urban gardening

in spring of 2008, we built one large planter (to hang on our balcony railing) out of some found/salvaged soft wood. that year we grew mint, chives, and basil in our balcony planter, and we officially caught the urban-gardening bug.

last year (2009) the planter started to give a bit from the weight of the soil and a year's worth of slow decomposition (soil + water + time = decomposing wood), so we reinforced it with some plywood pieces along the bottom. at the same time, chris built us another planter out of salvaged/found plywood and we expanded our urban gardening adventures. we grew chives, mint, and basil in one planter; and attempted nasturtiums and morning glories in the other planter. we spent hours building an elaborate fishing-line trellis for the nasturtiums and morning glories to climb. we attached it to the planter and to the top of our balcony; planted our pre-started seeds into the planter; and waited for the beautiful climbing vines to begin. they didn't. instead, over a matter of days, starling came and clipped off all the nasturtium and morning glory sprouts. we tried some visual and auditory starling scare tactics, with no luck. we gave up on the trellis and vines. we did still have success with the basil, chives, and mint. we also had some success with thyme and cilantro in pots on the balcony. although, our basil got aphids and we made the mistake of bringing it into the apartment, and aphids transferred to a few of our indoor plants. the removal process has been long, and tedious. but we think we finally got them all.

this year, our original planter (circa 2008) was looking pretty rough. i was not very confident that it would make it through the season without the sides falling off, leaking its contents onto the driveway/balconies below. we spent last sunday on the balcony, inspecting, repairing and rehanging the planters. the original planter required some serious repair/reinforcing, but it's much more structurally sound now :)

 we emptied out the old soil (for fear of aphids) and filled the planters with a mixture of pro-mix and organic compost to get our balcony garden started for the year. we bought all our seeds and soil from halifax seed this year, and we've been very impressed with their wealth of information and the time that they spent helping us in store. they've also got great tips on their website, including seed starting/sowing dates.

we planted the spinach seeds which will get one whole planter. the chives wintered over well and have started to come up again already. we'll start our basil indoors this week. and next month we'll sow the parsley, thyme, and coriander outside. our balcony doesn't get great sun exposure, so we're limited in what we can grow there. but, we're going to try some hot peppers indoors this year, on the shelf/ledge of a south-facing window.

 if all goes well this year, we'll have:
- chives for using fresh
- basil for using fresh and for making pesto
- parsley for using fresh and drying
- cilantro for guacamole and salsa making
- thyme for using fresh and drying
- spinach for eating/freezing

next year we might even try to secure a plot in a local community garden that's just a few blocks away from our apartment.

DIY dinner

chris and i have been watching a lot of jamie oliver's food revolution lately. it continues to astound us just how many people there are in north america who rely on fast food, pre-packaged foods, and processed/frozen foods for a majority of their meals.

i've seen supersize me and i've read excerpts from fast food nation; but i'd never realized that people really DO live that fast-food/convenience food lifestyle.

moreover, i can't believe that people regularly feed their children that crap. the brown-bag lunches featured on the most recent episode of jamie's food revolution were full of convenience foods, and therefore full of: sugar, sodium, preservatives and additives. see the lengthy list of ingredients on this pre-packaged/frozen peanut butter and jelly sandwich. and i thought a simple PB and J sandwich was already a convenience food (ie. it's easy to make?!)

chris and i both grew up with daily home-cooked meals, and brown-bag lunches filled with sandwiches, apples, carrot sticks and the occasional cookie/treat. for my family, fast food was a treat, happening only every second thursday of the month. the other 28 meals per month were home-made.

so, until watching jamie's food revolution, i probably wouldn't have considered making a healthy dinner as a worthy adventure in DIYing. but now, i guess i do!

 so, here's what we had for dinner on friday night. i made my first ever french onion soup. using alton brown's recipe. there's a few things i'd change about the recipe. overall, it was a bit too thick for us (a few too many onions, and not enough broth); and maybe a touch too sweet too. i'll go for more beef broth, less apple cider and less onions overall next time.

we didn't own french-onion soup crocks until friday morning, when i found some handmade ones at value village for a mere 99 cents each! they've got great character - little imperfections and signs that they are obviously hand made.

i also made some fresh garlic bread to go with the soup, and topped it with mozzarella and parmesan cheeses. i tossed a few local salad greens in our home-made salad dressing and sprinkled with a few roasted pumpkin seeds. overall not a difficult meal. just a bit time consuming - but that's what funemployment is about.

