Bleach Bottle Bird House

Sandaggeddon

noreply@blogger.com (Heather) — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 18:09:00 +0000

I should note upfront that I'm a lucky North Jersey squatter right now in that I actually have power. We're one of the few even in our own apartment complex who do (which has something to do with our electricity being on the utility circuit or something like that since we're right next to the laundry room). The scariest thing that happened was that a power line came down right behind our bedroom and lit the backyard on fire, but fortunately again, no one was hurt and the building wasn't damaged. (It should be noted that my tranny ass response to impending fire danger was to grab Donut and a bag full of pills and makeup. Priorities!)

So now, our biggest challenges are:

No frozen or refrigerated goods in the grocery stores (so no milk, eggs, meat, salad greens, raw vegetables, or bougie yogurts)
No gas (they were out before the storm, and now the gas lines are literally miles long)
Not sure if my office exists anymore and can't get to Manhattan anyway since all the trains are down and there is no gas in the car
HOW WILL I GET BACK TO BROOKLYN TO VOTE FOR OBAMA ON TUESDAY?

Luckily, I'm obsessed with pantries thanks to my mother's Tupperware wonderland kitchen that always has the ingredients for cookie making on hand at all times, so we've developed some hacks. Here's what we've got twerkin:

Hot Cocoa Mix. Before the storm, I made a hot cocoa mix by combining an organic vanilla pudding packet , a canister of powdered goat's milk, cocoa powder, and sugar. (I'd list the ratios here but I've had to keep adding and mixing to get it to taste right.) I've taken to putting this in my coffee since there's no milk or half and half around. I tried to do Coffeemate but it was fucking disgusting.
Winter Squash, Various Kinds of Potato, Onions, and Garlic. Any Little House on the Prairie enthusiast knows that these guys keep for months in your root cellar. Most of us with apartments don't necessarily have a spot that will keep them at the optimal 50 degrees and dry temperature required to make them last all winter, but it should get us through this period. Since we have electricity, we roasted four spaghetti squash, one turban squash, and one red kuri squash yesterday at 375 together for about an hour (and roasted the seeds separately). If you've got a generator that allows you to use the oven for a short period of time, you could cram it full of squash, potatoes, and sweet potatoes to roast to get the most out of the space. You could also grill these or cook them over a fire if you don't have a generator.

This allows for a couple different meal options. We've got cans of crushed tomatoes and pesto I froze over the growing season to put on the spaghetti squash. I've got cans of coconut milk, red curry paste, and some ginger root to make into a squash soup. And the sweet potatoes are earmarked for roasting, for sweet potato casserole, and for sweet potato meatloaf using the remaining ground beef in our freezer (it's technically for Donut but since he's got dry food as well he'll have to do without grassfed beef for the time being, which I guarantee he will be prissy about). You can also use winter squash puree in recipes that call for pumpkin puree- I wanted to make pumpkin pancakes but I'm trying to save up my remaining three eggs so I'm not sure if this will happen or not.

All of these foods, combined with onions and garlic, have leftover parts that can be made into soup stock. I'll be doing this in my slow cooker, but you just need a pot, water, and a heat source for this, so you can probably manage this over a fire if necessary. I'll be using the stock to make minestrone soup and to rehydrate dried beans.
Dried Beans. I have to admit that I'm not the world's largest bean enthusiast. I often find them boring and as a meat eater I'm not as dependent on them as my vegetarian friends so I can generally get by without them. But, since there isn't any meat to be acquired, beans it is.

I've always stocked a somewhat excessive quantity of dried beans considering my feelings towards them, but all the homesteading books recommend this so I have a decent supply. I soaked some kidney beans yesterday and cooked them last night in the slow cooker with the last of my frozen soup stock and the bottom of my box of red wine, plus a bunch of garlic and herbs. I'm going to put some in minestrone soup, some I'll make into hummus, and I guess I'll try to make refried beans or something with the rest?

I'll probably also try to sprout some dried chickpeas I have. This involves rinsing them, soaking them in water, and letting them hang out in a jar covered with cheesecloth, rerinsing them once or twice a day.
Dried Grains. We've got pasta, quinoa, oats, barley, and couscous. The last four can all be made into breakfast porridge-type joints by adding nuts and a sweetener, or an approximation of tabbouleh with whatever mixture of vegetables and herbs you have access to. And they can all go in soup, or get mixed with some form of tomatoes or pesto or whatever weird mixture of olive oil, nuts, and herbs/vegetables you have lying around. (I'll probably make a sundried tomato pesto later.) You can also sprout quinoa the way you sprout beans.
Seitan. If you can get to a grocery store to buy a bag of wheat gluten (or if you're really up for some work, whole wheat flour), and you can access a heat source to boil water, you can make your own seitan and have just a very nice fake meat party for yourself. It's really just a mixture of wheat gluten (which is in the speciality flour section) and water or stock with spices. In the past, I mixed the wheat gluten with chicken stock in the bread machine because I was lazy and didn't want to knead it myself, and then I cooked it by covering the resulting dough in more stock in the slow cooker and letting it cook on low overnight. If you have no power, you can knead the dough yourself (and you can technically start with whole wheat flour, although it takes several rinses and a lot more kneading) and boil it in a pot of water. It's not quite the same as the vegetarian duck you'd get at a Thai place, but it's weirdly kind of good. I threw some in with vegetables I was brazing in boxed wine because I am fancy as shit, and you can also stir fry it, barbecue it, or use it in other applications you'd use cut up meat for.
Citrus. Fairway still had citrus because they're tougher than blackberries and the like that go bad fairly quickly at room temperature. These will keep for a few weeks in the crisper of your refrigerator, but if your power is out, they'll keep at room temperature for a week. I'm thinking about zesting and drying the peels or maybe making preserved lemons to cook with, but we'll see how motivated I get. For now, I'm just glad to have a raw fruit around.
Apples and Pears. I'm so blown because I went apple picking with my family last weekend just to see how excessively New England we could be, but I couldn't carry the applesauce I made home with me because it would have been too heavy. If you can get apples and pears, they can keep well for a long time given the right conditions. Unlike squash, they're ideally stored at around 35 degrees, in a moist environment. Potatoes release a gas that makes apples spoil faster, so they shouldn't be stored near each other. You probably don't need to store them for the whole winter, so if you can keep them in the crisper in the fridge with a damp paper towel, whether your fridge is working or not, you should be able to have them around for awhile.
Various Oils, Butters, Milks. Now- I'd be lying if I said vegan things don't make me anxious. The word "earth" is basically always in the name and the ersatz version of a delicious thing you're accustomed to is always going to be weird. But coconut milk and coconut oil are actually better than milk and butter if, you know, you want something to be coconut flavored, and you can do both sweet and savory applications with them, all without requiring refrigeration. And my mom has successfully subbed half the butter in cookies (and this is "successful" according to my fat ass standards) with pumpkin puree and applesauce- you could easily use coconut oil or organic vegetable shortening in place of the rest of the butter.

There's also apple butter and other fruit butters that don't have any fat in them. While I've generally just eaten apple butter on toast, there's a surprising amount you can do with it, like making the base for meat sauces and glazes, squash soups, pie fillings, and weird cheddar and ham sandwiches.

So those are my hustles for now...hopefully the Netflix I access via Melissa's password holds up. Stay safe out there gang!

How I Poisoned Myself, and Why I Write This Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Heather) — Fri, 11 May 2012 19:06:00 +0000

Sometimes, hey, things happen. You're riding the rush of finding THE HARVEST DREAMZ VINTAGE PYREX BOWL you've been obsessed with and BAM! You decide that with your boyfriend gone and your roommate out of town, now is the perfect time to cut a shoot off of that ginger root you've been growing to make a delicious ginger shoot vodka. Man oh man, people will be all like, "Wow, Heather, my mouth is experiencing heretofore inconceivable taste sensations! I don't even know where my tongue is! Is it in a china hutch? Is it in a graveyard? Is my tongue in a graveyard?" And I'll be all like "Guys, it's cool, you've just fallen down the rabbit hole of subtle ginger tastes, and when you finally land, you'll commence on a journey that largely resembles my 1994 crowd-pleasing turn as the Cheshire Cat, wherein my mom made my costume thanks to Affordable Fabrics' unbeatable $1.99 a yard prices and one of those sticks of lavender opaque colored sunscreen, and also, it will look a little like Care Bears in Wonderland, and let's take a minute to relive one of those Amazing Songs, because it's basically Singing in the Rain for our generation."

OH MY GOD I AM SO SCARED BY HIS URBAN PLANNING THEORIES RIGHT NOW IT'S LIKE HE NEVER FINISHED READING THE POWER BROKER AND INSTEAD LEFT IT ON THE WINDOWSILL FOR MONTHS AFTER BORROWING IT FROM A FRIEND TO MAKE HIMSELF APPEAR MORE ERUDITE IN FRONT OF JUMPOFFS

Okay also this one:

Okay and also briefly I would like to curate some related art from my favorite medium, You Tube comments:

So yeah, basically, my assumption had been that I would make an incredible ginger shoot liqueur whose delicate flavor couldn't be found in stores, plunging them into a remarkably artistic venture for a film whose purpose was essentially to shill Chinese-made stuffed animals.

This is not what ended up happening.

Here is what the plant looked like:

The two long stalks with a leaf at the end, or "ginger" shoots, had been growing at a fantastic rate, thanks to its permanent home in a southern window sill and what I like to think of as The Magic Of Gowanus!TM. Ginger roots produce tall, edible shoots with edible leaves, and while not produced commercially since their flavor is much more mild than the root, I browsed through a number of culinary applications and felt fairly confident I could make an interesting drink. My googling also yielded ginger leaf images that looked like either of the following:

The leaves on mine didn't look quite the same as any of them, but considering the range of leave shapes I saw, I figured it was just a different variety.

So, still in post-Pyrex acquisition glow, I cut the stalk. It should be noted that I'm pretty much a rugged outdoorsman. As such, I knew that when trying a new part of a plant or a plant whose identification you're not 100% certain on, it's best to first smell it, and if it doesn't have an off-putting odor, to try an extremely small bite, wait 15 minutes to see if you experience any ill effects, and then try another extremely small bite. So gingerly (AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA WORDPLAY!) I took a tiny nibble of the shoot.

It tasted mad gross- bitter, not gingery at all. I became suspicious not unlike Donut when confronting bivalves:

Round hair brushes:

And fish named after characters from The Wire/90s R&B young man singers:

So I dug up the entire plant and examined the root. It looked like ginger. I washed it off, and cut into it, and took the very teeniest nibble. It was again super gross.

About five minutes later I called my nerd boyfriend to report on the disappointing ginger. It was at that point my mouth started burning and non-sensually tingling. I was all, "hey boo, my mouth is burning and non-sensually tingling right now and I'm starting to become suspicious that I just poisoned myself, you want to break this off?" And he's like, "look, I know It's The 90s and you're a modern woman who blazes into an office and incontestably wears shoulder pads better than me, a fact that doesn't make me jealous [ed- that is a lie], but you should probably call poison control."

At this point I was liberally rinsing my mouth out with water and guzzling milk and using it like a milk mouthwash which gets really gross don't picture it oh God you pictured it and now you can never unsee that. Meanwhile, he's asking me, "Heather- remember that plant we saw yesterday whose leaves you said resembled the ginger? What was that? I'm going to try to google it. Also- you should probably call poison control. Do you know the number? You don't have the number for poison control memorized? It's 1-800-222-1222." "...can you text it to me?" "Really?" "I don't have a really good memory." (Unless it's about who was and was not in the video for "Back That Ass Up," because I've literally gotten into a Best Friend Fight about the fact that LIL WAYNE WAS IN THAT VIDEO and I WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG.)

But before I called poison control, it hit me that I did remember what those leaves from yesterday were- they were calla lilies. And while I'm not in the habit of purchasing non-edible plants, last year Melissa wanted to do a brunch for her birthday and had made this purchase at the farmer's market, which I left in her care:

True story: a purchase Kailin has made is a product called "Weave Aid."

Having been distracted by what I'm going to assume was intercourse (as if that's more satisfying than indoor gardening LOLZ!), the calla lily died shortly thereafter and I threw the potting mix into a container where I kept such things and forgot about it because it was a dead plant and if I remembered every plant that has died in this household I would be constantly weighed down in my life with mental pictures of anthropomorphic chlorophyll crying or some shit and I already cry an unnecessary amount as it is.

But this undead son of a bitch had ceremoniously turned back up just like old jumpoffs texting, "Do You Ever Miss Me?" or "Have A Merry Christmas- I'm Sure You Will."

A quick Google search confirmed that calla lilies are poisonous. BLOWN, BLOWN, BLOWN. I dialed the number for poison control.

At this point my mouth was still super burning, but it wasn't quite as bad as a really hot pepper. Interestingly, it connected me to some sort of UCONN poison control, so I couldn't help but think of that wonderful scrunchie emblazoned with huskies that Jessi gave me one time, and also, where is that scrunchie? I could probably use it for washing my face, although I'd still need a headband to keep my bangs off my face, although I keep taking the headband back to my room with me, so it's never there in the bathroom when I need it, and although my apartment is small and I could technically walk back, I'm always like, "well, I'm here already" so I just unpleasantly get my bangs damp, and since the sink is really small, I basically get water all over the place which makes me think that sinks should really be designed for this kind of thing, and in fact, I believe they are, because this place I walked by on my way to work had those Mad Fancy sinks that look like bowls, and I'd like one, because a fancy sink means You've Made It, and that could help me Fake It Til I Make It, since I'm trying to practice being more confident, because Nancy Drew books taught me to treat my accomplishments in a humble and self-effacing manner even when you're clearly better at being a detective than local law enforcement and making lesbian friends named George (very progressive, Nancy Drew!), and not unlike how I tried to learn fashion from The Babysitter's Club books and put together what I thought was a Really Cool Claudia outfit in elementary school with orange lace leggings and was mocked because It Was The 90s and BSC is from the 80s, those 1950s values of feminine modesty that Carolyn Keene (WHO WAS A MAN, THAT NAME IS A PSEUDONYM AND I FOR ONE FEEL DUPED) proffered really only serve to inhibit women from achieving their whole potential. And also, doesn't UCONN have a really good ice cream place or something that somehow relates to their ag science program? I should go there the next time I'm home, I thought.

The poison control lady was very nice, even though she did not know where my scrunchie was. I told her what I'd eaten, the amount, and what I was doing to treat it, and she said that I was doing exactly the right thing. She said the burning sensation derived from the oxalic acid, which meant that it was kind of like I'd swallowed a thousand pieces of tiny glass. (But it's tiny glass! That's so cute. It is basically the cutest way to poison yourself.) Since I'd only eaten a very small amount, the only real side effect was the chance I'd have a slightly upset stomach because of all the adorable glass slicing up my insides, like a million Boos clawing me apart.

Do not let your roommate show this book to your boyfriend if you don't want to see a grown man contemplate his mortality because he becomes incredibly saddened by the thought that he "doesn't want Boo to ever die."

As it turns out, I didn't even get a stomach ache. Poison success! Which leads me to the last half of the title of this post: why I write.

I've had a lot of homesteading failures, but poisoning myself is kind of up there in terms of Embarrassing Moments. I can handle a nip slip (who hasn't seen them, at this point?) or any of your more Seventeen magazine style mortifications, but this made me feel like something everyone could use to mock how foolish I was for trying all of this homesteading stuff out. See what happens when you try? You poison yourself. I'm going to keep it casual and watch television programming and feel superior to you because I haven't poisoned myself. Also, you've really gotten fat lately. (I feel like in New York, negative self-talk tends to skew eating disordery, or is that just me?)

Ultimately, though, these kinds of mishaps are a huge part of why I write. One of the much discussed issues about aspirational lifestyle blogs, with their photographs that actually look nice and the portraits on an unsloppy life they paint, is that they serve as a mechanism for reinforcing feelings of inadequacy women have about themselves. The thinking is that Martha Stewart was bad enough- now, thanks to the democracy of the medium, there are actual real women sans lockdown cred living these serene lives of idyllic country DIY splendor (and are also better than you at being a mom, though I don't know why their ability to fuck without condoms OR pulling out is something that is societally rewarded?). And while every discerning reader obviously knows there is significant curation going on here, and that these women probably also make shitty dinners sometimes and make ugly crafts and throw up on themselves on the subway (is that just me?) and just don't mention it, the absence of visible fail on these blogs that purport (at least sort of) to be "realistic" can make the reader discouraged about their own abilities and life.

This skewing of perspective is something I'd like to remedy. I can't tell you how many recipes I fuck up a week, how many whole pineapples I drop on the floor after cutting the skin off so the gross floor debris gets all like encrusted on there and I'm like "fine, I'll just give that side to Donut" and he just leaves the piece sitting on the dog bed overnight, how often I feel like an abysmal failure at all I undertake...but the fact is, that's just what happens when you try. Sometimes you'll accomplish fantastic things, and sometimes you're going to just sit on the floor crying over yet another broken Grimace glass. I still think, however, that you'll accomplish much more than if you never tried at all.

I'd like people to read this blog and think that if I can do it, they can do it. Because (to change tenses) you probably can. There are couple things I'd like to think I'm naturally good at, (pretty much all of which have no use in our modern economy, like reading French and accurately recalling all the lyrics to "How Many Licks") but gardening and cooking and any of the various homesteading skills that involve spacial relations are not among them. This means that I'm fairly confident that most people reading this can do what I'm doing, and probably better and more quickly than me, even. It just takes feeling comfortable enough to take risks and fuck up. And hopefully, me being a human disaster and still doing this will encourage you enough to try projects of your own. DARE TO DREAM 2012?

Trying. A half hour later, I would finish skiing from "the top of the mountain" by attractively careening into a fence situated in a patch of mud.

Theoretical DIY Soap Dispenser MASHUP OMG!

noreply@blogger.com (Heather) — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 21:31:00 +0000

UPDATE: You can do this with dish soap too. 6 tablespoons of soap + fill the rest of the bottle with hot water. You can also do this if you're a baby.

Hipsters and moms who love sayings alike have ~~suckled from Pinterest's teat~~ benefited from Pinterest's bounty. And while I personally get a panic attack whenever I see signs that tell me how to live...laugh...and/or love, I can't ever hate on ideas like this:

What? That's right, another thing that bougie people love: MASON JARS!!!!! And I can't deny that I love them too, and regularly spirit them away from my parents' basement like a ferret hiding socks inside a mattress. (N.B.: Do not own a ferret.) This is a tidy way to upcycle not just the pump from a soap dispenser, but also the metal lid of the jar, which, if you're actually canning something, is for one use only (the lid vacuum seals the jar's contents, but can't reseal once it's been opened).

