A new crop for 2022

This weekend we decided, pretty much on the spur of the moment, to add a new crop to our 2022 garden. And it all started with a batch of sushi.

Brian and I seldom go out for sushi these days. Instead, Brian makes his own, which is still not cheap, but significantly cheaper. He's learned to make sushi rice using plain old white rice, and he buys the nori sheets and chunks of sushi-grade salmon at the local H-Mart. (All the sushi-grade fish used to be stored in a case with the amusing label "Roll Your Own," but I guess corporate decided that joke wasn't funny.) However, H-mart doesn't sell the little tubs of wasabi paste that normally come with the sushi; you can only get those if you're buying your sushi ready-made. So, as a substitute, he bought a little tin of wasabi powder that he could mix up with water to make his own wasabi paste. 

This time, however, when he mixed the wasabi, he found that it had completely lost its bite. Even I, a complete spice wimp, could lick the powder right off my finger with no ill effects. A quick search on Still Tasty revealed that wasabi powder, properly stored, should last three to four years — but on reflection, we realized that we'd probably had this tin for about that long. We just didn't eat sushi often enough to use it up. So the remaining powder went into the compost bin (or, since it was a somewhat windy day, the area immediately around it).

This got me wondering about whether there might be some way to acquire wasabi (or horseradish, which is what most sushi restaurants actually serve) in smaller quantities, so that we wouldn't waste so much of it. The way we usually do this with herbs, such as rosemary or oregano, is to grow our own and snip off a bit as needed. So I got to wondering: would it be possible to do the same thing with horseradish root?

A quick search revealed that horseradish is, in fact, easy to grow. Almost too easy, in fact, as it has a tendency to take over any area of the garden where it's planted. Good Housekeeping warns against tilling the ground where you've planted it or putting any bit of the root in your compost bin, as that's a good way to spread it all over the yard. Fortunately, it's easy to grow in containers as well, provided they have good drainage and a sunny spot to sit in. And we just happened to have several large buckets that we'd used for our largely unsuccessful potato experiment. Since we never actually got around to putting in a potato crop last year, we decided to repurpose the buckets and see, just for a lark, if we could manage to grow some horseradish.

The first challenge was to find horseradish root. That was easy; a quick call to the Belle Mead Co-Op, where we'd bought our seed potatoes, confirmed that they had some in stock. And since we needed to go there at some point anyway to buy more copper fungicide for our plum trees and some netting to replace the worn-out sections on our garden trellises, it wouldn't even cost us an extra trip. The price was a little steeper than we expected — $12 for a bag of three roots packed in wood shavings — but if the experiment works, this could supply us with all the horseradish we need for a lifetime to come, so what the hey. We decided to start two of the three roots, even though one horseradish plant would probably be plenty to meet our needs, since that would give us a backup in case one of them didn't grow well.

Fortunately, we didn't need to buy anything else. We already had the buckets and a supply of small rocks to create a drainage layer on the bottom. On top of that, we added some ordinary garden soil, amended with a scoop each of compost from our bin and rotted manure from Home Depot (which we've already tested for safety). Then we planted the roots (a few inches deep and at a forty-five degree angle, according to the instructions) and covered them with some wood mulch, which we scavenged from the area around our honeyberries. (We'll need to buy a load of mulch for them this year anyway, so replacing a little bit more won't matter much.)

Our new plants are now tucked into the sunniest corner of the garden, and by all accounts, they'll pretty much take care of themselves from here on out. All we'll need to do is give them a little water during dry spells and prune off any stray suckers. By the end of the year, we should be able to dig out the roots, cut off as much as we need, and replant the rest. The harvested portion should keep for up to three months in the fridge, up to six months if grated and frozen, or up to a year if we can figure out a way to dehydrate it. Storing the root in damp sand in a cold, dark cellar, apparently, is also an option. Or perhaps we could harvest one plant in late fall and the other in early spring to keep us going throughout the summer.

Of course, we'll have to be extra careful when preparing the horseradish, because the chemicals in this stuff are an incredibly potent irritant. Recommendations range from "prepare in a well-ventilated area" to "prepare outdoors" to "wear a ventilator mask and safety goggles." But I guess that's a problem we'll worry about when the time comes. No use counting our radishes before they're dug.

New articles from Money Crashers and Perch Energy

A quick update here to let you know about three new articles of mine that have gone live at Money Crashers, as well as one new one from Perch Energy.

The first Money Crashers piece has split off from my earlier piece on flooring. That one covered the different flooring options available and their pros and cons, particularly with regard to cost; this one is about how to save money on the materials and installation for whatever type of flooring you want.

How to Save Money on Flooring - 9 Steps to Get What You Want For Less

Continuing in the home renovation vein, here's a piece about remodeling your basement on a budget. In it, I cite as examples several of the techniques we used in renovating our already-kind-of-finished basement to turn it into a real room.

How to Save Money on a Basement Remodel - 10 Useful Tips

Next, a simple little piece about community banks. I explain what sets them apart from big banks and the pros and cons of choosing one for your banking needs. (In the process of writing this, I learned that our bank, Provident, was a community bank when we joined it, but apparently is no longer. As of last October, it has too many branches to qualify. So we're now using a regional bank instead, but we're okay with that.)

What Are Community Banks?

And lastly, my new piece for Perch is about tidal energy. I explain how this renewable energy source works and why it isn't used more (spoiler alert: it's mostly about cost).

Tidal Power Explained: What is Tidal Energy & Is It Renewable?

How to (maybe) repair a vinyl window shade

This week, the repair or replace dilemma reared its ugly head once again. This time, the culprit was the vinyl window shade in our bathroom. The only window in the bathroom is right in the tub, where it's regularly exposed to high levels of heat and moisture from the shower, which have apparently caused its vinyl material to pucker and warp slightly. This, in turn, resulted in a couple of small tears along the bottom seam, one of which has grown gradually bigger because I occasionally snagged it while squeegeeing the walls. Last week, after discovering that mildew was proliferating along these torn edges, I finally decided the problem had reached the point that we had to either repair the shade somehow or replace it. But which?

On the one hand, a new shade wouldn't be all that expensive. This one only cost around $10, but it also hadn't held up very well — so spending $10 another one just like it would probably mean resigning ourselves to spending another $10 on a replacement every year or so. Sure, we could easily afford that, but it seemed wasteful, particularly when the only part of the shade that's damaged is the bottom seam. There was still more than enough good material on the roller to cover the window, and it seemed ridiculous to just throw it away.

However, to get our money's worth out of this this still-useful material, we'd have to find some way to mend that tear, and that wasn't as simple a job as it sounded. When we encountered this same problem with our old bedroom window shade, we fixed it by applying a long strip of duct tape along the entire bottom seam, which enabled us to get another year or two of use out of the shade before the roller mechanism went kaput. But that was a blackout shade, so the duct tape applied to the back of the shade didn't actually show on the inside. This one is a translucent "light filtering" shade, so the duct tape would definitely be visible through the material. Plus, duct tape doesn't really hold up that well to moisture, so this would only be a short-term fix at best.

