Author Archives: Melissa | Growing Green Nutrition

Lo-Cal blogging?

I don’t often view HerGreenLife from the perspective of a reader.  Usually, I’m here on the back end of things, but every now and then, I like to check in and see what you see.

When I scrolled through the home page this morning, something in my tag cloud (the menu on the right-hand side of the page) jumped out a me.

EatLoCal

“Eat Lo-Cal?”  What?!?  Since when was low-calorie eating a prominent topic on my blog?  Sure, I’m all about eating healthy, but “lo-cal” has never really been my thing.  My cooking tends to be full of healthy ingredients (vegetables, whole grains, lean vegetarian protein), but I also don’t skimp on the fat (primarily olive oil and organic butter).

It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that the tag in question was “eat local,” hyphenated, as in “locally grown food,” and NOT “eat lo-cal.”

March was also not a “lo-cal” blogging month.  In fact, I posted fifteen times this month, for an average of a post every two days, which is quite good.

HerGreenLife is on track to have the second best month ever (don’t think we’ll quite beat August 2012, but the month is not over yet!), in terms of page views, and knowing that, knowing that you are out there reading, encouraged me to keep writing.  Thank you!

 

House hunting by bike

Well, we’re back on (or still on? — not sure we ever really fell off) the house hunting horse, though conditions are questionable: inventory is really low right now, good properties are moving fast, it’s a seller’s market, etc., etc.  Not to mention that interest rates (on loans) are rising.  (What really gets me is that interest rates on borrowed money are going up, while rates on savings, like C.D.s and money market accounts, are still pitiful –grr!)

Anyhow, a new property of interest (let’s call is a POI) popped up on Monday.  What with properties moving fast, I was more than a little anxious, and we got in to see it by Wednesday afternoon.

I planned to meet Matthew there after work, and since I’d been a bit under the weather, my initial plan was to take the car.  However, Wednesday was rather nice, weather-wise, the destination was just over 3 miles away, and biking worked, timing-wise.  In fact, in making my plans to bike, I rather forgot that I was feeling sick.  I readied my bike, picked Sir up from childcare early, and we headed over.

ThirdAcreLot

The Good

  • Almost a third of an acre (12200 sq ft lot) with good sun for gardening
  • A decent kitchen rehab
  • A crazy master suite that took up the entire 2nd floor, and included a wall of windows looking out onto the huge front yard (i.e., the garden)
  • Decent location for bikeability
  • Closet space

The Bad/Weird

  • The 100+ year-old house had some additions over the years, which seemed rather random/haphazard
  • There was a small basement under part of the house; the rest was some weird combination of crawl-space, subbasement, and slab
  • In one of the crawl-spaces, they were using jacks and bricks to support part of the house.
  • The entrance to the basement was through one of the first floor bedrooms
  • The kitchen, living, and dining areas had been refinished with laminate flooring, which is known for off-gassing some nasty stuff
  • The paint (or other?) fumes — both my lungs and head were unhappy; I had to keep stepping outside to get fresh air
  • Potential plumbing issues

The “Eh”

  • Pretty dismal for public transit
  • Not particularly walkable
  • On the very edge of StL city limits, meaning we would have to deal with “the school” question

The basement issues made it a no-go, a decision we arrived at rather quickly.  As our realtor pointed out, lifting a house and adding a basement is neither an easy nor a cheap fix.

We biked home together, and on the way, I pointed out a house with a huge lot (assuming that it was, in fact, a single property) that I’d noticed earlier.  After dinner, a bit of house-stalking turned up that it was, in fact, a house on half an acre.

HalfAcreLot

A-freaking-mazing.  And, distinctly NOT for sale.  Bummer.

Due to various timing and logistical issues, we’ve driven to most of the properties we’ve looked at over the past few years, which always feels wrong, since bikeability is one of our big criteria.  I have to admit that part of my motive in biking to this house on Wednesday was hoping to create some good house hunting karma.  Despite it not being “the one,” I really enjoyed seeing the house, and I think biking there helped my mood and improved the whole experience.

