Homekeeping

One of my coworkers asked me about the cleaning products I used and mentioned that his wife was now making her own laundry detergent. I've heard that you can do this, but I haven't made any myself. She's hardcore!

In honor of my co-worker's wife, today's post will be about the "recipes" I use for some of my cleaning solutions. Not only are they "greener" but they are a lot cheaper. I started making my own products when I had an allergic reaction to a chlorine bleach based spray a few years ago. It took a little while for The Hubby and I to get used to the vinegar smell, but now we associate this smell with "clean." Most green cleaners require a bit more elbow grease, but I think your health is worth it.

A lot of the "ingredients" for the solutions can be purchased in bulk.

Vinegar for instance

This is a ridiculously large bag of baking soda.

I guess some people use baking soda to control the alkalinity of swimming pools. This must be why they need a 12 lb bag of baking soda. This makes your stainless steel sink in the kitchen shine!

Castile soap

This particular bottle is scented with peppermint. Dr. Bronner's has lots of different scents like Rose and Eucalyptus.

Tea Tree Oil

Tea Tree is known as a mold and mildew killer.

Now for the "recipes."

For an all purpose cleaner:

In a spray bottle mix 1 part vinegag and 1 part water. Add a few squirts of castile soap for some grease cutting power and shake.

This does an excellent job of getting the grime out of the microwave. If you want to sanitize add a few drops of tea tree oil. Don't use a lot because a little goes a long way

For an abrasive cleaner:

Just mix baking soda with a few drops of Castile soap until it forms a paste.

I use this on bathroom sink bowls (toothpaste be gone!) and the tub and shower.

Confessions

So I feel like I have to get some things off my chest. I have a few eco-confessions...

1. I always seem to forget to turn a light off. It might be the hallway light, the closet light or the bathroom light. The Hubby is always there to offer a gentle reminder to turn the light out.
2. I am awful about wasting food. I feel this is like the eco-cardinal sin. I'll buy a piece of produce, stash it in the fridge and forget about it. Well, I forget about it until it starts to rot in the the produce bin. This is the bad habit I try to work on the most.
3. I secretly wish I could throw the container out with the moldy food. I don't, but sometimes I wish I could.
4. I know going green is all about reducing consumption. I've been good about it for the most part, but I just can't stop myself from buying new clothes. I'm not one of those people who can put together a super stylish outfit from a consignment shop. I know people who can and I'm envious.
5. I still hate the smell of compost,

Our First Harvest

So we now have our first organic pepper harvest. Here are the jalapenos and cayenne we harvested this weekend.

I think we're going to make roasted jalapeno poppers from the jalapenos (thank you Pioneer Woman).

It's very hard to find recipes for cayenne that don't involve ground cayenne peppers. After doing some research I found that cayenne peppers also go by the name bird chili and Thai chili. That was a little easier to find. I think we'll make turkey burgers with these. Yum!

Now I just have to figure out a way to combine what we get from our garden with what we get from the CSA like the turkey burgers.

* Update 7-19-09 - We tried both recipes this weekend. The jalapeno poppers were a hit. We took them to some friends' house for dinner and they were a big hit. We'll definitely make them again. The turkey burgers were not as big of a hit. Those we will definitely not make again. The cucumber salad was good as a side though.

The crops are in!

Two posts in one week! I'm trying to make up for last week when I was out of town. Plus yesterday was CSA day so I didn't want to not post.

We've moved away from the greens and into the summer vegetables. We're now getting summer squash and zucchini. The Hubby and I love zucchini on the grill.

We have cool cucumbers.

I'm thinking of eating one of these in a asian salad. Sunset also had a good really simple looking Cucumber Salad recipe that I think I'll try too.

Here's the summer squash.

I took these pictures pretty quickly and looking at them now i think I actually have two different yellow vegetables here. The light yellow ones are the summer squash and the other ones appear to be a yellow zucchini (see the green tops).

Last but not least. We had very two very odd shapped zucchini in our bag this time.

These babies are getting grilled. I'm so excited!

My "Garden"

First, I apologize for not posting last week. I was on vacation in sunny California. The hubby and I were touring wine country in Napa and Sonoma County!

On to today's entry....

So my garden isn't exactly a garden. It's really just a bunch of pots on my deck. We started our "garden" when we moved into our house a few years ago. One of my co-workers told me she grew vegetables on the deck of her apartment and I thought I'd give it a try. (I don't know why I was so surprised that you could grow vegetables in a pot because they aren't any different than ornamental flowers. They're all plants.)

So now you get to meet this year's crop.

First we have our raspberry bush.

We've grown lots of berries on this bush. We haven't been able to eat any of them because the birds eat them first. I actually saw a mocking bird hop up next to it and take one of those delicious looking berries and fly off! Alas, there are no more berries on my raspberry bush so we have nothing to show for our "hard" work. Really all we have to do is water it and fertilize it with an organic fertilizer.

(If you notice it says liquid fish and, yes, it does actually smell fishy)

Here are our peppers. We have cayenne peppers (they're the skinny ones) and jalapeno peppers (they're the plumper ones).

The cayenne peppers are new this year. Last year we tried to grow red peppers without much success. They kept getting blossom end rot. After some research I found that this was a calcium deficiency. After more research I found out the calcium deficiency was caused by inconsistent watering (yep that sounds right). We thought we'd wait until we were more responsible gardeners before trying to grow bell peppers again.

These are our strawberries. The one that's huge and overflowing is an "ever bearing" and the other one is "June bearing."

The June bearing plant had one strawberry. That's right, ONE. June came and went and we only had a single strawberry. Like the raspberries, we didn't get to eat that beautiful organic strawberry. Something mysteriously happen to that berry. We can't imagine that a bird could have carried off that big red berry. We suspect that Lola (our dog) got the berry because she is now very interested in the strawberries we bring home from the market.

Did you notice that a lot of the leaves had lots of holes in them? That's due to a rose gardener's worst nightmare called a June bug. Here's one of the buggers now...

We also found out last year that they like raspberry bushes. They've stayed away from them this year though.

Our last specimen is one that an idiot could grow. It's mint!

Mint is actually pretty invasive so most people grow it in pots even if they put it in their garden. They basically just bury the pot with the very top of the pot above ground so that it doesn't spread. We are particularly happy to have it in our "garden" because my husband makes a fabulous mojito.