Ecofrugal gifting games, 2023 edition

One of our most successful holiday gift ideas this year was a model of ecofrugality. It provided not one, but eight secondhand gifts for family and friends, with a little extra entertainment thrown in—all for just a few dollars.

Last year's round robin gift exchange with our niblings was so successful that we decided we'd try to repeat it this year. Our original plan was to do it with books again, picking up secondhand ones throughout the year and supplementing as needed with new ones. But last summer, as Brian and I were weeding out our collection of board games, it occurred to me that maybe we could make some of these discarded games the basis of this year's gift exchange. This would kill two birds with one stone: finding new homes for the games we no longer played while crossing eight people off our holiday gift list.

After clearing out our game shelves, we had more than eight possible candidates for the gift exchange. As Christmas drew nearer, we supplemented this selection with others that we picked up at the local thrift shop (some of them still in their original shrink wrap) and at yard sales. We picked and chose among these to get the best variety of different games to fit differing tastes. The finalists were:

• Bali, a word game for one or two players
• Rook, a trick-taking card game
• The Sherlock Holmes puzzle case, a collection of mini-mysteries
• Tantrix Match, a pattern-matching game
• A nice wooden version of the classic peg solitaire game
• How to Rob a Bank, in which a team of robbers takes on a team of security guards
• Anomia, a hectic group game with a lot of shouting
• The Resistance, a social deduction game in which you have to find the traitors in your midst
  

But the gifts themselves were just the start. The thing our niblings (and one nibling-in-not-quite-law) seemed to enjoy most about last year's gift exchange was a puzzle that we threw in kind of as an afterthought: a hidden message spelled out by the first letters of the pages where we'd stashed $5 bills. So for this year, we decided to craft a more elaborate treasure hunt based on clues hidden in all the game boxes. Brian's first thought was to put one clue in each box, so the kids could either collaborate or compete to find the hidden treasure first. But eventually he decided it would be better to make them all work together, so he decided the first step in the hunt would be to put together a puzzle. On the back would be either some sort of treasure map or the first in a series of clues leading them to the treasure.

On a video call with his folks, Brian scoped out the house to find good hiding places for clues. These had to be spots that were within reach, but enough out of the way that the clues wouldn't be found by accident before the game had started. Possibilities included a spider plant hanging in the dining room, a curio cabinet in the living room, an old dollhouse in the basement, and the tops of various tall pieces of furniture, such as the grandfather clock. We thought it would be nice to have all the clues joined by a common theme, and after considering several ideas (names of games? Literary quotations? Cards and suspects from the game Clue?) we came up with one suggested by the plant: species names.

On the back of the puzzle, Brian wrote a winding trail of letters spelling out Clorophytum comosum, the Latin name of the spider plant. We knew they could easily find that out with a Google search, leading them to the plant. In the plant pot, we placed a slip of paper with the second clue: Strix occidentalis. Although this is a real species (the spotted owl), there wasn't a real one in the house, but there was a stuffed animal version of it in the family room wearing a baseball cap. Under this cap, we hid the third clue: Brunus edwardii (magnus). This is not a real species, but a search on the name would lead them to a joke article that appeared in a 1972 issue of The Veterinary Record on common diseases of the teddy bear, and the magnus would tell them the specific specimen they wanted was the one known as Big Teddy up in the sewing room. Big Teddy was holding a piece of paper bearing an entirely made-up species name: Erinaceus horologium. The first half of this refers to a genus of hedgehogs, and the second half is Latin for "clock," directing them to the toy hedgehog sitting on top of the grandfather clock in the hall. Under that was the final clue, Chrysochus cobaltinus. This is a real species name referring to a type of blue beetle; there were no such beetles in the house, but there was a model of a blue Volkswagen beetle in the curio cabinet, and behind this we stashed our treasure chest (a cigar box filled with chocolate coins, jewel-like polyhedral dice, and some other odds and ends).

This gift exchange was a big hit. Once we had all eight youths in the room, we laid out the gifts for them to take turns choosing and swapping, and before they'd even finished opening up all the packages, some of them had peeked inside and discovered the puzzle pieces stashed there. This so piqued their interest that they immediately started putting the puzzle together, not even waiting to look at the rest of their presents, so the adults in the room exchanged their gifts to each other while the youngsters set about solving the puzzle and hunting down the clues. The only part we had to help them with was finding the treasure chest hidden behind the blue Beetle; we'd marked it with a slip of paper bearing the traditional X, but they thought that was just the next clue in the series and had to be directed to the box it was sitting on. We did see at least one of them later playing with the game she received in the gift exchange itself, but I think that the hunt-the-treasure game was more exciting for them than the actual presents.