However, I've got Big Dreams to take this even rowdier. I recently read an entry on Root Simple about using liquid castille soap, diluted, in a foaming hand soap dispenser. This provides a pretty tidy solution to the fact that Dr. Bronner's judgmental soap is really runny and recommends dilution, and to the fact that staring at this in the shower basically makes your face melt off (even if his son who currently runs the business being not crazy religious as per that documentary Leah watched sort of redeems it):

Their entry recommends filling the bottle 1/4 full of soap, the rest with water, and playing with it based on your preferences...or should I say...liquid dreams?

(I also saw recommendations when I looked online that you use hot water when mixing, since it helps with the pump not getting gunked up.) So my dare to dream on this one is that I'll stick (pause) a foaming hand soap dispenser through the Ball (pause again) jar lid...oh my God this mashup is making my loins quiver like I am at a Will Smith concert. (And you can FORGETIT if, say, Sisqo came on stage and cameoed on "Wild Wild West." I would lose my goddam mind.)

You can also just reuse a plastic foaming dispenser or purchase a glass one. According to some mom blogs you can also use shampoo, but those same blogs also recommended that you not use a creamy handsoap, so I'm inclined to think that only kind of shitty shampoo would work in this.

I'm currently using Method's foaming hand soap (which has a Cradle to Cradle certification aka MAD ENVIRO FANCY) to get this party started. I'll post back if/when I create my own inelegant version of this.

How You Apple A Man's Jacks? A Vintage Blog Draft I Found That Never Got Posted

noreply@blogger.com (Heather) — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 14:17:00 +0000

We all know that if you teach in an urban setting, you're pretty much going to be confronted by that question, and the follow ups, "how you crunch a man's berries?" and "how you honey nut a man's cheerios?" all the time. You might be too tired to be out there appleing a man's jacks willy nilly, instead choosing to fall asleep on Melissa's shoulder while people enjoy complimentary cheese puffs at The Levy with abundant plaid ambiance, but eventually, you'll get around to appleing a man's jack's all the live long day again, and here's why: apples are an excellent homesteading staple if you have recently googled to see if you qualify for medicaid.

I'm not sure if apples also grow in the southern regions of the country, but in the Northeast especially, circa right now [ed- not circa right now, unless you are reading this in the fall which is when I assume I started this post] they are abundant, very affordable, have myriad uses, and store exceptionally well compared to summer fruits like berries. I've gone three times so far this season. [ed-lies, and now I'm pretty sure I started this post in 2010 because I did not go three times last year, and that one time I did go, we took the following wonderful picture, but it was unseasonably mild, which I felt really cut into the Fall Fun feel.]

The first two times they were around $1.25/lb, but this last time, they were $0.99/lb, and $14 for a half bushel, which ended up being around 21 pounds. (Location: Dondero Orchards in South Glastonbury, for all my bitches showing that 860 love. Plus the old lady there had mad jokes. And they had apple cider milkshakes. Holy shit, that milkshake was delicious. Also, they charge the same price for picking the apples or getting them from the bins, which have more selection and include pears as well.) I think at the Union Square Farmer's market, the cheapest I've seen them is a bag of busted apples for about $2 that contained maybe a couple pounds?

Anyway, the point is that they're probably the cheapest fruit we have access to in the Northeast, and considering how many servings of fruit you're supposed to be eating in a day and how expensive most produce is, apples can really get the job done, especially because there's so much you can do with them.

1. Eat them plain (obvious, boring, but had to be included anyway)

2. Use the cores (or peelings) to flavor vodka. I have a jar I keep in the pantry filled with vodka that I add apple cores to as I use the apples. If you're peeling the apples for pie or something, you can add those to the jar too. I think, ultimately, when the vodka's been flavored enough, you could take the cores out, put them in the slow cooker, and make applesauce with them, but I haven't tried that yet...

3. Applesauce and apple butter. To make applesauce, I have been super lazy before and just cut up apples, with the peels on, and cooked them down in the slow cooker for a few hours. But you're not really supposed to leave the peels on and in, technically. When I looked up how to do this properly, you either have to peel and core the apples, or, if you have a food mill or this crazy sieve thing my mom stole from my grandpa's basement because my family stays stealing shit from each other , you can just cut the apples up, without peeling or coring or anything, and after it all cooks down you put it through the mill or sieve. That sieve is awesome, by the way. It enabled me to use way more of the apple, and not much ended up being left behind. [ed- I received one of these for Christmas 2011, dreams can come true. Below is a picture of one like it I found on the internet.]

Apple butter is just taking applesauce one step further. You just keep cooking the applesauce until it reduces down further to a spread-like consistency. For both of these, it's easiest to use a slow cooker because if you do it on the stove you have to watch it and stir it more frequently so it doesn't burn. You leave the lid up a little bit to make apple butter, so the water can evaporate out and escape. And then, oh manzies, the world is pretty much your oyster. You can use either to substitute for half the oil in cake and muffin recipes, use it in soups, mix it in with oatmeal or yogurt or granola, and other hippie bullshit. You can freeze them or can them, and apple butter, from what I've read on A Website, can actually just keep in the fridge for a really long time (probably because so much of the water is cooked out).

4. Dried apples or apple chips. This is much easier in a dehydrator, although you can do it on the stove set to around 98 degrees and rising.

I core the apples, put the cores in vodka, and lay the apple slices out in the dehydrator until they're like cracker crisp. You can dry them less and then they'll be more like the chewy dried apples you get at the grocery store, but I prefer them drier. [ed- and now I use the dried apples in steel cut oats I make in the slow cooker.]

5. Apple juice. This is another reason why yes, hey, I have a lot of kitchen appliances, but they're quite handy, I'd say. A lot of other healthy juices use apple as a base, and they can help sweeten a juice or partially mask a vegetabley taste, so they're very useful in this respect.

6. Apple jelly or jellies that use apple as a base. I didn't really understand this until recently, but the difference between jelly and jam is that jam is made from the whole fruit, and jelly is made using just the juice of a fruit. Also, since apples are high in pectin, the substance that makes jellies and jams set, other jellies use apples as a base. In my book whose title makes me uncomfortable, The Pleasure of Herbs, a number of herb jellies that you can use in savory dishes use apple as the base.

Now, that was all 2010 Heather stuff. But this is Heather from the future/present talking now. Actually, though, I don't really have that much else to say. There's apple crisp, pie, and any number of delicious dessert takes on apples, you can put them sliced in ham sandwiches or cut up in chicken salad sandwiches, and I'm sure there are apple breads you could get involved with. The only Addition From The Future I'd add is that you can use apples to make your own pectin for jam/jelly making, instead of buying it in the stores. Now, pectin costs like $2.00, so this isn't necessarily the biggest savings unless you make a lot of jam, but it is a way to use up kind of busted apples if you have an apple tree (or to thin the fruit), and you can also just use a bunch of peels and cores. (I believe some purists will say that this produces a better tasting jelly than what commercial pectin provides, but I've yet to make my own- something I will correct this year now that I have a nerd boyfriend with a car.)

Stay tuned as I unearth other drafts from the archives that will undoubtedly just contain one Antoine Dodson reference after another.

COCKroach Blocking (Apologies This Wasn't A More Creative Title)

noreply@blogger.com (Heather) — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 23:07:00 +0000

Of all the various mental breakdown stimuli that have caused me to gnash my teeth at the sky like Grendel and cry out I'M A HUMAN DISASTERRRRRRRRRR,

the cockroaches had to be one of the worst. While I appreciate this landlord's absenteeism to a certain extent, and prefer it to the "hiding behind a van" involvement of prior socially unstable landowners, he is still kind of a slumlord, if a more genteel slumlord (I later found out, from my neighbor who looks like Fat Joe, that my landlord used to also own the building next door, and that he didn't maintain it and eventually they sued and the building was taken away from him?).

So we wrote businesswoman-like emails, we called the super multiple times, and we wrote follow-up businesswoman-like emails. Out of all the calls, the super came twice and put some tiny, ineffective traps down, and the landlord provided only this Hemingway-esque response:

"Please call andrew [the super] who will take care of it. Boric acid, available in the hardware store, is totally effective against them- but don't leave any food or unclean dishes around."

Valid. But we weren't leaving food or unclean dishes out, the cockroaches were even going inside the dishwasher, and Andrew was not taking care of it. When I asked Andrew for an exterminator after two of his visits without continued improvement, he said he was going to have someone come, and then called me to ask if someone was going to be home to give him cash? This, of course, being suspect, I declined his request, and he said he would figure it out. He did not.

Result: Leah and I realized we had to address this ourselves. We researched boric acid and learned that it is non-toxic to humans or pets, and that it destroys the cockroach's exoskeleton as well as their insides, if they ingest it. The nerd boyfriend got involved and learned that whatever poisoning method used will "work its way through the population," which is super gross because this is achieved by the cockroaches eating other cockroaches. TMI, amirite ladies?

Our apartment's layout is sort of box-like. You enter in the kitchen, whose windows face south, and to the left is the bathroom, whose windows also face south. Behind the kitchen is a windowless living room, and behind that are two bedrooms that face north. The cockroaches' chill spot was the southwest corner of the kitchen near the sink, oven, and dishwasher, and they never ventured beyond the kitchen. So Leah lined the back of the kitchen counters with boric acid, and we waited.

Some dead cockroaches turned up, and they seemed to be momentarily slowed. But then, we'd use the oven or something, and they'd pop out and I'd have a complete mental breakdown and comfort myself with the Rossi.

And then it happened- I found one in my room.

Rationally, I knew the cockroaches were migrating because they were trying to avoid the poisonous trap we'd laid for them. Emotionally, I completely lost my shit. I went to Home Depot that night in a rage, spent like twenty minutes talking to an employee looking for something Leah had used in LA that she only knew as "the peanut butter stuff," and I bought a large tube of it and what seemed to be a more chemical-laden boric acid the Home Depot employee called "the blue stuff." I didn't want to violate environmental principles that have a sound, reasonable basis, but this was a clear quality of life issue that I just couldn't put up with.

As it turns out, I didn't have to. Behold The Peanut Butter Stuff:

That font tells you everything you need to know: bitches were going down. I used my Herculean rage strength to pull the refrigerator out, cleaned underneath it, and squirted the thin brown, somewhat peanut butter-like strings liberally about. I drew a line right underneath the oven on the floor and by the heater. (I blocked the areas off with tape in case Donut was interested, but he only eats organic so he hasn't been tempted.)

This represented a two-fold approach, depending on zone. On the countertops, where we wanted to repel the roaches, we'd applied a powdery insecticide. In out of the way places, we applied delicious fake harbinger of their doom peanut butter that would kill them from the inside and also their families would die too because they have no respect for authority figures and they lack a traditional burial culture.

And they went for it. YA BURNT, ROACHES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

While the bait is, I'm sure, environmentally questionable, the amount we used and the spots we put it in tend to limit the amount of toxic danger Leah, Donut, and nerd boyfriends faced, and I didn't end up having to resort to the blue stuff. And in my opinion, it was much more painless than fumigating, since we would have had to remove all of our dishes and food from the kitchen (I'm getting a panic attack just thinking about the level of effort that would entail). We still see an occasional roach (in case anyone's wondering, it's the small roaches- not like the terrifying ones I imagine are in LA), but after we applied the Combat it declined dramatically. Should you find yourself in our sad girl roach killing position, I heartily recommend it.

This Is A Game Called "Fun With Dishwasher Detergent." It Is A Boring Game.

noreply@blogger.com (Heather) — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 23:17:00 +0000

Update: Whether you choose to make your own dishwasher detergent or not, vinegar is a consistently excellent rinse aid AND it also helps keep the dishwasher itself clean.

As some of you know, I am a ho about Pinterest and spend an inordinate amount of time on it. Through a girl I went to high school with, I ended up at a blog with a recipe for homemade dishwasher detergent, and I thought, okay, Internet. I'll bite.

Let me just preface this by saying that I am fucking obsessed with my dishwasher. I've lived in New York since 2003 and this is the first time I've ever had one. When I saw it while apartment hunting, I pretty much lost my shit almost as hard as when I recently ate a very wonderful molasses cookie that Jessi made, watched Jurassic Park for the first time on VHS at a ski cabin in Vermont, and Melissa explained that all- ALL- her young years, her whole life, she never understood that it was about embryos. EMBRYOS!!!!!!!! She just thought Newton was hungry.

Pictured: "Newton"

Pictured: What Owen consumed because he could not have any cookies since he is a pilot. The results can be seen in the background.

So yeah, the dishwasher is wonderful if you cook from scratch, because you just make so many dishes which is the worst. Obviously, I had to find an eco-friendly dishwasher detergent. In terms of cost and environmental impact, the powder form is best, and it's best if it comes from a cardboard box rather than plastic. When Melissa still lived with me, we ended up using seventh generation, which is one of their few products that doesn't disappoint. But when I saw that DIY post I referenced a million years ago in this post before I got distracted by Jurassic Park and how Jeff Goldblum looks like a swarthy version of Melissa and Jessi's Uncle Darren, I thought it was worth some investigation.

So anyway, here is the DIY recipe.

This, however, prompted concern from Leah, since she was worried a homemade detergent wouldn't get rid of the diseases she felt were possibly lurking on the plates. It makes sense that she would be nervous- besides the griminess of our apartment, the marketing we've experienced our whole lives has suggested that if we let a piece of raw chicken touch the countertop, we are going to get salmonella and die. But this made me wonder, just in general- how "clean" do dishes actually ever get? And if a dishwashing liquid doesn't contain chemical antibacterial agents, how do germs ever get killed? Moreover- how the fuck does soap even work?

I turned, of course, to The Net. Because that is what people call it.

Question #1: How Does Soap Work?

Soap, apparently, works by looking a a combination of lollipops and sperm. TRY NOT TO THINK ABOUT THAT LAST SENTENCE TOO MUCH I JUST GROSSED MYSELF OUT REAL BAD. The heads (pause) are hydrophilic. They LOVE water, almost as much as Donut loves being little. The tails (pause) are hydrophobic, love each other (pause), and so for whatever reasons they make this spherical joint right here that is called a micelle:

When soap is in water, and it comes into contact with grease/oil and the dirt that is stuck to it, it busts into it and makes a new, grimier micelle with the grease/oil/dirt stuck inside, which the water then rinses away. If you have hard water (pause), the minerals in the water react with the soap to form a precipitate, which is what soap scum is. Other effects: "[t]he insoluble salts form bathtub rings, leave films that reduce hair luster, and gray/roughen textiles after repeated washings." WOW. It is a good thing I live in New York where I do not have hard water and I have cockroaches instead.

Question #2: What Is Detergent?

"Detergents were developed in response to the shortage of the animal and vegetable fats used to make soap during World War I and World War II. Detergents are primarily surfactants, which could be produced easily from petrochemicals. Surfactants lower the surface tension of water, essentially making it 'wetter' so that it is less likely to stick to itself and more likely to interact with oil and grease."

"Detergent" used to just mean "cleaning agent." However, it would appear that in current usage, "detergent" generally refers to a synthetic, petrochemical-based cleaning agent.

Question #3: Why Detergents and Not Soap?

According to the net in New Zealand:

"You may well ask why soap, which served well for so many years, was eventually displaced. Soaps are cheap and they are manufactured from a renewable source, whereas many of the synthetic detergents are made from petrochemicals. Soaps are also biodegradable; that is, they are readily broken down by bacteria, and thus they do not pollute rivers. However, due to their gelling properties, soaps do have a greater tendency to clog sewerage reticulation systems than synthetic detergents. The grease trap of a non-sewered house was often laden with soap. But the most important reason for the displacement of soap is the fact that, when a carboxylic acid soap is used in hard water, precipitation occurs....You may live in an area where the water is extremely soft. But calcium and magnesium ions are present in the dirt that you wash out of your clothes, so that some precipitation still occurs if soap is used, and gradually deposits are built up in the fabric.

There are other disadvantages with soap; it deteriorates on storage, and it lacks cleaning power when compared with the modern synthetic surfactants, which can be designed to perform specialised cleaning tasks. Finally and very importantly from a domestic laundry point of view, soap does not rinse out; it tends to leave a residue behind in the fabric that is being washed. A residue gradually builds up and causes bad odour, deterioration of the fabric and other associated problems."

(Also interesting- the amount of foam generally does not correspond to the amount of cleaning power a substance has, unless you have very little liquid involved.)

"Question [#4]: How Do Detergents Clean?

...Modern detergents contain more than surfactants. Cleaning products may also contain enzymes to degrade protein-based stains, bleaches to de-color stains and add power to cleaning agents, and blue dyes to counter yellowing. Like soaps, detergents have hydrophobic or water-hating molecular chains and hydrophilic or water-loving components. The hydrophobic hydrocarbons are repelled by water, but are attracted to oil and grease. The hydrophilic end of the same molecule means that one end of the molecule will be attracted to water, while the other side is binding to oil."

Here is one thing I found particularly interesting from this article:

"Neither detergents nor soap accomplish anything except binding to the soil until some mechanical energy or agitation is added into the equation. Swishing the soapy water around allows the soap or detergent to pull the grime away from clothes or dishes and into the larger pool of rinse water. Rinsing washes the detergent and soil away. Warm or hot water melts fats and oils so that it is easier for the soap or detergent to dissolve the soil and pull it away into the rinse water."

Summary of How Soap/Detergent Works Research:

SO. Soaps are from animal or plant sources; detergents are (generally) made with petroleum byproducts. Soaps and detergents/surfactants (let's ignore the other ingredients in commercial detergents for now) are just Mr. Banana Grabbering oil/grease and its attached dirt, with the aid of agitation. Soaps and detergents do NOT disinfect, like bleach.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Throughout the history of time, then, scullery hoes rendered dirty plates suitable for eating on again by essentially pushing the germ-attached dirt away. However, the thinking today is often that old timey people were gross and probably gangrenous, and that if we don't avail ourselves to the triclosany fruits of modern science, we will be too. This brings me to the next question:

Question #5: How Clean Do Dishes Need To Be To Be Safe?

At this point, I think we've all heard the arguments against chemical antibacterial cleaners like the aforementioned triclosan because they inhibit our body's ability to naturally defend itself and lead to the creation of superbugs. But even ignoring that, it looks like a number of tests indicate that use of antibacterial cleaners doesn't actually make you less likely to get sick. I think this Scientific American blog provides a pretty readable rundown of this (if you want to really nerd out, Rae-style, read some of the comments section). If you're too busy being a modern 90s businesswoman to read it, it notes that a professor who "surveyed all of the experimental or quasi-experimental studies published in English between 1980 and 2006 on the effectiveness of different hand washing strategies" discovered that plain soap and water was more efficacious at preventing disease than the antibacterials.

