In Progress

Suddenly tomorrow is September (!) and with the change in the weather this week (rain, finally) it feels absolutely like harvest time and the season for cozy indoor crafting. Really, who am I kidding - summer in Portland continues through September - but I'll make the most of this week of cozyness and cool nights after so many months of heat and drought.

In progress these days:

• This chili ristra, made with the glowing fruit of my Dragon Cayenne plant. 

The peppers turn red a few at a time, so the ristra is hanging by the window with the needle still on the doubled thread, ready to add a few more chilis every couple of days.

• Coriander seed

 Mostly dried on the stalk in the garden (from a handful of generous volunteer plants) after we ate all the leaves, I rescued a big handful of these from the rain this weekend. It is finishing its drying in a paper bag hanging in my room, then will move to the spice cupboard.

• A braided rag rug. Perhaps my newest favorite crafty endeavor, I'm completely hooked on this project!

When I moved in with Bill, I was finally able to move my fabric scrap collection from a big bag into some Ikea wire drawers, and I took the time sort it all and purge out all the scraps I didn't want to keep for future sewing projects. A lot were old clothes and linens. Some (read: the bright orange 70s print above) came with other, more desirable fabrics in cheap bags found at secondhand stores. I wanted to make use of all the scraps in some way, and my longtime love of the Little House books immediately came to my aid - a rag rug! I looked up a tutorial and immediately found this one, fittingly on the Little House Living website.

 My rug will not be chic in its color scheme, which is a complete hodge-podge, but it sure is fun and easy to make. Once I had torn all of the fabric into strips, I organized it by color (sort of). One ball is entirely a red and purple based print that I had an overabundance of, one ball is all of the solid colors, and another is all of the other prints. I have no real idea how big the final product will be, but I'm already looking forward to making another in the future. I like the idea of finding some old sheets at a thrift store to create a more consistent color palette. [Tip: Cut the strips into ~3 foot strips. Any longer and they get easily tangled with each other. Also, try not to be adding two new strips at exactly the same point, or the braid gets extra lumpy; try to stagger the bulk of adding new strips]. 

This is a really great project to have at hand to pull out and work on for a few minutes in the evening or on a Sunday afternoon. I've been enjoying listening to podcasts (Backstory is my current favorite) while braiding away. 

Happy September, everyone!

Thrifty Finds

Taking advantage of the lovely sunny (but COLD) weather this afternoon, Matt and I walked to our neighborhood thrift store to find a few things we've been wanting for awhile, to fill out our array of kitchenware. We had been keeping a short list of items for "when we have a little extra money," and last night two good friends forced payment on me for the easiest babysitting job ever, so we took advantage of a bit of the unexpected income.

We wholly believe in buying secondhand, except when it comes to most appliances. The only things I can think of in our kitchen that were bought new were the cast iron skillet and Dutch oven (several years ago), the food processor, some canning jars and my set of nesting mixing bowls. All the rest we found at thrift stores or received as gifts (or found for free on the curb...). This pretty much goes for all of our clothing, bedding, and furniture too. There is so much useful stuff out there that is in perfect condition but is given away to thrift stores, it makes no sense to pay extra for something just because it is new. And despite a few temptations, we came home with only what was on our list, plus these great aviator shades that looked so good on Matt that I refused to leave without buying them:

(Click on Photos to Enlarge)

Awesome, yes?

We don't have very much silverware, and it has become clear that we need a few more sets, particularly for when we have company. We also have a nice collection of mugs and teacups, but all of them are quite small, and we wanted to get a few larger ones (how very American of us):

Since moving into this house we have been talking about how we need a second, larger saucepot, because just having one complicates things sometimes, and we had enough of that while living out of the van in New Zealand. We also only have four bowls for a household of three, and none of the wide bowls that are nice for things like chicken and dumplings and stew, until now:

The other thing I love about shopping at thrift stores is that we can pick out individual items that go with our current collection of dishware, and have a huge variety to choose from. We were able to bring home an assortment of cheap mugs and bowls that go with our mismatched but coordinated bright aesthetic, and that makes me really happy.