 

project updates

washable cosmetic squares - and the lucky winner (chosen via random number generator) is a green spell.

thanks for sharing all your eco-friendly cosmetic ideas and products. and much thanks for reading my blog - yay new readers! one thing i have noticed, is that the felted wool can get a bit "hairy" with aggressive use - but it can be trimmed back with some scissors. some thick flannel might be another good fabric option for the pads. i say go with what you have, or can find second hand - re-purpose something!

yogurt - i implemented the modifications i mentioned in my DIY yogurt post, with GREAT success. this time, i held the milk at 185°F for 30 minutes prior to adding the starter. once it was cooled to 115°F, the starter was added and i put the whole thing in a thermos that we bought at MEC for a mere $15. we'd been considering one for our camping trips anyhow - so now it will double as a yogurt-making "machine"! when i screwed the cap on the temperature of the liquid was 114°F. after 12 hours of letting the bacteria do it's thing the temperature inside was 106°F. in 12 hours, the thermos only lost 8°F. so, the yogurt stayed within the sweet spot (100-115°F) for yogurt magic to happen. after a few hours of refrigeration in glass jars, the yogurt was the perfect consistency - probably twice as thick as the last stuff we made. it actually stays on the spoon, rather than dripping off! yogurt success!

cinnamon buns

i'm taking advantage of this funemployment to try new baking adventures that i probably wouldn't try otherwise. i've always wanted to make home-made cinnamon rolls, but the time required and possibility of failure has kept it off my baking radar until now.

then, last week one of my favourite baking blogs, bakerella posted about her attempts at making pioneer woman's cinnamon rolls. they looked delicious. but, like bakerella, me and bread-doughs don't go so well together, and i resort to my trusty bread machine to do the "dough" portion of the recipe.

i found a recipe on allrecipes.com that was highly rated and allowed for use of a bread machine. i added a bit of cinnamon and ginger to the dough ingredients, and used a bit less flour (as per some reviews of the recipe). i set my bread machine to dough setting on tuesday night, and awoke at 6:30am to the grinding sound of the bread machine spinning. i dragged myself out of bed to shut the bedroom door and then went back to sleep. by 8:00am, the dough was ready, and so was i.

since my plan was to make some half-sized cinnamon rolls, chris and i spent a bit of time the night before trying to calculate the appropriate length and width to roll the dough out in order to achieve the correct size (when rolled) cinnamon bun. we settled on 16"x32". we also calculated the size i should cut each cinnamon roll to achieve maximum uniformity. i am nothing if not a chronic-over-planner.

 when i began rolling the dough out on the counter, i realized - we don't actually have a portion of counter that is 32" in length or depth. oops. the largest portion of counter is the top of our portable dishwasher at 24"x26".

so, with some quick math and a knife, i revised my dough into two 16"x16" squares. and began spreading on the buttery-cinnamon-sugar goodness and rolling into 16" long cylinders. after that, i threw my plans for cinnamon roll size to the wind, and cut them to try to get at least two dozen similarly sized rolls.

i baked in muffin pans rather than in a 9x13" pan, so that they would be easier to get out of the pan, and more "single-serving" friendly.

 i packaged (most of) them and poured on some maple & cream-cheese icing. being a keen supporter of science research (and a thoughtful girlfriend), i walked them over to the SMU astronomy & physics grad students office so they could enjoy some tasty free food.

they've been getting a new home-baked item weekly in their office. which is nice of me, but also an excellent way to practice self-control. baked goods are definitely for sharing.

and here's one with icing, that i'm going to take to share with a friend today.
 

TOMORROW: cloth napkins; and a winner for the DIY cosmetic pads.

happy earth day everyone!

