I haz a sad

I lost my MARC train ticket for October. I managed to lose it after only having used it ONCE. This, ladies and gentlemen, is an extremely obvious example of waste. I spent three solid days tearing apart my house looking for it. I made three different phone calls to see if someone had turned it in at various locations - and I HATE making phone calls. No sign of the MARC ticket anywhere.

Clearly I need a better system for keeping track of it! I tried putting the ticket in a large plastic sleeve to make it easier to find in my purse, but I think that ultimately worked against me: since it was so large it was constantly in my way, and I couldn't stash it away safely in the zippered pocket inside my purse.

(On a metaphysical note, I truly believe that EVERYTHING that happens in life happens for a reason, but even my positive cheery self is having a hard time seeing the greater meaning behind this little mishap!)

The Exact Same! Except Totally Different!

With the official start of fall last week, I've started to feel a resurgence of interest in my garden. Most of the summer it was too hot, or too wet, or too bug-infested for me to spend the proper amount of time and attention on my little plot. Who knows how much awesomer it could have been if I'd actually worked on it...at all...during July and August?

My tomatoes are basically toast at this point, and I'm not talking about bruschetta. The wet spring made them all catch early blight, and I didn't think they would make it. Well, most of them have survived, although at this point they are so sick that none of the fruit will ripen. It starts to rot around the stem before the fruit ever gets ripe. So needless to say - in the spirit of NO WASTE! - I'm making green tomato chutney today.

Here's the original recipe I based my version on. Only thing is, I'm missing a lot of the ingredients! So here is my as-made version:

2 - 3 lbs green tomatoes, chopped

1/2 Spanish yellow onion, chopped

1 T olive oil

1/4 c brown sugar

1/4 c white sugar

1/2 c apple cider vinegar

1/4 t ground ginger

2 T fresh rosemary, chopped

Heat oil in a large saucepan. Add onion and saute until softened, about 5 minutes. Add the rest of ingredients, bring to a boil, then turn heat down and simmer for about 45 minutes, until mixture is thickened, tasting a few times and adding more of anything to taste. Remove from heat, let it cool, then store in the fridge.

I'll be using it on a pork loin roast for dinner tonight. YUM!

PhotoRec FTW!

I just lost a LOT of personal files on a free thumb drive that turned out to be corrupt! Warning to everyone not to use a free, give-away, swag thumb drive for anything that is actually important, since these are apparently pretty cheap.

ANYWAY, I manage to recover a LOT of files using PhotoRec. Not everything - there's some pictures of my kids missing, alas - but a lot more than PC Inspector. Recover Files couldn't even tell there was a disk there (I guess it's better for straight forward file deletion, rather than fatal disk errors).

Kudos to the team over at CGSecurity. Not the easiest tool to use ever, but it worked so hey! I'm for it!

(And this counts as "waste not", btw, because I didn't just throw out the corrupt thumb drive - I managed to get files off it. And NOW I'm going to clean it and toss it, since this is *blush* the second time it's corrupted files on me...)

ACK!

You may have noticed it's been a while since I last posted.

I felt like most of my entries were just hacks of the LifeHacker blog entries that came through every day on my RSS feeds, and that's not the kind of blogger I wanted to be.

I wanted to post things that are new! And unique! And insightful!

So I was very excited the other night when my husband created new headlight wiper blades for me out of my old windshield blades. We had just replaced the large wipers, and he observed that, well, the headlight wipers were already ancient when we bought the car three years into its life. In the intervening years, we had never replaced them. He quite cleverly cut apart the rubber and metal of the old blades, and sandwhiched them into the blade holders for the headlights. I took pictures every step of the way. Hurrah! A useful post! Recycling blades, and saving money through not having to spend the $30 / blade it cost for new headlight blades.

Unfortunately it's been done before. That's almost even my car! (I have the S60, same model year.)



Truly, there is nothing new under the sun.

Getting Creative In Minimizing Waste

I haven't posted in a while because real life has taken over. But I did want to share my latest forays into the realm of "Waste not, want not." I'm having to get creative.

Home made bread seemed like a great way to cut costs, so I've been experimenting a lot there. My one attempt at "Five Minute Bread" was quite successful; my home made sourdough using Oregon Trail starter, much less so.

Maybe my expectations with regards to sourdough are just to high, hmm?

