Preserving my sanity

I've been canning since university when I lived in a house with a pear tree.  That pear tree was the best thing about that house and although I don't miss the house at all, I really wish I could still get at those pears.  I bought a canning pot and the various accouterments and some large jars and put up half a dozen jars of pears.  Then, feeling on a roll, I made a batch of caramel apple jam that I gave as gifts that Christmas, but managed to keep enough jars for myself to know how good it was.

I didn't preserve anything again until 2 autumns ago, when Kathryn and I went to an apple you-pick and came home with 3 large bags of apples.  We made some more of my yummy apple jam and some applesauce, which we called Triple Threat Temptation Applesauce because it contained three kinds of apples.  By the time I got laid off, I was down to 1 partially full jar of apple jam and was thinking of making some more.  

It was with this in my mind that I happened to be chatting with the butcher and mentioned that I know how to make preserves.  He got very excited and asked that I make some for his store.  He said that he had dreams of a whole shelf of preserves and ordered a dozen 250 ml jars and a dozen 125 ml jars.  

That weekend, I went out to our usual organic grocery store and bought some organic apples.  I decided to experiment with the homemade apple pectin I'd made from the apple skins and cores from the previous batch of jam and applesauce, but it didn't gel properly so I need to experiment with that some more.  It still tasted good, but it wasn't "jammy" enough for me to feel good about selling.  I'm going to play with with using it in other ways, like muffins or tarts, that I can maybe sell at the butcher shop, as well.

Since then I've made a few batches of jam until I got what I feel is a good recipe for a double batch using powdered pectin (they say you shouldn't double jam recipes because it could cause the pectin to fail, but I figured that apples have enough natural pectin to over ride this, which it did).  I delivered almost the complete order - 1 dozen 250 ml jars and half a dozen 125 ml jars - to my butcher.  When I walked in with my cotton bag clanking with jars, the butcher was talking to a man at the counter.  When he saw me, he greeted me loudly as he tends to, calling out, "Hey, Broccoli!" (I'm not inserting this in place of my real name; that's actually what he calls me whenever he sees me).  He then made a big deal out of showing my jars to the man at the counter.  

As we got talking, the man explained that he was a caterer.  I immediately put on my sales hat, telling him that the jam works really well in tarts.  By the time the caterer left, he asked to buy a small jar from the butcher as a sample, talking about how he's always looking for new and interesting ingredients to keep ahead of the competition.   I hope he finds my jam outstanding enough to become my second client.

How to make the most of your frugal energy

As discussed in my entry on Tuesday, more and more people are trying to live frugally, either as a lifestyle choice or out of necessity. I've been doing some searching online and found lots of blogs, community groups, freebie sites, coupon sites, you name it, all on the subject of reducing those few extra cents from your purchases. But one of the things that isn't talked about much is what should be done with all those nickles and dimes that have be shaved off your grocery bill.

I think a lot of people use the money they save to just buy more stuff; the "I just saved a bunch of money with Geiko so I'm going to reward myself with a new Xbox game" cycle. The problem is, this kind of thinking is at cross purposes with the point of frugal living. If you are putting all this effort into saving money - clipping coupons, repairing and re-using things, researching deals - "saving" is exactly what you should be doing with your money. I find the best way to do this is to actually keep this money in a different place from your usual money reserves. That way, you can make absolutely sure you don't spend it "by accident". Some of the ways to accomplish this are simple, but to truly master your savings takes a little organizing and math.

First, start off by deciding where you are going to keep your savings. A high-interest savings account? A peanut butter jar on your bedside table? A cookie tin under your mattress? I personally like a combination of these. I save up small change in a jar in my bedroom and then transfer this to my savings account when there is enough to warrant the transfer. Who wants a 3-page bank statement itemizing every $.50 deposit into your savings account? Add the possibility that your bank may charge fees for the transfer, and you may end up wiping out all your savings, or even being charged more than you saved. An alternate to the jar would be to carry around a small notebook and keep track of every time you save money.

Next, figure out exactly how much money you save with each money-saving activity that you do. The simple example is when you buy discount or with coupons. If you saved $10 on that pair of pants, put $10 in your jar or record it in your log. Just make sure that your savings is worth it; purchasing a name-brand product on sale or with a coupon could still cost more than buying a comparable generic or store-brand product at full price (it's an industry secret that many name-brand products are produced and packaged at the exact same plants as generic products). Just watch for the temptation to buy something that you wouldn't normally buy or don't need, just because it's a good price. Buying it may save you 20% of the sale price, but not buying it will save you 100%.

