Changing necessities

Today I read a report about changing perceptions of necessity versus luxury. A few months ago I posted a blog about how our dryer conked out and I was extolling the virtues of a clothes line in lieu of a dryer. In my blog I stated that 83% of Americans view the dryer as a necessity. Interestingly enough, this Pew report I read indicates that those numbers, in this economy, are now below the opinion levels of those surveyed about the necessity of a clothes dryer in 1983. Now only 66% of people indicate the dryer as a necessity.

I take the time to wash a couple of loads of clothes almost every day and I try to hang all of the clothes on the line. My line is not immense, and about one load at a time fits on it. Yet now that summer time temps are upon us (over 100 this weekend!), I find it takes no more than a couple of hours for the clothes to dry. Utilizing the power of sun and wind makes a difference when you're trying to pinch pennies in this economy!

In addition, I was intrigued by the other "necessities" in this report which are now seeing declining numbers. The microwave (down 21% since 2006), home air conditioning (down 16%), television (down 12%) and cable service (down 10%).

Our microwave is a monster model. It is harvest gold, has a dial rather than push buttons, and we rarely use it. I would venture to guess in three years I have used the microwave maybe a dozen times. I use the stove, bbq grill and the oven rather than the microwave. Partly it's because when I do turn that beast on, I'm a little leery to even be in the house while it's running for fear of radiation! And that fear makes me realize that when I do utilize it, what I'm blasting into my food isn't necessarily something that is good for my body! We don't eat or buy convenience foods--those boxed meals with excess packaging and bland, over processed food just don't appeal to me. I prefer whole foods as much as I can get them. I occasionally use canned foods, but that's about the limit--unless you count boxed crackers! Warming my food is a snap on the stove with the help of a double boiler, though my goal when cooking is try to limit the amount of leftovers.

As for television, well, you know how I feel about that! Since the digital conversion our television has been turned on very little--we have watched a few movies on it. Out of curiosity one day not long after the conversion I thought I'd take a look to see what all static looks like. I was surprised to see the religious channels and Spanish speaking channels still coming through! I haven't missed watching TV, nor do I give it much thought. Actually lately I've been thankful it's a non-entity!

The reality is: we don't really "need" much more than a roof over our head, food to eat, and water to drink. The luxuries that make our life a little less hectic are just that--luxuries. What do most people do with all that extra time the dryer and microwave affords? Watch television! Though, apparently less people see the need for that too.

What in the heck is it?

Several months back, as I was planning my garden, I was very interested in companion planting and learned that borage grows well with tomatoes. I had never heard of borage, but found some seeds at the store, so I decided to go ahead and include them in my garden. Wow! What a plant! Often people ask me "what the heck is it?" when I point it out in my garden. I did a little research and thought I'd share it with you.

First of all, borage is edible--the leaves are most tasty when young. The plant is hairy all over and the consistency is a little strange to get used to, but the leaves taste like cucumber and make a great addition to salads. The flowers are edible too. Second of all, when you plant this in your garden, make sure you leave a lot of room for it to grow. Though the flowers are tiny, the plant itself can grow up to two or three feet tall and just as wide! Bees love the flowers, which is another added bonus if you are growing organically.

Grown as an herb, this plant is popular in Europe, and it is most often used in Germany, Spain, and Italy. In Germany the popular Frankfurter Grüne Soβe (Gruene Sosse) uses borage along with many other herbs.

Perhaps most importantly, at least in my mind, borage grows well with tomatoes. It is said that borage repels the tomato worm and makes tomatoes taste better if grown together. In my garden I have a ring of borage intermixed with nasturtiums, marigolds, and basil (all also make excellent tomato companions) surrounding four tomato plants. Whether they taste better will be the subject for a later post!

Creative Gardening

I guess it's been a while since I posted an update about my garden. Surprisingly it's coming along very well! Already we've enjoyed the bounties of our harvest--plenty of lettuce salads with borage leaves, radishes, and basil tossed in, all courtesy of our garden. We've also enjoyed turnips and beets as well as swiss chard. I went out yesterday to weed a little and as I was readjusting the cucumbers to climb the trellis, I noticed I had several green beans ready to pick! We ate those last night.