And all for less than $20!

Friday Foraging

These days, for a variety of reasons, Matt and I try to get things for free when we can. Not because we're trying to live off the backs of others or because we're just cheapskates. We're kind of poor, so free is nice, but we also don't like seeing things go to waste. We would rather an item get reused than thrown out, and if good food is available at little or no cost, we'd rather take advantage of it than spend money that could go towards things like paying off student debt. We constantly make use of the Craigslist "free" page, Freecycle, and the awesome free box culture here in Portland. My girlfriends and I swap clothes instead of buying new ones. Matt gets free meat and eggs from his work on a regular basis. We sometimes trade for items with friends. We occasionally dumpster dive for goodies for the compost or the chickens or ourselves (many Portland restaurants and supermarkets have specific dumpsters for food items). And, we have taken to gleaning fruit where we can find it for free. There are a few different fruit trees around that we check on, numerous chestnuts, and today we stopped by a grapevine I spotted in the neighborhood during the summer. It must be ancient, as it is growing up through a fifty-foot-tall fir tree, covering most of the tree, and hanging down into the parking lot of a local business (I'm not saying where :). Only a few clusters of grapes were really ripe (and within reach), but it looks like there are plenty more, hopefully they will ripen soon. I don't know much about grapes, but these ones taste like the Concords that I've had several times.

We'll definitely be checking the vine again in a week or two to see if we can get some more! Yum!

Fridays tend to be pretty simple, relaxing days for us. Right now we both go full tilt at work/school Monday through Thursday, so Friday feels a bit like Saturday. It's the day we sleep in, cook a fancyish breakfast (pancakes and bacon this morning) and catch up with each other a bit. I always like reconnecting with our little homestead on Fridays, especially now that I'm usually gone dark to dark, I don't see much of our various animal friends or the garden during the week.

Here's five of the six hens, digging into some squash rinds from our dinner last night. They LOVED them. About twenty minutes after this picture, nothing remained but a few small bits of rind scattered around the yard! No one's laying yet, all of our young'uns should start to lay around Thanksgiving, unless they decide it's too cold and dark. We're trying to trick Vivian into laying sooner by extending their "day" with a light on a timer that shines into their coop for a few extra hours at night and in the morning. No luck so far.

I spent a chunk of today working on my midterm for my Foundations of Public Health course, and researching for a program analysis I'm doing on the Cooking Matters program and a policy analysis of Oregon's school nutrition policy, which kept me inside (sometime soon I'll write more about the amazing stuff I'm learning these days. I'm completely in the right program, I know it). Tomorrow I'll spend some quality time with the garden. I can see from the windows that all the cover crops are doing well, but we had two frosts this week so I'm not sure if my (tiny, slow!) kale sprouts are alright. It's been wickedly cold, for Portland, and I even managed to leave my warmest, and favorite, gloves on the bus yesterday. I think I'm going to start wearing my weatherproof bike gloves for everyday, they're pretty nice looking and totally waterproof and windproof. Better than buying a new pair, unless I can find some for free :)

Changing Habits for Fall and Winter

Now that it's truly fall here, and we're spending a lot more time inside and wearing warmer clothing, a few things are changing in our habits and around the house. First of all, we are welcoming a new housemate, Lisa, who is moving in this weekend with her cat, Maggie! We're all looking forward to living together, and think it will be a really nice fit. I'm also excited to have a kitty around the house!

Since I've been inside the house a lot more these last couple of weeks, I've been feeling like it has gotten a little bit cluttered up, and I want to do something about it. Somehow we managed to accumulate a lot of stuff since moving in (most of it for free), but we don't have anywhere out of sight to store it. I really wish we had some nice built-ins with drawers and cabinets in the living room, but no such luck. Instead, we have these two shelves, which are great, but which quickly fill up and look messy:

(Click on Photos to Enlarge)

Beyond just organizing these shelves to make them tidier, I might start keeping an eye out on craigslist for a cheap or free little chest of drawers or a small trunk or something that would be nice to look at and useful to have in the living room, and that we could hide away some of this stuff in, out of sight! It's all stuff we use on a regular basis, but I'm tired of looking at it!