We've also tried fixing this problem on a bathroom shade with our hot glue gun. We cut off the damaged bottom portion of the shade, then put a dowel along the bottom edge to weigh it down, rolled up the vinyl material around it, and used hot glue to create a new seam. That repair held for a little while, but it didn't take long for heat and moisture to
loosen the glue's hold on the vinyl, and we eventually had to scrap the shade entirely and replace it with this one. So that, once again, was at best a short-term solution.

Thinking that there must surely be some kind of adhesive that could hold up in wet conditions, I started searching around online, and I discovered Tear-Aid Vinyl Repair. The manufacturer claims, and reviewers confirm, that this stuff can make a torn inflatable raft seaworthy again, so it seemed it should certainly be able to hold up on a vinyl shade that's only getting splashed with water, not submerged. And it was available at Dick's Sporting Goods, which is within striking distance of other stores where we shop regularly. The only catch: it was $10 for a kit that contained just one large patch (3" by 12"), one medium (1 3/8" square), and one small (7/8"). It would be good for maybe two or three repairs — if it worked at all. Was it worth the investment when we could just spend $10 on a new shade and be done with it?

Applying the guidelines I learned from Jeff Yeager, I decided that the answer was probably yes. For a tear this small, I reasoned, the $10 kit should be good for at least two repairs, which meant that the cost of the repair was only half the cost of the replacement. Spending $10 to replace both this shade and the next one that developed a tear would be cheaper than spending $20 to replace them both, not to mention less wasteful. So during our Saturday round of grocery shopping, we swung by Dick's and picked up a box of the Tear-Aid to attempt the repair.

However, when we opened the box, we realized there was an additional problem. According to the package, the kit was supposed to contain three patches, a 12" "reinforcement filament" for repairing tears on edges (like the one we had), two alcohol prep pads, and a set of instructions. That didn't sound like a very good value for $10, but we hadn't gotten even that much. Our kit contained only the large patch, the small patch, and the instructions — no medium patch, no reinforcement, no alcohol prep pads. It would still be enough to complete this one repair, but it might not be enough for even one more.

Our first instinct was to go back to Dick's and return it. But there were two problems with that: first, we'd already cut the small patch in two (to repair the smaller tear) before realizing the other parts were missing, so technically, we'd already used the kit at this point. And second, if we did go all the way back to Dick's the next day to return the kit, then what? Exchange it for another one that might also be defective? Or go back to the drawing board looking for something else we could use? I did manage to track down another product, Gear Aid Repair Tape, that might work, but it was only available at REI. The nearest store was in Princeton, which meant we'd probably have to wait until Thursday to pick it up. Faced with the choice of making a second trip to return the Tear-Aid, then yet another to pick up the alternative product (if it was available) and having to wait at least a week before we could attempt the repair again, or simply moving forward with the bird in the hand and getting the stupid thing fixed today, Brian decided to treat the $10 we'd spent as a sunk cost and forge ahead.

Even with the product in hand, however, it took us two attempts to actually make the repair. The first time we tried it, even though we'd allowed the shade to dry for a full 24 hours and it felt completely dry to the touch, the minute Brian tried to apply the patch to it, water squeezed out of the seam. He kept wiping it off and then trying again, and each time, water continued to squeeze out. Eventually, the small patch he'd cut (from half of the small one we'd been provided) was completely useless, and he just had to throw it out. So he hung the shade back up and gave it another 24 hours to dry, then tested the seam thoroughly to make sure there was no water left in it before attempting the repair again.

This time, fortunately, it went off without a hitch. First, after wiping the shade down with alcohol, he carefully applied the other half of the small patch to the small tear on the right side. This tear was small enough that even this tiny patch was big enough to wrap around to the back of the shade, sealing it on both sides. He also used scissors to round off the corners on the patch before applying it, so there would be no sharp edges for a squeegee or a fingernail to snag on and pull them loose.

Then, he cut a strip off the large patch that was just big enough to cover the larger tear — on one side, not both. Once again, he rounded off the corners before applying this patch to the front of the shade. Then he cut another one the same size, rounded it off similarly, and applied it to the back. This was less fiddly than trying to wrap the material around, and it seems about as secure. The repair isn't flawless — if you look carefully, you can still see the tear — but as long as it holds up, we won't complain. (We're giving it the rest of the day to dry before getting it wet, though, just to give it as good a chance as possible.)

So did we make the right choice? I guess it's too soon to say. We'll need to see how well this repair holds up, and compare it with how long the new shade took to get damaged in the first place. But one thing I can say for sure is that if I had to try it again, I wouldn't buy Tear-Aid. I'd wait until we could hit an REI and try the Gear Aid tape. It might not work as well, but it gives you nearly twice as much material (20" by 3") for half as much money — and since there's only one roll in the box, you know you're actually getting everything you pay for.

Recipe of the Month: Pasta Romesco With Spinach

Last month, I got an e-mail from my dad with the subject line, "Delicious vegan recipe." This is not a phrase my dad utters often, so it caught my attention. He said he had signed up for an email newsletter from the Washington Post that delivers "vegetarian or near-vegetarian recipes" to your inbox, and this was the latest one. He found it not only very tasty, but "surprisingly satisfying, for a meal with no meat, fish, or cheese."

The attached recipe was Pasta Romesco With Spinach: a pasta dish with an interesting sauce made from roasted red peppers, roasted almonds, tomato paste, salt, and smoked Spanish paprika. All this gets whirred together in the blender and tossed with pasta (the recipe calls for fusilli, but says spaghetti is also acceptable), spinach sauteed with garlic (it calls for baby spinach, but my dad said chopped adult spinach worked just fine), and fresh basil. My dad also modified the Washington Post recipe by cutting the olive oil, as he is wont to do; he used just one tablespoon to cook the spinach and didn't add any to the sauce, instead thinning it with the reserved liquid from the red peppers.

Well, as luck would have it, the most exotic ingredient in this dish, the smoked Spanish paprika, was something we happened to have on hand. Brian had picked some up on a whim on our latest visit to Penzeys, and he still hadn't really thought of a good way to use it, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity. And, since we're well into the harvest season now, we had plenty of fresh basil in the garden. The only ingredients we had to buy were the roasted red peppers, which we found at Trader Joe's, and the spinach, which we picked up for a buck at Shop Rite.

Since my dad recommended the recipe based on his own modified version, we decided to go with that for our first rendition of it. We substituted linguine, the only long pasta we had in the house, for the fusilli and thinned the sauce with the juice from the peppers. Despite this addition, the sauce was still rather thick, and it took a bit of work to get it to coat the noodles. Brian thinks it would probably work better with the full amount of olive oil, so he's inclined to try it that way next time.

And there will certainly be a next time, because this pasta, as advertised, was very good. The smoked Spanish paprika is a key ingredient; there's only a teaspoon of it in there, but it lends a distinct, smoky undertone to the entire dish, complementing the mellow flavor of the roasted peppers and the earthiness of the almonds. Although the recipe says it only makes three servings, we were able to get dinner for both of us out of it, plus a lunch each from the leftovers. And despite the shrill injunction in the last line of the recipe to "serve immediately," it was just as good the next day.

