I don’t own a clothes dryer. Although we bought our first ever washer a few months ago, we decided that we didn’t need to purchase a dryer. Now, nearly three months later, I’m happy to say that skipping the dryer was a great decision. For me personally, not owning a dryer offers a lot of benefits:
Energy savings: I’ve read that clothes dryers are one of the largest sources of household energy use. I’m sure we’re saving quite a bit of energy by not owning one.…
I’ve written a couple of posts about shopping at Costco. (See real food finds at Costco and wild fish at Costco.) Yesterday, however, Jesse and I had such a great Costco trip that I need to revisit the subject again. If you, too, are a Costco member, I greatly hope that your local Costco also carries the bounty that I just discovered at mine. If not, I’d consider suggesting that they start carrying some of these products. 🙂
Grass-fed Butter
When we entered the dairy aisle, this wonderful sight greeted us:
Beautiful Kerrygold butter
Our local Costco (in Superior, Colorado) hasn’t had Kerrygold butter in nearly a year, so suffice it to say I was EXTREMELY excited about this.…
If you saw my last garden post, you may have noticed that we’re pretty much swimming in basil here. Although I’ve been snipping off bits of basil for meals for weeks now, to make a really big dent I knew we’d have to make some pesto. (Quite the sacrifice, right? :)) Last weekend we finally got down to it. We harvested two bowls about this size:
Harvested basil
It was a lot of basil, but when I looked at the plants afterwards you could hardly tell that any was missing! Ha. I guess that just means that more pesto is in our future.…
Part of the reason that I decided to grow mint this year was so that I could try making my own peppermint extract. Jesse and I are pretty much obsessed with mint (especially mint plus chocolate) so we go through a lot of mint extract. I buy this brand of mint extract and think it’s great, but it’s not exactly cheap, so making my own seemed like a great way to save some money.
I finally got down to it last weekend. The extract has only been sitting for a few days so far so I can’t tell you how it came out, but I wanted to share the method now in case anyone else has an abundance of mint just begging to be used for something.…
It’s time for another garden update! Let me start out by showing a few older pictures. Here’s the bulk of our container garden right after we transplanted everything two months ago:
Container garden right after transplanting
Here’s that same setup one month ago:
Container garden after one month
And here’s what it looks like now:
Container garden after two months
We’ve moved most things out of this arrangement recently, to maximize sun exposure, but I moved it back temporarily to give a better comparison with the first two pictures. Even with the rearranging, I had trouble fitting everything into the picture (I couldn’t back up enough on our small balcony!) but you get the general idea.…