Wordless Wednesday

Pintesting - Chemical Free Beauty - Lemon Sugar Scrub

You may remember once I made the decision to rid my life of as many excess chemicals as I can (there are areas where I slip - we all do) I threw out a lot of beauty products I found to be harboring toxins I was previously unaware of.

Today's pintest comes via this pin and the info found here.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup sugar or 1/2 cup salt - I used sugar because sometimes I have cuts and bruises from traipsing through the woods. Who wants to come home with the intention of relaxing and rub salt and lemon into a wound!?

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 tablespoons lemon juice

The directions are simple: Mix all ingredients in a small bowl. - I mixed mine in the 1/2 pint jar I intended to store this in.

The resulting mix was too watery for me.

I like a firm scrub that I can pretty much hold in my hand. To remedy this "problem" I just added more sugar until the mix had reached the consistency I preferred.

How was it? The olive oil tends to still keep it really loose so I had to give it a bit of a mix before using it. It had a very light lemon scent wasn't at all unpleasant to use.

Around 80% of the time I shower I shower with my little lamb. The evening I tried this scrub was no exception.

There I was scrubbing and showering away when I look over and see her laying on her tummy not far from the drain. I thought she was pretending to swim. She wasn't. She was drinking what was washing off of me! It was a small battle to get her to stop.

Once I got her off her tummy she stood next to me with her mouth open trying to catch juice in her mouth.

When we got out of the shower I heard the dog in there licking at things.

I've Got Compost Fever

Well it's finally happened. If you regularly read this blog or know me personally you may have seen this one coming. I did - but not this soon. I've got composting fever.

The other week I was throwing out banana peels left from my daughters snacking and something in me sort of snapped, not in an angry way, more in a  - WHY AM I DOING THIS!? . . . sort of way.

In my attempts to become greener and greener and all I have been learning needless waste is something that is frequently (if not constantly) on my mind. Throwing away banana peels that could be composted along with other table type scraps just felt so completely wasteful.

I'd learned a little bit about vermicomposting from watching the documentary, "No Impact Man." So on the night of this "revelation" I went to bed dreaming of an indoor worm composting bin and growing fresh, wonderful tomatoes. And if I wanted that compost to take any part in my spring and summer gardening I needed to start now.

Disheartened that I didn't have the funds for a vermicompost bin and not yet finding a site detailing how to make a bin that would be "as good" as the kind you buy I hit up Pintrest. This fantastic pin gave me the first ray of sunshine. Knowing that I wanted to start my compost bin in a month or less I still felt unhappy with throwing away things I knew I would one day (hopefully soon) be composting. There was the answer, freeze it. If you have too much food that will be going into your bin you're advised to freeze it. Why not just begin freezing it now!?

I got out my freezer bags.

Then went through my fridge to find out what had gone bad and what needed to be thrown away anyway.

I felt a tad stupid. My grandmother had been freezing her compostables all of my life and I never thought anything of it and the idea never occurred to me. She keeps a small ceramic container that looks like a tiny garbage can on  the counter and when it's full she would put it into a plastic bag and freeze it.

After I began bagging I looked at the amount of food that would have just gone to waste and felt a bit better. Who knows if I will always have the amount of food I need to provide for my little worms to be? This way at least I may have some food here and ready to go for them.

Fleas Part III

Despite our best efforts the fleas, are still here. They aren't as bad. Maybe the dog picked them back up over the holiday while she stayed on the family farm. Who knows.

I'm building up my supply of essential oils to pintest a flea spray.

Home-Made Tortillas

I've been trying to cut costs and be as reasonably chemical-free and self-sustaining as possible; and I have to tell you, cutting out all those conveniences has left me with even more work than I had before. Recently I made home-made flour tortillas. Not that tortillas are infinitely expensive but every penny saved helps. This is also one more way that we can cut excess plastics from our lives. Besides, have you ever looked at just how much sodium some companies tortillas companies contain!?

Most tortilla recipes you find online call for lard or shortening and we don't tend to keep either of those around. With a a few minutes more of online searching you can turn up a recipe that doesn't call for either.

This recipe took me about 30 minutes to make from start to finish.

The results were satisfying but noticeably different from  their store bought counter-parts. My husband said he prefers these to the store bought.

I will definitely try the recipe again and in the future see if I can roll my tortillas even thinner than I did on my maiden try.