This has led us to two conclusions for next year: First, we should definitely keep this tradition going. Since we seldom see our niblings, it's much easier to get them something they like by having them swap gifts among themselves than just trying to guess who would like what. And second, since the treasure hunt seems to be their favorite part, maybe next year we should start with the puzzle rather than the gifts. That is, rather than choosing presents and designing a puzzle to go with them, maybe we should start by thinking about what would make the best puzzle and selecting gifts (ideally ones we can find secondhand) to fit it. Because with this crowd, apparently, it's the fun that counts.

Gardeners' Holidays 2023: The Changing of the Garden

Most years, Brian and I celebrate this Gardeners' Holiday by picking out new seed varieties from a catalog during our drive to Indiana to visit his folks. However, this year, there were a couple of complications. First of all, the new seed company we used this year, Botanical Interests, didn't send us a catalog—and by the time I realized they hadn't, it was too late to order one in time for the trip. But even if we had received one, we might not have chosen to use it, since Botanical Interests doesn't carry our favorite Carmen pepper seeds. That didn't matter so much this year, since we had a few left over from our last Fedco order. But for next year, we'll definitely need some more.

So we decided to give a different seed supplier a try in 2024. I checked the website of True Leaf Market, which was also on our short list last year, and found that they carry the Carmen peppers and everything else we're currently out of. However, trying to browse True Leaf's website on my phone in the car would have been a bit awkward—especially while trying to take notes of our selections on paper at the same time. So, since we had a little free time today, we opted to do our seed selecting at home instead. 

The seeds we plan to either renew or replace are:

• Arugula. True Leaf sells several varieties, most of which were unfamiliar to us. Our first instinct was to go with Rocket, since we've successfully grown it before and know it works in our garden. But the Rocket arugula has one problem: it always bolts as soon as the weather turns hot, leaving us with leggy, bitter plants that aren't really worth harvesting. So when we saw a variety called Slow Bolt, which was actually slightly cheaper than the Rocket and had a 5-star rating from growers, we decided it was worth a try.
• Thai basil. The company touts its Siam Queen variety as an AAS winner, but it's extremely expensive: a minimum of $12.24 per packet, more than three times as much as its other varieties that have better user ratings. We decided to go with the more modestly priced Red Leaf Holy Basil, choosing it over the equally well-reviewed Thai Sweet Large Leaf because its red color will make it easier to distinguish from the regular Italian basil.
• Dill. This is another plant that has a tendency to bolt. Usually, by the time our cucumbers ripen in the summer, there's no dill left in the garden to make dill pickles with. In hopes of mitigating that problem, we chose a variety called Dukat, which allegedly "holds longer at the leaf stage than other dills." One user says it "didn't even bud until July despite unusual heat," which sounds promising.
• Lettuce. The Marvel of Four Seasons variety we bought this year from Botanical Interest performed very well in our garden. It was so bolt-resistant that we were able to keep harvesting it all summer and well into the fall. Initially, we thought True Leaf didn't stock this variety, but it turns out it was just listed under its French name, Merveille de Quatre Saisons. However, the packet it comes in is only 500 milligrams, which might not be enough for six squares' worth of lettuce (especially with a second planting in fall). Rather than buy two packets, we decided to hedge our bets by adding a packet of a blend called Gourmet Mix. Since it includes five different varieties of Bibb, leaf, and romaine lettuces, it maximizes the chances that at least one of them will do well.
• Peppers. The Carmen pepper seeds were the reason we came to this site in the first place, so naturally we're ordering more of those. Their performance this year was actually a bit disappointing—only a dozen peppers off two plants—but we're hoping that's just because the seeds were two years old. We plan to put in two or three of those and fill in with a Banana pepper from our last Fedco shipment, rather than take our chances on a new variety.
• Snap peas. Our trusty Cascadia snap peas did moderately well this year, yielding a total of 26 ounces. That's better than their performance in 2021 (when a deer ate most of the plants) or 2022 (when some of them never germinated), but nowhere near as good as the whopping 79 ounces we got in 2019. Still, this variety has done better overall than any other we've tried, and it gets better ratings for yield at Cornell's Vegetable Variety site than any of True Leaf's other offerings. We're going to stick with it for at least one more year, but if our yields remain lackluster we'll consider a different variety, like the well-reviewed Sugar Ann or Super Sugar Snap.
• Zucchini. The Emerald Delight zucchini seeds we bought from Botanical Interest were a resounding flop. Though described as "extremely productive," they produced only six usable squash off both plants and suffered a bit from blossom end rot. True Leaf doesn't carry the highly productive Green Machine variety that did so well for us in 2021 and 2022, so we're going back to Black Beauty, which we've grown with moderate success in the past.

