Junque Food & Junque Yard - Do you eat what you grow?

DaMan recently read The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet by Robb Wolf, and is very into trying it.  I've been teasing him that his caveman side is showing, but I'm game to try it with him. Basically it tells the science behind why it's good for your body to eat what the hunter/gathers did. They were healthier than we modern humans are, they were taller, lived longer, and had very few incidents of major diseases like cancer and infertility. Why? When did it all change? The author believes, and has quite a bit of science to back it up, that when humans shifted from a hunter/gather lifestyle to an agrarian one, cultivating grains, is when we started getting sicker.

Well, I happen to know a lot of people with gluten intolerance. You can't swing a dead cat in the blogosphere of the interwebz without hitting some helicopter Mom who's rabidly promoting the health benefits of doing without processed grains. Junior is happier, healthier, and able to function by not eating bread or twinkies.


I might have been a little over-sarcastic there, but the point remains: eating lean meats, pure unprocessed fats, and a ton of leafy veggies is better for you than 85% of what you'll find in your local grocery store.

I'm a fat 40-something with diabetes and arthritis. I know that when I eat a few really good meals that are lower in processed carbs, I feel great. I also no that if I follow it up with a meal or two from the drive thru or the middle isles of the grocery store, I can barely move from the pain in my joints, and want to sleep ALL THE TIME.



So, if you haven't started a garden yet, why not? is space an issue? Container garden, or learn how to garden vertically. You think you have a brown thumb? I think cavemen all had brown thumbs (antibacterial soaps were around back then).

Just get yourself some butter crunch lettuce seeds and some baby spinach seeds and put them in a pot.

Water it every couple of days.

In about 30 days, you will have a salad that you can be proud of.

Go ahead and eat it.  You'll love it.

if you are interested in reading more about why a lot of us are sick, overweight, infertile, and more click on the link and get  The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet in: 0px !important;" width="1" /> by Robb Wolf. He's a decent writer, has the science background to back up what he says, and is pretty funny to boot.

Musings from the Junque Pile with a little Junque Food thrown in.

Nothing much happened in the gardens this past weekend. It was stormy and rainy and just blech-y.  I was hoping to get my tomatoes and peppers outside and into their warm and comfy wall-o-waters, but it was not meant to be.

Instead, I cleaned up after animals (you can't have 3 cats and a dog and have no smells in the house, I don't care who you are), did a mountain of laundry (that I still have yet to fold), and the hubster and I took turns shaving and trimming the dog (I swear she's part wookie, and smells like one too).

Sunday I concentrated on cooking for the week. I made an awesome pot of refried beans there's no frying don on them, so I don't know why they are called that, except it sounds much better than "Mushed Pinto Beans."  They were totally NOM. I say that, and I don't even like pinto beans. Or much of any bean-y type thing, for that matter. Except Green Beans, and even those can get bean-y if left on the vine too long. Trust me, I know.

But I digress....

I made 2 loaves of bread.  I wanted to make it handmade instead of in the bread machine. I guess I felt the need to knead, if ya know what I mean.  I used a 1/2 combo of whole wheat flour and white flour, with a few teaspoons full of flax seed.  I also covered it in sesame seeds while baking.  The loaves weren't as fluffy as I'd have liked them to be, but I don't think they are super dense either. I'll find out tomorrow when I make myself a sandwich, or toast.

I also made beef tacos for dinner. Seemed fitting, since I'd made the beans.  I love tacos in any form. Fish Tacos - have I shared that recipe with you guys? If not, I will...totally a great recipe, and quick and simple.

Back on track...

I also made a bowl of Tuna salad for lunches.

We are also defrosting a set of pork chops and I just had DaHubster get some hot dog buns, so pretty much all the dinners, with leftovers for lunches are all set this week.

I feel pretty darn good about that.

Not bad for a crappy rainy weekend.

And if you are still with me...I give you: KITTY CAM! Live kittens, go watch!

Musings from the Junque Pile - another spring cleaning project down.

I have a cabinet that houses half of my spices, and all of my plastic lids.  Before yesterday, I would have been too embarrassed to show you this cabinet, which is above the stove.  This is where we keep our lunch containers that we take to work every day, and you know what happens, lids get lost or the one lid that doesn’t fit any container suddenly multiplies like rabbits overnight.

I found some sort of rack-thing as Salvation Army for $2.00. I had no idea what it was, but I knew I could use it for something. It looks like two ginormous napkin holders that are also conjoined twins. I had visions of painting it a funky color and putting it up on the wall to hold necklaces or rings of keys, or something like that.

But when I was looking for a bigger container to put the ever procreating plastic lids in, and this rack popped into my brain. I just knew it would work, and VIOLA!  Instant lid holder! 

I can actually see what lids I have at a glance. I love it! Even my mother liked it, and that's saying something. She's about 6 inches shorter than I am, and this cabinet is above our stove.  She hated getting on the step stool in order to find a matching lid to a container. Now she can see what she  needs much easier, even if she still has to use the stool to get it (heh).

