Another neglected blog! Not neglected by all the others I used to read and have been ended for one reason or another, but another blog of MINE that just sort of ended. This is the third one! But it did have a specific purpose; to write down information about what I could do to "prepare" for major changes in the society I've lived in all my life.
I have still been cooking a lot still. I’ve added a couple of sauces to my regular repertoire of meal fixing; an easy pasta sauce and a curry sauce. I still have to look at the recipes but I’m getting better at them I also make a dozen whole wheat muffins on days, usually once a week or so, when I ‘m out of bread and don’t want to go to the store again too soon.
One reason I wanted to post is that prices of several things have been going up in the past year or so. Gasoline is going up again. We’re up to $3.48 this week for regular. We stayed between $3.00 and $3.30 for most of the past few months, since last summer.
When I started this blog, a one pound bag of lentils at my local Safeway was .70-.85 cents. Now, it is $1.89! A bag of lentils! Even beans and pnutt butter have increased in the past year or so. The peanut crop last summer was bad due to a drought in the southeast US and price for pnut butter went up around 50% around last October and November.
A loaf of bread, depending on the bread and the store, stays about $3.50 to $4.00 a loaf.
The store that was in easy walking distance of my house has closed. They didn’t go out of business; the owner didn’t want to renew the lease. A food store called Sunflowers is supposed to go in there but it won’t be up and running for a year. This is just a little inconvenient for me, but some of my neighbors really depended on the accessibility of that store.
I’m in my third year—2010, 2011 and now 2012—of having a CSA share. Our CSA can run all year round in Phoenix.
I’ve found that 3 neighbors and I are giving each other food. It’s just food that’s extra to the individual family and so they or I pass them on to someone in our small complex. It wasn’t intentional, it just developed! It started with me giving mustard greens to one neighbor and she gave me citrus and potatoes. She seems to be doing okay but I do have the feeling that one of these households could use some extra food. The person I give greens to is a pretty good cook and very often gives me part of a dish she has cooked CSA veggies with. It’s pretty good stuff. )
peace, Shamba
Showing posts with label projects finished. Show all posts
Showing posts with label projects finished. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
New House!
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
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
Thursday, April 29, 2010
One more thing off my list of to do... Water related ..
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
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
Friday, June 20, 2008
June 20th Accomplishment finished the past two weeks
These categories are from Sharon Astyk's Independence Days challenge, link to her signt is on the right hand column. The goal is to try and do some tasks in each of these categories every week.
1. Plant something. No food garden. But I have several pots of aloes that have been thriving all by themselves in a portion of the patio. Now with new gates, woodwork on house painted, dead bushes cut down but not cleared away it’s time to do something with these feral (!) aloes.
I don’t think you should just pick pieces of aloes and eat them but I know that aloes like these are very good for rubbing the inside of a piece on a cut or insect bite or a small sunburn.
I’ve got lots of pots of various sizes and I have the right kind of potting soil I’ve had for several months. As soon as I repot these aloes, they’ll be growing like anything. Probably anything else I’d like to plant will never make it in these summer temps, so that will have to wait until mid-September at least.
2. Harvest something. Um, no.
3. Preserve something. No.
4. Prep something. One small bag of clothes to give to St. Vincent de Paul or Salvation Army or Good will.
Also, I cleaned out the shed completely and rearranged everything inside. With the new wall and door, it is more secure than it used to be. I don’t want to put too much inside as everything gets so dirty but all the outside tools can go in there now instead of being under the bed.
Patio is also a much more appealing place and has possibilities to be a very pleasant place with some decent landscaping and the wind bells hung up again.
Best of all, I got my new solar oven. Checked it over and read instructions thoroughly. Also, read instructions that I found online from a solar oven site. Both instructions have several recipes listed. Also made a copy of the instructions from oven manufacturer on my hard drive—the instructions come on a CD. They are written in Hindi English which sometimes sounds funny to my American English native ears—but the instructions are clear enough to follow quite well.