So this little baby is definitely going into our regular repertoire. In fact, we're going to make a point of keeping a jar of roasted peppers on hand in the pantry from now on, so that we can make it whenever we feel inclined. So we'll add that to our list of things to pick up whenever we hit a Trader Joe's, along with almond milk and toilet paper.

Freecycle etiquette

Early this month, Brian took advantage of the time off he had for the holiday weekend to do a little cleanup in the laundry room/workshop. Though you may not be able to tell it from the picture, he actually got rid of quite a lot of stuff, sending some to the trash and some upstairs for me to list on Freecycle.

So over the past few weeks, I've made several Freecycle posts and dealt with several different Freecyclers, and the experience has reminded me of something I've thought for a while: there really ought to be a code of etiquette for dealing with people on Freecycle. It might seem like the rules of polite behavior on Freecycle are pretty much the same as they are anywhere else and shouldn't need explaining—but apparently they do, since so many people violate them all the time.

Since it appears that Miss Manners has somehow managed to overlook this particular area, I guess it falls to me to fill in the gap. So here are my proposed Rules of Freecycle Etiquette.

Rule 1: Provide a clear description.
When you offer an item on Freecycle, describe it as clearly and specifically as possible. Include a picture for any item that people might choose based partly on looks, or any item that's hard to describe clearly in writing. Also, provide as much detail you can in the item description, such as dimensions, color, material, and brand and model number. Providing all this information up front saves people the trouble of e-mailing you to ask for details—and it helps you by eliminating the risk for you that someone will request an item, show up, decide they don't like the looks of it, and back out.

Rule 2: Respond to messages.
If someone contacts you about a Freecycle post—either to request an item you've posted, or to offer something you've requested—you have an obligation to respond. Even if the item they're requesting is no longer available, simple courtesy demands that you tell them so.

Yet apparently, most Freecyclers don't bother to extend this common courtesy to others. Many times I've asked for an item and simply been left waiting for an answer, and it's incredibly annoying. I have no way of knowing whether I should be trying to plan my schedule around picking up the item or not. Whenever someone contacts me to ask for an item that I've already promised to someone else, I always reply to tell them so, and they usually respond with something along the lines of, "OK, thank you for letting me know." This shows that (1) they appreciate getting a reply, and (2) they're surprised to get it, because most people don't bother.

Rule 3: Express your intentions.
When you first contact someone about a Freecycle post, your message should state specifically what you want from them. If your message simply says, "Hi, is the bureau still available?" the other person has to e-mail you back to ask, "Yes, do you want it?" and then wait for your reply before you can start the process of making arrangements for a pickup. If you had simply said, "I am interested in the bureau, if it is still available," you could have started making arrangements right away.

Now, you might argue that this isn't really necessary, because obviously, anyone asking about the bureau must be interested in it. So in theory, you could simply respond to "Hi, is the bureau still available?" with "Yes, when would you like to pick it up?" But unfortunately, experience has taught me that this isn't a reasonable assumption. Often, my reply of "Yes, do you want it?" meets with no response—which suggests the answer is "No, not really." If I had instead replied with, "Yes, when would you like to pick it up?" I would have been left waiting for a reply that would never come, and being forced in the meantime to turn down other people who are requesting the same thing because I've already promised it to someone else.

In fact, it's better still if you go one step further and state in that first message not just that you are interested in the item, but when you would be able to pick it up: "I am interested in the bureau, if it is still available. I could pick it up Monday evening, if that's convenient." Including this information in your first message saves another round of back-and-forth messages. I have taken to putting in my posts, "If you are interested, please state in your first message when you can pick it up," in the hopes that this will save time—yet even then, most people ignore the request.

Rule 4: Be specific as to place and time.
This is kind of an extension of rule 3: when you offer to pick up an item, be as specific as possible about when you will be there. If you say, "I will come by some time on Saturday," or worse yet, "some time next weekend," then I have no idea when to expect you. If the item is too big for porch pickup, I'll be effectively held captive in my house all weekend waiting for you with no idea when you'll show up. If I'm leaving it out for porch pickup, this is less of a big deal, but it's still a minor inconvenience not to know how long the item will be out there.

By the same token, if you're the person offering the item, provide clear information about where your house is and what they must do to retrieve the item. I give not only my address, but a description of the house and a couple of landmarks they can use to help them find it. I also tell them if I want them to ring the bell or if I will leave the item out for porch pickup, and if it's the latter, exactly where the item will be: "I'll put it in a bag labeled 'Freecycle' and tie it to the railings of the side stoop." This may seem like overkill, but even with these detailed directions, some people still have trouble finding an item I've left out for them, and they either ring the bell or e-mail me later to say they came by and couldn't find it. But I can at least minimize the problem by being as specific as possible.

4. Honor your obligations.
If you have promised an item to someone, make sure that item is in the stated place at the stated time. If you said you would leave it out for porch pickup, make sure it's out there by the time the person is supposed to arrive; if they're coming to the door, then make sure you're home at the time they said they'd be there. And, obviously, if you have promised something to one person, don't give it to someone else instead just because they could come pick it up earlier. If you're not willing to wait until Tuesday, then don't promise the item to someone who can't come until Tuesday.

Likewise, if you have promised to pick something up at a given time, be there at that time. Don't assume that, just because the item is free, it doesn't really matter if you keep your promise. Even though there's no money at stake, you are still creating inconvenience for the person who posted it and has been forced to stay home waiting for you, or else gone to the trouble of hauling the item out to the porch only to see it sit there unclaimed.

Of course, emergencies do happen that can prevent you from showing up as scheduled. Your car breaks down; you have to stay home with a sick child; you're forced to work late. If something like this happens and you can't be there when you promised you would, SAY SO. It only takes a minute to send an e-mail to say you can't make it and attempt to reschedule. That way, the person can at least leave the house instead of sitting there waiting and wondering if you're ever going to show up. And if you can't arrange another suitable time for the pickup, they at least have a chance to withdraw their offer and give the item to someone else, instead of being stuck in limbo with an item they can't get rid of and can't give to anyone else because it's already promised to you.

5. Post a "taken" message.
After your item has been picked up, remember to go back to Freecycle and post a new message to say the item is now taken. Otherwise, it will still appear as an available item, and people will waste their time and yours asking you about it.


If everyone could just follow these five simple rules when using Freecycle, I think it would be a much more pleasant experience for everyone—givers and receivers alike. If you think there are any other important rules of Freecycle etiquette that I've left out, let me know in the comments.

The ultimate ground cover?

One of the most popular posts I've ever done on this blog is this old one from 2011 on the topic of ground covers. It talked about the difficulty of finding a suitable ground cover for our front yard, which would need to have the following features:

• Able to grow in our climate (UDSA Zone 7)
• Able to grow in our heavy clay soil
• Tolerant of full afternoon sun, but not requiring full sun all day
• Low-maintenance
• Able to tolerate some light foot traffic
• Low-growing, so we would never have to mow it (this was crucial)
• Non-invasive

As it turned out, there weren't a lot of plants that ticked all those boxes. In fact, I'd been able to find only three: smooth rupturewort (Herniaria glabra), barren strawberry (Waldensteinia fragarioides), and Dutch white clover (Trifolium repens). Weighing the pros and cons of all three of these, I decided the clover was probably the most ecofrugal, and I had a go at planting some in the back yard, but sadly, it didn't thrive as we'd hoped it would. I went on to experiment with other ground covers, such as creeping thyme, but none of them really turned into the easy-care green carpet that I'd hoped for.

