chickens,  food,  frugal,  garden,  green,  sustainable living,  yarn

about the dustmop

Update on yesterday’s post, wherein I yearned for a dust mop to swipe up the furballs: I don’t currently have a mopless handle, as it turns out, but a nice person on Freecycle is going to give me one, and my nice friend LisaPie says I can crochet a mop top out of cotton yarn, of which I have aplenty. So I will not be buying one. It was just a momentary flicker of lust and desire…a new dust mop…(swoons).

Lovely reader Heather was telling me about her indoor laundry-drying system, and how she also uses wool balls in the dryer. I’m like, wool balls – huh? She sent me this link, and says these felted (handmade) wool balls cut your drying by about 40% in the dryer. Who knew?Guess what I’ll be working on?
 http://howtomakedo.net/154/make-your-own-wool-dryer-balls

These are some other goofy things I’ve been doing lately, Compact-wise.

  • I’ve been using the extra sticky strips on packets of stamps as tape to hold the envelope closed. The other day I had a large (reused) manila envelope to mail, and at the PO, realized it was not sticking. I was going to ask for some tape, but I spied someone’s trash from a packet of stamps on the counter. All the sticky in-between strips were still there. So I didn’t have to buy a roll of packing tape nor ask for the borrow of some. Cheapskate me, huh? Well, it worked. And then I found a penny.

  • Just got a tasty recipe for some protein-filled snacks, made from our cheap friend, the lowly garbanzo bean. This recipe courtesy of April, a friend from high school, who posted it on Facebook the other day. I buy garbanzos dry, then soak and boil. April buys the Costco-size can, rinses, then makes them into snacks. So overnight I soaked, today boiled for 30 mins, then drained, and proceeded with the snack: drain well or pat dry with a towel. Arrange in 1-2 layers on a cookie sheet (no need to grease sheet). Sprinkle with your choice of seasonings — salt, pepper, taco seasoning, onion or garlic powder, chile lime salt, chili powder, whatever. Put in the oven at 350 for about 2-3 hrs til dry and crunchy. A whole potful filled a cookie sheet double layer, then baked down to a single layer and filled a 2 lb peanut butter jar. And the guys are eating them by the handful, like peanuts. I think that potful of these crunchy beans cost about 50 cents, and they are pure protein, plus a little salt. No fat!

  • Looks like the season for appliances to poop out, and last night it was the rice cooker. Mr Husband has had it 20+ years, and it warms things but doesn’t cook rice anymore. So I might keep it as a warmer for a while. Or plant something in it. I cooked the rice on top of the stove instead. It was just as good.

  • I’ve noticed in the great Coupon Savings Challenge that almost every single time I buy something at the store, on sale or with a coupon, that at least one price is wrong. I get so flustered in line when it’s busy, and they go so fast. We used to have to call out the prices (a million years when dinosaurs roamed the planet and there was a class called “Beginning Cashier Training” in high school). But they don’t do that anymore. You’re supposed to watch the checker/machine – but also watch the baggers who keep trying to give you plastic bags because it’s easier on *them*, and then seem incapacitated by the problem of where to put the gallons of milk. Um — they don’t need a bag. So while I’m keeping an eye on the bagger, the checker just jams everything through, and then I have to read the receipt and catch booboos after the fact. It’s a little annoying because I feel like The Problem Shopper, always complaining. They see me coming and their faces say that they recognize me — not that happily, or am I imagining it. Doh! But what the heck? They ought to get their advertised prices right. If it says 2 for $4, they ought to charge you that price. Just thought I’d kvetch about that a little bit.

  • Still eating our way through the pantry and freezer. Interesting that we’ve been eating better now that I have to work harder to make a decent meal out of the weirdest stuff. (Although we cooked apparently bad bacon on Sunday and made Mr Husband sick. Oops. Sorry.) But they keep telling me, “Great dinner!” I made a different 3-bean salad out of last summer’s frozen green beans, more of the garbanzos (boiled, not baked) and some edamame. It’s pretty, healthful and tasty. Last night’s Chinese-Japanese-Korean dinner included more of the frozen edamame, brown rice (dead cooker), stir-fry veggies with everything in it (clean out fridge), some Aidell’s chicken-pineapple meatballs (freezer), and a fruit salad I made out of fresh oranges, 1 persimmon, 1/2 a grapefruit, the last pomegranate, and a can of tropical fruit in juice. Plus green tea and some vegetarian “pork” buns that I had made and frozen a few months ago. Very tasty, all of it.

Here are a couple of photos of the dead garden just now. One shows the hot pepper plants under glass with 3 hens having a dig for worms.

Happy days, keep your fingers warm, and don’t forget to floss.

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3 Comments

  • noreply@blogger.com'

    Ellen

    Joolia,

    About the garbanzo crunchies, I’m trying them today, with canned (cuz I shortcut like that). I don’t have really any experience cooking with beans. When I opened the jar to drain and rinse them, they had all these little….almost like corn-husks on them. Is that what you’re supposed to be rinsing off? Cuz it took me forEVER to peel the little suckers. If you don’t know about using the canned version, can you ask your friend, because I felt like an idiot standing at the sink peeling each one.

    I’ve now got them in the oven with some sea salt-onion spice grinded over them so we’ll see how they taste. Did you have to stir them often, or leave your oven open a crack to let the moisture out? I’m not sure how they’re going to do in my gas oven. Also, I greased the pan just to be safe, which probably takes away from the “healthy snack” option. Anyway, a good experiment for a Sunday afternoon. Thanks for the idea!

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