Musings from the Junque Pile, or...

Comforter Redux, Part Deux.

I actually wrote this several weeks ago and thought I posted it, but apparently didn't. Oh well, better late than never...

You might think I’m being redundant (redundant) in the title, but I’m not (I’m not).  See, last spring I wrote a blog about my comforter, waxing poetic about how I loved the colors of the fabric, the reversible-ness of it, etc, etc.  Unfortunately it was very cheaply made (as only a $50 comforter from overstock.com can be), and the quilt batting inside was disintegrating, making for a very chilly and uncomfortable comforter.

But I love my blankey. I really wanted to save it. I got the wild-hair-up-my-butt-brainstorm to re-stuff it. The problem is is that I am not a quilter. I am not even much of a sewer, truth be told.  I’d dabbled in my 20's with making pillows for my grandmother's couch, and once sewed a pair of M.C. Hammer pants (don’t ask). I used to be able to run a sorta straight seam on a sewing machine.  But I’ve since developed an unreasonable fear of my sewing machines. It is probably from carting them all over the country with me as I moved hither and yon, always thinking about using them, but never doing it. They taunted me when we were in the same room alone. No really, they did. I even took videos of them taunting me, but it got lost it in the last move.

(You’re still stuck on those Hammer Pants, aren’t you?)

Anyway, I thought I could maybe just slit a hole in the side of my comforter, shove some poly-fill in there, sew it up and be done. And that’s pretty much what I did.  Then shoved some more poly-fill, and then some more, and more…

(I will just stop here for a moment and answer that *other* question burning in your head.  I didn’t use quilt batting for one reason – I’ve never quilted anything before, I’d never made a blanket before, but I *had* made pillows before.  And that’s why I used poly-fill. It makes sense if you think about it. Stupid sense, but whatever.)

You would not believe how much poly-fill a comforter with very little quilt-stitching to begin with can eat up. 6 bags later there was a very pretty mountain of poly-fill in the MIDDLE of my comforter. There was a veritable moat of under-stuffed fabric around this mountain of poly-fill. And as much as I would shake it,  pat it, and move it around to the edges of the fabric, all the poly-fill would gravitate to the middle again, sitting there looking like a recently fed troll in the middle of my bed.  It made it, for instance, impossible to watch TV in bed at night. Not to mention how cold it would get at the outer edges of the comforter, with no poly-fill there to keep me warm.

However, summer was coming, and I could ignore the problem for a few months by stuffing my comforter into a garbage bag and throwing it into the back of my closet. Unfortunately, all summers come to an end, and autumn was upon us.  I was recovering from hand surgery, not working, and had very little money. But I had time to mull the problem, and 2 very sullen sewing machines sitting around my house, sneering at me.  It was time to teach them a lesson.

I needed to figure out how to quilt an extremely puffy king sized comforter without breaking a needle or jamming the machine.  My wonderful hubster, being engineering-ly inclined, suggested the term “baffles.” Basically, sewing the comforter into tubes and stuffing the individual tubes after sewing.

Brilliant! 

I set about un-stuffing the beast filling four 13 gallon-sized garbage bags, in case you were wondering, or probably enough to fill one set of Hammer pants (not that I would know this).  After washing and ironing the fabric of the comforter (oh yeah: another reason I don’t sew is that I don’t iron, and you really need to iron things when you are sewing…you really, really do. Trust me on this), I set about dissecting the fabric so that the “baffles” were even along the length of the comforter.  I folded it in half, ironed a crease, folded it in half again, and ironed another crease.  This gave me 4 even quarters after sewing 3 lines.  “I can do this, I can do this, I can do this…” this chant was going through my head often during this project.

(Let me just interject that if you coming back to sewing after taking a decade or two off, you might want to sew on some scrap fabric, just for the heck of it.  You need to check the tension of you stitches, make sure the bottom thread isn’t bunching up in the machine or at the bottom of your fabric, etc.  Yeah, take it from me. You really REALLY want to do that.)

So, I eventually got the 3 seams sewn. I started stuffing the first baffle with poly-fill.  Wow, it’s still too large of an area. The Poly-fill sinks to the bottom of the comforter and lays there like a flopping fish, growing ever more bloated and unwieldy.  I almost cried.  But I bravely pushed on.  My sewing machine is apparently a wee bit out of shape, and the sewing I did made it realize that maybe it didn’t have the chops to consider sneering at me anymore. Take that, sewing machine!

I divided the existing quarters in half, ironed more creases, and sewed those. I have to say that it wasn’t a bad sewing job, running a king-sized comforter through the machine while maintaining a semi-straight line. Even un-stuffed, all that material is heavy!

But it worked! Making the baffles smaller did the trick. With less fabric to move around in, the poly-fill has less place to go, and therefore went where I wanted it to.  The only problem was…

I ran out of poly-fill, and needed to pick up another bag of it to finish the job.  Can you believe it? I’m calling myself the poly-fill queen from now on.

