Shamba's Notes

Happy Fall Equinox!

2011-09-14T14:01:00.003-07:00

Actually, this isn't until next week but at least our weather feels like September after being deep fried, boiled and steamed and burnt alive all of August. Our hottest August on record and because of that we have the record of days over 110 degrees this summer--31 or 32 was the final number.

I've been going along the past two months like usual. Solar cooking, cooking and feeding and herding cats, reading and hauling the last boxes out of storage that I put away last winter.

some other bigger world developments the past few months:

--Texas has been burned alived far worse than Phoenix all this past summer.
shana, Friend in Austin said that they've had almost all summer with temps over 100. They have tier 2 water rationing and the PTB asked people to set their thermostat no lower than 80 for AC.

--There is a frightening situation in Europe with the EU and Greece's huge debt problems. This has been going on for over 2 years now and they are no closer to solving this problem than they were then. As a matter of fact, the GErmans and French don't want to give Greece anymore of anything! But the French banks have a really large exosure to Greek debts so they can continue bailing out Greece, or Greece can default. All the Greek money will suddenly disappear and maybe some French and other banks may disappear because of it.

It is reminiscent of our financial mess 3 years ago when Lehman went under and everything went wonky.

Who knows if it will create a crisis as bad as the one 3 years ago or worse ... maybe they can continue the status quo a little longer.

I'm posting this info so I can look at it later after the solution to the Euro problem.

peace, Shamba

Here's a good photo of dusty doom!

2011-07-06T09:28:00.002-07:00

Phoenix Dust Storm Photo

Yup, that was us swallowed up in a tremendous dust cloud ahead of a apotty rain storm. Some places got dumped on and we got enough to wash some of the dust off.

It started about 7:45 in the evening when I saw the bulltin on tv about a storm warning, that just usually means a storm or possible dust and thunder storms are on the way to us. This one was coming from the south and southeast which is the usual direction for dust thunderstorms in the summer monsoon.

but this was a biggie, that I couldn't tell from the ground. It looked just like the dusty rain clouds we get this time of year. We didn't even have too much wind in my neighborhood. After the local news showed some pics of the airport being swallowed up, I went outside and it was very eerie. It was completely dark by then but our yard lights showeed everything in an orange light. It was still really, and for every molecule of air out there there was a m olecule of dust! All over hands, face, etc. It all sort of hung in the air.

It took an hour for the storm to cover the whole valley. It wasn't just the east valley or the south valley or the center of town (about where I live) that got it, it was the whole of Maricopa County, Apache Junction, Mesa, Tempe, Phoenix, Scottsdale, Glendale, Avondale, ....etc. it went from southeeast to west and northwest. It passed through and we got some rain after all. Some parts of the valley got more rain than we did.

Slightly overcast today and a small chance for storms this afternoon/evening ... but that one last night was something different. No damage done here ....

Burst of energy today

2011-06-21T14:47:00.000-07:00

I have these bursts of energy to cook, two or three times a week and today was one of them. Mostly whatever I make lasts me for a day or two as decent leftovers. In the late morning, I cooked 2 ears of corn in one small covered container and a container of rice above it cooking in the Global oven. The tasty Roma tomatoes—10—from last week’s/ CSA are dehydrating in the Tulsi. Stacked on top on that tray—upside down small glass dish in the middle to support the top tray--are some more tomatoes and a green pepper also dehydrating.

Then, on the stove inside, browned last of ground turkey with some garlic and small purple onion, plus some leftover small pieces of tomato. I like the elephant garlic we get from the CSA better than regular garlic, easier to handle and not so much odor. I like the small onions for the same reasons.

The high heat comes in today and the next few days so no more cooking in the late afternoons.

Since I pick up my CSA share on Wednesday, I like to go through the fridge and clean it out before I bring home the fresh food. So, after cleaning out the refrigerator today, I had some decent leftover veggies so I chopped them up and put them in the fridge. Tomorrow I will put them out in the solar oven to see how well they make vegetable stock. I haven’t tried this before and I really like having some kind of stock on hand. I’ll use the recipe that recommends a bay leaf, two stalks of thyme, some parsley and I think one other herb or spice ??? I see how it's turns out.

Peace, shamba

New House!

2011-06-07T11:51:00.001-07:00

Not totally, I didn’t move or gut the old house for a total remodel but it sure looks a lot different than the house used to look.

Once the floors were in, I had a painter I knew, who has a real gift for seeing color and palettes, suggested some colors and things to do. I called him knowing I wanted to hear what he would have to say about the color so we discussed his ideas and I went with them in the end. It‘s really lovely! I like it very much. I’d have pics but I ‘m, not sure where all of my camera stuff is at the moment. I have the digital camera but not the little things that will upload the pics to the computer! They’re around here somewhere.

I‘ve got a couple of earthy looking tones on the walls with an accent wall in each bedroom. Door and trim are all white and the overall effect really brings out the colors in the floor and feels very adobe-ish inside. Instead of looking darker and smaller, like I always think darker colors will do, it feels like being inside an earth house but not small.

And my whitewash finished cabinets in the kitchen, which are 15 or more year old, have been given a new life with a whitewash stain he brought. They look really good against the earthy colored kitchen walls. It is a real face lift for the kitchen with this painting!

I’ll give him a little free publicity. Anyone in the Phoenix metro area, Google Polaris Painting, or Mike Wells and you’ll get his number! Yes, reasonable prices.
So, that’s what I’ve been doing most of the past month, moving stuff out, waiting out a week of repairing and painting , soothing cats who got their furs all ruffled by too much action and now moving all that stuff back into the house.

I have bread and a rice dish in the solar ovens today. My patio is cleaned up now from a stream of workmen using the patio as a staging area so I can cook back there again.

Sign of the times: On a local TV station cooking segment, a chef was showing how to make cheesecake and he demonstrated how to mix ingredients by hand rather than by food processor. He said chefs/cooks are always demonstrating mixing on fancy food processors and it can be done by hand just as easily for most cooks. He showed how to layer the ingredients into the batter. The host of the show was interested because she said that those chefs’ food processessers always cost something like $12,000! She did exaggerate a bit …

Cheers for now,
Shamba

Just the same old thing ...

2011-05-13T10:14:00.005-07:00

So, for the past 8 weeks what have i been doing? :)

Not completely the same old thing but almost.

The floor installers found a package of damanged tiles and couldn't quite finish the floors the week they were installing. so, they ordered a new supply and it took about 3 weeks for the material to come in but it came in the dates they said it would. Meanwhile, the rest of the floor looked great and they set up my bedroom so I could use it even without the one side of the room finished. It was a 2-3 feet wide strip against the outside bedroom wall.

I called them the week the materials was due in and they called right back and set up a time for finishing the installation the next week. It took about 3 hours and they were done. so, the floors were finally done on April 20.

Meanwhile, I had talked to a painter and got an estimate, talked about colors, etc.
I was going to call him when the floors were done. Well, I called about a week later and have not received any replies at all. So, after almost a month of leaving message twice a week, I'm going to have to decide what to do about this: Look for another painter, leave things in storage until the inside is finished or bring it all back in the house and don't bother with painting until the heat is gone next fall. I really hate that idea so I'll just keep on with looking starting next week.

The cats are all pretty good except for Nubs. He's gotten thinner and a little less active. After a visit to the vet, and a bill to match!, he's got the very beginnings of renal failure which you can't do much about. Old kitties' kidney's wear out and that's what gets many cats in old age. :( I'll do what I can for him as long as I can. He's still playful with his mouse and has a good appetite and drinks a lot. We can try the recommended special foods although most cats never seem to like the stuff at all.

A few days around 100 but not much real heat yet.

peace, shamba

peace, Shamba

Adventures for the past 10 days ...

2011-03-26T14:11:00.002-07:00

Mostly I was without my own house since it was 4 days worth of work to rip out old carpeting, clean it up for new flooring and putting in the new tile laminate. The results look really great and I’m very pleased with the way it all looks! Hooray!
I wasn’t able to stay in my own house for 4 nights but I was at a small hotel about 1.5 miles away.

I met the workmen every morning at the house because I had to check on and feed the cats anyway—cats were outside these 4 days. Also came back at night to do the same routine with the cats. They survived that few days of noise and uproar and are doing okay.

Everything was moved out of the house into a storage unit or put in the small storage shed I have. I put my pantry foods that wouldn’t fit in cabinets, into the storage shed shelves. It would make a great pantry for half the year if I didn’t have enough other things in there already. It just wouldn’t work very well in the hot weather though.

The upside of the hotel was a full breakfast was available every day with the room (it was a comfortable quiet room), I had access to 24 hours cable and there were high-speed computers available in the lobby for any guest to use. For the news junkie in me the cable and computers were a treat although the news the last couple of weeks seems to worsen exponentially every few hours. 

The downside was I had no kitchen. I had a microwave and lots of decent restaurants around and fridge in the room (which I didn’t use) but after being used to doing my own cooking I felt really lost without my stove or pots or other sources for cooking. Solar ovens wouldn’t have worked at the hotel setup.

Goodness, you could go broke just buying meals or prepared food to microwave ! And I could buy fruit and keep it in my room but I didn’t get enough greens in the past week I know.

When I could get into the kitchen, I could get things out of the fridge and take them with me to eat later but it was really inconvenient not just having my kitchen and food things ready for use when I wanted.And another week of eating without my kitchen and I’d begin to feel like an overstuffed blimp.

I got the tv and the computer up and running Friday afternoon. I didn't expect it to go that smoothly but it did. Also, I packed my 2010 tax info in a box and couldn’t find it for 3 days—but I found it last night when I unpacked3 boxes at home. Eek!

Glad to be back at home and have my nice new floors!
Peace, shamba

Been out of touch

2011-03-23T09:48:00.003-07:00

for a few due to staying elsewhere while my new floors are being put in. Everyday or many times a day, some new horrible thing is happening out in the world. Japan, radiation issues, Libya war front, Israel moved into Gaza, radiation levels in Tokyo drinking water, a unknown source of a large oil spill just south of Grand Isle, Lousiana!!!! Sweet heavens above .... then what?

My floors do look really nice, they've been installed in the living room but the rest needs to be finished in the next day or two. I'm hoping these floors will cut the dust and loose dirt in the house and I have to be more diligent about keeping the cleaning up better! A couple of new dust mops should do it and new floors should provide the inspiration.

peace for now, shamba

Melting, melting, melting ... a glowing puddle of radiative goo ?

2011-03-14T22:27:00.005-07:00

Now, many think the fuel rods are melting in the 3 problem reactors in Fukushima 1 power plant in northern Japan.

And the Nikkei index has melted some because of the earthquake, tsunami and now probably radiation leaks even before the rods have melted through their containers. The Bank of Japan has been injecting money this trading Tuesday in Japan. Jpan is about 14 hours ahead of Phoenix time.

Of course, there is a great gap in my last entry and this one. Mostly, I'm referring to the giant 9.0 earthquake on the eastern side of Honshu island in Japan.
About every 12 hours, since last Friday, march 11, there's been some new announcement about nuclear power plants and nuclear reactors at one particular power plant. There have been explosions in the buildings the containers are in but so far no containers have been breached.

My net sites are beginning to talk about people and businesses packing up and leaving Tokyo as the radiation levels there are going up

My usual financial/geopolitical blogs are sure that the Japnaese authorities have been downplaying everything from the start. Zerohedge.com has been calling the event there right so far the past few days. Then about 10-12 hours after they post their conclusion, NBC evening news has it on, too!

Of all the things to be prepared for, anything nuclear or radiation is the one that frightens me the most. Of course, we don't know that it will reach here but the effects of this worldwide on food, business, tourism and just about anything else is totally wrecked if it doesn't stabilize completely pretty soon.

no peace tonight ya'll, shamba

My very own chiles ...

2011-02-18T12:30:00.001-07:00

I haven’t written for a while but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been doing anything. I’m not sure how interesting it’s all been but just the daily stuff is keeping me busy.

When I went to make a chile, cheese and grits dish that I really like, I remembered that it needed green chiles. I’ve made the recipe without green chiles, but it’s pretty blah without them. I don’t usually think of cans of green chile to have on hand.

However, this morning I remembered I have my own chiles in the freezer. All those green chiles we got the end of last summer from the CSA were all prepared myself and put in the freezer for when I would need them. Of course, it was a good way to keep them from going bad as well.

So, this morning I pulled out my very own bag of frozen green chiles to use in this dish. I smiled with pleasure at the bag when I saw it. It’s a very tangible reward, if small, of learning all the things related to food storage, preservation and cooking I’ve been trying out the past couple of years. My very own chiles …

Peace, Shamba

2011-02-18T12:30:00.000-07:00

Arizona Winter ....

2010-12-30T17:06:00.003-07:00

Weather update from Shamba's front yard:

Flurries, yep, snow flurries ... at 2:45-2:55 p.m. today.

I wondered what that white stuff was on my black pants hanging on the patio furniture ... then it was all around me for a few moments .... and I recognized it, snow, very small flakes and nothing lasted very long once it hit the ground or bushes.

One of my neighbor's kids cried: "Look, snow!"

Haven't seen it in almost 20 years here. It sometimes hits the ground but it doesn't last beyond a couple of minutes.

Just my few flakes worth,

Shamba

Southern Arizona is very cold today and northern Arizona is inundated with the snow from a large winter storm the past 24 hours. Roads to Flagstaff have been closed just past Sedona, the snow and wind creating great snow drifts make driving too dangerous.

It's 1:00 p.m. here MST, in Phoenix in my front yard and our temps are dropping from mid 40s the past hour I'll bet.

We had good rain from the storm but now the sky is mostly clear and it is cold out there. It's only 48-50 in Phoenix today! And there's a wind of about 15-20 miles and hour. It' supposed to be that cold for the next two days.

I haven't been this cold in years here at home! Of course, it was easily this cold when I lived in the Maryland-DC area.

We're not going to be much over 50 degrees for the next two days and very clear cold nights are starting tonight; temps tonight are supposed to be 19-29 degrees. I’m definitely covering plants for the next 3 nights.

One station this morning was saying it could be cold enough tomorrow morning to maybe worry about rained streets turning to ice. I haven't seen snow flurries here in 20 years and we can get fog in the winter but I've never seen ice on our roads.

I haven't wrapped my head up in years but my ears hurt so after being in the wind today I had to put on something. I just had too much to do today to let it go another day.

People who ccame to warm southern Arizona to see the bowl games here are in for a surprise as far as daily temperature are. Northern Arizona is all snowed in. Most of the roads north from Phoenix were closed the last day or so. The roads may be open this afternoon.

peace, Shamba

A Very Late Merry Christmas ...

2010-12-28T14:16:00.002-07:00

A Very Merry After Christmas and Happy New year!

Four of us had a very festive day at a heavily decorated house with lovely Christmas background music, homemade lasagna, green bean salad, green salad, lots of little chocolate cakes and “things” for dessert. And there were many friendly cats, so it’s good that all of us were fond of cats. :)

I have decoration of evergreens, pine branches and such in the house and it all smells very good.

A neighbor of mine gave me a “branch “ of Brussel sprouts since she had so many herself. I’ve never seen how these grow before. This is a neighbor I’ve given some extra greens to when my CSA share is a little too much for me.

We;’ve had some lovely winter weather in the 70s but this midweek we’re getting a very wet storm and 4-5 nights of freezing nights in the mid-20s. we’ll see if it gets that cold. I put out some extra bedding for the cats to snuggle into.

And I learned to make butternut squash soup this holiday season.
Peace, Shamba

Small Update in December

2010-12-11T10:38:00.002-07:00

I have been doing things but it doesn't interest me to keep track of my small culinary victories like it did.

It seem like all the blogs, (food blogs, I call them) I've been reading for the past two years about food sources, preparing food, cooking, and other food preps are not what they were. There are good reasons for this, employement issues, growing children, just life happening for everyone. Some bloggers have also become more public spokeswomen for the causes they believe in, some are writing books and just involved more in the Real Life than the blogs of Cyber Life. Some post less than they used to.

In any case, I miss reading them the way I used to. Who else was going to tell me that red lentils cooked the fastest of lentils? For this woman who hardly ever knew how to cook much, the past two years have been a great education about food and especially food I'd never tried before. I will keep looking at the blogs that I've become so fond of and I do wish their owners to have the best success at whatever they're doing.

And, I've learned how to make pumpkin soup, it wasn't great but I'll be better next time. I have two large freezer bags of cut up butternut squashes in the freezer and I want to make butternut soup next.

that all for now, don't let the christmas Crazies get to you.

peace, shamba

Not much of an update ...

2010-11-08T11:05:00.002-07:00

Not much to report except I tried a butternut squash recipe last week and it came out okay. the recipe was actually on a label attached to a butternut squash from last year and I wrote down the recipe.

Halve the squash and scoop out strings and seeds.

Stuff with combination of pineapple, cinnamon, brown sugar, some melted butter and bacon and/or cheese.

Put on baking sheet with 1/2 inch of water. Cook for at least 45 minutes.

Pretty tasty and smaller squashes make good side dishes for a meal.

Everything I planted is still growing.

I went through the digital recipes I have from doing cut and paste versions of them from cooking sites and blogs recipes. I have them all consolidated under types of food and I want to print them out at some point.

Someon I used to work with had a massive stroke at work two weeks ago and has never regained consciousness. His family took him off life support last
Friday. I didn't knpw him well but who I did know was kind and good and he lieaves animals and people he took care of behind.

another old friend from high school, has to have neuro surgery in a couple of weeks to correct misalignment of spine somehwere in the cervical vertebrae near the skull.
Eek! But they are all very confident that it will come out all right.

And Saturday night I went to M. 90th (!) birthday party that she threw at a local Greek restaurant. M. is still very sound of mind and spirit and is pretty good in body. She had invited about 60 odd people and I think they all came! there was lots of Greek food, some wine, lots of music, conversation about how we all knew M. and her family, and dancing with the Greek dancers and belly dancers!
A very good time was had by all.

peace, shamba

Decisions .... no, Decisions!

2010-10-28T14:27:00.001-07:00

I've been thinking about these decisions for a year so this is no thoughtless process here.

First on the list: something has needed to be done to my 30 year old bathroom for well, a long time. Tiles are loosening, the soap dish fell out of the tiled wall long ago, the bathroom sink vanity/cabinet leaked for a while and so the floor of the cabinet is disintegrating and some wall board damage near the bathtub shower area. So, there is going to be a remodeling project to fix the WHOLE THING AT ONCE.

After a few weeks of weighing options, I signed a contract with a reputable company I know and we’ll schedule a date when the materials come in. They said it would be just about 2 weeks before they would call me. No debt is involved, just funds I thought I would use for this and some small home improvements. Once this is done, it’s DONE for another 20-30 years, unless I decide I don’t like it and want something else! I sincerely doubt I will tire of it and want another one though. This is also the biggest and most expensive project to be done.

Second, after that will come getting rid of old carpet. I’ve been boxing books--my endless supply of books, it seems-- in anticipation of that. I also have to move all the stuff out of the bathroom that isn’t attached to a wall!

third,there is a storage unit place about a block from me I’m going to visit to rent some space for a couple of months. They are offering a free month’s rent when you sign up for their month to month agreement. I’ve used this place before to store stuff.

Fourth, I’ve planted some lettuce (Romaine) and a bell pepper plant this week. The containers are all in the front of the house for the winter as that is where the sun is that they need. Some of the containers are moving in next to the other flowering plants in containers that flourish year round.

I get greens from the CSA but I really like having some lettuce around all the time.

Fifth, I have a list and things to keep me busy in the next few weeks while I ignore all the political stuff about the election next week. But I did vote and send in my ballot.