Apparently, the effects of antibacterial cleaners are still not well understood, but some scientists think that they are disruptive because they kill the regular bacteria that live on us, leaving us more vulnerable to freeloading newcomers who just Houseguest their way in. Because apparently, it seems like the key to healthy cleaning is really in limiting the number of bacteria that gets all up in you, not firebombing them into oblivion.

Conclusion:

After delaying this post for way too long, perhaps distracted by that Jeff Goldblum painting, my conclusion is that for the dishes to be "safe," any soap/detergent that's effective at removing food debris is adequate, especially since a dishwasher supplies reasonably hot water. However, a dishwasher that really effectively removes all the grime is somewhat rare in my experience- more often, this process is usually aided by some manual pre-rinsing or scrubbing. So with both manual and automatic dishwashing, it's not imprudent to consider additives to the dish soap or dishwashing detergent that will make it more efficacious, as long as the environmental or human impact is benign. The seventh generation detergent includes the following ingredients:

Sodium carbonate (water softener and alkalinity builder), sodium sulfate and sodium chloride (promote flowability), citric acid (water softener), sodium silicate (protection agent and alkalinity builder), polyaspartic acid (water softener and anti-filming agent), ppg-10-laureth-7 (anti-spotting agent), sodium percarbonate (removes stains and water softener), protease and amylase (enzyme soil removers).

Enzymes, citric acid, other shit I don't know about- these all work to make the detergent more effective and to address some of the deficiencies noted about soap above, like its tendency to form soap scum. From some cursory googling, it looks like it's certainly possible to make your own enzyme cleaners from citrus peels, to get your hands on some citric acid by merely opening a Kool Aid packet, and to throw a bunch of stuff together to make your own detergent. But unless you have an obscenely cheaper source of these ingredients, per pound, than what this costs, which is not much, it looks like you're better off spending your spare time getting drunk and making bread, because carbs are a lot better baby daddy bait than soap.
(N.B. That's certainly not to say this is the case with all DIY cleaning products- throwing some citrus peels or drops of essential oil in a bottle of vinegar to make toilet bowl cleaner takes approximately 10 seconds and it definitely saves you a considerable amount of money on something you're literally throwing down the drain. But with more complicated recipes, again, if you have disposable income, just spend it on the Rossi.)

RAW MEAT MUFFINS FOR A YOUNG MAN!

noreply@blogger.com (Heather) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 21:13:00 +0000

A question I should probably ask myself when I write new posts about homemade dog food is, hey, Heather, do you want to make that same ODB joke over and over again about liking it raw, or do you want to post gratuitous photos of Donut? And I should limit myself and say, hey, you can have one, not the other.

So here he is in a raincoat!

Here he is in another raincoat!

Okay, now that I've indulged that, I'll get to some content

SIKE HERE HE IS ON TOP OF A SHELF BEING WORRIED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

He is just the tiniest. Well, that was worth missing out on ODB for

SIKE HERE IT IS!!!!

Like you didn't want to watch this too.

Anyway, like yesterday's post about trying to simplify cooking oatmeal from scratch, I'm continuously trying to find lazier ways to handle homemade dog food. Obviously, few things can compete with the convenience of scooping up a cup of dry dog food and adding water, like with kibble. But since it's undeniable how well Donut has done on raw meat, it's now additional bougie guilt I have to deal with. So I have to figure out how to make it manageable, time-wise, while making it possible with the space (I have an unnecessarily small freezer) and financial constraints I have.

At first, I'd make a batch of ground beef heart, liver, and old bull, plus some quinoa and vegetables, freeze half, and put the rest in the refrigerator. He liked it, and dogs can tolerate meat going a little past its prime (pause?), but it still got kind of gross in the fridge, plus every morning it meant I was scooping out raw meat, and he'd kind of make a mess of it on the floor. Like I said yesterday, in the morning, I am really just tryna handle my morning wood, so this got old. Plus, if I go away on the weekends I often miss the farmer's market, and I don't get out of work on time to pick up meat (pause again?) in Manhattan. (Even though I work near Chelsea TERRIBLE JOKES!)

Hence, over the summer I caved, and just bought that dehydrated raw dog food from the honest kitchen that the young man used to eat. I was also worried that he wasn't getting enough nutrients in his diet, so I liked that the honest kitchen food had so many different vegetables in it. But I still felt like he needed legit beef.

When I had my shit a little more together, I finally was around to go to the farmer's market, but they didn't have the old bull, just heart and liver. Heart is muscle meat anyway, and it's the cheapest thing they have, so I figured this was okay, since liver has a shitload of nutrients. And that night, as I was grinding it in the food processor, I had a moment of laziness inspiration- what if I measured the right portion in each cup in a muffin tin and froze it? That way, I'd end up with a bunch of little patties that I could throw in a ziplock and keep in the freezer, and every morning I could just take one out and put it in his bowl.

I sprayed the tin with canola oil first- if you attempt this yourself, do not skip this, because those fuckers get stuck. I put 1/4 cup of the ground meat/quinoa mixture in each, froze it overnight, and in the morning...I could not get them out. I was about to have another CLASSIC Heather moment in which I was like, EVERYTHING TURNS TO FAILURE but fortunately, after thawing for about 20 minutes, they came right out, and everything went according to plan.

Well, everything except what Donut did with it. I figured he'd let it thaw a little first and nibble throughout the day, but his ass WENT for it. On the comforter on the couch. Ew. He LOVES spiriting things away! So I had to train him that he could only bring it to his dog bed under the kitchen table (which gets washed regularly). But, hey, It Works, It Works For Me- he really likes those meat muffins.

The morning feeding routine now is that he gets 1/4 cup of the dehydrated raw food in the morning with a 1/4 cup meat muffin on top. And that's literally all I have to do. With dogs, you can technically feed them only once a day, so I started doing this because I really have no idea what time I'll get home on a given night, so this was the best way to give him some consistency with feeding and not keep him waiting for hours.

So, if you're a real Suze Orman,

Pictured: Who I prefer to think of as *the* Real Suze Orman and the "real" La Prohibida

right now you're probably thinking, Hey Boyfriend, how much is all of this costing? Stupidly, I'm not sure where I put that envelope where I did all my financial calculations, but it worked out that the meat muffins (made from exactly the kind of bougie beef one would assume it would be, plus organic quinoa) cost about the same per serving as the honest kitchen dog food. However, the meat muffins had significantly more meat in them (and a more expensive meat- the packaged food has turkey), so I think that if I made the vegetable portion myself, it would all work out to be cheaper, while being local, organic, and all of that shit.

My game plan, should I get my act together enough, is to get really crazy with my dehydrator and make a big batch of dried assorted vegetables so that I can cut the packaged food out entirely. That way, I can buy whatever is cheapest at the time at the farmer's market (or just steal it from my mom's garden), when it's in season, and keep adding to it continually, such that I never have to worry about running out of dry food for him. Then, I can put the foods into the muffins that don't necessarily keep forever at room temperature, like the meat itself, flax seed, and the quinoa (or quinoa flour- I'm trying to decide what form I should feed it to him in).

The whole point here, like with the last entry, is that by doing some advance prep work when you actually have time, you can cook from scratch using all the pansy ingredients that are better for you, for your small dog, and for the environment, and you can even make it cost less and behave much like a packaged convenience food. Making your pet's food from scratch every day is definitely not feasible for anyone with a normal weekday drinking problem or, really, anyone who has a job or friends. But you might be surprised about how painless it can be to integrate this into your lifestyle.

Even if that small young man in your life STAYS giving you judgment eyes from a bag and throwing up on your hair in the middle of the night...

Steel Cut Oats 2012: My Colon Is Poppin, B (Pause)

noreply@blogger.com (Heather) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 22:44:00 +0000

A chief hobby of mine, as you all might know, is stealing books from World War II veterans, and also from my mom. One such pilfering was a Weight Watchers slow cooker cookbook. WAIT THOUGH I NEED TO QUOTE SISQO HOLD UP. I know that just seeing the words "Weight Watchers" just made you anxious. It made me anxious too! When I tried that foolishness in high school it was basically baby eating disorder training. It is an excellent introduction into the world of rabid calorie counting that I would one day witness at its apex (which, if I recall, is also a pretty good gay club in Baltimore...THEY PLAYED SO MANY BRITNEY SPEARS REMIXES!) when Suzie and I had that Renfrew suitemate who cooked calorie free salad dressing until it hardened into a cracker, giving an acrid vinegar ambiance to the entire apartment.

However, there are some very good recipes in this cook book that you can easily modify to be less dumb. One of these is for steel cut oatmeal, which nicely addresses breakfast, a meal that is often neglected or suffering in nutrients. For example, when I was a young person and the whole world was like Portland is now

and I wanted a "cool" flannel shirt for Christmas, I ate either cereal or instant oatmeal packets every day. At the time, the packaging was bound to make a slew of health claims that moms stayed believing (although such claims on highly processed foods are now generally viewed as quite dubious). And fuck, if I was a mom trying to Do It All, I'm sure I would have resorted to easy breakfasts like this that kids can prepare themselves and that allow the kind of variety that reduces young person squabbling. But unfortunately, now we know better and we can't eat vitamin-enriched Lucky Charms, thinking they're healthy, unless we're just going balls to the wall and dipping a giant spoonful of Nutella into the box, twirling it around, and calling it a day. A sad, sad, downward spiraling day.

Anyway! No one here does that so it's cool! Back to steel cut oats!

Steel cut oats have a better flavor than instant, but I find them annoying and time consuming to cook on the stove, especially in the morning when I am just tryna handle my morning wood and stumble out the door. By throwing them in the slow cooker the night before, they're ready in the morning when you wake up. Here's the recipe that I adapted from Weight Watchers:

Slow Cooker Steel Cut Oats

1 1/2 c      water
1 1/2 c      milk
1 c        steel cut oats
3               apples, cut up

Cooking spray

Optional: mad other shit

Directions: throw the water and milk in a pot and bring to a boil. Spray the inside of the slow cooker with cooking spray because it's kind of a bitch to clean. Pour the boiling mixture in. Add the oats and the apples and various optional things I will note shortly. Cook on low overnight (6 hours).

Now, here is why Steven says my tranny name should be "Options For Days." There is a lot you can, and should, add to this basic recipe, both before and after cooking.

During cooking:

Pumpkin pie spices (cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves)
Vanilla bean- since I make my own vanilla extract by sticking a vanilla bean in a tiny bottle and filling it with vodka, periodically I'll grab a piece of vanilla bean, after it's flavored the vodka, and throw it in with the oatmeal mixture.
Other extracts- I haven't tried this, but why not? Life is for living, guys.
Other fruits- use whatever you have handy. Strawberries are very delicious in this when they're in season.
Butter- get fat with it!
Sugar- get tropical fat with it!

After cooking (both to preserve nutrients and for taste) amendments to add for health purposes:

Wheat bran
Wheat germ
Chia seeds
Ground flax seeds
Chopped or slivered nuts (pause)
Bee pollen- it tastes so weird, but then you start liking it, plus you can pretend that you are a baby honey bee!
Other healthy things the internet tells you to eat

Also, I always add maple syrup or honey so that it will actually taste good. I figure that if I'm choking down (pause) that many healthy things I've earned it.

I'm going to guess right now that you're probably thinking that some of these additions are a little time consuming in the morning. Well, I have put some thought into this, which I'll add in bullet point form to a list that I will entitle

Efficiency Modifications!

Dried apples

A slight inconvenience to this recipe process is cutting up apples. Yes, obviously, this isn't a difficult task, but if you're trying to do this before going to bed, each additional task added to the process gets in the way of you doing this kind of cooking from scratch regularly. You have to wash the apples, cut them up, wash the cutting board and knife so the cockroaches don't spirit them away in the night, and dispose of the cores, because it's not like Donut is going to eat three of them quickly before going to bed, no matter how much he likes apple cores. (And then, you're also wasting the apple cores.) However, if you have a big container of dried, appropriately-sized-for-oatmeal pieces stocked in your kitchen at all times, you can just grab a handful and throw it in. I tried it this last time, and it worked nicely.

A game plan I'm going to work on is to take some time some weekend to both dehydrate a fuck ton of apples and to make apple vodka. (This would also work for pears, too!) Basically, as you're cutting up the apples to dry, you just throw the cores in a jar and fill it with vodka. I'm even thinking that after the vodka has taken on the apple flavor, you can cook the cores down to make into applesauce or apple butter (you'd need a food mill for this), but I haven't tried this yet. This way, the cores don't get wasted, and you get three useful products out of your apples, rather than one- my hobo loins are so quivering right now!

Even if you're not getting a multi-product, I think drying other fruits to add in to the oatmeal would be great as well. So far, I've only found that apples and pears yield a useful side product for liquor flavoring (although I guess quinces have cores too?), but I'm sure there other things I could try...
Pre-ground jar of flax seed in the refrigerator

Okay so obviously, you are probably not going to grind whole flax seeds that you bought from the bulk bin a the grocery store in the morning when you're just trying to go to work. I grind about an eight ounce jar's worth and keep it in the refrigerator.
Dry oatmeal add-ins container

In terms of adding the dry options above, I've tended to haphazardly spoon a bunch of stuff into the oatmeal before heading to work. I'm thinking that it might be smarter to make a giant mix of all the things that don't have to be refrigerated (I think that's everything except the flax seeds) so you can just dump one scoop in and be done with it. (And, as always, it's a good idea to buy these things in bulk bins, where possible.)
Freezer storage

Since the oatmeal is, obviously, hot in the morning after I make it, I don't put it in the refrigerator or otherwise package it, since it's not good to put hot foods into a fridge or freezer. I just leave it out and deal with it when I get home from work. Then, I package up the remaining servings (usually three more), including the dry toppings, the flax seed, and the maple syrup, and keep them in the freezer, so when I leave for work in the morning all I have to do is grab it (pause).

So there you go. Oatmeal, apple vodka, grabbing mad nuts. It's going to be a VERY deluxe 2012 for this intestinal system indeed!

Note: I couldn't find the original Weight Watchers recipe on the net to give proper credit, but here is this other exciting Weight Watchers recipe, to fatten up as you choose: Pumpkin Steel Cut Oats (you can also sub in sweet potatoes)

Eucalyptus As Cockroach Repellent

noreply@blogger.com (Heather) — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 04:10:00 +0000

Me: um...don't mind the cockroaches in the sink...
Jumpoff: well, you do have a lot of plants strewn across the countertops...
Me: they're EUCALYPTUS, and I bought them because they're supposed to REPEL roaches.
Jumpoff: there's a roach crawling on one right now.
Me: [blown]

Look how not exactly that messy this countertop is, and how wonderful that moose bottle opener from KT is!

Eucalyptus not warding off cockroaches on the kitchen radiator in proximity to the Meyer lemon tree, chives, rosemary, lemon verbena, and sweet majoram.

Eucalyptus not warding off cockroaches on the bathroom radiator in proximity to the Venus fly trap, cacti, and Calamondin orange tree.

Eucalyptus in the shower not creating the promised bougie steam shower that theoretically would be good for colds and sinuses and shit. BLOWN BLOWN BLOWN.

End of the story: I had to call the landlord/super and they're coming to spray tomorrow. They did the same for mice earlier, including those plug-in sonic mouse things or whatever, which didn't seem to work in Bed-Stuy, but has pretty much worked on these more polite Carroll Gardens mice. It's frustrating, because I really wish I could just employ environmentally friendly solutions, but I think sometimes, depending on your living conditions, you have to admit defeat, which fucking sucks. Just like when that crack head stole my indoor compost machine. Sigh.

What The Fuck Is A Thimbleberry?

noreply@blogger.com (Heather) — Sat, 14 May 2011 12:41:00 +0000

This article in Salon struck a chord: "How I (kind of) Survive in the Wilderness"

She writes about the love I'm going to assume we all share of Oregon Trail (also excellent that I discovered yesterday, courtesy of the McSweeney's Short Imagined Monologues: ""No Son Of Mine Plays Oregon Trail Like That.") and how she carries her childhood love of survival stories over into foraging for food as a somewhat broke ass adult. She mentions gathering nettles, looking for oyster mushrooms, and collecting thimbleberry shoots. But what the fuck is a thimbleberry? She explains it in the article, but I have never heard of such a thing, and I often choose the thimble yes the thimble, arguably the lamest option when I am playing Monopoly. And I fucking love berry picking. It was obviously predestined by the American Girl Doll I chose, Kirsten, and so it probably came as no surprise that I conscripted Tiny Balls and her then boyfriend into a forced raspberry labor operation:

The cleverly named East Glastonbury, Connecticut site of Tiny's cruel berry imprisonment

T to the B, an incredibly small broken wretch of a person in her thorny, fruity subjugation

Me disgruntled that her bitch ass would not also pick red currants for my liqueur empire

AND she writes about using the fuck out of nettles. So I have two questions. One, is it just me, or does every other homesteading type in the country have this like crazy abundance of nettles kicking around? Because everyone is always talking about them but I've still never eaten them and only seen them at the farmer's markets just recently. Are they super easy to grow or something? And two, I always get so jealous hearing about other people living, laughing, and foraging for food. I know there are people who dumpster dive for food in New York, both homeless and freegan, but my ass is not doing that. As it is, my grandma yelled, "HEATHER THAT'S THE TRASH YOU HAVEN'T GOTTEN THAT LOW HAVE YOU?" on Mother's Day when I was throwing a peppermint wrapper in her garbage can, thinking I was taking something out, even though I was like, "GRANDMA I WORK AT A MAJOR PUBLISHING COMPANY" ("Well, I haven't seen any proof of that."). But I would pick edible weeds and whatever if I knew where I could go in the city to find them SANS used condom/urine/broken bottle of Hennessy taint. Does anyone know? And is this kind of thing just easier on the West Coast (the author of the article I mention lives in Oregon)?

Homemade Dog Food Continued: The Pretext I Am Using When I Really Just Want To Make Tasteless Meat Jokes

noreply@blogger.com (Heather) — Thu, 05 May 2011 13:00:00 +0000

When I last wrote about the young hooligan, he was eating a mixture of quinoa and beef liver, supplemented with fruits and vegetables on the side, and basically just Living, Laughing, and Loving like the signs I hate that Melissa likes to adorn her home with, because I feel it's impertinent of them to try to tell me how to live my life, just playing with the stuffed animal tampon that Rae/Sara (or was it Rae/Michelle?) gave me.

Sometimes Donut will also dip into Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker while lounging on the pink fur blanket. Note: do not write about Trader Joe Ho jumpoffs in proximity to the pink fur blanket or it might precipitate the break up of future relationships.

Then a couple of weeks ago at the farmer's market I purchased an array of different meat products, at the butcher's suggestion:

Beef heart, beef liver, and "Old Bull." I know there is a dad joke in there somewhere...

