June’s One Small Green Change is to switch to a reusable glass straw.  It’s kinda big deal because I normally go without. I got used to not using a straw during summer historical performing gigs. 

Beth of My Plastic Free Life and Lisa of Retro HousewifeGoes Green both rave about their unbreakable Glass Dharma straws. I thought, “That’s cool for you and straw loving people but I can mostly do without.”
However, there are times when using a straw makes life easier (Hi super thick shake! I’m talking to you.) Straws are a disposable that I can easily replace with a reusable. It will also save me money. Therefore, I kicked myself in the tush and got a Glass Dharma reusable straw.

Husband says my straw reminds him of a chemistry pipette.

Vinegar, vinegar, vinegar. Clean your house with vinegar. Frugal folks been giving out this nugget of advice as a cheap alternative to buying an array of expensive cleaners back when green was just a color.   Honestly, I wasn’t convinced that vinegar cleaned and disinfected my house as well as any number of commercial cleaners that I could buy in bulk, on sale, or at a closeout or dollar store.

My neighbor’s cat changed that.

My neighbor’s elderly kitty kept getting sick. We thought it was because she was older. No, the vet said the ingredients in my neighbor’s floor cleaner made her cat ill.

Well, geez, what could my floor cleaner be doing to my dog or worse, babies that crawl on my kitchen floor?

I went to the store to look for greener cleaners, I read labels, got confused, got a head ache, and came home frustrated without any green cleaners I might add.

Then I spied the white distilled vinegar bottle in my pantry. Would vinegar really clean and disinfect my kitchen counters like the frugal and green people said? Since this little experiment wouldn’t cost me anything extra, I decided to give a go.
I’m a convert.

Natural Kitchen Cleaners and How I Use Them

Deodorizing

• Baking soda – I put an open box of baking soda in the freezer and refrigerator as a deodorizer. I change the boxes monthly and use the old boxes for further cleaning.

Dishwashing

• Powdered phosphate free dishwashing detergent mixed with a box of baking soda I mix a box baking soda with a box of powdered dishwashing detergent to give it an extra oomph of cleaning power because my dishwasher needs some extra help. It is an excellent way to reuse that expired box of baking soda you put in the freezer/refrigerator as a deodorizer.
• Vinegar in the Jet Dry container of the dishwasher. Vinegar works to keep spots off the glasses just like Jet Dry, Cascade, or a store brand-sheeting agent. Actually, I think vinegar has better sheeting action and keeps water spots from forming on my glasses. Who knew?
• Phosphate free dish detergent. For those rare times, I hand wash dishes.  I try to go with a phosphate free dish detergent with plant based ingredients when my budget permits.

Sink Cleaner

Baking soda and dishwashing detergent – Instead of buying powdered cleanser, I sprinkle baking soda (usually an expired box from the refrigerator or freezer), add a squirt of dishwashing detergent, in my sink and scrub away.
Counter Cleaner

• Vinegar in a spray bottle A 5% solution of vinegar is a natural disinfectant. Fortunately, that is exactly what you buy at the store, so I don’t dilute mine with water. I put a clean and repurposed spray nozzle on my vinegar bottle and spray away. I like that I can clean my kitchen counters while dinner is cooking and not be worried if cleaner splashes into food cooking on the stove.
• Dishwashing detergent and water in a spray bottle If you don’t like the smell of vinegar or have granite or marble countertops you can’t clean with vinegar, watered down dishwashing detergent in spray bottle is an excellent alternative.

Oven Cleaner

• Baking soda and vinegar To clean baked on crud from my stove I apply a paste of baking soda and water. I let the paste work its magic for a bit and pour vinegar over it. The mixture bubbles up, loosens the baked on gunk, and allows me easily wipe up the mess better than any commercial cleaner I have tried.

Floor Cleaner

• A solution of half vinegar, half water, and healthy squirt of dishwashing detergent. I use this in my automatic floor cleaner. I also used it in the spray mop that preceded the automatic floor cleaner with excellent results. Best of all it’s kitty, doggie, and baby safe at a bargain price.