DIY cosmetic rounds (or squares)

lately i've been (slowly) switching from regular cosmetic/bath products to ones that don't contain nasty chemicals (which can be harmful to both me and the environment). if you want to read more, the campaign for safe cosmetics has a lot of great information about what's inside your shampoo, make-up, and perfume.

we now use a shampoo bar (no plastic packaging!) from a local soap maker; and i've pretty well stopped using conditioner (most days). our soap is DIYed from last summer's adventures in saponification. i'm playing around with a couple hair products that i've purchased from pur alternatives. and i recently purchased the burt's bees rosewater & glycerin toner which isn't perfect in terms of ingredients, but it's better than most.

 but, to use that more eco-friendly toner, i've been buying disposable organic cotton cosmetic rounds. unfortunately, they just pile up in the garbage can because they can't go into our municipal compost system. i figured there had to be a better way, and decided to make my own washable cosmetic rounds.

i headed to the salvation army for inspiration, and came home with some second-hand wool sweaters - to shrink and turn into lovely soft felt. crafting in a green world has a good felting tutorial.

 
i found that my sweaters needed two rounds in the hot washer and two rounds in the hot dryer to get felted to my satisfaction. i felted a whole bunch of sweaters (for various crafting projects) at once, so i feel less guilty about the energy required to hot-wash and dry (usually we'd cold-wash and hang-dry our clothing). one important thing to note: your sweaters need to have a high wool content, i'd say at least 80%, and the closer to 100% wool you can get, the better the felting results.

so, once my sweater was felted, i cut it into small squares (about 6cm x 6cm each). you could stop here, and have perfectly functional make-up removal/toner pads. however, i decided to dress mine up a bit. so, i cut squares of fabric (from my scrap bin), about 7cm x 7cm, and ironed down all 4 edges on each fabric square.

  i attached the fabric squares to the felted wool pieces, pinned in place, and then sewed the fabric to the felt around all 4 edges. the ones pictured are all plaid, but i've also made some baby blue and navy blue ones to mix-it-up and give as gifts. i'll be giving them in sets of 16 (enough for 2 weeks use plus a couple extra), in an assortment of fabric-scrap colours/patterns.

 
i'm also planning to make little mesh-bags for washing. these can go into the washer and dryer with your socks and underwear. they'd probably even air-dry pretty quickly (wool is great like that!).

and now for the fun part! i've made an extra set to give away. it's my first blog giveaway!

leave a comment telling me your favourite eco-friendly beauty product (or one you'd most like to try). i'll pick someone at random on friday april 23rd at 10:00am EST. if you don't know me personally, be sure to leave me some way to contact you. if you do know me personally, you might not win - but might get some of these as a gift for your next celebratory event :)

DIY Yogurt

 as previously mentioned, i love granola. and i love it most with a bowl of good yogurt. so, when my most recent readymade magazine arrived, i was excited to try the yogurt recipe on page 44.

lots of big-name brand store-bought yogurt contains food additives like gelatin, aspartame, guar gum, locust bean gum, artificial colours/flavours, etc. i prefer my food to just contain food, without all the extra things that i don't understand. i also find that gelatin (used as a thickener in many store-bought yogurts), triggers cold sores for me (probably because it contains lots of the amino acid arginine).

lately we've been buying yogurt from a foxhill cheese, who sells cheese, yogurt and gelato at the farmer's market. they make a really delicious vanilla yogurt, and it's only ingredients are: milk, sugar, vanilla and bacterial cultures. i used some of this yogurt as the starter for the yogurt i made myself.

the recipe from readymade makes it all look pretty simple. and it was! it uses 2% milk, a little bit of plain yogurt, a thermometer, a pot, a big jar and a towel. most of these were things that i had around my kitchen to begin with. i didn't have a jar big enough for the whole litre of yogurt, so instead i used two smaller jars (re-used salsa jars).