One other item we'll have to replace in next year's garden is the bird tape we hung up to deter deer. As far as we can tell, it worked—that is, we've suffered no more deer invasions since hanging it (although without a control, we can't be entirely sure if they're only keeping away deer the way balled-up newspaper keeps away elephants). And contrary to our fears, the lines stayed in place pretty well and didn't blow around that much. But this week, Brian discovered that the tape was disintegrating, leaving little scraps of shiny plastic scattered around the garden. So he took them all down, and next year we'll either buy another roll of the stuff or see if we can achieve the same results with something similar, like strips of aluminum foil.

But that's a problem for next year. For now, we've taken care of all the necessary tasks to put our garden to bed for the winter. Our new rain barrel, unlike the old one, has not gone back into the shed; instead we've partially drained it and covered the opening with a trash can lid, weighed down with a brick, so no more water accumulates in it. We've also covered the entire garden with a thick layer of leaves—not just in the beds, but also on the paths. I noticed this year that the back edge of the garden, where leaves naturally tend to accumulate, didn't have weeds popping up all over the place the way the rest of the paths do, so I decided to spread leaves everywhere and see how well they did at keeping the weeds down. We piled a good couple of inches on the paths and more on the beds, and when we plant them in the spring we'll sweep that lot onto the paths as well. Fingers crossed, this may be the solution that finally provides us with a mostly weed-free surface to walk on.

And lastly, we've brought our new rosemary plant—bought to replace the one we unsuccessfully attempted to winterize last year—indoors until spring. Its predecessor didn't survive the winter even tucked inside a plastic bag and piled with leaves, so when we bought this one, we just put it in a large pot that we could carry indoors when the frost hit. And since it was going to spend this month parked in front of a sunny window downstairs, I figured I might as well give it a seasonal makeover.

Happy holidays to all, and best of luck with your gardening efforts in 2024.

Recipe of the Month: Whole Wheat Raisin Rye

OK, I realize it may be a bit of a cheat to use a bread recipe as my Recipe of the Month for December. After all, the original point of the whole exercise was to get more fruits and veggies in my diet, and each month's selection is supposed to be a recipe that features either veggies or fruit in a prominent role. This raisin bread does contain fruit, but it's hard to argue that it's fundamentally a fruit recipe. But on the other hand, my very first Recipe of the Month was also a bread—in fact, a sweet quickbread that was closer in spirit to a cake, and thus less healthful than this one—so if that was allowed, this should be too. More to the point, there are only a couple of weeks left in December, and we're spending the last week of the month celebrating Christmas with Brian's folks, which doesn't leave us much time to squeeze in a new dish that's more veggie-centric. So calling this bread my fruit-based recipe for December seemed like the safest play.

Technically, this isn't even a brand-new recipe. Brian has made a similar raisin rye bread before, which I quite enjoyed, but that one used a mixture of white and rye flour. This time he replaced the white flour with whole-wheat flour to make a heartier (and healthier) loaf. He was afraid this substitution might mess up the texture, but it came out fine; a little dense, but still agreeably chewy. The only downside was that the whole-wheat flour somewhat overpowered the rye, so it tasted more like a whole-wheat raisin bread than a raisin rye bread. But it was tasty all the same, with a hearty, wheat-forward flavor punctuated by the pops of sweet raisins. It worked quite nicely with our new homemade plant-based spread.

So how healthy is this modified recipe? Well, it depends on your priorities. If I were still on my low-carb diet, there's no way I'd be able to eat this on a regular basis; the three small slices I usually have for breakfast contain about 50 grams of carbs, including 15 grams of sugars (mostly from the raisins). But they also have 7 grams of fiber and 7 grams of protein, both of which appear to be more important for me to keep my blood sugar within a reasonable range. And with all those raisins, this fiber-packed loaf still feels like a treat.