To calculate other forms of savings you may have to get creative and flex those grade school math muscles. If, for example, you save money by baking your own bread you would have to figure out exactly how much it costs to make each loaf of bread: adding up the cost of the ingredients (in the measurements used) and the cost of gas or electricity to use the oven. Since many bread recipes make 2 or more loaves, you would need to divide this total by the number of loaves to get the per loaf price. Compare this to the cost of the bread you normally buy to calculate your savings and put this savings in your jar or log book.

This may seem like a lot of effort, but most of the work is just in getting the system in place. Once you've calculated the cost of baking vs. buying bread, you don't have to do that again (unless there's a price increase on one of the ingredients or you switch to a differently priced brand). Also, once you've figured out the cost of 1 cup of flour, you can use this information to calculate the cost of everything else you use flour for, so the longer you keep it up, the less work it will be as you go along.

And don't forget to regularly put that money into a savings account (inspect your bank account's terms and fees to determine the most economical way to do this). As all those nickles and dimes add up, they will also grow and multiply. And that's the true meaning of being frugal, Charlie Brown.

All the rage

I found this article on msn.ca (in that window front and centre on the webpage) called The Era of the Frugalista. It's about how "cheap is in" and "budget is the new black". It seems like a promising sentiment, but I disagree. I think that treating frugality as a "fad" is the exact opposite of what we should be doing. Fads are, by definition, short term and impermanent. Living within one's means is not something that should be relegated to times of extreme recession; that kind of thinking is what got us into this mess in the first place. The Feast or Famine spending cycle that is the financial plan of most North American families has a lot to do with the preconceptions that are generally placed on frugality.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that frugality isn't really "in", it's just become popular by necessity. As the author of the article readily admits, most of the people who are now living thriftily will immediately convert to their old overspending ways (and regain their contempt for "poor living") once the dust of this recession clears. Imagine a world where people didn't spend or borrow more money than they could afford, where people lived within their means and had the forethought to save money to help through times of emergency. In such a world, how would a recession even be possible?

In other news, I'm finding ways to bring extra income into the household. I was chatting with the owner of the butcher shop in my neighbourhood and mentioned that I do preserving. After a successful taste test of my homemade Caramel Apple Jam he ordered 12 250ml jars and 12 125ml jars. I spent Sunday and last night making 2 batches and experimenting with the recipe a bit. Tonight I need to do the math to figure out how much it costs to make each jar and then come up with a wholesale price accordingly. U-pick season starts in a few months and that's where I'll really be able to make profit. I'm looking forward to experimenting with preserve recipes.

We are living history

When I was in 9th grade I wrote a history paper on the Great Depression; I got a really good mark on it, too, 98%. I remember that I became fascinated by the subject; all those people having to buckle down and make do, using their will to survive and creativity to rise above this situation that was completely out of their control. I remember stories of ripping back blankets to knit underwear and growing vegetables in tin cans. Of course, I never thought I’d end up living through it myself.

We all know by now that this period in time will likely be described in future generations’ history books as The Great Depression II. American consumer debt is now at 100% of the GDP, which has only happened once before in history. Can anyone in the class tell me when that was? Beuller? Beuller? That’s right, in September 1929, Great Depression I.

Since I was so fascinated in GDI back in jr. high, history, in its infinite sense of humour, has decided to give me a taste. This is a very round-about way of telling you that I’ve been laid off. The company that purchased the independent school that I’ve been working at for the last 3 and a half years has decided the merge my position with another woman’s position and they have someone that they want to take on this new role, and it’s not either of us. Since my colleague is going on mat leave soon, they are legally required to provide her with job security for when she comes back, so she doesn’t have to worry. When she gets back they’ll have something new for her to do. In my case, however, they have no such legal requirement. They want me to stay on long enough to train the new person, and then I’m gone.

Don’t get my wrong, though; I’m not bitter or upset in any way. In fact, I’m excited, and not due to some juvenile romanticization of global recessions. I’m excited because I was looking for a new job anyway, and now I get to do my job search full time, and get paid doing it, for a short time, at least. The severance I’m receiving is actually more than they are legally required to give me, so I have a bit of a cushion before I go on EI. The real source of my excitement, though, is that I’m determined to make the most out of this opportunity. I took this job straight out of university, with my student loan repayment date nipping at my heals. It was the first job that I was offered; in fact, it has been my first and only full-time job. I learned a lot and got some great experience, but I always knew that this wasn’t what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. In fact, I’m constantly surprised that I stayed as long as I did; I initially took this as a stop-gap job and figured I’d find something else and be gone in 8 months, tops. Now I have the opportunity to figure out what I really want to do and go for it.

