A busy week

First of all, I wanted to say that I found the photo of the yoghurt. It looks a little weird but you'll get the idea.

Next, I want to lecture you on something. If you want to eat nutritious food for not very much money, you have to learn to make Indian vegetarian. I heard a quote once that there is no reason for poor Brits (this could also apply to Americans) to eat a thousand times worse than poor Indians. You need lentils, spices, rice, some vegetables, and maybe some yoghurt. The most important spices are cayenne pepper, turmeric, cumin seeds, mustard seeds, and maybe some garam masala. I made a dish with a dhal, which is basically lentils cooked in a bunch of water, with some turmeric and salt. Then you fry the mustard seeds and cumin seeds, and when they are brown fry the turmeric and cayenne. Then dump the whole shebang into the lentils. In this particular instance I added some tamarind, which might be hard to find, depending on where you are. I also added a little brown sugar. For the vegetable I fried some garlic and ginger with the same spices (plus a little ground coriander, but that's not strictly necessary) then I threw in some potatoes, peas, and carrots. Then I added some water and covered it until it was cooked. I also made raita, using the homemade yoghurt, plus some lime juice, salt, and chopped cucumber. Then I cooked some brown rice. That's it. The healthiest I've ever been was when I subsisted mainly on Indian vegetarian. In fact, I've decided to become a weekday vegetarian and eat more of this kind of thing.

I gave myself a pretty successful haircut this week. Luckily I have curly hair and can hide all the mistakes. I don't have a picture because I hate having my photo taken.

We did some baking this week. I made bread. I usually make a whole wheat bread, with a little honey or brown sugar in it. I don't have two loaf pans so I shape them into a shape called a batard. When you bake bread, you should try to bake at least two loaves at once so that you don't end up costing in power the same that it would cost you to just buy the bread. Ideally you should bake four or five at a time but my mixer can only support two loaves and I usually don't have enough ingredients for four at any given time.

We also made homemade cookies. I used a whole wheat poppyseed cookie from the Enchanted Broccoli Forest cookbook by Mollie Katzen. They were tasty and not too sweet. The dough was really ugly, it was sort of grayish. The finished cookies look fine. I also should note that instead of eggs, I used flax seeds mixed with water. I learned this from a vegan cookbook. For baking, one tablespoon of flax seeds plus three tablespoons of water equals one egg. I like that you can sneak a little extra nutrition in there.

Finally, I want to recommend a book. It's called Make Your Place: Affordable, Sustainable Nesting Skills by Raleigh Briggs. Its focus is on health and first aid, cleaning and body care, and gardening. I'm most interested in the health and first aid and body care sections. I haven't heard much about DIY in those subjects, and it's such a sweet little book. I think it's a good complement to my other favorite homemaking book, The Hip Girl's Guide to Homemaking: Decorating, Dining, and the Gratifying Pleasures of Self-Sufficiency--On a Budget by Kate Payne. Its focus is on decorating, cleaning, gardening, mending clothes, fixing the house, and food preparation. I like to have all these resources around. For example, I'm pretty good at cooking (having gone to culinary school and working in restaurants and such) and I have many gardening books (but no garden), but I suck at decorating, and have no idea how to do healthcare myself. I think my next project is going to be salves. I plan on making a dry skin salve and a sore muscle salve. The procedure is similar to making lip balm.

A few items

We got up to a few exciting things this week. First, my husband and I made ginger beer. We fermented some ginger and sugar in water. Then we made a syrup with more ginger, sugar, and water. Next we added the two together and put it in pint-sized jars. We were going to do bottles, but to get the right kind of bottles would be $40, and we didn't have that to spare right now. They are currently undergoing their secondary fermentation. We put them in a rubbermaid tub with heavy stuff on top. This is because I heard many stories of ginger beer exploding and sending glass shattering everywhere. I hope that if they do explode, they at least won't damage the apartment (or us). We will be sad to lose that ginger beer though. We are really looking forward to it! We're not big drinkers but like a beer or a glass of wine sometimes. This way we get 10 pints from $3 worth of ingredients.

Today I made my own "maple" syrup. Not real maple syrup, which is what I grew up on, but sort of like Aunt Jemima's but better and cheaper. I've done this one before. I take some white and brown sugar and boil it in a little water, and then I add artificial maple extract. I'm not sure exactly but I think the whole thing comes to about $0.30 a batch. It's even cheaper if I make my own brown sugar, which I usually do, by mixing white sugar with a bit of molasses. That's all it is.

