Free Halloween Dinner at Chipotle's

Chipotle Mexican Grill does a cool thing on Halloween. If you dress up like a burrito or a taco, you get a free burrito or tacos. We found this out last year when we happened to go there on Halloween evening. I like this restaurant, even though it is a chain, because it's easy for us to get tasty vegan food there, they seem to have a conscience (they promoted the movie Food, Inc.), and much of their packaging is reusable or recyclable. (I re-use the aluminum foil used to wrap the burritos, compost the paper bags and napkins when I take them, compost the cardboard container for the "bowl" after removing the thin plastic lining, and recycle the foil top for the bowl.)

To get my free burrito this evening, I pulled out a wrinkled roll of aluminum foil from my high kitchen cabinet. This is the roll someone gave me last year outside of Chipotle's, after telling me about the free meal deal. After getting my free burrito last year, I carefully unwrapped myself and rolled the foil back up. It was great tonight to re-use the same foil. I wanted to add an extra little touch, though, so I fished the foil top to the bowl I'd gotten last week out of the recycle bin.


I taped that to a ball cap and wore it. I was making an effort - more of an effort than some folks there for their free food. Students especially seemed to go the minimalist route, merely wearing aluminum wrist bands, necklaces, bibs, or caps. It was heartening to see a little more imagination as I left; several people were putting together tall boxes covered in foil to wear into the restaurant.

This free deal goes until 10 pm tonight so you still have time to get yourself some tasty free food tonight if you live near a Chipotle Mexican Grill.

Moving Angst and Clutter

We got home yesterday afternoon after spending a couple of tough days moving my mother-in-law into her new (rental) home. Here are the highlights:

1. I'm great at cleaning out before a move and usually have great yard sales as a result. I'm a great packer - efficient and organized. This is the result of having moved too many times. However, I hate the actual moving part - loading the truck (and we always do it ourselves), the drive, and unloading. I hoped this move would be easier because it eliminated the truck and drive.


2. My mother-in-law has been dreading having to move since we first told her we needed to sell our house that she lived in. Our original plan was to find a place for all of us but she doesn't want to live in Tucson where we've decided to stay. Although the new owners let her stay in our old house, she cannot afford the rent they want and we cannot afford to continue paying half of it for her indefinitely.


3. It took her a long time to find an affordable place she could live in and then she's had to wait for months for the owner to do needed repairs and remodeling. The new place is across the street - literally, directly across the street. The rent is half as much, mostly because the house is smaller, not as nice, and there is scarcely a yard.


4. Getting rid of anything is hard for my mother-in-law. However, with my help and encouragement over the years, she's gotten much better about cleaning out. She let go of an amazing amount of clothes, knickknacks, and other household goods in the past few months so that she could fit into the smaller house.


5. Due to a painful bruise from tripping on the steps at the new house, she could not help much with the actual move and wasn't able to complete the packing before our arrival. Our plan had been for her to dog-sit while we did the moving anyway, so it initially didn't appear to pose a problem.


6. Unfortunately, Polie made it a problem. For some reason, he suffered extreme separation anxiety when we were both out of his sight. This meant we had to alternate hauling stuff across the street. To move the major appliances and furniture, we had to put the dogs in the vehicle with my mother-in-law and get everything moved early in the day before it got too hot in there for them.


7. Polie also will not 'go potty' while on leash and the fence in the new yard is too low to contain the dogs. We had to walk the dogs over to the old house - even in the middle of the night - and let them loose in the yard there to do their business. We have no idea what we will we do on future visits. Maybe Polie can just run free down the street again like he did on this trip when the gate was accidentally left open...

As a result of the above events, we got home exhausted and stressed yesterday. We also were extremely motivated to reduce the amount of stuff we will have to move when our turn comes, although finding a new home for us is proving far more difficult than it was for my mother-in-law. In any case, we need to make space to fit in an old armchair we brought home with us.

We spent yesterday afternoon going through the living room. We examined everything that was in the room: art on the walls, knickknacks, furniture, multi-media and books, sewing supplies, and other miscellaneous items. As we worked through it all, I dusted and cleaned in places that had been neglected for a very long time. When we were done, the room sparkled with that crispness that only comes after removing the light-absorbing dust.


We have a pile of items to donate, sell, and give away, including this custom piece of furniture my sweetie built using a bent drill rod (from mining) and some imported wood he bought more than three decades ago before he knew better.


Last night (and last week), I went through clothes I'd set aside when I regained some weight a while back. Decluttering wisdom dictates that one should not keep anything that has not been used in the past year and diet advice often stipulates that keeping smaller clothes may hinder weight loss efforts, and besides, fashions will change by the time one can fit into the clothes again.

These are rules that I decided to break. When I gained the weight, I was reasonably sure that I would (eventually) be ready and able to lose it again. As the months passed and the numbers on the scale didn't move downwards, I made myself a promise. If I had not lost any weight by the time we were ready to move, I would get rid of all the clothes that did not fit. Well, maybe I'd save the next size down, but I'd get rid of all the rest.

Thankfully, I started slowly losing weight in August. I went clothes shopping in my own storage closet twice this month, which is far cheaper even than going to the thrift store (where most of these clothes came from in the first place). It is encouraging to try on these clothes and find that many of them now fit. My wardrobe increased considerably and a few items have even been removed because they are now too large.

Have the fashions changed since they fit before? Probably. I don't have a clue because I don't follow fashion. I wear what is comfortable and functional, not what is fashionable. It's a good thing, because I've got several more boxes of clothes in several smaller sizes to work my weight down to.

My sweetie heads back to work tomorrow, leaving me on my own in clearing more clutter. I suppose it would be a good time to tackle the toiletries and personal supplies. I'll also be on my own in the kitchen as I do most of the food preparation and cooking. He gets to tackle the garage and garden supplies. I just hope we can keep our clutter-clearing momentum and motivation going.

Green Garden

It sometimes feels a little surreal to read about the gardeners up north putting their gardens to bed for the winter when ours is just taking off. With our containerized hydroponic garden, plants are producing far better than ever before. There are looofahs growing to spongehood, peppers galore, herbs, brassicas, eggplant, and overgrown okra.


The red potatoes have grown almost to the top of their 3-bucket towers.


The bell peppers are getting bigger every day.


Our third bitter melon is hanging high on the vine. We tried one while it was small and found it so incredibly bitter we could not eat it. We let the next one grow large as my sweetie had read that the seed coating in mature bitter melons tasted like cherry candy.


He cut it open this past week to see if this was true. Verdict? Not really. The seed coating has the consistency of a roasted red pepper and a chalky fruity flavor, but it's not reminiscent of cherries other than in color. The flavor is vaguely like some kind of tropical fruit. We plan to give the last bitter melon to a gal that moved here from Taiwan just a few years ago as she is more accustomed to the flavor than we are.

This morning, we dashed off to the annual Master Gardeners' plant sale. I pushed for us to get there at opening time - 8 am - and it turned out my hunch was correct. The parking lot was already packed when we got there a few minutes after 8. By the time we got into the plant area, someone had already picked up the last fig start.


However, there were still a few blackberry canes, another plant on our wish list. We bought two Rosborough Blackberries and look forward to eventually getting them into the ground for our future garden. These are adapted to desert conditions and should produce well.

We, and several other folks, were quite disappointed in the lack of edible plant offerings at the sale. I plan to email the group and encourage them to start more edible plants adapted to this area as they would obviously be popular. With the interest in edible gardening and increase in food prices, the group would be wise to move in this direction.

