do not spring up from below when it comes time to plant your edibles. While this dense cardboard barrier is enough to keep weeds from popping up it is also permeable, organic matter. Once it has had sufficient water and time to decompose it will provide additional nutrients to the soil as well as be soft enough for the roots of your jack-o-lantern pumpkins to reach down through.

Charlotte's jack-o-lantern "Nice Guy" (ps. thats not a real knife she has)

However, the most important function which this wet layer of cardboard provides is an ideal habitat for worms. Worms are the hard workers that do the tilling and aeration for you, if you just give them the right environment, food and time to do the work. Not only is allowing worms to till your garden for you a less work intensive approach, but it is in fact more effective than hand tilling because it gives the added benefit of worm castings (aka. poo). I'm not enough of a scientist to know precisely how or why, but decomposed material which has been consumed, digested and expelled by worms has a significantly higher amount of certain important garden nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen than if the organic material were left to decompose by itself.

This is part of the reason this snowy, cold, wet, time of year is ideal to do these kinds of garden preparations, because enough moisture (by means of snow), time (by means of passing through the non-growing season) and encouraged decomposition (thanks to expansion and contraction of water logged celluar structures) takes place that by the time next spring rolls around you'll have a lovely dark, rich, worm ridden soil to plant your delicious lovies in.

Enjoying the fruits of last year's soil preparations.

The next step, after laying down your cardboard is to lay alternating layers of "greens" and "browns". Greens are things like: grass clippings, kitchen scraps, rotten jack-o-lanterns etc. Browns are things like: dead leaves, corn husks and mulch.

This time of year is often a great time to layer your kitchen scrap sourced "green" heavy compost because it has already had several months of hot weather, insects (flies, pill-bugs etc.) and moisture to allow for the scraps to compost nicely. Its a perfect time of year to empty out your compost bin into your aspiring garden beds.

Raking in a year's worth of kitchen compost

As for this time of year being a good time for "browns", I think you can look out at your leaf covered lawn and only guess. There are lots of good ways to get "browns" but frankly I can't think of a more universally beneficial strategy than to use the leaves from the trees around you, which so graciously have decided to fall down for easy pickings. You get to clean up your lawn, you get to add nutrients to your garden, you get to provide a insulation to the decomposing "greens" between each layer, and you don't contribute to our already over extended landfills. If you're nice I bet your neighbors will even let you have their leaves too!

(photo credit)

Once you have laid alternating 2inch layers of "greens" and "browns" until your garden bed is full, the last step is: wait. Simply let the worms do their job underneath, the organic materials throughout decompose and the snow, rain, and sun encourage the whole process.

Thanks to a little proactive work in the late Autumn and early Winter you can enjoy soil that retains water, but allows it to drain and is full of rich organic nutrients but resists the growth of unwanted weeds by next Spring when you're ready to plant.

Sustainable Patriotism

I recently heard a story on NPR regarding the first televised presidential address, despite economic woes and post-war needs for revitilization President Truman's address was about food, well... more about eating.

Photo Credit

During his address he recommended (well...recommended like the guilt inducing recomendation of a stern grandmother) to the American people that they should adopt a few simple eating rules so that those in Europe (and America for that matter) would have enough to eat as nations rebuilt after the war.
The food rules he suggested were:

1- No meat on Tuesdays.
2. No poultry or eggs on Thursdays
3. Save a slice of bread every day.
4. Public eating places will serve bread and butter only on request.

I was intrigued by these rules as soon as I heard them. Partially because I already ascribe to a modified version of them (fasting on Fridays etc.) Also, having grown up in Colorado during a decade of drought I am familiar with a similar "by request" imposition at restaurants in an attempt to conserve water.

As a patriot (not a nationalist, mind you, a patriot) I am deeply interested in the notion of growing toward not self-sufficiency but community sufficiency. While doing some more research on President Truman's food rules I stumbled across an article which expanded on the fruits of reducing the national consumption of meat by means of reducing the household's consumption of meat.:

"If every family will reduce voluntarily its consumption of meat, whether it now has meat on the table three, four, five, or six days a week, the nation will achieve a maximum saving of meat and reduce the demand for grain to feed cattle and hogs. This will also produce a downward pressure on meat prices, and help curb living costs."