I also want to see what I can do about this area by our front door:

It feels messy and crowded, and I want to make room for Lisa to be able to store coats, purse and shoes here too. The basket is full of shoes, maybe some of them can be moved into our closet.

With the transition to cooler weather, I went through my closet and dresser drawers a few days ago, and swapped out my summer clothes for the winter ones that had been packed away down in the basement. With our relatively small closet and the fact that Matt and I are sharing 5 dresser drawers, space is at a premium, so it makes sense to keep only what I am currently using in the bedroom, and put the rest in storage. I also took the opportunity to pull out the clothes I haven't worn in the last few months or ones I am tired of, and set them aside. My girlfriends and I are having a clothing swap  ("Naked Lady Party") next week, where we will all bring the clothes we don't wear, and come away with "new" ones for free! Through this method, I regularly get clothes that are new to me. I think that in the last three years or so, I've actually paid for maybe 10 items of clothing, apart from shoes, socks and underwear.

Now that we have entered the permacloud that is Portland between October and April, we are no longer able to hang our laundry outside to dry on a regular basis. This means transitioning to hanging our clothes on lines and racks in the basement.

Clothes definitely take a bit longer to dry here, but we'd still rather air-dry them than use the dryer. We usually turn on the fan to give them some airflow for the first couple of hours, when they are extra-damp.

We're beginning to adapt to my school schedule, and to some of the unanticipated challenges that came with my studenthood. For example, we have been sharing my laptop from when we left for New Zealand, which has worked out pretty well, especially since Matt's dad gave him an iPad as a gift this summer. However, now that I am in school and have a lot of writing to do, as well as a lot of reading of online articles, and Matt is constantly job searching and working on job applications, we have to carefully plan and juggle for use of the computer. The iPad is fine for job searching, checking email, and I can use it for some of my online readings, but of course it doesn't have any word processing programs and it can't open PDF files, so I need the computer reading PDF articles and for typing papers, and Matt needs it for completing job applications. On days when I need to take the computer with me to school, Matt has to anticipate what he needs finish and get it done before I leave.

I am developing a schedule that works for me, usually being on campus all day on the days when I have class, and usually one other day besides. I can bike or bus downtown in the mornings, spend the day in the library reading and researching, then go to class in the evenings and be able to come home straightaway when class is finished. One night a week I don't get home until 10 PM, and the other I get home around 7:30 PM. It's working out well so far, when I can get most of my work done at school, and Matt makes a dinner that produces leftovers, or starts making dinner so we can eat right when I get home on my early nights.


It's all an adjustment, but I am so happy to be where I am, and am so encouraged by how many people feel, like me, that our nation (and the world) needs a major systemic overhaul that makes good health and lifestyle choices easier than poor ones.

A Free Box Tea Set!

Portland has a major free box culture. If you want to get rid of something that isn't actually trash, you leave it on the curb (in a box or not) or on a neighborhood "free bench" and it always disappears within a couple days. One of my favorite free box finds includes a perfect-condition wok that I found on the curb in front of my house. Matt was wondered aloud recently how many hundreds of dollars we've saved between the two of us, just by finding free stuff on the street. It's that awesome.

Once again, a few days ago, the curb in front of my house yielded a wonderful find. Matt found it and brought it in to me, and it was just another piece of evidence that he knows me very well. See, my favorite color scheme is bright yellow, blue, and white. A lot of what I own has been hand picked at thrift stores or import markets just because of these colors and patterns, or given to me for the same reason. For evidence, here are some of my current dishes:

And here's what Matt found:

I believe my reaction was along the lines of "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!"

Totally up my alley, happy bright tea cups and saucers that match my other dishes in the haphazard-but-same-color-scheme that I love, it totally made my night. 

Pretty and free. Perfect, no?