Actually there's a lot to want to ignore these day. Corn, oats, wheat and rice have
gone straight up in price since June. People want to invest in something that gives them a return and savings and equities aren't doing it these days so commodities are a big thing to give a return. People always need to eat.

Since I don't get to a grocery store every week these days, I don't track prices of some items like I used to week to week. I go like 2-3 weeks. It seems to me these price rises aren't showing up yet in stores but they'll have to eventually.

peace, shamba

Heat is GONE

2010-10-20T15:06:00.002-07:00

Looks like it's over for this year, nice storm in today and outlook is for next 10 days in 70s and low 80s. We can turn the AC completely off!

Also, picked up romaine lettuce and bell pepper plants to plant in containers in the next few days.

We'll see how that works out.

peace, shamba

the walls are moving in ... it seems

2010-10-13T14:45:00.001-07:00

Seldom in my life have I felt so squeezed I couldn’t find money in my resources for normal/expected increases in daily life. But I feel some economic walls moving inward the past couple of weeks. It’s like I’m watching them actually move and it’s totally unnerving.

Mostly it’s because of many things, property taxes are one. They went up this year, that was expected, but more than I thought. And this is the time of year that my health insurance opens enrollment. This year there are no new plans but the same as last year although I could change plans if I wanted. I don’t want to change but the cost isn’t staying the same, it’s gone up by $40-50 (?) a month. I expected some kind of increase but that seems a lot at once!

As soon as the health care act passed this summer, I received a letter from the state retiree’s plans that warned us all that this would only increase costs including our premiums. I wasn’t really surprised but seeing the costs going up is anxiety provoking. Of course, the co pays will go up as well.

Fortunately, I don’t have lots of meds to take but I have a chunk of stainless steel in my right hip joint that I can’t go with uninsured. As temporary as it was, that year or so with a hip deteriorating saw me going more and more disabled and that’s a frightening feeling. The replaced hip was like a miracle to me postponing aging and disability for a lot more years! (Knocking on wood!) My hip is good is good but it may required revision someday, and my other hip is wearing a little more all the time and maybe I’ll need that replaced someday.

And I’m a few years away from Medicare, and what form will that take by then or not???

And there’s some increase in my taxes coming in 2011 that I have to talk to my accountant about before the end of this 2010.

What I'm personally afraid of is having to do without way beyond what I know how to do! And then doing without even more and more and more down the line.
Doing without can be relative depending on what your normal economic levels are. I've done without at times in my life, but they are nothing compared with what others have had to do without, like really no money for anything but food.
I've always been able to have the right kind of food and enough of it. I cut other things out of the budget at times but never had to worry about food. Whatever I cut out was a matter of time before things got better and I could spend on those things again. And maybe now there will be no better times for a long time or not in my lifetime?

just some serious thoughts today,

shamba

Storms came but storms went ...

2010-10-05T14:19:00.004-07:00

Black, thick low hanging clouds over the valley today. Foreacast said probabilities of off and on thunderstorms and rain throughout today with temps about 85degrees.

I had some errands to do so I plotted my route and started out . I didn't get very far before it started raining, then pouring then fogged up windows and thunder and lighning so I pulled over in an office parking lot to wait it out. I haven't done that in several years but I could not see anything for fogged windows and the rain.
then it started hailing, so I pulled the car around behind the building and some trees to keep the hail from hitting the car. About pea-sized hail, no damage but a lot of noise.

The parking lot was filling with water rapidly and the center of the lot was the low point and it was deep enough to have waves!

I must have waited 20-25 minutes before some rain let up and I could see how deep the water was ... about 6 inches but I didn't want to wait for another rain band to come. I put the defroster on to get rid of the fog, ran window wipers and proceeded to come home.

My house got a lot of rain but no damage but there are outtages and wind damage and who knows how many accidents all over town. Needless to say, I didn't get my errands run but the car isn't covered in dust anymore. Storms should move through by by early evening.

peace, shamba

Medium sized victories ...

2010-09-27T14:25:00.002-07:00

Okay, I finally tried cooking and eating spaghetti squash today. Solar oven cooked squash, salt, pepper and some spaghetti sauce I really like made a decent lunch. I like this dish and it's really easy to make.

I'm in the process of packing up my shelves and shelves of books, rocks, sea shells and various other small souvenirs from trips over the years. No they're not going away, just until I get new flooring. My carpet is a little over "mumble, mumble" years of age and needs to be long-before-this-replaced! Doing anything about the flooring seemed so intimidating with all the stuff that has to be packed and moved around.

I figure I'll pack books, etc. and then arrange for flooring: I don't want any more carpeting though. This is easier for me than trying to decide on what I want, arrange for installation and then have a date to pack everything in a hurry. We'll see how it works out buf so far I've got 2 bookcases packed out of 5 (floor to ceiling books cases in the computer room). All the really breakable things in that room are almost all packed, too. Some spiny seashells need some spacial packing.

Any way, these seemed better than small victories in life so I called them medium sized.

peace, Shamba

Back to Some Regular Business ....

2010-09-24T14:52:00.003-07:00

I've been eating rather much and not the best stuff the past month, burgers, burritos, picked up pizzas eating out with friends to try new stuff and new beer! and not enough green stuff. There were often vegetable that went with all these heavy meals but not much green. This really adds up on the scales and to the system generally within just a month or so!

So, a few vegetarian days and/or lentil/rice dishes will set some of this over indulgence right.

I just didn't want to eat the CSA veggies like I usually do so I lost some eggplant, basil, arugala. Fuzzy grey just doesn't look good on the pretty purple egg plants! Mea culpa!

However, the squashes, melon, great melons! peppers and chiles were eaten or frozen/dried for future use.

Seasons are changing even here in the desert. Lack of sun in the north patio is increasing every day very quickly, plenty left for solar cooking but it really moves every couple of days.

And because the seasons are changing there are herb plants available again at the neighborhood nursery so I picked up some: Italian parsley, thyme, Greek oregano, basil and one more oregano plant. I didn't even have any dried oregano, all gone!, and couldn't find the bottle of thyme I'd bought a couple of weeks ago. It will be nice to have some fresh stuff again. :)

Last year, I just kind of used the fresh stuff and watched how much they grew. This coming fall,winter when the plants really produce I will pick them and get them dried.

I just put leaves and greens put in the dehydrator and leave them sitting for a couple of days without the heater and they dry quite well.

Feeling much better than a couple of weeks ago. 90s instead of 103 is good and the evenings and mornings are almost cool, more like an absenth of warmth than cool yet.

cheers,
Shamba

A Post ...

2010-09-09T12:04:00.001-07:00

Something like a malaise of heat and humidity overtook me the past few weeks. Of course, I'm still cooking, or eating someone elses' cooking, and things generally are going well.

this week my sinus headaches may have morphed into a low grade infection, maybe or not. I get one of these once a year. Usually, extra sleep and good food and laying off any dairy for a couple of weeks clears it up.

that's all for now ...

peace to all, shamba

Herb Garden Report

2010-08-18T14:17:00.006-07:00

Last September, end of September, I got some herb plants; Greek oregano, Italian parsley and basil. I gradually added to this group over November to January; thymes, another basil plant, cilantro, chives and some catnip. I bought a bronze fennel mostly cause I liked the way it looked, pretty metallic touch. It could be used for herbs, though, too.

These plants transplanted well into containers, produced pretty well and thrived until about April-May. I was able to use them in my own cooking and dehydrated some of them. Mostly though, I just liked them growing there and smelling so good.

RESULTS:

The sunshade I put up in mid-May probably helped keep them going a couple of more months. The basil and cilantro went to seed and even clipping off the flowers they didn't do so well and died sometime in June.

The parsley went to seed, too, but it still produced some until about June-July.

The fennel just didn't make it through the heat and the catnips got exposed to the sun too much for a few days and they didn't make it. this was sometime in June.

I had two thyme plants, one was a very lemony thyme. One went just seemed to give up one day and the other one is still alive today.

the oregano plant produced less and less the past 3 months but was alive until I think it drowned the week we had 3 monsoon storms in addition to my watering the day or so before that happened. It just was so water logged after that week I thought that's what killed it.

Factors that I don't know how they affected the plants:

Type of pot they are in;

Whether the plant would do better in the ground and not in a container;

Regularity of feeding, since May this has been spotty;

Life cycle of the particular plant;

Should I be going only by the Low Desert Planting schedule that I have a copy of from a local organization or can't I just grow them whenever they'll grow?

CONCLUSION:

This was a success as far I'm concerned this time around; first time I'd done it, got pretty good production from the plants for 6 or so months.

I want to add some rosemary and get some lavender to grow at the other end of the patio. My friend, S. has lovely lavender growing in her yard and I want to have some, too.

I also had very good time doing all this and I'm going to do it again.

peace, shamba

Still living and eating ;)

2010-08-10T13:47:00.002-07:00

I'm still living and eating but not writing much these days. Mostly I cook a one pot dish with meats, veggies and separately some rice or pasta. Sometimes it's just some veggies and rice for dinner. (I'm very fond of peanut butter/honey/jam sandwiches for lunches which, of course, require no cooking.)

Today, it's eggplant in one solar pot, sweet and red potatoes, onions in another pot and baby beets.

I haven't used egglplant much before this summer but I've been using simple preparations for what the CSA gives me.

peace to all,
Shamba

Dilemmas ...

2010-07-29T12:27:00.002-07:00

To solar cook or not to solar cook …

To eat a peanut butter and honey sandwich or delve into the onions, lentils and rice(they’d have to be cooked)…

To wait and see if the sun comes out of those grey clouds that aren’t raining or not ….

To be one with the plethora (I’ve always loved that word) of tomatoes from the CSA or …

Whether ‘tis nobler to cut the tomatoes and brave the damp heat outside to dehydrate or wait until another using the dreadful humid heat to postpone action …..

Okay, so I made my choice! :)

I cut up the tomatoes and put them outside in the Tulsi oven to dehydrate. I’ve saved some to eat not dehydrated, too. Dehydrating will take a day or two but no more than that. If they are out there too long, like a day too long, they can taste scorched. I swear the last group I did just tasted too crispy and a little scorched. But two days in the sun has come out tasty before.

As for lunch, it’s lentils and rice and onions and some herbs and out in the other solar oven.

And the sun has come out in a clear blue sky after mid day.

Most days of the past two weeks have started very overcast looking like some rain but they clear off and don’t do anything else. My neighborhood finally got some rain last night …. Steady couple of hours, no big wind storm.

The clouds when they are fluffy and white seem like they are ships with puffy sails gliding in a fleet across the sky. The dark low clouds and the puffy fleets are a welcome change from endless hot blue sky. Some people would find endless blue sky hard to ever get tired of but it is possible.

And on Food shopping day from Sprouts, I filled in my gaps in food storage:
Chickpeas, red lentils, yellow split peas, cornmeal, farina, dried apricots, dried cranberries, two jars of that applesauce I really like from Sprouts, a special on an attractive jar of apricot jam so I got one of them.

Looking over their bulk spices section to see about having lemon grass or sweet grass. I didn’t get anything there but picked up two bunches of fresh parsley to probably dehydrate if I don’t get it all used in a few days. I’m completely out of ANY kind of parsley, and my parsley plant isn’t producing much of anything right now.

Two dilemmas solved today. I've got lots more I just don't want to do any of the choices I have!

peace, Shamba

Seeking Chile ....

2010-07-26T10:28:00.004-07:00

I was going to you blog to look at some recipes bu I get a message about your blog being by invitation only.That is if you're able to continue the blog. thinking of you and hoping everything is well with you, your puppies, your other family members.

be well and peace,
Shamba

Not much to say lately ....

2010-07-20T11:59:00.002-07:00

Not much doing these days but solar cooking outside. Solar cooking these days is as much of a one pot affair as I can possibly make it because of the heat. So, meals are meat with vegetables, rice with lentils or beans and vegetables in a side pot. Actually that’s 2 pots, I know. 

Dehydrating tomatoes this Monday and Tuesday.

Heat so far this summer: We usually have an “average” of 18 days of 110 or more in the summer, figured as June, July and August. So far, we’ve had 8-9 days of these. I don’t remember how many we had last summer.

I've been working on sewing/mending projects inside. If I can get the simple mending stuff done, or get rid of the garment, I'll have a one foot high pile of "stuff" gone!

onwards, shamba

Surviving Mid-july ....

2010-07-09T12:50:00.002-07:00

What an irritating week! No matter what little or large thing I did it seemed fraught with small irritating obstacles to whatever m y goal was! And it’s too hot and humid to get pissed off about things …. So I growled a lot this week at various things which all came out right with just a little more effort on my part and patience. Mostly this was the last part of closing my mother’s estate.

Anyway, I’m swimming in squashes and tomatoes from last week and this weeks’ CSA shares. Also, great tasting cantalope and watermelons from them the past two weeks! YUMMY! I somehow never bought watermelons for myself but I had no trouble eating up the one I had last week. 

There are two new people running the CSA pickup where I go. The previous lady has moved out of state to be nearer her family, I’m told. These kind people had our veggies waiting for us in very good sturdy tote bags, with our names tagged on the bags.

They can hold our veggies for us afor a couple of days if we miss the pickup day, which is very nice of them. We have a small group that uses this pickup point; there are several others in the metro area.

Re: Herb garden. The cilantro and parlsey are gone, my friend S. told me hers always die in the summer, and the basil doesn’t seem to want to do well. But the thymes, chives and oregano are still doing pretty well. I’m not getting a lot out of the thyme and oregano but there’s enough of it to use for what I want about once or twice a week. The CSA has been providing fresh basil leaves the past month so I’m using that or drying it.

One catnip plant is still doing okay the other has died. I grew these for the two cats that like them so much.

Re: Moonsoon possibilities and summer: Our dew points are up in the 40s and it feels like it.

The last 2 weeks the whole rest of the country has had truly horrid hot temps for the east coast and the midwest, but so far here we haven’t had unusual heat for us. We’ve had seasonal temperatures since May.

But we have two months to go yet and we could get some records temps.
Re water: I don’t think Phoenix has ever had water rationing but I’ll bet it’s coming sometime in the next few years.

Utilities and city government encourage water conservation but the more we conserve the more the water rates go up.

Our water shed got good rain this year so we’re in good shape. All our reservoirs in that watershed are full, that doesn’t include the big Lake Mead or Lake Powell up near Nevada.

Hoping for a good monsoon the next 2 months,
shamba

for Sunday dinner, July 4th!-
-corn on the cob roasted in solar oven ...
--tomatoes and squash sliced served and eaten raw ... or better with some vinagrette (SP?
--chicken breast and potatoes roasted in solar oven ...
-corn bread baked after main dishes in solar oven.

Peace, shamba

Back from the sea ...

2010-06-16T14:20:00.003-07:00

I was in San Diego area. My brother and I put our parents ashes in the sea; it went perfectly. We got along well the 3 days I was there. It was very nice to see his friend, R. again. The weather was very overcast with the marine layer of clouds and cool and drizzly. It was really nice for a few days.

In the meantime, when I went to pick up my CSA stuff today, they had kindly saved my veggies from last week. I am inundated with tomatoes and various squash not to mention POTATOES! I also got the peaches from last week and the sweet corn, YUMMMMMM!

Guess I’ll be dehydrating with everything I have to dehydrate within the next few days. I also got myself several red bell peppers which I love dehydrated so I’ll have to get busy today and tomorrow.

Cats and plants doing well thanks to my friend, S., who took care of them while I was gone. No problems flying either,but it was during the weekdays so security lines and other airport things were not so busy.
Peace, shamba

A Short Break from computers

2010-06-06T19:03:00.001-07:00

and emails for a couple plus a couple of days.

peace to all,
shamba

Busy Afternoon ....

2010-06-01T18:15:00.003-07:00

We had some overcast today so I got out and put the shadecloth over the herbs; not the greatest construction in the world but I will be refining it over the next few weeks. I think I should have moved the plants further away from that block wall given how hot the wall can get. I actually have plenty more shade cloth if I want to make aome other arrangement.

The shadecloth is fastened to the wall and fastened temporarily on some plants stakes or poles in the front and side. that given me room to pull the canopy away and water easily. Anyway, that was enough for today.

A peek underneath ....

peace, shamba

Sunday Cooking ...

2010-05-30T17:20:00.005-07:00

My goal in cooking is to have food for 1-3 days. Of course, this involves leftovers; leftovers that can taste good cold or re heated. The cold food will sound better and better in the next week or so.

Today it’s a turkey loaf in the Sun oven and a veggie dish in the Tulsi oven. They could both be stacked in the Sun oven but the potato dish was an afterthought so I just put it in the Tulsi oven. The potato dish is just, sweet potato and red potato chopped medium fine, a little salt, pepper, fresh parsley and dried dill. I usually add some olive oil if I’m roasting them in the electric oven but this time I'm doing without the oil.

Anyway that’s enough food for at least 2-3 days with some fruit or salad greens with it or as snacks. We got some tasty apricots with the CSA stuff last week.

Next is putting up shade screen over the container herbs tomorrow. I feel like there's a race on to do thing before the end of this week! Temps will increase a lot this week, we’ll be at 105 by the end of this week; 110 over next weekend. We’ve had a good May but the heat comes some time.

peace, shamba

Thinking about the coming heat ...

2010-05-26T11:24:00.003-07:00

Some news from the big world: For the 4th year in a row, at the end of winter, the bee hives in this country, US, still have a lot of dead or mostly missing bees from the ones that were in the hive at the beginning of winter. This is the 4th spring in a row for this creepy disappearing bees issue. It’s also in other parts of the world. I don’t think we have a real handle on what causes this, too complex an issue for easy answers.

I'm putting up the shade cloth over the container herbs this week. They've done well so far but they'll need some help in the next few weeks to keep on going this summer. Actually, I don't really know if they will survive the summer but I'll give it my best effort.

The cat’s claw in the back wall is growing a lot faster since I’ve been watering this past week. Just a little regular water makes it grow like crazy. I’m working on getting it across the top of half of the block wall so it will help deflect the heat and sunlight that the wall absorbs in the hot weather. So far, the plant itself seems to agree with the way I want it to go.

And, our hot weather isn’t here yet. We hit 101 on Friday May 21 but we get another reprieve from triple digits for about another 5 days as a front blows through. Today was just dusty and windy but the next two days will be much lower in temps, about 80 degrees.

Mmm, the very old fridge is very inefficient also and it's freezing everything in it again. I'm sure this takes up a chunk of electricity.

Also, I got some window curtains on a very marked down deal and a Penny's card discount for fabric with thermal backing. I dug the card out of it's hiding place and used it. The thermal backing is supposed to help cut not only light but heat/and or cold. It definitely cut light and heat coming in a window with indirect light. Old curtains will be washed and used when clean when the new curtains get too furry from cats rubbing against them! Now, I’m thinking to do something with those very ancient drapes to the patio door. I’d get those cleaned and save them, too. There is how-many-years? of cat fur, dust, dirt and stains and who knows what else on those drapes!

I'm thinking with the way things are going in the economic and financial market place, I'm better off spending money on goods that will help the house be more energy efficient and more livable.

peace, shamba

May 10 and 11th and 12th

2010-05-13T12:20:00.007-07:00

Have spent several days with solar oven cooking different things:

1-Beef tenderloin, yes this turned out really well in the global sun oven. I put it in frozen and it came out pretty well. I left it longer than I intended to, about 2 hours instead of 1 ½ hours. It was a little dry but still pretty tender. It was well done, a little more than I like it. I don’t purchase this expensive meat and cook it very often—maybe once or twice a year—but it is my favorite meat meal.
It didn’t taste like grilled on a mesquite fire, of course, but pretty good anyway.

I like vegetarian food but I’m still the meat lover I was raised to be on Midwestern WASPy cooking. :)

2-Baked sweet potatotes. These were better than I thought they would be with a little butter, salt and pepper on them.

