Mushrooming!

What do most people do on their first anniversary?  I don't know.  We went on a mushroom foraging expedition!  Five hours with two mushrooms pros in an urban forest here in Vancouver.  Despite the chilly weather, it was fascinating and fun.

Even better, it clued us in to some things we can do without an additional trip to the store, like finding our own mushrooms (we're unlikely to do this until we're really certain of our identification skills) and growing our own in the storage closet (a potential 2014 project).

We saw cool mushrooms.  We saw tasty mushrooms.  We saw mushrooms that looked like bright orange snot.  We saw medicinal mushrooms.  We saw pretty mushrooms (well, most are).  And lots and lots more -- several dozen species.  It was amazing how many different kinds exist on a small patch of land, once you've clued in to their existence.  We learned lots.

Anyway, towards the end we picked a few edibles and took 'em home.  Starting from the upper left in the photo below, we have laccaria laccata, winter oysters, lepista nuda (blewits), and ... I don't know the other two yellowy types, but recall that the one under the winter oysters is some sort of fake chantarelle which isn't poisonous.  The three fan-shaped ones in the far lower left corner are turkey tails, which you don't eat because they're woody and leathery, but you can make them into tea for some nice health benefits (apparently) -- I did so this evening and feel pretty good.

The ones we fried up were all delicious in different ways, save the winter oysters which tasted almost exactly like nothing, except they were sort of a mushy-nothing.  The end.

Homemade hand & body cream

Bottles, dispensers, tubes, screw-top jars.  You know how things accumulate?  We thought we were pretty good about running a tight ship and not having lots of excess toiletries.  But when it came to lotions and creams, we had ... lots.  Of course, we didn't buy more and throughout the course of this year one by one the various containers ran dry.

Well, a few weeks ago we finally ran out of lotion / cream.  Time to make our own.

Starting with this link, I devised the following recipe:

1/4 cup coconut oil

1/8 cup shea butter

1/8 cup cocoa butter

1 tbsp liquid aloe vera

1 tbsp sweet almond oil

2 drops clary sage essential oil

2 drops sandalwood essential oil

1 drop patchouli essential oil

1 drop neroli (15%) essential oil

Heat the first three ingredients together -- I used a makeshift double boiler (a bowl sitting an inch-and-a-half-deep in a pot of water on the stovetop.  Add the rest and blend well -- I used a Magic Bullet.  In hindsight, I'd have waited and added the essential oils after this step since we now have a Magic Bullet container that smells like this recipe.  But hey ho.  Once done, I put it in a re-sourced lotion container and popped it in the fridge for a while to get it to "set".

The stuff is great.  For the scent portion, my aim was to make something that was fairly gender-neutral (Erin's the main consumer of this type of thing in our little household, but we'd just finished moving apartments, I'd spent several hours cleaning, cleaning, and cleaning, and my hands needed something).  I think I pulled it off -- we both like it.

Enjoy!

Homemade aftershave

Another bottle runs out, another recipe is tried in an effort to reduce our dependence on mass-produced goods and chemicals...

I got the base recipe for homemade aftershave here.  I recommend reading the original, since it gives some good background on the various ingredients and their uses/benefits.  I twisted the recipe around somewhat, as you'll see if you compare what's below with the original.

Here what I used:

2 cups of witch hazel extract
1/4 c dark rum (2 oz)
1 cinnamon stick
6 cloves
5 bay leaves
1/2 tsp aloe
1/2 tsp glycerin
25 drops bay rum oil (about 1/4 tsp)
8 drops neroli essential oil (10% dilution)

Put everything into a jar.  Cover, shake well, and let it sit for a month, shaking it every day or so (I probably achieved weekly and it seems none the worse for it).  Strain and bottle (I didn't think that straining it through a sieve was good enough to remove all the little bits, so I strained it through a paper towel laid inside a sieve).

Apply to face after shaving, about a teaspoon per time.

It feels and smells great, and I like the fact that most everything in it came from our kitchen.  I wouldn't drink it, but I like that I could if I wanted with little fear of getting sick -- I wouldn't try that with the store-bought stuff!

Fruit flies, be gone!

It's a bit late for this, given the fact that we're well into autumn.  However, this "recipe" is so good that it's worth sharing even in February.

We have fruits and veggies sitting out all the time.  We also have the windows open all the time.  Voila -- fruit flies!  And once you have them, nothing seems to work.  We've used traps -- purchased and homemade.  We've tried several home remedies.  Everything works...to a degree.

This site, like many others we've read, promised a solution.  And it actually worked.  Read more about it on the link.  But here's the summary.

1. Find a container (the other website suggested a wide mouth jar, but we used a small empty glass jar).
2. Fill it half full with apple cider vinegar (apparently the only thing that'll work).
3. Add a few drops of dish soap.
4. Fill it up with water in a way that makes it foamy (i.e., blast it under a running faucet).
5. Set it on the counter and walk away.

Within minutes, you'll be catching and drowning fruit flies.  The bubbles seem to be the key.  If you come back in an hour or two and the bubbles have gone away, put it under the faucet on full blast again for a second to get things nice and foamy.  Walk away again.  Just keep doing this every time you pass by over the next day or so.  After a half dozen times, you may have to start over with new vinegar.  But the reduction in numbers is significant right off the bat and in a day or two or three, you'll be fruit fly free.

Rescuing and re-sourcing: my favorite vase

It's incredible what you can sometimes get for free if you just keep your eyes open.  Back in my days at UBC, I was a member of the pottery club and would occasionally (in spurts) spend chunks of time in the dismally-located subterranean pottery studio there (bad location but a great little space, I should add!).

I made some nice stuff and some stuff that...didn't quite work out.  Mostly the former, however.

Anyway, as with all pottery studios there was a "discard" bin, where people put failed pieces.  Things that didn't turn out how the artist intended, things that cracked in the kiln, things where the coloring or patterns didn't pan out.

And that's where I found this wonderful piece.  Why was it in there?  Well, one side of it has a hairline crack on the upper third or so.  But hey.  This photo doesn't really capture it, but the texture, coloration, and size of it is gorgeous.  And unless you fill it right to the top with water, leakage isn't an issue.

Bottom line: we love it.  And the price was right.  Whoever made it -- thanks!

Our pet worms

We have pets!  This isn't a new thing, since we've been doing it for over a year now.  But out on our apartment's balcony, we have a few hundred "red wrigglers," a type of worm that is particularly good at turning our fruit and vegetable scraps into great dirt!

We had some initial growing pains (note: unless you want fried worms, avoid direct sunlight, even if it's not warm out) and our current batch is the offspring of worms from friends Ian and Ruth, who gave them to me in a yogurt container with holes punched in the lid (incidentally, these worms maaayyyy have attended a Jeff Mangum concert last year since I had my backpack with me at the time).

Anyway, they're super easy to keep!  We keep them happy with a once per week feeding.  Their home is kept balanced and fruit flies are (mostly) kept at bay by the addition of shredded paper, which I harvest from my workplace's shredder and bike home with in my backpack.

Our other bit of great news is that we'll have an even better place to USE this compost next growing season, as we've just signed on for a place with a huge rooftop garden!  But that's material for a future post...

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!