I know that the news is rife with the pros and cons of the dreaded "austerity measures" that certain countries (including our own) are seeking to adopt but frankly as the old cliche' goes "all politics is local". If every family utilized less resources and also shared the surplus resources with those in their community there would be ample food(/shelter/housing etc.) to go around, regardless of the unemployment rate, the threat of double dip recession or whatever politician jargon is currently a "threat to the nation's future."

photo credit

That being said, we have come up with our own, amended and expanded, food rules list so that we can reduce our own consumption and allow for less fortunate members of our community to have enough when we have more than enough. I'm not a big bumper sticker slogan guy but "live simply so that others may simply live" is just too poetically true to be ignored.

Anyway here they are, the Catholic, Patriotic, Sustainable Family Food Rules:
1- No meat on Fridays.
2- No poultry or eggs on Wednesday.
3- Use "cheap cuts" of meat for at least 1 meat meal each week.
4- Monday is soup/stew day.
5- Make only enough food to feed the family at each meal.
6- Treats only on feast days or important family holidays.

The break down of our motivation for these food rules is relatively simple.

First of all, we already ascribe to a meatless fast on Fridays as our form of Friday penance. While our diocese does not require meatless fasting it is a nice way to nod to tradition as well as share in sacrifices of our brethren around the world who are obliged to the meatless fast.

Fasting on Wednesday is also something traditionally Catholic in honor of St. Joseph. Rather than extending an additional meatless day outright Britt and I have been discussing options for other small sacrifices we can make. This one may actually be more difficult than the meatless Fridays because a substantial amount of our protein comes from chicken, turkey and eggs. With that in mind though, it should make the fast more efficacious both spiritually and secularly.

Rule 3's adoption on the other hand was strongly influenced by my (albeit brief) research into the Truman food rules. From the article I mentioned earlier: "...suggested also that housewives buy the cheaper cuts and grades of meat, rather than choice steaks and chops, to bring down prices and reduce waste...75 per cent of the cheaper meats were not being used on the average American dinner table. If the housewife will make greater use of the cheaper cuts we will have about 25 per cent more use of the entire animal. This will help feed starving Europe and cut our meat bills at home. All that is needed is for the housewife to learn how to cook the cheaper cuts. They are fully as nutritious as the choice cuts if properly prepared. Unskillful cooking will, of course, produce unpalatable dishes. It is time the American housewife learned how to cook the cheaper cuts." Beyond the sustainability and economy of using the whole animal, our self-education regarding Whole Food diets has shown that some of the "less desirable" cuts of meats are in fact more nutrient dense than others. Boneless, skinless chicken breast for example is actually pretty weak when it comes to chicken options. My housewife has already begun some of this by making wonderful, nutrient dense bone broths from our "left over" bones. I'm sure she is also eager to investigate other ways to incorporate "mystery meats" into our regular diet.

Which brings us to soup/stew Mondays. Part of the reason is that if we are making these splendid broths from bones, fat, celery trimmings, carrot tops etc. we might as well take advantage of them and get a fully gamut of meals out of our food (stay tuned for a future post about how to make an entire week's worth of dinners from one roast chicken!). The other thing is that soups and stews are notorious ways to make a little bit of food go a long way. If you start with a nutrient dense bone broth, you needn't add any meat, or if so, very little and the rest (beans, carrots, potatoes etc) end up acting as texture and filler more than needed mineral and nutrient contributors.

Rule 5 has a loose association with the Truman food rules in that rather than "saving a piece of bread" each day, we only make enough food to feed us each day, thereby saving bread (or meat or veggies or whatever) because its not even set on the table. This has an added benefit of healthful portion control and digestive health. We should eat until we are no longer hungry, NOT until we are full.

The final rule is probably the most sensible, but strangely the most difficult. Americans love treats, snacks, novelty foods, easy foods, appetizers etc. But frankly a lesson I know from our Catholic fasting practices is that feast days are always more delicious and celebratory when they are special...go figure. The interesting thing is that our Faith is all about feasting, in fact a big feast is one thing we're all looking forward to for eternity. So this rule boils down to no special treats (beer, ice cream, cake, going out to eat etc.) unless it is Sunday, a feast day or a very important family holiday. By abstaining from those special treats day to day we allow them to remain special when the time for celebration comes.

