Author Archives: Melissa | Growing Green Nutrition

Applesaucin’

One week ago, I was doing this:

That would be picking organic apples at an orchard near my grandparents’ cabin in West Texas.  The owners generously shared their apples with us, even though we were “Yankees.”

The golden delicious apples weighed down our checked bags a bit, but they made it back to St. Louis with only a few bruises.

I spent the morning chopping apples for applesauce, which is pretty much the easiest thing in the world to make.  Just wash the apples, cut them into chunks (I leave the skins ON), toss them in a pan with a little bit of water to get things going, and cook for awhile (20-30 minutes).  Voilà!  Beautiful chunky applesauce.

Apples are naturally sweet, so unless you’re using really tart apples, don’t add sugar.  Change things up a bit by adding a dash of cinnamon to your sauce.

I don’t know how many apples I started with (a lot!) but it cooked down to exactly 7 pints, which I processed in a water bath.  Handling the canning by myself was enough work without photographing the process.  I also intended to add cinnamon to some of the jars, but forgot amid the mild chaos.

Properly canned applesauce will keep for quite awhile without taking it space in the fridge or freezer.  See the canning instructions I followed here.

Makeup remover

A makeup-related post on Tiny Choices, along with a recent survey on another site, made me aware that my makeup-free face is an exception in our culture, not the norm.  Not by a long shot.

I did wear makeup in the past, but never much, as explained in part of my comment on Tiny Choices:

“My mother was/is a wonderful role model for natural beauty with minimal or no makeup, and I have happily followed in her footsteps. At my most ‘makeup heavy’ (high school and college), I wore mascara, concealer, and powder (so my face wouldn’t be ‘shiny’), and possibly a bit of eye shadow. I never could stand how either foundation or lipstick felt, and I’m glad I listened to my body’s cues and minimized the chemical exposure.”

So what about that chemical exposure?Continue reading “Makeup remover”

Travel green

Ready to fly

If you’re flying it all starts in the airport.  You CAN bring your reusable water bottle with you, just make sure it’s 100% empty when you go through security.  To emphasize the emptiness, I usually leave the lid off.  Find a drinking fountain and refill once you get to the other side.  To further cut down on waste, bring your own snacks (we had some delicious pumpkin bread) — most of the food options in airports, especially smaller ones, are crappy anyway.  Security seemed to have no issues with our wooden utensils.Continue reading “Travel green”

Better than Cash for Clunkers

I just read about Canada’s cool Retire Your Ride program that allows people to trade in their old, higher polluting car for a newer, somewhat less polluting car.  Hold up, wrong program!  Wrong country!

Actually, Canada’s program is much cooler than that — it helps reduce the number of vehicles on the road and encourage alternate means of transportation by providing vouchers for bicycles or public transportation.  Neat idea, eh?

Click on the link above to find out more about the program — you can even view the presentation in French, if that’s your thing.

This kind of makes me wish I were Canadian — depending on how today goes, maybe we’ll move there.

 

Winterizing the bed

We survived October without turning the heat on in our apartment, which really wasn’t a big deal.  We might not have made it if we hadn’t been in Texas for the last week of October — in green terms, we would have done better to stay here and use a bit of heat rather than fly to Texas, but there were other considerations, like a good friend’s wedding and a visit with my grandparents.

Anyhow, we returned from our travels to a just above sixty degree apartment on Saturday night, and I knew it was time to pull out the flannel sheets and our (faux) down comforter.  However, after 12+ hours of traveling, I lacked the energy to change the sheets, so we just made do with the comforter.  Boy, did that keep us warm!

I rather expected Matthew to insist on some heat these past two days (at least to warm up the bathroom in the morning), but to my surprise, that hasn’t happened yet.  I’m happy putting it off as long as possible — in addition to energy saving considerations, forced air heating zaps any moisture in the air and makes things disgustingly dry.

I also have yet to put on the flannel sheets, but you can bet that they’re coming — they really do make such a big difference.  The tricky part is getting out of that nice, warm bed.  To make that at least a bit more appealing, I highly recommend a warm robe and good slippers 🙂