I didn’t take any pictures of me sewing the comforter for the blog, but I will put up an end-product pic.  Just don’t look at the rest of my bedroom…it’s bad. Someday I will repaint the walls, sew up some curtains….QUIT SNICKERING at me. I swear, you all are as bad as my sewing machine…

Musings from the Junque Pile, or Tails of Two Kitties

Thanks to my mom for that title...it's all hers.

So, most of you know that my mother moved in with me with in the last month. She brought with her two cats, which added to the 3 that already rule the roost here at the micro-mini ranch. Buddy and Kibs are hers, and mine are Boston, Norm, and Celeste.  Celeste doesn't have too much to say in this story, as she doesn't come out from under the bed very often.

There was the normal hissing and spitting contests that happen when new cats are introduced to one another. We didn't think it would be much more than growling and batting at one another, as all cats are in the advanced adult age, all but 2 are over 10 years old.

A couple of days ago, mom came to me holding Buddy, saying, "I think he broke his tail."  We examined him, and his tail did have a lump in it, but he was holding it up, and it would wag around. He cried when we touched the lump, and we felt bad.

Now, Buddy is a special needs cat. We don't know if he has a birth defect or was malnourished as a youn'un, but he's extremely skinny, and his back legs are too long for his body. He's got really bad balance, and he walks just plain funny. Teetering from side to side, he often stumbles and falls on his rump. We try not to giggle at him, because we don't know if it hurts his feelings or anything like that. For the most part, Buddy is a happy cat. He loves to snuggle, and years of being in a neglectful home, prior to Mom rescuing him, he was picked on by other cats. It has given him a spunky attitude. He doesn't take crap from anybody. He will bitch-slap any cat that gets in his way. Or so we thought.

We figured he took a slightly harder than normal fall, and bumped or sprained his tail. We were pretty sure it wasn't broken. The other thought we hard was that one of my cats, Norm, had bitten him. So we decided to watch Buddy's tail and see if the swelling was more like and infected bite. As I said, the tail was up and swishing, so while we were concerned, we weren't whisking him off to the vet just yet.

Fast forward to yesterday afternoon, when I picked Kibs up for a snuggle. He's got a little hernia on his belly, that he's had forever, and doesn't seem to bother him much. But when I picked him up, he cried like he hurt. I figured I put too much pressure on his little belly, and vowed to be more careful in supporting him when I picked him up.  He is also a sweet heart, and a rescue, and though we aren't sure, we think he's the oldest of the bunch, which would put him in the 16-17 year range.

Last night I bent down to pet him, as he is always at my feet looking for love. As I ran my hand over the base of his tail, he made a pain noise. Oh no. And oh yes. He's got a bump on his tail, too.  WTF?!?!

He, like Buddy, has his tail up and swishing, so it's not broken, but damn if he doesn't also have a swollen bump, too. What is going on here??

We've made the tentative conclusion that both of the new cats have been part of some weird Kitty Hazing Ritual. Mr. Norm, who is the most gentlest cat when it comes to people, is a weee bit territorial around other cats. I'm thinking he's throwing his weight around, and making sure that everyone knows who's king of the jungle around here.

Rotten little bastard.

Musings at the Junque Pile - Home Made Beauty Products

I thought I'd give you, dear readers, a break from my garden for a minute.

I have a confession to make. I'm cheap.

No, really.  I hate to spend money on myself. Ask anyone. And I have a seriously hard time remembering to do girly things like get a haircut (yes, we won't talk about that here), go get a manicure (I'm actually a few weeks overdue for a fill - this is my one vice, but I'm ignoring it right now) or a pedicure. I buy the cheapest facial scrub I can, only because it is cheaper to buy it than make it (except for the stuff I will tell you about below). But I do have a few on the cheap things that I do here at the micro-mini ranch that proves that yes, I am a girl. A girls gotta get a boost every once in a while, right?

The bestest gentle facial astringent/toner out there: Witch Hazel. No kidding. It's like what, a buck a bottle? My current bottle is going on 3 years old. Wash your face, grab a cotton ball soaked in this stuff, and go to town. Cleans your pores, tightens said pores, and doesn't burn or smell overly astringent. Leaves your skin feeling cool and firm, but not dry or tight. LOVE this stuff, especially in the summer time, when I produce enough oil on my face to fuel my car for a week (Oh, I wish).

The bestest cheapest foot soak for cleaning your feet without scrubbing: 2 cups of vinegar in warm to lukewarm water. I am a diabetic, and I have a condition called neuropathy, where the bottoms of my feet and toes feel like they are always asleep. It is not recommended that neuropathy sufferer's get pedicures, as you can't feel how hot the water is, and any cuts, bumps or bruises may go unnoticed and get infected. As a result, I am very careful with my feet. I have found that a vinegar foot soak is a great way to exfoliate my feet without major scrubbing. It also helps alleviate mild cases of athlete's foot (when done every day for up to 2 weeks). I still scrub, but I don't have to really scrub hard. Most of the dead skin cells are whisked away by the vinegar. And I'm sure that I don't want to know how that happens. I'm just glad it does.