3-Eggs. Hard boiled eggs; 4 eggs in global oven for a little over an hour. Actually, it was an hour and 15 minutes.

There are a couple of other egg recipes I want to try that I found at the solarovenchef.blogspot.com and solarcookingathome.blogspot.com -- that last one is Sharlene T.'s blog.

I’m swimming in potatoes from the CSA! I’m eating them but they keep coming in good numbers. It's a good thing I like potatoes; mostly chpped up, like diced but not tiny cubes, with onions and just roasted.

We also got eggs this week, so it seems a good time to make the grits,chiles,eggs and cheddar cheese dish and freeze a chunk of it.

Peace, Shamba

new and some stuff to wonder about ....

2010-05-06T13:55:00.002-07:00

News lately:

--the financial situation in Greece in still not quite finalized, I think, so many times it’s been reported as “all taken care of” I don’t know if the latest version of their bailout/stabilization is done or not. A section of the Greek public is so worked up their demonstrations turn into riots and people are being killed in these demonstrations now. Did this influence the stock market drop today ?

--US Stock markets this week have had some losses, but today they had a big spike drop of almost 1000 points. They came back up though and show a total loss in points today of 347.80 to 10,520.32; S&P had 1128.15 Some commentators think the Greek and European financial situation is going to get worse and is a picture of the kind of austerity measure we'll have to take.

what I want to know, and I don't anyone is going to tell me!, is does that mean I have until the end of 2010 to get some more things done at the house?

--Bad oil spill from BP rig in the Gulf of Mexico; spill is growing hugely and could be spread around the west coast of Florida to the Keys and then up the East Coast.
What does this do to the temperature of water in regards to hurricane formation???
Is it going to hit the gulf Coastline, so far it's just hanging out there in the Gulf and hasn't come onto shore yet?

--The 99 weeks of unemployment that have been extended by Feds over the past year or so has not been extended to more. So, those people because of the recession for the past two, almost 2 ½ years, are going to run out of their UE benefits quite soon if they haven’t already--how many people is that and will they all be on the streets?

I think they just drop off any unemployment stat sheets and will that make the emplyment rates look better?

--Much more unemployment is probably coming with the education cuts across the country and also municipal and state workers will be let go starting with the fiscal year beginning July 1. Of course, many government employees have been let go all along the last year anyway.

Local weather news, no 100 degree days yet.

shamba

One more thing off my list of to do... Water related ..

2010-04-29T13:24:00.007-07:00

this is partly prep stuff and partly just maintenance on the house and partly, "help, this needs to be fixed!"

My very old toilet has been on it's last legs for at least a year, leaking now and then, but it increased in leaking the past couple of months. Also, all the faucets in the house seem to all start leaking badly in the past few months. did they all decide to leak together to get me to do something?! I was amazed at how much water these drips totalled up to after I plugged a sink one day to see how much water was being wasted. Wow, waaay more than I realized.

So, after checking on kinds of toilets available and some other realated info, I got a new one yesterday and all the dripping faucets have been totally fixed. So, the new toilet uses much less water than the previous one (we found a date of 1968 on the old one!) that's about how old the buildings are but I didn't realize it had been THAT long.

Yes, someone had to bring all the stuff and install it. Everyone I know who used to help me with such things have aged or developed their own problems about doing moveing and lifting of things like old/new toilets. That's one thing about getting older, sometimes you have to pay more for things to be done than doing them yourself with help.

I've also been much better about using water generally. When a cup of bowl has a little water in it, I don't pour it down the drain anymore, I had it to a plastic pitcher I have and use it to water my plants. When I change the cats' water, I pour that in the plants and give the cats fresh water. I also have a 2 1/2 gal bucket under the hose faucet in the back of the patio so that catches anything there. there's not too much that's comes out of there unless I'm using the hose but whatever falls is usable from the bucket.

peace to all,
shamba

more pics ...

2010-04-20T13:54:00.004-07:00

It's hard to get a good picture with the contrast of shadow and sun so stark in the afternoons .....earlier in the day with the whole back patio in sun it's easier to get a better picture.

Some of the container herbs ..

2010-04-20T13:26:00.002-07:00

Tax Day 2010 already!

2010-04-15T11:24:00.003-07:00

Notes from this past week or so:

Quake news on April 5 or 6: On local news yesterday evening: Calexico, California has a water plant off line for at least 60 days as a result of the quake a day or so ago. So they have to conserve water.

Channel 12 talked about what happens here, Phoenix metro, if the big One hits southern California. Well, they’d be coming here, we ‘vet always known that. Such an event in California would interrupt 60% of our fuel supply and 90% (!) of our food supply. That’s what they said. I knew the fuel supply would be affected, I guessed by about half, but I didn’t know the food supply percentage was so high.

Spent a really lovely afternoon at S.’s house and met many of her cats! I took two rolls of film of the cats. Most of them were quite obliging to have their pics taken.  I got a couple of ceramic pots for her. I needed some more to choose from to translplant some things in this week.

S. also has lavender and a an interesting looking catctus/succulent that she said I could have some of.

Busy week, I ran a lot of errands today, some to look at things, some to acquire supplies—really materials for the herb container garden in the patio area.
I picked up a card reader for the digital camera cards, previous one was broken; picked up a roll of shadecloth or sun screen fabric; a small solar stake light and some masonry nails. The fabric isn’t needed right away but in a few weeks—2-4-weeks, I’ll probably need it.

Moved all the herbs into the back patio. I moved some of the aloes to the front porch and the plant stand there. They’ll do better in that sunlight for the next 6 months than the herbs will. And if, probably really “when” not if, the herbs need to be covered with the shade/sun screen fabric they’ll all be in one place I can do it easily.

Also, added a sage plant to the herb group.

Picked up my 2009 taxes today and my mom’s estate taxes and made my weekly vegetable run for CSA veggies. I signed up for another round of CSA foods. I'm actually catching up with the overflow of veggies I've had in the past few weeks--passing some on to S. and a neighbor, dehydrating all the dill, and just eating more.

the DJA has gone up to 11,1??? this week.

cheers,
shamba

It’s getting warm in the car when I’m out—lots warmer. We’ll come close to 90 degrees this week.

Easter Monday ...

2010-04-05T14:11:00.002-07:00

Another beautiful day in the high 70s. :)

Transplanted into better and larger pots: Italian parsley, Lemon thyme, French thyme, Greek oregano, and cilantro.

Still out in the front of the house: Sweet basil, 2 bronze fennel plants, and chives.

Tomorrow, I’m doing the 3 cat nip plants into bigger containers and they’ll be out front for the cats to use/play with. The two tortiseshell females, Tortie and Chloe, particularly like these plants.

Hung up my two clay sun faces on the patio wall facing the bedrooms. They look better over the plants and I get to see them this way when I go by the patio doors. I left the other face on the wall facing the plants.

Monday morning, lots of smaller earthquakes today south of the Imperial Valley/Salton Sea area between Baja and mainland Mexico, The reason is the Sunday quake in Baja California (near Mexicali) which rated a 7.2 on the Richter scale. K. called me from San Diego yesterday afternoon to tell me about the quake they felt quite a bit in La Jolla. He said the buildings swayed a little (they live on the 3rd floor of 5 floors) and the pool water sloshed out of the pool itself. He’s never been in a quake in La Jolla. He lived in Palo Alto when the big quake hit in the Bay Area in 1989.

He was the quake happened only about 100 miles from Yuma and so that’s why Yuma felt it so much. A lot of people in Phoenix also reported feeling the quake, I didn’t but I was asleep! This is the first time I can remember so many people feeling and earthquake in Phoenix that came from the California or the Mexico border area.

Lots of home videos from Phoenix and Yuma, that show water sloshing around inn pools and over flowing the sides of the pools because of the quake.

I hope it doesn’t happen again very soon.

Peace, shamba

Herbs and some spring organizing ...

2010-03-29T14:10:00.005-07:00

I transplanted the parsley and oregano in bigger pots this afternoon. Boy, were they root bound. Anyway, they are in the back patio area now,there’s plenty of sun there now during the day. I’m going to try the shade cloth thing when the sun is stronger and the heat is here in the back patio.

The container herbs can just be out in the sun for some time each day during the heat and then be put in the shade against the house wall but the shade cloth makes more sense. I'll have to ask a couple of people how that might work.

I went to Safeway to check on produce prices, just out of curiosity. I really haven’t looked at much produce there since I joined the CSA. I have bought some apples and bananas the past 2 months though. All, I can see is that Safeway has slashed prices again or maybe temporarily on most everything especially lettuces. All the kinds of lettuce were like 10 bunches or pounds for $10.00! Everything else, including the sweet peppers, were pretty much the way they were 2-3 months ago.

I checked the jam/jelly aisle and the lentils and bean prices. The jam, at least this week, is lower than I bought the last time I was there. The lentils and beans seemed much the same.

We are fortunate in the Phoenix area to have a lot of competition among several grocery chains. We also have a number of farmer’s markets available valley wide every week almost all year round.

The last few months, Safeway and Basha’s in particular seem to be in some kind of price war. Or at least the Basha’s near me is in a lot of competition with the Safeway a mile away. The Safeway is much bigger and has a wider selection of food but the Basha’s is in very easy walking distance. Basha’s has also filed for Chapter 11 the past year.

I, then, walked around the corner to Whitfill nursery and checked out their herbs. No cilantro there today but I got some English thyme and a “Bronze Fennel.” The fennel is really quite pretty with that bronze color and the slender branches/shoots it sends out. I looked at the French thyme and decided I liked it a lot, too but that’s for another time. I looked at the rosemarys and the lavender, too.

yesterday was a beautiful day for Palm Sunday!

I attached and cleaned out the frige today. I tossed, scrubbed and cleaned out the whole things, crisper, middle and freezer part.

I had to throw out some greens leaves as they were at the end of their lifespan. But I chopped the rest of the chard, Chinese cabbage and spinach together, rinsed them and then decided to just use them as a salad with the rice and lentils that were in the global sun oven today. I mix the lentil dish and the greens together as a giant tossed salad with vinaigrette. Mine was an Italian type but I’m sure other kinds would work well, too.

It was a pleasure to chop all these greens with the new knife. The right tools DO make a lot of difference no matter what you’re doing in life.

Leftover greens get used tonight or tomorrow for a potato and greens dish. Or maybe I’ll just eat them as a salad dish with the leftover lentils.

Used the rosemary and tarragon that I had purchased at the grocery for dehydrating in the global oven. They were getting rid of a lot of packages of herbs at half price, so I figured the purchase was worth a try to dehydrate. Normally, the packages are like a little over $3.00.

peace, Shamba

Catching up this week.

2010-03-26T19:36:00.000-07:00

March 26,

We had our association HOA board meeting last night. It’s been very quiet around the place. We’ve had no major repairs to make since we replaced the damaged rafter holding up the front porch roofs. We have a substantial amount in our bank accounts! The increase in fees is helping us by us putting the increase away to take care of property insurance, which is what it was intended to do. For the foreseeable future, we’ll have a positive cash flow. We have some HOA dues delinquencies but not too many. Here hoping we don’t have any really big unexpected things come up like we did the whole new water line thing about two years ago. :0 We made major broken line repairs over and over and then finally had to redo the fresh water lines, those old pipes just wouldn’t hold together anymore.

Our units are generally worth about $50,000-55,000 these days. That’s just about the 50% decline in prices for the Phoenix area during the last two-three years. A couple of units have sold in the past two years. Our property managers said they’re beginning to see some properties move a little more than they did 6 months ago. They’re hopeful it will get better and one of our board members said we have to wait another couple of years for things to get better. He’s hopeful too, that things will increase in value. I think he’d like to get out of being a landlord himself here although he is a good landlord and good for us to have on the board.

I didn’t mention anything about the further deterioration of housing and any other market. We didn’t have time for those kinds of discussions and needed to get a lot of business done in our time allotted. One member had worked 12 days in a row and looked really kind of tired. He works for an airline, counter agent. Our property managers are good but they work regular hours and attend some board meetings during the week so they were ready to go home and forget work.

March 22,

Interesting, to say the least, point from Jim Puplava at www.financialsense.com this past Saturday, March 20, 2010. He has a weekly show that is available to listening on the website in a variety of formats. The topics and guests for each hour are listed at the website. I don’t listen to everything every week, but this past week I listened to the MP3 version of Hour 2 on the topic: “Turning Point: Change Ahead for Markets and Economy.” This part of the program was about 1 hour and 15 minutes. About 35-40 minutes into the program at the end of this Turning Point Segment Puplava says and I paraphrase I’m not direct quoting. As matter of fact I think he’s quoting a guest from the hour 1 of this date.

Everybody known a major financial crisis bigger than we’ve ever seen before is coming. What nobody knows, what nobody is smart enough to know, whether it’s 3 months, 6 months, 1 year or 2 years. Big money is preparing for this because everyone knows it is coming.
: (

Cheers,

herb cooking class ...

2010-03-19T10:02:00.000-07:00

I attended my cooking with herbs class Thursday morning. This was certainly well worth doing! there were 15 of us in the class and a knowledgeable and happy instructor. Apparently, the business is doing very well these days.

I am thinking a Yeast Bread Primer might be fun and useful to go to in May and the Indian Cooking class they’re offering.

In any case:
1. Harvested some parsley and basil and dehydrated them! Herbs are still really growing.
2. Huge pot of beef barley soup plus various veggies. Only I threw in some well cooked wheat berries instead of the barley.
3. Lantana plant in front is growing bigger every single day. It’s in the 80 the past few days and everything that can do so is putting forth blooms of one kind or another. Citrus blossoms will pop open any day on the two trees we have in our area in the back of the townhouse complex. Also, the pomegranate tree will bloom in the next month.
4. Tomorrow it’s roasting veggies to catch up with CSA veggies.

Peace, shamba

I wonder these things ....

2010-03-09T16:54:00.002-07:00

I wonder … but I don’t expect anyone to really have the answers, I just wonder these things from time to time and they’ve been piling up in my head so here they are.

I wonder when or if we’ll start hearing the “D”epression word instead of the “R”ecession word or the “G”reater “R”ecession words …?

I wonder when we’ll have to watch all the local gas stations for which ones have gas to buy rather than watching which one has the best prices …

When will car dealerships, or any auto repair place, not have regular deliveries of the parts and stuff they need to repair cars?

Will they just say, “Come back tomorrow or a few days, we might/may have it then?”

I wonder when nail polish and nail polish remover won’t be so easily available …. I like polish and use it but I don’t have a clue what it’s made of, but something in it must be related to petroleum …

What about the elements of hair coloring and highlights that I get done by a good friend who has a local business …

When will there be fewer ball point pens—surely, their plastic and ink related to petroleum?

Will there ever be fewer kinds of cell phones to choose from?

Digital cameras come in all shapes and sizes of Mega Pixels? When will we see fewer of those available in stores?

And how long will film keep existing and will they stop developing/processing it? There are still people using film out there and I’m one of them although I have a small digital camera as well.

What about flatscreens used for tvs and computer display screens?

When do all the elements that go into electronics start becoming scarcer? Recycling of electronic parts, that’ll be a bigger business than it is now . ..

Will the city of Phoenix ever tell residents they’ll HAVE to conserve water?
Not just “encouraging” conservation but really having to learn to handle water differently to conserve it …

When or will local governments in the USA encourage residents to use rain water and rain barrels to help provide water for themselves? This assumes that governments/utilities will still have a part in delivering water to communities … .

How long will professional sports teams keep traveling around the US when there’s a crunch on gasoline/jet fuel? (I’m thinking of the US here but other countries have the professional sports, too.)

Will the PGA, WPGA, NFL, NHL and NBA (I’m probably leaving some sport league out of this that I don’t know about) just have smaller geographic groupings of competing teams? Maybe individual sport franchises in certain cities will just fold and not exist?

University and college sports teams and their various tiers of competition? Will they just wither away over time?

Will all kinds of tv get less over time, whether it’s cable/satellite/broadcast? Time and energy will be too expensive or available for these to exist the way they do now? Just paid tv/internet for those who can afford it?

Will grocery stores or farmer's markets have signs in places where certain foods used to be like "Bananas/Certain meats sold out and no more expected for a month or so." Or "No more Pomegranates/Apples/Pears/Almonds/Walnuts, etc. until next year." Meaning, next year's harvest, our allotment of seasonal food is gone for the year.

it's hard to push thoughts like these away anymore in the last couple of years, on this blustery, squally day with bursts of moderate rains. Another storm!

Shamba

one more storm

2010-03-08T10:02:00.000-07:00

March 7th, Another Sunday of rain, moderate to heavy rain at times all day long. It was lovely, really. And we’re not going to have the clear sunny weather until Wednesday morning because something else is passing through Arizona tonight and tomorrow. Honest to god I could have used a rain barrel this winter!

The desert parks in town are all green, green, green. March is here and I haven’t made it out to the desert to drive around and see the green growth plus some flowers that are out there. I just need to get up some morning, take the camera and take off in the car.

We’re only 6-8 weeks from May, too. The temps will go from just around 70 to 80 and then suddenly to 100 in those weeks since we usually break 100 sometime in early May.

That’s all for now, Shamba

What a beautiful day!

2010-03-04T12:55:00.008-07:00

Cool breeze but our usual sunny skies with some white clouds! the citrus buds are about to pop open but haven't yet. The pomegrante tree is all leafed out. It only take 3 weeks once it gets a very few leaves open.

I put rice out in the Tulsi oven for cooking in the back patio. It's the first solar cooking dish of the year. :)

March 4th Veggies Are –

Carrots Sweet Potatoes
Citrus Mustard Green
Swiss Chard Lettuce Heads
Dill Turnips

Oranges! And the Chard is gorgeous and lettuce heads HOORAY! Things look very familiar to eat this week. That means just the reading of the names makes me want to eat them. :)

All, i mean ALL of my grains were gone after 2 months of using what I had on hand, I've very fond of cooked cereal for breakfast and that's where most of the grains go. So, I trundled off to Sprouts to fill out my grains list. Picked up some bell peppers for very inexpensive eac. I'm going to dehydrate them in the next few days.

Feeling better than I have for about a week.

cheers,
shamba

Update march 1st

2010-03-04T12:50:00.000-07:00

Monday
I have a list of preps and I just keep working on going down the list. However, it seems like the past month I feel an urgency to get more done but at the same time I feel like a deer looking at the oncoming headlights of some big thing! It kind of saps the energy,too. and makes my neck and shoulder muscles tighten up after reading about this stuff lately. Need to do my shoulder stretches more or stop reading so much stuff lately.

I think this: "Well, look, there is that big Thing/collapse/market crash/outcry against city budget and it's coming and omy, it's as big and terrifying as the doomer blogs said it would be!"

More people of my circles are willing to talk about things aren't really going to get better for a long time. I'm not sure that's good or not except it might be a sign that more people are recognizing it's not going to be recovery by spring.

There's a small nursery that advertises "Vegetable Tube" gardening. I'm going to stop by there later this week and find out what that's about. Anyone here know anything?

Sunday

A nice rainy day again! I like the idea of being inside on these cold wet days we’ve had but on the other hand, I’d like a week or so inbetween them so things could dry out a little more. My plants love the water from the sky though. My parsley has lost it’s mind (!) and has a couple of really thick tall stalks on it. After this clears out today, we should have a clear week at least so far.

Ran out of any kind of bread so to have some available I did a quick bread today, caught up with the turnips and roasted them and other root veggies. I realized I could use the oven for both at the same time. Used up the last of the dehydrated vegetable broth to drink while I was cooking. Last two pieces of pizza are for dinner. Plenty of green stuff for salads.
That’s all for now,
shamba

Snippet of Phoenix Budget Struggle

2010-02-26T10:56:00.005-07:00

From www.ktar.com:

by KTAR Newsroom (February 24th, 2010 @ 1:27pm) PHOENIX - Hundreds of Phoenix firefighters have voted unanimously to take a 2 percent pay cut and four furlough days over the next two years to save jobs.