The dude also gave me a bone (AHAHA LAUGHTER PENIS EUPHEMISM):

All of it together was about $20. After I gingerly grabbed the meat and put it in...my bag (JOKES!) I ground it all in my food processor. For one week I fed it to him mixed with quinoa, and then the next week he just got the meat plain. And he was fat chillin on it.

I know what you're thinking. That is just not enough calcium! Well, don't sleep on my hustle. In the wild, wolves and wild dogs derive calcium from chewing on bones (OUCH LOLZ!), but they also can get it from egg shells. I save all of the egg shells I use in a jar in the fridge (if you don't have a dog or cat, egg shells are also excellent to grind and use in gardening, both mixed in the soil and scattered on the surface to discourage pests, since a number of soft bodied insects and slugs get torn up from the rough edges). Normal dogs will often just eat the eggshell as is. But Donut's a pussy, so I realized I'd have to trick him into it.

I realize as I'm about to type this next part that none of this is going to get me laid or make me appear more sexually desirable, and it's really just a stone's throw from going full cat lady, but I'll say it: I made dog biscuits. My mom made some for him for Christmas and gave me several recipes along with a bone shaped cookie cutter, and because things always go so well when I "improvise" at recipes, I adapted one of those. Now I will take it grosser. Instead of using vegetable oil, I used the leftover fat/oil from cooking a whole chicken (it's not supposed to go down the drain anyway). Actually, I guess that's not that gross compared to cutting a beef heart into pieces. Or picking a dookie bubble out of someone's ass. Anyway, I also added carrots that I was going to cook for myself but didn't get around to, the ground up egg shells, and chicken soup stock I'd made. I didn't have a rolling pin, so I just spread the dough out over the whole cookie sheet, and this was the result:

But, young blood actually seems to like them, as did my parents' dog Lucy. (And my mom said that if you don't have a rolling pin, fyi, you can use a can or something to roll dough out, which maybe I'll do next time.)

Everyone loves pictures of someone else's pet!

Now, we all know that farmer's markets are basically baby daddy collection sites, and this weekend there were several dudes worth nervously peeing on a stick for. There was a blond milkman, which, yeah, we all know I normally don't dip into unless he's a rescue diver and I'm losing my virginity and there's the promise of visiting a Pac Sun outlet afterward, but I'd break that for him, and then a brown-haired butcher. Once I'd acquired the first dude's milk (after a nice little conversation where I nervously-because-he-was-handsome answered his questions about how I was making yogurt and if I'd ever made cheese before, and how he just keeps screwing up mozzarella even though it's supposedly so easy to make! LOL!), you know me, it was on to the next one. But that milkman stayed involving himself, which I was not mad at. Noticing that I was purchasing beef heart, he got really excited and kind of proud to say that he and hot butcher had beef tongue the other day, and hot butcher was like, no, don't tell her that, I don't have any left! But then, while the butcher was showing me an array of bones, it suddenly clicked in with the milkman that the meat was for the dog, and he looked so blown, like he'd discovered a secret organ meat freakaleek and then had it rescinded. So thinking about how I could lay some groundwork for putting my mouth on his mouth, I was like, oh, well, how would I cook it if I was to eat it? I will handle your meat however you tell me to, sir.

Apparently, you cut the heart into thin slices and then sear it in a pan, perhaps with some salt and pepper. That sounded like what I've been accused of by someone who's aggressively cuddled a blanket to prove a point before, so I...hmmm, was that too cold? That last sentence was pretty cold. Breakups make me really sad too, I promise. Hence the infamous "I hate you" allegedly 30 times into the phone while sobbing and drunk at 6 pm in the bathtub, or even more tragically, that time I pretty much ruined the vibe at a party by putting on Seal. I just deal with them by doing normal things, like using humor to hide the crushing ache of separation, or drinking grape soda and vodka until I black out.

Anyway! So on Sunday, after I returned from the farmer's market, I ground the beef and heart and mixed it with a quinoa, egg, and (couple spoonfuls of) peanut butter mixture I'd made on Saturday to carry him over (I ran out of beef on Friday). I'd consulted with my friend Kristina before about what she feeds her dogs, so I added some ground pumpkin seed as well. She gave me pretty excellent explanation which I hope she doesn't mind if I relay here:

"Yeah, the funny thing is that I actually became friends with the woman who makes the raw food, and near the end of my own unemployment streak, went over to help her make batches of raw (still do actually; th...is former vegetarian clearly gets her ya-ya's from playing with raw meat!). It is a whole new experience cutting up an entire cow's liver or tossing chicken necks into the grinder, I'll tell ya. But needless to say, I got to see the whole process. And this is what's in it: raw eggs (dried shells also added if there isn't bone in the meat, such as organ meat), ground flax seed, ground pumpkin seeds, dried green tea leaves, apples + carrots + collards (though this fluctuates depending on what's in season and/or available organic), and of course the meat. The meat has the highest percentage of course, but I know I'm preaching to the choir!

It really is SO easy to do - but then again, it's easier when you have an industrial grinder to do the dirty work for you (that's what she said)."

Moral of the story:
Making dog food is still not that much work, and while I know I can find a way to do it cheaper, spending around $25 for two weeks of food for him is definitely within my budget. The dog biscuits were also easy enough, and I think they'll function as a nice way to use up leftover vegetables at the end of the week so they don't go to waste.

One last moral:
If you mix grape soda and vodka you will vomit magenta. That is all.

A Very Hartbeat Easter

noreply@blogger.com (Heather) — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 18:03:00 +0000

I put on for my city. Which city, you say? Oh, only New England's Rising Star!

(Thanks to Miriam for procuring the best half shirt ever not on Joey Lawrence, and by the way, are we all aware that the following happened? It's not Man Band level exciting, but if you like nostalgia it might get you by the balls.)

Last weekend I indeed put it down for the 860. Friday I had to be a distance businesswoman because I had to go to the dentist, because maybe, hey, shamefully, I am on Dr. Stache's health insurance for now....While I was there, I had Homesteading Moment #1, in which I asked the hygienist if there was any difference in the efficacy of environmentally friendly toothpastes and the regular kind, and also revealed myself to be a massive douchebag by admitting I purchased one of these at Whole Foods:

She said that there isn't a difference, except in mouth feel. False. She did not use the words "mouth feel" because she did not learn that phrase on the back of a package of unhappy crab crackers in Chinatown as a young person wearing cut up tee-shirts and an ironic trucker hat made by Garrett that said "Queer Beacon" with a rainbow lighthouse on it in 2004. But she did say that normal toothpastes might feel more frothy than the eco ones, and she also recommended the Burt's Bees toothpaste. Right now I'm using a Tom's of Maine toothpaste that is embarrassingly named "Wicked Fresh" or some shit like that. Ugh. This is why people hate environmental things. But...no cavities! And it's reassuring that the pansy toothpastes I've been using are dentist-approved.

Homesteading Moment #2 was Mama Flan getting too cute about Easter egg dying. She's been really supportive of all of the projects I've been trying, and every year she makes me, Tiny Balls, and BFlan (who is now a drunk dialer extraordinaire and I AIN'T MAD YOU MAKE ME SO PROUD) dye eggs. This year, however, she read about natural dyes instead of using food coloring:

(From top- spinach, beets, yellow onions.)

Not pictured is some red cabbage which is supposed to yield blue dye. Theoretically, we should have had green, red, yellow, and blue dyes to use after she heated and strained them:

However...my mom used a can of beets, and I think they'd probably been denuded of their dye somewhat in processing, so the red didn't work. The spinach was lackluster as well. However, thanks to the excellent (SARCASM LOLZ!) photography below, you can see that the yellow and the blue worked nicely:

Well...at least I liked the yellow. It was kind of a mustardy goldenrod doo doo yellow, but I wasn't mad at that. With the natural dyes, you have to leave the eggs in longer, which was fine with me because Tiny Balls and I had to dip out to go to karaoke. Per Melissa and Jessi's request, I tried to give northern Connecticut what I thought they needed, the way school need teachers, the way Kathie Lee need Regis...

However, even though I spent that night absolutely murdering tracks, and coyly forced the DJ to refer to me as "Mr. Steal Your Girl," before announcing my "shoutout to Easter," the people were, in the immortal words of that erstwhile jumpoff, "just not feelin' it." And in the town where this decoration adorned my middle school's wall?

Blown.

But what is Easter about? It is about a brighter day. Like a brighter day in beautiful Springfield, Massachusetts.

In case your Where's Waldo novelty item finding skills are rusty, yes that "Brooklyn Gear" awning features an advertisement for "BEEPERS" on the side.

This brings me to Homesteading Moment #3: My aunt's Meyer lemon tree! She's the one who gave me my Meyer Lemon tree, and she was worried about her tree for awhile since it had lost leaves and wasn't producing fruit, but now it's back in full health!

Look at them, just hanging there, hanging around like Earl Grey who Melissa and Jessi's grandma aka G$ calls "the little teabagger." Happy Easter indeed.

I Stole A Joke From Sam W. That One Time, And Also Recently I Grew Some Sprouts And Microgreens

noreply@blogger.com (Heather) — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 14:00:00 +0000

So I am not friends with anyone at work on facebook. (Except Annie, obviously, who was like, "hey come be a businesswoman with me and when I leave for a hot minute put up that advertisement for alpacas in my cubicle" did you even notice yet Ann K. I did it two days ago and you haven't said anything and you know how excited I am that you only need one acre to support four alpacas and their fur is warmer and lighter than wool! and as such is the reason why I had to sit there and hear one of my bosses say he plays the theremin after he was counting in foreign languages and singing Cat Stevens songs which he'd changed the words to. Which was all kind of hilarious so technically I ain't mad.) The reason for this is that probably if my co-workers looked through my pictures they would be like, "oh my god she is so arousing and businesslike in this photograph where she is vomiting in the gutter and a tranny named Alexandria is patting her back and telling her to 'pant'" and then who could get any work done. Also then they would catch me using, "Why is Jadakiss as hard as it gets?" as part of a random sequence of questions repeatedly for comedic effect and they'd be like, "Heather, we get it, you have a unique urban sensibility, you don't need to keep making hip hop references from 2004."

But somehow, through technology or magic or maybe through Annie's twitter we really have no scientific way of knowing some of my business colleagues have found this. And yes, it includes fewer titty shots, but it's nonetheless sort of embarrassing since I work in publishing where theoretically we produce content that is good and this blog is mostly just a sequence of gardening failures and tasteless implications of dudes tryna hop on, golden vagina, etc. Also, now they can catch me when I steal their jokes and appropriate them as my own and then they force me to print retractions about how I stole a line from them about getting "STUDFARM" etched on the office's glass doors okay Sam are you happy now probably you are because I just walked by your office for...normal reasons and you're not in it, no, the reason was not because I wanted to get my mouth on the giant conch our boss has in his office to blow it that would be unseemly.

Let's talk about microgreens! And sprouts!

So in our culture bitches stay eating salads. Also, they love to pretend like the salad they are eating is really good and act like my recurring daydream about running through fields of bacon holding hands with the Honey BBQ Crispy Chicken sandwich from Friendly's is gross, which it isn't, it is beautiful. It is modern art practically and I would know because I have a fancy MOMA membership and also I don't own a television, just FYI I am so cultured! However, salads are problematic in non-mild climates in the winter because those succulent (that is gross) leaves are transported from pretty far away using the blood of the earth and are encased in plastic. Even if you're eating organic, which typically you get to pat yourself on the back for (you are doing such good things even though you are the product of a meager upper-middle class household!), you still have to acknowledge the energy and environmental impact that goes into making the plastic packaging and shipping them across the country (generally you'd get greens from California- I think I read that if you separated California out from the United States and treated it as its own country, by itself it's something like the third largest food producer in the world).

And look, I'm certainly not judging about lettuce because I used up my judgment quota earlier when Tiny Balls decided I wasn't allowed to do sexual time travel anymore since I found a "ones to watch in Washington" profile of the infamous, "Would You Take Me In Your Mouth" that talked about the monthly salons he was hosting (NOT THE KIND THAT INVOLVE WEAVES, BLOWN) and giving quotes about Western Civilization that were the terriblest. Hey. We are all just putting our power pumps on and trying to do the best we can, amirite ladies? Sometimes that means your salad comes in plastic containers, and other times maybe it means you hook up with terrible people because they have a pool and your apartment's got real spotty air conditioning. The point is that after you recognize that you are making horrible (or mildly non-Earth friendly) decisions, you try to do things differently. Which always takes way longer than you think it will, and often, it's really, really hard. So hard. Oh my God, it's so hard just thinking about it.

So yeah, growing your own sprouts and microgreens can help with the plastic/non-local greens during winter issue. Growing enough lettuce for regular salads during the winter is rough when you're limited to just window space (unless maybe if you have a full hydroponic system covering several windows and you are only growing greens). However, sprouts are usually grown in jars and don't need light, and they provide bulk quickly. Microgreens do need light (nowhere near as much as a fruiting plant though) but they can be harvested pretty quickly compared to basically any adult plant. Microgreens also help deal with the spoilage problem- if you buy a bag of baby spinach, you need to eat it all within a few days, and if you don't, it gets gross. If you're growing spinach to use as a microgreen, the worst that happens if you don't eat it that week, or even the next week, is that it turns into baby or adult spinach.

Oh, I should also say that in case you're not mad bougie, microgreens are just baby baby greens. Sprouts are seeds that are probably 3-5 days old. Microgreens might be something like 14-20 days old. The method of cultivation depends on what kind of plant it is, but you're either going to grow them in jars, on moist paper towels, or in somewhat shallow trays of potting mix. So if you want to try this, I would google directions for that specific seed, but I figured it might be helpful to see what I did/am doing to get a sense of how feasible it would be for you.

For sprouting, I had a bag of mung beans that I'd purchased from the bulk bins at Whole Foods like a year earlier. None of the legumes in those bins are very pricey (definitely under $5.00 a pound, but a pound of seeds is a fuck ton of sprouts, so you wouldn't even need that much).

To start, you soak the seeds in water overnight. I used my smaller crockpot for this:

Then, you dump it all in a colander or whatever to strain the water out, and put the seeds in one or more jars that are covered with either cheesecloth or a light breathable fabric. If you do any canning, the rings work perfectly to keep the fabric on, but you can also use a rubber band or a novelty UCONN scrunchie that Jessi gave you several years ago. They generally should be kept out of the light but warm, and tilted slightly downward for drainage, so I put the jars in the larger crock pot that I keep on top of the refrigerator (the fridge spot seems to be a popular location according to the internet and books I stole from my mom).

The one thing you need to do for maintenance while they're growing is to rinse them twice a day (although some sprouts are okay with only once and some need three, apparently). But after 3-5 days (generally) they're ready to eat. By the time I finished, that strainer was overflowing and I had the sprouts in four jars.

I think with some sprouts you need to eat them at just the right time, and others you can let go for longer if you keep rinsing them, so I'll have to play around with that. I used some of those mung bean sprouts in some wraps and salads, but they started looking questionable before I could finish all of them (you can store them in the refrigerator for a few days).

About a week after I tried the sprouting, I started my first batch of microgreens in one of those plastic baby spinach clamshells. Since I was just experimenting, I went with two packets of seeds I had on hand- sunflower and kale (left- the sunflowers are the taller ones to the front). I'd had sunflower microgreens before and I like them, but one little packet doesn't yield what I was looking for for this operation (it'll give you a good number of full sunflowers if you let those bitches get full term, but with sunflower microgreens you're basically just eating the cotyledons (the first two generic-looking leaves that all plants have before they put out their first set of what's referred to as "true" leaves) so you'd need more. The kale will probably be enough, but kale is somewhat slow growing so it'll be awhile before they're doing anything.

However, on the right are some garden cress seedlings I started I think two weeks later- you can see them closer up below:

The garden cress seems to be much faster growing, and they're super easy to do since you just scatter the seeds across the surface and you don't even need to plant them.

So my thought on the microgreens is that if you are looking for quantity, maybe do some research on which plants are faster growing, as this could seriously up your yields. But, since microgreens are, you know, tiny, and not likely to ever make up the bulk of a salad, it also seems like a smart idea to grow varieties that are strong or sharp tasting, so that you can add a lot of flavor to a salad without needing a ton of leaves. (Kind of like midway between the uses for a mild lettuce and an herb?) I've seen cress, mustard, arugula, and radishes recommended for this purpose, and I'm not mad at radish greens- when I attempted to grow radishes last year but didn't space them correctly, I ended up with some, and they were pretty good. And arugula is generally awesome no matter when you eat it.

I think for next winter, I'll have to work on using sprouts and microgreens in conjunction with seasonally appropriate vegetables like carrots and kale for when I'd like it raw SORRY I CAN'T STOP MAKING HIP HOP REFERENCES EVER SINCE LIL KIM LOOKED ME IN THE EYES OUTSIDE THE TRIAL WHEN STEVEN AND I WERE THERE TO BE THE COMPLEXION CONNECTION WHEN HE WORKED AT WENDY WILLIAMS. How Many Licks is still possibly one of the greatest songs of all time HELLO Sisqo is on it and pasties are involved and who doesn't love pasties? No one. The answer is no one.

Donut: It Must Be A Crackhead (Yes, I Started Writing This Entry Circa March 17th When That Alabama Leprechaun Reference Was More Appropriate Though Still Not Really Topical)

noreply@blogger.com (Heather) — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 18:37:00 +0000

Look, I know basically no one on the planet wants to hear you talk about your pet. Any story about your animal has to be really fucking solid for you to bring it up socially, and even then, it's probably questionable. That's not to say the temptation isn't there, all the goddam time, to talk about your pet, just like people want to talk about their children, because who's so little? And who is being such a banana? But you have to fight it. Maybe pick up a People magazine and dip in to whatever that childless, can't-find-true-love freak Jennifer Aniston is doing so you can talk about that. See? Because she is childless, she is still interesting enough that like a million years since she has done any project worth talking about, she is still on the cover of your grandma's favorite magazine.

But, in terms of environmentally conscious pet care, it is useful to know what other people are doing, the way that if I ever get the money together for a post-pregnancy vagina tightening surgery, I'll be hollering at whoever's popped a baby out before me (my money is on Bunni and Kelly Taylor) to explain why I can't give my kid just a tiny bit of rum to calm them down and make them fall asleep and stop asking for shit. So, in that vein, I figured I'd give an update of my progress in taking care of this young hoodrat who lives in my house, just tryna camouflage with fabrics and cockblock.

(And yes, that is my busted laptop screen in the background, and yes, it is still broken, months later.)

Now, he's probably not a hoodrat of the same caliber as Uptown BennFrank Veetz, PG County heartthrob who went to the same high school as my friend Nancy who, as such, has become privy to THE BEST facebook statuses of all time (And yes, if you're friends with me, this is further evidence that I started writing this entry several weeks ago and have not been at all on my grind.) :

But still. MASSIVE hoodrat, found wandering Queens, and, both too broke for spray paint and lacking opposable thumbs, was instead engaging in scratchiti with his tiny paws, his movements and personality pretty much comparable only to Toonces, The Cat Who Could Drive A Car.