The thing is, I don’t really know what it is I want to do. The idea of doing the same thing for the rest of my life feels suffocating, but at the same time I feel that at my age I should have some kind of career path. But every day I think up a new job I’d like to have: film crew, publishing, freelance writing, yarn manufacture, full-time etsy story owner, craft instructor (I’ve often thought of opening a craft college), dog trainer, professional organizer, environmental advisor. And of course, there’s always the persistent thought that I’m just not meant for the working world, that any career I try will ultimately leave me feeling trapped and frustrated, that I’m meant for more free spirited things, like doing an assortment of volunteer jobs and running my home business and (eventually) being a SAHM. But if this latter option is my destiny, we’re still a ways from being able to afford to be a one income household.

Which brings me back to my main point. Now that I’m unemployed, I have access to the various job search services that didn’t want to talk to me while I had a full-time job (fair enough). Even the ones that were interested in helping me in my pursuit of a career change had most of their services available during business hours. One in particular that I’m interested in is a 2-week government funded workshop that helps people assess their skills and interests and narrow their focus as to what they should be doing as their next career. A friend of mine did it a few years ago and said it was really helpful, and seemed designed for people who had been laid off and wanted to find work in a different field from the one they were leaving.

So as you can tell, this blog will have a brand new focus, and I hope I will be blogging much more often (sorry about that, by the way). I’ll be writing about my efforts to “find my path”, as well as our new frugal lifestyle. I’d love to hear about how this recession is effecting you, as well, so feel free to leave a comment and join the discussion.

Completely un-wedding related

Here is a great article I've found on uses for used coffee grounds. Mr. Broccoli loves coffee, so I hope to get quite a bit of use out of these.

One wedding down, 1 to go!

We had the Church wedding on the weekend. Everything went off perfectly and the weather couldn't have been nicer! I'm still mired in wedding stuff, but I wanted to make a quick update and link to some pictures that our wonderful photographer put up on his blog.

There's the icing on the cake and then...

...there's the cake topper! As I mentioned in my last post, I have commissioned an artist on etsy to custom-make our cake topper. We've been going back and forth for a while, bouncing ideas off each other and deciding among design sketches and we've finally come up with an excellent design. Each time she sent me various design sketches to choose from and each time it was unanimous among my parents, Mr. Broccoli, and me. I'll spare you a play by play of every design variation, but this is the one we chose, in full colour.

Isn't it great!? The idea we started out with was the two of us on a loveseat with books on our laps. Then, I thought it would be sweet to get Spirit in there somewhere, so she sent us a a few designs with her in various places around the topper and we just loved her spread across our laps. I had mentioned in a few emails that I knit, so she suggested that she put a knitting basket in there, too, which I love! She's managed to get the green and orange of our wedding colours in there and I love the colour contrast of the gold on brown of the base. I'm so happy with this cake topper, I'm very glad I chose her out of all the etsy artists that do custom cake toppers. Check out her store: Sophia's Workshop.

In other news, I've finished knitting all the corsages and boutonnieres and am working on the bouquet flowers. Pictures to come.

Wedding crazy

Wow it's been a long time since I've posted. My only excuse is that I've been busy with wedding stuff. I spent the August long weekend in Nova Scotia ostensibly to do wedding stuff but really just to relax. The main reason my parent's shelled out for the tickets is because I wanted to be at the tasting with the caterers (too long watching I Do, Lets Eat not to be excited about this). The food was excellent; so excellent, in fact, that I'm having a hard time choosing which dish I want. We're giving guests a choice between Chicken Parmesan and Salmon Pico de Gallo. I really liked them both, so I'm going to have to let Mr. Broccoli decide first. Then, I'll just take whichever one he doesn't and eat off his plate.

We've been busy making the invitations, which is looking more and more like the most certifiable idea we've had so far. The invitations are going to be mini hand-bound books, complete with pages and a "hardcover" binding made of card stock. Originally we were going to fold the card stock so as to give them little spines, but we've quickly abandoned that as impractical and unnecessarily time consuming. Since there are 3 events - the Nova Scotia wedding, the Toronto wedding, and the reception for our friends - there also has to be 3 distinct invitations, each with their own wording, guest list, and colour to help us keep track. They are also going to have reply cards that look like the old check-out cards in the backs of library books (pre-digital age; ask your parents). With any luck, we'll at least get the Nova Scotia invitations in the mail this weekend since that is the first event. Cross your fingers.

I'm also knitting my wedding bouquet, and the bouquets for my bridesmaids and the corsages and boutonnieres for the wedding party. That's somewhere around 40 knit flowers, with leaves and some with stems. I'm hoping to have time to make a lace binding for the 3 bouquets, but we'll see how that goes.

In the midst of all this DIYing, we've decided to outsource some things. I've found an artist on etsy to custom make our wedding topper; it will be the 2 of us sitting on a loveseat with books open on our laps and my cat on the armrest. We're having it done in her "Elegant" style that you see on the website. I've also ordered my tiara from etsy. I love this whole hand-made wedding thing.