Toxic Teas

I love me some tea. I've been in love with tea and the many opportunities for ceremony and ritual surrounding it ever since my mother asked me if I wanted to have a peppermint tea party with her when I was a little girl. Heck yeah I wanted to have a tea party! She brewed us a couples of cups of tea and we sat in my room enjoying it. Tea is simply magical.

There are secret dangers everywhere these days and unless you actually go looking for them you have a great chance on missing out on what could prove to be useful information. Looking for trouble sounds crazy and exhausting. I look at it this way - if you're reading this blog then it's likely you're interested in these hidden dangers and I'm happy to share whatever I've learned with you.

The subject of toxins in tea was just one of those thoughts I had in passing and chose to revisit. Honestly, it came to me while I sat watching The Backyardigans with my daughter. I let my mind wander and suddenly found myself wondering - are there hidden toxins in tea? It wasn't a search that took much digging to find an answer to my question, and that answer was a resounding yes.

Many tea bags are produced using a nasty chemical used in the production of plastics and insecticides. When this chemical, epichlorohydrin, comes in contact with water, it hydrolyzes into a carcinogen. In a world where we are trying so hard to rid our homes and bodies of endocrine disruptors we sit down with a nice, hot, cup of cellular metabolic process disruptors.

But wait there's more! (I'm so so sorry . . . )

Tea bags are also usually bleached (that's how most of our household items [examples: toilet paper, baby wipes] get that lovely white color. The edges of these bleached bags are also sealed using MORE CHEMICALS!

After these tea bags have been made with epichlorohyrin, bleached, and heat sealed with chemicals; the bags are "wet strengthened" using additional chemicals making sure that the bag doesn't fall apart upon impact with your hot water.

How can you avoid these pitfalls? Check labels. Some teas are made with chemical free bags. Look for "chemical free" or "bleach free" and I should think any company side-stepping a clear answer about if their products are exposed to these things or not should be side-stepped when it comes to your next cup of tea.

Tea companies I found to be free of epichlorohydrin
Twinings (uses a thin layer of polypropylene plastic to seal the tea bags)

Tea companies best to avoid on this issue
Celestial Seasonings
Stash
Bigelow (contain polyamine-epichlorohydrin resins)
Yogi (contain polyamine-epichlorohydrin resins)
Numi (provided an inconclusive response when questioned)
Lipton
Ahmad (will not respond)
Salada (will not respond)
Tazo (will not respond)
Harney & Sons Fine Teas (will not respond)
Ginar (will not respond)
Red Rose
Tetley

Alternative options
Loose tea
Bag your own tea

Related reading
The Truth: About Tea Bags
Twinings FAQ
Bleach in teabags - health risks
Bleached tea bags
Yahoo! Answers
Green Tea May Fight Cancer But The Tea Bags Might Cause It
List of Epichlorohydrin Free Tea Products
How To Tell if Epichlorohydrin Is In Your Tea

Pintesting In The Kitchen - Candied Pumpkin Seeds

Yet another pre-written post that I've let sit way too long and never finished! Here yah go everyone.

Sunday evening my husband decided we should carve pumpkins. At the time he suggested it I was tied up in Skyrim desperately fighting off the forsworn and repeatedly having my butt handed to me. By the time I reached the living room he had already carved the first pumpkin and she had already drawn on a couple of them.

I really hate to be too terribly wasteful and I remember as a child being given some toasted pumpkin seeds at a friends house when I spent the night. The taste was somewhat unremarkable. I don't remember being particularly enamored, but I am of the general impression that everyone usually just needs certain foods prepared the best way for their own personal taste.

There were plenty of pumpkin seeds left after the carving.

This lead me to a completely unplanned kitchen pintest which I'll split into two posts - the first come via this pin and the information I followed from it's source here.

After sifting through the pumpkin guts and separating the seeds from the squishy orange innards. I gave the seeds a good rinse in my colander, making sure to pull out any fragments of pumpkin I could.

The squishy innards I gave to my little lamb to go make a mess of in the living room.

I made the mix as instructed and spread out the now coated seeds on a cookie sheet to bake.

The need for me to get further information outside of the original pin is unusual but this one was one them because I had no pumpkin pie spice. The recipe for pumpkin pie spice I used can be found here.

I baked them for 45 minutes but thought they were still a bit to soft so I put them in for another 10 and had my husband remove them from the oven.

When it came time to remove them from the foil my seeds had pretty much candied themselves to the sheet.

I ended up folding the stiff aluminum foil, letting the seeds drop into a container. Then for good measure I gave the container a bit of a shake.

How were they? My husband and daughter liked them so I'll call it a win.