Now, one thing people who know the older, more businesswoman-like Heather might not know, is that I had a chocolate lab growing up who, after her puppy years, was well-behaved, loved everybody, never had accidents in the house, and only once ate an entire bag of balloons.

She also didn't judge us on the matching Christmas sweaters. Donut, however, delivers consistently snide comments re: my sartorial choices, and hates people almost as much as I do. Even though Steven has twice brought him Hoop, Donut's favorite Polish orange soda, he still barks at him like crazy (this could also be because dipping it low makes Donut uneasy, though, to be fair) and does this to most people, even Melissa who he sees every goddam day because she lives with me. He's mad bulimic, also, and his magnum opus was one time peeing, in one stretch, in EVERY ROOM IN THE HOUSE. He also has a bum heart, weird joint issues, and I am 100% sure that he came initially from a puppy mill (I acquired him from the Brooklyn Animal Resource Coalition [BARC] in Williamsburg, right after he'd come to them from the New York City Pound.)

It's sort of touchy for me to say this, since it is the Right Thing To Do, but getting dogs from a shelter can be a real crap shoot. Sara's dog, Oscar, is unbelievably sweet and well behaved.

As opposed to:

Judgement eyes. Donut, the third Indiana Jones was only one of the best movies of all time. You're being a real dick here. You were also terribly bred, physically, which, combined with the abuse and neglect, makes you act like that one student of mine who gave me the phrase "GREATJUSTGREAT" who I loved and who was really attached to me but still acted like a real cunt sometimes. (The first day of school, she made fun of someone for saying their uncle died in 9/11.)

But I have made some slow progress with him over the 2 1/2 years I've owned him. When I first got him, his fur had a bunch of mats in it, I think he had worms, and he was just kind of like, gross and throwing up out of both ends. I tried giving him regular dog food but he kept getting sick, even on the Science Diet dog food the vet tech recommended. Then I went to this pet store near where I lived at the time in Greenpoint, District Dog, where the owner recommended I try the dehydrated raw dog food from the honest kitchen, since a lot of dogs don't handle all of the corn in most commercial foods well.

I'm not motivated enough to neatly rehash what I researched before about raw feeding for dogs, but basically, it's the same deal for dogs as it is with people- organic produce and properly raised meats (haha, "raised meats") have more nutrients than their conventional counterparts, and whole foods are better than processed. So for awhile, I've been alternating between feeding Donut the honest kitchen dog food and making my own, with varying levels of success. Since he's such a little asshole, he could be super picky about his food, and even though I tried him on raw chicken for awhile, I think he didn't like the texture or something because he just wouldn't eat very much of it. He would sometimes enjoy turkey necks, sometimes not. (Dogs can eat raw chicken and turkey bones- they just can't eat the cooked ones because they get brittle and splinter.) And I'll admit, he lost some weight at this point. There. I said it. I'm a shitty parent.

However, in January, there was an article in the Times about homemade dog food, and it mentioned that a butcher shop in Williamsburg, Marlow and Daughters, was selling their own house dog food, and obviously my bougie ass had to dip in. Their first formula was just beef liver (they've since developed a more complex formula) but Donut shocked me by actually eating it somewhat voraciously. And then he puked, obvi. The first week, I kept offering him the liver, and he kept eating it but later vomiting. BUT THEN, I started cutting it with quinoa (which was an ingredient in his old food) and shit was just gangbusters. Not only did he love it and not get sick, but he started to put on weight and be less of a little bitch.

If you're interested in making homemade dog food, quinoa is super handy to have on hand as an ingredient. It's a complete source of protein, and apparently it's a seed rather than a grain (although I'm not really sure what the difference between a seed and a grain are). You can get it in the bulk bins at Whole Foods and the like for pretty cheap (maybe around $2 a pound?), and usually one dry cup of quinoa cooks up to a whole pot's worth, which for Donut generally lasts a week. A lot of people will feed their dogs rice or other grains, which is fine if they don't have allergies, but quinoa cooks pretty quickly on the stove so it works with my laziness. (And all you have to do is just put one cup of quinoa in the pot, 2-3 cups of water, let it come to a boil, and then turn it down to simmer until it's done, maybe stirring occasionally so it doesn't burn on the bottom. You don't even have to strain it or anything.)

The young man also eats a lot of vegetables on the side, since he's weirdly a baby vegetarian and I want to round out the nutritional package.

I pretty much just give him what's in season at the farmer's market, and he gets it whole as I'm leaving for work in the morning to give him something to do while I'm at work (this mostly ends up being apples and carrots, since they're cheapish, you can get them almost all year round, and they don't go bad quickly). I was giving him the rest of my tea in the mornings, which he really liked, but lately I've been drinking this tea with cocoa in it so he's been so blown.

Now that I know of the few basics that he likes, I want to really work on making sure he's getting all of the vitamins and micronutrients or whatever that he needs. Kristina, if you're reading this, what's in the patties that you give your dog? (You put it on my facebook at one point and I tried looking at the weird fb function where you can view your friendship with someone to find it but I didn't see it.) the honest kitchen has a recipe book that uses their foods (and sometimes just regular whole foods) to make meals for dogs, (and also some recipes not using their foods that are edible for people and dogs, which, though it sounds gross in theory, could work nicely with my laziness, since I'd only have to cook once) which could be a way to more easily incorporate things I don't generally have on hand, like kelp. My new plan of action is to spend more time looking at the ingredients in the various premium organic dog foods and figure out how I can incorporate them into a seasonal diet for both the creature and me, with an eye for things my broke ass can afford. So, I will probably not make salmon for Donut, since it's like $16 a pound, but I could definitely buy a bunch of sweet potatoes and make some for him, and some for me.

Some final notes on Donut maintenance, should anyone actually give a shit-

Me going back to work has been quite an adjustment for him. He definitely is super punchy by the time I get home (much like I used to be when socializing with people after being unemployed all day), and since I started work in December and the sidewalks were excessively treacherous, I wasn't walking him as much as I should have. I've found that his behavior is much improved if I walk him for a mile in the morning before I go to work, and a mile when I get home. I've actually been doing pretty well at the morning walks, but cold weather, socializing, and overtime haven't really helped the evening walks. I'm working on it though.
I've vaguely got the whole wee wee pad thing down. Donut naturally takes dumps and pees in the bathroom, and his jam is to kind of try to aim for the door when peeing, though he doesn't make it. So that's where I put the wee wee pad. One awesome thing about raw high protein diets is that the dogs can make way more efficient use of the food they take in, so they poop less and the poops are much smaller and less gross. If Donut was a bigger dog, I'd probably have to hire a dog walker, but since he's so little this system is working for now.
Don't worry, even though he is moderately better behaved, he is still the worst and I would not be surprised if he throws up on my hair again.

On the docket for dog care, that maybe in a super long time I'll update everyone about: homemade dog shampoo after I find that recipe Elaina sent me that one time, actually baking the dog biscuits my mom gave me the recipes and bone-shaped cookie cutter for, and a Henry VIII-esque manly but fancy brown collar that will hopefully involve jewels and ermine fur. I might have to settle for rhinestones and a weave on that last one, but we'll see.

How I'm Livin

noreply@blogger.com (Heather) — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 21:20:00 +0000

Even though I spend my days at the stud farm (we're planning to get that etched in glass on the doors) telling bro-workers to "Get that brain, son," and answering questions like, "Would you rather have sex with a tranny with big boobs and a big dick, or small boobs and a small dick?" (the former, obviously), I keep my off-peak cell phone hours in a more lady-like employ. You know, just doing bitch stuff, like cooking, cleaning, gardening, and being forced, during Guys Night, to slow dance to "Strangers In The Night" while Godzilla plays in the background and I'm double-fisting Buds and PBRs. Because, as we've established, a strong part of my appeal is that I'm like one of your bros that you could fuck and not be gay.

But I digress from ladylike things. So, first of all, I've moved my plants around a bunch, but here's the set-up in the bathroom window:

The top left is the Calamondin orange tree B Flan gave me for Christmas- it's been blooming for a couple weeks now, and it's loaded with more fruits than [insert a gentrifying neighborhood here].

Next to the Calamondin tree is basically Melissa and Christian's love child- do you guys all remember when I was like, "Yo, my roommate's boyfriend is being mad whack AND he's making me sharecrop a pineapple for him?" Well, me and C-Town have been working on strengthening our friendship, based on a foundation almost solely comprised of shared Hot 97 references, and in like January the pineapple was finally ready to eat. But, excitingly, you can propagate an entirely new pineapple plant from just the top of a pineapple fruit. You just cut it off, stick it in water for a few weeks, (I had it in a sunny window...I think it does need light to do this) and then roots will develop!

You can then just plant it, although I think it takes around two years for a new pineapple to form and ripen on it.

On the bottom shelf in that bathroom window are, on the left, my Meyer lemon tree, and on the right, the other Calamondin orange tree I got for Christmas. They illustrate some of the biggest challenges in indoor plant culture- over/underwatering, adequate light, dry winter heat, and pest potential. I put all of my plants in sub-irrigating planters, like I've mentioned before, to deal with that first problem, but then the bottom two started dropping leaves, which made me super sad. One hoodratty thing you can do to address the last three that I learned from an article in Mother Earth News about techniques for growing vegetables in partial shade conditions is to get rowdy with some tin foil, like so:

Adding tinfoil to container plants directs more light up to the leaves to improve growth, and it also deters pests. Except Roger from television's Sister Sister. (Sorry if you are my facebook friend and you just caught me reusing that joke. Also, btw, Immature did not sing "Candy Rain," and now I have no excuse to post the video here, BLOWN.) The tinfoil will also prevent some of the water from evaporating from the soil, and it comes in handy when you're trying to spray the leaves with one of those detachable shower heads, since it stops soil from getting all over your bathtub. And who hasn't had that problem, I mean, right?

The next thing I might try, since the Meyer lemon and bottom Calamondin have been losing leaves, is to cover them in plastic wrap (with some air holes, of course) to retain moisture until we're done using the radiator for the season. And believe me, I know, sometimes, it doesn't look as nice when it's wrapped up, and maybe you can't feel as much, but it'll still be hard under there. It's not like with penises.

In spite of the leaf loss, and probably because I spent last night [ed- I started writing this post a week ago and got distracted] at small claims night court and I needed something more exciting in my life than getting a sideways hug from my old landlord, hearing him tell the court officers that "their computers were wrong," and watching him take off his shoe and scratch his foot, "because his diabetes was acting up," when I looked at the Meyer lemon this morning I noticed it had a bunch of new leaf growth AND new buds forming! As did the other, more struggly Calamondin orange tree!

My dishwasher, however, had, in a super Full House-like manner, comically overflowed with suds all over the kitchen, because maybe I put regular dish soap in since I ran out of the tablets. BLOWN again.

The aloe is doing great, even though it's not near the window in the bathroom- the lamb's ear next to it started dying while it was still in front of the window, so I think come spring I'll have to take another seedling from my mom's herb garden and start again:

(It's also where Melissa stores her straightener and product, since all of the shelves and outlets in our bathroom are weirdly located.)

The lemon verbena has new growth on it and has been surviving nicely, despite the winter heat. Usually it has the rosemary next to it, so I'm wondering if that's been taking the brunt of the radiator action.

Since rosemary is a Mediterranean plant, it puts up with dryness exceptionally well, so that shit's been gangbusters.

There's only a couple spots left for plants that need a fair amount of light now- the above shelf in the kitchen, in the smaller planter vases by the kitchen sink window, and maybe a hanging pot in both windows.

The kitchen sink window fits seven vase-soda bottle planters. I've recently acquired some more seedlings too- a thyme that I stuck in with the rosemary, a basil, a cilantro, and a sage, so that leaves me with limited room, and it's forcing me to really think about what plants deliver the most. Especially when you're growing indoors, I've found, from jacking up probably dozens of plants, that things are less sloppy when:

a) you're excited enough about them to care if they start to die
b) they are useful enough in small quantities to make it worthwhile (I could theoretically grow carrots, but then I'd spend the whole growing season on one plant that takes a long ass time to mature, and at the end have one carrot that Donut will eat in five minutes)
c) they make you happy when you look at them

So, for example, the fruit on the citrus trees takes a long time to mature, but they provide enough to flavor a liqueur, they flower several times a year and scent the entire room, and they're aesthetically pleasing in basically all stages of growth. But like, with lettuces...even though in theory they're a great idea, and you can generally cut leaves off and more will grow back, it's tough to grow enough to make a base for a full salad. However, you can grow herbs that work in salads but won't constitute the bulk of the salad, like nasturtiums, which are not only perennials, but have leaves, flowers, AND seed pods you can eat (I guess some people pickle them like capers?).

With that in mind, here is my tentative plant wish list for this season:
1. Jasmine (vining, so I can trail it over a window)
2. Kaffir lime tree (like I obsessed about before, you can use the leaves AND fruit on these)
3. Nasturtiums (good for hanging baskets)
4. Peppermint and/or spearmint- maybe a big planter with various kinds of mint?
5. Summer Savory6. Sweet Majoram (I think I killed my last sweet majoram by accident- the wick I used in the planter disintegrated, so I think I need to make sure I always use synthetic fabrics, even though I'm inclined to use up any all or part cotton scraps I have lying around)
7. Peppers, the remix?
8. Dill

I have to admit though, despite it being filled with Tasty Banana mousetraps and Newtown Creek residue, I miss the Greenpoint apartment. I want a backyard again in which I can forcibly snuggle my roommates in a hammock or where party guests can stand on Patricke's shoulders and try to break into Leah's bedroom window because I have passed out and inadvertently locked myself in with everyone's purses. And, you know, plant things. But this apartment has a dishwasher, which is pretty sweet, and it's also located near another superfund site, so hey, it definitely has its upsides. I think the constraint of only having three windows to garden in offers an interesting challenge, and it will help me think of ways to encourage people to garden on a very manageable small scale. It'll also free up time to work on other aspects of homesteading, like preserving foods and getting back on my liquors hustle.

And now, thanks to Broseph, I'll close with Careless Whispers, because I probably will never dance again the way I danced to "Strangers In The Night" that one awkward, "most romantic thing that's ever happened to me" time.

Weekly Gay Ass* Martha Stewart Round-Up

noreply@blogger.com (Heather) — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Clothing Swap

Clothing swap or drag estate sale? Either way, it's basically all of my dreams come true. And I hope y'all know you need to come correct and alert me if you're getting rid of anything with sequins, nucka.

Pass on the Paper Towels

Microfiber cloths? Where have I seen those before? Write your own rhymes, bitch, before it gets to a Lil Kim/Nicki Minaj level beef. Still, obviously, I cosign on this. I do think you need to come up with a storage solution for dirty cloths if they're going to be a practical option, and you need to have enough of them on hand so that you can use a fresh one every time. The ones I just bought recommend laundering them in a mesh garment bag, so I'm thinking that you could have a separate garbage can (or a five gallon bucket?) just for them, with a mesh garment bag in it, and that way you're not mixing them in with your daily laundry. I'd say you maybe need like 20 of them? But an 8 pack of paper towels is $15.79, so I think you'd start saving money within a month or two. A case of 12 is $40 at the Brooklyn Home Depot, OR on Amazon, you can get a 36 pack of Zwipes for $22.75 AND yes, it's eligible for Super Saver shipping.

Eco Gift Wrap

I mean, to be real, my ass is just going to use newspaper, probably, and that's if I even manage to get my act together enough to buy you a real present that isn't a bottle of Svedka at all. But Martha's gay ass ideas about using birch bark, old timey maps, and sweaters (apparently, sweater repurposing is not limited to just Grey Gardens headwraps anymore) are kind of tight.

Cast Iron Skillet

Apparently, you can turn a cast iron skillet over and use it as a pizza stone and cast iron skillets last "at least 50 years." They also add iron to your diet. And let's be real, I'll buy anything that involves rubbing oil all over something. Even if that something is a questionable craigslist home massage.

"Save Money on Wine

Wines often cost more when they come from a well-known wine-making region or are made from a popular grape. So rather than heading straight for a familiar bottle, try something different: Instead of Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, or Merlot, try Albarino, Malbec, or Sangiovese. Chile, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa are newer wine-producing countries that make good-quality bargain wines. You can also ask the store manager about any specials. If a store gets a deal from the distributor, the savings may be passed on to you."

Okay, but aren't we all just buying cheap wine from Trader Joe's anyway, unless we haven't thought ahead and are forced to go to the bougie store twice in one day post drunk brunch with Kelly?

Teacup Lights

Last time I checked, candle purchases weren't exactly devouring my paychecks, unless I'm back at the Yankee Candle land of dreams, but I'll bite- you use the leftover ends of candles and old teacups to make new candles. Or, you could do what I do and just put your old candle on the radiator. Done! And all without the use of a double boiler or having to steal from foppish dandies.

Belt Buckle Picture Frame- What The Fuck

I guess- I GUESS- you could do this if you're mad dumb. Or if you need a use for your once ironic name buckle purchased in Chinatown sitting unused in your closet next to a trucker hat. 2003 was a weird time.

Purify The Air With Houseplants

Posing indoor house plants as a money saver in lieu of buying an air purifier is literally the whitest money saving tip I have ever heard.

Freeze It

Freeze wine, lemon juice, tomato paste, herbs, extra stock to add "oomph" to weeknight meals? In ice cube trays? I learned this in a mom magazine years ago, thank you very much. Why you all up on Better Homes and Garden's nuts?

Turn Pretty Paper Into Packaging

Run used wrapping paper and the like through a paper shredder for packing paper. But seriously, who sends this many gifts? I can barely feed and clothe myself, let alone remember a birthday, purchase a gift, and send it to someone in fanciful repurposed packaging. Maybe I need to try initiating a Xanax-for-Adderall swapsies with more motivated friends.

No Waste Dressing

Here's another sort of whack, but workable one- make dressing using the leftover bit of mustard in the jar, right in the jar. I mean- yeah, it works I guess, and it encourages you to reuse a jar. I just wish Martha had an answer for how I could start having disposable income.

Fitted Sheet As Box Spring Cover

Wallpaper Door Panels

Again, I don't really see how this saves money, but I have enjoyed this look ever since I noticed it on Sally's bedroom door on Mad Men.

Coordinate Mismatched Towels

Again, to be real, we're all just lucky if there's a clean towel in my bathroom, period. But if I ever start to care about having matching towels in the bathroom, this ribbon-as-unifier concept works.