**Satellite images of POIs courtesy of Google maps.**

 

 

Sir speaks

In the last four months, Gabriel has made huge progress in the speech and language department.  The changes started in mid-December (just shy of 2 1/2 years old), when his vocabulary really took off — all of the sudden he was using a lot more words (language) though many of the words sounded similar and were difficult to distinguish (speech).

In mid-January, we started speech therapy, and between that and just finally being developmentally “ready,” he’s really taken off: greatly expanded vocabulary, phrases and sentences, and slowly making progress on articulation.

While we get a lot of, “Be careful what you wish for, once he starts talking, you’ll never get him to shut up,” type comments, I’m enjoying all of the talking, except what is uttered in a whiny voice (but there was whining before he was talking much).

He still drops most ending consonants, so, while we understand almost all of what he says, comprehension can be difficult for others.  The only consistent exception is that he really emphasizes the “d” at the end of “good.”

Me: How are you feeling this morning?
G: Goo-duh

Being able to talk means that he can tell us what he’s thinking.  For a number of mornings in a row, when I went into his room to say good morning, he would start to get up, pause, and, with a very thoughtful look on his face, say, “Thinking ’bout going somewhere.”

He can also tell us what he’s feeling . . .

Me (to a crying Gabriel): I know you don’t want to put away your toys and brush your teeth right now, but that’s what we’re going to do.
G (crying): Feel really sad!

I’m thrilled that he’s starting to verbally express his feelings.  However, such statements are no more effective than crying when it comes to swaying Mama.

IMG_3728

He has some particularly cute and endearing phrases:

  • He uses, “Lil’ bit,” as a response to many questions, and, as Matthew describes it, he sounds like a little Southern girl when he says it.
  • “Love you soooo much!”  This one is pretty much self-explanatory.
  • “Want mo’ food,” which usually means, “I want different food.”

He surprised me by counting to ten last week.  I thought we were counting to three or four for rocket ship blast-off, but he just kept going, all the way up to ten!

He’s pretty good with manners, often using “Please” and “Thank you” appropriately, with no prompting.  He hasn’t quite figured out what to do when someone thanks him, though.

Me: Thank you for picking up your toys, Gabriel.
G: Thank you, too, Mommy.

He’s really into Curious George, and we started reading the books and pausing to let him supply certain words:

Me: This is . . .
G: Geor’
Me: He was a good little . . .
G: Mo-key
Me: And always very . . .
G: Cute-sy

Yep, “Cutesy George.”  This is one of my favorites, and, sadly, one that he already seems to be outgrowing.  He can’t completely get his tongue around “cur-i-ous” just yet, but it’s sounding more like “curious” than “cutesy” every day.

We are just now hitting the “Why?” stage.  The word started popping up in a few places two or three weeks ago, but it’s really been in the last week that he’s started using it all. the. time.  Sometimes, it works to turn the question around on him.

The “why’s” got particularly repetitive on a car ride the other day, so I started having fun with it, making up random responses.

G: Why going this way?
Me: Because this is the way to Papa’s house.
G: Why?
Me: Because the unicorn said so.

You have to be able to have fun with this, right?  Either that, or go completely out of your mind.

 

Toasted

In the last several months, we had to replace both a toaster and a toaster oven.  Both of the now-dead appliances were pretty basic, no-frills items, but they did their jobs.  And then they stopped.

The toaster conked out first.  In the few weeks it took to settle on a replacement, having the toaster oven as a back-up was really nice (if less efficient than using the toaster for simple tasks like toasting bread).

I first turned to Craigslist, hoping for a decent used toaster, but that effort was unsuccessful.  Whenever we’re buying new, we try to read some reviews to help pick a good value product.  Unfortunately, most reviews don’t provide a good test of lifespan, unless the product dies very quickly.

We opted for this rather basic model, and chose the standard dial rather than the digital display, since a digital display seemed like one more thing that could break.  We’ve had the toaster for a number of months now, and so far, so good.