Time for me to go figure out what to do with huge okra pods and a nice purple eggplant.

Challenge Check-in: Only 70 Days Left

Another check-in for the 100 Days Challenge, blah, blah, blah... Pardon me for saying so, but I'm getting tired of this challenge. I think there was too much self-imposed drama with it for me this past week or maybe I'm just tired. It's been a heck of a week and I'm still wrung out from it. Sleep seems out of my grasp lately and my energy levels are pretty low. It's definitely time for a vacation but the closest I'm going to come to that is a few days helping my mother-in-law finally move into her new home.

Anyway, back to the challenge. I've blogged about what I'm doing several times since the last official check-in: changing my focus and showing how I used up some relish and mesquite flour. Today, I emptied out two more jars from the fridge. My sweetie cooked some rice for his lunch. I had a bowl of the leftover rice for breakfast, topped with tomato-eggplant relish and fresh sliced cucumber. For lunch, I dumped the last of my melon kimchi over more rice, along with some steamed chard, sauteed mushrooms, and gochu jang for an impromptu bibim bap.

I'm making progress, albeit slowly, in using up my perishable food. All of the cold food has been inventoried but I haven't yet tackled the kitchen shelves. Outside commitments kept me hopping this week with just enough time to sit and rest in the evenings most days. And while sitting, I was peeling the husks off fresh pistachio nuts so I could salt and then roast them in the solar oven today.

For those participating in the challenge, please report in. For those of you who are not, are all these posts about the challenge driving you bonkers?

Local Dog Treats

The refrigerator and freezer inventory is finished, and I've already made some progress on using up a couple of items. From the refrigerator, I finished up some pumpkin butter syrup (just pumpkin butter thinned with maple syrup) on pancakes over the weekend. Then yesterday, the last of the green tomato relish was stirred into vegan mac 'n cheese for a nice dinner. Yesterday, I pulled a small bag of toasted mesquite flour, purchased from Native Seeds last year, from the freezer.


I have mixed feelings about mesquite as food. While the beans can be a good source of food, it's not easy to convert them into a usable flour. Sure, the Indians ground them with rocks, but they also ground down their teeth with the resulting bits of rock included in the flour. And, that's a bit more labor-intensive than even I am willing to deal with. Desert Harvesters, a local group, hosts events around the area with their hammermill, a big industrial mill, to turn the beans into flour.


One year I collected mesquite beans from a tree in my yard. It was a little bit of work to wash the beans and spread them out to dry. Then I stored them in paper bags in the garage until after the summer monsoon season when the hammermill would be available. One day, my sweetie came in and told me my bags were rattling. Uh oh. I had Bruchid beetles - little beetles that lay eggs in the immature beans. The young hatch and emerge from little holes in the beans. (See first picture above to see the perfectly round little holes.) The beetles are harmless, but they leave lots of little holes in the beans (and paper bag) and can be a pest flying all over the place. I finally threw the beans in the freezer.


After thawing them out in time to dry thoroughly for the milling, I waited in line for some time to mill my beans into flour. After hours of collecting, cleaning, drying, and milling my beans, I discovered that the flour did not taste great. Despite having tried the beans first and thinking they were fine, my batch of flour had an unpleasant aftertaste and all my efforts were for naught.

Not easily discouraged, my sweetie and I made our way a few months ago to a mesquite tasting event where foods made from recipes for a new mesquite cookbook were being sampled. We're not sure whether it was from the mesquite or some other ingredient, but both of us had a strange reaction in our mouths and throats - a little swelling and sensitivity. This didn't seem to happen to other folks that we are aware of, but it has made us wary of eating mesquite.


So, here I was yesterday holding a bag of mesquite flour thinking I really don't want to eat this but I'm not supposed to be wasting food with my revised challenge! An image of my dogs munching on the mesquite beans on the back patio came into my head. I decided to try baking some dog treats for them using mesquite flour. Because mesquite does not contain gluten, I used half mesquite flour and half wheat flour. The wheat flour was ground by my sweetie using our pedal-powered set-up and delicious wheat berries from my CSA.

Mesquite-Wheat Dog Crackers


3/4 cup mesquite flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/3 cup soy flour
Shells from 2 eggs, dried and pulverized in a blender
1/2 cup + 1 tbs water
1/4 cup + 1/2 tbs oil (I used olive and sesame oils.)

Preheat oven (or solar oven) to 350 degrees.
Mix dry ingredients.
Stir together water and oil; quickly pour into dry ingredients.
Mix well.
Divide dough in half and place on two baking sheets.
Roll out until flat, making sure the thickness is even throughout. (Otherwise, the edges will brown before the center like mine did.)
Score lightly with a pizza roller before baking.
Bake for at least twenty minutes until golden brown.
Remove from the oven and turn off the heat.
After the treats have cooled slightly, cut through with the pizza roller.
If any pieces (especially from the center) are not crisp, return them to the oven to dry out.


I broke the crackers into small sizes to use for training treats and my dogs think they are just dandy.

Changing My Focus

I've been giving a lot of thought to what I chose to do for the 100 Days Challenge - "spend no money on food" - and the problems I've had with it. Part of the idea behind choosing this as my challenge was that it would force me to eat the food I already have before bringing new food (from the store, Farmer's Market, or a restaurant) home. It would ensure that the perishable produce I bring home weekly from the CSA is used up before it goes bad. It would encourage me to eat the older foods in my emergency pantry before they expire or go bad. Of course, saving money is also good, especially since we're having trouble finding a suitable house in our price range.

Rather than continue to bang my head against the wall every time I spend a cent on food through the end of the year, especially during the holiday season, I've decided to tackle my goal more directly. I have changed my particular challenge to:

Eat up perishable food.

It's simple. It's direct. It's exactly what I need to do. And it doesn't set me up for failure. I can still do a little shopping or enjoy an occasional meal out without guilt, as long as I pay attention to what food needs to be eaten up quickly.

I have slacked off on my meal planning but will be working on that again. I have already started using my dry-erase board on the refrigerator to list the perishable produce again as a reminder what is lurking in the produce drawers.

This past week, I cleaned out my refrigerator and re-organized it. Unfortunately, I had to throw out some food because I did not use it up in time. There was about 1/2 cup of fresh salsa verde with a clump of white mold growing on top. Another mystery container had hints of mold so I tossed its contents. And I finally bade goodbye to my long-dead sourdough starter. When sourdough starter is ignored for weeks (months) at a time, it uses up all its food and gets nasty. When I am at a point that I think I'll use it to bake bread regularly, then I'll start a new batch.

I moved several containers to the front of the fridge as a reminder to use them soon. I already finished up some pumpkin butter mixed with maple syrup on pancakes (for dinner last night). I smeared the last smidgen of pear butter over my toast this morning. Within the next month, I will clean out the freezer and see what needs to be used up sooner than later. Then the kitchen pantry will be up for cleaning. Finally, I'll tackle the preserved food and emergency stores, checking dates on everything.

My plan is to create a list of the pantry foods that need to be used up this year. I'll keep that handy and plan my meals around those ingredients. With winter coming soon, it should be easy to incorporate even the strangest items in some kind of soup. If I'm stumped, I'll post a request for help. It's always interesting to get ideas from others.

Thank you for all the feedback you have provided while I've struggled with this challenge.

Tucson RRFM

(Click to enlarge.)

Thoughts on "Not Good Enough"

Sorry for yet another post wondering about the merits of being good enough and feeling bad or guilty for not living up to expectations. I've read several things today that have really got my thinking going and have gotten a number of comments on yesterday's post suggesting I'm being too hard on myself for failing in my challenge.