For scrubbing rough, dry skin patches on your feet or elbows (or where ever you might have them), the bestest cheapest body scrub is: mix up 1/4 cup of sugar and just enough olive oil to saturate the sugar, but not dissolve it.  Then rub briskly on your dry patches, followed by a good soaping and rinsing.  If you do this to your feet, DO NOT shower afterwards. Your feet will be too slippery, and I don't want to hear about anyone falling and knocking themselves senseless. Put on some socks and go to bed.

Try these things out and see if they do just as good a job as some of those spendy commercial products. I believe you will be pleasantly surprised. If you find you do like them, make up small batches and add a drop or two of your favorite essential oil to give yourself a special spa-like treat.

Musings from the Junque Pile

Ah...another mild Saturday morning, and I am up way earlier than I want to be.  Here at the micro-mini ranch we have a rare breed called, "the alarm clock cat."  Boston is 14 years old, and very set in his ways. Unfortunately, his internal clock broke down awhile back, and anytime after 4:00AM is fair game. He's also never been able to tell the difference between a weekday and the weekend. Therefore all days are meant for waking before the sun comes up.

It might be safer to say he's part rooster.  He starts crowing for breakfast usually around 4:30 AM. Pillows have been known to fly in his general direction when he gets his MEOW on. I also keep a water spritzer near the bed for when he really gets going. Unfortunately, once I get up to feed him, I'm usually wake enough that I cannot go back to sleep.

Today started off with Boston's typical RRRRRAAAAAWR, and my usual response, "SHUT UP."

Then his co-conspirator, Norm, who decides to up the stakes, invited me to play a game of Bed Mouse. If you've never played Bed Mouse with a cat, it's actually a rousing good time. But not at 4:45 in the morning.  The rules are simple. If your foot under the cover wiggles, Norm will pounce on it and try to capture it with his paws and teeth. If you wiggle you foot even more, Norm will roll around on the bed in ecstasy, attempting to bring the Bed Mouse to submission. I am so good at this game, I can sometimes play it in my sleep. Not this morning, however. Norm has another talent that works in conjunction with Boston's alarm clock. Norm can pace up and down a sleeping person's body until he gets right over that sleeping person's bladder. And then he stands on that spot, and gets heavier, and heavier, and heaver. His little paws have these magic lead weights that suddenly appear. And the beauty of this talent is that he doesn't have to do anything. He just stands there on his opponent's bladder and gets heavier.  It's a neat trick if you think about it.

Around this time, our dog, Muffett also decides that it's time for her morning constitutional.  She will jump down off the bed, and pace at the foot of it. Her little nails go CLACK CLACK CLACK on the wood floors. She might give a gentle shake of her head, causing the tags around her neck to jingle in a merry fashion.

CLACK CLACK RRRRRRRRRAWR CLACK CLACK jingle RRRRRRRRAAAAAAWWWRR...

And as all this still hasn't worked (yet), the 3rd cat gets into the act. Celeste, our shy delicate flower of a cat will jump from the window sill, where she's been guarding us as we sleep.  *POMPH!* Right into the middle of the bed. She will mince over the rumpled covers of the bed and meow in her tiny female cat voice, right in my ear. Just a single, tiny MEW. It's really such a perfect counterpoint to Boston's heavy-handed, disturbingly rooster-like siren call from the doorway (he doesn't dare get any closer, knowing he's in for a whack of the pillow or a face full of water.

With Norm growing heavier and heavier on my bladder, Muffett pacing down below, and Celeste being cute in my ear... HOW IS A PERSON SUPPOSED TO GET ANY SLEEP???

They aren't. That's the point.

Good Morning.

Junque Yard - freshening up the walkway

It's a warm/cool morning, as I sit outside with my laptop and cup of coffee. I'm really enjoying the spring/summer like weather. After all my rantings that spring was too cold and rainy, I'm taking advantage of all the good weather I can!

DaMan started on a project that I've been chomping at the bit to have done for awhile. We held off due to financial and the aforementioned rainy weather, but the stars have aligned, and we can now (hopefully) go forth!

There is a paver-lined walkway that goes up to the back of our yard. It's in sort of a strange area, about 2 feet out from our garage, leaving a space that has become our berry patch, with strawberries, raspberries, and one lone blueberry that's hanging in there, but isn't happy, because it needs a girlfriend blueberry bush in order for it to be happy and produce blueberries (hoping that will be rectified soon, I hate to see anyone/thing lonely).

As nature is prone to do, the grass and weeds have come up through the cracks between the pavers, and it's pretty unattractive. Grass has also permeated my strawberry patch, and is making it difficult to weed in there. So it is time for a re-do.

DaMan pulled up about 50 concrete pavers last night. Today we are going to head to the local hardware store where they are having a sale on pea gravel. We will pick up some landscaper's cloth, too (and maybe another blueberry bush for the lonely guy that can't get a date).