Finally, beyond consuming no more than our share of resources, saving money, reducing the strain on our farm/graze lands, there is a wonderful side effect that our family is looking forward to: aid in planning. Britt mentioned that she is undertaking the Plan-It-Don't-Panic meal planned challenge. How much easier is it to know that Friday will be meatless, Wednesday won't use eggs or chicken and that we're having soup on Monday? It just becomes a game of fill in the blank after that.

Linking up with GNOWFGLINS

Make It!- Making booze the ol' fashioned way.

*disclaimer, or something* Every state/city/locale has different laws concerning making alcohol as a private citizen. Usually because the governmental body in question has a vested interest in tax revenue that they are afraid they'll miss out on. I'm no expert on the law, so before trying this at home, do whatever research necessary to cover your hiney.

Anyway, today I made wine, or at least began the process of its making. Join me in my messy and enlightening journey:

Step one: procure many many grapes.

As luck would have it my younger sister (whom we obtained grapes from at the beginning of our last experiment as well) has grape vines in her backyard that are very well established, as they are older than me, and possibly my mother (they're gramma's old vines). This time around we harvested something like...65lbs. I confess that I didn't weigh them, but it was two big ol' boxes that seemed heavier than a 50lb box of clay. You can use any grape really, each will give a different flavour and each will have a different sugar content which effects alcohol content etc. I really don't recommend just going to the grocery and buying bulk grapes when they go on sale though because most of the "food grapes" we eat aren't really sweet enough to make a decent wine (let alone any pesticides/waxes/irradiation they've been subject to, but thats another rant altogether). The best bet is actually growing your own grapes, which I hear are remarkably easy to do, but need a few years before you're getting dozens of pounds of fruit. I dunno though, try it, prove me wrong.

Step two: smash said grapes.

There are many ways to smash grapes. Fancy wine presses, which are like $175 bucks, so nuts to that. Juicers, which for legit ones aren't cheap either, plus you have to take all of the grapes off of the stems and seed them,  something I just couldn't justify spending my time on. Food processors which work for some fruits like crabapples (look for our upcoming guest post on DynoMom about our crabapple cider and vinegar adventures) but beat up grapes too much and thereby release too much grape skin flavor/bitterness. Or getting a big open vessel, dumping your grapes into it and squishing them under foot. With those options how could we do anything but make a big fun mess, right? Honestly, it was a ball, if you've never stomped grapes, I highly recommend it. Next year I will try my hardest to get a couple hundred pounds of grapes by asking neighbors, friends etc. and having a big grape stompin' party. (stay tuned...)

My feet.

Charlotte does her part.

Even Bea joins in!

Step three: procure yeast.

There are lots of cool yeasts, for this project I'd recommend either an ale yeast or if you want the final product to be a little more dry, a champagne yeast. Either option is like... 75cents or something, so its not exactly going to break the bank to go with a "fancy" yeast. Maybe its because I already went to the trouble of pressing the grapes by hand (well...foot) and may as well go all out with old school techniques, maybe its a profound self-sufficiency statement to fight "big yeast business", or maybe its because I love unique local phenomena (ie.making pots from local clay) whatever the case I decided to go the route of wild yeasts.Oh, also maybe because its easy too, since the yeasts already existed on the grapes when I smashed 'em. The only thing to keep in mind is that wild yeasts are unpredictable. They could be awesome, they could be terrible. Either way you'll get alcohol, but yeasts strongly affect the flavour of your wine. In our case if it turns out badly, we'll just make the wine into vinegar and call it a victory, but of course we didn't have to buy our grapes...

Step four: ferment.