The first thing I read this morning was an article about the disappearing Arctic ice cap. Once again, scientists are observing and predicting change coming even faster than the last prediction. From the article by Elodie Mazien (emphasis added by me):

The Arctic ice cap will disappear completely in summer months within 20 to 30 years, a polar research team said as they presented findings from an expedition led by adventurer Pen Hadow.

It is likely to be largely ice-free during the warmer months within a decade, the experts added.

Doctor Martin Sommerkorn, senior climate change adviser for the World Wide Fund for Nature's international Arctic programme, said the survey painted a sombre picture of the ice meltdown, which was happening "faster than we thought".

"Remove the Arctic ice cap and we are left with a very different and much warmer world," he said.

Loss of sea ice cover will "set in motion powerful climate feedbacks which will have an impact far beyond the Arctic itself," he added.

"This could lead to flooding affecting one quarter of the world's population, substantial increases in greenhouse gas emission from massive carbon pools and extreme global weather changes."

Sharon also wrote about an article on climate change. To quote from the article by Stephen Leahy (emphasis added by me):

The climate negotiators heading to Copenhagen in December must accept the fact that the world’s carbon emissions must eventually stop – and stop completely. There is no sustainable per capita carbon emission level because it is the total amount of carbon emitted that counts, explains Myles Allen of the Climate Dynamics group at University of Oxford’s Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics Department.

Carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for many centuries, which makes it the most important greenhouse gas to reduce and eliminate. The current focus on CO2 concentrations like 450 ppm or 350 ppm is the not the right approach since it is the total cumulative emissions that determine how warm the planet will get, Allen told the conference.

If climate negotiators only look at slowing rates of carbon emissions, then natural gas will be substituted for coal because it has half of the carbon – but the total amount of carbon in the atmosphere will continue to increase.

Melinda asked this morning, "Do You Have to Change Your Life Entirely in Order to Stop Climate Change?" She suggests that rather than feeling overwhelmed by the problem, people start out with change, any change, to begin to make a difference. After reading the other two articles this morning and several of the comments left on her post, I think my answer to her question would now be YES! We do have to change our lives entirely in order to stop climate change.

People, the planet is facing large changes as a result of the action of human beings. By consuming so many resources and burning massive amounts of fossil fuels, we have managed to alter the temperature of an entire planet. Yay us? Uh, no. This is not an accomplishment to be proud of; this is incredibly irresponsible behavior. It is short-sighted and the equivalent of "crapping in our own nest", something other species have figured out is a really stupid thing to do.

The articles above make it clear that half-assed efforts to "save the planet" are not going to cut it. It's time for digging in and making some big changes. It's time to give up our easy lives filled with labor-saving devices of every type that run on carbon-spewing fuel. We have to consume less and burn less carbon and we have to be good enough. The alternative, the results of our not being good enough, are moving towards a world uninhabitable by humans and many of the other planet's species.

Is that "okay"? Should I give up feeling guilty when I'm not good enough, even in a seemingly unrelated challenge? No way! We need to do whatever it takes to push through the hardship and challenges of changing our lives. We need to develop the skills required to stick to a tough commitment to ourselves and the planet. Making an exception just because we are tired or grouchy or had a bad day just won't work anymore, not when we are already in the end game. One exception turns into many, giving up today leads to giving up entirely, not being good enough shows others the effort is too hard so they shouldn't even try. We have to be good enough. Or we just might not make it.

Overly dramatic? I don't think so. I've read somewhere that the scientists are getting pretty freaked out by what they are finding with climate change. Scientists don't generally get "freaked out" but their findings are so startling and the potential impacts are so devastating that it's alarming them. We all need to be shaken up, startled, alarmed, and scared about what's happening if that's what it takes to truly commit to making dramatic changes in our lives. Anything less is not good enough.

100 Days Check-In - Going for the Whole Mile

We've passed the 20 day mark in the 100 Days Challenge. I hope the rest of you have done better than I did in the past 10 days.

You might recall that I told my friend that I had set strict guidelines for myself initially in this challenge because I "tend to do better with clear cut black-and-white rules. Give me an inch and I'll take a mile." Well, once I relaxed those guidelines and decided it was okay to spend money, under certain circumstances, on food during the challenge, it was all over.

We're not even talking about a slippery slope here, folks, we're talking jumping off the freakin' cliff. You already know about the Chipotle burrito with my sweetie and the Sweet Tomatoes dinner out with a group of friends. If you checked on my daily food log on the other blog, you are aware that I ate at both Chipotle and Sweet Tomatoes again on my own. (I didn't pay for the second Sweet Tomatoes meal, though, as I got a free coupon through my weight loss challenge group.) Over the weekend, my sweetie decided he wanted a burger from the vegan restaurant and told me, "You don't have to come." Ha! Let him go get a tasty burger on his own? I don't think so.

Pretty damn pathetic, if you ask me. In 10 days, I ate out FIVE times. That's way more than usual and I'm really supposed to not be eating out at all. And I'm not even telling you about one other meal out because you'd quit reading my blog because I'm such a hypocrite, so we're just going to pretend it didn't happen. So, 5 meals out in 10 days - I blew off my own challenge for almost 20% of my meals! Sheesh.

Unfortunately, the challenge carnage did not end there. Unbeknownst to you, I had told my sweetie at the beginning of this challenge that I would still shop for food if there was a good deal on something that would be good for the emergency food supplies, even though I am ostensibly trying to rotate my stock and eat up some of the food. Well, sure enough, this past week there was a good sale on canned tomatoes. I did not get enough local organic tomatoes to can as many as I need, either through the CSA or our garden (and I can't afford the Farmers Market prices for tomatoes). So, I spent some money to stock up. Once I'd spent that money, it seemed silly to force ourselves to have homemade sushi without the avocado so I sprung for a couple of avocados at the beginning of this week, too.

I know what you're probably thinking. Either, "This Chile really is a loser and I'm not going to listen to anything she says again!" or "There goes Chile being too hard on herself again."

I'd say the first choice is more appropriate. I chose my challenge and I entered it voluntarily. I set up my criteria knowing that I need strict rules. Against my better judgment, I relaxed those rules and tried to fool myself into thinking I'd be okay with them. Let's be honest with ourselves here. Rules are there for a reason. You shouldn't mess with the rules. An alcoholic can never have just one drink and a black-and-white thinker can never have just one exception. It doesn't work. I gave myself an inch and I took the whole damn mile.

So, I've got 78 days left after today. What am I going to do with them? You know, I don't have a clue. I'd like to say I'll go back to being strict and not spending a cent. On the other hand, I want to think I can be an adult about this and make good choices, even though I proved that theory spectacularly wrong this past 10 days. Right now, I'm torn between simply tossing in the towel and admitting defeat, buckling down to do this correctly, or setting a new rule with a dollar limit for food expenditures whether at the store or restaurants.

Anyway, enough about my failures. How did you do?

Planning Meals, Week 2

I asked in comments if people wanted to help plan my meals agin. Several folks said yes, so I'm again listing what's in the house that is perishable. These are the foods my menu must work with, supplemented by staples in the pantry and less perishable foods in the fridge and freezer.

You'll notice some of the same foods as last week. That's a result of two things: one is we're getting some of the same produce each week at the CSA. The other reason is I didn't eat up everything from last week (like the butternut squash).