Shoe woes

I hate shoe shopping. I really do. My feet are size 7 (usually, anyway), which seems to be the size that always sells out first, and the ball of my foot is just a bit wider than the average 7, but my feet are too short for size 8. Argh! In the stereotypical-girlie-shopping departemnt, I much prefer to drool over bags. They don't have to fit anything.

But, of course, I can't exactly walk bare foot down the aisle, so I needed to buy shoes for the wedding dress (actually, 2 pairs, but lets deal with one thing at a time, shall we?). My parents came to visit this past weekend and we used this opportunity to go shoe shopping. My mom has a much higher tolerance for shoe shopping than I do; in fact, she bought her shoes for the wedding first, and plans to look for a dress to match them!

We went to the Eaton Centre and looked at almost every shoe store in the mall before we found the perfect pair. Our main concern was the heel; I'm an absolute dufous at a lot of "girlie" things and one of the highest on that list is walking in high heels. The heels couldn't be too high and they couldn't be stilettoes. Walking down the aisle is the very last place I want to fall flat on my face (and end up on America's Funniest Home Videos or whatever knock-off version is playing now). The shoes we found are white, of course, with just a little peek-a-boo of an open toe. The heels are stiletto, but the only go up about an inch and a half. I think I should be able to handle that! They have 2 little circles of leather around the part that crosses over the top of the toes for some visual interest.

I'd love to be able to post pictures of the shoes, but that is not currently possible, due, in part, to those cute little circles of leather. First, the salesman had to go to another location in the mall to get the shoes in my size, which took about 10 minutes. We almost left, thinking he had forgotten us and gone on his break. When he brought them to me to try on, we discovered that one of the little circles of leather wasn't glued on like all the rest; it just kind of flopped there looking lop-sided. No problem, they said. We'll just glue it down for you, no charge. Standing at the cash register and watching the saleswoman pack them into the shoe box Mom noticed a line of glue along the top of the leather circle.

She pointed this out to the salesgirl show said, "no problem.  I'll just clean it up".  So she took out an arsenal of cleaning products: lotions, brushes, cloths, sprays.  But when she was finished, instead of a small line of glue there was a big grey smudge across the top of the toes!  Mom asked if they had another pair in that size and she said it was the only one.  So we asked if we could get a discount, since it looked like we would now have to buy white leather dye to fix it.  Because they were already on sale, she could only give us $10, which we hardly felt was compensation for watching her ruin my wedding shoes right before our eyes.  At this point the manger came over and took the shoe out of the salesgirl's hands to fix it himself.  Of course, all he did was the same things she had just done and he turned the grey smudge into a black one!  Finally he suggested she look to see if there were any in the warehouse and thankfully there were.  So the shoe store is going to ship them to me, free of charge.  Hurray!

What's in a name?

If you had asked me a week ago how I felt about taking my husband's name after marriage, I would have replied that I didn't much care one way or the other, but that he did so I would take his name. Then my dad asked me to take a hyphenated name so that I could keep my maiden name as part of my legal name. He was asking this because he was updating his will and he didn't want there to be any complications due to my name change when it comes time for the will to matter. All of a sudden, I realized that I do care. I've really grown attached to this Broccoli thing, and I certainly didn't want a hyphenated name at all. Plus, I have to think of the kids growing up with either a hyphenated name or a different name from their mother, both of which can cause confusion. Mr. Broccoli, of course, said it was entirely my decision to make (although he did really like the Broccoli thing, as well). What to do?

I spoke with a co-worker who got married 5 years ago, and she gave me the perfect answer that makes everybody happy. She said that legally changing your name is a long and pricey process and that nowadays, most women don't do it at all. Instead, the "assume" their husband's last name. This means that once I have a marriage license I can legally have all my IDs, credit cards, bank accounts, passport etc changed over to my new name without actually having it legally changed. I will still legally have my maiden name and I will still legally take on my husband's. Hurray for answers that keep me from having to make a decision!

In other news, I went home to Nova Scotia a few weeks ago for my bridal shower. It was a nice, relaxed, intimate affair in the living room of a waterfront house my parents own and rent out in the tourist season. My mom and grandmother catered it themselves and we used it as a chance to try out some wines for the reception dinner (I loved the red, an Italian called Masi. Still looking for a good white, though).