Decoupage Chest and Magazine File

Fuck. You got me. If there's anything white people and novelty tee-shirt enthusiasts love, it's trompe l'oeil. Just ask my little brother who has to pretend he likes the tuxedo tee-shirt I bought him for Christmas.

Make Pancakes and Soup from Mashed Potatoes

Make A Frittata From Leftover Pasta

Lid Rack Mail Sorter

Mel and I bought one of those lid holders that attaches to the wall from Ikea to hold magazines, but they get all floppy, and no one likes it when it's floppy. Mail might be a better choice for it.

Office In A Chest

I use a vintage suitcase for the same purpose. Was that a douchey and pretentious sounding thing to say? Of course. I went to NYU. One of my best friends' boyfriends has a Proust tattoo, in French, on his arm. We're all The Worst. But at least you can chalk it up to our crippling insecurities and paralyzing awkwardness.

Brooch Ribbon Necklace

Okay. Now go back to work. What the fuck are they paying you for, anyway?

More Gay* Shit: Martha Stewart Again, Thanks To My Addictive Personality And Self-Destructive Tendencies

noreply@blogger.com (Heather) — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 21:03:00 +0000

*Note: this comes from someone who, at one point, had probably kissed more gay men than straight men and received for her 18th birthday ironically held at Hooters a custom trucker hat with a lighthouse shooting rainbows hand drawn upon it labeled "Queer Beacon." Know that in all instances in which I use the word "gay" or "homo" it is with nothing but love for the community who has motorboated me the most.

I initially wrote that this would be a Weekly Segment, followed up by some mentions of juice-box wine and maudlin reflections on love lost. But I feel pretty good today, since one of my co-workers sent me the following email detailing how he was partially responsible for one of the Best Places On Earth: the Yankee Candle SCENTER (puns!) OF THE UNIVERSE compound in Western Massachusetts.

(I know you would never do this, but DON'T sleep on that recreation of a quaint Bavarian village, or you will be So Blown when actual fake falling snow comes down to picturesquely fuck up your steeze. Guys, the actual Von Trapp Great-Grandchildren performed there! I am absolutely losing my shit right now that I missed this.) To all my n-words in lockdown in the 860/413 aka Hot 93.7 listening area- get ready to read a description of your wildest dreams come true:

"Ok, you are going to love this. Answer yes I have… but there is more.. back in 1993-1995 I was doing network installations (running fiber cables, data cables, installing the servers etc. etc.) Yankee Candle was one of our biggest clients, so I was actually the one who wired that entire bavarian village.. there are crawl tunnels and spaces all throughout that place and since I was smaller and I guess agile.. I was the one that had to pull the cables through all the back areas, tunnels etc. etc. and then hook them up to punch down blocks and servers.. it was actually pretty cool.. we worked 6pm – 6am. Also installed all the network stuff for their factory, nothing like standing on a lift 30 feet in the air over a vat of melted scented wax to get a little dizzy…"

Did your mind also just flashback to this time in your life when your mother hadn't patched up your fall foliage pants in such a way that now they give you a cameltoe if you try to wear them but you still wear them anyway because how could you ever stop wearing the most sexually arousing pants of all time?

The next thing you're going to tell me is that one of the dudes in the sausagefest nerdery I work in invented the Friendly's Cone Head sundae and hand carved the Old Sturbridge Village old timey picture that you can stick your head in.

Because this is what normal people do after weddings. They go to historical recreation destinations where ginger cookies abound, spend a lot of time ascertaining the exact process through which old-timey people used sage leaves to dye homespun yarn, and take pictures in which Jessi is literally the greatest little boy of all time.

The point is, I'm rejuvenated to the point that I can say hey, Donut, tonight, we're drinking sparkling water and eating healthfully, because the world isn't such a terrible place after all when you're reminded about how you can go nutmeg deep pretty much whenever you want into a world of Foliage and Fun, and that your friend's second annual 29th birthday party is being held at a roller skating rink in Middletown where this time, your Mean Dad won't make you wear a helmet and the other fifth graders will not mock you as "Gangster's Paradise" plays, at a time in your life when you couldn't actually relate to the lyrics of the song and you'd never knocked a chair over in anger while wearing a leather jacket.

So it's Martha Stewart Time!!!!!! Today, we will be tackling organization systems- all 100 of them, and more.

Closet Pegboard

If every hole you drill into your apartment means another spackle job you'll have to do as you hastily shove your belongings into force flex garbage bags and get in tense fights with your roommate about "just wanting to know if she wanted you to bring her package of tofu in the refrigerator items bag," you might want to think about using peg board, so you can move hooks and the like around as your storage needs change, without creating more holes. Plus, pegboard is dad garage chic!

Clothing Fix-It Kit

Face it, you're living a lie. You are never going to sew the buttons back onto that coat that your heaving bosom caused to pop off. But maybe, your mom will shame you into letting her fix it, because your hobo-like appearance brings embarrassment to your entire family.

Boxed Rings

Okay, Martha, I'll bite. In the past, I've stuck an array of jewelries up on the wall via hooks or thumbtacks, which again leads to the problem of Holes That Need To Be Plugged Up, and I'm not just talking about ladies who you *think* could have the "fun fucked into them" by you. You can probably make your own hoodrat version of this by affixing a shoe box to a canvas. Then when people come over, they will say, "my, what a nice shoe box affixed to a canvas," and when you go to the kitchen to check on the roast, they will laugh at you and your tacky attempts at DIY.

Jewelry Cabinet

Sure, this looks awesome. Unfortunately, even though Martha thinks you will find an awesome one just hanging out at a flea market or yard sale, all you will be able to scrounge up is a gross metal one you find, like the rest of your furniture, on the street. Hey, at least bed bugs don't live in metal!

Pretty Plastic Bag Organizer

Goodness, you're not making that! You just had a panic attack because you started thinking about how you'd manage to even sweep the floor before your parents come to visit tomorrow, and half of your apartment is still in boxes when you moved in two months ago. The best you can hope for is that one of your bougier friends shows up to your housewarming party with wine in one of those classy cloth bags, instead of a 40 in black plastic that they've already drunk half of.

Hanging Baskets

See-Through Containers

You definitely need this. You probably have mice. Actually, you definitely have mice. And they're gnawing through the plastic lid to that can of powdered milk you bought to make hot chocolate mix as we speak.

Under-the-Sink Organizer

Baking Pan Organizer

I can't hate on this one. It's a good look.

Pegboard Organizer

Your dad loves ghostwriting for Martha Stewart.

Tidy Cords

Maybe your new apartment only has three outlets and they are all in out of the way places, like above the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. You will have a lot of extension cords draped all over the place, and you could use this to curl them up? But a better idea would be to put it around your dick, and have a lightsaber fight with another dude, and I will film it.

Mobile Storage Table

Bench Storage

If you don't want the mice getting to your shit, you better put it on lockdown in a bench with a lid that is too heavy for their tiny hands to lift up. Plus, remember that one time Michelle and Sara came to your apartment and a chair broke underneath you while you were eating bodega ice cream? And how you didn't buy a replacement chair? Where the fuck are people supposed to sit? Go buy a goddam bench. Your floor is way too dirty for guests to sit on.

Pegboard Helper

Your dad's at it again with this room divider.

Stylish Storage Boxes and Labels

You will try to make this yourself using paint and ribbon, and it will look shitty. Try it as a conversation piece in your office! Oh, you don't have one? Haha. You're poor, aren't you? Now no one will ever have sex with you unless they're trying to live out some kind of stable boy fantasy.

Magnet Organizers

They have a bunch of this stuff at Ikea. Eat some reasonably priced macaroni and cheese in their cafeteria and hey, you'll get through it. There's cinnamon buns at the end, you know.

Roll Holder

Guys, put those toilet paper rolls in a vase because that plastic bag is not cutting it and anyway, you got it for free since it was the centerpiece at your friend's wedding that you maybe took too much advantage of the open bar at and ended up throwing up in the bridal suite bathroom before going back for more and falling asleep at the table. Hey, teaching is really hard.

Toiletry Shelf

Because it's really not polite to hand the towel you use to dry your dog off to your roommate's boyfriend and tell him it's the "guest towel," use the vertical space in your bathroom to store extra towels, toothbrushes, and bulk goods.

Terry Slipcover

For once in my life, I actually have a bathroom large enough to accommodate a chair in it, and I think I'm going to go with it. But what I will probably do is just throw a bathrobe over a chair and call it a day.

Okay, so now that I've taken myself through 25 bedroom organizers, 25 kitchen organizers, 25 closet, storage, and office organizers, and 25 bathroom organizers, plus answered a boss' question, "Oh, you went to NYU?" with "Yeah. It's where I learned to be an administrative assistant." I'm both bouge and snarked out. Come back next week when I return to the blog equivalent of calling an ex-boyfriend for sex. (And no, well meaning friends, I haven't done that in like a whole month, okay, so you don't need to be worried. 2011, y'all!)

Gay Shit*: I Read Martha Stewart So You Don't Have To

noreply@blogger.com (Heather) — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 22:47:00 +0000

a. most applicable to an apartment dwelling life (decorating without painting, fitting a lot in a small space [hi-yo!], storage without making excessive holes in the wall)

b. include repurposing or other environmentally friendly gestures

c. can help you gussy up the shitty, make do situations we all live in because we can't afford to buy real furniture or art yet, and if you can, don't tell me that, because I don't need another reason to cry alone in my bedroom while watching a Netflix documentary about what could cause the end of our civilization that features the same scientist from Guns, Germs, and Steel, which also makes you sad because Remember When You Watched That With Someone You Loved and Who Even Knows What Love Is Anymore, Pass The Juice Box Of Wine, Donut. Collapse! Watch it instantly! And decorate while drinking that wine juice box because these are the best days of your life, young person!

Illustrated Cabinet

Try making this edgy by using porn. You're so counterculture!

Bottle Cap Magnets

Probably REAL fucking jenky in action.

Velvet Ribbon Mirror Frame

Because my cheap ass is not buying a frame for the mirror I found on the street.

Prints With Custom Patterned Mats

Did your kid draw you a shitty picture? Did your friend in art school draw you a shitty picture? Distract everyone's eyes with a garish pattern!

Quilt Headboard

Unfortunately, this one is For Lesbians Only (FLO). If you're trying to get pounded out, you need some bare wall space for leverage or that quilt and rod (wanky wanky) are definitely getting pulled down in the midst of boning.

Hanging Pillows

Napkin-Folded Pillow Case

Pinecone Finial

Who the fuck knew that shit was called a "finial?" Probably Michelle. But she is a graduate student, and we all know Graduate Students Are The Worst. I also think you could use not a pinecone for this. Ready to get edgy again? Try a bundle of cigarettes loosely tied with gold rope and finished with at tassel. Look at you juxtaposing! You're so contemporary!

Stepladder Bed Stand

Jewelry Storage

Terribly, terribly homo. But why do I like it?

Okay, the anxiety moment has come. I just saw a link below the one I was looking at for "100 Easy Organizers." Clearly, I went in over my head when I thought I could browse pillows, frames and mirrors, bedding, lighting, and bedroom organization in one day. I think next week I will tackle my results from taking on the organization section.

Dirt McGirt Revisited

noreply@blogger.com (Heather) — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 21:54:00 +0000

As someone who is almost as greazy and raw as Big Baby Jesus, one of the things I've been trying to work on of late is cleaning. We all know the troubles with eco-friendly cleaners- so many of them are painfully ineffective and so unnervingly hippie scented that it's tempting to give up on them entirely. One of the problems I've determined is that, perhaps at least with Americans, we're so used to the convenience of super strong cleaning products that we're not accustomed to cleaning preventively or in my case, even regularly. (I mean, I'd assumed, from growing up with a chocolate lab that B FLAN apparently stayed judging,

Or is he grilling his oldest sister's fresh homemade M.C. Escher joint?

that by having a dog I'd pretty much never have to clean the floor. WRONG. Donut instead artfully trails both crumbs and occasionally urine through multiple rooms, sometimes pausing to almost throw up on a jumpoff. I'M GETTING SO LAID.) But did you just ask me for an old timey farmer's almanac quote to clarify this point? Just ask this unsettling gif of Ben Franklin! (Is that a gif? I'm new to being a robotic scientist.) An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. So here are some things I've encountered in my slovenly journey through life since the last time I posted about cleaning that could potentially help you, if by some chance you are less tidy than me which is virtually impossible.

1) Mesh sink and shower traps.
You're probably doing this already. But if you live in a hobo fort, as I often have, you know that the plumbing is often old and busted, and generally prone to clogging. There's the whole eco-friendly trick of putting a half cup of baking soda (perhaps scented with essential oils if you're a big fruitcake), adding vinegar, and making a bathroom 3rd grade science experiment volcano, followed by a tea kettle of boiling water. That's just fine for a bit of scum or whatever, and it will help with odors as well, but it's not going to eat through six months of hair. I've had to resort to Draino a couple of times in the past few years, and my environmental conscience is definitely out of sorts over it. Some apartments, like my last one, have the kind of drain covering that is screwed down and covered in large-ish holes, which makes it difficult to put a more effective mesh trap over it. (I'm not inclined to think the other one traps much hair, which seems to be the biggest source of clogs.) I think you could probably just unscrew it and put a mesh trap in, though.

One place to not forget is the bathroom sink. It didn't occur to me, but somehow we have managed to clog the bathroom sink, and I don't just think it was our ill advised idea to fill it with decorative river rocks that ended up getting really slimy and gross (kind of like...actual river rocks). And no, I wax my mustache, and Melissa doesn't let Q-Tip shave at our apartment, so it's not that. It's probably from blow-drying and hair straightening, I'm guessing. Anyway, make sure you put one there too. Right now I had to awkwardly put one upside down on it since there's that stopper thing in it which appears to be broken and won't come out, but I think I'll need to find a more permanent solution.

Admittedly, in both the kitchen and bathroom, cleaning the mesh things is gross, but I think it's necessary. I'd also do the volcano thing as often as you remember to do it.

2) Swiffer vacuum.
Sometimes, appliance store employees will tell you that such a thing "does not exist." However, former all-star CVS employee Tiny Balls will tell you that it does, and it's pretty wonderful. Could you buy a real vacuum for your floors? Yeah, probably. But seeing as I probably can't even afford the toy Dyson that Catie's adorable niece rocks,

Nascent feminism! She chose that vacuum, okay PC police?

this is what I'm up to for now. Plus, it works via charging it, so in addition to being extremely light you get more mobility.

I think, technically, if you look through a lot of environmental blogs, Swiffers are kind of the worst, but you can modify them so they serve multiple purposes and don't require you to keep purchasing those pads or Wet Jet solutions. It seems like a lot of people are taking an old dish towel, cutting it to size, and attaching it to the Swiffer, but you can also buy a pack of microfiber cleaning cloths and use those, for both wet and dry cleaning. Let me tell you something- people are all up on microfiber's nuts on the internet. There's some Austrian brand called "Enjo" that is apparently a cult classic in other countries (although I think it's also something vulgar in Japanese, so be careful when you google it...), but it seems like standard microfiber cleaning cloths are getting the job done for a lot of people out there (the ones I found on Amazon had excellent reviews, and someone mentioned that you could also get them at Lowe's.)

I guess the deal with microfiber is that since the threads are so fine, they're able to trap a considerable amount of dirt/grime, abetted by static electricity when dry, and water when wet. They also don't generally require you to use any cleaning product with them besides water, so they save money and packaging waste. I imagine for weird grime spots on the floor, you'd probably want to use the old baking soda-castille soap scrub, or if you want to go commercial, Melissa picked up Method's Le Scrub, which I've also been using on tough pots and pans (and would probably also do well in the shower). The scent is decent, too, as this kind of thing goes. And you could probably wet the microfiber using vinegar too, for extra clean/shine/easter egg dying scent.

One thing I like about the Swiffer vacuum is that you really can use it to both vacuum and wet-clean (just don't turn the vacuum on). Since Donut stays shedding all over the place, our old apartment used to contain giant caramel-colored tumbleweeds just lurking, waiting to fuck up your black outfits, but now that I have the vacuum, the hair problem is much less serious. I'm still covered in dog hair (although I have had some success by changing out of my work clothes before I pick him up to pet him), but that's the price you pay for having a Young Explorer in your life.

Why is he so much happier as Dog Kylie Minogue? My dog is a faggot.

3) Pretending to be somewhat eco-friendly with your lazy cleaning compromises: using cost as a motivator to properly take care of your clothing.
The weekend before last, instead of spending all of Saturday doing my own laundry, I dropped 46 pounds of it off at the laundromat before going to brunch at Buttermilk Channel with Melissa and Kelly. In my defense, the only one near me is the tiniest laundromat of all time (I'm going to say just wider than a subway car, and that's including the machines, so the actual space to walk through is even worse), there are no seats, and other laundry patrons referred to it as "Tetris" and were trying to give me tips on which machines actually dried the clothing. I also had that volume of laundry because I was washing linens and stuff from the move, so theoretically, this won't be a regular expense.

Also, have you ever had a bloody mary with a fucking oyster for a garnish? Or pecan pie French toast? I mean, come on.

Try to have a best friend who is a vegetarian so she will let you eat the oyster when you 60/40 your brunch beverages. What, you don't do that and just have your own individual drink? Lame-alert! How are you supposed to have both sweet AND savory alcohol, buy two drinks per person? It's a recession, guys, ever heard of it?

Oysters are so sustainable and non-sentient that even vegetarians are starting to get on board with them. And not just the ones who lie about being a vegetarian because they think it makes them seem cute but really they're just annoying as fuck. (I mean, don't get me wrong, I support being a vegetarian, and I live with one, but you know the type I'm talking about. Ugh, but the worst is people who pretend to be vegans but aren't. Why are you the worst? Eating weird vegan cookies does not make you superior, nephew. There's no need to lie about it. That's not to say, again, that eating weird vegan cookies makes you that kind of person. You can eat a cookie without being the worst. Or, to put my criticism of vegetarian/veganism misused as status marker, like the author of the above mentioned oyster article writes, "Eating ethically is not a purity pissing contest, and the more vegans or vegetarians pretend that it is, the more their diets start to resemble mere fashion—and thus risk being dismissed as such. Emerson wrote, 'A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.' Or maybe I just wanted to include another adage in this post. Who knows.)

What I think is key here, at the nexus of lazy bouge and ecological mindfulness, are two things. First, you can use the extra cost as a motivator to dry fewer items. For me, the annoying thing about doing laundry in that kind of seatless-setting is the whole change-over process. The machines are often tricksters about how much time they really have left, and if you have to wait you're often left watching back to back episodes of new Mowry sister-related programming on BET. But if you're just washing clothes (on cold, theoretically), you can come back for them post-brunch and hence are not subjected to Tia, Tamara, or....Roger!

The second is that if you take proper care of your clothes, you can wash them less (and they'll also last longer). So hey, go ahead, and put on those home pants with an elastic waistband when you get home from work.

