Sprouts!

Prepping sprouts are Erin's deal.  But I still eat 'em.

It's pretty easy.  Take something that you want to sprout.  The pictures below are mung beans, but we've also tried some other stuff and you can too.

Instructions:

• Soak some beans/seeds overnight and then drain and put in a jar with a mesh top.
• Tip the jar on its side in a bowl and rinse/drain them once or twice a day.
• Wait.

In about 4 days, you'll have healthy sprouts -- fresh, with zero packaging waste, and at a cost of a few cents per batch!

Homemade play dough

Summer happens.  Our postings have been few and far between in recent months, but the Year of Less continues...

One of the challenges for this year is what to do about gifts -- birthdays, anniversaries, etc.  We've tried to be creative about not buying stuff.  We've given away homemade wares, given gift certificates for meals and activities, and continued to do homemade cards for people (Erin generally heads up this one).

Here's something we did as a fun and pretty easy gift for kids: Homemade play dough!

We started by trolling the internet for ideas that use all natural ingredients and narrowed in on this one.  Here you go:

1 c plain white flour
1/2 c salt
2 tbsp cream of tartar (not necessary, but makes it more elastic)
1 tbsp olive oil
1 c boiling water
Natural food coloring

Instructions: Put it all in a bowl and mix.  That's it.  For our inaugural batch, we wanted to avoid artificial food coloring.  This recipe made enough for three nice balls (pictured below).  For red, we chopped up a piece of beetroot and squeezed some juice in.  For orange, we sprinkled in paprika.  For yellow, turmeric.