Filed under: on the town
Today is Car Free Day! Are there Car Free activities going on where you live? Here in Montreal, part of downtown will be blocked off to cars for part of the day. The area is bounded by but doesn’t include some major streets, and the hours are after morning rush hour and before afternoon rush hour, so the street closure is perhaps more symbolic than trying to affect real change. However, having lived most of my life in a city with public transportation that can be described as poor at best, I still appreciate the gesture.
Matt decided to get rid of some of his t-shirts recently, and since I can’t stand to see usable materials end up in the trash, they were added to my “former clothes that are now just material I can probably use to sew something sometime” pile. For two of the shirts, their stint in that pile was short lived. The tops and fronts were cut off and made into baby bibs. (Can’t pass up a pre-made, perfectly good neck hole!) Someday our baby will be drooling and spilling food onto a Dillinger Escape Plan t-shirt! 
The fun didn’t stop there. How could I in good conscience throw away the whole back and sleeves of two t-shirts? So much material! So much potential! Good reader, it didn’t take long before I had decided what to do. Combined with some flannel sheets I nabbed off Freecycle back in June, some mistakenly ordered traffic stopping neon green PUL, and a bit of velcro, these t-shirt remnants became six reusable cloth pads, which I plan on donating to Goods 4 Girls.
If you don’t know about Goods 4 Girls, now is the time to acquaint yourself with this awesome organization, run by Deanna Duke aka Crunchy Chicken. They collect reusable cloth pads — homemade or otherwise — for distribution to girls/women in need in Africa. Check the site for more info; she says it pretty well on there. I think it’s a kick butt organization, and I only wish I had gotten around to sewing for them sooner!
Got a sewing machine? Why not give sewing cloth pads a try? It’s a quick, satisfying project. Like using a Diva (or other brand) cup, cloth pads are reusable so you keep lots and lots of disposable products out of the landfills. If you decide using cloth pads is not for you, you can donate to Good 4 Girls (unused pads only of course!). There are lots of patterns available for free on the internet. The Goods 4 Girls site has a list of them. The one I used for these pads is Adahy’s pantyliner pattern. I’ve tried a bunch of different patterns, and this is the one I like best so far. Of course, if you’re not a sewer, you can always donate with moola or cloth pads made by someone else. See the Donate page on the site.
Filed under: in the bathroom
My shampoo boycott has come to an end… or at least had a hiccup. I decided this weekend that I just couldn’t stand the constantly dirty head feeling anymore, so the shampoo made an appearance in the shower. I don’t think this has to be the end of my No Poo experiment, though, and I definitely learned about my hair and its behavior when unshampooed over the last six or so weeks. Shampoo is not the only way to wash your hair. I recommend experimenting with alternatives or at least decreasing your use of shampoo. Your head doesn’t need to be covered in thick bubbles to get clean!
I just found out that next week marks the start of Montreal’s weekly green waste pick-up program. Now Montrealers will be able to put their yard waste out at the curb for composting, just like recycling and trash pick-up. Unfortunately, this doesn’t affect me since I don’t have a yard and therefore don’t generate yard waste. At first I got really excited, thinking this was all organic waste, but no, just grass clippings, leaves, and the like. I hope this will expand to include kitchen scraps too.
Filed under: in the kitchen
Last week we got our second Good Food Box. What a haul! I love it! If you’re in Montreal or somewhere else with a Good Food Box program, I totally recommend it. Here’s what we got this time around:
- 1 lb red grapes
- 4 pears
- big head of broccoli
- 2 green peppers
- big bunch of celery
- 3 big cucumbers
- 6 ears of corn
- head of iceberg lettuce
- 1 leek
- 1.5 lbs tomatoes
- 2 lbs yellow onions
Everything is from Quebec except the grapes and pears which are from the US. Not bad for $10. It’s certainly better than I could have done with $10 at the grocery store or the farmers’ market. Yumyum!
Filed under: in the bathroom
It’s the great no poo experiment! The “poo” in this case is shampoo, not poop. Going “no poo” means washing your hair without shampoo. For me, the ultimate goal is to get my scalp to regulate its oil output such that I can simply rinse my hair with water in the shower and not look like a greaseball. I’ve been transitioning to this rinse-only method by using baking soda and apple cider vinegar. The first week I washed my hair with a solution of three teaspoons of baking soda to about a cup of water. Then I rinsed with the same ratio of apple cider vinegar to water. (There was a complete water rinse between each solution — no volcanoes on my head!) Each week I reduced the baking soda/vinegar by one teaspoon.
I’ve now finished my fourth week of no poo-ing. It was my first full week of just rinsing with water. I’m not sure I’m happy with the results yet. The first two weeks, my hair seemed just like normal. Once I hit the one teaspoon week, I started feeling greasier even just out of the shower. Maybe I need to give my head a bit longer to adjust. Maybe I just need to get used to not being as super squeaky clean as I used to be with all the harsh chemicals in shampoo that were stripping my hair of all traces of oil. My hair doesn’t look bad, mind you. I just feel a bit greasy.