The head of the United Phoenix Firefighters Association Pete Gorraiz (guh-'RYE-us) says the pay cuts will save three engine companies and 42 jobs.

Gorraiz says the Phoenix Fire Department will lose 40 jobs but those will be offset by retirements that will happen by June, meaning that no firefighters will have to face layoffs.

Phoenix Fire Chief Bob Khan tells KTAR Radio in Phoenix that firefighters like what they do, believe in what they do and want to protect the community and save jobs for fellow firefighters.

The final city budget hasn't been set but it will be in early March. No matter what they do the city council's action seem to enrage somebody, lots of somebodies. the public hasn't come to realize yet that less and less is what's ahead of us for a few years.

I don't blame "somebodies" for being angry. If I was 30 years younger--I'm so old I can say that now!--I would be very angry for the things I would not have in my life that I expected to have, and angry because of my children not having these things either. And not just expected material things but the choices of traveling, pursuing almost any interest I wanted and finding people to share that will also be lessened in the coming years.

Peace , shamba

Vegetable report for the week ... :)

2010-02-26T10:35:00.004-07:00

this weeks veggies:
Carrots Kohlrabi
Rubi Stripes Tango/Lola Rosa Mix
Spinach Endive
Cilantro Citrus

I still have veggies leftover from last week but I'm doing better at managing them all week by week. also, one solution to too many veggies is to give some to neighbors or friends. It keeps things from being wasted which is my main concern. Maybe it will introduce them to some new things as well.

One of my neighbors got a deal on some russet potatoes and wanted to know if I could use, like if I “ate potatoes”. So, now I have about 8 medium sized russets and I gave her some of my CSA share. She didn’t ask for the greens but I know that she really likes greens and she took spinach and a portion of all the other greens we had this week.

As for tonights dinner, its a potato, greens, cheddar cheese and onion casserole.
this recipe is from the Crooked Sky Farms Recipes is below. I'm not in Tucson but the recipes are on the Tucson site.
Crooked Sky Farms Recipes

Greens and Potatoes Casserole
Adapted from Cooks.com
8 cups water
2 bunches chopped greens
6 or more red potatoes, sliced
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 or more onions, sliced
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup (4 ounces) shredded cheese
1/2 cup vegetable broth
Preheat oven to 350°

Bring water to a boil in a large pot. Add greens, and cook.
5 minutes or until tender, stirring occasionally. Drain; set aside.
Arrange potato slices in a single layer in oiled baking dish; top with single layer of onion slices. Sprinkle with 1/4 teaspoon salt; top with half of greens mixture.
Sprinkle with 1/2 cup cheese. Repeat layers once, ending with the greens. Cover with remaining slices of potatoes, and sprinkle with remaining 1/2 cup cheese.

Pour broth evenly over potato mixture, and sprinkle with remaining 1/4 teaspoon salt. Cover with foil.

Bake at 350° for 45 minutes.

Uncover and bake 30 minutes or until lightly browned and potatoes are tender.

And I'm sure this can be done in the solar oven as well as my inside oven. Maybe the potatoes won't brown on top but it will be all cooked and taste quite good, I'm sure.

Peace, Shamba

Current Food Sources

2010-02-22T11:24:00.002-07:00

Boy, was I ambitious yesterday! (Saturday Feb 20 actually)

Tried cooked wheatberries (white winter wheat from CSA, not the hard red winter wheatberries I’ve bought before) with some milk and brown sugar for breakfast. It was okay. Even the overnight soaked wheatberries were still very chewy. I didn’t mind that so much but I thought they’d be a little softer. I think this would be better cooked in milk rather than just adding the milk to it after it’s been cooked in water.

I’ve had a terrible craving for something sweet like pumpkin pie all week. The pumpkin pie taste simply wouldn’t leave me alone so I made one yesterday. I had the pumpkin puree, added spices, egg and the condensed milk and used a pie shell I had in the freezer but it wasn’t homemade shell. I was so hungry for the pie I ate a 4th of it! But it satisfied my craving for that flavor finally.

Al, I made red lentil soup for the first time. It was okay but I’d want to use more veggie or chicken flavored broth with it next time. I had a recipe that used cumin, salt and pepper and some lemon juice and some olive oil on top at serving in the bowl. I think this might be a “learned flavor” for me.

And some chicken with veggies and leftover wheatberries is the last thing I cooked. The chicken was all thawed and needed to be cooked.

That leaves a lotta dishes to be washed one way or the other loaded in the dishwasher or the sink …

And notes about current Food Sources

1. CSA vegetables. These are more greens that I thought but I want to do a whole year’s worth of subscriptions to see what they grow all year around. I wish we could get a few citrus each week. I’d imagine we’d get summer squashes later on and I hope some sweet peppers and tomatoes.

2. Sprouts. This is where I get dry bulk things: flour, sea sale, cornmeal, farina, oats, sugar, rices, legumes, dried fruits, cereals to cook. I also can buy bulk spices here. Sometimes I buy some applesauce I particularly like here as well as canned pumpkin and sweet potato. I like these canned products rather than the similar ones at the grocery stores. They also have the usual food store supply of produce, meat, dairy etc. I also buy those things at this store.

3. Safeway and Bashas’ are closest grocery stores. I still buy peanut butter ( a LOT for the collapse is needed you know ;)) jams, maybe meat and dairy, fruit, maybe some veggies I don’t get in the CSA but I’m trying not to do that as long as I have the CSA membership. So far, it’s working for the veg.

4. Farmer’s Market weekly about 2 miles from here. This might be a more economical place to get fresh produce than the CSA pickup but I like the variety and figuring out how to prepare and eat the CSA veggies.

Peace, shamba

Back to regular routine

2010-02-19T12:36:00.001-07:00

Back to my regular routine as of today.

My brother came into town on Monday from San Diego. He was originally going to drive in today but changed his mind and came Monday. He didn’t stay with me this time, this was better!

We had to make some decisions about personal property of my parents, pictures and some other estate related material. That went well; we made some decisions and let others go for a while. We were invited out to meet some old friends of his from grade school! These guys have kept in touch for almost 50 years. :)

Then, of course, my brother wanted to buy me dinner out which we did and he also picked up some subways one day for us to eat. Subway day was the day I decided to make a rice dish and vegetable soup so when he arrived with the sandwiches we had a lot to eat that lunch and those leftovers for dinner.

He took off on Thursday about noon. We had a good time but my plans for my vegetables kind of went out the window.

So, today I had to take stock of what was leftover and what was in the CSA batch I picked up Thursday afternoon. Actually, Wednesday noon is the scheduled time for veg pickup but the people who handle the distribution also have a regular office for their regular jobs in the hospital complex. So, when we miss a pickup day we can pickup the veggies Thursday or Friday. They have them bagged and in the fridge for us. This is very nice of them, I think!

I tried something Chile suggested for last week’s veggies—I had sweet potatoes--and it is quite good! My friend, S., also took some of the green I got last week. She liked the fennel and the dill quite a bit. I had two fennel then to use in the recipe below. I had dehydrated a lot of the fresh dill. I hadn’t done that before and I also haven’t really cooked with dill before.

Anyway, Chile’s suggestion was:
If you have any sweet potatoes left, a member gave me a very tasty recipe. Dice the sweet potatoes. Cut the fennel bottoms into bite-sized pieces. Toss both with a little oil, salt & pepper, and some tarragon. Roast until tender. It was very yummy for lunch yesterday. And, yes, I cooked it in the solar oven. :)

If you don't have any sweet potatoes left, try it with the carrots. Then serve with some kind of starch like pasta, potatoes, or rice. I suppose you could substitute dill for the tarragon, too, to use some of the dill.

Thanks for the ideas, Chile!

Peace to all , Shamba

Veggies veggies, veggies !

2010-02-12T13:55:00.003-07:00

I have been remiss in keeping up with my vegetables from the CSA. Actually, I just haven't felt very energetic this week. My cold seems to wax and wane with the rainy weather. The next week is up to 75 degrees so I'm hoping warmer weather will make me feel more energetic.

So, today is Roasting beets and Roasting Root Veggies. The roasted veggies are good with just about anything so they’re quite easy to eat. They’re also good enough that I want to eat them so they’ll be gone in a day or so.

I’m also going to have to think interms of whole meals being vegetarian instead of just side dishes. That’ll be new for or at least I haven’t done it for long time.

CSA stuff this week:

Arugula Mizuna
Fennel Dill
Spring Mix Carrots
Tokyo Bekana Citrus

the oranges are gone(!), some of the spring mix is eaten. I want to try braised fennel sometime this weekend. I'm always nibbling on carrots so they'll be gone by next CSA day. The greens are always a little more than I can eat raw so I'm going to have to cook more of them. S. would like some arugula and dill and I certainly have it to spare.

Enough sun is available on the back patio for solar cooking again back there.

cheers,
shamba

Taxes taxes in Arizona ....

2010-02-08T11:26:00.005-07:00

this is just a quick note about 2 tax things that happened this past week:

--Governor Brewer has been asking since last January, when she took over for Janet Napolitano who resigned to be part of Obama government, for a public vote on a 1 % sales tax.

--Divided Phoenix City Council voted to put a 2% tax on food in the city. It's supposed to expire in 5 years. Public hearings are scheduled for the next month or so for the public to react to the proposed budget, including the food sales tax. I remember when we did away with the tax on food in the early 1980s. So far have we retreated? the city was very flush with money in the early 1980s, I was still working for them then and we got very generous raises.
peace for now,

shamba

Happy GroundHog Day!

2010-02-02T13:06:00.003-07:00

This is pretty meaningless in southern Arizona where six more weeks will bring spring, actually about 2-3 more weeks will bring spring.

Anyway, thoughts on the continuing drama of the times: one thought from the Arizona state budget struggles and one from my own observations.

1)On Horizon, http://www.azpbs.org/horizon/index.php , KAET Arizona PBS station, show to discuss Arizona public affairs issues. It’s how to keep track of state government. This show was from the midddle of the last week of January.

They discussed the current Governors proposal to do away with the state supported statutes for mentally, including severely mentally ill persons, as a way of cutting into the budget deficit. There was discussion of how these laws came into being around 1980; the number of people affected, how communities will be affected by the cuts, if they take place. Because of lack of any other support for the mentally ill, they also discussed how much more money it will cost in crisis management for those mentally ill who have no meds or structured support. The cost in police calls, emergency room management and other public costs would be then charged to a different jurisdiction than the state in many cases, county or city budgets. This of course does not begin to calculate the intangible human suffering and grief involved.

They finally came to the point that the result of this would be going backwards, not just in monetary terms, but human/humane terms. The host of the show seemed genuinely shocked by the logical progression that this budget proposal would lead to, if it happens. The two other panel members involved in services to the mentally ill community, of course, were well aware of the implications of the situation.
So far, most discussions I have seem on PBS or other media like this have been so theoretical and not yet “real” for the program participants. At least, I haven’t seen it so starkly like I saw it on the faces of these people. It was really quite horrible and I almost didn’t watch it but I had the feeling of being a Cassandra watching the great wave of things coming in the future and no one is seeing the same stuff yet—BUT it’s getting closer to more people seeing it all the time in front of them as it happens.

For myself, I think the Arizona legislature will be no closer to finding a budget solution at the end of June, traditional end of the session, than they are now. I think it will be such an ugly political election year. 

2)Notes from the current recession/depression are coming closer to me and the people I know. It seems like I'm aware of more people who lately have slipped a notch downward in the ecnonmic ladder.

Someone I know in the MidWest seems to be in bad straights. She made a remark on the phone the other day about eating a lot of spaghetti, I don't know if with meat or not, and not affording veggies and fruits as they were too expensive. And her husband, who's been out of work a while, makes all their bread.

I've never heard that out of her before. I wanted to say something about lentils and rice that I have a couple times a week but I actually had a roast in the crock pot and so that information came out instead.

I feel bad for her but didn't want to ask too much. She's still working, their kids are grown and they have a house. They've always wanted to move to Florida when the kids were grown enough.

A neighbor learned that she can't sell her townhouse/condo because no one wants to finance them in the Phoenix area. she'a have to sell to someone who'd pay with cash. I think that dismayed and surprised her.

There are days when things are going along fine and then some bit of news or something i hear from someone reminds me of the direction we're really going in.

On the other hand, contractors and people who fix things want work and are doing pretty well at it. I took two lamps in to see if they could be fixed to the old established, Phoenix Lamps, and I'm going to get my excellent brass, floor lamp back like new for not much money!!! I don't know how much yet but lamp is totally useless the way it is. Hooray! I love that lamp and I use it to read by sitting on the couch.

They said they were very busy and they have a wonderful store full of all kinds of lamps, from all time periods, and other furniture that they also sell. It's a wonderful old store to look at.

I'm looking at the rest of my "work on the house" list I've been getting done the past 2 years and it's time to start doing the rest of it: insulation, getting rid of old carpeting, maybe some other things as well.

That's enough commentary for now. I'm progressing eating/cooking my multitude of greens from the CSA. I passed some on to a friend so they wouldn't go to waste. next time we have mustard greens I'm going to ask to trade!

Peace to all,
Shamba

Jan 25th Cold and wet and cold ...

2010-01-27T13:47:00.002-07:00

We had 2.5 inches out of last week's rains. it was cold and wet and now I'm cold with a cold! Not sure if its improving or not. Be back in a couple of days.

cheers,
shamba

3rd storm coming

2010-01-20T14:00:00.000-07:00

From www.azcentral.com weather.

"Today's forecast: Stronger, wetter storm coming
by Sarah Walters - Jan. 20, 2010 01:41 AM
12 News Weather Plus Meteorologist

The second of a series of storms is moving out quickly this morning, but light rain and snow showers are still expected to continue in eastern Arizona. Expect quiet, dry weather for today, with partly cloudy skies. Clouds increase from the west this afternoon, ahead of our 3rd storm, and we pick up a 50% chance of rain showers in the Valley this evening. After midnight, rain and snow chances across the state increase.

Thursday morning, things really start to ramp up, where heavy rain and snow are likely in Arizona. Expect it to rain and snow all day long, and continue into Friday, as this third storm is stronger, wetter, and slower-moving. There's also a chance of embedded thunderstorms which could contain lightning, heavy downpours, and small hail. Not only that, but strong winds are expected by Thursday night with winds up to 50 mph. Winds will be even stronger in southeast Arizona, where a High Wind Watch is in effect for winds up to 65 mph.

By the end of the week, this 3rd storm will have dumped 2"-4" of additional rainfall across Valley locations. Higher elevations north and east of Phoenix could see 5"+. Because of the heavy rainfall accumulation expected, normally dry washes and streams are expected to flood so a Flash Flood Watch has been issued for the Phoenix metro and surrounding areas from 6am Thursday, through 5pm Friday. There is also a Flood Watch for areas south of the Mogollon Rim from Thursday morning through Saturday morning, as heavy rain of up to 7" is possible, along with melting snow. These watches mean that Flood & Flash Flood Warnings could be occur at anytime during the watch period, so be sure to monitor the weather on our 24-hour weather channel, 12 News Weather Plus. You can find it on Cox Digital Cable 83, Qwest Choice TV 66, over the air 12.2, or on www.12news.azcentral.com.

In the High Country, rain and snow will start to pick up again this afternoon and evening, and really ramp up after midnight. A Winter Storm Watch is in effect along the Rim, from Flagstaff down into the White Mountains area starting tonight and lasting through Friday evening. Snowfall rates are expected to become quite heavy after midnight and continue throughout the day on Thursday. Strong winds up to 50 mph are also expected, which could lead to white-out, near blizzard conditions.
That watch could eventually turn into a Winter Storm Warning or Blizzard Warning for the High Country. When it's all said and done by Saturday morning, this 3rd storm could dump and additional 2' – 4' of snowfall above 7000', with those higher amounts for the White Mountains area. The Flagstaff area is expected to get 2'-3' of additional accumulation by Saturday morning.

There's also a Blizzard Watch above 7,000' in southeast Arizona from Thursday morning through Friday morning. Heavy snow will be possible at times with up to 1'-2' two-day total accumulation expected. Winds in these areas will get up to 65 mph though, which means that white-out & blizzard conditions are likely. This also includes the higher elevations around the Tucson metro area. This watch could eventually turn into a Blizzard Warning.

Rain and snow chances will be dwindling late Friday into Saturday, as this 3rd punch exits Arizona. Drier, quiet conditions can be expected by Saturday afternoon. Most of the weekend looks good… with drier and slightly warmer weather. Valley highs for the rest of the week are only expected to warm into the upper 50s low 60s, and then warm into the mid 60s by Sunday and Monday.

The majority of next week looks dry, but there's the possibility of another storm moving through the southwest on Tuesday/Wednesday. Too early to tell at this point on the timing and intensity of this storm, but we will be watching it… being that we are in a moderate to strong El Nino pattern this winter. "

2 Storms Report

2010-01-20T13:49:00.001-07:00

Out of Monday nights storm Phoenix got about ½ inch. Out of Tuesday night’s storm we got almost 1 inch; this are based on the figures from local TV on what the official rain gage at Sky Harbor airport registered. The cities located around Phoenix mostly got significantly more rain. Some parts town did lose power for a couple of hours, APS houses. [Arizona Public Service. Mine is Salt River Project.]

Tuesday afternoon there were what seemed like zillions of all sized cloud coming into the area and they all melded together into a very darkened sky about late afternoon. The rain sprinkled a little about 6 p.m. but started in earnest at 7 p.m. and from there it was a steady medium rain until about 11 p.m. here where I live. During the following hours it cleared out completely and we had a bright, very fresh clean feeling morning. Oh, boy, do the plants all like this moisture.

There is no sign of the next storm yet, but it’s likely to come in and start raining during the night. This one is predicted to give Phoenix 1-2 inches of rain.

Northern part of the state got lots of snow and this next storm is expected to give even more snow than the last two together but that does depend on the part of the state.

Also, picked up my first share of the CSA stuff. Boy, they are in a not so easy to find location. It’s temporary until new offices are renovated by this summer. It was: turnips, 3 oranges, carrots, a pick of 3 herbs (cilantro was my choice) wheatberries, bok choy, spring mix and one more I can’t remember at the moment. There’s a lot of the bok choy in one of those bunches.

peace, shamba

Evening Update, January 18th

2010-01-18T17:16:00.004-07:00

Accuweather forecast info for the week:
Phoenix, AZ
15-Day Forecast
Monday, January 18, 2010
WeatherAlarm™!
Heavy rain occurring on Jan 18 | Jan 19 | Jan 20 | Jan 21 | Jan 22.
Total amount 7.09 Inches. [Bolding is mine.]

More info and serious preparedness warnings for coming stormy week:

Local broadcast news has serious messages about preparedness for local storm effect.
They are really stressing being prepared for power outages, communicating with family members and, because of possible heavy rains at the end of the week, they are seriously warning about flooding. Like any place, if we get too much rain too fast we’ve got flooding problems. This is mostly in more north of Phoenix but parts of town can get flooded. They are talking about kinds of walkie talkies that can be used for emerencies and bug-out bags if you’re in areas where you could be evacuated.

AZcentral.com

“The first of a series of storms will move through the state today bringing a chance of rain and snow. Expect considerable cloudiness and about a 50% chance of rain in the Valley during the day. Rain chances increase tonight, and by tomorrow morning, Valley rainfall totals will range from .25"-1". Heavier rainfall will be possible in the higher elevations north and east of the Valley where up to 2" of accumulation is possible. It's also going to be a bit breezy today, with winds up to 10-20 mph, gusting to 30.