• Spicy mixed greens (must be cooked)
• A few I'itoi onions (like super-spicy green onions)
• Armenian cucumber (from last week - they keep well)
• Radishes
• 1 bell pepper
• Roasted green chiles
• 2 green tomatoes
• 3 pears
• Applesauce (homemade)
• Onions
• A few red potatoes
• Butternut squash
• Cooked brown rice (overcooked really - kind of mushy)
• Leftover brown rice with sauteed onion & faux "chicken"
• Leftover sushi rice w/ filling veggies
• Leftover cooked pinto beans
• Smidgeon of leftover vegan cheesy sauce

'Course there may not be much left for you to suggest since I already have some decent ideas for how to use up these foods:

• Leftover sushi for dinner
• Leftover brown rice with onion & "chicken"
• Veggie burgers made with brown rice & pinto beans with a "Swiss Steak" sauce - maybe with sauteed radishes & greens
• Bibim bap (using spicy greens, cucumber, dried shiitake mushrooms)
• Chile-potatoes with cheesy sauce
• Rice pudding made with mushy rice?

I'm probably going to need to throw a few things in the freezer if I can find space as we won't get to some of the leftovers fast enough.

Any ideas for what to do with the green tomatoes? I don't do them fried and don't need any more green tomato relish right now. Got lots of starchy meals planned so nothing jumps out for the squash.

Update: The brown rice is really quite disgusting in texture. I might try using it to make Heather's rice milk. I wonder if that can be frozen...

Email Alert

If you signed up to have follow-up comments to your comment on my posts sent to you via email, you may notice an influx of emails comming in. I'm finally catching up with my comments....all the way back to June. I hadn't realized I'd missed so many. Once I catch up, I can clean out my email folder for Chile Chews - it's back up over 1600.

For any other Blogspot bloggers in a similar fix, here's a tip you probably already know. A fast and easy way to check comments is to click on the comments link for each post on the Edit Posts page.

Lesson for the Day: Procrastination takes up more time than it saves.

Update: Holy Cow! It's the next morning and I've only made it up through the end of July's posts. Sheesh, no wonder I put these things off.

Second Update: I'm caught up with my comments. 'Course I haven't read any other blogs for a while and need to catch up on that now. Sleep? Who needs that?

How Messy Happens

When I was younger, say, college age, I was compulsively neat and I obsessively scheduled my time in order to have sufficient time to attend and study for all my classes. There was little time for frivolous behavior, although Wildlife Society parties could be considered "networking" so they were okay. And parties when my siblings and I shared a rental house were certainly acceptable and fun, as long as I still got my homework done.

I seem to have lost the ability to be neat or stay on a schedule anymore. Perhaps it is the lack of traditional 8 to 5 employment; I always suspected I would not do so well with self-employment at home. But I'm not even what you'd call self-employed since my "work" doesn't result in a paycheck; it results in a lower cost of living and better quality of life. Shopping for bargains, scavenging for wild foods, checking out thrift stores and yard sales, mending and repairing instead of buying anew, and preserving food can be a full-time job.

Still, though, I used to occasionally be able to keep the house straightened up and relatively clean, albeit relying on the pressure of overnight company every few months for a thorough house-cleaning. Now that seems to be beyond my grasp. I spent a hectic morning this past week cleaning up the visible parts of the house for the dog training appointment but you'd never know it to see it now. Clutter has taken over all the flat surfaces already.

I really hate living in a messy house but once it gets messy, it seems overwhelming to deal with it. My house really isn't all that bad, since I can - under pressure - get it straightened up and cleaned in a day, but I can certainly see how it is possible for a living space to degrade to unbelievable levels of clutter and messiness. The kitchen is one area that stays in pretty good shape, mostly because I'm a bit paranoid about food-borne illnesses. If I'm preserving food, I have to start with a clean and clutter-free kitchen. If I'm preparing a complicated meal, I start with a clean and uncluttered kitchen. Thank heavens my sweetie will wash up after me!

My office has gotten really bad again. For some reason, in every house we've lived in, the office quickly becomes my least favorite room in the house. I intend to clean it up and, in fact, often enter the room with the intention of working on the mess. However, once I see the mess, I realize that half an hour of working on it, or even an hour, will make little dent. Without the promise of visible progress quickly, I get discouraged and don't even bother.

This has also led to cluttered email boxes again. This past week was filled with outside commitments and not feeling great, resulting in a backlog of blog comments that should be acknowledged and responded to. Again, though, I come and look at the computer and am overwhelmed with how far behind I have allowed myself to get. Instead of just diving in, I sit here whining about how much work there is to do. Once upon a time, I learned the lesson that tasks can often be finished with far less effort than is used to avoid starting them. Guess I've forgotten that one.

I suppose I should do something. There is clean laundry to put away - has been for 3 days now. There are dishes to wash - has been for 3 hours. There are piles of papers to sort through on my desk - has been for 3 months. There are posts to write - have been on the list for 3 weeks now. I should get started on one of these, but I think I'll go read today's paper instead. Doing the crossword puzzles should burn up at least half an hour or so.

Feel free to leave a comment. Just don't hold your breath waiting for me to respond!

What a Week!

This week has been tremendously busy. I was sick for part of it, which is never fun, but didn't slow me down too much. I missed both of my self-defense classes and hardly biked at all. I was, however, physically active helping an elderly friend sort through her belongings and pack for a possible move. I'm also way behind on responding to comments on the blog but hope to catch up this weekend.

Here's a bit of what's been going on this week.

Seed-saving workshop

I went to a great workshop at the Food Bank as part of their garden education series. I'll be posting about this workshop next week.


Dog Issues

Due to a few minor issues with the dogs, we decided to consult with an animal behaviorist and trainer privately in our home. She met with us, including the dogs, for over an hour and gave us some insight into what's going on with them as well as excellent suggestions for specific training methods. Polie has already learned that he will get a time-out if he doesn't settle down when told.

Because I was not feeling well yesterday morning, my sweetie had to walk both dogs. He decided to do this separately in order to get a little training in with each one. Before leaving each time, he gave the one stuck at home a kong toy with a little peanut butter and left it in the bedroom so I could make sure the dog wasn't too upset by being left behind.

Angel licked out her peanut butter fairly quickly and left the room. When my sweetie got home with Polie, he made a discovery: the empty plastic treat bag that had held Polie's treats was on the floor. He had left it on the back of the counter by the sink. This meant only one thing.

We had falsely accused Polie of knocking a bread cooling rack off the stove a couple of weeks ago. It had to be him, we thought, because there was no sign that Angel had used her previous route to get on the counter: hop on the chair in the other room, hop on the table, and then up on the counter, winding her way over to the stovetop. Absolutely no sign she'd done that, so evidently Polie had just put his front paws up and knocked it down.

Polie's a tall dog, standing 25" at his back by the shoulders with a 17" long legs ("in-seam" style measurement). Angel is only 20" high with 13" long legs. The counter is 37" high. It was obvious to us that she could not get up that high without a way to stair-step up.

Obviously, we were wrong. Polie was not in the house and the bag was on the floor.


We don't know how this short stocky dog can possibly make that jump. Perhaps she isn't jumping. Could she be climbing up the handles on the drawers?


Show me the Money!

I was browsing through meet-up groups in my area a few months ago and ran across one for weight-loss. They had an intriguing premise: support each other in weight-loss and use money as a motivation. Participants can follow any plan they choose to lose their weight (except bariatric surgery).

Each week, the group meets at a local YMCA that allows them to use their scale - the accurate kind you find in a doctor's office. They weigh in and the weight is recorded on a spreadsheet. Each participant contributes $10 to the kitty. At the weigh-in the next week, whoever loses the greatest percentage of weight wins the kitty collected the previous week. (Keep in mind that 5 pounds lost for someone at 200 pounds is a lower percentage (2.5%) than 5 pounds lost for someone at 175 (2.86%). Theoretically, heavier folks can shed weight easier, but it still means they have to actually lose more pounds to win.)