The State of the Garden, Part 2

As previously mentioned, the weather has been terrible here until a couple days ago, and my poor garden has been neglected as I've stayed inside to avoid this month of rain. However, this week is at least dry and warm, though somewhat cloudy, so I spent Monday evening surveying the damage and trying to tidy up and put things back in order.

(Click on photos to enlarge)

Cilantro, spearmint, and nasturtiums surviving.

Bright Lights Chard, planted long ago but stunted by rain and slugs and overrun and shaded by my potato plants. Here they are, you can see the colors developing in the stems.

Matt decided to document me attempting to prop up my crazy potatoes:

Of course I didn't give them enough space when I planted them, although they seem to be growing fine, just flopping over and shading everything else. They are blooming though, which means I might dig for some new potatoes later this week!

My old clothes rack finally gave up the ghost, so I reduced it to its basic elements and used the rods as stakes, and the folding sides as trellises:

This is to keep my sweet peas from flopping over on their sides. I think it actually looks really cool:

These cucumbers that Olga gave me are growing and blooming healthily, but all the ones I started died as soon as I planted them into the garden...

I propped up some nasturtiums:

And snapped off all the garlic scapes (this helps the plant shut down in preparation for harvesting):

I also pulled out the hoe and went after all the weeds that have been thriving on this moisture, disentangled some garlic plants from a swarm of morning glory vines, and cut off the bottom branches of some tomato plants, which were yellowed and damaged from all the mud. 

Rosemary is one thing that loves Portland's wet climate. I bought this plant as a tiny start a year ago:

Here's some more nasturtiums climbing on something else repurposed as a 

trellis (metalwork from my old screen door):

I ended my bout of garden-tidying by collecting some rosemary and green onions to roast with potatoes for dinner, with some of the garlic scapes. The rest of the scapes were sauteed with olive oil and salt- one of my favorite summer treats, and even more special since Matt had never had them before!

I hope your garden grows well, and that lots of sunshine is finding its way to you!

A Bag for Maya

My beautiful niece, Maya, daughter of my close friends Lydia and Roberto, just turned 2 years old on May 28th!

I had the honor of being the first person to meet Maya, after her mom and dad and grandma- she was about 12 hours old. Hard to believe two years have gone by since then! She and her parents mean the world to me, but they moved from Oregon to Nebraska when Maya was a week old, so I have been a long-distance Auntie her whole life. Between visits and photos we manage to keep up just fine (the photo above is from Mama and Maya's visit to Portland in early March). She is a happy, busy little girl with a penchant for bags and purses, so for her 2nd birthday present, I made her this:

I didn't use a pattern, but based it generally on these bags by Soulemama. The floral print is actually from a button-down shirt that was in my rag bag. I embroidered that piece first, then sewed on the lining.

The lining is a very stout cotton, essential because the shirt fabric, though lovely, was worn very thin by the time it made it to the rag bag. I sewed on the handles before sewing up the final side seams of the bag (have you ever tried to do it the other way around? Such a pain.) I ended up hand sewing those two side seams, as they were just too thick for my machine to handle. With the seams and overlap from the lining in there, I think it was about 8 layers of fabric altogether. I am very pleased with it- it turned out very pretty, but I also made sure to make it sturdy, including double-sewing the handles to withstand the hijinks of a toddler.

After pressing the seams and cutting off all the loose threads, I put in some pretty clips and things for her lovely long hair, and it was sent off to Nebraska. Happy birthday, little one!

*Maya's photo and name were published with her parents' permission!*

A Happy Lack of Plastics

Plastic is not biodegradable, and it is a synthetic material, something our bodies can’t handle. That’s enough to make me take a few steps to decrease the number of plastic products I use. I don’t want to ingest any plastic, and I don’t want to create garbage if I don’t have to.