It was mostly my mother's friends, but they are all women that I've grown up with so I didn't feel out of place. Both my grandmother's were there, of course, as well as my cousin's wife and their oldest daughter who I hadn't seen since she was 7. She's 13 now. I'm sorry, but I don't remember ever giving her permission to grow up. She's supposed to stay little and cute like when I used to babysit her! There was also the daughter of one of my mother's best friends, another former babysitting charge. I hadn't seen her since she was about 13 and I was 18. The first thing she said when she saw me was, "Oh my God! You're so old! I can't believe you're getting married!". I'm so old?! Is that any way to talk to her venerable elder? :)

Here are the few pictures my mom took with my new camera:



Me, surrounded by my booty! Oh, and the guests, too.

A crowd shot.

I really think that paper plate hats covered in gift ribbons and bows will be really in this summer. Watch for it. My little cousin made this for me and did a wonderful job.




The spread. Yum

The all-important cake. This was baked by an old friend of mine from high school. My mom ran into her a few days before the shower and found that she's starting a home baking business. I had just picked my wedding colours the day before, that beautiful Autumn orange and my favourite colour, dark green, and it's great how she was able to incorporate that into the cake decoration.

Preparing the cake from group consumption (aka cutting the cake).

Wedding update

This whole wedding thing is really coming together. We've booked a hall for the reception in Toronto; we're having it at the Gladstone. I was there in university and it was a real dive at the time, but they've fixed it up and it's exactly what we're looking for. Since the Mosque ceremony will be family only, this reception is for our friends so we're planing to have it like a cocktail party with a very casual feel. The Gladstone is booked for the entire month of October except for the one date that we needed it! It was fated.

Yesterday, Mr. Broccoli's mother and sister took me shopping for an Indian wedding dress. The shop we went to did more casual wear than wedding dresses, but it was kind of nice to only have to try on a few dresses instead of dozens. The first one I tried on was a champagne coloured dress that had caught my future MIL's eye in the first place:



It's quite nice, but as you can see it quite washes me out. Remarks were made about my need for a tan, but that's what I expect being the only white girl in an Indian dress shop. :) Here's a close up view of the lovely needlework on the blouse.


See, not quite to washed out close up, but still...

Then she saleswoman brought out a purple dress.


A little colour makes a big difference, doesn't it? This one was also lovely, but not quite it, either (sorry for the blurry picture. It was taken on a blackberry).

When the saleswoman had first brought out a pink dress, I said right away that I wouldn't even try it on. Although my mom (among others) has always told me how good I look in pink, it's just not a colour that I picture myself in. After I tried on the purple dress she found another pink one of a different shade, so I consented to try it on.


And that was it. Even other shoppers in the store were coming over and saying "wow". The longer I had it on the more I liked it. We decided that this was the one.


Again, sorry for the blurry pic.

Of course, we had to find accessories.


I'm totally blinged out! The necklace is so large that it extends beyond the lower edge of the picture. It was hard to get the forehead piece to stay (I don't know what it's called). I'll have to pin the chain in securely for the wedding.

Here I am, the total outfit.

We still have to get shoes, bangles and a hijab and the dress needs a fair bit of tailoring to fit (outfits at this kind of store are all one size and it's up to the wearer to have it fitted) and to lengthen the sleeves. I really wanted something that was very different from the wedding dress I'll be wearing at the church wedding, and this is definitely it!

When we got back into the car, I found that the metalic embroidery had left scratches all over my arms! The things we women do for beauty.

Seeing green

Spring is looking like it might actually be a reality, despite sudden swings between 14 degrees and 10 below these last few weeks. All in all, I remain hopefuly that the Earth will continue on its usual orbit and that the weather will become consistently warm once more. With that in mind, 2 weeks ago I planted my first tomato seeds.

I made a self-watering seed starter out of a Tim Hortons water bottle from my lunch. I started out by cutting it into two at around the place where the bottle becomes ribbed (for her pleasure? I highly doubt it). The plastic bottle cap was thin enough that I was able to poke a hole in it using a metal poker that I have. I think the original purpose has something to do with tying up meat with string, but I bought them in university when I used to have an annual egg dying party for Easter. They're great for poking holes in the shells to get the insides out!

I got some cotton yarn from my yarn closet and cut off about 6 inches. I inserted it through the hole and tied a knot on the inside of the cap.

I filled the bottom with water and the top with potting soil (my potting soil from last year had completely dried out and it was quite an ordeal to re-introduce moisture into the soil). I made sure to keep the yarn as centered in the soil as possible. Then I placed the soil-filled top with the cap facing down into the water-filled bottom. Now the cotton yarn becomes a wick! I've barely touched it for the whole 2 weeks and I've certainly never watered it. Yet the soil is as moist as it was when I first planted it.

Somebody please think of the bees!