The pea gravel is essential. Once all the pavers are up and the unwanted sod is pulled, we will level the dirt underneath as much as possible, lay down the landscaper's cloth, and spread the pea gravel. The bags are $1.75 for 3 cubic feet.. We estimate that we will need about 20 bags of gravel. Then the pavers will be laid down again on top of the gravel. Everything we've read about this says that a good 2 inches of gravel will help with frost heave during the winter. If you are unfamiliar with that lovely trick of Mother Nature's, it's where the ground buckles and heaves up during the winter due to cold and frost. Concrete and cold do not like each other, and they fight in the winter time, especially in cold climates, such as ours. If you see cracks in a  sidewalk where one corner is higher than the other it's likely, more often than not, due to frost heave.

Landscaper's cloth is just a little more insurance that the grass and weeds don't come back for a few more years. It will eventually degrade, and you can buy the stuff based on how many years it is estimated that it will stem back the tide. 7 years, 10 years, etc. it sells for about $8.00 per 20 feet.

We are hoping to do this project for around $45. Here's hoping that we keep our budget, and I'll have a nice looking walkway again! I will update the results as we finish the project.

Isn't this ugly? Strawberry patch to the left, lawn to the right

The pavers DaMan pulled, to be used again, once the ground is ready for them.

Junque Pile

The holiday weekend has been nice, with a few bumps in the road, but that's to be expected, right?  Saturday started out with a trip to the local farmer's market, where we bought some of the tomato and pepper plants. We have a favorite vendor there, a life-long multi-generation farmer woman who always takes the time to talk to us, and give up hints and tips on growing. She also sells lots of heirloom variety plants, and we have had great luck with her plants. She's friendly, knowledgeable, and a hoot to chat with.  I believe she's got a secret crush on the Hubster, and it's reciprocated, even though he won't admit it.

It's not normally too early in the season to plant the warm weather veggies, but the spring has been so cloudy and cold, most of the tomatoes and peppers aren't as robust looking as they normally are. But we make do, right?

picture borrowed from www.plantertomato.com

We like to buy farm eggs at the market when we can, but the ultra-premium price they go for here is not conducive to our family budget. At least some of the time. This past Saturday we decided to splurge when we say another vendor was selling duck eggs. Never having had them, we chatted the seller up on the difference between duck and chicken eggs. They are larger, richer, with a bigger and more vibrant yolk. If you've had farm fresh eggs vs. store bought commercially laid chicken eggs, you know the yolks are more vibrant in and of themselves. Duck eggs go way beyond!  We brought them home, lovingly cradled in my arms, and I set to work frying up a couple for us. Delicious! The whole meal was.  I felt all down home. Bacon, a fried duck egg, and toast made of home made bread. It was almost a religious experience. If the city I live in won't give in and let the residents keep chickens (a cause I've helped lobby in the past), I'm going to smuggle a couple of ducks in here, I swear it.  :)

The weather precluded us from planting a lot, though the Hubster did construct a cage for growing potatoes. We were originally going to grow them in a set of leftover tires from our car, but after researching on the net, he decided that a cage of landscaper's cloth filled with straw would be more to his liking. He planted a good 4 lbs worth of potato eyes, while I attempted to weed the herb garden and the poor pitiful strawberry garden.

The soil has been to wet to mess with the strawberries, and as a result, the grass has started to take over the patch. But when I saw that they were struggling to put out their pretty little blossoms, I knew I had to do something. So Sunday, I was delicately weeding in and amongst the strawberry crowns, trying not to disturb them, while ripping out the grass. Thankfully, Hubster was smart and got a couple of extra bales of straw, as we hear it makes for great mulch, and weed suppressor.

When it was storming too much, or the fog was too thick, we'd come inside and do the normal weekend things every body does, cook, clean, etc. I attempted to make some home made hamburger and hot dog buns, with a 50% success rate. I made the buns too small, anticapating that they would grow larger after the last rise.  Not so much, unfortunately. Next time I will try not to be so frugal and squeeze more buns out of the batch. Either that or we will have to have teeny tiny burgers.  LOL.  Check out the recipe I used here: Belle's Hamburger Bun recipe on Allrecipes.com.

On a sad note, my microwave died on Sunday.  It was a quick and most likely a painless death for the poor overworked thing. It was a gift from one of Hubster's cousins, and we'd had it for most of the time we've been co-habbing (about 8 years). I was heating something up, and it just shut down. I thought that the circuit breaker blew, as it occasionally does. The fridge and the microwave are on the same circuit, and they occasionally fight each other for current (it's an older house).  But no, the circuit didnt need to be reset, and the fridge was still running. I guess the fridge won that little battle.

I breifly contemplated running and experiment where we see how long we can go without a microwave before Mr and Mrs Junque kill each other, then I slapped myself upside the said and told myself to get real. I may be all for "Living the Simple Life," but there's simple, and then there's simple.  Right?