Snow showers can also be expected all day in the High Country, where they will receive 1"-3" of during the day. The snowfall will pick up by this evening and overnight, where moderate to heavy snow is possible. By tomorrow afternoon, after this first storm has passes, 6"-12" of accumulation is expected above 6,000'.

Because of the snowfall expected up north, a Winter Weather Advisory is in effect from noon today, through noon Tuesday.

There's a chance of precipitation in the state, each and every day this week, as we are currently in an El Nino pattern. We are in a moderate to strong El Nino, which means the jet stream has shifted into a position where it acts as a conveyor belt, allowing a series of storms to move through the state, one after the other. The second storm will move through Arizona Tuesday night, through Wednesday. This second storm will bring an additional .5"-1" of rainfall in the Valley, and another 6"-12" of snow up north, above 5,500'.

ALERT! The third storm set move through the state on Thursday looks to be stronger and wetter than the previous two. We're expecting strong winds with winds up over 40 mph in some locations, along with the possibility of thunderstorms as well. The main threat with this storm will be an increase in precipitation intensity, and higher snow levels which could cause significant snow melt and flash flooding will be possible. The snow level will start out at 8,000' and eventually drop down to 5,500' by Thursday night. New snowfall totals by Friday are expected to be up to 1-2 feet of additional accumulation.

To get the latest weather forecast go to our 24-hour weather channel, 12 News Weather Plus. You can find it on Cox Digital Cable 83, Qwest Choice TV 66, over the air 12.2, or on www.12news.azcentral.com.”

peace for tonight anyway,

shamba

Rain Rain coming ...

2010-01-18T11:04:00.002-07:00

We’ve got 3, count ‘em, 3 big storms coming our way this week. As a matter of fact, the first one is here as of this morning. I woke up to rain, quiet easy but steady rain. It went on for another hour or so and has let up for the time being. It’s lovely, if the whole week is this wet and not pouring it will be really pleasant, I think.

And, yes, these storms are courtesy of the Southwest Deserts’ friend, El Nino. El Nino is the weather pattern that appears every few years, 5-10, I think. And it seems to cause lots of problem when it disrupts the usual weather pattern in North and South America but here in Arizona and in Southern California it is good for more rain than usual in the winter.

Channel 12, NBC broadcast affiliate, said the first two storms are Mon-Tuesday night and we can expect ½ - 1 inch of rain in Phoenix metro area. The next storm is wetter and maybe 1-3 inches of rain.

My one grey tabby female won’t be happy with this rain but we got to have it! These 3 storms will cover the whole state and bring rain in the deserts and snow in the high country. I ought to have a map of Arizona to link to when I mention these things so I can find them on the map and maybe, if anyone is checking in here, they could see it, too. Possible 4th or 5th storms were mentioned in one forecast I heard on local TV.

I’ll have to move the plants on the front porch out a little so they can get some of the rain, fresh from the sky this week. Maybe we’ll catch up on our lack of precipitation; it seems to me we’re an inch or two down from where we should be this time of year. But then I can hardly remember a time in my life when I’ve ever heard that we had an “excess” of rain/precipitation either!

The new CSA session starts on Wednesday and I have to take my contract and check over there and turn it in and get my first load of food from there! I hope my contact can email more specific directions than I have so I can find them in the hospital complex they distribute from. I know where the major cross streets are but it’s a big complex.

Good heavens, I just found my name on Chile’s Chews local blog list! Right there in the list with Solar Oven Chef!

Of course, local blogs are valuable to those living in similar locations, I know because I read chile’s and the Solar Chef myself. My thanks to chile!

Peace to All, shamba

January 13th: Happy New Year!

2010-01-13T13:08:00.002-07:00

I’m keeping on with my “using up leftovers and produce” even if the challenge is over. I drove out to the Thunderbird Banner Hospital to find out where the CSA produce is located. I’m taking over the payment and the contract for their next session next Wednesday.

A very grand lady I met on the internet in my scifi days has passed away at her home in Missouri. Her husband and some of her children were with her. Bluetopaz had a lung cancer and she was in her late 70s. She was a bright light and I’ll miss her. I'm very glad I took the pictures of her that I have now.

On January 6th, news on local NBC affiliate reported “fewer’ jobs lost than expected” in December 2008. A turn around may only be a few months away, the anchor said. I doubt it but I live in interesting times I guess.
Cheers, shamba

It was a Christmas and now A Happy New Year!

2010-01-03T10:47:00.003-07:00

chsitmas Day seemed to be all about cats and their servants! :)I cooked and fed my cats on Christmas Day. Then I went to my friends' house for Christmas dinner and she was doing the main cooking and her husband was feeding their 10 plus cats. He's the one with the soft heart for cats actually.

Another friend came later with her cooking after having fed her 10 plus cats!

Donna laid out all the good china and crystal bgoblets on the lovely table and of, course, the their main dish of Hungarian stuffed cabbage. Her husband is a first generation a Hungarian American. We had a grand afternoon the food was good and we laughed a LOT! A lot of strange cat and some dog stories, too. We would have bored the heck out of someone who wasn't an animal fancier. :)

This is the first Christmas in my whole life, I didn’t have anything planned for the day. so, 3 good friends and ex-coworkers ahad a very good time together.

Later in the week: I was possessed by cleaning out the corner of one room that hasn't been touched in years.

More stuff to goodwill, old yoga/exercise leotards and leggings that don’t fit. I’ve got plenty left that fit just fine. Fixed the green shawl, made one sweater into a cat bed, it was just oo full of holes to fix, fixed 2 others to be able to weat them again.

Sewing is the only mending left. That corner of the computer room looks a lot better than it did with all the mending waiting to be done.

Waste Not: A few more things to the Good will; stuffed animals, cleaned and washed; old leotards from yoga years ago that are not in style anymore. I can wear most of them them but they’re an old styleand I have enough newer things. Only box in the computer room closet will be Christmas decorations. It is much less congested.

Fixed 3 sweaters to wear again; one went for an outside cat bed—and they like it!—and shawl is fixed and functional again.

Want Not: I went through stores; moved all the newer cans of food to the right shelves.

Build community food systems: Got contract for next CSA session.

I don't really think that 2010 will much that much better than 2009, if it's better at all, but I'll see what I can do to make it better.

Peace, Shamba

2009-12-24T11:47:00.002-07:00

Now, It's Christmas Eve and I'm not going anywhere today. I was out to get a couple of specific things at a store but ended up in 2 shopping center parking lots and two grocery parking lots driving around looking for parking places. Dangerous these lot on the week before christmas! I picked up one thing at Safeway to make my sald for donna's house on christmas Day.

I always feel like the world takes a Time Out on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day for a couple of days of peace and safety.

Merry Christmas and S and I are off to Donna and Steve's for christmas dinner. :)

Peaxce to All, shamba

Dec 17th Notes:

Well, what a wonderful day for effective government news! NOT!

The whole health care reform bill in its present form might as well be thrown out and started over again. That’s the Feds.
The AZ state legislature had its 4th—4TH!—special session to fix the 2010 budget and nothun’ absolutely nothing happened today.
By the time they get in session in January and go to July, or longer, they will have twice as much budget deficit to fix for the 2011 budget and whatever is leftover from the 2010 budget.

My point in mentioning this at this blog is not to keep to keep track of what the feds and stat leg are doing in detail and how they’re ineffective at the moment. It’s only to provide a fell for the times we’re living in.

I feel so much cognitive dissonance, or head splitting, from looking at reality two ways. The way it has been, the way it’s going and what I see and sense coming round the bend. The past two years have brought the two sides closer and closer, perhaps this is the year they somehow connect? We’re just right at the edge of finding ourselves in worse circumstances than any of us, Americans, I mean, thought we’d ever “devolve” to in post-World war II America.

shamba.

A Few Less Things to take my energy

2009-12-14T14:11:00.000-07:00

Rain and dark clouds this afternoon.

For some reason, I was moved to empty the cabinet over the refrigerator. My finds were various: 5 old coffee makers glass carafes, some baskets, various containers, a Christmas Plastic plate I’ve hardly ever used. I also took some of the ornamental cats made from rabbit fur from the computer room and several of the smaller stuffed animals I’m not attached to for passing on to someone else. Everything but the stuffed animals was bagged for Goodwill. Two dress jackets in good condition were bagged for going to Sal Army or Goodwill. The animals are in another box waiting for me to inspect them.

Remaining animals move from the table next to the computer to my bedroom with some other stuffed animals.

I have a lot of room now in the cabinet over the fridge and less cluttered look to my one terribly cluttered room.

shamba

2009-12-12T11:36:00.002-07:00

I lost some produce in the past few days but not much. Two pears were hiding in the back of a fridge shelf and died there :), some arugala didn't make it to cooking.

I dehydrated a bunch of green beans I'd gotten but then I intended to do that with them anyway so there was no risk of any of them going to waste.

I cooked two turkey legs on some greens, kale, onions and some parsley and seasonings. The greens were okay but i wasn't fond of the turkey legs. I loved those when i was a kid maybe it was just the way it tasted that particular day.. Anyway the cats were very grateful for the turkey meat! If I hadn't given it to the cats, I would have done some casserole thing with pasta, veggies and baking the whole thing.

This challenge has been worth doing and a longer one can teach you how well you can do with things over a longer stretch of time.

Risa, about the almond roca...lol!

May all of you have a good weekend and don't let the holiday crazies get to you. Two weeks till chrismas and it all begins to press in on you!.

Peace to all,
Shamba

December 6

2009-12-06T11:40:00.001-07:00

Alas! My neighbor Sue is moving out by the end of the month. She hopes to purchase a house on her own since prices are so good these days. She will keep her condo as a rental—many crossed fingers there! She says she couldn’t sell it as lenders aren’t lending to sell condos! I didn’t’ realize that.

Our complex has two units for sale, no. 11 (149,000) and no. 35 (125,000) are both asking for over 100,000! No. 35 has been for sale since nov. 2008 and they have not changed their price at all in the past year. Our units are about 800 square feet on ground level with good sized bedrooms and back and front patios. Even at the height of the real estate boom here they might not have sold for that much.

She hopes to purchase a house on her own since prices are so good these days. She's in her late 30s and wants more room. She will keep her condo as a rental—many crossed fingers there! She says she couldn’t sell it as lenders aren’t lending to sell condos at all. I didn’t realize that was happening.

All I could think of was, I hope it works for her but I wonder given how things are going to be in the next few years.

:(
Peace to me today, Shamba

Dec 3 Food related post

2009-12-03T10:53:00.005-07:00

I had some leftover green beans, some kale, celery of which some was about to go under (!) so I threw them in a pot with some chicken broth--not home made--and made a pretty decent soup out of it. I have enough of it for about two more meals.

I hadn't made soup with greens and it smelled okay and tasted okay but I just generally don't like cooked greens--limp and wierd looking. :) But it was okay!
Once upon a time I would have just looked, thought "Meh!" and tossed the bunch.

I'm trying to decide if I'm going to use the solar oven to cooke something in the next few days. I haven't decided what's next yet to be cooked now that the leftover cycle from last cooking time is about done.

Peace,
shamba

December 3

2009-12-03T10:35:00.005-07:00

I wanted to post this for my own record of how things are going here and also I may look back at this from a later perspective. I did that with some of the days of the stock market crash in 2008. This is one article with the proper link to give credit for it and a link or two more.

Annual economic forecast in Phornix –State economy in worst shape in like since my whole lifetime (!) 59 years. We won't reach pre-recession employment levels anyway, levels until 2014. Like the guy on Channel 12 news said, It’s a long climb back up.

Its important to note that this is economic/financial. Peak Oil/Peak Energy/Peak Everything is NOT figured into this situation.

http://asunews.asu.edu/20091202_business_economicforecastluncheon

2010 forecasts revealed at annual Economic Forecast Luncheon

Arizona is slowly moving down a long road to economic recovery, according to experts today at the 46th Annual Economic Forecast Luncheon co-sponsored by Arizona State University's W. P. Carey School of Business and JPMorgan Chase. More than 1,000 people crowded into the Phoenix Convention Center to hear whether tough times will soon be over, and the 2010 forecast news was not pleasant.

"Arizona consumers and businesses are in the state's worst economic downturn, by far, in modern times," said Professor Lee McPheters, director of the W. P. Carey School of Business' JPMorgan Chase Economic Outlook Center. "In fact, 2009 saw the first personal income decline for Arizonans since records have been kept. Personal income for the year may be down as much as 2 percent."

McPheters says Arizona lost more than 240,000 jobs over the past two years. He expects the state to lose another 24,300 jobs next year. Arizona was officially the worst state in the nation for job growth between October 2008 and October 2009, with an unemployment rate reaching 9.3 percent this October. McPheters, who is also editor of the Arizona and Western Blue Chip Economic Forecast publications, does not expect to see the state return to 2007 job levels until 2013.

He adds the holidays won't bring much economic cheer. Retail sales for the year in Arizona are expected to be 10 to 15 percent lower in 2009 than 2008. In addition, McPheters says state budget problems will persist because of less tax revenue coming in, less population growth than previous downturns, and mandatory spending dedicated to designated programs through legally protected formulas.

On the national front, Anthony Chan, managing director and chief economist for JPMorgan Chase Private Client Services, had similar negative news. He explained that since 1954, real gross domestic product (GDP) growth has averaged about 5.8 percent in the first four quarters of economic recovery, but a number of factors indicate we won't see a boost like that after this recession.

"Americans' household wealth has plunged by an average of about $5,000, and people are also saving more, so we are not likely to experience the level of consumer spending that usually helps to lead us out of recession," Chan says.

However, he added there are a few good signs on the horizon. He says companies are contributing to fixed investments to improve their productivity and profits as the economy recovers. During the third quarter of 2009, the preliminary real GDP was up 0.9 percent, and inventories are likely to grow from there. He also says the government is determined to avoid a double-dip recession, so it will probably contribute 0.2 to 0.3 percent toward real GDP growth next year.

"We can still come out with a real GDP growth rate that lies within 2 to 2.5 percent," says Chan. "While such growth is unlikely to close the current negative output gap, it is likely we will continue to build momentum over the next several calendar quarters."

The real estate and construction forecast included some positive news only from the single-family home market. Elliott D. Pollack, chief executive officer of the well-known Scottsdale firm Elliott D. Pollack and Company, says local housing prices have finally flattened out, and multiple listing prices are up 11.7 percent since they hit bottom in April. However, there are more than 50,000 units now in the foreclosure process in Maricopa County, with more foreclosures on the way. Pollack believes there were 80,000 excess single-family homes and condo units in the market as of 2009's second quarter.

"Unfortunately, it appears a high percentage of resales have been purchased by investors," says Pollack. "Up to 40 percent of homes purchased in August, for example, were bought by ‘absentee owners,' meaning many of them are likely to go back on the market in the next two years. While I do believe Phoenix will grow again, we could easily have to wait until 2013 or 2014."

Things are even worse in the commercial market, according to Pollack. He says apartment vacancies could exceed 13 to 14 percent at the peak. Office vacancies will reach their highest level ever next year, exceeding 27 percent. Industrial vacancy rates could reach or equal the all-time-high vacancy seen in the Valley in 1986.

"Overall, based on history, it could take a decade before prices get back to the 2008 peaks," says Pollack. "What this suggests is that the overall level of commercial building, which is already down significantly, will come to a screeching halt next year. From an economic development standpoint, the situation could be a positive because a large amount of inexpensive space will be available for companies that want to expand or move here."

More details and analysis, including slides from the luncheon presentations, are available at http://knowledge.wpcarey.asu.edu.

And, second thing I wanted to post. I liked this idea from a blog I read regularly. It was a few months ago and it was called Time for a Consumption Strike. Looks like Denninger’s (market-ticker.denninger.net) consumption strike will be a permanent way to live:

"....Until then the position of those who wish to join is simple: No non-essential purchases of anything are made. Period.

What's an essential purchase? Here's the list:

Enough food to eat at home. No more eating out.
Rent and utilities.
Essential medical services.
Enough fuel to get to and from work.

In addition any "excess withholding" is stopped; if you are getting a big fat refund from the IRS every year you are loaning the government your money at zero interest until April. Stop that; it’s stupid. Change your W4 so you get exactly nothing back or owe a tiny amount; if you pay estimates pay only that which you must and not one dime more.

Note that it is unlawful to use your W4 to intentionally under-withhold, but you are in fact not obligated to pay one more dime in tax than you actually owe. There is nothing wrong with adjusting withholding to match (as close as you reasonably can) your actual tax obligation.
Put the money you save (it will be a lot!) into a non-TARP Credit Union if you have one available to you, or a non-TARP local bank if you do not. Spend none of it."

Peace to all, Shamba

November 29

2009-11-29T13:14:00.002-07:00

I dehydrated the green beans and bell peppers that I got at the farmer’s market last week. I certainly couldn’t have used them up with all my other produce this week.

Thanksgiving: Turkey meat loaf today.  There’s asparagus, kale and arugala for green veggies to choose from and pumpkin pie—my made with an organic pie filling—and well, I don’t know what else yet. I do have two sweet potatoes that would be great roasted, too.

S. is using the day as her day off and she does have to go back to work on Friday. She stopped by later on Thanksgiving and we had some pie together. She loves the taste of the dehydrated red sweet peppers and the dehydrated tomatoes.

No more dehydrated veggies, I ate the rest of them up the day after Thanksgiving!

Moved the herbs to the front porch. They’ll get the sun they should have there until about march or so.

Going now to bake some bread, not breadk that has to be kneaded though. right arm and shoulder are improving a lot. Injuries get old fast!

Peace, shamba

November Days Catchup

2009-11-14T13:43:00.004-07:00

Nice, cooler weather after a couple of 90 days the past week of so. I've been doing okay with my challenge but I haven’t written anything at all my blog for several days.

Also, when measuring something in my back patio a weekend ago--wall height in one place--I slipped and banged my right shoulder and elbow against the wall. Nothing broken! I was really afraid of some serious injury beyond strain or sprain. I went to urgent Care to have it checked out. They gave me some "nice' pain pills to take to help me sleep since the first 3-4 days were pretty painful and brused all over, er, I was bruised all over the right side. But my arm and shoulder have been improving every day. I used Arnica montana all over where anything hurt and also had some Arnica montana to take for internal use. The moist heat packs they suggested have also been very helpful-3 times a day for 20 minutes.

I've been careful with the right arm but I think it's going to be okay now.

Crooked Sky Farms provides a CSA locally and I think I'm signing up right after the holidays.
I'll have to get a copy of their contract.

My container herbs are growing like hotcakes.

For challenge about 10 days ago:

I pulled all the leftover veggies out of the fridge, onions, sweet potatoes, two red potatoes, 1 russet potato, 3 parsnips, 1 acorn squash, a forlorn turnip and tomato.

The last of fresh cilantro which wasn't going to make it at all.

The cilantro went to garbage, I had used most of it and I want to get a cilantro plant.

One russet potato, 1 red potato, the small sweet potatoes, the turnip, one parsnip and two onions went into a roasting pan with olive oil & thyme and oregano and all got roasted.

I haven't baked sweet potatoes before but not been fond of the whole thing but roasted they are really good!

Anyway all those roasted veggies were extremely tasty and got eaten up in a day.

The other potatoes and parsnips and one large onion got put in a savory Indian spices dish with some canned peas (didn't have any frozen) cumin, turmeric, coriander and chili powder. I'm trying to use more of these spices but I really wasn't sure about this recipe at all but when it was finished cooking it was pretty good over rice. This recipe used up some rice I need to be using up, too.

