10 Cosmetics from the Kitchen

A well stocked kitchen has many ingredients that can be used as toiletries as well. I've made a list of my favorites.

1. Olive or almond oil - Great to use as oil for your skin and probably better for you than petroleum based oils. Almond oil has almost no smell but it seems to go rancid more quickly that most olive oil.
2. Baking soda - This one has a myriad of uses…in the bath, a paste to brush your teeth, a slurry to cleanse your skin.
3. Honey - While it is sticky - it also feels really good on your skin (try a honey facial mask!) and can be used with ground oatmeal to make a wonderful, exfoliating scrub for your face.
4. Tea - After you use the bag to make tea, let them cool rather than throwing them in the trash and use them on your eyes while taking a 10 minute break lying down. A spray bottle of strong tea can be quite refreshing in the summer time but be careful to not get it on anything besides your skin because tea can stain.
5. Oatmeal - Did you know that the 'juice' from oatmeal is great for your skin? You can put it in a small back and use it in your bath - squeezing out the milky juice but keeping the oatmeal from clogging the drain. It can be processed in a small food processor and used with honey for a facial scrub as well.
6. Cucumber – Cucumber slices feel great on closed eyelids for a 10 minute break lying down. It can also be used as another ingredient in your honey/oatmeal scrub…just process it in the food processor after the oatmeal.
7.  Salt - Can be another ingredient for a scrub…it dissolves relatively quickly so is actually very mild when used for this purpose. Dissolved in warm water, it can be used as a mouth rinse and helps heal any mouth soreness.
8. Lemon juice - When I was growing up we sprayed our hair with lemon juice then went out in the sun to let it bleach; it only bleaches a little but is easy on the hair while it does it. It can also be mixed with water to make a great rinse for oily hair any time of the year.
9. Vinegar - Used similarly to lemon juice. It also can be used as a spray for sunburn; it has great cooling properties. The apple cider variety is the best for your skin, but be careful not to get it on clothing that it could stain.
10. Vanilla - A teaspoon in bathwater along with some unscented oil or Epsom salts on a winter's night - lovely. Vanilla is one of my favorite winter scents.

Recipe of the Week: Homemade Soup for a Cold Day

Variety is the spice of life. Trying a new recipe each and every week is something that works well for me. Enjoy!

 

The first cold snap of the year feels colder than the temperature actually indicates. Soup is always welcome and it is quite easy to make. The recipe below can be easily modified for what you have on hand using the generalized techniques noted as the bottom of this posting.

5 medium size fresh mushrooms – chopped

4 stalks celery, chopped

Small amount olive oil

Beef bouillon and water

Seasonings to your taste: onion flakes, black pepper, a favorite no-salt blend

Egg noodles

1 can rutabaga, drained of liquid (I got it on sale so that is why it was in my pantry)

¼ cup frozen green peas

Dollop sour cream

Dried basil

In your soup pot, sauté mushrooms and celery in a little olive oil. When they are softened, add the water and bouillon.

Process half the rutabagas in a small food processor and set aside.

Add the seasonings to the soup pot. When the liquid is hot, add the noodles set a timer for their minimal cooking time. Toward the end of the time add the green peas and half the can of unprocessed rutabagas.

When the combination is heated through, stir in the processed rutabaga.

Pour hot soup into your bowl, top with a dollop of sour cream and a sprinkle of dried basil.

Generalized soup making techniques:

1. Sauté the firmer vegetables prior to adding any liquid.
2. Some kind of stock is required. Bouillon cubes are easy to keep on hand and sufficient for most soups since the flavor comes more from the other ingredients. Be aware the they contain salt so don’t add salt while you are cooking your soup.
3. If you want noodles or rice – add them after the liquid is hot and let the seasonings cook into them.
4. If you use canned vegetables, drain off their liquid since it is usually laden with salt – way more than you need in your soup.
5. Keeping frozen vegetables in the freezer (peas and corn, for example) are handy for both salads and soups.
6. Processing a softer ingredient in a food processor before adding it to the soup (or taking some of the veggies out after they are cooked to puree) can give the broth of the soup a natural thickness that makes it easier to keep on the spoon.
7. A dollop of sour cream and a sprinkling of a dried herb on top of your soup after it is in the bowl can make a hum drum meal into something quite special!