But now, eight years later, it looks like we may actually have found the ideal ground cover completely by accident. Or to be more accurate, it found us.

You see, we actually happened to have a little bit of barren strawberry growing in our back yard when we bought the place. And since it was nice and green and grew well with no effort on our part, we were happy to let it grow wherever it wanted. In fact, over the years, we've helped it along by pulling out the weeds (chiefly mugwort) that happened to be its primary competition. And by this spring, I discovered that the barren strawberry plants had more or less completely colonized one full corner of our back yard.

Just take a look at that lush blanket of green, growing thickly and evenly across the entire spread from the patio to the border of the honeyberry bed (and even climbing slightly up the wall). Left to its own devices, the barren strawberry did all this without any planting, feeding, or even watering on our part. It doesn't need mowing, but doesn't object to having the mower pushed over it in the parts of the yard that still have grass. It doesn't mind being walked across on a regular basis as we go to and from the clothesline. It has even managed to choke out most of the mugwort in that part of the yard, something I wasn't sure was possible.

Now, I know some folks consider this plant a weed. Even my gardening books describe it as aggressive (though since it's a native plant, it can't technically be considered invasive). But frankly, I think that aggressiveness (or shall we call it "assertiveness"?) is actually a benefit in our yard, allowing it to compete with all the other, much less agreeable weeds. As far as I'm concerned, with the exception of the garden and mulched beds, this stuff is welcome to grow anywhere on our property it likes. We'll even help it along, if we can figure out how.

One comment at Dave's Garden says it's "easily propagated by soft tip cuttings in water," so maybe I'll try clipping a piece or two and seeing if I can sprout some of these to spread to the front yard. If I can get it to spread there as exuberantly as it did in the back, in another nine years we might finally have the mower-free landscape we've always wanted out there.

Thrift Week 2019, Day 7: Shopping bags

The one disposable item that seems to have the biggest target painted on its back these days is the plastic shopping bag. (Especially if it's a shopping bag from Target.) All across America, cities and towns are either putting a tax on plastic bags to discourage their use or banning them altogether. And it's easy to see why plastic bags make such a good villain: they're probably the most clear-cut example of stupid plastic there is. Think about it: you buy something, carry it home in a bag, and put the bag straight in the trash. It has served a purpose for perhaps five minutes, and it will sit in a landfill for centuries—if it doesn't instead get washed down a gutter and end up in the ocean, bleaching a coral reef or clogging up a fish's guts.

Unfortunately, most of the alternatives to plastic bags have problems of their own. Consider:

• Paper bags have some advantages over plastic. They decompose faster than plastic, making them less of a hazard in the oceans, and they're also easier to recycle. But, as this 2014 article from EcoMyths explains, they also have a higher carbon footprint and require both more water and more energy to produce. And because they're not as strong as plastic, they're less likely to be reused.
• Reusable bags seem like the obvious green choice, but actually, it depends on the type of bag. Cotton canvas bags require so much water, energy, and harmful chemicals to produce that, according to the UK EPA, they'd need to be reused a whopping 131 times to make their carbon footprint as small as a single-use plastic bag's. Reusable plastic bags, by contrast, only need to be reused 4 to 11 times to make them the greener choice.
• Even if you choose the very greenest type of reusable bag, it doesn't actually prevent waste unless you actually use it. Just last week, I was chatting with someone who is very eco-conscious (in fact, she's the one we got our rain barrel from), and she confessed that she hardly ever brings reusable bags to the store. She always means to, but she just never has them with her when she gets to the store. We said, why not just keep them in the car (a Prius, of course), and she said she does that, but then she takes them inside to unload them and they never make it back to the car.

Fortunately, I have a reusable bag that solves all these problems: my ChicoBag folding tote. It's made of recycled plastic, the material the UK EPA deemed most eco-friendly, and even more important, it folds up into its own built-in pocket, creating a tiny parcel small enough to fit in one hand. It lives in my purse, and if I ever decide on the spur of the moment to swing by the grocery store or the farmers' market while I'm out on my walk, I can just whip out my little bag and deploy it. Then as soon as I get home and take the groceries out, I immediately fold it back into its pocket and stuff it back in the purse, so I can never forget about it. (Forget American Express—this is the plastic not to leave home without.) I even keep my store loyalty cards clipped to it, so I don't need to fumble with a separate item.

Now, this bag isn't perfect. After ten years or so, it's showing signs of wear; I've already had to darn a small hole in the front of it, and I'm not sure how much longer it will hold up. And it's a bit on the flimsy side; it can hold a head of broccoli just fine, but I don't know if I'd trust it with a gallon of milk. However, the newer ChicoBag models seem to be made of tougher stuff; the Micro Skydiver purports to be "micro-ripstop fabric" that can hold up to 25 pounds. Plus it folds into an even smaller package than mine. The one downside is the $20 price tag, but if it gets as much use as mine has, it's probably a good investment. But if you want a cheaper alternative, IKEA has one for two bucks—not quite as compact or sturdy, but still portable.

Ah, you may be asking, but what if you go to the store and decide to buy some produce from the bins? You have to take a plastic bag for that, don't you? Well, not usually. When we make a grocery run in the car, we always have with us our large reusable shopping bag (also from IKEA) and a set of three mesh produce bags, received as a Christmas gift six years ago. So the only time we need to take a plastic bag for produce is if (1) we buy more than three separate produce items that require bags, or (2) we decide to stop into the store while we're on foot, so all we have is the ChicoBag. (If I know ahead of time that I'm planning to visit the farmers' market while out on my walk, I can stuff a couple of reused plastic bags in my purse.)

Although plastic bags are free at most grocery stores, our reusable bags still save us a bit of money. True, some of the stores I blogged about saving money at with bring-your-own-bag discounts back in 2011 have since discontinued them. But we still get 10 cents off per container at the Whole Earth Center, and we still avoid paying for bags at Aldi—and if Highland Park's proposed plastic bag ban goes into law, we could eventually be saving 10 cents a pop at our local Stop & Shop. So the estimate I made at the time that these bags save us $25 a year isn't too far off the mark. But even if these bags didn't save us a penny, they'd still spare us from having to bring a worthless piece of plastic into our house every time we shop—and you can't put a price on that.

Plant-based milk experiments: The conclusion

After about a month since my last post on our attempts to become a milk-free household, I figured it was time for an update. And I'll go ahead and lead with the fact that we seem at last to have found a (mostly) satisfactory solution.