If you'd like to give it a try, here's the complete recipe:

Whole wheat raisin rye

Ingredients:

• 1.75 cups lukewarm water
• 3 Tbsp brown sugar
• 1 Tbsp yeast
• 1.5 cups rye flour
• 2.5 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 Tbsp vital wheat gluten
• 1 Tbsp caraway seeds, coarsely ground
• 2 tsp salt
• 2 Tbsp oil (Brian used canola)
  
• 1 cup raisins

Directions:

1. Dissolve/suspend sugar and yeast in water and set aside for a few minutes. The mixture should start to foam up.
2. Combine flours, gluten, caraway, and salt in a large bowl. Add oil and yeast mixture and stir to mix. Cover bowl with a cloth and allow to rest for 5-10 minutes.
3. Knead dough for about 5 minutes, adding additional flour or water as necessary to maintain consistency. Knead the raisins into the dough, then continue to knead for an additional five minutes. Cover the bowl with a cloth and place in a warm, moist place (an unheated oven over or next to a pan of hot water works nicely) until the dough has doubled in size (about an hour).
4. Divide the dough into two equal-sized pieces. Shape the pieces into rough cylinders and place them in two bread pans. If you’re worried about the loaves sticking to the pans, you should grease and flour the pans before placing the dough in them. Return the dough to a warm, moist place and allow it to rise until once again it is doubled in size (about an hour).
5. Bake the loaves at 375 degrees F for 30 minutes. Turn out of the pans as soon as they're finished and cool them on a wire rack if you have one.

Return of the Shoe Conundrum

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the snow...

Last March, I bought myself a new pair of winter boots. I'd already limped through most of the winter with boots that leaked—two pairs of them, in fact—and all attempts to repair them had come to naught. After spending over a month searching for a replacement that met my tough criteria (comfortable, weatherproof, leather-free, not too ridiculously expensive, and not too ridiculous-looking), I finally found a pair at Woman Within that seemed acceptable. Not ideal, but acceptable. They weren't available in my exact size, but they were wearable; they weren't very warm, but with a thicker sock, they were tolerable; they didn't have much in the way of arch support, but I could add that with a suitable insert; and while they didn't look all that durable, they were cheap enough that I figured I could at least get my money's worth out of them. And they were actually kind of cool-looking—nice enough for both indoor and outdoor use and even reasonably appropriate for wearing with skirts. Of course, by the time they arrived, winter was nearly over, so they didn't get a lot of use before I put them away for spring. But it was nice to know that when colder weather came around again, I'd have suitable footwear ready to go and wouldn't have to subject myself to another frantic round of shoe shopping.

Fast forward to late October, when I decided it was cool enough outside to start wearing my new-ish boots again. All through the fall, I remained quite pleased with their looks and comfort...until the first wet day, when I discovered after about 20 minutes of walking in them that my right foot had become damp around the toes. I hadn't been stomping through puddles or anything, just walking outdoors in a light rain, and even that was enough to get my feet wet. In short, I now had not two but three pairs of leaky boots, including one that was practically brand new.

So here it is, the start of another winter, and I'm right back to where I was a year ago. Once again, I'm facing the same old dilemma: what's the most ecofrugal way to get through this winter with dry feet? Is there any reasonable hope of repairing these boots, even if I was unable to repair either of their predecessor pairs? And if that doesn't work, where, oh where, can I find a replacement pair that meets my criteria?

However, I do have a couple of advantages that I didn't have last year. First of all, I'm armed with the knowledge of what didn't work last time around. I know not to bother trying to fix these boots with Shoe Goo or hot glue, as neither will hold up. I also know where not to look for replacements, as I've already tried a bunch of different styles that weren't suitable. For instance, I'm not going to waste time or money on any more Sperry boots, given that the last pair I bought wore through at the heel and began taking on water within a matter of weeks. (If only I'd seen this YouTube video deconstructing the boots before I bought them, I could have saved myself the hassle.) Nor am I going to bother with specialty vegan retailers from overseas, like Will's Vegan store, since last time I hazarded $136 on a pair of their boots I ended up having to ship them all the way back to Britain.

Also, I've found some better sources of information this year about both boot repair and boot shopping. For starters, I found an article on how to fix boots that leak at the seams with a product called Aquaseal SR. A little research showed that this product has different ingredients from Shoe Goo, and it appears to do a better job with waterproofing, so there's hope that it may succeed where Shoe Goo failed. It's not available in any local stores, but I found a tube for $13 or so on eBay (shipping included). So I'll start by trying to repair my existing boots with that. If it works, I should be able to make it through the winter with them.