How long it takes to ferment your wine has everything to do with heat and the amount of sugars in your juice. If you want to be savvy you can use a hydrometer to test the specific gravity of the juice at the outset to know precisely how much sugar there is, and subsequently how much alcohol there will be. I didn't. Instead I went with the tride and true "ferment it till it stops bubbling" approach. How alcoholic will it be? No idea, frankly I don't have any reason to care since I'm not bottling it for sale nor am I intending to use to to sterilize wounds on the battlefield. The small bit of technology that I did decide to use is a water airlock to allow the wine to offgas while neither causing the jug to explode nor allowing unwanted mold spores, bacteria or foreign yeasts (like from Britt's kombucha) in. These valves are something like 75cents maybe a couple of bucks if you get the elite version. The rubber stopper that it goes into is maybe another dollar if that much.

All good winemakers need someone to test the juice.

Step five: bottle.
We'll talk about this later after the fermentation is done, but in our case rather than transfering several gallons into individual wine bottles for aging we're just going to cap the jugs we are using for the fermentation. If I get really industrious I might tap the wine into some swing top bottles, but I'm not even going to attempt corking or any such fancy contrivances as that.

The local brewery store that we patronize sells a home wine making kit for $165.00, and juice concentrate for wine making for around $100. Admittedly if you popped for all of that you'd be able to make 6 gallons of wine, rather than my measly 2 so we'll say that an equivalent price for the wine we are making would be...*crunches some numbers* something like $83.00. Honestly, if you got the kit and the concentrate you'd likely make some very nice wine. But I'm too frugal, too well connected with resources, and too non-wine snobby to bother.

Now for our cost breakdown since my brain is still on "urban survivalist"mode from last month.

Grapes: free. (this would have been by far the largest cost, thanks gramma and lil sis.)
Smashin' apparati: free (between borrowing our friend's father's 10gal crock and 15 minutes of exercise)
Yeast: free (and with literally no effort on my part to boot)
Carboy/jug(s): free (we used re purposed cider jugs, which will work for both fermentation and storage)
Airlock: I dunno, say 75 cents (though I actually already owned this, so I didn't go out and buy it anyway)
Rubber stopper: um. a dollar (again, already owned it)

Hopefully by Christmas I'll have 2 gallons of delicious delicious wine thanks to old timey techniques, friends, family and a couple hours of work, oh and $1.75.


                                                                Linking back to

  

 Simple Lives Thursday

and

Real Food Wednesday

Tea party

A while back, Joey and I stopped buying sodas, and we both saw the effects on our waist lines (well, I was pregnant at the time, so it was more of a bump line!).  But we both still crave delicious drinks.  So here's a few of our drink choices we've either come to love, or tried and tossed, and their pros and cons.

Tea anybody?

Sparkle Water (aka mineral water or Seltzer water)
This was our go-to for a long time, and it still is, but only as a treat.  This was a great way to quench our soda cravings, especially with a dash of lemon juice or orange juice added in.  The bubbles really do something to kick water up that extra notch!  We call it Sparkle Water in our house for the toddler's sake-it makes it special, and also helps warn her that she's about to get bubbles up her nose.

While I could drink Perrier, or even grocery store seltzer all day long and be more than happy, it isn't budget friendly.  I looked into getting a seltzer bottle, until I realized that the major health benefits come from natural sparkling water.  So the cost does not justify drinking it daily- except when I'm pregnant.  For wahtever reason, I have a hard time keeping myself hydrated when I'm pregnant- I just don't like drinking liquids.  But the bubbles make everything go down smooth.  So it's worth it then.

Kombucha (aka Baby Beer)

We were introduced to Kombucha originally by my brother-in-law, and reintroduced by Dyno-Mom, who gave us a baby SCOBY.  I love the stuff, Joey does not.  Charlotte does though, which is good because around the time we got the SCOBY we were having trouble with her finding random beer bottles to try and drink out of whenever we had beer.  It wasn't very often, but she would kick and cry every time we took the beer away from her and scream "BEER!" at the top of her lungs.  I know another little girl who was equally attached to the hops whose word for "good" was "beer" until she was about two.  ;-)  So I know it's not just my kid who has to be curtailed from the Guinness glasses.  So now she call Kombucha "Beer"- which is just fine.  Yes it does have trace amounts of alcohol in it, just as much as vinegar and other daily edibles, so I don't let her have more than a few ounces a day.  The only real problem is when she asks for her "beer" while we're in the check-out line at the grocery store.  True story.