First of all, while I sometimes store food in plastic containers, I NEVER heat food in plastic. I don’t care if it says “microwave safe.” There are plenty of sources out there showing that the denotation “microwave safe” only means that the container won’t melt if you heat it. It does not refer to the safety of your food once it has been heated in the microwave in a plastic container. If you ask me, the fact that a plastic container won’t melt when heated to high temperatures is more dodgy than if it actually did melt. There’s enough research out there to convince me that heating food in plastic is not a good idea- plastic molecules can slough off of plastics and into food when the container or wrapping is heated and cooled repeatedly.

I mostly store food in glass jars and in Pyrex Tupperware-style containers. Unfortunately the latter are fairly expensive, but they are in fact microwave safe in the true sense. As for the jars, I use some canning jars, and the rest are jars that other food products are sold in. I try not to buy food that is packaged in plastic, and if I have to buy peanut butter or something canned, I try to always find it in glass packaging so the jars can be reused. I do freeze a lot of foods in plastic, since any glass besides Pyrex doesn’t usually stand up to freezing, even with room left for the expansion of broth, etc. I have less qualms about freezing in plastic, since I only let things thaw in the plastic and remove before heating.


I cook exclusively in cast iron, ceramic, Pyrex, and stainless steel. Hopefully we all know that “non-stick” pans are a big no-no. For me, all it takes is one good look at a pan that has been sliced up by knives and spatulas and is missing some of its metal lining, lost into food at some point or the other. Cast iron is the original non-stick material, and I swear by it. I’ve stopped using aluminum pans as well. There is some research out there that suggests aluminum is linked to Alzheimers, but from what I can tell, the amount of aluminum you would have to ingest for it to cause dementia is HUGE. Still, I don’t like the idea of molecules of a foreign metal entering my body by any means. (On a side note, aluminum is the active ingredient in most antiperspirants—a substance that is put straight into pores. I began using an aluminum-free deodorant several years ago, made by Adidas, of all people. It is effective and safe, as far as I can tell. I admire Tom’s of Maine as a company, but their aluminum-free deodorants make me smell like a giant hippie).

A few years ago I also got rid of my plastic water bottles, and bought two metal water bottles. One is a Klean Kanteen, made from stainless steel. The other is a Sigg, from the Swiss company. It is made from aluminum, but with a liner that is supposedly proven to not leach anything harmful into the liquid in the bottle. I guess in some ways everything is a gamble, but I feel better with metal than with plastic.

I do still use plastic bags for storing some dry foods and for things like veggies in the fridge. My major complaint about plastic bags is that people often throw them away after one use, forgetting that things like bread bags are recyclable, and that sandwich bags are reusable. I wash and re-use all plastic bags, unless they are hopelessly destroyed (i.e. something rotted in it) in which case I do throw them away, or unless they get torn, in which case they get recycled. I rarely get plastic grocery bags at the store- that only happens if I forget my canvas totes and have too much to carry without a bag. I’m usually on my bike and put all my groceries in my pack. I always try to take my own produce bags from home, so I’m not creating extra waste by taking new ones from the store. Each time I wash bags at home, I put a bunch of the clean produce bags in my pack or totes so I don’t have to think about it when I go to the store.

In some cases it’s hard to know what to believe. I feel like I run on instinct mostly, feeling better about using more stable substances like glass and cast iron for cooking purposes. The only thing research is saying for sure is that plastic wrapping can leach into food at harmful if heated or cooled, while also acknowledging that harder plastics can leach into food, but at such small amounts that a “harmful” accumulation is almost impossible. Still, I choose to believe that any accumulation of a foreign substance in my food or drink is unacceptable, as is putting unnecessary plastic in the garbage, which will end up in a dump and never break down.

Links to research and news regarding plastics:

The FDA’s Statement on Bisphenols (BPAs), 2008: http://www.nalgene-outdoor.com/technical/FDAstatement.html

2005 Research Suggesting Cancer Link to Plastic: http://www.foodproductiondaily.com/Packaging/Research-suggests-cancer-link-to-plastic-packaging

Alzheimers Society article on aluminum as a contributing factor: http://alzheimers.org.uk/site/scripts/documents_info.php?categoryID=200137&documentID=99&pageNumber=1