Today, the weather god's have promised sunshine and warm temps. I'm holding them to their promise, and we will get those tomatoes and peppers planted.  We will also get the cukes, zuke, and loofa seeds in their appointed spots and make the appropriate genuflections to the above named gods that the weather becomes summer like, and the seeds germinate.  I draw the line at ritual killings, but do you think they would take an offering of some misshapen hamburger buns??

Junque Yard

It's Memorial Day weekend, and in my neck of the urban woods, that means it's planting weekend. Our frost free days start around this time of year, though you wouldn't know it from the temperature this Spring. I've complained enough about the lack of warmth, and the excess of rain, and I shan't do it again here (yes, I said shan't).

My house has very little natural sunlight peeping into the windows, and my years' past attempts from starting my garden from seed indoors have been failures. Yes, I've tried grow lights, fluorescent, etc. and all I get are thin, leggy stalks that struggle to survive. If one of my herd of cats doesn't dig into the soil and kill the burgeoning seedlings, they are too weak to make it outside. So unless I seed directly outside, I buy starters from the local Farmer's Market. I am lucky enough to live in an area where farms do good work. Tomatoes and peppers are must haves in my garden. DaMan and I have found that we enjoy Roma tomatoes for canning. We just put them up plain to turn them into sauces at a later date. I have a fondness for banana peppers, which I pickle and can vast quantities of, but love to slice them fresh and put into salads, or just dress with vinegar and a little oil, maybe a wee bit of onion for a quickie side dish.

Bell peppers are a staple in this house hold - all colors of the rainbow. The price of bells in the grocery store have doubled and sometimes tripled over the winter. I can't swallow paying $3.99 for a red/orange/yellow pepper. I plan on doubling my production of those this year, and freezing them for cooking with later on.

Cucumbers are another thing that I enjoy growing. I don't buy starts of those, as they are a warm weather plant, and I can seed those direct. I'm going to be trying out a bush variety that is supposedly more compact than the vine variety. The plan is to pick them small to make pickles, but there's always a few that hide under the foliage, and grow GI-NORMOUS.  Those will go towards making pickle relish. I made both sweet and dill relish last summer, and ran out of the sweet sometime after Christmas.  They made handy gifts, and were well received.

DaMan has a fondness for green beans. Unfortunately, we get lazy, and let the bean grow too large. Then they get tough and stringy, and not very palatable. Lesson learned. Pick your green beans early and often!

This year we are going to be trying potatoes. DaMan will be growing them in a set of tires. Yes, tires.  Potatoes grow in an interesting way.  You get starter spuds from the nursery, and cut them up so they have at least one eye each. Place the tire where you want to grow (where they will get at least 6 hours of sunlight a day), and throw some compost, or well amended soil, or heck, even rotted straw in the bottom. Lay the potato pieces eye side up, and cover with more soil or straw. Water well. The eyes become the stalks of the plants. When the stalks are about 6 inches high and leafy, throw more soil around them, mounding them up. Continue to do the same, and when the stalks and leaves wither and brown, yank them out of the soil, and count how many new potatoes you have!  The tires (or you could use a clean dark colored garbage can) act as a warmer for the soil (black draws in the heat from the sun). But it also serves the purpose of growing something else that isn't taking up space in your garden. And here at the urban micro-mini ranch, space is at a premium.

I haven't even touched on our fruit bushes, the lettuce "patch", or the herb garden...yet. :)

Musings at the Junque Pile.

Hi there,

It was productive, yet an unspactacular weekend at the mini-micro urban ranch. There are times when non-drama is good for the soul, and this was one of those times.  The spring, which to date has been cold, cloudy, and rainy, took a break for a warmer interlude, and that led the hubster and I to dash outside and do as much as we could under a gentle but shining sun.  He washed the dog, and I weeded. He mowed most of the lawn. I weeded. He weeded. I mowed the rest of the lawn. We both weeded. I potted some plants. Weeding commenced. You get the idea.

Wild Rhubarb and Stubborn Dandelion suffered and died horrible deaths. Yes, you can eat the rhubarb, but you really wouldn't want to. I used to give it to co-workers, but they never asked for more. I took it as a sign. The dandelions...well, they were taking up valuable real estate.

I went to the local Farmer's Market. Gosh, I missed that place. They have several during the week, but I cannot go as they are during work hours. The Saturday one is special to me. I've made acquaintance with some of the vendors there. It gives me a sense of peace knowing that I, a former Flower Child of the 70's, turned Valley Girl of the 80's can talk about bees and eggs and tomato varieties and double headed begonias. I feel like I'm starting to come home. I'm what you might call...a late bloomer.

Junque-olgy - It's Curtains for you!

I'm in desperate need to get rid of my mini-blinds. They are disgusting and broken, and UGH!

I'm starting easy, because it's many, many moons since I hauled out the sewing machine (remember "Hammer Time?" - remember "Hammer Pants?" - yeah, I made those).  I want to make cafe curtains for one window in the kitchen that sits over the sink.  The walls are pale yellow.  The counter top is a mottled pottery color (not orange, not brown, but just like a clay pot), the appliances are all white.

