SAUERKRAUT!!!

We grew cabbage this year. Despite all the aphid killing I had to do (though spraying aphids with the hose on the jet setting is surprisingly cathartic,) we got some pretty nice looking heads. They weren't very tasty, however. They were kinda hard and kinda over-crunchy, and kinda tough. Not delicious enough to eat straight up. I made cabbage soup out of one head, which was good, but decided something else was in order.

Sauerkraut!!!

I Googled some tips and decided to keep the operation small, (I only had two smallish heads) and go with the mason jar method.

You guys, this is so easy.

First I spent about 30 minutes chopping cabbage into kraut-sized pieces... so, small. Of course, as I was just finishing up and congratulating myself on not injuring any of my phalanges, I cut off the edge of my fingernail. No blood, but a nice dose of adrenaline, that's for sure.

Next came the fun part. I put all the shredded cabbage, about 8 cups of it, into a large bowl, sprinkled about 2 teaspoons of sea salt over it and started kneading and massaging the hell out of it. Actually, the whole point is to massage the moisture out of it so it has a brine to soak in. After about 10 minutes of sweet sweet massage, it packed it into two large, sanitized  mason jars. Even after packing it really well, I still didn't have enough liquid to cover the cabbage, so I made some more brine with water and sea salt and poured it into the jars.

I covered the jars with a wash rag secured by a rubber band, and left them to sit on the counter to get their "sauer" on. I read that there was a chance that stuff could grow on the top and things could start looking funky, so I was a bit nervous. For the first few days, there was some serious fermenting going on, because a lot of air bubbles would collect in the jars around the shredded cabbage. To remedy this, I would just use a spoon to pack the cabbage down into the brine a couple times a day to squeeze the bubbles out.

After about 4 days, the bubbling stopped. At a week, we tasted it. It smelled like slightly sour cabbage, and tasted pretty much the same. It was starting to get sour but was more salty. So it stayed on the counter. We tasted it again about 5 days later, and it was better, but not quite. So it stayed on the counter for about 2 1/2 weeks total.

And you know what? No funkyness. Ever. The color of the cabbage got a little darker, the green-ness went away, and the flavor just came gradually.

Such an easy way to make the summer harvest last a little longer.

Time to get me some brats.

When packed together, I ended up with a whole mason jar of sauerkraut.

Quick Homemade Dryer Sheets

So it's flannel sheet season.

While Eddy was napping this afternoon, I decided that it was time to give our bed the winter makeover. I pulled the flannel sheets from the linen closet, only to be greeted by sheets that just smelled funky. Like closet. They're clean so I didn't feel the need to wash them again, but I felt like they needed a quick romp in the dryer with a dryer sheet.

There was one problem. I don't have dryer sheets. I haven't bought them in years. I don't really know what's on them and since Shawn and I both have sensitive skin, I just tend to avoid them.

But I still needed something to get the closet smell out. So, to the internet I went, and found some info on homemade dryer sheets.

Holy cow, this may be the quickest project in Urban Hobby Homesteader history.

Ready?

Find some fabric you can cut up. This could be an old t-shirt, or in my case, a crappy dollar store dish towel that has been sitting in my closet for years without use. You will also need some white vinegar, essential oils of your choice, and a container to put it in (I chose an old peanut butter jar.)

First cut up the fabric into dryer sheet-sized pieces. Mix a quarter cup of vinegar with 5 drops of essential oil (tea tree in my case) into your container and shake it up. Add the fabric and they're ready. You can make more solution when you need it and reuse the pieces of fabric by throwing them back in the jar.

My staging skills leave a bit to be desired, but you get the picture.

Non-toxic, no waste, super cheap, and smells good. Everyone wins.

And to end, here's Eddy in her Halloween costume jammies - NASA astronaut!

Frickin' adorable.

So Long, Skipper

Well, our family has just gotten a little smaller. After years of talking about it and months of stressing out about it, we have found a new, much more fitting forever home for Skipper.

We had a feeling this would be the result when Eddy was born. To be honest, we were dreading his reaction to her because normally when he hears a baby cry, squeal, laugh, or make any other noise for that matter, he responds with a pretty ear-piercing scream of his own. But, to our surprise and relief, he seemed to understand that our baby was taken care of and he didn't need to let us know about it.

So we thought maybe we would be able to keep him. Unfortunately, though he is much more pleasant about Eddy than we anticipated, he still has his needs that we don't have the time or energy to attend to.

Caring for Skipper is like caring for a toddler. He needs a lot of our time and attention and will scream if he doesn't get what he wants. What makes it hard is the fact that he hates me. If we would accept any affection, or food from me without attacking me, it might be a different story. But he only wants it from Shawn and Shawn just isn't home enough for it to be fair for Skipper.

We also think Skipper is lonely. He sits by himself for most of the day and screams when he sees our neighbors out the window.

He's a sad little dude, and we needed to do something about it.

The we were informed about Pacific Parrot Placement.