I also noticed that my tomato plants are growing so large (remember those tomatoes I was fussing about earlier this spring???) that they're beginning to droop onto the ground. As I don't want to spend money on tomato cages, and because I have a whole pile of dried bamboo laying in the yard, I did a little research to figure out a way to make tomato cages out of bamboo. Already I've poked a stalk of bamboo next to some tomatoes, but it's just not enough to support all the branches. I found an article at e-how about "How to Build a Bamboo Tomato Cage" and adapted it for my tomatoes. As I was building the first cage today I realized there is no magic one size fits all tomato cage since everyone's tomato needs are different. I have some areas where I have two or four tomatoes of varying heights and sizes growing along side one another, and I have other areas where I have a lone tomato plant. They are spread throughout my garden. In order to make most efficient use of the bamboo as well as my space, I built one cage that supports two plants today.

As you can see, it is important to build a tomato cage with the proper supervision. Ami passes by just in time for the camera to go off, on her way to a shady spot where she casually watched my progress.

I planted the three back poles first, and then beginning with the bottom, I added smaller stalks broken from the top of the bamboo poles (some of the poles are well over 10 feet tall!), working from the bottom up. I used zip ties to hold the sides in place. It's not perfect--as I worked along I realized ways I could have built the cage and used less zip ties. Next time I'll run one long pole across all three rather than shorter ones linking each bamboo pole. I did this along the back, but for some reason (maybe the sun was getting to my brain?) I didn't do that on the front. I'm not sure I like the looks of plastic zip ties in my garden, but you do what you gotta do!

Disconnected and loving it

Let me preface this by saying I am not 100% disconnected, but when it comes to television I am. This month my rabbit ears will become an ancient relic, destined for storage in the garage attic, or perhaps the local dump. The television will continue to collect dust, as it has been increasingly in the months past. It will retain its position in the corner because I still use it to view movies on DVD or VHS. But as for network or cable television, it is already defunct.

I read today a piece on NPR's All Tech Considered, entitled "Cutting the Coax: Living without Cable TV." Todd Mundt, the author, speaks to his decision to cut cable and live without it. Yet, what he describes is not living without television; he swaps one medium for several others. His post is full of references to television I have never, nor will probably ever watch.

I moved here three years ago. At the point before I moved I was a cable junky, especially on the weekends when I'd curl up on the couch and get sucked into HGTV, Lifetime, The Food Network, and many other channels. I can't count the number of hours I spent in front of the glowing box. When we got a DVR I thought I had died and gone to heaven! Just before moving to California I moved where I didn't have a DVR and couldn't imagine a life without it. But then I moved to a house where there was no cable at all. Interestingly, the only television show I missed and had issues with missing was "Grey's Anatomy." I have watched that show since the first episode and I admit I'm hooked. I worked my way around that initially by asking a friend of mine who does have a DVR to record it for me. For about a year and a half I would go to her house weekly--sometimes bi-monthly--to watch the show. Then sometime this year I discovered that I could watch current episodes on ABC.com, so my weekly trips to her house stopped. That's the only current show I watch. I do turn the television on for 15 minutes first thing in the morning to get the weather, but more often lately I find I don't even do that.

Here's the problem when you disconnect from television like this: pretty soon you can't stand to watch any of it. Last week, when I was in Nebraska, I turned the television on one day while at the hospital with my mom. I watched all of 10 minutes of it (more than 5 was commercial time) before I had to turn it off. It was simply because I could not stand the constant barrage of commercials. I know I've written about this before, so I won't repeat myself here. It's amazing how invasive commercials are.

So when I read Todd Mundt's experience, at first I was kind of excited to read how someone else has discovered that over time without television you don't want it any more, but I was disappointed to find that all he did was transfer one addiction for another. He claims he is still "getting information" through these different mediums, but I can attest that you can get information by other means. Yes, I'm still hooked up through the Internet (and I do pay the $10 extra a month for high speed cable internet), and I find that it provides me a window to the world of information that television cannot. Through other means I can make up my own mind about the quality of information that I'm presented, rather than believe the crap (or even just be persuaded by it) that's pushed in my face on television.

In this household the switch to digital television won't mean a thing. We don't use the TV now, there's no need for us to use it in the future either.