Decorating for Christmas Everything but the Tree

Our tradition is to decorate for Christmas just after Thanksgiving. The activity signals the beginning of the happy flurry always associated with December. This year I find myself enthusiastic about our decorations other than the tree!

My favorite is the way we are using Christmas cards from years past:

• Under the clear plastic on the table (picture at right)
• Backed with thin magnets (attached to the card with 2 faced tape) and put on the refrigerator, the door to the garage, the frames of the French doors 
• Standing up on the mantle
• Pinned to the giant scrunchies on the pantry and coat closet doors (picture of the scrunchies before the cards were attached below)

The flags on the stair railing are festive as well. The first flags we bought were used outdoors and faded after a year or two. It’s better to pick out favorites and use them year and after year – making them part of the tradition rather than a short-term glitz.

The same can be said for the pine cone wreath hanging in the den. I did use it outdoors on the front door one year but decided thereafter to decorate it with more fragile ribbons, bells, and artificial birds to hang somewhere inside. It is about 15 years old now. The wreath started out with more sentimental value than the purchased flags since my sister made it from pine cones collected from the yard of another sister.

What are your favorite ‘everything but the tree’ decorations this year?

Kindle Fire – Week 2 Review

Two weeks ago, an early Christmas present from my husband arrived –  a Kindle Fire, Full Color 7" Multi-touch Display, Wi-Fi .  I’m documenting my journey getting comfortable with it over the next few weeks. The 1^st week review can be found here. The delta for week 2 included:

• Using the Kindle to display a recipe (Cranberry Upside Down Cake) worked reasonable well. I put it on a pedestal book stand so it was out of danger of spills and easily visible. The only thing I would change next time would be to lengthen the display timeout from 5 minutes (I had forgotten all about this until it timed out!).

• The OurGroceries app worked well at the store. I particularly like the way the list marks off and moves those items to the bottom as you shop. It is much easier to see what you still need to buy than with a paper list. There was no problem with display timeout (I am not a browsing kind of grocery shopper). A case designed for the Kindle would be better than my improvised padded folder.
• And that brings me to the Kindle Fire MicroShell Folio Cover by Marware  we ordered when my husband saw it on sale – and it came already! It is very light weight but has a solid back that provides good protection for the Kindle. I like the elastic strap that keeps it closed and is also handy for your hand while reading.

At the end of week 2, I’m still very pleased with my Kindle Fire. I’ll continue my review for another week…after that I expect that I’ll be mostly through the experimentation and be simply enjoying my Kindle!

US Botanic Garden - Landmark Building Models

There is a wonderful display of models of the landmark buildings of Washington DC on display at the US Botantic Garden surrrounded by the lush plantings of the conservatory. Their architectural details are created with dried plant materials like bark, pine cone scales, willow twigs, grapevine tendrils and acorn caps. If you are in the Washington DC area between 11/24 and 1/2, it is well work seeing. 

Here is my picture of the model of the Washington Monument. It even has the windows and red lights on top!

A slide show of the Supreme Court building, the Jefferson Memorial ,  the Smithsonian castle, the Museum of the American Indian, the Lincoln Memorial, and the White House is below.

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Gleanings of the Week Ending November 26, 2011

The items below were the cream of the articles I read this past week:

Wild Turkey Facts – did you know that sonic booms can cause domesticated turkey to have fatal heart attacks?

National Parks Conservation Association report on the Chesapeake Bay – the bay will never be as it was when John Smith arrived…but there are things that can and should be done to help the bay recover rather than declining further

Baltimore’s can-do approach to food deserts – it can be very difficult/expensive to find healthful food inner city neighborhoods. Baltimore is trying to improve that situation.