PPP is a local 501(C)(3) that helps people rehome their parrots. Once I heard about them, I filled out their Placement Registration Form and was contacted by them within 5 days with the message that they had a potential match for Skipper. The email included a little information about the possible candidate. It sounded pretty good so I filled out the Release Agreement form which officially switched ownership of Skipper to PPP (they actually retain ownership of him forever, so they have the right to take him back if they feel the new owner is not a good fit.) This agreement can be rescinded by us at any point in the process if we decided to keep him afterall. Once the papers were in from both parties with a donation from us ($50, which we were happy to pay to an organization that does this amazing work,) we got the contact information from Skipper's new daddy.

Then it was up to us to contact him. I emailed him with more info about Skipper and asked for more info about him. Though we were pretty eager to get Skipper out of here, we also felt an obligation to make sure that this new home was right for him. I asked him a few questions, one of them was whether he has any kids of his own or whether any kids may come around once in a while. To be honest, finding a home with kids would have been ideal, but this new home sounds like a winner.

We dropped him off at his new house on Sunday and were super happy with his new digs. He has a nice long hallway to practice his flying and his new Amazon friend named June is already enamored with him. (He also has two African Greys to hang out with.) He will also get periodic weekend visits from two children. His new owner is very experienced with parrots, and sounds like he devotes a lot of his time to caring for his "children." He also seems really chill about the way he cares for them, and just wants his "kids" to be happy. He was talking about how he shares his fries and pizza with the birds, and allows them the freedom to just be birds. We hung out in the house for a while and we drove away feeling happy. Though it's weird to not have him around anymore, we're super happy that he finally has a home that is best suited for his species (second to the wild, or course.)

To conclude, let's reminisce.

Though super annoying more often than not, he provided us as well as all our guests with a ton of entertainment over the years. From his somewhat limited vocabulary, to his extensive sound effects, and ear-peircing screams, he was always making noise. Despite this, and maybe because of this, Skipper's intelligence was always fascinating to me. He just knew things, and you could tell he was thinking and calculating and manipulating. Cool and aggravating at the same time.

He brought many laughs and lots of joy to scores of kids. I took him in to work on at least five different occasions over the years and he made a show out of the whole thing each time. Since he was always happy to see new people he'd never met, he would also put on a show for all of our guests, oftentimes being the life of many a party. The video above is of him putting on one of his shows. He thought he was a pretty good singer. He wasn't. But it was sure funny.

Since we dropped him off, I've been getting occasional picture messages from his new daddy. Here he is with his girlfriend, June. (Though he seems to be more interested in whatever he's eating than in his new friend.)

Skipper's on the left, June on the right :)

Quinoa is Not Always Gross

Unlike most people, I don't like quinoa. In general, I think it's pretty gross. Due to the fact that it has been such a fad lately, I've eaten it quite a bit in various ways over the past several years, but I've always been somewhere between disappointed or grossed out. I actually enjoy the texture and even like the fact that it looks like a bowl full of teeny tiny worms. The taste just doesn't do it for me. It's like dust. Dirty dust.

(Remember that commercial from last football season where that guy is grilling a quinoa patty at a tailgate party and calls it "qweeno"? Oh man, I loved that commercial. Also because he said it tasted like a "dirty old tree branch." He's so right.)

I digress.

The other day I was rummaging around my pantry and found a bag of red quinoa that I had bought in a fit of health conscious insanity. I wasn't going to throw it away, even though it was quinoa, so I had to figure out what to do with it.

Quinoa salad was out. It's just too gross for me. I knew that I needed to somehow cook it with strong flavors to keep the tree-branchy dustyness at bay.

Answer: Curry.

So here's the recipe that made me like quinoa. For a day.

This is also a good, spicy, warming recipe for a chilly fall day.

Curried Quinoa with Raisins

Ingredients
1 cup quinoa
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 cup broth (chicken, vegetable, your choice)
1 cup water
1/2 tsp salt
pepper to taste
1 tablespoon curry
1/2 cup raisins

In a saucepan toss together the quinoa and olive oil. Add the spices, salt, and raisins, and toss together. Add the water and broth, cover, and simmer on medium low for 20-30 minutes or until tender.

It's actually pretty delicious. I still won't eat quinoa salad though.

Yeah, I would make and eat this again.

Sleepy Sacky

Before I had a baby, I had all these aspirations to do fun sewing projects that would result in cute little clothes and other accessories. Well, it's been slow to start,  but I've been able to create this and that, here and there.

One of my recently completed projects was a sleep sack I made out of unused blankets. Eddy has a few sleep sacks, but they are all made out of fleece, and during the various hot streaks we were having during the summer, they were just too warm for her, but the house would cool off enough that being in just PJ's wasn't enough through the night.

So my sewing machine and I solved that problem.

First, I rummaged through my blanket drawer and pulled two blankets that Eddy had either outgrown or never used.

Both flannel receiving blankets.

Next, I used one of her fleece sleep sacks and outlined it directly onto the blankets, leaving about an inch border for hemming, etc. but also making it a few inches longer. Luckily, both the front and back panels needed to make the sleep sack are the same size and shape. Once I cut out the pieces from the pink blanket, I cut panels that matched the bottom halves of the two panels out of the smaller monkey blanket.