Peace to all,
Shamba

November 2,

Had lunch with B. today. She thinks that we’ll just scrape by in the economy for at least 3-4 years. She’s quite disgusted the way the whole thing has gone and the government saying these chipper things when there is nothing to be chipper about. She did say no to a depression but looked glum in talking about the whole thing altogether.

I actually went through all my emails in my two accounts, with various personas, and cleaned them all out. whatta job! I get a lot less junk mail than I used to but still there's plenty. I need to unsubscribe from some more lists.

Other outside world news in the past month:

In 2-3 years no more oil from Mexico …
Depletion rate in oil producing countries are faster than anticipated, too
Great recession has cut down on demand, oil prices 147 in July 2008 and then went down to $30 a barrel within 6-8 months and now has come up since summer 2009 now is at around $80 a barrel.
Gas prices are creeping up but are still about mid $2-$3 range after coming way down in fall 2008 as the price of oil fell.
If the economy starts to grow a bit, the price of crude will probably go up! Catch-22!

peace, shamba

News from past few days

2009-10-27T14:47:00.002-07:00

October 27th:

In the spirit of taking “extras” into the household in these hard times, it seems I have a few weeks old pretty grey and white kitten in my cat household now! He/she can’t be more than 4-5-6 weeks and seems just a little too young to be away from a mother although it can eat adult cat food and small bites of filet mignon cut up especially for it :)

He kept running to all of my adult cats trying to find his mom and an adult cat to bond with. It seems that my orange Kirby is who he picked. Kirby doesn’t seem afraid of him and tolerates him eating in the same dish he does. The others don’t seem very happy with this or don’t know what to make of it. The little guy cries and runs to the adults for comfort.

He was stuck in a tree in front of my neighbors place yesterday and made his way down the tree fine though when I left him alone. He can’t have been around for more than a day or two. But he knows now where food and a soft fleecy place to sleep are —he moved into the “winterized” cat digs. He may not be a complete stranger to people and may come around to being tamed a little more. As it is now I couldn’t catch him without a trap and the animal places are so full of animals these days although kittens and pretty cats probably have a chance. I can’t think about that too much.

October 26th: Cleaned up the cat’s porch today, scrubbed everything with water/soap/bleach and put down new cat bedding material for cold nights which are coming along about Wednesday this week. Daytimes will drop into the 60s midweek and that means nighttime temps in the 40s.

Homelessness in Arizona is worse than it’s ever been before, on the local news tonight. It has occurred to me that from here on out, if we slide downward economically it will be something that few people functioning in society today in the US will recognize or have too much experience with. Not a happy thought. If t we don’t have jobs for people, we’ll have a lot of unemployed in various degrees of homeless, hungry, sick with chronic illnesses.

October 24th-25th:

Half a can of tomato sauce and the rest of the diced tomatoes go into the chicken dinner tonight. I can’t remember why I have the leftover diced tomatoes. Used up a frozen pizza dough I forgot I had it wasn’t past date so I used it for a very simple pizza, tomato sauce and sundried tomatoes. I added some dried sweet peppers. It was okay.

Housing all over the country to go down more in value, according to this Yahoo link.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Homes-About-to-get-much-cnnm-699910894.html?x=0&ref=patrick.net

I quote the part about Phoenix in particular, since I live there.
“ In Phoenix values have already collapsed by 54% and could fall another 23.4%. In both cities, Fiserv anticipates the losses to continue into 2011, but they will be less than 5%.”

That adds up to: 82.4% I just added the whole 5%.

Pretty close to Ilargi and Stoneleighs general prediction about devaluation of residential real estate and within 5 years from the peak to the trough of the market. I ‘m thinking of 2006 to 2011 as the peak to trough years.

Peace, shamba

Heads Up, Oct. 23, 2009

2009-10-23T11:52:00.006-07:00

Financial Economic News Below:
Here's a Big Heads Up by Karl Denninger at His Market ticker web site:

Friday, October 23. 2009
Posted by Karl Denninger in Musings at 11:55

Possible Credit Dislocation: Be Warned

http://market-ticker.denninger.net/authors/2-Karl-Denninger
I hope that's the right link to the article.

He uses some language that is very similar to the data Cliff High reports: “money lock up”

“Note that the indications above are far stronger than what we saw going into last fall before the wheels came off. As a consequence if these actions are those of people with real knowledge (and this is not a guess on their part) I would expect the outcome to be worse than what we saw last fall in terms of economic impact.”

Another vip link, I haven't read this webssite before: :
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2009/10/is-fed-governor-hinting-at-stock-market.html

''Is a Fed Governor Hinting at a Stock Market Crash Just Ahead?
Sounds like it to me.

These are truly remarkable words coming from inside the Federal Reserve. Reuters has the details:

U.S. Federal Reserve Governor Kevin Warsh on Tuesday called gains in Asian and U.S. stocks noteworthy and wondered whether those increases signal a return to financial normality after a wrenching crisis or raise the prospects for asset bubbles.
Stock markets in a number of Asian economies have posted hefty gains in recent months, Warsh said while moderating a panel at an Asia economic policy conference hosted by the San Francisco Federal Reserve.

"This is a remarkable move, certainly the U.S. has also seen a remarkable increase in asset values," he said

This is as close to a warning as you are ever going to get from a Fed governor ''

Worse than last fall Denninger implies.

I wish I could just go take my money out of the CU and put it somewhere else, except that there isn't somewhere else? I'd wonder about treasuries at this point.

*sigh* shamba

October 23rd

2009-10-23T10:26:00.002-07:00

First of all: We've passed into the astrological sun sign of Scorpio. :) This is my sign and I love it!

Second, not much to report about the leftover food challenge this week: Had too many tomatoes earlier in the week and I dried them in the Tulsi oven. I sliced them in half this time rather than quarters. This worked well, I thought.

No real leftovers today, Friday, so I will be making a whole new meal or two for the next two days. I have fresh produce that I'm using up steadily now that the tomatoes are dehydrated.

Third, something I read the other day, it was this week:

Housing all over the country to go down more in value, according to this Yahoo link.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Homes-About-to-get-much-cnnm-699910894.html?x=0&ref=patrick.net

I quote the part about Phoenix in particular, since I live there. “In Phoenix values have already collapsed by 54% and could fall another 23.4%. In both cities, Fiserv anticipates the losses to continue into 2011, but they will be less than 5%.”

That adds up to: 82.4% I just added the whole 5%. I ‘m thinking of 2006 to 2011 as the peak to trough years that residential housing prices have fallen.

Peace, shamba

October 21st

2009-10-21T18:36:00.001-07:00

I did another batch of sundried Roma tomatoes this week. These were halves and they seemed to talk a little longer to dry, I didn’t try to help them along with electric heat I just let the sun do all the work.

In the kitchen overn, I made Chili cheese Grits without green chiles—didn’t have any again-- but added some oregano, black pepper and put a green chiffonade from greens on the top of the cheese when it was done! It sure looked pretty with the green and yellow-orange together.

I also ordered some small cooking tools from amazon today: 2 cooling round racks that will fit inside the crockpot and pots for solar ovens, one square cooling rack that will fit all the pans as well and a chimney starter. I wasn’t going to spend money on much before the end of the year but if they are cooking tools I can use in many ways and I don’t have anything like them well, okay. And I decided on the chimney starter because if it works then I’ll learn how to better use the grill.

And you know, if our money is going to deflate or inflate or just go “poof!” in some banking blowup or meltdown then I might as well have physical tools that will be around for a few years. As soon as I got a good grater, I actually grated more things: for example, I love grated carrots in salads and on the side.

The safety deposit is almost completely empty, I got everything out to look it over.
Peace, Shamba

October 17th

2009-10-17T13:27:00.000-07:00

1. Dried about 6 sliced up bell peppers in the dehydrator I got last winter at Linene’s N things when they went out of business. I ran it overnight and it seemed to work fine. I will try this with one of the solar ovens next time I dehydrate something just to see how it goes with the same kind of peppers. I don’t know how hot the electric dehydrator gets, I’ll have to check the instructions that came with it.

2. I’ve got the dehydrated bell peppers next to the solar sundried tomatoes.

Later in the day: I went to Safeway for a couple of things. The parking lot was packed a lot more than even a Saturday midday. So, what’s up there? A big promotion and lots and lots of prices marked down significantly.

They had some houseplants and flowers out I front for sale including several herb plants. I picked up a little sage plant, organic and locally grown, it said. I love the smell of sage. It makes me think of Thanksgiving and Christmas and sage stuffing in turkey! So, I brought it home.

I also got some more well priced Roma tomatoes to sun dry and got some kale to use this coming week. I've tried some kale before and it was okay. Better than the mustard greens were anyway.

Now, I've decided I want a catnip plant and I better find out if any particular herbs or plants are poisonous to cats. I hadn't thought of that before.
Peace, shamba

October 15

2009-10-15T10:50:00.001-07:00

My 20 day Challenge Report:
Challenge this week or the past 10 days or so:

1. Used bones, some meat, celery seed, salt, pepper in making chicken broth from leftover chicken. I haven’t done that for a long time. There wasn’t really much meat as the final leftovers were given to the cats.

2. Used up the last of the lentils/rice/diced tomato dish with some chicken broth from item 1 above for dinner that night.

3. Had some leftover strawberries with oatmeal the next morning.

4. Bell peppers are going into the dehydrator today or tomorrow.

5. I failed completely at using up the mustard greens I had got at the store! I thought it’d be interesting to try they but maybe another time.

6. Had lunch out with some friends and used the leftovers from that meal the next meal.

7. Broken down and ordered pizza DELIVERED twice in the past two weeks. How many points off is that?but they tasted good! :) and they are leftovers for at least one day probably two.

My sundried tomatoes came out quite well. I'll do more next time.

peace, shamba

October 12

2009-10-12T15:12:00.000-07:00

I’m putting the Roma tomatoes out to dry today.

A little later: Dehydrating tomatoes (Roma tomatoes, I wanted to start with smaller tomatoes): well, it seems that the October sun, which I do prefer to the July sun, has got a lot of clouds along with it today. I’m so used to having hot and constant sun! that I forget that the seasons I like the best might not cooperate with the same sun as in July! So, I put the tomatoes in the Tulsi with the electric back up on. We might have a front moving it, I don’t know. So far the weather says that we’ll have much warmer temps by the end of this week—around high 90s. We’ve had really good cooler weather the past 2 weeks.

Don't forget, we are now officially in the Oct 10 to 15 time period Clif has pointed to where signs may pop up for the event on the 25th. Keep your eyes open. I am referring to the webbot project trying to predict the future ….

http://www.halfpasthuman.com/ and http://www.peoplenomics.com/

I am a follower of George Ure's Urbansurvival. com site. The webbot project reading the future is something he's involved with and he writes about it often. Sometimes they're right, sometimes they're not. This fall, the interpreters of the webbot data think that a great financial/economic turn for the worse is coming. It can also be interpreted a little differently depending on how you look at it--as all data predicting the future seems to be! :) You can LOL or not as you believe in the possibility of these things. I, obviously, believe in the possibilities.

We'll see this time how accurate it becomes. I still have some projects to do to the townhouse but I haven't made any plans to travel or do much after the past year of economic conditions happening that no one thought could happen anymore! But if really nothing happens to further the downslide of our world/economy/whatever I'm going to look into taking one of two trips I'd like to do in my lifetime. I'll be 59 in November (!) and have probably 15-20 good years left if my good DNA works for me that long. I feel like I'm waiting for the end of the world so I can get on with my life! Wierd feeling!

I would not abandon my present "prepping arrangements" or not do anymore but I'm getting tired of living for the complete apocalyse happening any day now. I'm sure things generally will get worse over the next few years due the economy, peak oil/energy and the climate changings. There's been plenty of "the worst" that could still happen to lots of people anyway so I shouldn't be looking forward to fulfillment of that! I won't like it much when it gets here, I know.

peace to all,
shamba

October 9-10th posted on October 12th

2009-10-12T10:46:00.000-07:00

Very iffy sun today, temps are in the high 80s but sky is slightly over cast and the light peeks in and out of the bigger puffs of clouds. I put rice, yellow splitpeas, a can of diced tomatoes and some seasoning in the Tulsi oven. I plugged it in to use the electric backup on low to see how that will do today. I soaked the split peas for a couple of hours. These are the tail end of a group of split peas and I suspect they are a little harder with age so I soaked them.
I also have chicken to cook up tonight but that’s going in the inside oven later this afternoon.

My herb plants are doing very well. They are all growing and growing.

Next week one day , I’m trying drying tomatoes in the global oven. I haven't done it before so maybe I should say i'll try! No, this will be a very easy thing to do, I'm sure.

I‘ve inherited some containers with plants from a neighbor. There are several aloes and some other things growing among the various aloe plants. One of them looks like the leaves of a golden pothos or something just like that. I think some Irises are growing between the aloes in one of the pots. Anyway, I’ll have to look those up, blooming Iris would be great or the upright stems/leave plant look pretty good the way they are.

All thei ttime I'm doing anything, I'm watching events in the world--financial and other--about the "big" event that's been p[redicted by the webbots and seems to be happening based on reports of overthrowing the dollar as reserve currency and the grwing debt in the US, the dollar falling in value the past few months rather severely.

anyway, I'm watching

Peace for now, shamba

Oct 7th

2009-10-07T12:19:00.000-07:00

I ate out yesterday with leftovers for dinner. I had lunch with Donna and Mildred on Tuesday. M. wanted to take us both out for the help we'd given her on her genealogy. It was a beautiful day, 82 degrees. We just sat in the Paradise Café for three hours after we ate, talking and talking. They don't think we'll have any more downslide into depression--"the worst is over"-- but we'll not have much of an economic recovery for a while. I've been increasingly schizophrenic the past two months about the whole financial/economic thing. Sometimes I think "okay, maybe, it won't be so bad and we'll stabilize and have some weak recovery" but usually that lasts only a day or so! I see something like a business going out of busines, or hear some news, or talk to friends about their job situation and then I think, buy some more oatmeal or practice making bread, rolls, etc.

Mildred will be 89 in November! She drove herself yesterday; she does have some kidney and some severe joint things. She's okay in the mind but she's definitely getting a little frailer every year. She seemed a little more stooped in the shoulders than I've seen her before. I need to make a point of talking and seeing her more often. She was a great friend and neighbor to my parents and family when I was growing up. She's my second mother, as my mom told me once. D. and I are both 59. Thirty years between Mildred and us.

As for the Blog thing here, my posting about anything here will be spotty over the next 4-5 days as I have some appts and other things scheduled. this includes going through the food storage and seeing what is needed to use up soon and if I need more of anything. I ran out of canned tomato products in the kitchen cupboards but I have another place I keep "more" of that kind of thing. I need to go through them. I seem to use all kinds of tomatoes: whole peeled tomatoes, diced tomatoes of Italian or Mexican seasoning, stewed tomatoes with seasoning or none, tomato sauce, etc etc etc. I don't have any pureed tomatoes right now. I use these with all kinds of dishes, meat dishes, pasta, veggie anything.

For today, I have some leftovers of a soup I made the other day: Beef broth, some pearled barley soaked overnight, leek, scallions, carrots, 1 small potato, celery for a soup. I'll wash, slice and eat the two medium pears that need to be used up. I just like them as plain fruit, maybe with a little cinammon and brown sugar. They'd be good with a chocolate sauce but I'm not going to do that today.

All for now,
later,
Shamba

October 3 Saturday

2009-10-03T12:32:00.000-07:00

Suffice it to saw that the economic news this past week has helped to dim the “bright lights” of recovery hopes. I’ll not get into that at all today. I’m enjoying the weather too much.
Not much in food news today. Eating the last of beef stew and veggies and have to make a big store run for all kinds of food and related supplies sometime today. I'll get to Sprouts for bulk purchases later this week after i checked out all those supplies in my pantry. At least, what I think of as my longer term storage pantry.

Thinking of emailing the local CSA and seeing what’s involved in getting on their supplies list.
My containers of basil, parsley and oregano are dong just fine.

Happy News from the Desert!

Our temps are now below 100 degrees, at least for the next 10 days!

On October 1st in the morning in my house it was 70 degrees from the weather alone. Ac didn't run all night and it was very quiet the previous night because my neighbors' ACs weren't running either.

It was cool inside! Not just an absence of warmth but actual coolth! :) :) :) :) :)

Peace to all,
shamba

September 30th, Wednesday

2009-09-30T16:09:00.000-07:00

At the last minute, like 15 minutes ago, at 12:55 p.m., I decided to cook in the Global sun oven. I have a pot of beef stew meat, canned stewed tomatoes, some minced onions, and some other seasonings and it’s out there cooking. It wasn’t quite unfrozen so it’ll need all the 3 ½ hours of sunlight it’s got left today to cook.

I don’t know what else I’ll eat with it but I’ll deal with that later.

Okay, it’s 30 minutes later and I’m using up the last ½ of brown rice in a glass jar. I’ll need to open a new package of rice after this. I will use water to cook it in, not broth this time. And it will go in the solar oven under the meat dish when I’m ready to cook it. It only takes an hour or so to cook.

Update Wednesday: Success with the beef stew meat by 4 p.m! I put it in a little after 1:p.m. still pretty frozen. The condensation on the glass door started about 3:30 and I could begin to smell the food cooking a little before that. I got the idea of putting the meat in even if still frozen from the Solar Chef who put some frozen meat of her own in her oven and it was done after 3-4 hours. Also had adjust the oven frequently, including moving the table it was on. If it's on the table it's higher to catch more sun after 2:p.m. Middle of the day is still fine for cooking.

I’m not sure about green stuff tonight I’m fresh out of most fresh stuff.

shamba

Monday Sept 28th

2009-09-28T17:19:00.000-07:00

Sun: I have the last of some brown rice in one of my glass jars to do something with today; not quite a cup. I have more rice but I’d have to open a package or something. So, I do what I do with rice, I’ll put it in the solar oven with some split peas/lentils, maybe add some vegetables at the end of the cooking time, dehydrated minced onions, cumin, coriander, salt and vegetable broth.

I’m losing more sun exposure on the patio faster and faster every day. Its interesting how fast it moves this time of year. I'll have to move i to the front soon.

Saturday: Put a piece of beef with assorted and some leftover veggies in the solar oven pot today. Potatoes, last 1 ½ leeks, carrot, little bit of a leftover onion, sea salt, ground pepper, freshly chopped up basil, parsley and oregano. I’m not sure how much of the fresh herbs really need to be added I’ll guess I’ll know better when the whole thing is done.

Update: the meat dish could have used a little more of the herbs, I’m just chicken with putting too much in dishes.

Wednesday: Used up the rest of the brick of cheddar cheese and grits and assorted other ingredients to make Chile Cheese Grits. I halved the recipe though as it makes a huge amount of food, about 12-14 servings. I’ve cooked the whole thing for potlucks before and kept half for me. The cheese I had wouldn’t have been enough for the whole recipe anyway. Note for next time: more green chiles make it tastier.

So, I have some cheese grits for today and froze the rest and that’s several days worth of food. It freezes well and reheats well. It cooked just fine in the Tulsi solar oven; I hadn’t cooked that dish in a solar oven yet.

Cheers,
shamba

September 25

2009-09-25T10:32:00.000-07:00

Okay, I picked a challenge. I will try? make sure?--how affirmative do I have to be--that I use all my leftovers to the nth degree. And one more part, to use up my produce in whatever way I can find before it rots.

I'm better at these two things than I was a year ago but cooking for one, I sometimes get too enthusiastic about cooking with my solar ovens and make too much at one time. Also, I get tired of eating the same thing after a couple of days.Very Leftover meat and some cheese or egg dishes aren't a problem as some of my cats like them.