If that doesn't work, I also have more possible places to look for replacement boots than I had last year. Thanks to my uncle's Hanukkah gift, a full-access subscription to the New York Times that includes their product-review site, Wirecutter, I was able to consult this roundup of the best winter boots for recommendations. Most of their picks didn't fit my criteria in one way or another—either they contained leather or they were pull-on styles that would never fit onto my feet—but there was one "also consider" pair from Bogs that looked like it might do. (The pair they recommended is a pull-on boot, but there's a similar style available that laces up and is leather-free.) It's rather pricey (around $150), but it has solid reviews and a one-year warranty, so I know it will at least get me through one winter, which is more than I can say for the $100 Sperry boots. Wirecutter also recommended a Columbia boot that's no longer available, but there are a couple of similar styles priced at $100 to $120 that get good reviews for warmth and waterproofing.

The YouTube video I linked to above—part of a series in which a guy cuts up four pairs of duck boots to assess their construction—also yielded some useful information. The best performers of the lot were the pricey L.L. Bean boots, which don't meet my criteria because they have leather uppers. But the review also found that a truly crappy pair of $30 boots from Walmart performed almost as well as the the $100 Sperry boots. Both were terrible, but one was terrible for a much lower price. So if I just need a stopgap pair of boots to get me through the winter, a cheap pair from Walmart might not be such a terrible idea. Even if they fall apart after a few months like the Sperry boots, I won't have to feel as bad about it.

Are consumers really responsible for consumerism?

I recently read a hand-wringing story in The Guardian about the problems of consumer culture. It starts by describing a visit the author, Chip Colwell, made to a huge landfill in Denver and his horror at seeing the literal mountains of trash created by "mass consumption." Feeling the need to do something about the problem, Colwell sat down with his family and worked out a plan for a "slow-buy year." During that year, each of them would purchase no more than five items beyond basic necessities (food, medicine, school and work supplies, and any parts needed for car repairs). They'd be allowed to accept gifts of material objects, though they were supposed to "discourage" others from giving them, but any gifts they bought for others would count toward their five-item limit.

Now, I'm all for being mindful about consumption, but this struck me as unreasonably extreme. I've seen, and even taken, challenges along similar lines, but they were much more limited. For instance, the Dress Retro challenge I'm taking this year requires me to purchase no more than three new garments—but that's only for clothing, and it doesn't include shoes, socks, underwear, or anything purchased secondhand. Under the rules of the Colwell family challenge, none of those exemptions would apply. 

Moreover, it struck me as problematic that the Colwells were taking it on themselves to fix what is, fundamentally, a social problem. It's the same problem I had with the Take the Jump Challenge and its requirement to give up personal vehicles: American society is designed around car use, and giving up my own car won't solve that problem. All it will do is make my own life considerably more difficult. And it's the same problem I had with the Climate Coach's advice to switch to zero-waste personal care products: the amount it would cost me to replace my conditioner, dental floss, and toothpaste with zero-waste versions is simply not a reasonable price to pay for the tiny amount of waste it would eliminate. Car dependency and plastic waste don't exist because of individual consumers making irresponsible choices: they exist because, for all practical purposes, we don't have any better choices. It's big business and big government that have shaped our society to look the way it does, and they're the ones who have the power and the responsibility to fix it.

Eventually, Colwell comes to the same conclusion. Six months into his family's yearlong experiment, when the project has been all but derailed by real life—a hole in his only pair of running shoes, a pen going through the laundry with most of his clothing, a new home—he feels a need for "bigger answers" that "don’t reframe just individual consumption, but how our larger world of consumerism operates." He speaks with scientists who point to the sheer scope of the waste problem (one estimates that there are around 250,000 tons of plastic) and say that addressing it is going to require fundamental changes in business and public policy. Even if Colwell's family produced no plastic waste whatsoever for an entire year, that would be a tiny drop in a very, very large bucket.

This doesn't mean that it's pointless for us as individuals to be conscious about our consumption. Even if my personal choices don't have a huge impact, every little bit helps—and more to the point, it helps keep me sane. When I've been calling Congress month after month about climate legislation with no result, it's a nice change of pace to focus on the little things that are within my control, like buying stuff secondhand. But that doesn't mean that I should beat myself up every time I give in and buy something new from the store. My small decisions aren't going to save the planet, and they aren't going to destroy it either.