So, I'm looking for fun and funky prints to buy for curtains this morning, and most of the things I like are labeled "Juvenile." I'm trying not to be insulted, and mostly I'm just giggling at the thought of truly WILD prints, and the look on DaMan's face when I finally get them up.

say...something like this: 



But he probably wouldn't have a problem with this:



I love this, but it's a jersey knit, and not at all right for curtains:



... and people wonder why I never get anything done.



So help me out...wild prints, that aren't too dark (my house is light challenged), in the yellow/red/green family preferably. Please?

I promise to write up the whole process of what is sure to be a comedy of errors - Me vs. Sewing Machine vs. Tension Rods, etc.

And!!!  Bonus points to those that might point in me in a trying Junque-like fashion of re-using something else to make my curtains.

Junque-ology - Re-Stuffing my Comforter

Yes, I wish this was my bed. Alas,it is not.  The comforter shown in this picture, however, is mine. I love the reversible fabric. I love the plaid on one side, the lighter striped pattern on the other. I bought this from Overstock.com probably about 2 years ago for just under $50.00.  I figured it would give me a few years, then give out. Well, I was right.  The batting inside has torn and bunched badly The poor thing is pretty much unusable. However, it being the only comforter I have, I've had to use it - even in it's horrendous shape. 

I really didn't want buy another cheap comforter. I REALLY REALLY REALLY want another goose down duvet. Our last duvet met its nasty end when one of our cats decided it was a much better place to pee on than in the litter box. But she was old and sick, and I forgave her.

I had thoughts of turning the fabric from the comforter into a duvet cover. It wouldn't take much, but getting a new duvet is something I cannot afford right now. Have you priced them lately??? O.M.G. it almost makes you want to raise the geese yourself just for feathers.

Anywhoo...I needed to do something quick. The comforter desperately needed to be washed, but the batting inside wasn't going to be able to handle another washing & drying. It hasn't been warm enough to line dry, either, which I was doing in nicer weather to save some wear and tear. What to do? What to do?

If you remember from my blog-post about the necklace board I made...I tend to dither. I want to do something, but I can't because something else needs to be done first. And that can't be done, because of cost or SOMETHING that always manages to bog down the process. So I dither. I let ideas swirl in my head, and nothing ever gets done. Starting this blog is helping me to stop and say, "Do What You Can Now." Just do it, and do it better later, if you need to.  So I am.

I went to the craft store, and bought out their section of poly fiber-fill. I remembered from my pillow making days, that you generally 2x what you think you do when it comes to fiber-fill. So I got lots.

I dug out my old sewing kit, and hunted up my seam ripper.  The seam ripper and I used to be good friends, back in the old sewing days. Yes, together we've ripped a seam or two...hundred.  I sat down with my comforter, my seam-ripper, a large garbage bag, and whatever was playing on the History Channel (something about the Pope, but I really wasn't paying attention).

I carefully "ripped" about 2 1/2 inches of seam from the side of the comforter. I pulled out all the gnarly stuffing from inside. And I do mean GNARLY. If you have a dog, and you let that dog sleep with you on the bed, then you know GNARLY.  I carefully took out the laughable quilting stitches in the middle of the thing (seriously, there were maybe 6 one inch long quilt stitches for a king sized comforter), which is why the batting tore and bunched up in the first place.

I'm washing and drying the shell of the comforter, then I will stuff it with the new poly-fill, then I'll whip-stitch the side seam back up.  And Viola! One fixed comforter.

You might ask, why didn't buy new batting, and re-quilt the thing?  Because I *do* want to go back at a later date and make this a duvet cover - when I finally get my new goose-filled duvet. Re-stuffing the comforter now will tide it over until I get that new duvet (and oh yes, I will get it). Then I can open the foot of the comforter, take out the poly fill, throw in the duvet, and either put on buttons, snaps or Velcro, as a new closure.

See? It *can* be fixed for now...and made better for later.  :)

And the dog can't lay on it until she gets a bath...and I mean that sincerely.

Junque Jewelry or Junque-ology...you decide.

Necklace Organizer...round one.

I make and have a lot of necklaces. I have a jewelry box that I don't love. It doesn't organize well, and the spot to hang necklaces is down the back, so you can't see them unless you stand over the box, peering in. It's just not convenient.

I've been toying with the idea for a way to hang my necklaces so that they are all visible, and yet compact. Here's what I did.

I had an old framed cork-board & some tiny J hooks (or coffee cup hooks). Viola!

Yes, it's another crappy cell phone pic, but I'll take a better one at a later date. I promise!

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, but I need to jazz it up a bit. I want to paint the frame and paper the cork-board with some pretty paper.  I'm waiting until after I re-paint my bedroom, though, so I can match it to the new wall color.  Then I will post an update here!