There are a few more incentives to encourage continued participation and weight loss. Because some people kept regaining the weight and then losing it again, they decided that the initial weight when someone joins the group is their base weight. If the person goes over this weight, they are not eligible to win the kitty until they drop below it again. If a person misses a weigh-in, they are not eligible to win the kitty the following week. (Obvious - they didn't pay into it!)

The group is fairly small, unfortunately, with only 4 to 7 or 8 people participating each week. With more people, there would be a bigger kitty each week, possibly providing stronger motivation. However, there's been at least one success story in the group. One guy lost 87 pounds in 6 months and won enough money to buy a nice bike!

I joined at the beginning of August and have found the prospect of winning money is motivating, even if it's only a small amount. When tempted to eat something fattening, I ask myself, is that really worth giving up the possibility of winning $50? Usually the answer is NO!

I have won the kitty three times in the past two months. When I look at my winnings compared to what I've paid in each week, I have up $40 (net) so far. When I look at my weight, I have lost 20 pounds (net) so far. I've always said that money would motivate me and it seems to be working!

There is a nice social component to the group as well. At least a few folks go out to Sweet Tomatoes Salad Bar after the weigh-in each week. It's an easy place for people on different diet plans to eat together and very easy for a strict vegetarian to get their fill. There are far more veggies available for a salad than I ever have at home, some fatfree dressings or just vinegar, and baked potatoes and sweet potatoes in the hot buffet bar. Sometimes, I can even persuade the person on the pasta bar to heat me up some plain pasta with no sauce or oil. I then toss that on a plate with vegetables from the salad bar and fatfree Italian dressing. It's great with spinach, red onion, mushrooms, and green peas.

As a bonus, these ladies have been going to the same Sweet Tomatoes at least once a week for over a year. The managers there will occasionally give them coupons for a free meal. These are given as awards to the second place winner in the weigh-in. I've won two free meals so far, in addition to being up the $40!


Lots of Cooking from Scratch

Even though I relaxed my rules for my 100 Days Challenge, I still prepared lots of homemade food this week. Thanks to the suggestions for dishes to eat this week, the menu has been tasty almost every day. I've recorded all my meals for this week so you can see what I chose to make. Click the links in the post on meal-planning for the daily food logs. Yesterday I finally had time to do some of the cooking in my solar ovens. I try to keep a log of foods cooked with the sun but I have to admit that I don't use my ovens as consistently as this Arizona gal!


Bulk cheesecloth

I did a bulk order of cheesecloth recently from Raglady to get a lifetime supply of the stuff. I try to avoid using much because although it is washable and re-usable, at some point it must be discarded. It's cotton and can be composted but I still try to minimize my use of disposable products. For a lot of my straining (liqueurs, jellies, vinegar), I use a gold coffee filter. Cheesecloth is useful, though, for wrapping wheat gluten meat analogs (such as this "corned beef") and for covering fermenting vinegar and vegetables (such as sauerkraut and kimchi). I tried using cloth to cover the vinegar but it didn't allow enough air flow.

The small packages of cheesecloth sold in stores contain 2 square yards of material and sell for about $4. Raglady's price was so much better at $70 for 36 inches by 100 yards that I couldn't pass it up! But, wait, there was an even better deal if you ordered a case of 10 boxes. You know me, I can't pass up a good deal. I contacted friends I knew were interested in cooking, canning, and/or brewing. I lined up five orders and wanted two boxes for myself. After deliberating for a while, I decided to trust the fates and make the order, figuring I could rustle up customers for the extra three boxes eventually.


We opted for a finer grade of cheesecloth so that we could get it unbleached, even though each box only had 70 yards. For a case order, the cost per box was only $45. At the CSA on Tuesday, I took one friend's box and got her money for it. While discussing it, another volunteer came over and asked about it. She jumped at the opportunity to get one of the spare boxes and wrote me a check on the spot. In the meantime, a member of the CSA overheard all this and prepaid for another one of the extra boxes. In less than 10 minutes, I'd found homes for two of the extra boxes. I'm taking the last one to the CSA pick-up today in the hopes of getting rid of it, too, although a friend is measuring windows today to see if there would be enough to make sheer curtains.

I did not charge my friends extra for their boxes as I wasn't doing this to make a profit. (Actually, I rounded up the cost of $44.80 per box to $45, meaning I did profit a $1.60 on the entire order.) I organized this bulk order because it got me cheesecloth at a price I liked and help others get it, too.


Plans for the Weekend

None!

Well, no plans other than making potato latkes for breakfast tomorrow, cleaning my office, planning meals for the week with the CSA produce, taking the dogs to the dog park and to obedience training, re-starting my core and self-defense workouts, getting caught up on laundry, and roasting some fresh pistachios. I used to have free time to blog and to sleep. What happened?!

Easy Applesauce (with Juice & Vinegar, too)

I like applesauce occasionally and much prefer homemade to the stuff sold in stores. I've found that it's not that hard to do, although it is somewhat time-consuming. The recipe I'm giving below is not one for canning. If you wish to can it, please refer to your canning guide to add the appropriate amount of lemon juice to the boiling sauce before ladlling into sterilized jars and processing in the waterbath canner. (My guide says 4 tbs lemon juice per 12 pounds of apples.) You can, however, freeze this applesauce easily.

Chile's Easy Applesauce, Juice & Vinegar

Apples - a mix of tart and sweet makes a nice applesauce
Water
Lemon juice

Put a little water in a large pan, whatever size will hold the apples when chopped.

Add a little lemon juice; this will keep the chopped apples from turning brown from oxidation. For each dozen medium to large apples, I use about a tablespoon of lemon juice.

Now comes the time-consuming part. Peel and core your apples. This really isn't hard, it just takes a while. I picked up a peeler/corer at a yard sale last year but I keep forgetting to try it out so I just do this by hand, fully processing one apple at a time. I have two containers set up next to the cutting board. One of them is for compost. The other is a large jar containing a quart of water with 1/4 cup sugar dissolved in it.

I cut the apple in half. Using a paring knife, I notch out the blossom end and stem end to remove those. Those go into the compost. Next, I cut one half into quarters. Typically I knock the seeds out with the knife tip into the compost container.

The next step is to cut the core out of each quarter and peel the apple. Those parts get dropped into the jar with sweet water in it. Each cleaned piece of apple is then cut in half or thirds and dropped in the big pot of lemon water to keep them from turning brown.

Continue until all the apples are done. I use enough water to barely cover the chopped apples in the pot, adding a little bit as I'm working if necessary. Turn the heat on under the pot and bring the water to a boil. Reduce heat and let simmer until apples are tender. This only takes 10-15 minutes.

In the meantime, cover your jar of apple peels and cores in sweet water with a piece of cheesecloth, using a rubberband to hold it in place. Tuck that away in a closet and make a note on your calendar to check it in 1 week. In a week, strain this liquid into a new jar and cover it again. Compost the cores and peels. Tuck your covered jar away for 2-3 more weeks. At that point, you should have vinegar. It will be even better if you uncover it every day or so and give it a quick stir to aerate the liquid. When done, bottle and enjoy!

Once your apple chunks are tender, remove from heat. Pour through a fine strainer, capturing the liquid. Put the apple chunks in the blender or food processor and blend until smooth. Add sugar and cinnamon if desired. You're done. This is applesauce and ready to eat after it cools off. Store in the refrigerator or freezer. It will keep in the refrigerator for about a week.