Whale Fossils in the Atacama Desert – there are a lot of them and the research is just beginning

Mars Sand Dunes in Motion – the red planet dunes are not as static as once thought

Paper gems (template included) – hum…maybe this is a use for odd bits of wrapping paper? I’ve already printed off the template to give it a try!

Changes In Ancient Humans’ Diet Made Wisdom Teeth Obsolete – I am a person who did have all 4 wisdom teeth removed before I was 20. It is interesting to have this explanation but it may not be the only reason wisdom teeth need to be extracted.

Know your Sharks Gallery – Fascinating creatures that are getting a lot of attention from National Geographic right now

Makeup tips for aging faces – Some of these tips I had derived on my own some now…and every little bit helps!

10 Extra Special Holiday Gifts

Extra special gifts require some extra thought …to make it perfectly tailored for the recipient. The ideas listed below are intended to get your creative juices started! Remember – sometimes the most memorable gifts are not the ones that cost a lot of $.

1. An IOU (on pretty paper) for something they would enjoy or need like: a home cooked meal (maybe 3 or 4 of them), 4 hours of babysitting, a trip to a local attraction like a garden or museum with transportation provided, 3 months of pet food (delivered a month at a time), or rototilling of the garden come spring.
2. A homemade favorite dessert.
3. A homemade favorite cookie dough for the freezer….to bake and enjoy long after the holidays are done.
4. A favorite blend of coffee or tea or hot chocolate…or their favorite special creamers.
5. A box of microwave popcorn wrapped with that movie on DVD they asked for
6. An exact replacement for a favorite T-shirt or pair of socks that wore out sometime during the year.
7. A thumb drive of family pictures (assuming they have a computer or frame to view the pictures).
8. If the person is a reader and you have access to a used book store where there are a large number of books they would enjoy – buy a number of books and wrap them each individually in different kinds of paper…newspaper, glossy magazine pages, etc.
9. If they are a person that enjoys personal notes – send one daily – either email or the old fashioned snail mail….that lets them know you are thinking about them every day. Do it for a month or more around the holiday. If snail mail is used, there are lots of small flat ‘presents’ that can be slipped into the envelope – a well-wrapped tea bag, a pressed flower, a paper snow flake or heart, a dried leaf, a recipe card.
10. Create a collection of digital images that the recipient would find soothing or visually appealing that you can load on their computer with instructions on how to play the ‘slide show.’ Natural images are my favorites - botanical prints, bubbling/rippling water, feathers, wood grain.

Do you have some ideas to add to the list – things that you’ve given or received that were extra memorable or needed….and obviously appreciated?

Recipe of the Week: Cranberry Upside Down Cake

Yes - this is the second 'recipe of the week' for this week. The recipe pointed to in my 'Gleanings' from last Sunday turned out so luscious that I wanted to share. If course, I did my usual 'modify the recipe' thing:

• butter instead of margarine
• regular brown sugar rather than vegan
• whole wheat flour
• regular sugar rather than vegan
• almond milk rather than soy milk
• orange zest (since I had just eaten an orange and had the zest drying on a plate in the kitchen) rather than lemon zest or oil

And - I realized that I no longer have any regular round cake pans - so I made it in a rectangular Pyrex baking dish. 

It is yummy and a beautiful deep red color. Next time - I think I'll try making it in a Bundt pan!

Book of the Week: The Botanical Register (1815-1828)

The 14 volumes of The Botanical Register that Botanicus has scanned and made available online are my featured ‘book’ this week.   The botanical images in The Botanical Register are well worth a look and there are approximately 90 of them in each volume. It is easy to look at just the ‘plates’ using the Pages list on the left side of the page. On the right side of the page is a control panel for zooming in or out and downloading. It is easy to move around the image by simply dragging the view window.  I am gleaning images for my desktop slideshow to play on my second monitor while I write!

Botanicus is a freely accessible, Web-based encyclopedia of digitized historic botanical literature from the Missouri Botanical Garden Library. There is a wealth of material on the site. A short list of some others I’ve enjoyed recently includes:

Orchid Albums from the late 1800s

Journal et flore des jardins

Abbildung und Beschreibung blühender Cacteen

The Botanist's Repository for New and Rare Plants

Rumphia

Historia fisica, politica y natural de la isla de Cuba

Annales de Flore et de Pomone

I am thankful for....