There you have it. My cleaners are green, budget friendly, and some work even better than their conventional counterparts do. My house is clean and doesn’t smell like a fake flower factory anymore, which I like. In addition, if you wondering, my naturally clean house doesn’t smell like pickles either.

Back in the days of Early Marriage, which my husband and I lovingly refer to as The Poverty Years, one of our hobbies was to visit an indoor food market on weekends.

While much of the food at the market was interesting, unusual, and tempting to buy only the food stall that sold interesting spices in little envelopes on the cheap was in our budget. The fresh fish flown in daily from the ocean stall or the buffalo steak butcher, among others, were not.

We’d walk the market, wonder, drool, and then go buy a cup of coffee at the coffee stall. That was our Saturday date.

One Valentine’s Day we were planning what do and were to eat. Instead of going to a chain restaurant with its frozen entrees, we decided to splurge at the fancy food stalls and cook our own  Valentine’s Day dinner.

We bought emu steaks from the fancy butcher because we’d never tried it before.

We bought a slice of the most descendant and large enough for two people cake you ever did see from the fancy bakery for dessert.  

On Valentine’s Day, my husband took charge of the emu like it was his baby. He marinated the emu steaks in a mixture of soy sauce, orange juice, garlic, and ginger for an hour. When it was time to cook, we opened a bottle of the finest screw top wine we could find (we had to bow to the budget somewhere!) and poured it in our wedding crystal. Along the rest of our newlywed friends, we joked that fancy wine glasses make cheap wine taste better.

I set the table with our wedding china and my grandmother’s silver.

We turned on the music and fired up the stove. We laughed as we cooked trying to guess what emu would taste like. We danced an impromptu emu dance in the kitchen as I made the sides.

We found that emu cooks fast, in less than 15 minutes of sauté time. So while we had to cook our Valentine’s Day dinner it barely took any time at all.

While emu is a bird it doesn’t taste like chicken. It tasted like a nice slice of lean beef. The sides were delicious and the dessert was nothing short of decadent. Sure, we could have eaten a cheaper meal in a nicer restaurant but we never would have tried something so new and different if we hadn’t taken the risk and cooked our holiday meal.

What really made that dinner special was the fact that we bought it and cooked it laughing all the way. Laughter and togetherness made cooking that meal fun and romantic.

This Valentine’s Day consider grabbing your loved ones and cooking something fun together. The emu dance is optional.

Every family is supposed to bring a plate of cookies to share after our local Christmas pageant.  Somewhere, somehow every busy mom brings her cookie baking A game. I look at the table of temptations and can’t help but think those moms get more than the one day notice I get from my family about the date of the pageant.

Those cookie-baking masters saw through my cheat of trying to pass off bakery cookies for homemade cookies in years past. Now I go for minimum effort (and cost) and maximum impact. I make peppermint chocolate bark.

Ingredients:

1 bag of milk chocolate chips

1 bag of white chocolate chips

½ cup of crushed peppermint candy/candy canes

1. Melt one bag of milk chocolate chips in a glass bowl in the microwave.
2. Pour the melted milk chocolate in thin layer onto a cookie sheet and let cool until hard.
3. Toss six candy canes or peppermint candy into the food processor to crush them into chips, unless the last minute baking fairies smile upon me and I find a bag of crushed peppermint candy chips at the grocery store.
4. Melt one bag of white chocolate chips in a glass bowl in the microwave.
5. Pour the melted white chocolate over the first layer of dark chocolate. It does not have to be perfect; it’s best that you just cover it, because the hot white chocolate chip top layer will start to melt the bottom layer if you aren’t careful.
6. Pour the crushed peppermint candies over the hot white chocolate layer.
7. Let the peppermint chocolate bark cool overnight.

To serve: break the peppermint chocolate bark into pieces with your hands, bring it to the cookie party, and win raves. Let’s face it, cookies are good, but chocolate? That’s always better!

Recently, a close family friend came home from the hospital after another breast cancer procedure. While my friend rested, I rattled around her kitchen to fix her kids some lunch. I opened her freezer saw a casserole.

And another.

And another.

And another.

The woman had four shelves in her freezer full of homemade casseroles! (more…)