I love bees, I always have. I love their shape, I love their colours, I love their fuzzy little bodies, I love that my name starts with "B", and I especially love their honey (I really love honey!). But I have come across some startling news. Apparently, the honey bee population in North America is dwindling! Yee gads! I first heard about this on Planet Green, the sister site of TreeHugger.com. Apparently Haagen Dazs is trying to bring awareness to this issue with a website and by promising to donate part of the proceeds from the sale of their "bee-dependent" ice cream flavours, including a brand new flavour called Vanilla Honey Bee. Yum. I hardly need an excuse to eat high quality ice cream, especially with spring (supposedly) upon us and summer round the bend.

You may be thinking, "why would I care if the bees all die? I don't like honey, all bees do is make honey and sting people". Well there, fussy britches. Don't write off bees so fast. Making honey is the most obvious thing that bees do for people, but it's far from the most important. Bees are pollinators, so along with birds and bats bees are responsible for fertilizing 1/3 of all of our agriculture. Every third bite you take of a peach this summer is thanks to the work of bees. So raise your spoons high and dig in for the bees!

Hey, where'd that sun go?

Despite the imminent snow forecasted for today and tomorrow, we' had yet another lovely weekend. I think, if we have to keep see-sawing between winter and spring weather, I like our current mix of cold, bitter weekdays (when I'm stuck in my window-less office) and warm, sunny weekends when I can go out and play. With the previous weekend being a long weekend, the weather gods decided to take that into consideration and gave us a lovely Friday, too!

On Friday Mr. Broccoli and I went to mosque with his family. There isn't really an equivelent to East in Islam, but because everyone gets the day off it tends to be one of the days when everyone goes to Friday service. We didn't balance this off by attending church on Sunday, but when we have kids that will definitely be the rule. Before mosque we spent about an hour and his parents' house so that I could go through the picture boxes with Mr. Broccoli's mother. My mom wants to do a slideshow during the reception and has asked for pictures of my sweetie growing up. I ended up taking all the boxes and albums home and I will hve a phone conference with my mom sometime this weekend to decide which ones she wants.

The rest of the weekend was taking up with my fierce and sudden urge to nest. All I wanted to do was spring cleaning, so I did several loads of laundry, some organizing of my craft studio, and some baking. I'd like to get into the habit of baking every weekend. I made some crepe batter, which I promptly forgot about in the fridge, and pie crust dough. The crepe batter will keep for a few more days, so I'll need to make the crepes some weeknight this week. Ihope to keep a batch of cooked crepes in the fridge for quick breakfasts.

The pie crust was an experiment of sorts. I took the recipe from a 1970s book about cooking food for the freezer. I got it at a church sale and I love how it refers to freezers as brand new technology and even has a chapter on why you would want to bother buying one. I substitued whole wheat flour for white in the hopes of making it more nutricious (Mr. Broccoli is trying to lose weight), but it turns out the whole wheat flour isn't as easy to work with. It took more water than the recipe called for to make it ball up without crumbling in my hands (and I still didn't quite overcome this) and it baked into a much denser crust. I wanted to make little mini pie crusts to use some of my homemade caramel apple jam as filling, but the only circular cookie cutter I had was smaller than the tart molds so I ended up with all kinds of little slightly curved disks of whole wheat crust. Hmmm, not quite what I was going for. Next time, I'll use white flour so I can get a sense of what it's supposed to come out like and then maybe experiment with substituting part amounts of whole wheat flour. I'll also need to get a larger circlular cutter of some sort. Maybe an aluminum can. I'm still eating the little disks with apple jam for breakfast.

Pi is round

Happy Pi Day everyone! Today is March 14 or 3.14. Get it? :)

Pi Day is celebrated by math enthusiasts who, we all know, are renowned for their geeky sense of humour. I love the idea. If it weren't for the fact that Mr. Broccoli and I had already decided to make soup tonight (sweet potato and corn soup with organic whole grain bread fried in olive oil and spices; yum!) I would make some kind of meat pie. Maybe I'll make mini pies with my homemade apple jam for dessert. Anyway, everyone get your geek on and let me know what you did to celebrate the great infinite number.

Also, I got a raise today! Inching ever forward in my effort to pay off my student loan. Hurray!

Plants on the brain

Despite the serious dumping of snow we received this past weekend, I'm already starting to feel the coming of spring. For example, last night it was 9:30 before I noticed that I hadn't turned the heat back up to 70F when I got home from work (I always turn it down to 65 before I leave for work). I eventually turned it up so that I wouldn't freeze in bed: Queen sized bed + 1 person sleeping alone = cold nights. I can stand waiting for the bus in the morning without loosing feeling in my smaller appendages and walking from a warm doorway to a cold car seems like less of an Arctic expedition. All in all, the warm weather is coming.