The Comfort Zone

I really liked a lot of the tips on this I found here, especially dressing for the task at hand and wearing traditional underclothes. Slips, guys! Slips! They're not just outwear! I consulted the internet to learn more about this phenomenon, and it turns out that they can be pretty handy in terms of not making your skirt ride up, making it lie properly (or lay, shit, middle school grammar, why have I forgotten you? You "lay" something down right? But the skirt "lies" on its own, sans direct object? EVERYTHINGISTHEWORST) so that it doesn't wrinkle or cling, and protecting your clothing from how gross you are. I have to admit, I have had some serious Seventeen magazine moments involving vintage dresses made of synthetic fabric weirdly riding up when I am carrying a larger tote bag, and I didn't even realize that slips could help arrest this phenomenon.

This does mean, however, that you probably shouldn't freeball as much as you do, like right now, as you read this and your nuts are delicately teabagging your Businessman Pants in your office chair. BLOWN. However, are you wearing opaque tights? Sheer tights? Freeball away! The word "panty" is right there in the word "pantyhose." There's no need to doublebag it. Or, to judge This Guy for never wearing underwear with my tights. Except for when your friend posts on your facebook, "Heather. Got our wedding video. Your cooter almost makes an appearance." Maybe if it's a filmed occasion you should wear underwear just in case, but only if you tend to get unruly on the dance floor. Next time, I'm wearing my dick shorts.

Additionally, you should wash your bras/underwear in lingerie bags- it's not just for use because you're embarrassed that that old lady will be mumbling about your underwear to her co-workers in Chinese. Apparently, it keeps the straps from wrapping around each other. You should fasten the clasp so that it doesn't catch on sweaters and the like. H&M's website also suggests that you "wash nylon tights and delicate garments with details in a laundry bag." If you didn't several years ago become too fat for the jeans you owned and decided that you wouldn't buy another pair until you were thin enough to fit and consequently haven't owned jeans since 2008, and you often sport some Wranglers or Chics, you should also zip them up, since the teeth can damage clothing as well. I've been wondering for a long time if you should turn your clothes inside out or not to get them cleaner- according to this website:

"Some of the wear and tear that happens on your clothing can be prevented by turning your clothing inside out before washing and drying. Washing and drying clothing is rough on the outside of your clothing. Turning garments inside out will reduce pilling which dulls the look of the fabric. Don't forget to turn clothing inside out when you hang clothes outside to dry. While the sun is an excellent and efficient drying tool, it will zap the color right out of your clothing."

H&M's website actually has a pretty good primer on laundering that tells you the best way to take care of clothes by fabric, probably because they know that their clothes literally fall apart as you're wearing them:

"Washing instructions

The washing instructions for your garment sometimes contain extra information on caring for the item. Here are a few more tips on caring for certain materials and garments.

Details

Take off removable details and do up Velcro and zip fastenings before washing. Wash nylon tights and delicate garments with details in a laundry bag.

Chunky-knits

Chunky-knits should be reshaped and dried flat to maintain the original shape, which is why these garments are additionally labelled “Dry flat”.

Linen

Linen is a natural material and can easily get misshapen when wet. To restore the garment to its original shape, iron it with a hot steam iron. To keep its sheen, iron the garment on the reverse side.

Viscose

Viscose is a natural material and can easily get misshapen when wet. To restore the garment easily to its original shape, iron it with a steam iron.

Silk

Silk is a very delicate material and should be treated with care. Use a detergent for delicates when washing silk and do not stretch the garment while wet.

Wool

Often, airing woollen garments is enough. Use a detergent for delicates when you do wash them. Use the wool or hand wash cycle on your washing machine or wash by hand. Iron after washing to restore the natural sheen.

Denim

Wash jeans inside out to stop them fading. Remove them from the washing machine as soon as possible after the programme has ended to avoid creasing. Denim’s characteristic appearance is the result of a special dyeing method. As a result, small pigment particles may remain on the surface and can rub off.

Leather

Leather and suede items should be taken to a specialist leather dry cleaner.

Down jackets

Place tennis balls in the tumble dryer when drying down garments to distribute the down evenly. The down must be dried completely.

Rainwear

Rainwear should drip-dry. If you dry them in a drying cabinet, do so at a low temperature.

Washing clothes and the environment

H&M works actively on environmental matters related to production and transport in order to limit our environmental impact. The greatest share of energy consumption, however, occurs when you wash your clothes.

Energy consumption during the lifetime of a T-shirt from washing, tumble drying and ironing

Energy distribution during the lifetime of a cotton T-shirt. The “use” phase covers: washing 25 times at 60°, with tumble drying and ironing. (Source: “Well dressed?” By: University of Cambridge Institute for Manufacturing)

Don’t wash clothes unnecessarily
Don’t wash clothes that are not dirty. Often, airing and brushing clothes is enough.
Lower the washing temperature
H&M always labels its garments with the highest permitted temperature. But you can select a lower washing temperature to save energy. Most detergents wash just as well at lower temperatures. A cold wash uses around half as much energy as a warm wash. H&M recommends that heavily soiled clothes and underwear are always washed at the highest temperature allowed. But do not wash your garments at hotter temperatures than stated in the washing instructions.
Fill your washing machine
Sort the clothes by colour and washing temperature. Fill up your washing machine, but don’t stuff too much in. A washing machine is full when you can place a clenched fist on top of the washing without compressing the clothes. Use an energy saving programme – most modern washing machines have one.
Choose a “green” detergent
Use an environmentally friendly detergent that is free from optical whiteners and phosphates, since these have a negative environmental impact when released into nature. Dose the detergent as stated on the packaging. Overdosing detergent will not make your clothes cleaner. To get the dose right, you need to know whether you have hard or soft water.

Avoid fabric conditioners, although H&M recommends that acrylic garments are washed with fabric conditioner to counter static electricity in the garment after washing.
Avoid dry cleaning
Dry cleaning is a process in which the clothes are cleaned using an organic solvent. Dry cleaning has a negative environmental impact when the solvent is released into nature. A small proportion of H&M’s garments are dry clean only, because they contain details or materials than could change colour or become misshapen by washing at home. Today, there are also greener methods of dry cleaning that clean the clothes using only water and carbon dioxide reclaimed from industry. This type of dry cleaning therefore does not release chemicals.
Leave your washing out to dry
It is preferable to leave your washing out to dry since tumble drying and drying cabinets use a lot of energy. To reduce drying time, spin the clothes well before taking them out of the washing machine.
Give away your clothes!
When you no longer have a use for clothes, give them to an organisation that can extend the garment’s life."

I also gave the laundromat my own detergent (I think right now it's Biokleen detergent and Ecover softener). But I think when those two run out I'll start making my own detergent and softener. I still have to admit I haven't made my own detergent or powder yet, but I do have Big Dreams of not being the worst, so here is the plan:

Washing:
1) Detergent- I've looked through all the recipes, and if you don't want to go to the trouble of grating up a bar of soap, this one is the way to go. In terms of liquid castile soaps, the excessive sayings on the bottles of Dr. Bronner's make me murderously angry for some reason (because I don't care for a soap telling me how to live my life) and the Whole Foods kind was recently on sale for the same price, so I bought the almond kind. If you do go for the Dr. Bronner's, I don't know what it is, but some of the scents start to smell really crazy to me after awhile, except for the almond, so I recommend that.

"Recipe #10 – (Powdered)
1 cup Vinegar (white)
1 cup Baking Soda
1 cup Washing Soda
1/4 cup liquid castile soap

Mix well and store in sealed container.
I find it easiest to pour the liquid soap into the bowl first, stirred in the washing soda, then baking soda, then added the vinegar in small batches at a time (the recipe foams up at first). The mixture is a thick paste at first that will break down into a heavy powdered detergent, just keep stirring. There may be some hard lumps, try to break them down when stirring (it really helps to make sure the baking soda isn’t clumpy when first adding). I used 1/2 cup per full load with great results."

There are other recipes that involve grating a bar of soap, which probably also work well, and many of them use the old timey soap Fels-Naptha as a base. Your grandpa loves it! It's literally over a hundred years old. It apparently also can get rid of aphids on your plants, draw out splinters, and soothe poison ivy. But is it environmentally friendly? According to Lance Armstrong,

"Uses

Fels-Naptha contains solvents that dissolves greasy stains, including oil and grease, perspiration, chocolate, baby formula and cosmetics. The wet bar is rubbed into stains before putting clothes into the washing machine. You can also grate about one-third of an ounce of the bar into the washing machine as a detergent booster. It has been used as a folk remedy for contact dermatitis caused by exposure to poison ivy, poison oak and other skin irritants. However, the Dial company warns that Fels-Naptha should not be used directly on your skin.

Ingredients

Fels-Naptha contains soap consisting of sodium tallowate and sodium cocoate or sodium palmate kernelate and sodium palmate. The word "sodium" refers to sodium hydroxide, the lye used to make soap, in this case with tallow, coconut oil, palm oil or palm kernel oil. It also contains water and talc. Coconut acid, palm acid and tallow acid are fatty acids derived from plants and animals. They are emollients and surfactants, cleaning agents in other words. PEG-6 methyl ether is an extract of juniper. Fels-Naptha also contains glycerin, an emollient; sorbitol, a sugar alcohol derived from fruits, corn and seaweed, a moisturizer; and sodium chloride, ordinary table salt. Pentasodium pentetate and/or tetrasodium etidronate are inorganic salts used as emulsifiers and dispersing agents. Titatium dioxide is an opaque white pigment. The soap also contains fragrance, source not specified and acid orange and acid yellow colors.

Considerations

Some of the ingredients in Fels-Naptha are of concern, such as titanium dioxide, which is known to contaminate the ocean and lakes and harm wildlife. According to Material Safety Data Sheets, Fels-Naptha is safe for consumer use in the laundry. The MSDS does give warnings about occupational hazards, and those who work with Fels-Naptha soap in industrial settings are required to wear safety gear including goggles and gloves, because it is an irritant.

What is Naphtha?

Naphtha is the name for a petroleum derived solvent, and includes such solvents as gasoline and kerosene. Originally Fels-Naptha contained benzene, another name for naphtha, which dissolves oil and so is very useful for oily stains. This ingredient is what made Fels-Naptha such a success, making it possible for homemakers to get their laundry cleaner with less effort. However, Fels-Naptha no longer contains benzene."

According to the Good Guide, it's not that bad (unless you're doing greywater, but if you are, you're probably environmentally advanced beyond this blog). And it seems waaaaay more effective than some Dr. Bronner bullshit. So I'd say it's definitely nowhere near as bad as the effective but ecologically irresponsible mascara I'm wearing, but not as environmentally friendly as other methods. (There's a good tutorial here if you want to try.)

2) Booster- 1/2 cup baking soda per load. Add it with your detergent or (and this is important since I once may have kind of gotten baking soda all over Melissa and Jessi's washing machine) to the water before adding clothes if you have a top loading machine. (Bronwen once sent me this post from apartment therapy that I blogged about earlier on how to scent the baking soda using fresh herbs, which I plan to try...)

Drying: (from a website)
Fabric Softener –

"Just adding a ¼ to ½ cup of white vinegar to the rinse cycle should give you nice results – and no, your laundry won’t come out smelling like vinegar!

Or you can make this:

1 cup baking soda
6 cups distilled white vinegar
8 cups water
5-10 drops essential oils (Optional - I like Lavender Essential Oil )
Bucket for mixing
Reuse old fabric softener or detergent container (clean)

Mix baking soda and one cup of the water in bucket. Slowly add in the vinegar and when it stops fizzing, add the rest of the water. If you want a fragrance, use your favorite essential oil adding 5 to 10 drops (start with less, you can always add more later). Pour mixture into container, put on top and remember to shake before using. ½ to 1 cup added to the beginning of the rinse cycle should work well.

If you are one of those people who often forget to add softener to the rinse cycle, you can make your own dryer sheet by putting just a little bit of your homemade fabric softener on an old washcloth or clean rag, and toss it in the dryer. Just dampen the cloth with a little - you don’t want it dripping on to your clothes."

You can also, apparently, reduce static cling by sticking a 2-3" ball of aluminum in the dryer.

And meanwhile, I'll continue to dream of a day when I have a way to do laundry that is closer to my apartment than two and a half blocks away...#whitewhine

I think, for now, these are all the cleaning updates I have- drain traps, Swiffer vacuum+microfiber, laundry drop-off+eco-friendly detergent. Haha, it looks like you didn't have to read this whole long entry. Ya burnt, as it were.

Lesbian Yellow Sour Fruit

noreply@blogger.com (Heather) — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 17:47:00 +0000

It's tough to say which kind of lemon I love more- Liz Lemon, or the Meyer lemon. Both were present while I drank jug wine mid-day, salty tears mingling with Carlo Rossi, bemoaning the loss of my naive idealism. Both are beloved and much talked about in blogs by bougie people on the coasts. The Meyer lemon, however, has a somewhat floral bouquet to it, whereas I imagine that LL perhaps smells like sandwich and scented candle.

Meyer lemons are supposed to be somewhat sweeter than regular lemons, and since mine were finally ready to be harvested last week, I've been researching what the best uses for them would be.

"Mine were cantaloupes"- Leonora, mayor of Williamsburg

As a note, I'd never seen a Meyer lemon in real life until I had my own tree, but last week when Annie and I took a panic-attack inducing trip to both Home Depot and Whole Foods, I noticed that they actually had some bags of Meyer lemons for sale (the one on 23rd st). So if you don't want to grow your own tree and wait a year, just throw some xannies into your bindle, and hopefully the dumb bitch in front of you won't take the last bag, like how, after I'd been all excited about cooking salmon, and collected the ingredients, the ho in front of me took the last pound of wild salmon, which was on sale for like $10.99, leaving me to purchase a crazy family pack of 2.75 pounds of farmed salmon (this one was from Norway and supposedly had various environmental controls in place) for $13.99 a pound.

This is what 2.75 pounds of BLOWN looks like

At first, I was spewing venom, but when I got home, I divided the salmon up, cooking most of it using the recipe I posted in the last entry, and cutting the rest into thinnish pieces (I'd say probs a little under a half a pound's worth) and letting it sit overnight in the juice of one lemon to make a ceviche that tasted pretty good for containing only two ingredients.

Obviously, after my dumb ass posted about how you need to follow the recipe as instructed, and make sure that you wrap the salmon, I realized that new apartment contains no tin foil or parchment paper that I could find, so I improvised, using the tray from the toaster oven, which actually worked quite nicely. I ate salmon pretty much all last week, and I have some frozen for when my body recovers from the Omega 3 overdose.

Anyway, back to Meyer lemons. In a moment of perfect timing, Annie sent me this post from the kitchn, "How Should I Use My First-Ever Bag Of Meyer Lemons?" the day before the moment of harvest came (Melissa touched one and it fell into her hand). All of the suggestions look great, but since I only have two lemons, I wanted to do something special with them that would make maximum use of the flavor. One poster threw out a link to a limoncello recipe, but since limoncello just uses the zest to flavor the liqueur, I realized I'd have nowhere near enough. Then, I came across this recipe for a lemon liqueur. It only requires three lemons, so I could easily shrink the recipe. My only concern is that they recommend heating the sugar with the peels and the vodka- wouldn't that cook out the alcohol? I'm more inclined to macerate the peels and juice in vodka for awhile, add a sugar syrup to taste, and then let the liqueur age a little before serving.

Since I want to get the most use possible out of the lemons, I also googled around to see if anyone had thought up a use for the zests- BINGO. Chowhound is the best. The idea I liked the most was "- dry them, grind into powder, and use in everything from baked goods to granola to ice cream...you can even combine the powder with cocoa or confectioners sugar for dusting truffles (it might be particularly good with white chocolate!)." Um, sold. I probably won't be making my own truffles, but when I still lived in Bed-Stuy and would occasionally get the chicken and waffles from Miss Dahlia's, I noticed that the waffles had a teeny bit of lemon zest in them and it really added a nice hint of flavor, so I'd probably use the powder for pancakes or biscuits or something.

I also really loved the idea of a Meyer lemon cardamom liqueur I found on this website- she made some beautiful and delicious-looking other liqueurs as well: "Tangerine Spice (with nutmeg and cloves), Chocolate Orange, Orange Saffron, Mint Lime, and Meyer Lemon Cardamom." I'm definitely going to try some of those soon, once I get my money situation a little more stabilized and can justify ordering $100 worth of vodka from Astor Place Wine and Spirits. (P.S., they will deliver to Brooklyn on Saturdays if your order is $100 or more). I've continued to read up about the whole filtering vodka through a Britta thing- it was my jam before, obviously, but I also read that you can just buy activated charcoal, which is what makes the Britta work, by itself, and that it's more cost effective that way.

Either way, dare to dream, we'll all be delicately crunk in the near future.

Lemon trees grow up so fast- above and below, February of last year, last picture, December 2010.

Salmon Is Not Just A Color That Looks Delightful On Drag Kathie Lee Gifford

noreply@blogger.com (Heather) — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 21:08:00 +0000

Hodaleyheehoo, indeed.

It's healthy and shit as well. I came across this recipe awhile ago when I was in my first year of teaching and was living the high life, collecting those fat teacher paychecks. Man, those were the times. I was getting 1980s money, son. I went on salmon hiatus for most of the time I lived in Bed-Stuy, but now that I'm on my admin grind, I'm going to be so coked out, it's ridiculous. Jokes. It's not like I'm Diane doing baby bumps and getting comment of the week on The Superficial. Anyway, between making slightly more than I did on funemp and a reduced need to self-medicate with alcohol, I'm getting my Omega 3 on once more.

Baked Salmon II

INGREDIENTS

2 cloves garlic, minced
6 tablespoons light olive oil
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon fresh parsley, chopped
2 (6 ounce) fillets salmon

DIRECTIONS

In a medium glass bowl, prepare marinade by mixing garlic, light olive oil, basil, salt, pepper, lemon juice and parsley. Place salmon fillets in a medium glass baking dish, and cover with the marinade. Marinate in the refrigerator about 1 hour, turning occasionally.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
Place fillets in aluminum foil, cover with marinade, and seal. Place sealed salmon in the glass dish, and bake 35 to 45 minutes, until easily flaked with a fork.

MORE MEMBER REVIEWS

Reviewed on Mar. 8, 2004 by ROUVER

Excellent recipe. As recommended, made the following changes, and it turned out wonderfully: 2 T. olive oil, 1 T. melted butter, 3/4 tsp basil, 1/2 tsp salt, 3 T lemon juice, 1 tsp dried parsley, dash of dill weed. Instead of wrapping fillets individually, I just put the foil on top of the baking dish. I also skin fish before marinading (CRUCIAL for lessening fishy taste). Overall VERY easy. I make it with rice & serve the remaining marinade to drizzle on rice & fish.