The Wholesome Pantry coconut milk from Shop Rite, which I tried right after the Aldi almond milk, was not that solution. I liked it quite well to drink by itself, but it had a very pronounced coconut flavor—much stronger than the homemade coconut milk we tried—which wasn't ideal for all applications. The coconut flavor was reasonably compatible with breakfast cocoa, but it tasted a little off in an egg cream, and it would never work in, say, mushroom-barley soup.

So, on our next visit to Trader Joe's, I decided to check out their selections, hoping for something like oat or flax milk to try next. However, their only choices were soy, almond, and coconut (all available in sweetened and unsweetened, vanilla or plain). But the thought crossed my mind that maybe it would be worth trying the almond milk, even though I hadn't liked Aldi's. I figured there had to be some reason this particular "schmilk" was so popular, so maybe the off taste I'd detected in the Aldi milk was just a peculiarity of that particular brand.

Sure enough, the TJ's almond milk tasted much better than Aldi's. Sweet, creamy, and fairly neutral in its flavor, with little to no almond taste, it worked fine in every application we tried: straight up, on cereal, in cocoa, and in egg creams. Brian also tried using some to make his favorite chocolate pudding and found it actually worked better than the skim milk we've been using, giving it a lighter, silkier texture that melted in the mouth. It's a little more expensive than the Aldi almond milk, at $2.69 per half gallon, and the nearest Trader Joe's store isn't quite as close to us as the nearest Aldi, but then again, we pass right by it our regular route to Princeton on Thursdays, so it should be easy to work it into our routine.

However, finding one alternative we liked didn't stop us from trying a couple of others when the opportunity presented itself. For example, last weekend we happened to be low on almond milk at around the same time we were making a run to Shop Rite, so rather than go out of our way to hit the Trader Joe's as well, we decided to pick up a carton of Wholesome Pantry almond milk and see how we liked that. It turned out to have a mild, sweet flavor with a more noticeable almond taste than the TJ's brand, but not enough to make it incompatible with chocolate. So we now have that available as a backup option (that's only a tiny bit pricier) for any time we can't easily make it to Trader Joe's.

Then yesterday, Stop & Shop sent me a coupon for a free half-gallon of Mariani walnut milk, so we gave that a try as well. The only variety they had at our local store was plain and unsweetened, which tasted noticeably different from the almond milks, with no sweetness whatsoever and just the faintest hint of walnut flavor. However, it was pretty neutral-tasting, and we thought it would work fine for both sweet and savory dishes, as long as we adjusted the amount of sugar to compensate. We did discover one odd thing about it, though; when Brian used some in a bread pudding, it took much longer to bake than usual and still never got completely firm. This made us wonder if maybe it was some special property of cow's milk that gave bread pudding its texture, and we might run into the same problem if we made it with almond milk. However, when I checked bread pudding recipes online, I found several that used almond milk, soy milk, or even plain water, so clearly it's not impossible to make a bread pudding that's dairy-free; we'll just have to experiment a bit more.

I should also mention that, the last time we were at Aldi, we decided to grab one more carton of their almond milk just to make 100 percent sure it wouldn't work for us. I thought it was possible that I'd just happened to get a bad batch the first time I tried it, and Brian thought maybe now that my palate had adjusted to almond milk, the Aldi stuff wouldn't taste so odd. But the second carton merely confirmed our results; when we tasted it side-by-side with the Trader Joe's brand, we could both detect a faint but distinct difference. So, while it would have been nice to go with the cheapest almond milk, we're willing to pay an extra 80 cents a carton for the quality we like.

Or perhaps, to be more accurate, I should say the quality I like. Because Brian, it turns out, has found a way to manage his morning breakfast cereal without using any milk—or any kind of packaged "schmilk"—at all.

Now, Brian grew up drinking 2 percent milk, and that's what he used on his cereal before moving in with me. However, he found that he was able to adapt to using skim milk—even powdered milk, when we were using that—without too much difficulty, even though he found the flavor vastly different for drinking. So he reasoned that for his cereal, flavor wasn't a big concern; all he really needed to do was moisten it. So, as an experiment, he decided to try it with plain water instead of milk. This, he found, had a slightly harsh flavor, so he tried "softening" it by adding a bit of salt and sugar. He used about 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 1 tablespoon of sugar to a quart of water, mixing it up in one of our milk bottles and storing it in the fridge.

When he tried this softened water on his cereal, it actually tasted fine, but it looked a little odd. He was used to having a white liquid in the bowl, and the clear liquid was off-putting. So he hit on the idea of taking the walnuts that he normally crumbles onto his morning cereal—about three tablespoons' worth—and soaking them overnight in a little over a cup of the softened water, then grinding up the mixture in the Magic Bullet in the morning. Then he dumps the contents, solids and liquids together, onto his cereal. So, in effect, he's making a homemade walnut milk, except the walnuts aren't costing him anything extra, since he was using them on the cereal anyway. Thus, the only extra expense is the sugar and salt he's adding to the water. It does mean a little bit of extra prep time in the morning, but then again, it saves him the effort of crushing up the walnuts by hand, so it comes out about even.

In conclusion, it looks like we have both managed to find acceptable alternatives to milk for use at home. This does not mean we'll be giving up milk completely; I have no plans to become one of those annoying people who holds up the line at the coffee shop asking what kinds of milk alternatives they have, nor do we want to put friends and family to the trouble of getting special schmilk for us when we come to visit. We're really trying to avoid the stereotype of the obnoxious vegan by practicing our carbon-light diet in a way that doesn't inconvenience anyone else. We're not trying to achieve total ideological purity here, just to shrink our carbon footprint as much as we can reasonably manage.

So, having successfully solved the milk problem, our next challenge is going to be cheese—and this, I suspect, is going to be a lot tougher. After all, making an acceptable milk alternative really isn't that hard; as I noted when I first started experimenting with schmilks back in August, almond milk has been around for centuries. But these plant milks simply don't curdle like cheese. Making a vegan substitute for Parmesan isn't too hard, since it's the flavor and not the texture you need; I've seen lots of recipes for homemade versions made from nutritional yeast with ground nuts, bread crumbs, or straight out of the bottle, all of which would probably serve the purpose. But for something like cheddar or mozzarella, it's much harder to find a substitute. Yes, there are vegan cheese alternatives on the market, but the ones we've seen are either very expensive, not very good, or both. For instance, when we needed to serve a pizza to a vegan friend, we tried Daiya, which is cited on many lists (like  Huffington Post Australia and Spruce Eats) as the best mozzarella alternative out there, and we found it was merely okay. The taste wasn't bad, but it didn't really melt and stretch like the real thing.

Right now, we're thinking our best approach might be just to cut down on cheese, rather than trying to find a substitute for it. We can make recipes that rely on cheese less often, and when we make them, reduce the amount we use. Tonight, for example, Brian whipped up a batch of quesadillas that had maybe a quarter to a third of a pound of shredded Monterey Jack, rather than the half-pound he's been using, spread out across the usual volume of black beans and spinach, and while the texture was certainly different, it wasn't unsatisfying. Since we're not trying to go full vegan, simply cutting back on cheese will allow us to shrink our food footprint while still enjoying a cheesy dish once in a while. And, as a bonus, it will make those cheese-based dishes cheaper, too—which is what ecofrugality is all about.