I will post another no poo update in a few weeks. If you are interested in going no poo, give it a search. There’s lots of info out there about why and how to do it. Personally, I’m doing it to be rid of chemical-laden shampoo and packaging. Also, it’s an experiment, and I like experiments. I think it will be cool if my head can learn to regulate its oil production without outside influence; in theory, it should. We’ll see if that amount of natural oil production is something I like or not. If not, I may consider going back to the baking soda/vinegar treatment, which seemed to work very well for me. Or I may make some shampoo soap bars. I have made them in the past, and they dried my hair out. However, plain baking soda did that too, but the vinegar rinse softened my hair back out, so maybe that is something to try.
OK, so I don’t have a kingdom to trade for a compost pile, but it would be really nice to have one. Or access to one very nearby would be great. Or curbside organic matter pick-up would be fantastic. (This last one is supposed to be coming to Montreal… sometime.) This is one of the downfalls of living in an apartment: no yard for a compost pile.
This week I am not collecting my organic matter for my worms. They didn’t seem to be eating as fast as I was feeding them, so I’m giving them a week off. Even when I do feed them, though, there are many compostable things that end up in the trash. My worms can only eat so much! Nearly all of Matt’s coffee grounds end up in the trash. Banana peels go in there. Most of the egg shells too. Anything that is too hard or too big (and unable to be reduced in size) or too protein-y (like beans) or too seedy or too slow to break down ends up in the trash. It makes me sad because I know that it would all happily decompose and turn into beautiful compost if only given a chance.
If you have a yard and are able to have a compost pile, please do so. It’s very low-maintenance, and I bet you will be surprised at how much your garbage is reduced. You can put your yard waste in there too. And you will end up with lovely compost to use on your lovely yard!
Filed under: market report
It’s been a while since I did a market report, but then it’s been a while since I’ve been to the market. The real market, I mean. The J-T. I did go to the Atwater market a couple times because it’s so much closer, and I was desperate for strawberries.
I guess I have really been out of the loop because I was somewhat amazed at what all is in season now! Perhaps it’s because the last time I was there, it was all strawberries, rhubarb, and asparagus. Now it’s everything season, it seems! Tomatoes, eggplant, beans, potatoes, corn, peaches, onions, greens, herbs… I even saw some Quebec cabbage, which made me a little sad, cabbage being winter food in my eyes. I’m not ready for summer to be gone yet! No use dwelling on that, though, when there is such an abundance of tasty local summer food available.
I bought what will most likely be my last basket of strawberries for the season. There are fewer people selling them now (although still a lot) and the price seems to be climbing a bit, so I’m guessing they are on their way out. I intend to enjoy these fresh instead of freezing them, as I did with the last batch I bought. Six pints of strawberries in the freezer will make for some tasty smoothies over the winter.
As I said, I wasn’t prepared for all the summer food to be ready already, so I didn’t take full advantage. Next time, you can bet that I will be coming home with corn, peaches, and tomatoes a-plenty! Yumyum! Oh, and okra! I will keep a sharp eye out for okra. I am determined to find it this year.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Three water-related things to report today:
1. Finally, finally, finally, after months of waiting, the leak in our bathroom has finally been fixed! Oh happy day! The background story is that the cold water has been leaking from the bathtub faucet for many months, progressively getting worse. For the last few months, we’ve had the cold water turned off, only turning it on when needed. As you can imagine, turning the water on and off has been a hassle. It is therefore extremely exciting for me to be able to adjust the temperature of the water while washing my hands! Or brush my teeth with cold water! Or not worry about wasting water when we forget to turn the cold water back off! Yay!
2. A waterspout was seen in the St. Lawrence river yesterday down at the Old Port. Apparently, this never happens. See a picture here.
3. There is still unmelted snow from this winter’s record-breaking snowfalls! Mmmm, dirty six-month-old snow. Sounds awesome. Read more here.
Filed under: in the kitchen
Today Matt picked up our first Good Food Box. Exciting! According to the brochure, “The Good Food Box is a collective buying group that purchases fresh fruits and vegetables at wholesale prices.” It’s similar to a CSA in that you pay in advance for a box of mystery produce. It’s dissimilar in that you only pay for one box at a time, and you are not obligated to buy more than one box. That is, it’s not a subscription. The food is probably but not necessarily local. There is no mention as to if it is organic, so I’m guessing that is not one of their priorities.
We got a medium box for $10. This is what was in it:
- small container of raspberries
- 5 pears
- 1 really big bunch of celery
- 1 lb yellow beans*
- 1 really big head of lettuce
- 1/2 lb baby bok choy
- 2 medium zucchini (1 lb)
- 1 lb baby potatoes
- 3 not very ripe tomatoes
The pears are from Argentina. The tomatoes are from elsewhere in Canada. Everything else is from Quebec (admittedly a large province but I still consider it local). The food came with a sheet of paper with info about some of the food and recipes. As for bad points, there were a few yucky raspberries in the carton, but that was the only thing that looked somewhat bad. All in all, I’d say it’s a pretty good deal for ten bucks!
If you live in Montreal and want to get in on the Good Food Box, check out what Moisson Montreal has to say about it. There is a list of drop off points here. Not sure if this list is up to date or not.
* Does anyone have any good string bean recipes? I never know what to do with them!