I have been very careful about trying to eat real food at every meal. Usually I make some kind of simple breakfast, with leftovers for lunch, and something for dinner. Today I made pork curry with coleslaw and rice. The curry mix was some of my spices and some spices mixed by the aunt of one of my friends. It was pretty good, and my husband ate it up, even though he does not like tomatoes. The coleslaw used some mayo that I had made earlier in the week, with some curry powder added, and then an all-natural dip mix added. So I "recycled" that mayo twice. I really enjoy making my own mayo, which again is about $30 a batch. Storebought mayo (and maple syrup, for that matter) aren't so expensive, but why not do it even cheaper and fresher?

I have put myself on a challenge of spending no more than $30 a week on groceries. In Canada this wouldn't have been possible but food is pretty cheap in the States, so you can save your money to spend on health care. It takes a lot of analyzing coupons, calculating, and sacrificing what you want now so you can have it later, or switching items so that you can have something that you couldn't normally have. I have figured out exactly what we're buying this week, and I am excited thinking about what we will make.

In clothing news, I have finished knitting a sweater and am seaming it now. The collar and the shoulder seams are finished, as well as attaching the arms to the body. Now I am trying to sew the sleeves together and close the body part. I have to unsew a bit because I did it unevenly and the armpit was going to be all lopsided. It's annoying to have to redo it but not as annoying as wearing something that I have worked on for almost a year to have it all weird. I was hoping I could wear it to church tomorrow but it doesn't look like that will be possible, unless I stay up until 5 AM finishing it. Oh well, there's always next week. Hopefully I'll be able to wear it when I volunteer at the museum next week. My supervisor saw me working on it and she was excited to see how it is going to turn out. She thought it was so cool that I could actually knit my own clothes. I think it's pretty cool too!

Finally, I made my own toothpaste today. I mixed baking soda and salt and a little peppermint essential oil. I mixed in a little water to make a paste. You can add glycerin too, but I didn't feel like going to the store. So that was my dental adventure for the day!

I'm back and Beauty Routine

I haven't been using this blog for a while, but I wanted to share some of my efforts in radical homemaking and self-sufficiency and decided that this was the right venue. So I'm resurrecting it.

I wanted to share some ways I am being more self-sufficient in my beauty routine. I'm not huge into beauty, although I like makeup and nice hair. Anyways, there are a few things one must do for personal care and I want to know how I can do more stuff for myself. In hair care, I am following the no-poo (no shampoo) method. I thought it sounded gross at first but actually it is working better for me than shampoo did. Basically, I take a tablespoon of baking soda in a cup of water in a squeeze bottle and squeeze it over my hair in the shower, taking care to massage my scalp. Then I rinse it out. Next, I take another squeeze bottle and use a mixture of a tablespoon or two of apple cider vinegar and a cup of water, and finger-comb that through my hair. That's my conditioner. How does acid condition? I don't know but it works so well! I no longer need to use a leave-in conditioner in order to comb my hair after my shower. It works great! I usually use the baking soda once or twice a week and the vinegar every time I shower. I've also made my own hair gel using a quarter teaspoon of agar in a cup of hot water, and then cooling it as it gels. I usually add a drop or two of a floral essential oil so that my hair smells nice. It doesn't work so great but it's okay and I don't look like a hippy, so it will do until that day when I can afford silly things like hair mousse.

In facial care, my stepmom gave me a really nice skin care "regime" but I only use that once a day. In the morning, my routine is usually to wash my face with soap in the shower or with Spectro gel at the sink. Then I use my stepmom's lotion. At night, I use her cleanser and toner, but my own lotion, which is a little jar of olive oil scented with rose and ylang ylang essential oils so I don't smell like salad. It works fantastically on my skin and my skin hasn't been this clear in a long time. I don't use the oil in the morning because it makes my face look pretty oily for a while, which isn't a problem if I'm going to bed but is if I'm going out in public. Also, I sometimes use my own toner, which is just rose water that I get from the mediterranean store. It's the best toner I've ever used.

Next, we had a problem earlier this year when my husband ran out of deodorant. He still had to go to work and the weather was warm so it was a real dilemma. Anyways, we found out that you can make your own deodorant from two tablespoons cornstarch, two tablespoons baking soda, and two tablespoons olive oil and a couple drops each of tea tree oil and lavender oil. Just mix it up and scoop in onto your pits with your fingertips. My husband said it was the best deodorant he'd ever used.

Finally, I've become the hairdresser in our home. I shave my husband's head, and I found a way to cut my own hair into layers by making a very high ponytail while it's wet and straightened as much as possible. Then I pull the ponytail up and cut off the very top evenly. Not the most artistic haircut I've ever had, but it's certainly flattering and looks good (this only works on curly hair). Additionally, I've figured out how to do my own threading for tidy eyebrows. So that's the self-sufficient beauty routine at our place!