Spring marches on

I flew back to northern California the other day after a whirlwind trip back to Nebraska. As I exited the airport I was immediately struck by the floral smell in the air. It was humid and sticky in Nebraska, as it always is in the spring and summer, but here the air was crisp, and so fragrant! I looked around but could not see where the smell was coming from. Flowers begin blooming here in March or so and continue on until the heat of summer and dry season. Each bloom marks the seasons for me. The Camellias and Wisteria are the first to bloom sometime in March, then comes the Lemon Bottlebrush tree in April and May. But it is the bloom of the Magnolia tree that amazes me most year after year, and it signals to me the end of the lush spring and an ushering in of the heat of summer.

We have two Magnolia trees in the yard. I was curious and did a little research about them. I am guessing ours are the magnolia grandiflora species--that is, the Southern Magnolia. Magnolia trees are ancient; they have survived ice ages and continental drift, and have been around for over 20 million years! They existed before bees, and the flowers developed to encourage pollination by beetles.

Their flowers are short lived, so I take the time frequently to stand and admire them before they disappear. A couple of weeks ago I noticed one of the two trees in bloom already. It stands near the garden bed, and as I was tending my garden I noticed things were dropping like rain onto the ground around my feet. Curious about this, I glanced up, hoping it was not a bird! I was amazed to discover that the bees were busy around each blossom, and as they dove into the flower, they would throw down the stamen to the ground below. Soon enough the flowers will disappear, their leaves will be all around the ground, and we will once again be cursing their cones all over the place. But for now, for these brief few weeks, I stand in awe of this ancient, magnificent tree species with its flowers that span the size of a small dinner plate.

Eggs-a-plenty!

Lately I've been mulling over the idea of raising chickens. Not so much for eating, but for eggs. We have a chicken coop in the back of the garage already, but it has been abandoned for several years. I've been told that raising chickens is easy, and I know it's not against the law here because people all around the neighborhood have chickens, goats, cows, horses and other farm animals. My friend has chickens, and I hit her up from time to time for eggs. Her hens are allowed to roam her property, so the eggs are free range and absolutely delicious. Their yokes are a much darker yellow than store-bought eggs.

Lately my friend has been telling me that one of her hens must be laying on eggs outside the hen house; she knew this because the hen, when she called for it, would come running from behind the garage when all the other hens were already around her waiting to be fed. Yesterday she went out to the area she suspected the hen was laying and underneath a junk pile she found 60 (yes, that's SIXTY) eggs! Now, you would think that all these eggs must have gone bad because the hen(s?) had been laying there for quite some time. Apparently, however, there is a way to determine whether eggs are bad or good.

To determine whether an egg has gone bad you simply have to follow these steps:

1. Fill a bowl with cool water.


2. Gently place the egg into the water.


3. If it drops quickly to the bottom, and lies on its side, it is fresh.


4. If it drops to the bottom, but stands on end, it's still okay to eat, but it needs to be consumed soon!


5. If it floats to the top of the water, toss it--it's a bad egg!

My friend said out of the 60 eggs, she had to toss only a dozen! I was the happy recipient of two 18-packs of these eggs, so I had to experiment to see for myself. Though many of the eggs pointed upward (still okay to eat, but an indication that they're a few weeks old), several were still fresh. I boiled up a dozen of the pointer eggs--eggs that are a little bit older are easier to peel than fresh ones.

After this experience I'm beginning to eyeball that chicken coop with renewed interest!

Gramma's Recipes

Some years ago I stumbled on an old cookbook among my mother's things. It was tattered, torn, and falling apart. Yet, within the book were pages of recipes, many handwritten and food-stained. The handwriting I recognized from old family letters as that of my great-grandmother's. I instantly latched onto the book and held onto it as a cherished family heirloom. Today I was thumbing through the book, and thought I'd take the time to share one of the recipes with you. It is one which maybe we all need to rely upon in these dark economic times:

Economy Cake

Put 1/2 cup sour milk, yolk of 1 egg, 1/4 cake Baker's chocolate in double boiler. When melted and smooth add 1 tbsp. butter 1 cup sugar 1/2 cup sour milk 1 tsp soda 1 1/2 cups flour. Use white of egg for frosting.


That's it. No directions necessary as any good housewife worth her weight knew how to process this recipe!

If you try this recipe, could you please comment and let me know how it went?