Pinterest at Capitol Reef

Well, I knew that we wanted to try out some dutch oven recipes while we were camping last week.

And I saw this awesome idea on Pinterest where you put the briquettes in egg cartons, 

light the egg cartons on fire,

and the briquettes begin burning nicely.

No fire starter, lighter fluid, etc needed.

Here is our picture perfect set-up.

...lighting the egg carton...

...fire burns nicely...

...and then goes out completely.

So, we decided that we needed to put the briquettes in the egg carton,

and CLOSE the egg carton (perhaps to contain the heat?)

...egg carton full of briquettes...

lighting the CLOSED egg carton...

...egg carton burning...

...still burning...

...egg carton burning...briquettes--not so much...

So, the next day when we attempted dutch oven madness again, we went to the next logical way to start a fire and keep it burning...

We turned it over the to pyromaniac 7 year old...

...taking his fire starting very seriously...

who needs egg cartons when dry grass and sticks burn so easily?

Dutch Oven Peanut Butter Bars

1 cup butter

1 cup sugar

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup peanut butter (I used crunchy)

2 eggs

1 t. soda

1/2 t. salt

1 t. vanilla

2 cups flour

2 cups oats

Cream butters and sugars.  Add the eggs and vanilla and mix well.  Sift dry ingredients and add to creamed mixture.  Press into greased dutch oven.  Bake at 350 for 15 to 30 minutes or until golden.

For the frosting, melt 2 cups chocolate chips and 1 cup peanut butter together and spread over bars.  Serves 12-15.

I used about 24 briquettes, 15 on top and 9 on bottom on a 12 inch dutch oven (14 inch would work well) It took about 1 hour.  I sprinkled the chocolate chips on the bars, dropped spoonfuls of peanut butter (I used creamy here) randomly on top, and put the lid back on for 10 minutes.  Opened it up and swirled the chocolate chips and melted peanut butter around.  

**Recipe found on Pinterest from the Dutchoven Madness blog.

Earth day 2011

In honor of Earth Day, I took a little carbon footprint quiz. (take the quiz here)
Now, if you know me at all (and all 3 of you do), you know that I'm kind of a recycle fanatic.  (admitting it the first step).  So, I thought I would do fairly well on the quiz with the whole compost/recycle/second hand/thrifting/gardening nonsense that we occupy ourselves with around here.
well, not so much.  My score was 4.5.  What this means is that if everyone in the world lived like I live, it would take 4.5 Earths to support that life.  Really?  What would happen if I didn't compost/recycle/second hand/thrift/garden????

According to the quiz, here are my problem areas...

I have running water.  and electricity.

I have a car.  well, 2 of them.  and the tires are flat on my bike.

I read the newspaper.

And I fly on airplanes.  

So, I continued on to see what the suggestions are for reducing my carbon footprint...

um, 

ride my bike.  everywhere.

use less electricity.

eat less meat.

grow more of my own food.  or only purchase food grown within 200 miles (goodbye bananas.  and grapes.  and lots of other things.)

oh, and don't fly on airplanes.

By doing all of these things, I can reduce my number to 3.5  (or 3.5 Earths to support such a lifestyle for everyone on the Earth.

So, I am going to try and do all of the things suggested on the list.  except for the last one.  Rick is registered to run in the New York Marathon next fall and that is too far to ride my bike.

 our attempt at composting

 Peaches grown within 1 mile of my house.  

Even though I drove around the block to pick them and haul them home.

 thifted yard chairs.

brought home from Montana.

proof that we buy local

 growing our own food.  quite a success.

 Green cleaning products.

I actually quite like the smell of vinegar for cleaning.

a little more success at gardening.

our radish crop helped feed us for about 8 days.  great.

recycle part 3

Merrell Recycling

671 N. 1000 E.

Mapleton, UT 84664

801-491-2257

This is my recycle corner in the garage.

Recycle Part 2

Part 2

Plastic. Why do we make something that will last forever and then use it for things that will be thrown away? Most of the plastic is used one time.

There is a big blob of plastic trash stuff swirling around in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It is in an area where the currents come together. It consists of plastic bags, plastic bottles, tires, fishing nets, and other nondecomposable items. It is twice the size of Texas. The trash has been dumped from cruise ships and cargo ships. It is also made up of one bottle left on the beach. One can thrown out a car window. A plastic bag blown from a landfill. All of these items have found their way to the ocean and made their way through the currents to the Great Garbage Patch in the Pacific Ocean. The problem now is “Who is responsible for the clean up?”