Chill the liquid you saved from straining the apples. This will taste just as good, or better, than commercial apple juice.

There you have it. Easy applesauce, juice, and vinegar, too. Nothing wasted and not all that much work for how much you get out of it. 'Course you could always just eat the apples whole.

Bike Update & a Dog Trailer

My biking miles in September were three-quarters of what they were in August. The drop-off in miles started in mid-September when I realized I’d been overtraining. Up until that point, I was going pretty strong and using the electric assist less and less. That trend reversed overnight with me easing up significantly on miles and liberally using the assist as much as necessary to begin my recovery.

Ironically, when the month came to an end, I had used almost the exact average number of amp hours per mile for the month as I used in August. I suppose this makes sense as my mileage ramped up so fast in early August that I was using the assist more in the beginning of this biking adventure. In any case, I am well on my way to recovery from the overtraining although I think it may be a few weeks yet until I am at the same place I was in late August.

The cooler temperatures have definitely made biking more pleasant, although the early sunsets have their disadvantages. Because I volunteer at the CSA on Fridays, I worry a bit about the condition of drivers by early evening. It is common around here for folks ending their shifts at 3 pm to begin their weekend partying by 3:15, and the workers heading home at 5 pm probably get started just as quick. Adding in the darkness quickly descending by the time I leave the CSA increases the potential for a hazardous encounter on the road. For now, I am taking my bright rechargeable headlight, using my blinking tail light, and riding through the University campus to minimize vehicular traffic. If I begin to feel my safety is compromised as winter approaches, I will sadly return to driving to the CSA for a few months.


On a more positive note, I want to share photos of a dog's bike trailer with you. I first noticed this trailer at the CSA a couple weeks ago, not because I always key in on how people on bikes get their CSA shares home, but because there was a dog in it. I happened to have my camera with me this past week and asked his owner if I could take, and post, pictures of the trailer.


Henry built the trailer himself. It attaches to the bike with a hitch bolted down to the rear bike rack. Henry's dog, Baldrick, gets to come to the CSA each week in the trailer.


As you can see, it's a pretty good size. And it needs to be as Baldrick is a 60 pound dog.

When I asked Henry about getting the dog accustomed to riding in the trailer, he told me of the slow training process he went through. First, he put the trailer on blocks (rather than wheels) so that it was nice and stable. By putting Baldrick's food in the trailer, Henry made the trailer seem like a pretty good place for a dog to hang out. The introduction of wheels came next, with plenty of treats to continue the positive associations with being in the trailer. Pulling the trailer by hand got the dog used to movement, while, of course, receiving lots and lots of treats. Henry says Baldrick does pretty well in the trailer now but he still doesn’t like it when the city buses pass by too close.


How does Baldrick get in the trailer? Through the gate, of course. It folds down into a little ramp.


Once in the trailer, Baldrick’s collar is hooked to a carabiner tied to a cord secured around the front part of the trailer. This keeps him from trying to climb forward out of the trailer as well as preventing any wild leaps over the sides. Upon inquiry, it did not sound like Baldrick was inclined to leap wildly over the sides, although he does get a little excited over lizards. With Polie, though, I’d be a little worried about what would happen if he saw a cat…

Henry is willing to share his ideas about building and using bike trailers, especially for transporting your dog. If you would like to get in touch with him, or even talk to him about building a trailer for you, leave me a comment with your email address. I will pass it along to him.

I showed my sweetie these pictures of the bike trailers and he agrees with me that it may be a way to reduce our car-dependence even further in the long run. With a trailer for each dog, we could take them just about anywhere in the city by bike.

Is Imperfection Healthy?

I have a theory. I think that seeking perfection may be unhealthy. The desire to be perfect can drive the seeker crazy because it's damn near impossible to actually be perfect. Despite our best intentions, most of us will slip up and miss the mark at some point in our lives. Often at many points.

Is this so bad? As long as one is striving to do the best he or she can, pushing oneself to improve, is imperfection something to be ashamed of? I don't think so. In most cases, being imperfect does not result in death - our own or someone else's. It may result in embarrassment, humiliation, a lost opportunity, and occasionally bigger losses. However, making mistakes also leads to opportunities for personal growth and continued learning.

This doesn't mean that willful imperfection is a worthy goal. Remember, I said that as long as someone does the best they can, falling short of the goal is not the end of the world. Not bothering to even try, on the other hand, is not behavior to be proud of. Forgiving oneself for failing to be perfect is more likely to result in a willingness to keep trying than beating oneself up over every imperfection.

Sounds like I know what I'm talking about, doesn't it? I should. I am the world's worst self-critic. For years, family, friends, coworkers, and even readers of this blog have told me I should take it easier on myself. "Yeah, yeah," I always thought, "easy for you to say. You don't have to live up to my expectations!" I knew I was hard on myself but dammit, I expect more from me. Why shouldn't I expect perfection?

Because perfection is probably impossible. I didn't realize just how critical I was of myself until a few years ago. I participated in a study on how mindfulness meditation impacted those with recurring depressive tendencies. Those of us who expect perfection of ourselves often tend towards depression since we will never be as perfect as we think we should be and therefore we're always disappointed in ourselves. A few weeks into the study, I was doing my daily required meditation when it hit me - at a visceral level - how incredibly hard on myself I tended to be. It was like getting sucker-punched in the gut and it left me sobbing. I called the researcher conducting the study and she talked me through it. It was not a pleasant experience at all but it was the first time I truly understood how I had been treating myself.

One would think that after going through this, I would have given up my perfectionist ways. I did, for a while. Then several years passed, I've long since given up my daily, helpful meditation practice, and I started reverting to my old ways. I actually started setting myself up for failure, in part as a result of this blog. In striving to create unique challenges, inspire my readers to push themselves to try new things (or give up old ones), and change behavior in a radical way, I began to expect perfection from myself again.

This occurred to me yesterday when I met a good friend at the farmers market. I complained to her that I was struggling with this week's menu because ultimately I really missed eating out. For me, eating out is an opportunity to get a break from kitchen chores. Although I love cooking and creating tasty meals, sometimes I just want someone else to do the work. By setting up this challenge of not spending any money on food through the end of the year, I had boxed myself into a corner of having to plan and prepare every single meal for weeks to come. She suggested that if I was a little more moderate in my challenges, I wouldn't find myself in these kinds of binds. I reminded her that I am not good at moderation and tend to do better with clear cut black-and-white rules. Give me an inch and I'll take a mile. She laughed, and may have even rolled her eyes a bit....in a nice way, of course.

She planted a seed, though, that grew into a realization by evening that she may be right. After an exhausting day and still dealing with some neck pain I've had for the past week, I was not up to cooking last night. Knowing it was failing in my own challenge, I asked my sweetie if he wanted to go get a burrito for dinner rather than the option of boiling pasta and throwing sauce on it because I didn't have the energy left to make anything. I was secretly thrilled when he said he wanted a burrito, but worried that he'd be disappointed in me regarding the challenge slip. His understanding that there are bumps only the road reminded me that my expectations of myself are often too high and my condemnations of myself for slipping up often too harsh. The burritos were great.

I'm not the only one that is struggling with tough challenges. Daharja had some slip-ups in her water challenge recently and now questions whether to give up the challenge entirely or get back on the horse with more determination. Some of the comments recommended modifying her challenge to still be challenging but not so difficult as to make her miserable and prone to slipping up. It's a tough call, and I'll be interested to see what she chooses.