Then, several weeks ago, our toaster oven started malfunctioning.  The heating elements on the bottom were getting hot, but those on the top were not.  The top heating elements are essential to the “broil” function, which is something we use a good bit, for broiling tofu, asparagus, etc.

I succeeded in finding a replacement on Craigslist.  The replacement is actually an upgrade, I guess, to a much larger toaster oven that includes a convection oven feature.  The thing is, the small toaster oven was really pretty ideal for our needs, which included broiling small batches of things and reheating things that we wanted to crisp up a bit, like pizza and croissants.  When not in use, it stored easily under the counter and didn’t take up precious counter space.

If we actually want to bake anything, we usually do so in a quantity that exceeds the capacity of even a large toaster oven, and thus necessitates the real oven.

The new toaster oven (bottom) could eat the old toaster oven for breakfast!
The new toaster oven (bottom) could eat the old toaster oven for breakfast!

This new toaster oven is a bit of a beast, and more toaster oven than we really need.  It’s too big to fit under the counter, even if I wanted to be moving it around all the time, which I don’t, given it’s bulk and weight, so it’s permanently using counter real estate.  While I haven’t tested it yet (time to pull out the Kill-A-Watt meter), I imagine it chews more energy that our previous, much smaller toaster oven, because there is more space to heat to the desired temperature.  If we were using that space, it wouldn’t be a big deal, but, most of the time, we are not.

I spent the first week with the new toaster oven seriously questioning my purchase.  The previous owner had attempted to clean it, which was nice, but the oven cleaner fumes coming off the thing were overwhelming, to the point of potentially rendering it unusable.  I placed an open container of baking soda inside for a few days, but it had little effect.

Then I found a suggestion to place a pan of water in the oven, turn it to 400° F, and leave it on until the water came to a boil.  I decided it would take a really long time to boil an open pan of water in the oven, so I cheated a bit, and preheated the water in the microwave, then poured it into a metal bread pan in the hot toaster oven.  I left it in, with the oven on, for about 30 minutes.  Lo and behold, this did the trick, and we now have a fully usuable, de-stinkified toaster oven!

#Spring

Sure, everyone and their grandma is writing a “Spring” post today, but I can’t resist.  This is what we’ve been waiting for, through the cold, snowy winter!

Spring in the garden
Matthew took a vacation day today, so that he can spend both today and tomorrow in the garden.  (Unfortunately, his productivity may be limited by a respiratory virus he seems to have picked up.)  There are potatoes to plant (just a wee bit later than past years) and onions and leeks to get in the ground.

He’s going to hold off on the fennel and cruciferous, since there is still more cold in our forecast.  Those seedlings are hanging out here with me, in a temporary chicken-wire cage to protect them from voracious rabbits.

IMG_3736[1]

Realistically, even with two days at the garden, he probably wouldn’t have time to get these in the ground this weekend anyway, so it’s not the end of the world.  We’ll bring them back in under the grow lights for the cold nights.

IMG_3739[1]

Awaiting our longtail
As of two weekends ago, we pretty much finalized everything for our bike, including picking out handlebars and tires.

When I posted a couple of weeks ago, a reader and bike shop owner informed me that the Yepp Maxi Standard was not the seat that was compatible with the  Xtracycle Edgerunner.  Bummer, because I’m not sure that my original EBay purchase is returnable, but better to find out when we were still waiting on the bike and had time to get the correct seat (still trying to sell the blue standard seat on Craigslist, and hoping the spring weather will generate more interest).

Our Yepp Maxi Easyfit arrived on Wednesday, so we now have the correct seat to go on our bike.  We decided the lime-colored seat was our top choice, and I managed to find a used one on Amazon, which I wasn’t expecting!

IMG_3741[1]

I would call it more of “safety yellow” than “lime green” — it’s not a bad color, but definitely not my favorite.   It will certainly be visible, which is something.  Also, it will be behind me on the bike, so I won’t really have to look at it all that much!

Now all we need is the bike — fingers crossed for no more delays!

Happy Spring!