Charlotte teething on an EMPTY beer bottle at about 6 months

In any case, Kombucha is an acquired taste.  But to those who acquire it, it's both delicious and cheap, if you make it yourself.  And it's bubbly-  big plus in my book!  All you need is a baby SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast) from a friend or make one yourself from a bottle of raw Kombucha bought at the store, tea and sugar.  I use Newman's Own Organic Royal Tea (black and green combined, or just black) and sucanat, an unrefined sugar with a load of minerals.  But you can use cheap black tea and cheap white sugar and get equally as good a beverage.  The sugar is ingested, totally or in part depending on how long it goes, so you don't get any or much yourself.  And it's pro-biotic!  Yay good bacteria!

Kombucha in a continuous brew

Hello, Mother!

Kefir (water and dairy)

As I said before, Joey doesn't dig on the Kombucha- it's way too vinegary for him.  But he likes kefir, both water and dairy.

Kefir is a fermented beverage using small, grain-like SCOBY's that are not the same as the large mass of SCOBY that creates a Kombucha mother.  Dairy Kefir reigns from the northern European regions, like Poland.  It is a thin, yogurty, tangy, bubbly concoction that is made with milk and Kefir grains- cauliflower like cultures of yeast and bacteria.  Water Kefir is actually a traditional "Small Beer" found around the world in many different cultures, and can also be called Tibicos.  It is made using sugar water and flavored with a variety of different fruits or extracts.  Joey likes vanilla water kefir as he says it's very similar to Cream Soda, whereas I've recently found that adding slices of a green apple to the secondary ferment makes a very delicious drink.

Water kefir on the left, dairy kefi on the right, and crab apple cider in the middle

We are still experimenting with Kefir.  I got water grains from Melissa (Dyno-mom) awhile back, and they've been doing great.  I also ordered dehydrated dairy grains from Cultures for Health and we've been having less luck with them.  I think I MAY have just now figured them out, but we'll see.  I'm less of a fan of dairy kefir in general, but that's probably just because I've never been a big milk drinker. I had a hard time digesting pasteurized milk all my life but I'm starting to be able to drink more since we switch to raw milk awhile back, but I certainly don't crave it.  All in all, water kefir is practically free.  Melissa has a good overview of the in's and out's on her blog, here.  Dairy kefir is a little more expensive, especially if you use raw milk, but I have friends who love it so much they'd rather drop the grains in their gallon and just drink that instead of regular milk anyway.  Joey would, but I'd rather not, at least not until we get our grains ripe enough so that they're working properly.

Other things we've tried-

Ginger beer- good, cheap and easy.  We still make this from time to time.  Melissa's tutorial here.

Crab Apple Cider/Wine/vinegar- There will be a post on this coming up soon that we're doing for Melissa's blog.

Tea- Iced or hot.  Right now, Joey is going through practically a gallon of iced tea a day.  We make sun tea so we don't have to heat up the kitchen, or worry about breaking a glass pitcher with hot liquids.

Coffee- not cheap, not super healthy, but oh so good!  I used to drink it black, but now I add a tablespoon or so of cream or whole milk, and occasionally a dash of vanilla or a shake of cinnamon.  If you can drink it without sugar or other sweeteners, it's not nearly so bad as people make it out to be.  Just moderation, people.

And then, there's the good old fashioned water bottle.  We'll be talking about that in a later post.

Linking up with GNOWFGLINS Simple Lives Thursday

Guess what landed in our backyard: The Sequal

For all of you who were stumped by the images from our Guess what landed in our backyard post then brace yourselves for the answer:

*drumroll*

...I have no idea either.

What I do know is where it came from, which is certainly something and even more certainly less disconcerting. It was another dumpstering find, one that I wouldn't have taken home had Britt and I literally not just been talking about material to build an awning for our back porch that morning.

The object is... well, huge. I'm not particularly certain about its dimensions but spread out it nearly fills our backyard. That being said its likely somewhere around 1/4 acre. What is more shocking, and subsequently perplexing, about its size is that the piece we have is only about a quarter of the whole (I know because I saw the other 3 pieces laying near the dumpster as well.)