DIY straw sleeve

A couple of weeks back, I decided to embark on a modified version of the Plastic Free July challenge, with a focus on cutting out "stupid plastic"—in particular, any plastics that are single-use and non-recyclable. To that end, I decided it was time to get serious about dealing with this year's most popular plastic villain: drinking straws.

Now, you might wonder why straws, in particular, have come under such intense fire. After all, they're a lot smaller than, say, water bottles or soda bottles or even plastic shopping bags. So why are so many green groups targeting them?

The answer is twofold. First, they're ubiquitous; and second, they're not recyclable. As Popular Science explains, although they're typically made of recyclable polypropylene, their small size and weight actually work against them; they slip right the cracks in the conveyor belts used in large-scale plastic recycling. And since polypropylene floats, unlike the heavier PETE plastic used in water and soda bottles, a lot of these plastic straws end up adrift in the ocean, where they can cause harm to wildlife.

When I first decided to try reducing straw use back in April, I decided that, rather than rushing out and buying a set of reusable silicone straws, I'd first try to use up all the old straws I'd brought home over the years and rinsed out. (Since they were going to end up in the trash eventually, I figured, I might as well get as much use out of them as possible first.) So I tucked a straw from my collection inside a pennywhistle that I was already carrying around in my purse.

Unfortunately, when my purse was snatched last month, I lost both the whistle and the straw. So in order to carry on with my straw-reuse experiment, I was going to need a new container. I found some reusable sleeves for drinking straws online, but they cost $12 apiece—twice as much as a whole set of the silicone drinking straws. That seemed like a ridiculous amount to pay for something that was basically just a little tube of fabric. Surely, I figured, I could make something similar with the materials in my scrap bin.

So I headed downstairs and dug through my remnants, looking for something I could easily make into a suitable straw sleeve. The first thing that caught my eye was an old pair of shorts, made of a sort of printed cotton fabric. They'd worn out in the thigh area, but there was plenty of good fabric around the hem, and it occurred to me that if I simply cut off a section of that hem, it would be exactly the right size to store a straw.

To make sure this would accommodate any straw in my collection, I grabbed the longest one I could find, measured it against the hem of the shorts, and cut off a section long enough to cover it. By starting at the side seam, I was able to give it a ready-sewn end, so I didn't even have to sew it up at the bottom. All I have to is slip the straw into the sleeve and then tuck in the end of the fabric above it to keep it from sliding back out again.

I've even discovered that this DIY straw sleeve is wide enough to accommodate the bigger-barreled straws used with bubble tea, one of my favorite to-go treats. Since the bubble-sized straws are a little too wide to fit in a standard to-go cup, I decided to carry both a bubble-sized straw and a regular straw, with the narrower one tucked inside the wider one, which in turn is tucked inside the sleeve. So now, no matter where I stop off for a drink, I'll have just the right straw to drink it with, and I won't need to take a new one.

Of course, as luck would have it, since I came up with this oh-so-clever solution I haven't bought a single to-go drink anywhere, so I haven't really had a chance to deploy my new sustainable toy. But I know it's ready when I need it.

So, for anyone out there who's been thinking about switching to reusable straws, but couldn't figure out how to carry one: wonder no more. This trick would probably work just fine with any old pair of pants or shorts you happen to have sitting around in your rag bag. And if you don't have a rag bag, you could just buy the cheapest pair you can find at your local thrift shop and cut it up; it'll still be cheaper than buying one of those fancy straw sleeves on Etsy.

We're more frugal than the Frugalwoods (no fooling)!

I know that in the world of frugal-living blogs, I'm a very small fish in a pretty big pond. With just over 1,000 posts total and an average of around 2,000 page views per month, I can't compare to leading lights like Mr. Money Mustache, J.D. Roth of Get Rich Slowly, or the team of experts at Wise Bread. And that's okay. I've got my little niche, and I'm pretty content within it.

But sometimes, reading these more successful blogs, I start to feel inadequate—not about my blog's modest scale, but about my finances. These bloggers boast about how they were able to retire in their early 30s just by cutting out luxuries and investing sensibly, and I think, "Well, gee, I do all that—how come I'm 45 years old and not financially independent yet? What am I doing wrong?"

The answer, it turns out, could be that there's nothing at all wrong with how I spend my money—I'm just not making as much as they are.

This came home to me recently when I came across an article in The Guardian by Elizabeth Willard Thames of the popular Frugalwoods blog. She and her husband Nate have built their brand around their personal success story, which reads kind of like Horatio Alger meets Henry David Thoreau: they both had high-powered careers and a big house in the city, but they weren't happy with that lifestyle, so they decided to scale back, save up, and trade it all in for a cozy homestead on 66 acres in Vermont.

In her article, "Mrs. Frugalwoods" insists, "My husband, Nate, and I are not exceptional people...we’ve never won the lottery or had investment banker salaries or been the beneficiaries of inheritances or trust funds." She goes on to concede that they are "extraordinarily privileged" to have had parents who were well-educated and financially stable, so they could grow up "happy, warm, well-educated, [and] well-cared-for," but that just seems like rubbing it in: basically, she's implying that anyone else (like me) who had a similar upbringing could retire at age 32 and buy a farm in Vermont if they really wanted to. The fact that I'm still working for a living in my forties just proves that I'm not trying hard enough.

However, before I could get too glum about this, I happened upon a second article about the Frugalwoods that tackled their story from a completely different angle. The Outline points out that the Frugalwoods' story of achieving financial independence through "extreme frugality" leaves out one rather important fact: how much money they actually have.

The Frugalwoods are "tight-lipped about their income," the article says, but there are enough financial clues on their blog to make it clear that their rags-to-riches story doesn't exactly start with rags. For instance, they reveal that they bought a $460,000, four-bedroom house in Cambridge back in 2012, which they were later able to rent out for $4,400 per month. (That property alone brings them close to $27,000 in income, even after you deduct the cost of a property manager, taxes, and the mortgage they're still paying on it.) And in a 2014 post, Liz notes that they've both maxed out their 401(k) contributions, to the tune of $35,000 a year—a sum they don't even count when calculating their annual savings rate at just over 71 percent of their income.

Now, I think our lifestyle is pretty frugal, but our savings rate has never been anywhere close to 71 percent. We currently save a bit more than 50 percent of our take-home pay, and back when we still had a mortgage, it was less than 40 percent. So I started wondering: how do the Frugalwoods really do it? Just how low are their expenses? Are they really living on that much less than we do—in the Boston area, no less—or are they just making a lot more?

It seems impossible to say, given that the Frugalwoods refuse to disclose their income—but taking another look at that 2014 blog entry, I realized that I actually had all the information I needed to figure it out for myself. After noting that they saved 71.4% of their income for 2014, Mrs. Frugalwoods goes on to add that "If we include both of our 401K contributions...our savings rate is 93.07%." And since she'd already said their 401(k)s were maxed out at $17,500 each, it was clear that this $35,000 per year represented 21.67% of their total income. Thus, their total income for the year was $161,513.61.