With the tiny but noticeable changes in the weather, my thoughts inevitably turn to my annual attempts to maintain a garden that doesn't shrivel up and die by mid-June. I've decided to keep it simple this year by starting out with only one crop: tomatoes. I'm not a huge fan of eating tomatoes by themselves, but I do like a lot of things that tomatoes go into, like beef stew that uses tomato paste, spaghetti sauce, and, of course, ketchup. Plus, back when I actually had a back yard, tomatoes were always the vegetable that managed to grow, even when we had a drought and all other plants had scummed.

I've isolated that my main obstacle to green-thumbed success is my inability to regularly water the outdoor plants during the peak of the summer when my job is at its busiest and I'm at my most stressed-out. Of course, that is the time of year when they most need regular watering, especially since my balcony is South-facing, so this usually ends in disaster. To prevent that from happening this year I'm currently devising a self-watering plant container out of plastic popcorn buckets from the movie theatre (Mr. Broccoli has a serious thing for popcorn and a large bucket of the stuff - covered in powdered flavoring - is considered a requirement for any movie outing, so we have about a dozen). I'll post pictures of the construction when I can realistically start to make it (i.e. when there's no more snow on the balcony). Until then, viva spring!

Edited to add: I've found a few Instructables on how to make self-watering planters. I plan to use bits and pieces from each one. There are two methods of using a plastic bottle or milk jug that would be a great seed starter or herb container, there's a much larger one for multiple plants using a Rubbermade container. Apparently you can buy premade planters call Earth Boxes that are self-watering, but there is always someone out there who wants to try and make it themselves. This is closer to what I have in mind with the popcorn buckets. Here's a good one on general organic gardening. It's meant for large-space in the ground gardening, but there are some good resources. This is a great one for adding a self-watering bottle into a unmodified planter. (These links are for anyone interested in this DIY project, as well as for myself to get back to later.)

Don't throw out that tea bag!

I love discovering surprising and ingenious ways of reusing something, especially a something that I use a lot. I've just come across this web page that lists various uses for used green tea leaves. My favourite is cat litter deodorizer. Since we use a natural cat litter, Swheatschoop, that doesn't have a deodorizer or perfume and we usually end up buying baking powder just for this purpose. I drink green tea almost every day at work, so I could really amass quite of few leaves. I just need to devise a way of discreetly drying the leaves in my office. :)

What are your favourite ways to use brewed tea leaves?

What I would do if I wont the lottery

I can't remember when I first heard of the concept of volunteer tourism but it's something that has held my interested since I was in high school. If I had the finances to take off from paid employment for a few months (or a year) and travel Latin America (where such programs are usually held) tracking turtle migration or doing community work, I would do so in a heart beat. However, I have found it more and more difficult to find such oppotunities (although when I search, I always do so only out of curiosity), so I was very happy to stumble on this website from the blog currently hosting Carnival of the Green. The website is for Volunteer Latin America, which matches volunteers with a huge list of volunteer opportunities in Latin America: everything from medical work, to conservation, to social work and building houses. And, of course, the ubiquitis ESL teaching opportunites.

Looking through all the projects I have a really hard time deciding which one I would do if I had the chance. Would I want to track the behaviour and migration patterns of bottle-nosed dolphins and other marine animals, or work with an indigenous community that makes traditional textiles for sale? Or run a theatre group for street kids? My brother would love one of the many monkey conservation projects. And there is a leather-back turtle conservation project that only requires a 1 week commitment. I suggested to Mr. Broccoli that we incorporate that into our honeymoon, since we'll be in Latin America anyway (we've decided to spend 2 weeks in Ecuador) but he told me I was crazy. Spoil sport!

Worms!

I've just begun my third attempt at vermicomposting. I won't go into what went wrong with my previous 2 attempts, but suffice it to say third times a charm, right? I got a proper vermicomposter bin from someone on Freecycle. It's from the now defunct Toroto Municipal vermicompost program, as you can see by the label:

It's a good sized bin, larger than just Mr. Broccoli and I probably need, but it'll be good for me to use to get the hang of it and hopefully keep it going this time.


My cat is quite curious about this new contraption in the kitchen. Unfotunately, I couldn't get a shot of her looking into the bin when the top was off. She's not very considerate about posing for the camera. I did take a picture of the worms, though.

These are my little kitchen helpers. So far I've fed them twice. They got the solids from Mr. Broccoli's left over soup earlier in the week, and a yummy worm fruit salad yesterday, consisting of the banana peels from my banana bread, some mostly spoiled strawberries and a bit of corn and peas from when I still had to eat mushy foods (I couldn't actually eat the corn and peas, they were for Mr. Broccoli). I'm fascinated with the little guys. I've always liked watching worms, and Mr. Broccoli keeps having to tell me to put the lid down and leave them alone, or I'll just sit in front of the bin and watch them. I don't think that makes me weird.