California alone consumes 11 billion of those plastic grocery bags each year. Most of them will only be used one time and then they will go to the landfill only to sit for hundreds or thousands of years—unless, of course, they get caught by the wind and blown to the ocean where the currents will take them to the Great Garbage Patch.

At the grocery store last week, the checker asked me, “Paper or Plastic?” Having forgotten to bring in my cotton grocery bags with me, I replied, “Neither.” The problem was that ‘neither’ wasn’t one of the options. I was afraid that she was going to have to call the manager for an override or something. I did manage to make it out of the store without my paper or my plastic. I did have a couple of big reusable bags in the back of the car, so I packed my stuff from the cart, into the bags and into the back of the car. It only took an extra minute or two.

I don’t do everything right. Last week we went to lunch and we brought the leftovers home in a Styrofoam box. Ooops. And I do get a newspaper. Everyday. I could read the same stuff online, but I like to read the newspaper. One of these days I will cancel, but for now I just recycle it. And I am not known for my short showers. Baby steps….

Added: Mapleton does not have a city recycle program. However, the city does endorse a private recycling program. It is actually just a local family that does this for extra income. It is the Roger Merrill family. They come around on Wednesdays which is the early out day for school, giving them extra time to make the rounds. They pick up paper for $5 per month and drop it off directly at the local schools. So, basically I am paying them $5 a month to do the same exact thing that I could do for free. Except that my time and my gas are not exactly free. I am fine with the fact that they do it for me for $5. I don't have to figure out when to make time to deal with it. They pick it up every week--rain or shine.

Then I pay them another $5 a month to pick up everything else. When I first signed up with them I asked them if I needed to separate all of the plastics according to the number on the bottom of the carton located in the middle of the triangle. They kind of laughed at me and told me to just throw it all into the same container. They would sort through it later once they picked it all up and got it home. They said that if the public had to separate it at all, most of them would find it too much of an inconvenience and wouldn't bother to recycle. So, I am totally OK with sending them off each week with one big container of my "trash" for them to sort through later. I am also perfectly fine with the fact that once they sort through all of the "trash", they take it to various locations to recycle it and get cash back for it. The amount that I would get would (again) not be worth my time and effort individually. But it certainly is worth their effort to gather all of the recyclable things from this community and get cash for it. It is absolutely worth $5 each month for me to rinse out a few cans and containers, set out on the curb once a week, and rid my conscience of any worries as to how I am going to find time to save the Earth. I think these people are pretty dang cool for taking the initiative to get their hands dirty and provide this service to the community at the same time they are making money for the needs and wants of their family.

thanks for your comments.

It's true. My recycle bins are always overflowing each week. It really cramps my style when we forget to take out the recycle bins EACH week because by the second week there is a ton of stuff. However, I think we could go 2 weeks between our regular trash pick-ups and not even get close to filling out trash bins.

reduce, reuse, recycle

We are kind of nutty at our house about the recycling. On the news a few nights ago, we heard a story about the Salt Lake County Landfill. It is filling up quite rapidly. The report stated that the current landfill will run out of space in less than 50 years. That might not seem like a big deal, but when they do run out of space, the only option will be to haul the waste to another location which will likely be 100 ‘s of miles away. And it will be done by an outside company—not the city or the county. The costs for this service will be 10 times the cost for the current waste removal services. The sad part is: over 80% of the waste that is going to the Salt Lake County Landfill is recyclable.

I had a conversation not long ago with a fellow neighbor and recycler. She mentioned that she knew some people who were down right annoyed at the fact that if they were to recycle it would cost them an additional $5 to $10 a month for recycling services. However, these same people don’t flinch a bit about paying the extra $10 a month to have 2 garbage cans.

What’s the difference people???

The difference is that if you are responsible and take the extra few seconds to separate your trash from the items that can be recycled you are reducing the amount of garbage that goes to the landfill. You are being responsible with our resources. You are helping keep the world a more beautiful place.

We separate our recyclable items into 2 different containers:

Paper in one. Everything else in another container.

First Container: Paper. Newspaper. Junk Mail. Catalogs. Magazines. All of those extra copies from the computer printer. Cereal boxes. Macaroni & cheese boxes. Cake mix boxes. Cardboard boxes.

example: recycle the cake mix box, not the plastic bag

Second Container: Everything else: aluminum cans (pop). Steel cans (vegetables, fruit, soup). Plastic (milk jugs, yogurt containers, cottage cheese containers, bread bags, grocery bags). Anything with one of those triangle arrow things.

The only thing that is not recycled is glass. I wish I would find a place that would recycle glass.

