Reducing waste

The bloggers at enviromom did a great series on reducing the amount of household waste we produce. They have a challenge to reduce your waste to only one can a month. Actually, Saul and I are pretty close already, but there's only two of us. We end up putting out a can every other week, so there's room for improvement still.

Anyway, what's really nice is that they've gone room-by-room in a typical house, listing ways to reduce waste in each room.

http://www.enviromom.com/getting-to-one-garbage-can.html

I'm thinking about requesting that Edgewood borough put this in their monthly newsletter. Besides the environmental effects, our taxes could be much lower if people didn't produce so much waste. Two of my neighbors, both just couples, somehow produce four trashcans of waste every week. How they do that, I'm not sure. I hear one of the couples has all of their dogs paper-trained, so they toss out lots of no-longer-recyclable paper. Not sure what's up with the other couple though.

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Preserving herbs

Maja asked me about preserving herbs, specifically, freezing v. drying. So, a little late, here's what I figured out.

Last year, I tried freezing some herbs. There seems to be two methods for doing this:

1) Chop and freeze in a bag
2) Place in water and freeze in an ice-cube tray.

I tried both. #2 was pretty bad. Basically, the herbs float to the surface before they freeze, and then they get freezer burned. #1 was ok, but you can't measure it out. Basically, as soon as they thaw, they turn to mush, so you have to put them directly into the soup or whatever.

So, I'm just drying this year. However, I think it works best if you dry the leaves whole, and then crush them later as needed. I think it preserves the scent better.

Unfortunately, you can't smell how amazing my dried parsley is, but here's the photo comparison of the store-bought parsley with my parsley.

Store bought parsley smells faintly of parsley, but mostly of "dried plant". Home grown parsley is the second strongest herb we grow. Saul put some in soup yesterday, and when I walked in the kitchen, that was all I could smell.

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Sustainable cleaning

This book lists home-made cleaning products and a few safe store brands. They've got a cost comparison to the name brand cleaners, and they rate the effectiveness compared to the name brand. My favorite so far is the window cleaner. She suggests club soda, with a little blue food dye so that the house cleaner will actually use it. It works well, leaves no streaks, and doesn't smell like vinegar.

Clean House, Clean Planet

I've found a few other, more recently published books, but this one still seems to be the most comprehensive.

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Well, hello there

We found this in the garden.

That is a very LARGE tobacco hornworm. This explains why I kept finding half-eaten green tomatoes on the top of my plants. I think this one guy was doing all the damage. As big as he is, he was really hard to see. I only found him because he was ON the tomato I intended to pick.

I scoured the tomatoes, but found no others. We did have one last year, but it was smaller and covered in wasp eggs (yay for companion gardening!) I planted flowers that attract a particular wasp that kills these worms, and with the exception of this guy, it seems to be working.

He's nearly ready to become a moth, so I didn't have the heart to kill him. I just put him on the other end of the yard with a pile of fallen green tomatoes that he could eat for a day or two.

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The danag

So, I'm not even sure how to transliterate "danag" properly, but pronounce it how it sounds. It's an Armenian word (actually, it might be Turkish, or just some random word my grandmother made up. See story about this below.). It means, loosely, washcloth. Specifically, during my childhood, it refers to the reusable washcloths that are usually pink, blue, or yellow, are very thin, but soak up lots of water. Refer to picture. Danag:




Anyway, I love these things. First, they are immensely resuable. They're ideal for soaking up large amounts of liquid or wiping down the table and counters. They're also great for dusting and general cleaning. Unfortunately, they're hard to find. Rite-Aid seems to stock them, and sometimes Giant Eagle has them in strange places.

I do sometimes still grab for a paper towel when I should use these. To help get me in the habit, I've made the paper towels harder to access. I've Put the paper towels a cabinet and put a couple reusable wipes in an easy-to grab place. One on the kitchen sink, and one hanging over the stove bar maybe. I've only once thrown them out because they ripped. Most of the time, they get tossed because I used it to clean up something really dirty. I haven't tried throwing them in the wash yet though, so I might try that sometime and see if I can get more out of them.

Random story about danags

One day in my apartment in SLO, my roomie was cooking dinner, and I was in the kitchen clearing the table. We had been doing projects on it, so it was a little dirty. I decided to wipe it down for dinner. So, I turn to my roommate, who is near the sink, and say "Hey Jen, can you hand me the da-" and it hits me. She's not going to know what a danag is. Danag is Armenian. No problem. English. Jen, hand me the what-the-hell-is-that-thing. Thingy. Cleaning thing. Washing thingy. Wipey-downy-thingy. Meanwhile my mouth is open and my roommate is staring at me and my brain basically just seg faults right there. Nothing except my mouth slowly opening and closing.

Anyway, after my brain rebooted, my ego recovered, and I recovered the item in question, I had to ask my roommate what it was called. She looked at me like I was nuts. "Uh, washcloth? What the hell is wrong with you?"

It occurred to me that for 18 years, my mom had been saying "Ciera, take the danag and wash down the table", "Ciera, hand me the danag", and "Ciera, wipe down the patio chairs; I left the danag outside". My dad even uses the word since it wasn't an item he grew up with, so he adopted my mom's vocabulary.

Worst brain fault ever.

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