This'n that - green addition

People are starting to get used to my roof, I think.  They don't stare as they go by anymore.  Today a couple that I often see on the walking trails asked me about my roof, and said that they love it.   Right away, they zoned in on what I considered to be the selling points... it helps to insulate the house, it isn't made with petroleum products, and it'll last as long as the house does.

I've been kind of leery about discussing the roof with any of the neighbours, after all the complaints that were made to the city; but was relieved to know that this couple wasn't involved in that.  Actually, from the questions that they asked me, I get the impression that they're thinking of doing the same on their house.  I hope they do.

As an aside, they pointed out that I paid significantly less than the cost of a new vehicle for this roof.  The vast majority of people around here replace their trucks and SUV's every 4-5 years for a cool $40+K.    Knowing the modest car that I drive (and that I plan to continue driving it for many years to come) somehow made me feel more justified.  Given the choice between this or a gas guzzler; I'll happily take the new roof.

I suspect that my garden is ready to harvest, but I'm not sure.  I've never grown many vegetables, so I'm afraid of pulling them up too soon.  The peas were a flop.  Tomatoes did much better than last year's puny crop, but not a tonne. Out of three plants, I've got about 10 tomatoes.  Carrot greens are only a 3-4 inches high, so I suspect that they didn't do so well.  Beets, on the other hand, did very well.  I suspect I'll be eating fresh beets well into the new year.

I found a new store in town that specializes in humanely raised, organic meats.  The owners actually drive around to local farms, check the living conditions, select which animals they want, and transport them directly to be butchered.  (I prefer to pretend that that last part doesn't happen.)    I've been a vegetarian off and on for years.  I would prefer to be a non-meat eater, but never seem to manage it.  I will say, though, that having found this store makes me feel a lot better about the meat that I do eat.  Plus, today I had free range organic chicken for dinner.  You'll never be able to convince me that isn't better than the stuff you get at a regular grocery store.

I'm thinking of joining the No Poo movement.  This is not about constipation, as the name would imply.  This is a movement towards making your own shampoo at home, and avoiding all the chemicals, packaging and expense of buying it for 8-20 dollars a bottle.

Some say that you can use a mixture as simple as 1 cup of water/1 tbsp of baking soda.  Other recipes involve  making a tea from various herbs, and mixing it with distilled water and castile soap (or vegetable glycerin).  I'm tempted to try this out, and keep reading about the how healthy your hair will be as a result.  What's holding me back is that there's apparently an adjustment period for a few weeks until your scalp adjusts, during which your hair will seem quite greasy.  I'm not too keen on going through the greasy phase.

I also found a recipe for making my own toothpaste.  Somehow, that seems like less of leap of faith, and may actually be the next step.  Then again, a choice between bad breath and greasy hair, I think I'd prefer the greasy hair.  If I wait a few months, I can hide the grease under a toque.

For the Zadge

The Zadge from Blue Skies and Yellow Dogs suggested that I try out yesterday's shots in black and white, so I did.  I would have posted them in the comments section of that blog entry, but I don't know how.

Also, I sometimes like sepia more than black and white, so I tried that too.  And I fiddled some too.

Original

 Sepia

Black and White

Good call from the Zadge.  Black and white does have a way of exaggerating the details.

It also makes me think that maybe I should start fiddling with pictures before I post them.  Although, the truth is, I think I may be too intrinsically lazy to do that with any sort of regularity.

Work It, Baby

Big dog

I have a big dog.  She's tall, and she's got really long legs.  Being the conscientious dog owner that I am, I went out and got her the biggest dog bed I could find, so that she could stretch out and get comfortable.

Hmmmph.

Sticker Shock, Withdrawal and Cake

Over the last few years, I've taken down all of the mirrored closet doors in my house.  Most have been replaced with pine doors, but there is one small closet that needs a bi-fold door.  I wasn't able to find a bi-fold that matches the other doors in the house at the Mecca (AKA Home Depot) so today I started a search at the other home reno type stores.  At my first stop, I found a very nice lady who said that she could order what I needed in, if I'd be willing to wait 6-8 weeks.  The only catch was the price.  

The doors that I've already installed in the closets were $80 each, and bi-folds are smaller.  I was hoping that I might be able to get one for $60, maybe $75 because it needs to be special ordered.  Turns out, I was a wee bit off.  For a knotty pine bi-fold door, they wanted... wait for it.....  $360.  For a clear pine (no knots - this is what my other doors are made of) bi-fold door, the price came in at a cool $420.

For a closet door!

I guess I'll keep shopping around and looking for other options.  In the meantime, a shower curtain and rod is sounding pretty good.