Why would I post an unfinished project here, you might ask? Well, I think I have a good reason. One, I put making this necklace board for months, even though I really needed it. My brain was swirling with the "I can't-s"  as in, "I can't do that because I haven't picked out the pretty paper," and "I can't pick out the paper until I paint the walls in the room,"  and so on. I'm a master of procrastination for this very reason.  So I stopped, did the what I needed to get the quick fix, and the pretty comes when it comes.

That's my new Junque-ology rule to live by.  I hope you like it.

Junque-yard

...and a small plug! Mike the Gardener

A few weeks ago I signed up with a seed of the month club. I found the company through FaceBook, as a group that I'd "liked." 50% off the normal membership fee of $24.00 for a year. Plus if you tell them your birthday date, you'll receive some extras as a gift around that date. I figured what the heck.

I got my first envelope in the mail this weekend. WooHoo! Mike the Gardener outdid himself right out of the box! Here's a list of what I received. One seed packet of:

Sunflower (Mammoth Grey)
Peas (Lincoln)
Beets (Cylindra)
Thyme
Parsley (Italian Flat Leaf)
Cabbage (Golden Acre)
Zucchini (Black Beauty)
Carrot (Chanteny Red Core)

Very Not Bad! I can't imagine that Mike the Gardner is going to be that generous every month, but wow! (actually, reading the site...it's 8 packets the first month, and 4 packets every month afterward, for a total of 52 packets a year. That's a bargain @ $12.00 for a year's membership)

Now, I know that I will be getting things that I won't plant, because I don't care for the item, or know it won't grow every well, but I've been talking with co-workers and people online about swapping seeds. I can only imagine that after my year's membership is done, I will have bunches of things to trade with.

I also figured that I'd be getting things that I would want to try, things that would take me out of my comfort zone. For example, I tried cabbage a few years ago, but it didn't go anywhere. I brought a sprout-ling with a already-set head on it, planted it, and watched it do absolutely nothing all summer long.  But as you can see of the list above, I now have a packet of seed, and I'm going to try again in a different part of the yard.

And same goes for Zucchini. I am probably the only person in the world that has had trouble growing zukes. The one time I tried it, the plants I had produced only male flowers, and therefore, wouldn't set fruit. What's up with that?

I cannot to try this different variety of carrot, too. I've been growing Danvers Half Long carrots for 2 years now, and I've been really pleased with them. Trying a new kind and seeing the differences just makes me all tingly!


Just a little bit longer, and I can start planting veggies into the garden...I can't wait!

Junque Jewelry

I wear a lot of necklaces during the week, most of which I’ve made over the years. There’s one necklace that I didn’t make, but has a great homemade flair to it. I'm sure that's why I like it. It is a silver wire-wrapped heart, suspended diagonally on a snake chain. You can tell the artist shaped the heart over some sort of form, probably something water soluble so it could be melted out by soaking. Or possibly using something flammable like cork clay, because the silver wire has been heat treated to become inflexible. This necklace was my grandmother’s, she and I shared the same passion for hand crafted wearable art.

 

I wear it fairly often and as a result, it’s become quite tarnished. 

it's hard to see the tarnish on the heart, but it's there, trust me!

Now, over the years, I’ve been giving various sorts of jewelry cleaners to try, and I hate messing with them. I don’t know the chemicals they have, and they usually still take a certainly amount of buffing or scrubbing to get clean anyway. I don’t know about you, but I hate spending money on a product that claims to be a breeze to use, and you still have to put your elbow grease into it anyway.  I’d rather pay next to nothing, use a more natural product that I know the ingredients of, especially if I’m going to have to use my elbows to clean it anyway.

 

So, I’d heard rumors about toothpaste, but never tried it before. but I thought it might be worth a try. Being cautious, though, I decided to check the interwebs to see if there were any warnings, and there were several. Toothpastes can have an abrasive reaction to fine silver, or silver-plated items, causing them to get scratched. While this might not be a problem for some things, it's better to be safe than sorry. So I decided to take a gander at other "natural" ways to take the tarnish off of silver, and I cam across  What I found was AWESOME! A quick, easy, safe, and CHEAP way to do what I wanted.


I spot-checked the method from a couple of different sites, and I'll list them at the end for you, if you want them, oh gentle readers.

How to Make a Silver Polishing Dip

• a disposable pie tin OR a glass baking dish with a sheet of aluminum foil
• 1 tablespoon of baking soda
• 1 tablespoon of salt
• at least one cup of steaming hot (but not boiling) water

1. Line the glass dish with aluminum foil (or if you are using the disposable pie tin, skip)
2. add the hot water, baking soda, and salt. 
3. Still until dissolved (it will fizz...no worries)
4. Drop your item(s) into the water
5. Check after a couple of minutes. Leave in longer of there's still more tarnishing to be taken away.
6. Remove, dry, and polish. Viola!

glass bowl & tin foil

heart pendant, getting dipped

all bright & shiny!

**Please be aware that this method of cleaning may not be appropriate for jewelry with precious or semi-precious stones in it. **



Sources:


Making a Silver Polishing Dip from About.com


Rena's Klingenberg's How to Clean Tarnished Silver Jewelry