there's not a tonne of hands-on time required to make this recipe, but the waiting is tricky (for me, i'm inpatient). the yogurt needs to sit for 5+ hours, and then refrigerate overnight before you eat it. last night at bedtime, i was a bit too excited for breakfast time to come. i kept myself awake thinking about possible flavour combinations for my yogurt.

 it was worth the wait (and the little bit of lack-of-sleep). the end result is pretty tasty! i flavoured mine with some local (frozen) blueberries, and maple syrup. yum! chris flavoured his with the dregs of a jar of apricot jam from our fridge. it tasted great with the granola i also made yesterday.

one thing to note - the yogurt was considerably thinner than what we're used to. so, i did some google-troubleshooting and found a few tips that i'll try next time i make it to help get a thicker yogurt.

 a different method of incubation. readymade magazine's recipe suggests you just wrap the jar in a towel, but that probably doesn't maintain the heat as well as using a double-walled stainless steel thermos, or using the oven, crock-pot, or a heating pad. i'll probably try the thermos next, since it's the most energy efficient of the methods. the idea is to maintain the yogurt temperature at about 110 degrees F for 5 hours or more so the bacterial cultures can do their job.

holding the milk at 185°F for thirty minutes before cooling and adding the starter. according to makeyourownyogurt.com the extended heating denatures the milk proteins, and enables them to sequester more of the water in milk, and you lose some more to evaporation.

 there's also some other suggestions, like using some powdered milk - but i don't think i'll try that. it increases expenses, complexity, and food miles. i'll put the other suggestions to the test this weekend, once we eat up all the yogurt from this batch (which won't take long).

a quest for tasty granola

i love granola. but only if it's home-made-style granola. i really dislike the taste of the cloying-corn-syrupy boxed granola available in the grocery store cereal aisle. and it all seems so expensive for such an inferior product. so i usually just make my own.

over the past few months or so, i've been perfecting my granola recipe. i used to make a recipe that i stole from the local coffee establishment that employed me during my masters degree studies. it was pretty good recipe. but something about it reminded me too much of early saturday morning shifts at the cafe.

and then i had some incredible granola from another local establishment - the coastal cafe. they serve it with fresh fruit and vanilla yogurt. they call it "the steph" and it is delicious! i've been attempting to replicate it ever since i tasted it last summer. i purchased a bag of it, brought it home to analyze and made a list of what i thought the ingredients might be.

then i also found this granola recipe and enjoyed it too. it seemed to include a lot of the ingredients that i had guessed were in coastal's granola. so, i thought i'd merge them to see what i produced. the result has been tasty!

now i've created my perfect granola recipe. i don't think it replicated the coastal's granola exactly, but i do think it's delicious (and probably a bit healthier than theirs is - less sugar).

 

this granola (baking in the oven, in the picture above) is full of wonderful stuff. nuts, seeds, oats, maple syrup, coconut! of course, you could always change up the main ingredients to suit your tastes. i'm a big fan of this combination of ingredients - but you might not be. make it to suit your tastes and what you've got in your cupboards. here's my recipe:

 ingredients:
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 tbsp water
1 cup maple syrup
2 tbsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp ground nutmeg
4 cups old-fashioned oats
1 cup wheat germ
4 tbsp brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt
4 tbsp ground flax seed
1 cup coconut
1 cup pumpkin seeds
1 cup almonds (whole)
1 cup walnuts (chopped)

instructions:
- preheat to 275 degrees F
- grease two cookie cookie sheets with cooking spray or oil and set aside
- bring oil, syrup and water to a simmer in a saucepan over low heat
- mix all other ingredients together in a large bowl
- pour oil/maple syrup mixture over dry mixture and stir to combine
- pour mixture onto two prepared cookie sheets
- squeeze granola in handfuls to form small clumps
- bake for 30 minutes
- stir and continue to bake until golden brown (15 minutes longer)
- let cool, then store in an airtight container
- makes approximately 12 cups

it makes a lot of granola. so there's always some for sharing. although, i must admit - i'll eat this granola for breakfast every day until it's gone.

i also made an attempt at home-made yogurt today. if all goes well i'll blog about it tomorrow over a delicious home-made breakfast of yogurt and granola. yum!