Two little crafties

We have come a long way since moving into our 'housie' in the suburbs. When we first moved here, the lot looked like this:

and we had a lot of what we simply called The Vine. The Vine was the villain in our landscaping efforts, always working against us, and sprouting seven new sprigs any time we ripped out one. We were very united in our hatred of The Vine. 

Now, 10+ years into this journey, I had to stop on the side of the road to clip a few branches of what we have since learned is called 'bittersweet'. Not sure about the sweet aspect. Even in winding this wreath, the juice of the fruits stung my hands. Wear gloves if you can stand them (I never can, except in beekeeping). 

The other offender does have a redeeming quality more obvious to the eye: Rose multiflora. The weed of roses, an invasive species of dubious ecological value. Grows everywhere and is almost as hard to tame as bittersweet, plus it has thorns! Its redeeming qualities include flowers, which can be made into delicious rose petal jelly, and cute little red rosehips in fall. Which I made into a wreath for the kitchen entrance: 

please ignore the filthy window and screen, I'm more crafty than cleansy

view from the back through the screen

How's that for making those invasives work for me, huh? Haven't I shown them who's boss?

{this moment}

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{this moment}

A Friday SouleMama ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see

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A frugal use for leftover pie crust

Just a little bit of a recipe today that I figured out recently (after we made knotweed pie!). Some of us are having a hard time throwing things away. Especially food! This can take a turn for the grotesque in my family (hi mom!), but most of the time, I just try to avoid waste in the first place.
So when the pie recipe says to cut the top crust to shape and toss the 'clippings', yeah, well. Not gonna happen. So here's what you can do instead:

Combine leftover crust and re-roll. Yeah, I know, not flaky, yadda yadda yadda. IMO, if you haven't overworked the original batch of crust, it's fine to do once.

Peel and core half an apple, and dust all sides with cinnamon sugar. Be generous. A dab of butter stuck in the hole in the middle wouldn't have hurt, either, but I was rushed.

Wrap ends of crust around the apple, and if there aren't gaps, make some slits for venting. Bake with your pie, for about 35 minutes. 

Tastes great with vanilla ice cream, especially to those people who think the crust is the best part of a pie (aka not me)!

Knotweed - not just a weed!

We made strawberry knotweed pie yesterday. Who knew you could eat that stuff? It grows at every street corner around here, a hard-to-beat invasive species that hailed from Asia, and settled here a little too well.

On the upside, it's healthy (even some medicinal benefits) and abundant, so makes for a great foraging prey. I followed the recipe by Russ Cohen, published in his book 'Wild plants I have known and eaten'. He grew up in my town, as it turns out! The knowledge applies locally for sure. Find more fun knotweed info here, but really, read the book. Great resource!

The first task was to harvest, peel and slice the stalks. It is good to pick the younger parts of the stalks, something we had to learn the tough way :-)

I made my favorite pie crust, enough for an 11in pie (why bother with an eensy 9in pie?? I will never understand). Then I stirred together

• 4 cups of sliced knotweed
• 3 cups of sliced, frozen strawberries
• 2 Tbsp cornstarch
• 1 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp allspice
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg 
• 1 tsp vanilla

in a bowl, and filled that into the crust.

I popped the top layer on, and baked at 375 with speedbake (convection) for 45 minutes.

The verdict: We got some of the woodsy bits of knotweed, maybe we're too far into the season, or maybe we just need to cut the top parts of the stalks instead of the thicker bottom parts. That was the downside. The upside - a wonderfully rounded, more complex than rhubarb, flavor that we really loved! I can't wait to do this again with younger stalks. Served with vanilla ice cream, while still hot (please excuse the picture, we just couldn't wait for the filling to solidify a little more), a huge spring time treat!

Some good words

This week has been very busy with some good stuff and some not exactly amazing stuff (overflowing septic, anyone? At least I got a new tool out of that one...).

In the middle of all of that, I came across these two quotes, which somehow hit a nerve after a week full of intense debate among friends and fellow activists about population growth, environmental impact, corporate dominance, and the gloomy report from the IPCC, and burn-out.