I expect I'll end up making more veg broth from scratch with odds and end from the crisper drawer. :)

Peace, Shamba

September 21 Last Day of Summer

2009-09-21T11:29:00.000-07:00

This is the Tulsi with the shadow of the old bush. The bricks that the oven sits on is the best general place to cook on the back patio but I have two small tables I also use to set the ovens on when I need to use it someplace else.

This is the west corner where the dead pyracantha was removed. The container of parsley, basil and oregano sits there right now but I don't leave it there because the sun is still too hot for it there. I wanted it in the photo though. and this is the Sun Oven I was cooking with that day. Also, you can see the corner of the red Tulsi oven in the right side of the picture. This is the sun mid morning to early afternoon in late September.

This is shot of Global Sun oven in the east corner of the patio. It is set up for late afternoon sun cooking 4-5:30. I will be losing this 5:30 sun in the next month. I'll have to cook in the front of the house as all direct sunlight is gone from the patio from November to early April.

Cheers,

Shamba

September 15-18th

2009-09-18T11:30:00.000-07:00

Our kind landscaper came and took out my last and very old dead pyracantha bush. It was . old enough and brittle enough I could have broken it’s branches off one by one like I did with the other one, but he made short work of taking it out by using one of his saws. Now I have a whole empty corner of the patio to do something with. I’m thinking containers with some kind of plantings in them. I have some cuttings of plants one of my neighbors has and she’s got a great container garden in her front window area. Maybe I’ll check into a climbing plant of some kind to see if it could cover up part of the wall to keep it cooler. Cats’ claw always works. I’ll think about it.

Went to Home Depot today to look at a variety of things I’m always thinking about doing something about: a new front door that would be more efficient that the old door I have; look at lighting fixture for the kitchen or globes/bulb covers to replace the ones that I have broken; maybe plants.

So, for once I found some globes I like: I’m going back to get the globes later today. I did and they look so much nicer than only 3 globes on a 5 light fixture and only light bulbs in the places where the globes were broken off.

And, I got a container pot of basil, oregano and parsley. They will be fine in the container they’re in for a few weeks then I want to transplant them to larger ones. They smell wonderful.

This is all to reward myself after the struggle to get a signature guarantee from the Cu or the BofA so I can sell the last stock transfer for my mom’s estate account. The little BofA branch came through for me again! They didn’t’ fuss about whether or not they could do the signature since I am a trustee of the estate, they just did it for me! Something about the differences between CUs and banks I’m sure. Anyway, that done!

DJA still going up but hasn’t broken 10,000 yet. What holds it up for heavens sake??
Shamba

September 4th

2009-09-04T13:11:00.000-07:00

Sept. 4th, 2009:

Wahoo, September! The worst heat is behind us and the worst power bill probably, too. No, I can’t turn off the AC altogether—that’s too much to ask—but it’s definitely running less. And in a few weeks, the reason I live here will be evident and the good weather will continue until about mid-April. J J so, I have lots of good things to anticipate even though we’ll have some moderate heat for next 4-6 weeks.

I need to tell the tai chi teacher at my studio about my solar ovens he was very interested. I also got to visit with a couple of others at the yoga studio. The workshop I wanted to attend has been postponed another month or two. I have to go back to classes more regularly. I’m not doing well with that. But I’ve kept up with the cooking intention pretty well this summer although I broke down and ordered 4 pizzas for delivery over the past month or so. A great splurge they are but they do feed me for about 2 days with salad and other side dishes.

Today, I’m making the curried lentils with raisins, carrots, sweet pepper and some onion in the Tulsi oven. It’s a stovetop recipe but I’m doing it solar today.

The Global oven has a pot with ingredients to make vegetable stock. I used too much water the last time I tried to make this, on the stove top, so I’ll see how it comes out this time.

I have to coordinate solar cooking more everyday since the sun angles are moving fast these days. Less sun in morning and the late afternoon. That means in about a month (?) there won't be any sun at any time of day to cook with on the back patio. But of course, there will be plenty in the front of the house. That's closer to the kitchen, too.

Oh, and yes, the unemployement is up for Aug, 9.7% and the flatlined and maybe tipping over economy is still out there. but today it doesn't matter much. :)

Cheers,
shamba

Aug 22, 28, 31.

2009-09-04T13:03:00.000-07:00

August 31st:

1. Okay, the estate has 1 stock left to sell that has to have a medaillion signature guarantee and a letter to order the sale.

2 & 3. Two unclaimed property form to fill out for the State of Arizona. One earlier claim has been settled. How they came up with these two I ‘ll never know but I have the forms to fill out and accompanying documents to prove I got the right to these things! Sheesh, I HATE THESE FORMS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And old comadre from yoga teacher training has a small studio of her own very close to where I live. I ‘ve stopped by a couple of times to check it out but once she was closed for a week and then today she had a class going with the doors closed and blinds and a sign not to disturb. Glad to see she’s teaching again and hasn’t had to close down because of economics.

August 28th:

Cooked a meatloaf the other day, had meat that had thawed but I wasn’t sure what I’d do with it so I made meatloaf. We’ve had a few over 110 days again and I wasn’t cooking anything inside! That was Thursday, Friday and tomorrow…

Anyway, meatloaf was great. Made some rice, split peas, some salt, pepper, turmeric and curry powder this morning. I was surprised I didn’t have quite enough sun at 11:00 a.m. this morning in the usual cooking spot when I went out to put in the rice! Sun is moving quickly to change angles these late August days. I put the rice in the oven anyway and it will cook well it’s just starting with only half sun.

The winter laundry is done. This is all the blankets, throws etc. have all been freshly washed and ready to sue in a month or two at night. I didn’t get these done earlier as I had my injured arm to deal with. And I actually found places to put all this winter laundry! So, it doesn’t have to sit out stacked up on the extra laundry hamper after all.

I have to do cat laundry-for winter cat beds—and clean up the front porch, where the cats actually live. Next week, I hope to get to that. I’m not tackling that this weekend though.

August 22:

Nonfood supplies for medicine chest.

Alka Seltzer like stuff (I should never be without these!); paper towels; Gold Bond body and hand cream marked down (I love this stuff for any feeling of irritation or itchiness on skin); Imodium (when you need something like this you need it); some shoe cleaner/polish/scuff mark remover to spiff up shoes and sandals after this summer of sweat, splashed with water from hose watering, cats lying on them, various other small calamities that happen to shoes. I got some standard band aids.

Then I decided I wanted to try leeks in something this week and got some bananas, too. And some wet canned cat food as a treat for the herd this week.

all for now

August 19th and August 21

2009-08-21T13:36:00.000-07:00

August 19th:

Had a great lunch with B. from yoga. We celebrated our 10th anniversary graduating as trained yoga teachers! J We talked about what we knew of the others who were in our class at Desert Song. She still teaches there and I still go there for classes.

We sat at the bar which was quite comfortable because people were waiting to be seated at tables. She found the seats and they worked out well. We had these wonderful veggie burgers, and a creamed corn with some kind of curry and cilantro. I want that recipe! The burgers and the corn as a side dish were delicious. Their Cole slaw was pretty good, too. I have leftovers for dinner or lunch tomorrow.

Then she remarked on how the restaurant, Houston’s, didn’t look like there was a recession but there were lots and lots of empty commercial spaces in that mall/complex. There used to be small retail shops and offices and businesses but so much of it is empty now. This is true for all kinds of commercial properties these days; the large fancy ones and the little neighborhood strip malls (even if the strip malls have been completely redone like one near me.) The two other restaurants in that complex seemed to have a good business going today at lunch.

Her law firm has had revenue coming in slow down a lot in the last year. I don’t think they’ve had any layoffs there though.

“Excessive heat “for today and Thursday. But the temps are supposed to be “only” 110 and not 115 or so!
Lows sweeping in this weekend to lower temps. Dark is here by 7:15 these days.

August 21:

Overcast day and getting more overcast as the day goes by due to low and moisture coming into the state from the south in Mexico. It is a good day to try the hotter solar oven to see how it does on a day like this. Global Sun oven gets a little hotter than the Tulsi especially on days like this, I bet.

So, I chopped up zucchini, red bell pepper, onion, an ear of corn split in two, celery and carrots and olive oil, salt and pepper and a little garlic. The pepper and zucchini needed to be used in the next few days anyway day or so. Anymore, letting produce go bad seems a terrible thing to do to me especially since I have the easy way of cooking solar. Also, I made a brown rice and split pea dish. These are both in the Global Sun oven, rice dish on the bottom and the veggie sin the sun oven roaster pan on top of it.

I figure I’ll just leave it all out there for longer than it would take with a bright sunny day. Since no meat dish is involved, I’m sure it will cook just fine left out there long enough.

Later in afternoon: sun came out in full force about an hour after I put the food out.

Notes on State budget situation, From PBS program, Horizon on August 20th current
State Treasurer is explaining Arizona budget situation.

-State is broke. General Fund borrowed 386 million dollars to keep the lights on as of August 19.

-need balanced budget signed by Gov. or next Tuesday, we’ll need to borrow again and more.

-State gov can get 5-6 million by interagency borrowing. State agencies can borrow from each other but still need to leave enough money in each agency to fund that agency.

-Banks don’t want to lend to us unless we can pay it back.

-Will be running out of money by the end of October without a budget.

-Takes 6-8 weeks to set up credit facility for State to borrow money.

-some banks may not want to participate.

-Our rating is on a watch of some kind because of budget problems. This causes higher interest if we borrow and our rating is downgraded.

-If no resolution in budget by end of October, we might end up like California with IOUs, delayed payments, etc. Gov will have to decide who gets paid etc.

-New budget doesn’t allow for vote on possibly raising the sales tax in Nov. Why don’t these fools, Republican fools! (is my bias showing here?) in the legislature want the people to vote on this?? They can blame us for voting higher taxes in then and they can avoid any blame! GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

-we had last year in 2008 at this time 650 million dollars in the bank. State is spending at the same rate as last year.

all for now, Shamba

August 1-3, 2009

2009-08-03T15:49:00.000-07:00

I have to confess I helped the consumer economy along a bit by consuming a useful utensil—Global sun oven with the discount I got from using Chile Chews name. I also got one 3 qt pan to use with it. I don’t have anything quite like that in my pots and pans.

This thing is really easy to use after using my Tulsi oven. I'm pretty sure from looking at it that it's easy to use and I will be able to cook the more traditional mid-Western, farm like, WASPy cooking that I learned from my Mom! The Tulsi isn’t hard to use but with it’s flatter design and the pans it came with, I had to adjust the way I cooked foods and what foods I could use in it.

With the Tulsi and after reading food/cooking/prep blogs I have tried more new foods to me and ways of cooking them in the past 18 months than I have in my whole previous life! Couscous, quinoa, beans, lentils, various nonyeast breads, some egg dishes beyond scrambled or hard boiled and all kinds of vegetables I never ate--or knew I had eaten. That would be chards, kales, collard greens and winter squashes. I've liked most of them. The greens just go well in salads and sometimes in vegetable soups. But mostly beans and butternut and acorn squash aren't going to be my favorites. I could cultivate the taste of acorn squash, I think, it smells so good cooking. However, split peas and lentils with veggies and/or rice are just fine.

After reading some other bloggers who deal with solar cookers, I realize how easy I have it using these ovens where I live. On my north patio, where I cook from mid May to mid October, it’s perfectly flat, I have sun all afternoon with no trees/bldgs anything to block the sunlight at all. I have sun well overhead mostly coming straight down. The sun does move across the patio during the day but the middle of the patio close to the north wall gets sun for a good 4-5 hours. I put the ovens out there with stuff in them and they hardly have to be adjusted at all June until after early/mid September. After end of October I’ll have to cook in the front yard. I didn’t do any solar oven cooking after mid November last year until this June. I’m going to try to do more this winter and see how it works.

There’s plenty of unshaded yard to use although the sun angles are much different and my neighbors can see what I’m doing. ;) Two nice African sumacs give us shade and a pleasant yard in this common area. Some neighbors cook on their front porches or use the barbecue that’s near the pool so several of us see each other cooking outside.

Chicken breasts (2) and some liquid I put in with them were in the big oven for 2-3 hours. Great! They didn’t need to be in quite that long but I put them out and did some stuff and took a nap and it was 3 hours later.

Tomorrow, I’m going to use the liquid, maybe with some soup stock I’ve got on hand, or maybe not, and make a soup.

The next Day:

Pot of broth from yesterday and various fresh veggies and it’s in the oven. Wish I had some crackers of some kind. This came out pretty well except it was more stew than soup!

Monday Aug 3: Put the last two pieces of “old” frozen chicken in the GSO to cook. That’s the last of the frozen chicken parts, breasts, legs, thighs, whatever. In for 3 hours, that was more than enough to cook them thoroughly. The cats will get some of it for dinner. Easy to smell it cooking when I go out the patio doors!

AIP thoughts on Monday:

1. Keep on with as much solar cooking as possible through cooler weather even if it’s out in the front common area.

Have to watch where I’ll set oven as the cats will probably want to check it out. So, no balancing it/them on the porch wall; put it on the ground or on the small table out front. I’m at the end of the building so it’s probable if it’s on the sidewalk it won’t be in anyone’s way except mine.

2. Keep closer track of BTUs this winter. I’m sure I could get this usage down some more.

3. I ‘ve hardly used hot water for bathing this summer. Water in cold taps is plenty warm for showers most days July-August from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

4. Idea: Keep plastic pitcher available to put water in that is “extra” at the kitchen sink. It’s surprising how much water this is.

5. When rewiring, put some outside outlets in from and back, please.

6. Idea: Could schedule using electric oven for more things at the same time.

7. Idea: For refrigerator, could schedule taking things out and putting things in instead of so many individual grabs from the fridge. Tricky!

8. When I’m cooking breakfast, either hot or cooler weather, I’ve been bringing cereal to proper temperature and then taking it off the burner to finish cooking or turning the burner off altogether. Also, I’m using the pot lids while this off the heat is taking place.

9. Idea: Have a whole energy audit done? Sometimes utilities will do free audits; but I don’t know if mine would do this.

enough for now, Shamba

July Updates

2009-07-27T13:07:00.000-07:00

July 27, Monday :

So, another 113 or so day today; we’ve had a break of a week or so from the “excessive heat warnings” but today the temp is up again. I’m surprised at the difference between 105 and 115 makes; I forget how better it is at the lower number there.

We got some rain last week overnight but that’s been it. We’ve had several near misses as storms seem to form in the early evenings but never quite made it to Central Phoenix or they just didn’t have any rain to dump on us.

So, what better way to use the heat and sun than to try a new solar oven recipe? Curried Lentils and veggies and rice in a separate pan.

I slept badly last night and this is a relatively easy way to be productive today.

Food storage reviewfor the past few weeks:

I actually ran out of oatmeal during my 6-8 weeks or not using my injured arm. (it is now 12 weeks) I thought I had enough for the Apocalypse and beyond but I was wrong! I think I want to keep more than I have had on hand from now on.

I need to use up my remaining brown rice before looking at any other rice I have including the Basmati, which I love.

I DON”T need any more pasta for a while. I’m pastad in plenty. Basta with Pasta! (For a while)

The lentil and dried beans supply is fine. Lentils and split peas are so easy to use; I use them in place of the dried beans a lot.

Picked up some organic canned green beans on sale.

Picked up 4 boxes of whole wheat pastas; didin’t realize until today that I have plenty of all kinds of pastas.

I need to pick up at Sprouts in the bulk section: white sugar, NO more whole wheat flour for a while, granola, steel cut oats/rolled oatmeal.

New cat likes staying in most of the time. I have to keep bedroom doors shut though to keep him and Mariah separate. Nubs needs to do adjusting for this and Mariah, too. We’ll see how it works out.

July 22, 2009:

Went to othopod for 11 wk check up on right arm. It’s almost completely healed. It aches less than it did a couple of weeks ago. Stretching quads every day has done away with almost all ofmy knee pains—who knew such a simple solution could do so much!

I’ll keep on taking the Arnica Montana internally for at least a few more weeks.

Pub pot of chicken breast with veggie in solar oven, the big solar oven. I put it out about 12:30. Put a container of couscous & water out with it—under it actually—towards the last hour or so of cooking time. I’m so hungry thinking about this food, I hope I’m not disappointed in the outcome of the dish. Update: This combination of food worked out just fine.

Mariah, tabby cat, is afraid of the way this oven looks when it’s put up. She doesn’t seem to mind the Tulsi oven when it’s out there at all.

July 14-19th:

Saw, Harry Potter movie; it’s pretty good. Unfortunately, it will be another 18 months before the first half of Deathly Hallows comes out!

More preparedness: Bash’s had Gold Bond skin things on sale about half of what I’d pay at –so I got 3-4 different kinds of their lotions. That should last a while. Often, my skin gets hot and itchy at this time of the year. If stress levels are up, this turns into hives which tends to freak me out.

Also, my favorite shoe store for the past 15-20 years has been the EJs branch at colonnade. They’ve been slowly dwindling away in customers and inventory the past year and now they have gone out of business. I couldn’t let that pass without locking and ended up with 2 pairs of shoes there. Next Sunday is their last day. There are two more stores in north Scottsdale. Yes, it would be worth a couple of trips a year to check them out. But not for several months.

Cheers,
shamba

July 12th:

2009-07-19T11:22:00.000-07:00

July 12: Sunday:
These are my organization of thoughts on a lot of comments at blogs, etc. I read during the week.
1. permanently smaller economy; Not an V or U or W recovery but X! the X idea is from Robert Reich. as in impasse?? No way through go back? No, I know there’ll be no going back to what we had 2000-2006!
2. Permanent job losses after this down cycle. People have some money for unemployment, extensions, maybe savings maybe assets or things to sell. When they all run out? And when any work they find doesn’t pay for what they have been used to? Lose their houses, too?
3. Permanent smaller revenue for state and local govs. Every year, less and less available due to less spending due to people with no income to spend except for absolute necessities.
4. Permanent lessening of government services: education, police and security, infrastructure, social services, helpe to hospitals and various other organizations.
5. Permanent reduction in medical services available for those who depend on government for programs, elderly assistance like nursing homes available, other nonprofits don’t get any govet help and private help is dwindling: food banks, shelters, animals shelters, etc.
6. Healthservice, public and private permanent reduced. No meds available for chronic disease or various conditions, no insurance available, people sicken and die from various diseases. Emergency rooms can’t treat someone if they are so far gone with chronic conditions: diabetes, heart condition, etc. 7. Pensions and government mandated services are reduced to lack of funding. Service to

June 27 Saturday

2009-06-27T15:29:00.001-07:00

I felt like this June is some kind of turning point in our economic future because June’s unemployment rate will tell us how we’re going, along with other indiciators. The stock markets had a rally since it’s low point in march and a lot of all kinds of people see what they think are green shoots. But green shoots of what plants? Some others are seeing green shoots turning into yellow weeds. So if they were weeds, they weren’t what we’d like to see growing anyway, I guess they mean.

And people have felt more hopeful the last couple of months, April and May, some polls say anyway. Some people I know have felt that way. Some days I even felt that way, more days, I haven’t. I’m interested in how the general perception will get more pessimistic from here . If this sounds sick, I’m sorry! I hope it doesn’t go that way, but if reality goes that way more and more general perceptions will go that way , too.

I’d like to deal with one day at a time, REALLY, one day at a time instead of having to think ahead all the times about everything! This means whatever preparedness stuff I want to achieve but mostly it’s had to do with my mom’s estate money and my own money. It’s very intimidating knowing what to do about these things normally but the atmosphere of fear and uncertainly for money these last few months has been incredible.

I haven’t put things in mattresses or strong boxes under the bed. I moved some money out of the stock market last week. I have a couple thousand left in another def comp fund I want to move.

The estate has 3 stock amounts that have some last paperwork (I hope it’s the last) to do to transfer everything and get it sold.