Just call me Toothless Joe

Despite my fears of waking up during surgery (which happened to a friend of mine) or the aneasthetic not working (which happened to my mom once), I survived the wisdom teeth-ectomy without incident. When I sat down in the chair at the dental surgen's office they put a gas mask on my nose, which I expected to emit happy gas, but didn't. It didn't seem to emit anything and made it imposible to exhale through my nose. While I was getting used to my new breathing aparatous, the nurse strapped (?!!) my wrists to the chair and put a heart rate monitor on my index finger. I'm not quite sure the point of the wrist straps. Do they have an ongoing problem with people attempting to flee mid-surgery, a scalple dangling from their mouth? Probably not, since the straps were the gentle, velcro kind, but still. It made me wonder. It took a little trying for the dental surgen to find a vein on the back of my wrist, which is also weird, because I can see them right now just for looking. But then, I don't have an expensive dental surgery degree, so what do I know.

Once the needle was in there I started to feel it real quick. The surgen told me something about how I didn't have to worry about keeping my mouth open, but I don't recall much of it. I do remember, just as I started to drift off, that my mother had made me promise to get his assurance that he would get all the bits of the teeth (apparently her own inept dentist had left the roots in on one of her wisdom teeth and they became infected), and so I seem to have said as much in my last moments of consciousness.

Only I didn't go unconscious. I didn't feel anything or even seem to have a sense of my physical body, but I could hear the surgen and nurse talking. Sometimes they were talking about the procedure, sometimes they were talking about who was taking a day off next week. But that's all very sketchy, too. However, I do know that when the operation was over, I didn't have a feeling of being woken up, simply of being moved from the chair and helped onto a recovery bench outside the dental surgen's inner sanctum. Mr. Broccoli was asked to come in and he says that my face lit up like the sun when I saw him. Although I was woozy, at the same time my mind was perfectly clear. I listened to the nurse's instructions about post-op care with complete understanding, which was totally different from the hazy absorbtion of conversation I'd experienced during the procedure itself.

I didn't realize how I looked until the nurse was taking me downstairs to meet Mr Broccoli who had gone to bring the car around. I looked at myself in the elevator mirror and would have laughted if such action had been physically possible. But it wasn't. My whole head was completely frozen, my mouth gapping open and I wouldn't have known it if I hadn't seen it. I couldn't even grunt. The only things I could move were my eyes, but they were crossed. My left eye looked straight ahead while my right eye looked directly to the left, so that as we drove home it constantly looked like we were about to turn into oncoming traffic. But I was too stoned to be terribly bothered by this. The rest of Thursday was spent eating apple sauce and being fascinated by my face as it slowly thawed. The last part to thaw was my lower lip and jaw, like the mouth of a ventriloquist dummy, which finally regained feeling at around 8:30 that night.

At 10:30 the pain set in. Luckily this was also bedtime (it's surprising how tiring surgery is when you're not even the one performing it!) so I took a couple of Tylonol 3s and hopped into bed. Then I woke up in the middle of the night in pain and had to take a couple more. Friday was just a day of pain, lying on the couch (when I eventually forced myself out of bed because I hate staying in bed all day) staring at the TV, counting down until I could take more Tyolenol. The T3s took a long time to kick in, never lasted very long, and made me woozy, but they were all I had and I lived by the count of 3 hours (the length of time the bottle says you have to wait between doses) for 2 straight days. :) Mr. Broccoli was as helpful as he could be, but short of knocking me out with a hammer there really wasn't anything anyone could do. He did go to the store and buy me a can of every kind of cream of something soup in the place, as well as some fresh fruit and bananas to make smoothies. Smoothies are joy!

By Sunday I had sworn off the T3s and had the energy to leave the house for a brief trip to the mall. I had also attempted to eat some solid food, although everyting had to be cut into tiny pieces because I couldn't open my mouth any wider than a half inch between my teeth. I looked like a chipmunk who had met Mohammed Ali in a dark alley, with a huge swollen bruise on my left cheek. Mr. Broccoli made the occational wife abuse joke until I cautioned him that someone overhearing might take him seriously and rush my off to Ernestine's.

I still have some pain off and on, but I'm mostly healed now. All the stitches have dissolved (and sometimes been accidentally swallowed!) and my bruise is just a small triangle of greenish yellow running from the left corner of my mouth to just under my chin. I do have a hard spot left where the swelling was that feels like someone imbedded the roller ball from a computer mouse under my cheek. Today has been the most pain-free day yet and I'm hoping to get a full night's sleep tonight (I haven't had a pill-free sleep yet this week). In closing, I don't recommend the experience as a whole, and I'm glad they took all 4 because I sure wouldn't ever want to go through with this again.