Other things that do not recycle: pizza boxes that have touched food, plastic bags (like sandwich bags) and food (but that’s OK because it can go to the compost bin!!—just not rice and meat)

It makes me think of living in Michigan. When you would buy bottles or cans of pop, you would pay a deposit. So a 12 pack of Diet Coke would cost an extra $1.20. However, the streets, roadways, trails, and parks were never littered with drink cans and bottles. I knew of a little family that would go to a local recreation area to gather pop cans for FHE. They would walk around until they found enough cans to take in to recycle and then use the money they got back to buy a treat. They always looked forward to those days when they would gather cans to see how much money they could get back. So, next time you are in Michigan, notice how free the roadways are of cans and bottles. Way to go Michigan!!

Earth Day

Ok, I know Earth Day was yesterday. But I wanted to get this posted anyway. I have lived in my house for 3 years and I am proud to say that I have not ever purchased Window Cleaner since moving into this house.

Instead this is what I use: homemade window cleaner. (1 c. water + 1 c. alcohol + 2 T. vinegar)

I know that I could use newspaper to eliminate streaks, but I don't. It just seems like it would make my hands dirty. Some people do not like to use a recipe like this because of the smell of the vinegar. But it only lasts a few seconds and it really doesn't bother me at all. I think it works great. I get water spots on the shower glass in my bathroom and I really think that the vinegar helps get the water deposits off the glass very easily.

It's a bit cheaper, too. That is always nice.

There are other recipes out there. Some are extra strength and have other ingredients like ammonia. I haven't really needed anything more than what I have been using so I haven't tried them.

Sorry Earth. the homemade dishwasher detergent was a bust. I won't even try that again.

Green Summer

I am so proud of my little daughter.  She is Green.  She had to do a project for school.  They are studying government and how laws are made.  They had to write a bill, send it to the senate, argue for the bill and see if the "President" (Principal) would pass the bill and sign in into a school law.  Well the principal liked Summer's proposal so much that she wants Summer to write a letter to the city council asking for her proposal to be accepted by the city in real life.

This is what Summer proposed:  There is so much waste in school lunch that Summer wants to the paper and plastic to be recycled and the food waste to be used for composting.  Hehehe.  I was so proud of Summer for doing such a good job on her project AND for coming up with a solution for the waste at school.  Summer says that there are about 600 students in her school and about 500 of them eat school lunch.  Of those 500 lunches, less than 1/2 of the food is eaten, the rest goes into the trash--that's a lot of trash every day.  And they use paper napkins that can be composted.  Plus that's also a lot of plastic utensils that are thrown away every day.

Good job Summer for thinking GREEN. 

Update on going green

I saw a thing on TV last night about our carbon footprint (the new word for the impact one has on the environment--I think I will try to use it to impress people at the checkout line at the grocery store).  They said the the average American uses/requires 24 acres of land to support themselves.  you know, food we eat, fuel we burn, cotton grown for the abundance of clothes we all have, etc.  They said that if every person living on the earth required as much land per person to live as Americans do, it would take at least 5 earths to support the current population of the world right now.  OH, I'm feeling guilty.  I think I'll go compost, and plant a garden this afternoon.  I'll let you know how it goes. 

update:  so, I've been talking about compost lately.  Lanny thinks he can compost better than I can compost.  We seem to be having a compost contest.  He is in the process of converting a big, huge barrel that he got for $25 into a rotating compost bin.  He believes that he can compost faster than I can compost because his stuff is spinning and mine is just sitting.  He also has access to more "green waste" than I do.  So, I think I will enlist all my neighbors to add their green waste to my cause.  I can make fun of my brother because he does not read my blog.  

Go Green

I found some tips on going green so I thought I would post them and then try to do some of them.  Along with my Emergency Preparedness obsession, I have also been preoccupied with Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

 1.  Make foods from scratch.

2.  Buy non-perishable foods that you consume a lot of in bulk.

3.  Make a menu and shop with a list so you don't buy unnecessary items.

4.  Avoid single packaged food or drinks.

5.  Store leftovers in reusable containers.

6.  Pack lunch items in reusable containers rather than plastic bags.

7.  Buy used rather than new when you can.

8.  Take your own drink cup with you to get a drink at Maverick.

9.  Reuse plastic water bottles.

10.  Make your own cleaning products.

11. Use reusable rags, brooms, mops, cloths, etc for cleaning instead of disposable.

12.  Use cloth diapers (Ummm, I don't think so.  I can't do everything right.)

13.  Compost your food waste.

14.  Plant a garden.

15.  Receive and pay bills online.

16. Use reusable shopping bags.