Now here's where things start to look weird. If their income was $161,514, and they saved about 93 percent of it in total, that means the amount they actually lived on was 7 percent of it, or $11,305. Except, as they disclosed in their post about renting out their house, their mortgage payment and taxes on their Cambridge house come to $1,921.66 per month, or $23,060 per year. Clearly, the math on that does not work.

More likely, what they mean is that if they counted the $35,000 they saved out of their pre-tax income toward the amount they saved out of their take-home income, their savings would be 93 percent. (Actually, it wouldn't, because the taxes that also came out of that pre-tax income would also have to be counted as an expense—but we don't have enough info to figure out what the right number would be.) So I'm assuming that the $161,513.61 a year I came up with for the Frugalwoods' income is really their take-home pay, not gross. And since we know they saved 71.4 percent of that, the amount of that they actually spent was 28.6 percent of it, or $46,192.89.

Armed with this figure, I clicked over to my budget spreadsheet, where I've been tracking all our expenses since 2005, to figure out how much we spent in 2014. The answer was $28,902.66—more than $17,000 less than the Frugalwoods.

However, it only took me a few minutes to figure out that this wasn't really a fair comparison. By 2014, we'd already paid off our mortgage, so our living expenses were naturally much lower than theirs. So I went back a little further and looked at our expenses for the year right before we paid off the mortgage: October 2012 through September 2013. For that period, our total living expenses came to $38,983.65—still a good seven grand below the Frugalwoods' level of "extreme frugality." Apparently, we were actually living more frugally, despite spending over 60 percent our our income, than they were while spending less than 30 percent of theirs.

Now, the point of this isn't to brag. Well, maybe just a little, but the main point of it is that if you, like me, have been reading blogs like Frugalwoods and thinking, "Oh man, I've never been able to save 71 percent of my income, I must be doing it all wrong, I'll never be able to buy my farm in Vermont"—stop. Instead, substitute this thought: "My financial situation is unique, and I can't reasonably compare my savings rate to some blogger's (especially one who's refusing to disclose his or her income). What I can do is to learn as many tricks as I can to cut my expenses so that I can close in on financial independence as fast as is reasonably possible for me."

And if that's your goal, it would appear that maybe you actually could learn a trick or two from a little-fish blog like this one that even hot shots like the Frugalwoods haven't picked up yet.

IKEA hack: Cat-safe vase 3.0

One of the first things we had to do after we got our two rambunctious kitties in 2015 was figure out a way to protect our flowers from them. It didn't take us long to figure out that it wasn't enough for the vase to be stable enough to keep the cats from knocking it over; it also had to physically block off their access to the flowers, since anything they could reach would get pulled out and turned into a cat toy/snack. Even if we limited ourselves strictly to cat-safe flowers that wouldn't hurt the kitties if they chose to chew on them, it would kind of defeat the purpose of displaying flowers to make the kitchen look nice if they instead ended up scattered all over the floor.

Our first attempt at a cat-safe vase was a glass canning jar inverted over top of a smaller jar. This experiment showed us that a fully enclosed container wouldn't really work, because water condensed all over the inside and made it nearly impossible to see the flowers underneath. We needed something with a bit of ventilation to allow the flowers to breathe.

Our next attempt, our cat-safe vase 1.0, was a repurposed glass candle chimney from our local thrift shop. We just inverted it over top of a small glass of wildflowers, keeping them out of reach of curious paws while still allowing us to see them (sort of). This arrangement wasn't ideal, since it severely limited the size of the flower bouquet that would fit underneath, but it worked reasonably well for about a year.

Then, after what seemed like a fairly minor tap against a candlestick, the glass shade completely broke. We couldn't find another, so Brian came up with a DIY cat-safe vase using a plain glass vase and a wooden stand with holes that allowed air to circulate from below. This, once again, worked tolerably well, but it still wasn't ideal. For one thing, having the vase inverted over the top tended to cramp the flower arrangements inside, squashing any artistically draped leaves or blossoms against the side of the glass. It was tricky to load and unload it properly, getting the glass centered in exactly the right spot so the vase could fit over top without crushing the flowers. And although it theoretically allowed for some air movement, the inside of the vase still had a tendency to mist up—and after a bunch of flowers had been in there for a week or so, mold would start to form along their foliage. This required us to change the flowers quite a bit more often than we had to when we were using a simple, open vase.

Then, last week, we accompanied Brian's sister's family on a trip to the Indianapolis IKEA and spotted this nifty SINNESRO lantern. It's meant to keep a candle protected from the wind outdoors, but it occurred to me that it could just as easily protect a small vase of flowers from our inquisitive felines. And since it was designed to provide enough air to keep a candle flame burning, we figured it ought to do a reasonably good job of allowing air to circulate around our flowers. At any rate, for eight bucks, we thought it was worth a try. Even if it didn't work, we could still use the lantern for its intended purpose, either indoors or out on our patio.

As soon as we got home from Indiana, we set up the new the lantern on our kitchen table. Since there are no flowers blooming at this time of year, we just put a little sprig of evergreens in a cup and tucked it inside as a proof of concept.

Right away, it was clear that this lantern had a couple of advantages over the previous cat-safe vase. For one, it was much easier to load and unload, since you could tuck the glass of flowers right inside the glass enclosure instead of having to carefully lower the vase down over top of it. It was also a lot more polished-looking than our makeshift vase with its wooden stand. (Brian had sanded the piece down a little bit to smooth it out and covered over the screws with wood putty, but it was still pretty obvious that it had been cobbled together from plywood scraps.)

So far, the new lantern-vase shows no tendency to fog up inside, but in this extra-cold, dry weather, we can't necessarily read too much into that. We'll have to give it a few days to see whether the greenery inside stays clean and free of mildew, but for now, I'm liking this arrangement very much. And we still have our old cat-safe vase 2.0 available if we decide we want to display some flowers in another location.

So for anyone out there who is looking for a way to keep flowers and cats in the same house, I'd say this ultra-simple IKEA hack is the easiest way to make it work. If you don't happen to have an IKEA store in your neck of the woods, pretty much any candle lantern intended for outdoor use should do just as well, though you might have to pay a bit more for it. A quick online search just turned up several options priced around $12 at stores like Pier 1 and Quick Candles; you can almost surely find something to fit both your taste and your budget.

DIY canning equipment

Ever since we started gardening, Brian and I have used a variety of methods to preserve our excess produce (when we were fortunate enough to have any). Winter squash, of course, are easy to store; we just stash them downstairs in the cool confines of the laundry room until we want to use them. Freezing is the next easiest method, and a search of our freezer on any given day is likely to turn up bags of rhubarb, containers of tomato sauce, and cubes of pesto that we've frozen in the ice-cube tray. Over the years, we've also experimented with packing fresh basil in salt or olive oil, drying cherry tomatoes in the oven, and making jars of ice box dill pickles that keep for several months in the fridge.

Until recently, though, we'd never actually tackled the toughest of all home preservation methods: canning. For one thing, it's a much more involved process than any other method; a quick search on "how to can" just led me to this page from the National Center for Home Food Preservation, with literally dozens of different fact sheets on the various tools and techniques involved. There's a lot that can go wrong—and the consequences of a mistake can be deadly.

