Update.

It has been such a long time since I've written a post!  Things are getting pretty busy with the upcoming wedding and most of what I have been doing in my free time has been baking, so I haven't had much to post about.  I'm still doing all the same things that I was doing before, but unfortunately I can't write too many posts about how fun it is to make butter.  Or can I...?  It would get old very fast!  Anyhow, I thought it would be nice to give an omnibus update about some of the blog posts that I've done and how things are developing. 

1. Composting: our composter is on our patio and I must admit, it leaks "compost tea".  It also smells a bit sometimes (that's when we have to add more "brown" to the mixture), and has started to attract small bugs.  Tim says they're mosquitoes, but I think they're mostly just fruit flies.  I don't go out onto the patio that much, so it really doesn't bother me at all, even when I do go out to throw compost into the composter, I couldn't care less.  The compost tea leaking on the balcony is a little annoying, but there are very few ways to avoid that.  The actual compost itself is developing nicely, according to Tim.  I tend not to spend much time messing around with it or looking at it.  I'm sure we won't be able to make use of any of it this season, but that's okay, we just wanted to avoid throwing our food waste in the garbage, so it is definitely helping with that.
2. No 'poo:  I am still not using shampoo and it has now been forty days.  It has been about thirty-five days since I have used anything other than water.  I'm thinking that this weekend I might use some baking soda and see what happens, as I have been experimenting with my hair and trying to figure out what I will do for the wedding and my hair is no longer holding any sort of style.  I would like to curl it because that's how Tim likes it, so maybe stripping out just a bit of the natural oils might help.
3. Soapstone cookware: We are LOVING the soapstone cookware.  It really does not allow foods to stick to it, it's very easy to clean (we have to clean it by hand, it can't go in the dishwasher), it has worked well for all foods we've made in the past week (homemade pizza, frittata, Indian food, sauteing veggies, etc.).  I carmelized some onions one day on one of the pans which has resulted in some discolouration, but every time we use that pan, it fades a little more.  We've used them in the oven, from the range then straight into the oven, and in the fridge, and they've been great in all situations.
4. Patio garden: Our little patio garden is going well!  From the seedlings that we started with, we ended up losing most of our lettuce, so it was a good thing that I got the salad pot from Superstore afterwards.  Some of our herbs from last year are coming back (most notably our sage), which was a welcome surprise.  Our shallot are growing nicely, as are the bok choy.  I think we've lots some of the eggplant, tomato plants, and pepper plants, but we really were only hoping for one of each of those, so hopefully they'll work out. I bought a strawberry plant and Tim is getting ready to transplant it into a bigger pot.  We harvested the lettuce in the salad pot about three weeks ago and it is just about ready for another harvest!
5. Baking: I am still baking up a storm.  I've been making my own paneer and butter regularly, as well as granola, tomato sauce, ice cream and lemonade.  There are also lots of baked goods that I make (cookies, egg tarts, muffins, cupcakes, custards, etc.).  Recently, I've decided to start making a whole grain kernel salad every week for Tim and I to eat, so we've been experimenting with that.  We've made quinoa, barley and spelt salads so far. Also, we've decided to start making a healthy soup every week, mostly so that I can bring it to eat for lunch at work.  I made a delicious vegetarian chili lemon soy broth with tofu, water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, orange peppers, cilantro and other goodies in it. This weekend I'm going to make a barley vegetable soup.

So that is a bit of an update.  We are really focusing on trying to eliminate plastics and chemicals as much as possible from our home and our lives and it is going well!  My goal is just to live more simply and sustainably and I must say, I love it!

Apartment composting - Part II

To compliment our new composter that now sits on our balcony, we wanted to get a small kitchen pail or pot that we could put scraps in before taking them out to the balcony.  We looked online to get some ideas and fell in love with the little white crock-styled compost collector to the left.  Note that this container is not designed to actually compost (or, if it is, it's only going to make a couple cups of compost), but to act as a place to put your scraps while you're cooking or preparing your food so you don't have to keep running outside.  This particular style appealed to us because it is aesthetically pleasing enough that we can just set it on our countertop (if we were going to put it under the sink I can guarantee you we would not consider spending more than a few bucks for it), AND it is dishwasher safe, so the goo from the scraps would be easily washed out.

Despite the fact that we really liked this crock-styled container, I still wanted to look on Craigslist to see if there was something that we could get second-hand, because we try to buy everything second-hand.  Naturally, there were many many second hand Diaper Dumpers on Craigslist, but nothing for compost.  So Tim and I discussed what we should do and we came to the conclusion that despite the fact that we really liked this crock collector, we would just get a large plain jar from Superstore.

Apartment composting - Part I

Today is the big day - we've officially put our composter into use!  We obtained our composter from the North Shore Recycling Program earlier this week after giving up on getting a NatureMill Composter, which I had learned tend to break down easily.  So Tim stopped by the depot and picked it up and set it up earlier this week.  Upon reading the instructions, we discovered that we needed to start the composter off with a bed of twigs, so we didn't start putting our scraps into the composter until today (although we were keeping the scraps in the fridge - gross!).  So today we went on a little adventure to the park just down at the end of our street and looked around by the creek and filled a box with twigs and brought them back.  We filled the bottom of the composter with the twigs:

So, since we live in an apartment, we set the composter up on the balcony.  We're really lucky to have a fairly big balcony, so it just hangs out in the corner. Here's a shot of Tim prepping it:

Now that we've christened it with our first load of "green" (over which Tim immediately put some "brown" because he thought it already stunk), in a few months, we'll be able to use some beautiful nutritious compost for our plants!  If any of you compost and have some helpful tips, feel free to leave some comments.  Also, we plan to use mainly shredded paper for our brown material, have any of you done that or do most of you manage to find dry leaves?

Follow up: it's been a couple hours since I posted this and I have done some research on using paper as brown and apparently unless we get some worms (which we're considering), we should avoid the paper. Sigh.

Compost resources in the Lower Mainland.

Two days ago we finally acquired the one contraption I really don't think we should have been living without: our very own composter.  As soon as I learned about the surprising negative impacts of throwing your waste in the garbage (and therefore into a nearby landfill), I started trying to find a way that we could compost.

The first solution I found, because we live in an apartment, was a composter called the NatureMill Composter, designed to be kept indoors.  It plugs in and uses heat and a rotating mixer arm, to cause contents to break down faster than in a typical composter, usually in about two weeks.  Unfortunately, I did a little too much research.  After I had talked myself into it and started telling people about it, and was making plans to get it, I contacted a fellow blogger that had mentioned he had one, and asked him if he would purchase his composter again.  He said it had broken down twice I believe in a year and that he would not.  So there went that idea. It's too bad, it was a nice looking little box.  I still worry that maybe I jumped the gun and changed my mind too fast, and that maybe the other blogger was just really hard on his and mine would have been alright, but I don't think there's much chance of that, Tim and I go through a lot of produce, so we would probably be even harder on ours.

So then I tried to find local composters and was pleasantly surprised to find that the North Shore Recycling Program sells composters to residents at cost, which is $45 including tax.  They also have composting workshops for those not well-versed in the ways of composting.