Next, I cut the front panels in half vertically for the zipper.

Construction was pretty simple. Sew the monkey panels onto the pink sheets, then sew the panels together, while reenforcing the neck line and arm holes. After I sewed in the zipper, I added a little velcro tab at the top. I love the little accents.

Turned out pretty cute, I think. Too bad I didn't make this earlier in the summer so it could be used. Oh well.

The. Cutest. Model.

Garden Stuff and Recap

Is summer already coming to a close? How is this possible? The 2014 harvest season has been pretty good. It probably could have been better had I spent more time watering, fertilizing, weeding, and just giving it general TLC, but I'm happy with it.

A harvest from earlier this summer.

A few things to note:

1) My cherry and grape tomatoes have been cray-cray awesome. And super delicious. We're lucky to get half of them in the house.

2) My zucchini plant never got bigger than the size of a basketball. WTF? Forget about even getting any zucchini this year.

3) I let an onion from last season go to flower to see if I could save the seeds. It totally worked. See below.

Dried up onion flower.

Not a ton, but a good amount for next year. Note Eddy eating grass in the background.

4) For some awesome reason, my dry Calypso beans (or Gussy beans as I like to call them,) decided to give me a double harvest this year. When I went out to harvest the dry pods a few weeks ago, I noticed that the plants had a BuNcH of green beans on them. Like a second wave. Why would the plants do that? Because of our silly summer weather? I'm not complaining.

5) I have an enormous beet waiting to be pulled from the ground. I can't wait to have a chance to roast and eat the shit out of it.

A harvest from this last weekend. Edamame are delicious.

6) I found some tent caterpillar eggs on our plum tree, (which was super sad and didn't give us any fruit again this year) so I cut that off. It feels nice to be able to recognize a pest before it becomes a problem next spring.

See the clump up at the top? So evil!!!

7) We have rats. They ate a bunch of my dry beans, but then the edamame started maturing and they switched to those. I think we may have gotten 25% of the harvest that could have been. The rest went to those fuzzy little asshole vermin. They might need to die. I have to research the most humane way of getting rid of rats. Ugh. I think they also decimated my shiso. Who knew that they liked shiso?

8) We got enough tomatoes for two batches of my delicious marinara. Yum.

Baby Bath Win

Babies are expensive. For various reasons. One of those reasons is the gear. Oh, the gear.

But no matter what the baby gear industry tells you, there are a lot of products out there that are on various "getting ready for baby" lists that no one really needs. Sure, you need the essentials like a car seat, a crib, clothes, diapers, etc., but there are a lot of items on those lists that are just silly. Wipe warmers? Bottle warmer? Diaper genies? Ugh, when I saw a diaper genie for sale at Babies R Us a few months back, it took everything on me to not stand there and point and laugh at it hysterically. Seriously.

You gotta be smart about it, friends.

We put a lot of thought into the things we've bought for Eddy. I didn't just buy everything on the "you need these" lists and really thought about where everything was going to go in our tiny house, and whether the item was a necessity or just a luxury. We shopped Craigslist, graciously accepted various items second hand, and did a lot of research so that we only purchased items that could be used for a longer period of time or in several different ways.

One of the things that the baby gear industry tries really hard to tell you that babies need are special bathtubs. Yes, babies need baths, and yes, you have to be careful when bathing your baby since doing it incorrectly could be dangerous. But the baby bath items out in the market are ridiculous. Before Eddy was born, we bought an inexpensive foldable bath that fits into the sink so that we could bathe her during her caterpillar stage. Of course, she grew out of this quickly. Soon we were bathing her directly in the bathroom sink. But now she's grown out of that as well.

So we found ourselves on the hunt for a baby bath. I wanted something simple. Something that would fit her little body but would allow her to splash around and play. A bathtub would do that, but the thought of filling an entire bathtub every other day seemed a bit wasteful. So we searched and searched for something simple and came across options that ranged from too much to silly to absolutely outrageous. Did you know there are baby jacuzzis out there? Ones that bubble and stuff? Ugh. Then there are the ones that are made of awful plasticky colors that are contoured for the baby's little tushy. These require the baby to lay back and be a perfect little angel in the water. Our Eddy is not this. She likes to move and play, and there was no way she was going to sit still in one of those, not to mention she would grow out of it so quickly. Then we would be stuck with this hunk of useless contoured piece of plastic.

After chatting with some friends for ideas, we finally came up with the perfect plan.

Storage tub + small bath mat = instant baby tub!

So I took a trip to Fred Meyer and got a shallower storage tub. We just used that at first, but found that the bottom was way too slippery for her to be able to sit in it herself. A small bath mat fixed that problem right up. And guess what we have after she grows out of this tub? A regular old storage container... to probably store baby stuff.

So much fun is now had at bath time. Eating the bubbles is the best.

So happy!

$15 baby bath tub for the win!