Thanksgiving Day tradition in my family includes a lot of food…and some contemplative time to articulate – maybe only to ourselves – the elements of our lives that we are thankful for.

Almost every year – the first things I think about are:

• Family far and near
• Meaningful activity/work
• Personal health
• Comfortable home
• Country/community

Is there anything unique about 2011? Of course. Nothing on the list is truly static.

Family Far and Near

• In 2011 my daughter moved to the other side of the country. It is a multi-hop plane trip or a 4 day road trip to see her now. I am more thankful for modern communication than ever before but the anticipation of seeing her in person over the winter break is so sweet.
• This is the first Thanksgiving without my grandmother. She died in late 2010 at 98 years old. While she had not cooked Thanksgiving in recent years – I am thankful that she did for so many years and the memories of the food (highlights were apricot kolaches and dinner rolls with gooey raisin centers) are so vivid still.
• The majority of years I have been cooking Thanksgiving dinner at the time my husband and daughter made the short trip to put silk flowers on my mother-in-laws grave but this year I arranged the morning such that I could go with my husband. I am thankful to her every time I notice something in our home that was hers – some wind chimes, a scarf, some kitchen knives. Although she died over 20 years ago, she still has a positive and frequent impact on my life.

Meaningful activity/work

• In previous years, I would have called this element ‘meaningful work’ – the change reflects what is happening in my life. I am in transition from someone that works for a big corporation to something quite different/not fully defined yet. I am thankful to have so many options as I step into the next phase of my life. Right now life is so wonderfully full and the choices I have in front of me are equivalent – or maybe greater – than when I was in my 20s.

Personal Health

• I am thankful that I have been able to take off about 25 pounds in the past 2 years and am getting very close to being the ‘normal’ weight for my height. While I was pretty healthy before, the exercise and healthy eating to achieve the weight loss has indeed made me feel even better….no more aching knees going up and down stairs!

Comfortable Home

• The prospect of spending more time at home – not having to go into an office every weekday – is something I am looking forward to. I am thankful the house is one I’ve truly turned into a home over 15 years I’ve lived here and that the view from my office is the best in the house (looking out onto a forest).

Country/community

• While I can’t bring myself to be thankful for the elected government in the US (the elected officials seem all have something other than ‘the good of the country’ as their primary interest!), I am thankful for the American people. They have moments of brilliance when their diversity drives renewal of the spirit that founded the country….may that aspect of the American psyche happen with increased frequency in 2012.
• I am also thankful to the community in which I live in Maryland. Last weekend the neighborhood was full of leaves on the ground – thick and wet. Today, everything is tidy; the lawn mowers and leaf blowers are silent so we all enjoy the sunny day we have for the holiday.

Happy Thanksgiving to all…..enjoy!

Recipe of the Week: Sweet Potato Wedges

Years ago – sweet potatoes were almost the same a pinto beans as far as providing easy-to-grow (and therefore inexpensive) food. They still are quite a bargain in food value so it is worthwhile to experiment with new ways of preparing and enjoying them. One of my favorites is as baked wedges.

Sweet potato

Olive oil (about 1 tablespoon)

Cinnamon (about 1 teaspoon)

Preheat oven to 350° F. Peel sweet potato and cut into wedges. Place in a ziplock bag with a small amount of olive oil and cinnamon. Close and move the potatoes around in the bag until they are lightly coated with oil and cinnamon. Empty the potatoes onto a cookie sheet. Cook for about 1 hour or until the potatoes are soft.

To use the oven more efficiently, I often cook them with a meat dish that cooks for  the same amount of time and at the same temperature. The sweet potatoes in the picture below are shown with boneless pork chops baked with salsa topping (baking dish covered with foil for 1st 75% of cooking time).