I’m sooo weary of dealing with money and really feeling it has to get out of the market as soon as possible. I’ve felt it every hour of every day since last October and it’s now getting better. At least the greatest amount of it is done. I can understand why people have been overwhelmed with fear and’/or inertia or denial in trying to do anything something with their money whatever form it’s in—stocks, treasuries, savings, CDS or whatever. Then there’s always the fear that wherever you put it, it will fail! Even owning gold has been a worry since gold bugs are worried about the amount of “real gold” coins or bullion is really available, really exists (!) Or are the dealers just selling paper shares that will never be back by the real thing.

Got some clouds on the horizons all around and it’s almost the 4th of July. This always cheers me up because we begin to turn towards the part of the year I like the most even if it’s two months away.

Peace to myself,
Shamba

Juneth 25th, Thursday

2009-06-25T15:18:00.000-07:00

HOORAY! Dr. B. says my right radial head is 85% healed! X-rayed r. arms and both knees for some pain in R. knee, also. Little beginnings of bone spur in r. knee (groan).

However, we discussed stretching for the quads, which are naturally tight anyway, and some anti-inflammatory crème. Also, I need to stop using my rocking chair so much for a month or so to see if that doesn’t help the pain/tightness in my knees.

I’m not supposed to “push or lean” on my right arm yet. Give that two weeks he says.

I’m going back in a month. Starting my arm exercises with 1 lb weights. I’ll see about doing some rotator cuff exercises with them. I have all the exercise plans that my PTs gave me from my two rounds of PT for arms and shoulder in the past 3 years.

Some preps over the past 2-3 weeks.

--Picked up latex gloves, and an old fashioned ice bag! I also found hot water bottles actually still exist at the local CVS (drugstore).

The latex gloves have been on my mind from time to time as I’ve cleaned up dead bird parts after the cats worked on them! Today I found a torn open pigeon carcass at the end of our building. My cats may have done it or not. But I cleaned it up and then had to go to the store anyway. So, I picked up the latex gloves while I was there.

--Got some more of the Neutrogena sunscreen I like so well.

--Got some surgical masks at a Fry’s. These are also good for when I clean up where the cat’s live on the front porch. Good for dust, leaves, dirt, cat or other dander, etc.

--Don’t need any more rechargeable batteries at the moment.

--Large Goodwill store near me has a very large and nice assortment of clothing that seems to be growing larger every time I go there. Didn’t purchase garments but I like to scope out the place every few weeks. More people are certainly using it these days.

--This store is also a good place to look for all kinds of dishes, cookware and household fabrics. The fabrics also include all kinds of fabric remnants and good sized pieces of cloth that can’t be categorized as bedding or towels etc.

--Went through clothes that need to be mended and realized I desperately want to sew something. At least I want to mend and fix the stuff that needs doing.

-- Found an older skirt that just needs it’s stretched out elastic waistband replaced. I realized how easy it would be to rip out the old one and do a new one; one of my old favorities when I was wearing skirts.

My heart is with doing sewing and fiber arts stuff. I‘d do someone’s ironing forever if they’ fix my food and clean up the kitchen afterwards! I actually like ironing. I’ve always liked the whole production process of creating stuff with fabric: laying out patterns, adjusting, pinning and cutting carefully (sometimes not cause I’m in a hurry) and the step by step process of seeing it come together.

--T. has moved to Payson and her handsome Nubs is now my 8th cat. She lived here 15 years and I will miss her. Plus we don’t have a clue who will live there now.

Other news these days: 19 state govts are on the edge of shutting down, including mine.

It just occurred to me this morning that fewer employees in state government means less money paid into the state retirement funds …. Ummm, yeah …. Maybe more canned tomatoes are in order.

Peace,
Shamba

June 11

2009-06-13T10:05:00.000-07:00

Ok, 5 ½ weeks from stress fractured right arm—it’s healing well and I can use the arm except for carrying anything heavier than a full soda bottle (dr. agreed with this) bottle could be full of soda or other liquid—Also, I can’t lean on it at all. But my range of motion is really excellent. I didn’t expect that.

-I can drive again

-I can do my own laundry if I’m careful about the heaviness of items in the load.

During this time period d. and S. helped out a lot and one of my neighbors did, too.

After 2 weeks of way too hot temps for 2 weeks in May, our temps are now running between 90-100 degrees. We’ve had very overcast days and even 2-3 days of gentle intermittent rain in mid-May! We’ve had almost 4 weeks of these cloudy and under usual temperature days. It’s certainly very nice in the mornings and the AC doesn’t have to be on as much. I wonder how much longer it will last.

My food storage is depleted a lot since it was at the first of May that I fell and broke the arm and I usually make 2 trips at the first of the month to buy what I need. So, almost a month and a half has gone by without much except some daily trips to get what is absolutely necessary. Like healthy choice frozen dinners for a 2-three week period as a meal option. They looked best of all the possible frozen dinners at the time at the store in easy walking or driving distance.

-Friends helped me pull what I needed out of storage containers so I could have a small amount easy for me to handle to fix to eat as hand got better. This was on a weekly basis.

-Opening cans doesn’t work with one hand not working well! But an electric one wouldn’t have been any better. I have used those before. Friends had to open cans sometimes for me.

-Use paper plates/bowls! and of course, plastic utensils.

-Powdered milk is easier to use, measured out and then mixed with water for a glass or two, than handling milk containers of any kind.

-Soda bottles washed out are great for keeping water in the fridge, and easy to handle with one hand. They are light weight and don’t tip over as easily as glasses or heavier water containers. Also, Mariah (one of my cats) can’t drink out of them! She’s very fond of drinking out of cups or mugs. She always inspects what I’m drinking and sometimes drinks it herself (except for coffee)
-Have a store nearby you can walk to easily to get some things if you can’t drive! My store was only a quarter mile away one way. This also got me out of the house and it was easy to carry a few things in a medium to large tote bag. The first two weeks it was good for my spirits to do this if I could.

-Ended up adding to rechargeable battery supply on a shopping trip one day. AAA and AA batteries ins good supply now.

--Finally made appt with CFA I like at the CU. Goal: Move small IRAs now that the market has come up a lot from March lows I’m going to get everything out of equities that is left there! I didn't really plan to wait until the market hadn come up so much I've just been watching things as they've gone the past 2 months. I finally made the decision; this seemed a very hard decision to make.

Peace, Shamba

May 19th

2009-06-13T10:03:00.000-07:00

Everyone–EVERYONE–should do food storage! Some kind of food storage.

2 1/2 weeks ago I fell and have a stress fracture in my right arm–I’m able to type today since it’s doing quite well.

Fortunately, the injury is not very serious and my trip through the ER went quite well and I expect to recover fully. I had cat food stored, food of my own and so the inconveniences of this whole thing were made easier by the supplies I had on hand.

I also had to get some frozen dinners to help out and someone had to open my canned goods and then we stowed them in the fridge for a day or so until I could use them with my good arm and hand. But I had the food on hand and hopefully in a week or so, after the dr visit tomorrow I will be doing much more.

Celery and carrots can be eaten raw by hand easily enough and bell peppers like apples, if you really need to.

Peace to All,
shamba

Ailr 17-29th Notes

2009-04-29T14:27:00.000-07:00

As of April 27th we have a new player on the world stage, complicating just about everything--the Swine flu!--possible influenza pandemic. It's "swine"flu" which is really a DNA mixture of Avian and Swine and Human DNA, so It's a hybrid flu. I started to think on the first day we heard about it on eht MSM that it might be somewhat alarmist but I don't think so now. and who am I to say someone else is alarmist??!! LOL We want to be aware and prepared for possibilities but healths services have been preparing for possible flu pandemics for a few years now.

Started in Mexico and is spreading to all around the world. It can be mild and no worse than any regular flu but there are some deaths and very seriously ill people from this in Mexico and the US.

As of 29th, we’ve had an elementary school closed for seven Calendar days in North Central Phoenix as a result of a confirmed “swine” flu in a student there. Students were sent home at midday and sstate health officials had a press conference to talk about it and explain other flue preparations they’ve made. This seems to be developing very quickly. We certainly should be better prepared than previous possible epidemics or pandemic than in the past.

On Thursday, april 23, I had a great afternoon with Penny and Maura at Penny’s new place in Mesa. they will be returning to Montana for the summer and be back in October.

Economic news on the 23rd: 12th week in a row for huge employment numbers around 640.000 again .. broadcast NBC news is broadcasting more of the same/probably going to get worse message tonight. Actually, they’ve been broadcasting that essage for the past two months. Some nights it just sounds so much worse and other nights not so bad.

On April 29th, GDP shrank by 6.1 % first quarter 2009, it was contracting by 6.3% in last Q of 2008.

AIYIYIYIYIYIYIYIYIYI! On a positive note, I have all the guaranteed singatures for stock stuff to send off.

WASH YOU HANDS OUT THERE,

Peace to all, Shamba

April 7th and April 17th

2009-04-18T09:06:00.000-07:00

April 17, 2009

Accomplishments for the week:

Taxes away! Or at least for another year. Last one for my mother; many years of tax return filings left for me.

I had to go to the brokers last week to pick up some stock papers from him to get them to the accountant before the 15th. His securities firm wouldn’t let him fax the information he had for Michael! Another folder of paper to store for a while. Ah, well ….

I get a good sized refund this year—that’s a surprise. And a small refund from the state.

Creditor’s info sent to the paralegal.

My Wells Fargo safe deposit box mystery is almost solved. Staff member found the listing in the computer and we went to look at where the boxes were. They have the box but I can’t find the key!

If I don’t’ find it in a week they have someone drill into open it. Twist is there are two boxes with similar numbers so it’s a tossup between which box is really mine. Key says, but I can’t find the key where it should be since last year. If I have to pay for two boxes to be drilled open, then that’s the way it will have to be. I have to get to the bottom of this box and what’s in it. I think there are silver coins that Dad gave me once and some documents. My passport, though, I have at home.

Have to do an inventory of Mom’s assets and estimated/real worth on the day she died.

Paid myself back to paying the first estate legal bill; payback is always good! Hehehehe

April 7, 2009

Okaaaay! After my online class I feel terribly informed but not sure what happens next … Where am I going from here with projects for the house, general preparedness issues and what will I do for the rest of my life??? A lot to decide in one hour, I guess

Summer will be here in 3-4 weeks, it will be May then already. Need to schedule tune-up for AC.
Waiting on tax information to send off. I may have to pay, and the deadline is midnight Wednesday, April 15, next week.

There are two unclaimed properties at the state of Arizona ... I think. I sent off for the met life stock and should get a letter back about that. That leaves the one certificate I have. I’d forgotten about it until the certificate fell out of a folder.

Pinnacle West stock stuff gets done tomorrow; Comcast has to send a current statement of the account before the CU personnel can do a guaranteed signature. I probably need that for PW stock anyway.

None of this stock is worth a whole lot under 500 each, maybe doesn’t even total that altogether.
Cheers,
shamba

April 1-3 Update

2009-04-05T17:30:00.000-07:00

April 3
The dryers were all full and still had about 15-20 minutes to go when I got my 2 wash loads of laundry this afternoon. I didn’t realize that all 4 were bull when I put my laundry in. So, I decided it was a good time to try the clothesline idea. Last summer sometime, I picked up a good sized but easy to carry folding laundry basket, clothesline and 2 packages of clothes pins.
I hung the pants and knit tops and shirts on hangars and hung them in the bathroom. I always hang better pants, capris and shorts, not jeans, inside. Other things, except for denim things, to in a dryer. Denim gets hung on the bushes in the front of the house until dark—they’re usually dry much sooner than that anyway. And it’s not so classy to have clothes hanging all over the landscaping for more than one afternoon.

Anyway, I tied up the clothesline and hung out the undies and socks and some prs of knit shorts went on the patio chairs. And no one will see them, unless they peek over the block wall. J
That didn’t take long either. And saved me 25 to 50 cents.

Oh, yes, unemployment is up after March figures to 8.5% and what was that about unemployment going to 9% by the end of 2009?? (Someone made that prediction even as late as the end of February) If we keep going this way it will be like 12% by the end of Dec.

Off to do something positive,
shamba

April 1 2009

Some latest Arizona Econ Info:
-On local HBC channel 12 on 6:00 p.m. news (3-31-09) leading story was that the average home price in Phoenix (area or metro incorporated area?) in March 07 was 255,000; in March 09 (now) it’s 150,00; a 53% drop. (I didn’t do the math I just wrote down what they said on air)
Some other US news: from various sources online.
-Manufacturing in the U.S. contracted for a 14th straight month in March as factories kept on cutting production amid the economic downturn that this month becomes the longest since the Great Depression.
-The nation’s gross domestic product was $14.2 trillion in 2008. President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Either met with the chief executives of the nation’s 12 biggest banks on March 27 at the White House to enlist their support to thaw a 20-month freeze in bank lending.
-“Companies in the U.S. cut an estimated 742,000 workers in March, pointing to no relief in sight for the labor market amid the longest recession in seven decades, a private report based on payroll data showed today. The drop in the ADP Employer Services gauge was larger than economists forecast and the most since records began in 2001. February’s reading was revised to show cut of 706,000 workers, up from a previous estimate of 697,000.Companies are slashing staff as tight credit conditions and shrinking household wealth cause sales to shrink. The Labor Department may report in two days that employers cut payrolls in March for a 15th consecutive month, putting jobs losses in the current downturn at more than 5 million, according to a Bloomberg survey. "The weakness is distributed across all components of the economy," Joel Prakken, chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers LLC in St. Louis, said in a conference call. "We are going to see several more months of serious bleeding before we see lesser job losses."
-"The pace of decline is slowing down, that’s important," David Wyss, chief economist with Standard & Poor’s in New York, said in a Bloomberg Television interview. "It is too early to look for a turnaround, but maybe it is time to start saying that things are not getting as bad as quickly as they were earlier."
-The OECD predicted that world trade will shrink by 13.2pc in 2009. The forecast is worse than those from the World Trade Organisation and World Bank and indicates a faster and more widespread implosion of imports and exports than in any single year during the 1930s.
--The USDA said farmers intend to plant the nation's 21 biggest crops on 7.8 million fewer acres than last year, the biggest one-year drop since 1987, when the farm belt was mired in a debt crisis. The retreat is most dramatic in states like North Dakota, where farmers intend to plant 1.4 million fewer acres, and in Texas, where farmers could idle one million acres. Many growers still have time to change their plans for the growing season, which begins in mid-April across much of the farm belt. The USDA will survey farmers about actual plantings in June.

I’m waiting to see what M. says about my 2007 taxes before I decide what to do with the IRAs money.
Two more small stock transfers to do before I’m done with the estate stuff. Yeah!

Cheers,
shamba

March 30th

2009-03-30T11:47:00.000-07:00

Fossil Free Weekend?
Okay, I'd decided to go without any electricityfor Sunday. doing a whole utility, or more than one utility free day or weekend, seemed way too much. butrather than not do any, I decided one day without one utility. It didn't come out as planned but I learned a few things.

To keep myself busy during non-net, TV or other electric distractions, I'd planned to clean up mypatio, trim the overgrown stuff, and report about 15-20 aloes and put someflower cuttings from a neighbor in pots. the aloes stay in the back and theflowers--hearts and flowers is the name I think--were goingn to go mostly ontheh front porch.

BTW, my natural gas heat wasn't coming on except for early morning for a littlewhile since it's not so cold at night anymore.

To make a long story shorter, my sinuses were totally plugged from a change inweather and allergies Sunday so I gave in and made cereal on the stove so thewarmth from the cereal and coffee would make my head feel better. It always does ...I repented :) of my decision to use the electric stove though and stayed awayfrom electricty generally until sundown. I had just picked sunup to sundown formy electricity free hours.

I did get all the outside work done I'd intended! My lower back certainly knows I did something unusual yesterday. I also cleaned out some stuff--boxes--from my shed so there's room for things like water storage containers. I realized I had all kinds of nails in the shed wall already that I could hang things on. There are two wooden brackets already in the wall that I could put some kind of shelf on and put stuff on there.

so, I never got anything in the solar oven yesterday and cooked dinner the regular way but I got some things accomplished. I also learned I need a wind up clock or another battery powered one. and there will be another time to try again going without utilities ...

cheer,sheri in phoenix

Sat March 28th

2009-03-28T13:49:00.000-07:00

I finally got the old analog TV out of the living room where it has been sitting for a little over a month since I got the new digital TV. I took it to Goodwill and then decided to look around inside their store. I found the very model of a battery powered fan that I had viewed online earlier this week at amazon or someplace. It's a good size although it does need 8 D batteries and I got it on a 50% off Satuday.

Also, I got some AAA batteries and found a battery powered clock so I have 2 battery powered clocks now.

Tomorrow I plan on doing the plant repotting on the back patio.

shamba

March 27, 2009

2009-03-27T15:41:00.000-07:00

Finished an online class in Adapting In Place from Sharon and Aaron. What a lot of information and overwhelming at times really. Lots of things, and not all happy things to think about but better than not thinking about them. That’s one reason I haven’t been posting here but I haven’t had a lot to say this windy, pollen saturated March.

Had a nasty allergy problem that I had to go to the dr for and get prednisone, antibiotics and antihistamines which did fix it. Citrus blossoms, of course, and a variety of other things blooming did it I guess. I haven’t had an allergy problem like that before in the spring!

I’ve also been busy the past month with estate papers, taxes for Mom and myself and filing, sorting and shredding papers (again!) But next year I won’t be doing anymore taxes for mom/Eleanor and will have much less paperwork to sort and maybe a lot more that I can shred and/or burn.

Work has started on the new fresh water lines for the south side of the complex. In our small complex, two units are now for sale and 2 are for rent. I don’t think anyone has even glanced at the 2 for sale and they have been there for at least 6 months each. I know the people who own the rentals and they are in no big hurry for a resident, when they find one it will be fine. that’s kind of interesting but they are older people and may have the rentals paid off, I don’t know.

Where I used to work for the state has been cut very badly in the past month or so and that’s only for the 2009 budget year. what happens in the 2010 budget?! People let go, half the staff hours slashed in half (those have all been restored to 30 hours a week instead of 20) and threat of each week not knowing what’s coming next week. (S. hours were cut to 20 for a week or so but then she got restored up to 30. the other's whose hours were cut to 20 also got their work time to 30 hours.) And L. has decided to retire!! Party next Tuesday.

Large local food bank sent out info on how in Feb 2009 they had a 90 percent increase of use from Feb of 08. Director hasn’t seen things so bad in 40 some years of being associated with this particular food bank.

DJA has gone up to about 7900 the past two weeks but it was about 7700 Friday Mar 27.

Markets on March 18th.
7,486.58
+90.88
+1.23%
Nasdaq
1,491.22
+29.11
+1.99%

S&P 500
794.35
+16.23
+2.09%

Feb 26

2009-02-26T12:33:00.000-07:00

where I used to work is going to go away due to the AZ state budget issues! :( :( :0 Eek! This makes the economic stuff really closer than it was. There's a retirement party for one of the staff there that I'm going to today. I expect it may feel like a wake as well as a party! :/

Starting an online class next week I'm really looking forward to. It centers on how to adapt yourself and place to the coming changes, not all good, that could be/probably will be coming in the next few years. I have some ideas from previous readings at various blogs and books but the people who take the class and teachers will have some, too and I hope this will all help me with my ideas. It's things that could be done and that helps with anxiety and fears.

Otherwise, not much new here. Weather is warming up and is lovely. I smell citrus blossoms out there beginning to come out ... : )

Workshop at yoga studio this saturday morning, too.

end of estate papers by May 30th, I have assets to collect before then though.

Postponing major decisions in life until after estate is settled and this class is done.

feeling pretty good today,
shamba

DJA is hanging around in the 7,100-7300 range the past week or so....