31 users found this review helpful

Some notes- besides being a choice insult, I like the idea of the addition of dill weed suggested. Plus, you can't ask for a plant that is more excited to attract beneficial insects, am I right? Also, if you're like me, sometimes you probably like to "improvise" otherwise known as "attempt to prepare recipes while lacking vital ingredients," but trust, the lemon is definitely important. I discovered this once when I had the reverse situation- I used the lemon juice, but I accidentally forgot I was marinating it and left it for two or more hours instead of one. The problem is that if you leave fish in citrus for long enough, you get ceviche, which is awesome, but results in a much drier and less tasty salmon if you then proceed to still cook it for the recommended 35-45 minutes. Also, don't sleep on that aluminum foil.

A final note about salmon-in terms of both your health and environmental impact, you want to get wild salmon, preferably Alaskan. Farmed salmon is often grain fed, and while wild Alaskan salmon is on the
Monterey Bay Aquarium's (kind of everyone's go-to for reliable sustainable seafood info) "Best Choices" List, farmed appears on the "Avoid" list. And in general, you want to avoid fish from Asia, which sounds horribly xenophobic, but their environmental standards are often worse than our very own terribly abysmal standards.

Also, for all you fuckers with an iphone that are bougie enough to sacrifice the ability to reliably place a call and to kick it on a family plan, the Monterey Bay Aquarium has a faboosh looking app that not only provides the list of sustainable seafood options for your region, but also uses GPS to show you nearby places where people have located Best Choices. I tried to see if they had something similar for my tron, but BLOWN. I guess you can take a baby WASP out the hood, but you can't take the hood out the baby WASP.

I'm Pretty Sure This Is What Langston Hughes Was Writing About

noreply@blogger.com (Heather) — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 15:28:00 +0000

Love of my life Alison sent me this like two days ago. The gentleman in question is none other than Dr. Claw.

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore -

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over -

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Do we think lobstermen take on mistresses?

Give Me A Beat- And Make It Something Grimey

noreply@blogger.com (Heather) — Fri, 21 May 2010 16:24:00 +0000

I generally keep my house the way I keep my cultural tourism- mad grimey. Considering the ODB mural located conveniently on our street halfway between me and Mel and our kickball love sponge Will, we really should just consider this apartment Dirt McGurt headquarters. Even Donut keeps it greazy and raw:

But as we have, you know, the mouse problem and all, theoretically I need to change my ways. And obviously, if I'm to maintain any kind of environmental street cred, it needs to be eco friendly and solely rely on vinegar and baking soda. And mostly, I do, in various recipes. But, full disclosure- let's just say, and we're being purely hypothetical here- that you and your roommate were out for a long time, and a small dog lives in the house. And let's say that you both got back to the apartment at the same time, except that one of you brought a dude back, and before either of you had time to check if the tiny creature had, as is his wont, pooped in the bathroom, because duh, he gets it, the dude goes to the bathroom. And maybe he takes kind of a long time in there while you check with the other one if he's cute or you're just drunk, and then one of you takes the dog on a walk, and when the hypothetical dog walking roommate comes back, they go to the bathroom to shower, and they make an awkward discovery:

Did I caca block my bestie?

Because there is definitely some dog poop smeared on the bathroom floor, and some hastily wadded up pieces of toilet paper in the garbage can.

It's not like this has ever happened, obvi. Um, can't I write a work of fiction as though I am Sapphire? So, I'm just saying, in a case like this, if it ever happened, which I'm not saying it did, sometimes you break out the Fantastik and clean it up conventionally.

However, in less extreme circumstances, various eco-friendly cleaning tactics do work quite nicely. Let's start with my favorite, and I have to give credit on how I learned about most of these to The Urban Homestead, that book I was reading and obsessively re-reading all last summer which lead to me talking a lot about how I wanted some pet quail. But I digress.

Drain Cleaner
Why is this one so fun? Oh, I don't know, because it involves making a fourth grade-esque baking soda volcano in your home? Yes. Yes it does.
Supplies: baking soda, vinegar, tea kettle of boiling water
Basically, you put some baking soda on top of your shower drain or sink drain, and put a full kettle of water on to boil. Or, you could use a pot too, but just don't get awkward and burn yourself. When the water is boiling, pour a bunch of vinegar on top of the baking soda so that's it's off the science, and then pour the whole kettle of boiling water on top of it. If you do this fairly regularly as maintenance, you won't need Draino, which is really, really bad for the environment. Also, if you add some essential oil to the vinegar or baking soda (I add lavender to all of the vinegar I use for cleaning, because it's good at making you calm, and also, duh, lavender comes from the Latin word meaning "to wash," because of Roman practices, dumb ass) it makes things smell nicer. Actually, the whole treatment, even without essential oil, can get rid of weird drain smells.

Toilet Unclogger
This is for all my Liz Lemons out there, because we know you have Soubaz's number memorized, and despite all reports to the contrary, we know it is the plumbing, not you.
Supplies: liquid soap, someone's shampoo or body wash if you are in a party situation, tea kettle of boiling water
You might remember this from before if you've read this blog for a little while, but hey, maybe we've had some troubles with our toilet in which I almost bitch slapped Melissa on Super Bowl Sunday (it really was a super TOILET bowl! jokes!) for flushing the toilet that was already filled to the brim with doo doo water, causing it to overflow all over the bathroom. In less dire situations, you can just put a fuck ton of soap or shampoo or body wash your grandma got you at Christmas Tree Shops in 1992, let it sit there for maybe a half hour to an hour, and then pour a full kettle of boiling water on it. This makes the doo doo paper slide down the pipes better. I was successful one time doing two rounds of this, but on Toilet Bowl Sunday, the only thing that worked was getting a new plunger (the toilet augur did shit). So basically, your first step should be a plunger, and if that doesn't work, do a couple rounds of the soap-boiling water combo, and if it's still not working, for the love of God, don't flush the full doo doo salad water toilet "just to see what happens."

Stovetop Cleaner
Supplies: baking soda, liquid soap- NOT steel wool
Because of our douchebag mice, I've had to get better about cleaning the stovetop. One day, I was like, hey, I'm Really Going To Do It, and I tried to make the stove really fucking clean. I mixed baking soda with enough liquid soap to make a paste, and scrubbed the top with the steel wool pot cleaning thing.

Then, of course, the stove wouldn't light. I thought the pilot light had gone out, but I don't even think we have a pilot light. I'm all over YouTube trying to figure out how to light a pilot light and blah blah blah, and then I read that you're not supposed to use steel wool near the burners because one of how the metals react together or something. Blown. Eventually, after some intense drying with paper towels (yes I know I should have been using rags, there weren't any clean ones, okay, McJudgy?), because of course I had also covered the stove in water, which also probably caused problems.

Moral of the story is that baking soda and liquid soap and a scrub brush get the grime up nicely, and then maybe just use a little bit of water to wipe it up and a rag to dry it.

Real Greazy Dishes
Supplies: baking soda, dish soap
We've been using the Mrs. Meyer's dish soap, because the world of eco-friendly detergents is fraught with suck. Like, Seventh Generation can eat my ass. I'm not saying I don't still use their stupid chafey toilet paper, because it's what's on Fresh Direct or at Whole Foods or whatever, but they blow. Mrs. Meyer's dish soap does a good job of cutting the grease and the basil scent is really pleasant, and unlike any other I've smelled. I've tried various incarnations of my own dish soap, like using the Dr. Bronners and vinegar and a bunch of things, but so far, none have been very satisfying. So mostly, I just use the Mrs. Meyers and the steel wool thing or the brush that came with my yard sale juicer.

However, if shit is real grimey, if you do the same baking soda-soap paste mixture, that has always worked for me.

Bath Tub
Supplies: baking soda, liquid soap, maybe some essential oils if you want to get fruity about it
So here's the thing- baking soda is good at both scrubbing and deodorizing, so by making that same baking soda-soap paste and using a scrub brush, you can work on all the weird black shit in your shower. Oh, and please don't front like you don't have any mold in your shower. Oh, you don't? Well, fuck you. I'm too busy living my glamorous life as an edgy young person to keep the mold in check. Anyway, usually I clean the shower while taking a shower, so I like to add a bunch of lavender essential oil to the mixture because it makes me feel calm. Sometimes that shit really works.

I know what you're thinking- wow, what an erotic tableau I've put before you. Well, hey, listen- I think we all know I've been asked by asstronauts before, "Have you ever showered with anyone before?" and no one was surprised that at age 24, yes, yes I have. But, since at least one person I've showered with reads this blog (PANAMA CITY BEACH '04: WAFFLE HOUSE=DREAMS), they can attest to the fact that it's just a lot of mascara trannying everywhere and lipstick smearing and ultimately, you're basically just showering with a lady Robert Smith. Not to mention seaweed in crevices.

This Christmas present I gave Suzie in 2005 of a neon stuffed animal seal from Ocean State Job Lot that I made up to look like Robert Smith is essentially what you will find showering next to you if we become intimate.

Ew, also, want to hear something gross? On NPR they said the air in your shower is more gross than the air in the subway systems. I'm paraphrasing, but you get the idea. Something about all the bacteria in the shower head.

Toilet Bowl
Supplies: Vinegar, maybe essential oil, that toilet bowl brush thing you bought at Ikea that no longer matches your bathroom
You're just going to dookie in your toilet bowl right after you clean it anyway, so the basic disinfecting skills of vinegar will suffice- you don't need it 100% antibacterialized, because you take shits on it. I think you can dilute it with water, but I would use it straight up. The vinegar smell goes away once everything dries.

Floors
Supplies: mop, vinegar, bucket, water, liquid soap
I know what you're thinking- why clean the floor? It will just get dirty again! At least, that's what I always say. But if you have a party, here is probably what will happen: if your name is Miriam, the first time your boyfriend meets me, I will pass out on a couch still holding a full bottle of beer. It will slowly trickle onto the floor as Donut licks it up. And Miriam will just tell you, "she has a really long commute." But here's the thing: Donut is a very small dog. He can't lick up all the alcohol, and he doesn't like chips or crackers, only gingersnaps. So after a party, you will probably have to wash your floor.

Fill a big ass bucket up with hot water, throw some vinegar in, and a tiny bit of soap to cut grease. Vinegar doesn't cut grease so well, but it does make shit shiny. Don't try to get cute and add baking soda to, because then it will leave a bunch of residue and your floor will look ashy and in need of cocoa butter.

Mirrors and Windows
Supplies: vinegar, newspaper, spray bottle, water
I know what you're thinking, yet again:
a. Who washes that shit?
b. Print is a dying medium.
Well, find a flyer or something. Be resourceful, it's a recession. Put half water and half vinegar in a spray bottle and wipe it with the newspaper. Done.

Counters
Ugh, I'm getting tired of talking about cleaning. I'm so tired of it I probably will not do any actual cleaning today, even though I keep dragging potting mix all over the floors and Donut woke me up to try to hunt mice last night. Half vinegar, half water, throw some essential oil in, donesies.

American Girl Magazine Taught Me About My Lady Parts And Creative Repurpose of Everyday Objects

noreply@blogger.com (Heather) — Tue, 18 May 2010 04:11:00 +0000

...and obviously, friendship bracelets and hair braiding. Duh.

Yeah, maybe you were an edgy ten-year-old who was reading Teen magazine or, heavens, Seventeen, but maybe you were socially awkward with restrictive parents who didn't understand marketing and erroneously believed that the aforementioned magazines were intended for people who were the age specified by the title. So you read American Girl magazine, which was not a doll fancier periodical, thank God, but was rather something for young people to read that featured projects and short stories and the like, and didn't encourage the sexualization of tweens. I know it might be hard to believe because of how cool I am now and how glamorous of a lifestyle I lead, but this guy was not hot to trot in fifth grade. Though I did, thanks to AG, know the meaning of "loquacious," and more pertinently for this blog, see a wonderful project in which you nailed or screwed the lid of a baby food jar under a shelf, so that you could have handy visible storage.

Obviously, if I did this project it wouldn't look so lame, duh. Oh, it would be edgy. I would fill the jars with edgy things, like condoms and cigarettes, because I'm not a baby who reads American Girl magazine anymore, I've come a long way, okay, and guess what, I've had intercourse, that's right, intercourse, so I could use those jar condoms. I'm using one right now, in fact. You heard me.

But, um, I probably haven't come a long way, because again while reading one of the ReadyMade magazine's blogs, I found this spin on the jar thing and became unbearably jazzed:

That's right, motherfucker- an f-ing flower bloom. In a table.

That could be me! I could be lying prostrate on a table with apparently no arms, my despair juxtaposing spectacularly with the poetic single bloom.

Except that my sad girl moments are more like sitting on the ground in front of a Korean deli, crying because Daniel won't give me one of his donuts.

Imagine how you'd feel if a white version of Prince wouldn't give you a donut.

Coming up: in an entry some time soon, I follow through with plans made in my head and announced months ago and finally become the woman Garrett wants me to be, by both trying out the recipe for homemade body wax and vajazzling myself.

I would pretty much do anything a person who mixes patterns so well says, even if he did have a ponytail briefly while living in Europe. I would not, however, follow any of that tranny Marjan's advice. Lifting up your shirt as a dance move in a pre-Jersey shore era is unacceptable.

It's Like They Turned My Clumsy and Destructive Life Into An Art Installation: GLASSphemy!

noreply@blogger.com (Heather) — Wed, 12 May 2010 18:43:00 +0000

Oh hey thank you, ReadyMade magazine's blog. And for once, I say this genuinely. One of the Facts of My Life that has been making me feel a sense of shame at failure that my young hooligans very rarely evinced is the fact that I keep being non-charmingly clumsy and breaking and damaging shit. People love lists, right? Step into my world, for a moment, gang:

Some time in March: A nail has jutted up from the floorboard, and I step on it. It sucks balls, and I have my second tetanus scare in two years, the first being when I slip and fall on some moss covered steps in Venice, my thrift store pump flies into the canal, and I am forced to walk around a sinking European city barefoot until I find attractive black wading boots to complement my capris and pastel sweater.
Some time in April: My majestic 1977 commemorative Grimace glass shatters, along with my hopes and dreams.
April 23, 2010: While eating a pint of bodega ice cream, the trash-picked chair collapses underneath me.
May 1, 2010: One week later, outside of Ernie's apartment, I sit on a rickety wooden bench and break it, and then, out of nowhere, a beer bottle is thrown at Steven, Melissa, Kerry and me.
May 4, 2010: I break a glass jar in the bathroom. As I am cleaning it up, Melissa's coffee cup falls off of the back of the toilet and shatters.
Some time in May: I drop my Mac, leaving crack marks all over the screen that only grow larger as the days pass. I find out in the Apple store that it will cost $450 to replace there, start crying, and am hugged by an Apple employee who had previously complimented my scarf. Was he gay? Was he hitting on me? Was he just being an Apple employee? The only thing we know for sure is that my ass did not pay to fix it, so I can barely see my screen as I type. Also, we now know that in my vulnerable state, I went to Sephora, my weakness was seized upon by the employees, and I bought over $100 of hourglass makeup that is not as eco-friendly as it should be, and came home looking, as Melissa put it, "like I belong under the BQE." Not knowing whether or not that was "a thing," I find that she is calling me a prostitute, and I sadly drink the weird drink she has fixed me on my fire escape.
May 6, 2010: Leaving Jessi's surprise engagement party, I fucking bite it on the pavement. Tiny Balls solemnly instructs me not to bleed in her new car, and I now look like a lamprey or other terrifying deep sea creature tried to suck the life out of me through the top of my foot.
May 10, 2010: I stub my toe so badly I almost pee. Who the fuck knew? Ew.
May 11, 2010: Leaving to babysit my goddaughter in the dirty Jerz, a nail jutting out from the wall hits this same toe. In a rush, as always, I curse, throw boots on, and leave. Later, when I take my tights off, I realized that I'd been like, hemorrhaging blood all day.

And who the fuck knows what I'll break today? Hearts? Only that of the bodega employee if I decide to stop patronizing Ayban Brooklyn Express Deli for my regular "I'm sad I broke something" pint of off-brand ice cream.

Luckily, ReadyMade makes me feel like the glass I strew in my own home, and that scattered liberally over every block of my neighborhood, can be put to good use, and can even give me the pretext to declare my life not a horrible failure, but rather Performance Art. There's this art installation that's going to happen in Gowanus that is called Glassphemy that looks FABOOSH:

"Not so long ago, in Philadelphia, a meeting of architects and urban planners was convened by the Community Design Collaborative to think of ‘interim uses’ for empty lots around the city. One of the lots in question was always strewn with piles of broken glass. The architects and urban planners furrowed their brows in thought: would it be possible to create a project that would lure people away from their littering ways, converting the lot for more constructive uses?
And then, a brave woman in the audience, Bethany Edwards, said: “What if we just create a place for people to go break glass?”
David Belt was a panelist at that event. Taken by Edwards’ comment, he brought the glass-breaking idea back to his company, Macro-Sea. And that’s how Glassphemy! was born. Part game, part art installation, part mobile recycling center, Glassphemy! is a 20-by-30-foot steel structure lined with bulletproof glass. A person standing on one side can throw bottles at a friend or enemy who is standing in safety behind the clear wall on the other side. Satisfying crashes and bright lights ensue upon impact. Glassphemy! is about relieving psychological tension, having fun, and getting your recycling done all at the same time.
Glassphemy! is opening on May 20 at the Dumpster pool lot in Gowanus, Brooklyn. The bottles that are broken there will be recycled on site. When the installation is through, the Glassphemy! structure will be broken down and recycled or moved to a new location."

Are you fucking kidding me? This combines my natural tendency to inadvertent destruction and my seething rage within to its apex! But wait, it gets better...

"To honor the spirit of innovation and smart material re-use, and to keep the conversation and ideas flowing, ReadyMade is teaming up with Macro-Sea to offer the Glassphemy! contest."

That's right. Mad bitches on the internet are going to help me figure out what to do with all of the turmoil I leave in my wake. Like this lovely looking light:

I'm not entirely sure how you make this, but if my mom's church craft fair potpourri mixed with Christmas lights in a jar hustle is any indication, you could probably take a bunch of broken glass, throw it in a jar with some LED Christmas lights to be more energy efficient, and tuna surprise, you've got an interesting night light. Actually, I've seen DIY plans online that make light-in-a-jar situations from hacking a solar garden light, so you could probably do that too. Right now I'm trying to figure out the best ways, using the tools I have (I don't own a glass cutter, for example) to use all of the things I normally toss as trash or recycling, and this is an excellent start! I can't wait to see what people come up with for this contest!

PREP TIME	15 Min
COOK TIME	45 Min
READY IN	2 Hrs