For me, I am going to continue to strive to spend no money on food through the end of the year. However, I've also decided that, if I choose, mindfully, to spend money and examine the reasons why I made the choice, I will not beat myself up over it. I am not giving myself free rein to go shopping or out to restaurants whenever I feel like it, but rather trying to turn this challenge into a learning experience, one where I can gain insights into how and why I make the choices I do. I am giving myself permission to be imperfect and still be happy. Trying to be perfect has not made me happy because I rarely succeed.

Plan My Meals

After picking up my share from the CSA on Friday, I try to do some meal-planning over the weekend. Sometimes when writing down all the perishable produce I have to work with during the week, a menu just jumps out at me. Other times, I have to struggle a bit. This is one of those times.

I thought I'd give you a list of what I have and see if you can make any brilliant suggestions. The produce includes this week's CSA share, leftovers from previous weeks (spuds & onions keep well), and what's ripe from the garden. Staples such as beans, rice, and wheat are also on hand, as well as a variety of home-canned condiments (example of typical condiments). Remember, we eat strict vegetarian dishes only with no meat, dairy, or eggs. I also do not cook or make food with added oil. Other than those restrictions, give me your best ideas!

1 butternut squash
1 sweet potato
some red potatoes
onions
medium eggplant Gumbo ingredient
2 small bell peppers
6 fresh chile peppers
hot peppers (garden)
a few tomatoes, a couple still green (CSA & garden)
couple of okra pods (garden) Gumbo ingredient
huge Armenian cucumber (FYI: not a fan of cooked cucumber...)
1 bitter melon
yellow watermelon
old apples homemade applesauce
1 pear - 2nd one mixed in with homemade applesauce
salvaged bananas



Here's the meal I put together last night. The faux cheesy sauce incorporated half of a cooked sweet potato and was tossed with plain ol' elbow macaroni. I toasted the last bread crumbs in a small pan for a crunchy topping.

The side dish was delicious. I started out by sauteing an onion, a fresh chile, and a purple cayenne from the garden. Then I added the one long bean from the garden. After it was tender, I put in the other half of the cooked sweet potato and a diced tomato. Stirred this for a minute or two and then turned off the heat. Some Malabar spinach from the garden was added last just to wilt it a bit. Salt and pepper was the only seasoning.


Hit me with your best menu suggestions! So that you can see what I actually do with the food, I promise to post all my meals on my food blog this week. Feel free to check over there to see what I'm eating.

Edited to Add: One more restriction is that I can't go shopping for ingredients I don't have on hand due to my ridiculous challenge. Obviously you don't know everything I have on hand, but figure everything has to be made from scratch. As a friend told me this morning, "If you would practice a little more moderation, you wouldn't get yourself into these kinds of binds."

Sunday's meals
Monday's meals
Tuesday & Wednesday's meals
Thursday's meals

Kitchen Pests

Years ago, I dealt with two major ant invasions into my kitchen within a short period of time. In each case, we'd neglected to clean up the dirty kitchen the night before. Thus was born a new rule:

Never leave dirty dishes overnight.

This seemed to solve the problem as we never had ants in the kitchen again, there or in subsequent homes. No matter how tired we were, the kitchen had to be cleaned up before bed.

However, we have a new breed of kitchen pests. They are large, have just four legs, and are covered in fur. One variety has a long, powerful tail but the other only has a stump. Yes, I am talking about my rotten dogs.


This little Angel, sleeping on her very own sheets (used to cover the recliners at night), likes bread. We first discovered the nature of this pest after leaving several loaves of store-bought bread on a table while taking care of other things. A short while later, half a loaf of bread was found on the floor. Luckily, she hadn't had time to destroy them all. I believe she snagged some bread another time, but she has little opportunity any more as any bread is put high out of her reach.

While this doesn't sound like a big deal, it is rather inconvenient when I've baked anything. If I am not going to be in the immediate kitchen area, the cooling rack and bread has to go up on top of a high shelf or on the refrigerator.


I intentionally did not fix the red eye in this photo of the other kitchen pest because it reflects Polie's true devilish nature. We suspect he may have been fed people food at meals as he tries to give us his best sad, "I'm starving!" look when we are eating. He does not actively beg, but I'm sure he wouldn't turn down a morsel if offered.

The challenge with this type of kitchen pest is the length of the legs. His head is already almost at counter height so we must be careful to not leave food near the edges. He had not indicated an interest in trying to steal counter food, but given the opportunity and some inattention on our part, I wouldn't put it past him.

I also keep a piece of plywood clamped onto the front of our food shelves in the kitchen. I have such inadequate cabinet space that I have to put the food on an open steel shelf unit. I don't know if he'd try to get into any of this food, but I don't want to take chances.

Especially not after yesterday. I baked cornbread in the solar oven yesterday and barely had time to cool it before heading out to the CSA. I removed it from the cast iron skillet and left it on a cooling rack for half an hour. As I was getting ready to leave, I saw the bread and remembered to put it away. I did not, however, clean up the crumbs left behind. I looked at the crumbs in the skillet and wondered to myself if I should clean it but I didn't have time.

The reason the skillet was a concern is that Angel is a climber. At least once before, she jumped on a chair on the other side of the kitchen counter to get up to a table and then up to the counter. She wound her way around things on the counter to get to the stove where she evidently stepped in the dirty skillet. We know this because she left pawprints on the counter due to the burnt flour residue left in the skillet. Since then, we've either moved that chair away from the table or tipped it so she couldn't climb up.

She has a sore back leg this week, though, so I didn't think she'd be jumping up. However, when my sweetie got home, he found the cooling rack and a plastic spatula on the floor. The utensil was chewed up. No footprints in sight and nothing knocked over on the counter. There was no way Angel could have gotten over to the stove without knocking something over.

There was only one explanation. Polie knocked the rack off the stove.

There is a new rule in the house, one that will make my life busier:

Never leave the dogs alone with a dirty kitchen.

Usually we leave the day's dishes until evening so we only have to wash dishes once a day. This saves water as well as the energy to heat the water. This saves me energy as I can often persuade my sweetie to wash all the dishes for me.

No more. Any time I go out during the week and any time we both head out on the weekend without the dogs, the kitchen will have to be cleaned first. I suspect I'll be doing a lot of dishes from now on. I think a key feature I'd like in our own home will be a separate kitchen with a door, unlike this one which is open on both ends.

100 Days Check-in: 90 days to go

It's the first check-in for the 100 Days Challenge. Rather than do weekly check-ins, I'm breaking the challenge into 10 day segments. We're 10% of the way there already.

For those already signed up for the 100 Days, how is your challenge going? Are you meeting your goal of doing whatever you chose every day?

New people can still sign up. You can choose to do a 90 Day Challenge through the end of the year or you can stretch it out to a 100 Day Challenge by going into 2010. How you choose to challenge yourself is up to you. The point is to choose one thing you will do every day. Finish the year out strong!

For an idea of what kind of challenges the current participants chose, you can check the sidebar list under the 100 Days logo. These folks chose a wide range of ways to challenge themselves. Some challenges center around food: spending no money on food, buying no food for home except fruit, eating from what is at home (in the freezer, Mason jars, storage bins, gallon jars, garden), eating sweets only one day per week, or using up all produce & leftovers. Several people chose to make sure they exercise every day. Others set themselves challenges such as bringing home no new plastic, surviving this semester, or unpacking/uncluttering/organizing one area (box, shelf, drawer, etc.) every day.