Recently, though, Brian was moved to try a pickle recipe that called for actual canning. It didn't look too complicated: load the veggies into the jars, pour the boiled pickling mixture on top, then seal the jars and process them in a hot-water bath for 15 minutes. The worst that could happen would be that the jars didn't seal properly, and it would be pretty easy to tell if they hadn't—in which case we could just treat the resulting pickles as ice box pickles and keep them in the fridge.

The problem was the equipment. These days, it's fairly easy to find canning jars and lids at supermarkets, and we have a large stock pot that's big enough to process small jars in a boiling water bath. However, there are two additional, specialized pieces you need for canning: a rack to keep the jars off the bottom of the pot, so water can circulate properly, and a pair of wide, curved tongs for lifting the jars out of the hot water bath. Brian was naturally reluctant to invest money in these for a single canning attempt that might turn out to be his last.

To see if there was any way to mock up reasonable substitutes for these two pieces, I did a quick search on "DIY canning equipment" and came across this handy "home hacks" article on Kitchn. It said you can easily convert a pair of ordinary kitchen tongs to sturdy, jar-gripping tongs suitable for canning with some rubber bands. Just wrap several of them securely around the blades of the tongs, fitting them into the grooves. Brian tried it with our basic kitchen tongs and found that with this addition, they could lift a full pint jar with no slippage.

The article also suggested a way to make a canning rack out of aluminum foil by twisting it into ropes, then weaving them together to make a circular mat that fits your stockpot. However, the resulting jerry-rigged rack didn't look very sturdy, and it seemed likely that it would only be good for a single use. Brian figured that if he was going to go to the trouble of making something from scratch for this canning experiment, it might as well be something that he could use again if he decided it was worth pursuing canning any further in future. But on the other hand, there was a chance he'd only use it once, so he didn't want to buy any new materials for it.

So he disappeared down into his tinkering workshop, from which a series of mysterious banging sounds soon began to issue. When he finally reemerged, he was carrying this ingenious device, cobbled together from several lengths of perforated steel hanger strap. He'd bought this stuff so long ago that he couldn't even remember what it was initially for, but it came on a fairly big roll, and there was lots of it left. He simply made a series of rings from it, ranging from very small to almost the circumference of the stockpot, and lined them all up together so that he could thread a single bolt through the holes in all the circles at once.

As you can see, this DIY rack fits neatly in the bottom of the pot and supports a quart jar on top, with a good couple of inches to spare. The multiple layers of sturdy tape are strong enough to hold up the larger jars, and close enough together that even the smaller jars can't slip through. It can hold at least three quart jars or four little pint jars at a time.

As it turns out, the pickling process didn't go off entirely without a hitch (though that's a story for another blog entry). But the DIY equipment itself performed admirably. Best of all, neither of the pieces took up much room when we were done with it. The canning rack can be stashed right in the pot, ready to go in case we decide to use it again. The tongs, stripped of their rubber bands, are back in their usual place in the drawer; should we decide to take another crack at canning, it will be a simple enough matter to get them wrapped up again. Much better than spending money on a whole new piece of equipment that we then have to make room for.

Settling in for winter

Although there are still plenty of leaves left on the trees, the weather for the last few days has been decidedly wintry. Yesterday, when heading out to the farmers' market for some local apples and cranberries (because it's just silly to make Thanksgiving cranberry sauce from Wisconsin-grown cranberries when the plant is native to New Jersey), I actually set aside my lightweight fall coat in favor of the bulky winter one—and all the parts of me it didn't cover were still freezing. And even though we've already fired up the heating system for the winter, I also had to haul out my wearable blanket a couple of days last week to stay warm while working.

This change in the weather signaled that it was time for us to take care of a few seasonal chores. We'd already taken care of stashing away the window air conditioner and changing our sheets from their summer percale to warmer flannel, signaling that the warm weather was definitively over for the year; now it was time for those tasks that mark the transition from fall into winter. First, Brian went out into the garden and harvested all the remaining tomatoes and peppers: several more of the big Pineapples, a few Black Princes (which are actually Green Princes at the moment), a smattering of little Sun Golds, and about four green Jimmy Nardello frying peppers. All the ones that have started to "blush," even slightly, got set out on the kitchen counter, where they are now ripening up nicely; the completely green ones got stowed in a newspaper-lined box in the basement, together with an apple to accelerate the ripening process. This hasn't always worked so well in the past, but there's not much we can do with the green tomatoes otherwise (and it won't hurt the apple), so we have nothing to lose by trying.

Then, today, Brian went out to deal with the job of stowing away our rain barrel for the winter. Yesterday morning, he'd opened up the spigot at the bottom to let the water empty out, which it did, but very slowly; when he got home from work, there was still water dripping from the spout. But by morning, the drip had stopped, and he just had to open it up to get out the remaining water near the bottom. In fact, as soon as he moved the barrel, it became apparent that he wasn't going to get the remaining water out without opening it up, because some of it had turned into a block of ice that we could hear clanking around in there.

So he undid the screws at the top and removed the lid, revealing a few chunks of ice, a bit of liquid water...and a layer of dark green algae smeared all over the inside of the barrel. Fortunately, it turned out that this stuff peeled off pretty easily, so Brian was able to remove most of it with his hands. He discarded it, and the ice, in a little bed to one side of the yard where we've planted this year's crop of garlic and shallots; with any luck, it will serve as fertilizer. Then he reassembled the barrel and stowed it in the shed. He did happen to notice one problem when he reattached the lid; the black rubber pipe attached to the back, which drains the overflow from the barrel away from the house, was starting to split in places. Trying to remove it from the spout just exacerbated the problem, so he left it in place for now. When we return the barrel to service next spring, we'll see if the damage proves severe enough to cause a leak and replace the part if necessary.

Then all that remained was to return the downspout to its wintertime configuration. He took off the piece that routes water from the downspout into the barrel and replaced it with a longer piece that extends the pipe down to the ground and directs it outward, across the barrel's concrete resting pad, and away from the house. That should keep the foundation safe from water damage, whether winter brings us rain or snow.

As for installing the storm windows in our screen doors, that turned out not to be necessary, since he'd never actually removed them to replace them with screens this spring. We don't tend to leave the doors open for ventilation anyway, since we have plenty of windows, so it wouldn't really have made much difference. We still have plenty of ice melt left over from last year, and our snow shovels remain in good condition, along with the car's tires and windshield wipers. And we've both had our flu shots already.

So now the only task left on our winter checklist is to buy a big bag of birdseed and set up our backyard buffet for the local cardinals and sparrows. (Not the squirrels, though. They may have managed to plunder our plum tree and pilfer our eggplants, but so far they absolutely cannot figure out how to hack our bird feeder. It's this kind, so if you're looking for a feeder that can truly thwart the furry menaces, I can recommend it.)

As soon as that's done, we can count ourselves ready for winter—which will leave us free to enjoy the last few lingering, golden days of fall.