Luckily for us waste-avoiders, there are lots of uses for sourdough bread that's gone stale due to disappointment. The majority of it will go to croûtons. A smaller amount went into this summer squash casserole recipe. Which was OK, though not fabulous. Keep an eye out for more summer squash recipe reviews here: I have a bumper crop and I'm ALREADY sick of it, even though the season has barely started!

On the Mend

One of the hardest parts of cutting back has been mending clothes. To be blunt about it, I abhor menial sewing tasks. Replacing buttons? Hemming pants? Bleh. But I have steeled myself to the ennui of mending to serve the greater good.

The best example is my black wool coat. I have worn this coat for three winters now. Around December last year, I nearly broke down and bought a new one, because I had literally worn the edges through at the wrist. My favorite smart-looking and professional coat had officially reached "shabby" status. But I really, really, REALLY did not want to spend $100 or more on a new wool coat.

Enter: scraps of black satin left over from another sewing project. (Remember, it's not sewing I despise, just mending.) I cut two long rectangles, and used machine- and hand-sewing to attach the rectangles to the sleeves to serve as bindings! Shabby solved! In fact, the black-on-black satin-plus-wool texture combination was pretty stylish looking.

This simple repair helped the coat survive the rest of the winter. It since has lost a button, and the satin bindings are starting to look ratty too. Of course, the past two mornings have been cold enough I had to repair the button so I could wear it again. I might even have to new bindings on the sleeves.... maybe with matching binding on the collar to pull the whole look together!

Waste Not: One Squishy Banana

Whenever we have three bananas which have gone brown, everyone in the fam gets excited. Three brown bananas means mommy will soon be baking banana bread! (For the record, I use the recipe out of Cook's Illustrated Best Recipe collection, with one secret ingredient: substitute sour cream for the yogurt. SLURP!)

But what do I do if I only have one squishy banana? This happens a lot, and I have been stumped as to the best use for this one banana. I can always save them in the freezer for future banana bread awesomeness, but using frozen bananas instead of fresh COMPLETELY changes the texture of the bread.

And then: I realized. One squishy banana = smoothie!

1.) Freeze the banana for at least a few hours.
2.) Chop it into smallish pieces, and blend with some orange juice, some yogurt, and some fresh fruit of a flavor compatible with the yogurt. (A lot of smoothie directions say to use plain yogurt, but if you are making a strawberry smoothie and strawberry yogurt is what you have, then why not?)
3.) If the smoothie is too thick, add more orange juice; if it's too thin, add more fruit; if it's not cold enough, add some ice cubes.

Voila. One squishy banana saved from waste!

(And one more banana peel to add to the compost bin!)

Waste Not, Want Not

So what do we do with seven leftover corn bread muffins? I made an extra big batch over the weekend, thinking the fam would eat them all.

Not so much!

Tonight, we will be eating corn bread muffin casserole!

1.) Crumble the corn bread and pack it into the bottom of the casserole dish.
2.) Layer on some cooked white rice.
3.) Layer on some beans (refried, kidney, pinto, whatev).
4.) Layer on some browned meat, cooked with some kind of yummy seasoning (like taco).
5.) Sprinkle on some cheese!

Bake till cooked through - 350 for 30 minutes? Might want to cover it with foil until the last 10 minutes so the cheese doesn't over-brown.

Top with sour cream, chopped tomatoes, onions, or whatever sounds good!

Recontextualization

Sweet potato "muffins" (aka baked dough bricks) aren't so bad when warmed and smeared with cream cheese. When enjoyed with coffee, I could almost close my eyes and pretend I was enjoying a pumpkin spice latte.

...Almost...

Mmmm, tasty

Living cheap thought of the day: Leftovers Omelet. I had just a few spears of asparagus left from dinner two nights ago; three slices of deli turkey; some "Italian blend" cheese. All of which would have been destined for the trash can after a few more days in my fridge.

Add two eggs, a splash of milk, some salt and pepper and voila. Leftovers Omelet. Cost nothing, and kept just a little more stuff out of the landfills. And it tasted so good. *burp*

Waste Not, Want Not

For almost two years now, I have operated by this principle. A little history lesson about "why" later; for now, my "waste not" thought of the day.

Dude. Sweet potatoes.

I baked two of them last night, then nobody in the family wanted to eat them but me. I cleaned off the skins, chopped up the flesh - it looks like I have about 2 cups to use in a recipe. Sweet potato muffins, maybe?