My challenge is to spend no money on food for myself through the end of the year. My CSA share, paid for through volunteer labor, provides my fresh produce each week. I dug into the freezer this first 10 days for some frozen produce including roasted tomato puree, basil, green peas, and mango chunks. I supplemented with preserved produce from previous CSA shares, such as guero escabeche (pickled hot peppers) and pickled onions. I salvaged some bananas again, keeping a couple of bunches, and then hauling the rest to the local food bank.

Surprisingly, I was able to score a free restaurant meal. A local vegetarian restaurant hosted a "Feed the World" dinner where the buffet meal was free. I enjoyed their tossed salad with dressing, rice and curried vegetables, bread, and halvah. I've planted the seed with my weight-loss group that I'd be willing to barter food I've canned for someone to buy me dinner when they go out weekly. I'm not sure they realized I was serious.

I was also given some food the day after starting the challenge. I'm helping an elderly lady pack up her house for a move and she cleaned out her cupboards. Some of the food wasn't vegan so I passed that along to the food bank when I donated the bananas. Unfortunately, when I was at the food bank, I slipped and bought a can of tomatoes. I wasn't thinking, and I had just used up the last of my frozen tomato puree. This was, however, my only food expenditure for 10 days. $1.25 is remarkably low for the food budget!

How did you do with your challenge? Leave a report in the comments or a link to one on your blog. If you want to join in, just leave a comment here with how you choose to challenge yourself.

Cheap Training Treats for the Dogs

Note: this post is not so much about what we do to lighten our impact as it is about reining in the budget. However, more frugal use of purchased resources does result in a lighter impact. Ethical vegans should be aware I will be discussing meaty treats for my dogs in this post.

It is important to us to have dogs that are well-behaved and will do what we ask, especially when out in public. With Angel, we didn't worry too much because she had obviously had some obedience training before she came into our lives. She's a mellow dog, too. Polie, on the other hand, is our wild child. We got him partly as a result of his rambunctiousness causing injury to his previous owner. He was impossible to walk until we bought a harness that reduced his pulling tendencies considerably. Training was an absolute necessity.

The problem with training is that you go through a huge number of treats while teaching the dog how you expect it to behave. I'd estimate that our dogs consume up to a cup of treats per day, especially while we are going through the obedience classes. (They just started Intermediate Obedience training.) This can quickly get expensive. Even with reducing their meals by an equivalent amount so they don't gain weight, I needed a way to keep the cost down.

There are numerous recipes available for making your own dog treats. I have not tried any and don't plan to in the near future for a couple of reasons. One is that the training treats need to be really enticing for the dog, enough to make it want to do what you want it to do. Strong smells and flavors, especially cheesy and meaty ones, are going to appeal to their canine nature more than wheat-based treats. I don't particularly want to have to cook with animal products. I also don't want to take the time it would require to make such a high volume of treats from scratch needed during their intense training period.

Therefore, I currently buy their treats. I'd love to buy them the locally-made all-natural treats but let's get real. It would cost a fortune for 2 cups of those treats per day and that's just not in our budget. The treats I do buy, from mail-order and pet stores, contain basic natural ingredients rather than a lot of fillers and preservatives. And the ingredients are from the U.S.


The easiest and most convenient of the treats is Charlee Bears. The cheapest I can find them is $5 for a one pound package. Because each treat is fairly small and lightweight, this means there are quite a lot of treats per pound. The best way to compare price would be by the number of treats per dollar but I haven't taken the time to do that.


RE-SIZING

With most other treats we use, however, the size of the treats is too large for training purposes. Small-sized treats sold specifically for training are more expensive than the larger treats. To save money, I make my own training treats from larger treats instead. I do this by setting up a little table while watching a movie and then break or cut the treats into smaller pieces appropriate for training. I've even dedicated one side of a small cutting board and one sharp knife to cutting dog treats only. (I don't want any cross-contamination with my food on the cutting board.)


The dogs love their "trout cookies" as we call them. They are made with trout and sweet potatoes and come from the Flint River Ranch company. The treats are way too big for training but fairly easy to break up. I break each square into about 9 pieces, slightly smaller than the Charlee Bears.


A vet turned us onto dehydrated liver treats over a decade ago. Dogs absolutely love these as they are pure meat - liver that has been freeze-dried. They are very stable and last a long time. Unfortunately, they are quite expensive with the large tub there costing over $25. However, there are a lot of treats in there. No point in figuring cost per pound as freeze-drying changes the weight completely from fresh or cooked liver. The larger tub is a better price per ounce.


These are great for training because the dogs really want them, so it's worth it to buy them. However, I'm not about to give them a big ol' chunk of tasty liver just for doing one thing right. I cut each liver chunk down into about four pieces, a perfect size for training and a way to get four times as many treats for the same cost. When I'm training, I mix different kinds of treats so they don't get all liver all the time.


Some trainers recommend hot dogs for training but we'd rather give the dogs something made specifically for dogs. The pet stores sell a meaty food (not raw) in tube form - kind of like a dog meat loaf in sausage form. Once the package is opened, it must be refrigerated. Portions are supposed to be cut off for each meal. Some of the trainers where we go for classes use this for training. I bought some and the dogs liked it a lot. The next time, I bought the largest tube they sold, at a better price per ounce, cut it into about 10 rounds and froze them individually. Every couple of weeks, I thaw one out and then cut it into small training size pieces.

This is my least favorite treat to deal with but I do because it is one of the dogs' favorites. It smells nice and stinky which makes them very eager to eat it. It's also pretty cheap once it's cut up into small pieces. One of the disadvantages is that it gets the cutting board and my fingers all stinky. The cut-up treats have to be kept in the refrigerator. Since we mix treats for training, any mixture containing these treats also has to be kept in the fridge if we don't use it all up. Like I said, though, it's worth it for better-behaved dogs.


NO WASTE

As you might suspect, I end up with crumbs from breaking and cutting up dog treats. At first, I always just brushed these into the dogs' bowls after I was done and they loved me for it. Then I got smart.


We have Kong toys to give them when we leave the house. The stores sell soft cheese and peanut-butter flavored stuff to fill these with for the dogs to lick out. Again, too expensive for our budget and I'd rather control the ingredients. I bought a big jar of peanut butter instead. The dogs love a smear of peanut butter inside the toys.


Since they have their own jar of peanut butter, it occurred to me one day that I could mix the treat dust into their peanut butter. Hoo boy, did they ever love that! This enhances the appeal of the peanut butter-filled toys as well as making good use of the "waste product" of treat dust.


I also end up with some very small pieces of treats that aren't good for our walks but are a little chunky for the peanut butter. I save these in a little container, kept in a closet so they can't get to it, and use it for brief training sessions in the house. This morning, for instance, I got the bowl of treats out and had them practice sitting and staying while being distracted. I'm amazed they are willing to "stay" while I shake the bowl of mini-treats under the noses and move it just out of reach. But, they do because they know they'll be rewarded with a tasty tidbit.

This probably sounds like a whole lot of work to save a little money. Well, it is a lot of work but it is saving a lot of money. The basic obedience training course was 8 weeks long and this new intermediate one is another 8 weeks. We probably won't take classes beyond that but we will still need some treats on hand to keep them up to par. Eventually I may start baking treats for them, but for now, this works for me, for the budget, and for them.


Although....there is one more option for cheap treats. The patio is covered with mesquite beans right now. I'm not crazy about the taste, although a lot of people do use mesquite flour. Coyotes and other animals eat them for the sweetness and the high protein content. Both dogs have been munching on the beans when we've been outside. This morning, I broke up a couple of beans and found out that they would work as training treats. Hm....