Chief Arvol Looking Horse, spiritual leader among the Dakota, Lakota, Nakota people:  

“Each of us is put here in this time and this place to personally decide the future of mankind.  Do you think that the creator would create unnecessary people in a time of danger? Know that you are essential to this world. The biggest cancer spreading upon Mother Earth is the tar sands.”

Chief Reuben George, Tsleil-Waututh: 

“One thing I can say right off the bat is that we are winning. When we come together like this, we become stronger. There is no price for our water and lands.  The lessons we receive from Mother Earth is to become better human beings.  We give back to the earth and the land.  The pipelines do not do that.  We are going to win!”

Find out more about the reject and protect actions, put together by a group named Cowboy and Indian Alliance. (Is that the best name ever, or what?), and consider making a donation if you're able.

Drying laundry using fossil fuel

I have blogged about hang-drying laundry before but that was in summer. I am often asked "but what about winter?" Which reminded me to write about wintertime laundry hanging. To summarize my general attitude: hang-drying laundry is really a very effective way to lower your carbon footprint, see for example the data in this article. If you're intimidated by the labor - consider just hanging large items such as towels, that use up a ton of energy to dry, but are quick to hang up. I will admit to drying socks, drawers and the piles of kitchen rags we use in the dryer in the winter, because they are just so tedious and space-consuming to hang up little by little. But yes, I do hang-dry the vast majority of our family's laundry every week, throughout the year.

As a matter of fact, my laundry dries at warp speed in winter: I hang it right next to our gas-fueled furnace, on several folding laundry racks, my favorite one being this one. The water pipes make excellent places to hang clothes hangers, too. Drying laundry this way has a carbon footprint, yes, but consider this: The current wisdom for insulating your hone is to insulate the leakage of hot air to the attic and that of cold air entering the house, typically around the perimeter of the foundation where it meets the framing.  BTW I learned this during our energy audit and if you haven't had one done, you're missing out!

But back to the laundry. Since the insulation envelope includes the basement, the laundry doesn't create much of an extra heating load, it dries in they super dry winter air and makes us all breathe a little easier by gently humidifying the indoor climate. Win win!

Hair Dare!

I found myself at the mall this weekend and finally worked up that magic combination of courage and opportunity to donate my hair. Well, 10 inches of it. My oldest decided to follow suit, and was able to donate 8 inches of million-dollar-blonde mane. 

Of course this now presents us with new-to-us styling challenges so I went out to buy hair spray. I just had to take a picture - seriously, the hair care aisle is not a safe place for children. 2 sexy! Kinky! No, that isn't my commentary, those are the names of the products. Not your mother's beach babe, no kidding.

I made home-made rosemary mint shampoo bars as an antidote, stat. I used less coconut milk and an infusion of homegrown rosemary and mint instead of the water. See how I splurged on a fancy new soap cutter, too? The result smells delicious and has the added advantage of being PG.


 

Cherry Pit Warming Pillow

In my family, I'm notorious for starting projects and then never finishing them. I disagree! I just sometimes have a bit of a 'maturing' phase built in. Yeah, so sometimes, that's years. I have that in common with good scotch.
One of those projects needed to be finished today - I woke up with a massive kink in my neck that is so painful and did not respond well to exercise. Then I remembered the bag of cherry pits that was sitting around since our enormous cherry jamming session last summer. I had washed, boiled, washed some more, and then dried those pits. And then put them in a paper bag and forgot all about them....

Today, the pain in my neck reminded me, and I found a piece of my favorite flannel, and said brown paper bag. As so often, finishing this particular project took only a few minutes (you can see I machine stitched the pillow closed, I wasn't going to rely on hand-stitching to keep the cherry pits in place reliably) and now I'm sitting on the sofa with warm cherry pits soothing my sore spot. Aaahhh.

  

All is NOT quiet on the Eastern Front

In the past 2 weeks, I have attended two organizing meetings related to Climate Action. Each time, I could barely motivate myself to leave the house, because I was tired, I had a lot to do, and I felt discouraged anyway. Each time, I expected yet another informative evening with friendly people, but little to take home as far as tangible actions. Both times, I instead came away energized by how different the climate movement seems this fall, even compared to just 12 short months ago. There is so much more deliberate action, skill and organizational talent at work. The momentum is building and the energy in the room has changed.