Kindle Fire - Week 1 Review

One week ago, an early Christmas present from my husband arrived – a Kindle Fire, Full Color 7" Multi-touch Display, Wi-Fi. PCs and Blackberries are old hat for me, but touch screens are new. I’m going to write blog items over the next few weeks about my journey to use it effectively. My successes so far:

• The first thing I did was put in the info to allow the Kindle into my home wireless network. It took less than a minute…and has worked flawlessly since.
• I successfully downloaded and read a Kindle book from my public library - Diane Mott Davidson’s Chopping Spree (Goldy Bear Culinary Mystery). For this kind of text, the narrower line length was preferable. I even found an old acrylic bookstand to use for the kindle so I could read while I was exercising. The highlighting feature will take some getting used to; getting my finger positioned to start the highlighting was the most challenging for me.
• My husband and I looked for a grocery list app and settled on OurGroceries. It wasn’t on the Amazon app store but my husband got the app on his Droid phone; then we used the PC and AndroXplorer to move it to the Kindle. It works fine. We can create a list that our PCs, his Droid phone, his iPad, and my Kindle can all share. We’ll see how my Kindle works when I shop for groceries this next weekend.
• Email worked almost immediately. The only challenging part was my finger putting in my email address and password the first time. It is already easier.
• Web browsing is easy enough if the links are not very closely spaced on the page. I have learned to enlarge the page before I attempt to follow a link.
• My blog looks great on the Kindle. It was one of the first sites I took a look at.
• One frustration so far is that the cases for the Kindle Fire are still pretty expensive and there is not much selection. I want something that will protect it while I am using it (like when I am grocery shopping) – not a bag or sleeve. Hopefully, more will come out soon.
• Finally, I took a look at a PDF file – Protecting our Chesapeake from the National Park Conservation Association. This file was easier to read with the long line length the 7 inches provides. I got lots of practice moving around in the document since it was formatted with double columns. The pictures displayed well.

All in all, I’ve been pleased with the Kindle Fire so far. I’ll continue the report on my journey next week!

Squash and Gourd Images

These photographs were taken at Longwood Gardens (Pennsylvania) and Brookside Gardens (Maryland) in October 2011. The wonderful shapes and colors remind me of the abundance of the fall harvest.

Gleanings of the Week Ending November 19, 2011

The items below were the cream of the articles I read this past week:

1. National Park Service Documents Ancient Towers in Afghanistan - this is the second week in a row there has been an archaeology story from somewhere dangerous on my gleanings list (last week is was Lybia)
2. Baby Elephant pictures (Borneo) - note how large the eyes of the baby are in relation to the rest of him
3. New Mouthwash Targeting Harmful Bacteria May Render Tooth Decay a Thing of the Past - Wow! If this works as the early tests revealed (and without bad side effects), this is a disruptive technology....maybe to more than denistry if the same idea could be applied to other bacterial problems
4. Lots of Bundt Cake Recipes - some of the recipes reference books, others online - there are a lot of great ideas (and pictures) on this site to motivate me to dig out the Bundt pan!
5. Cynthia Kenyon: Experiments that hint of longer lives (TED talk) - genes have been identified that cause organisms to not age as fast (and thus live longer); studying what those genes do in the body is a very active area of research
6. Cranberries (info and recipes) – Cranberry upside-down cake…sounds good…think I’ll try this next week!
7. Fossil poop - coprolites - some discoveries from these bloob-like fossils...one included a human hair
8. Gaston Lacombe’s Fundy National Park Picture sequence - the photo of water smoothed rocks pulled me in (it is a great first picture for the series)

Water Lily Pictures

These were taken at Longwood Gardens (Pennsylvannia) in September and October 2011. Bees seemed to enjoy the flowers!

Book of the Week: The Power of the 2x2 Matrix

I enjoyed being reminded of the 2x2 analysis method in the book The Power of the 2 x 2 Matrix: Using 2 x 2 Thinking to Solve Business Problems and Make Better Decisions  this week. Probably the most famous 2x2 maxtrix from the past 20 years was from Stephen R. Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People  that used importance and urgency to help us analyze our activities in those dimensions. It turns out that the seemingly simple 2x2 is great for analyzing all kinds of things….and that it isn’t necessarily always simple.