The no caffeine, no aspartame efforts continue.  The withdrawal symptoms are gone, but I'm still battling a 20 year habit.  I miss pop but I am feeling better.  Saturday was the first day in a really long time that there was no swelling in my feet or ankles.  I celebrated this by wearing a pair of shoes that I'd bought a few months ago and hadn't ever been able to fit into.  I wore them to walk the dogs... maybe about 10 blocks.  They felt fine, but there were some serious blisters when I got home.  Now, the swelling in my feet is (mostly) gone; but I still can't wear shoes until the blisters heal.   It's like showing a kid candy, and telling them they can't have it.

I brought a cake into work today.  I'd made a number of substitutions and guessed at a few quantities in the recipe, so I wasn't feeling entirely confident about it.   I asked two of the guys to do a taste test before I put it out for the masses.  They've both eaten my successful baking efforts many times in the past, so they know my cooking.  I didn't think they'd mind - I kind of feel like they owe me - but one of them (let's call him Bob) refused.  When the other said it was OK rather noncommittally,  I took the chance and put the cake in the kitchen.  I also left a sign that said that if the cake was awful, Bob made it.   When he found the sign a few hours later, he threatened libel.  

I should note here that the cake is gone, and that many other reports came in that it was good.

Look it Up Cake

I have a fridge full of still-good-but-getting-kind-of-old food, so I decided to make a cake.  I have a recipe for orange blueberry cake that I haven't made for some time, and thought I'd give it a go.  The only problem was, my scale is metric and the recipe was in imperial.

I don't know how much 1 oz of cream cheese is, so I had to look up the conversion of oz to gram and weighed it.  Then I didn't believe how little 1 oz is (I though it'd be at least half a block) so I added some more.

The next step is to add eggs then alternating yogurt and the flour mixture.  Again... no idea how much 8 oz of yogurt is.  I'd forgotten the earlier conversion was, so I looked that up again.    Then I couldn't multiply 28.34 by eight in my head, so I went back to the computer to figure that out.

I measured that out, and then I'll be darned if I could find the baking powder.  I know I've got some; but it's nowhere to be found.  So I looked up how to make it myself and did that.  (It turns out, making baking powder is incredibly easy, and since the homemade version contains no aluminum, I suspect that I'll be doing this from now on.)  See below for instructions

Then, if you could believe it, I realized that when I copied out this recipe a few years ago, I'd forgotten to write down how much baking soda to use.  I had to look up other cake recipes to make a guess at that too.

My last problem was with my nifty new citrus juicer.  Since I tend to use fresh lemon or lime juice at least a few times a week, I splurged a while back for a really great juicer that strains the juice as you go, and measures it when you're done.  Except, it measures in ml instead of cups, and I needed a 1/4 cup.  I had to look that up too.

Finally, I had all my ingredients measured out and ready to go.  The cake's done now, and is looking and smelling great.  The only problem is, I realized after all that prep work that the yogurt I was using contained Splenda.  I'm not eating Splenda anymore because it doesn't sit right with me.

I guess that means that I'll be bringing it into the office tomorrow, but first I'll have to find a guinea pig to try the first piece.  After all that guess work, I'm not so sure it'll turn out.



Orange Blueberry Cake
AKA, in my case, Lemon Blueberry Cake because I didn't have oranges or orange yogurt

2 cups of sugar
1/2 cup softened butter
1 oz (28.34 grams) of softened cream cheese
4 eggs
3 cups of flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda (an educated guess)
8oz (226.8 gram) orange yogurt -I used lemon yogurt
1/4 cup orange juice - I used lemon juice
2 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries.

• Preheat oven to 325F
• Grease and flour bundt pan, set aside
• Combine sugar, butter and cream cheese, beat 3 minutes until well blended
• Add eggs, one at a time
• In separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda.  Gradually add flour mixture to butter mixture alternately with yogurt.  Being and end with flour mixture.
• Stir in orange (lemon) juice and vanilla
• fold in blueberries (if you're using frozen blueberries, they should still be frozen when you mix them in, or your cake will turn purple).
• pour into prepared pan.  back for 65-75 minutes

When the cake was out of the pan but still warm, I drizzled it with a glaze that I'd made of 2 part white sugar, 1 part fresh lemon juice.  (One lemon makes about 1/2 a cup of glaze)

Homemade baking powder

1 part baking soda

1 part corn starch

2 parts cream of tartar

Holy Smokes

There are some very serious fires burning in British Columbia right now, and we're feeling it here in Alberta.    For the last few days, the sky was somewhat hazy, but today we've been inundated with smoke.   It smells like a camp fire inside and out, and the major cities have issued air quality warnings (which is a rarity around here.)

I took this picture shortly after I got home from work tonight.

We've got a pretty impressive lightning and rain storm going on now that it took us all by surprise.  We didn't see it coming because we couldn't see the clouds blowing in.