 
Paraphrased quotes from attendees of both meetings include:

"We're done trying to educate people. We have reached those who want to learn the facts, now we're moving forward in action" ~ "Climate Change is no longer an environmental issue. It is about health, jobs, safety and the economy" ~ "Individual action is admirable but ineffective. Community action is necessary, but there is a systemic problem that has to be addressed, and it has to happen quickly" ~ "Changing lightbulbs is good, changing senators is better" ~ "It has to be a struggle" ~ "Scientific talk and facts don't get people to act. Stories and relationships do" ~ "It always seems impossible, until it is done (Nelson Mandela)"

In my jumbled way, I'm probably not conveying the focus and skillful organizing behind some very specific targets that several groups are pursuing. For my home state, the global warming solutions act not only empowers the governor, but also requires of him, to put in place a plan that will allow MA to meet the targets specified.

To get there, the agenda is simple:
1) Ban the worst. Do not allow any more infrastructure for fossil based energy to be put in place
2) Build the best. Only invest in sustainable solutions.
3) Set us on a path for a price for carbon.

Several groups, among them Mothers Out Front and 350MA.org have converged on these succinct points, which are feasible for Governor Patrick to implement before he steps back in 2014, given current legislation and the executive powers he has.

I am hoping to be able to contribute my bit to make MA the first state to leave fossil fuels in the past, and to move towards a sustainable post-coal, post-oil future.

{this moment}

. . . . . . . . . . 

{this moment}

A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

. . . . . . . . . .

Do fix it, if it is broken!

This is a sort-of-guest post by the handy husband. Both of us are continually annoyed (to put it mildly) at things breaking when in our view, they should live much longer, productive lives. Today's exhibit: A broken, out of waranty, Canon EFS 17-85 lens.

In the husband's words: 

"There is a ribbon cable inside the lens that flexes as the zoom changes. After enough "zooming" the ribbon cable breaks and the camera reports a completely unhelpful "Error 99". Three years after purchasing the lens, I had got the first "Error 99" and had it repaired by Canon (to the tune of $160 or so). Three years later, here I am again. This time I decided to repair it myself to save the repair cost Canon charges.

The suspect ribbon cable ($25 including the aperture mechanism, or if you want to be ultra-cheap and are great at tiny solder joints, you can buy just the cable for less than $5) is the innermost part of the lens, so everything needs to come apart to get to it. I watched the relevant youtube video, took it apart, replaced the broken cable, and put it all back together. In another 3 years I expect it to break again."

the spare part

He was meticulous about taking photos of each stage of dis-assembly, so as to be able to put it back together. I was most concerned with trying to keep the parts dust-free. We're sharing this process for several reasons. One, I'm proud of the handy husband! Two, I read this book and it strongly advocates sharing lessons learned in self-sufficiency with as broad an audience as possible (yes, you're that!). Three, I simply would have never thought one could repair a camera zoom lens at home. Turns out it's not rocket science!

Next up: The non-functioning automatic door to the Sienna can apparently be fixed with bicycle hydraulic bike cable.... stay tuned!

Farming vicariously

On Thursdays, we go pick up our CSA share. The local farm offers a fall-and-into-winter share that is perfect for me as the gardening in my shady, cold spot winds down and they keep producing gorgeous crops on their sunny fields. (It couldn't possibly be their skill and expertise that make the difference, could it?). So we get to go and be farmers in spirit, and the kids get to help out and learn in their 'open farmyard' program. 

Harvesting popcorn

The education staff is amazing, and I learn something every time I go, too. I took pictures of these nifty hanging planters because I want to reinforce our fence and do this with some old wool blankets next year. Isn't it brilliant? And look at those gorgeous eggplants and peppers: 

A straggling tomato hornworm (aka 'tomato monster') doomed by wasp larvae feasting on him.

Julie was enthusiastically watering the herbs. See those pants? They're the famous 'Quick Change Trousers' by Anna Maria Horner, and I just spent my morning extending the pattern in length and cutting 3 more pairs for Julie's fall wardrobe.

I just loved this rainbow made of kale varieties, with the foliage beginning to turn in the background. Fall is glorious in these parts, isn't it?