The book provides details of a reliable path of pre-work prior to actually using the tool which is good basic problem solving 101:

• Name the problem
• Describe the ideal end state
• Brainstorm the list of what is important…difficult…required
• Cluster the list
• Rank the clusters
• Look at the top 2 or 3 and pick 2 to try for the 2x2 matrix

Once you have designed a 2x2, you can understand pretty quickly if it works to provide perspective and insight to the problem.

So – this is a good book to encourage you to use a pretty intuitive tool once you learn how to perform the pre-work to hone its formulation. This book can help you do that!

Recipe of the Week: Pumpkin Custard Variations

Pumpkin and Thanksgiving seem to go together...so I have pumpkin featured again this week.

My family enjoys pumpkin custard - skipping the pie crust completely. Over the years we have experimented with several variations to the recipe on the canned pumpkin. 

• Substituting honey, molasses, maple syrup, or frozen apple juice for the sugar (same amount as the sugar) provides a pleasant extra flavor to the custard. Add an extra egg to make sure the custard sets with the extra liquid. My favorite is half honey/half molasses to replace the sugar.
• Clean and save the outer part of an orange skin, grate it up in a small food processor (or simply grate off the skin from the orange before you eat it). Add it to the custard to add a citrusy flavor.
• If you want something a bit crunchy - try adding unsalted sunflower seeds to the custard. They will rise to the top of the custard (somewhat like a pecan pie!) and make a crunchy upper surface to the custard.
• I almost always round up on the cinnamon and ginger from the recipe on the can. My family likes a spicey custard!

Everyday Creative: Creating a Stand Up Platform for a Laptop

I tend to spend too much time in front of my computer. A while back I started using a Swopper as the chair at my desk so I get a little exercise while I am reading items on the machine (bouncing, moving back and forth). 

I tend to get tired of the same repetitive motion and it is, after all, still sitting. So - it was time for an experiment.

Since I was not sure how well I would like a stand up work environment, I started thinking about what I could do that would cost nothing - at least initially. What I developed is pictured below.

 I already had enough surface area on my L shaped computer table and 2 plastic egg crates that happened to be empty in my basement. I turned the egg crates upside down. The laptop goes on one and the mouse goes on the other. The spaces in the bottom of the egg crate are large enough to allow plenty of good air circulation for the laptop however I decided to put a label box under my mouse pad. The configuration is the right height for me! I've used it for about 4 hours throughout the day and it works well.

Had it been too low - I could have used some other label boxes or books under the egg crate the laptop was on. The space under the egg crates is great for the power cords or the quick references I need for whatever I am doing. There is a lip around the edge of the egg crate that keeps the laptop from sliding off.

Is this going to be my long term solution to a stand up platform for my laptop? I don't know. It certainly is good enough for awhile and if I do decide to buy something I'll know the exact height I need and that I really will use what I buy.

Preparing for a Road Trip

I made a one day road trip last week…4 hours in the car. That isn’t much of trek but it has prompted me to think about the generic process of preparation. Here’s my quick checklist:

• Car in good working condition?
• Gas tank full?
• Umbrella in car (in case it rains unexpectedly)?
• Sunglasses?
• Snacks and water ready for the cooler?
• Addresses for destination (to enter into the nav system/Garmin)?
• AAA card (in case something does go wrong with the car)?
• Insurance card and registration (in case of an accident)?
• Any time constraints (have to be at destination by a certain time) factored in to departure time?
• Cargo secured in trunk or, if it won’t all fit in the trunk, in the back seat?
• Layers of clothing appropriate for the likely weather conditions?
• Sleeping bag (if winter and driving in bad weather)?

Any suggestions for addtions to this list?

Botanical Images - October 2011

These are some botanical shots taken at Longwood Gardens (Pennsylvannia) in October 2011. I like the shapes and shadows - the colors blending.