When I first picked it up I surmised it to be a billboard since many companies opt to use tarp style billboards instead of paying for the cost of painting and/or installation of more permenant billboard material. However, the dimensions on this thing are waaaaay too big to be a billboard. The "small" piece of it which we now poccess is probably a billboard size itself.

The other odd thing is that some of the text on it is only 2 or 3 inches tall, making it ineffective for billboard distances. What was this used for really? No idea, honestly. Based on the text and imagery it seems to have been some kind of advertisement for a phone company but this piece of material would have been seriously enormous.

Nevertheless, for our purposes its awsome. The material itself is some kind of rubberized plastic which makes it (as I'm sure was its intent) weatherproof. It also is actually a small mesh, which will allow for both (some) light as well as air to pass through the (for lack of a better word) fabric.

This is wonderful news for two reasons: First of all, this material will be essentially ideal for the awning which we are looking to make for our back porch. Allowing some light, but providing shade, and also able to stand up to sun and other harsh elements.

The other benefit of the material, since we have more than enough to spare, is that it should also function as a pretty useful cold frame for our garden bed. We have a funny growing season here, we have enough sun for many months, but frosts come in pretty early sometimes. Hopefully this material will be both insulative and permeable enough to give us another month or two of growing for our new crops of spinach, swiss chard, beets, kale and winter squash. Maybe pumpkins too, providing our dachshund doesn't eat any more of them.

Fulfilling Apspirations

When first endeavoring into dumpster diving I was asked what kinds of things I was seeking. For the most part my response has been, "I'm mostly just curious, but I guess I need some wood for some new raised garden beds."

With now literally 5's of hours of experience dumpstering in my neighborhood this past week I have come to understand a few things. First of all, the back of 5 Guys is THE GROSSEST place I have ever been. I won't say it was greasy because now isn't the time for dramatic understatement, I will however, say that after I walked away from the dumpster my shoes were slipping on the asphalt parking lot.

..nasty.

The other thing I realized is that I may have picked one of the most difficult classes of items to procure from a dumpster: building materials. Afterall, why would someone throw away lumber? At best I've been hoping to collect enough odd pieces of furniture or other refuse to create some makeshift garden beds and call it a day.

Enter in: the second lesson in the importance of building relationships: knowledge.

A friend of mine is a handyman/carpenter/cabinetmaker/pipe craftsman and I mentioned to him my fruitless search for lumber when he made an observation so obvious it had to come from wisdom. "Why don't you check out some places who are remodeling or constructing, you know, with one of those big roll away dumpsters." Construction site to find construction materials? Who would have thought?

Now, when people mention "free" and "construction site" in the same breath you are typically looking at jail time and hefty fines for grand larceny. But this wasn't my friend's intent at all, but instead the refuse from the both the demolished/remodeled site as well as the cull/fall from the job itself. He has worked at enough large construction/remodel sites in his life to realize that big contractors tend to have a different philosophy when it comes to their business model: fast is better than efficent. That being said, any length of lumber under 4ft is often just tossed. Extra driver bits, left over insulation, surplus nails, all of these things are typically just thrown away rather than stored because these big contractors work on a strategy of volume.

Well, this is all fine in theory, and I trust my friend's experience, but I've already checked 20 dumpsters and didn't see more than an old door stop when it came to lumber being tossed. So I figured I'd try it out and see what the dumpsters at remodels had in store.

*image to come*

...alright, so he was right. One visit to a single business undergoing a remodel and I am now the proud owner of enough straight, clean (besides the odd nail here or there), lumber to build at least one, perhaps two new raised garden beds. I'd have more but my car simply couldn't hold the rest of the 2x4's which were discarded by the re-modelers.

I'm looking forward to continuing to pick the brains of people from all walks of life and find out the little hidden secrets of what, when and how people throw things away.

With that in mind: anyone work(ed) at a restaurant know tips for finding the hidden stockpiles of compostables in the sundry trash bags filling their dumpsters?

Bonus!

We aren't going to make a habit of Sunday posts since it's our Family Day and we're busy with church and all, but guess what?

Free Veggies! 

Somebody left a bag of yellow squash in front of our church steps with a sign that said "free garden veggies".  Score 1 for us!  I was just starting to feel a little low!