5. Cook something.
Did rice in one pot, and veggies in another pot the night I got the solar oven. I followed instructions I got with the oven and kept checking it every 10 minutes. Of course, to get the best results I’ll have to leave the oven alone once I put something in there, I knew that but it was fun to keep checking it and see how it looked on the patio.
Veggies taste better than if they are steamed. No more mushy steamed broccoli for me! It is also better to cook earlier in the day than at 4-6 in the afternoon here; that is the hottest time of the day in Phoenix.
Also, I can’t burn things in the solar oven easily. Over the years, I have ruined perfectly good pots that way on the stove. I put it on and walk away and don’t come back soon enough.
Corn bread from scratch and it fit in one of the oven pans and it cooked very well in an hour!
A recipe for this was in the oven instructions but I just used another one I already had and figured it would take about twice the time of the oven baked corn bread. I watched it and it was very good at just over an hour in the solar oven.
6. Manage your reserves. listed new items needed for next weeks food shopping trip; coffee, cornmeal, food fresh or dried, and always cat food.
7. Work on local food systems. No.
8. Reduced Waste: No.
9. Learned a skill. Yup, cooked some things successfully with the solar oven.
cheers, shamba
1. Plant something. No food garden. But I have several pots of aloes that have been thriving all by themselves in a portion of the patio. Now with new gates, woodwork on house painted, dead bushes cut down but not cleared away it’s time to do something with these feral (!) aloes.
I don’t think you should just pick pieces of aloes and eat them but I know that aloes like these are very good for rubbing the inside of a piece on a cut or insect bite or a small sunburn.
I’ve got lots of pots of various sizes and I have the right kind of potting soil I’ve had for several months. As soon as I repot these aloes, they’ll be growing like anything. Probably anything else I’d like to plant will never make it in these summer temps, so that will have to wait until mid-September at least.
2. Harvest something. Um, no.
3. Preserve something. No.
4. Prep something. One small bag of clothes to give to St. Vincent de Paul or Salvation Army or Good will.
Also, I cleaned out the shed completely and rearranged everything inside. With the new wall and door, it is more secure than it used to be. I don’t want to put too much inside as everything gets so dirty but all the outside tools can go in there now instead of being under the bed.
Patio is also a much more appealing place and has possibilities to be a very pleasant place with some decent landscaping and the wind bells hung up again.
Best of all, I got my new solar oven. Checked it over and read instructions thoroughly. Also, read instructions that I found online from a solar oven site. Both instructions have several recipes listed. Also made a copy of the instructions from oven manufacturer on my hard drive—the instructions come on a CD. They are written in Hindi English which sometimes sounds funny to my American English native ears—but the instructions are clear enough to follow quite well.
5. Cook something.
Did rice in one pot, and veggies in another pot the night I got the solar oven. I followed instructions I got with the oven and kept checking it every 10 minutes. Of course, to get the best results I’ll have to leave the oven alone once I put something in there, I knew that but it was fun to keep checking it and see how it looked on the patio.
Veggies taste better than if they are steamed. No more mushy steamed broccoli for me! It is also better to cook earlier in the day than at 4-6 in the afternoon here; that is the hottest time of the day in Phoenix.
Also, I can’t burn things in the solar oven easily. Over the years, I have ruined perfectly good pots that way on the stove. I put it on and walk away and don’t come back soon enough.
Corn bread from scratch and it fit in one of the oven pans and it cooked very well in an hour!
A recipe for this was in the oven instructions but I just used another one I already had and figured it would take about twice the time of the oven baked corn bread. I watched it and it was very good at just over an hour in the solar oven.
6. Manage your reserves. listed new items needed for next weeks food shopping trip; coffee, cornmeal, food fresh or dried, and always cat food.
7. Work on local food systems. No.
8. Reduced Waste: No.
9. Learned a skill. Yup, cooked some things successfully with the solar oven.
cheers, shamba
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