A farewell to CFLs

This week, Brian and I received a free "Quick Home Energy Check-up" from our utility. Basically, they sent a guy out to our house who looked at our heating system, insulation, appliances, and so on, and made recommendations about ways to save energy. Most of what we learned from this was not news to us. Overall, our home is pretty efficient: our attic is well insulated, our faucets low-flow, our appliances mostly up-to-date. The contractor pointed out a couple of changes worth making (sealing the attic hatch and repairing a compromised double-glazed window) and one that we don't consider worth making (replacing our water heater solely on the grounds that it's over 10 years old, which I already knew was rubbish. We do eventually want to replace it with an electric one, ideally an efficient heat pump model, in order to get our whole house off of fossil fuels, but I see no reason to rush the process.)

The best part, though, was that we got a bunch of free stuff. As part of the checkup process, the checker-up made a whole series of minor efficiency upgrades on the spot. He insulated the one bit of our water heater's pipe that wasn't wrapped already and replaced both our 2.5-gpm shower heads with shiny new 1.5-gpm models that have proved just as effective and satisfying to use. And he replaced all our old compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) with new LED bulbs. Or at least, almost all.

We'd already installed LEDs in the fixtures where we thought they'd make most difference in terms of lifespan, looks, or performance. But other fixtures still contained CFLs, since we already had a bunch of them and figured we might as well use them up before replacing them. So this helpful fellow went through and upgraded the bulbs in our living room table lamps, our guest room lamp, and all the fixtures downstairs—all, that is, except the overhead fixture nearest the stairs. On that one, he spent several minutes turning the "nipple" that held the cover in place, and it just would not come off. It turned freely, but it refused to part ways with the bolt it was attached to. It was a baffling problem, one he'd never encountered before in 15 years on the job, and eventually he had to leave those last two lonely CFLs in place.

After he left, though, Brian messed around with the light for a bit and eventually managed to get the cover off. (He just grabbed the nut with his locking pliers and kept turning the entire bolt assembly until it unscrewed at the other end.) And once he had the light reassembled, he was able to replace those last two CFLs with two extra LEDs that had been removed from the fixture in our downstairs bathroom. (They didn't quite match, so the contractor had replaced them with a matched set of nicer-looking LED globes.) And with that, our interior lighting was finally 100 percent LED-based. 

This left us with a new problem: what to do with all our old CFLs. We had a pretty big collection of them, some left over from previous bulk purchases and some that we'd removed from the fixtures we'd already upgraded to LEDs, and there was no real chance we'd ever use them again. Normally, when we have stuff we no longer need, I try to Freecycle it, but I had a hard time believing anyone would want these old CFLs now that LEDs are so cheap and readily available. (You can buy them at Home Depot for as little as $1.75 apiece now, which is less than we paid for most of our CFLs.) And, as Brian pointed out, even if someone took them just because they were free, they wouldn't be taking the place of less efficient incandescent bulbs; as of this year, those are no longer on the market. All they'd be doing is delaying the transition to the still more efficient, longer-lasting, less-hazardous LEDs. So in the end, we bundled up the lot and hauled them all to the nearest Home Depot for recycling. 

We also brought with us two other CFLs that the contractor hadn't replaced: the two in the exterior light by our kitchen door. We figured if we going to Home Depot anyway, we might as well look for LED replacements for these bulbs as well. Unfortunately, it didn't occur to us to measure the fixtures first, so the pair of EcoSmart bulbs we picked up for $15 turned out to be too wide to fit—and we'd already disposed of the old CFLs. Fortunately, we had another exterior fixture by the patio door, so we just installed the new LED floodlight bulbs in that one. Then we transferred the two ancient incandescent floodlight bulbs from that fixture, which had been there since we bought the house and possibly for several years before that, to the side door.

So now, ironically, the only fixture at our house that doesn't have LEDs is still using old, ridiculously inefficient incandescents. But since that light doesn't get used very often, it's not that big a deal. We can pick up some new LED bulbs for it (that actually fit) the next time we're at a home store, and dispose of the old bulbs with our regular household trash. And at that point, we'll finally move all our home's lighting into the twenty-first century.

Doing the same for our heating and plumbing, now, that will be a much bigger job. But at least we've made a start.

Good hunting at Goodwill

I've been a regular visitor to thrift shops for decades now. Based on a quick count, roughly two-thirds of the clothes in my closet are secondhand, including many unique pieces that I dearly love. But that doesn't mean that I normally have good luck at thrift shops. On any given thrift shop visit (including most of the ones I made during Thrift Shop Week in 2016), the most likely outcome is that I'll find nothing useful and walk out empty-handed. I've only managed to accumulate such a sizable secondhand wardrobe through perseverance; even if I strike out nine times out of ten, my occasional lucky shopping trips add up over time.

The same, however, does not hold true for Brian. In the past month, we've visited two different Goodwill stores: our usual store in East Brunswick and one up in Bound Brook that we decided to check out for our anniversary, because we're weird that way. And between the two, he has filled pretty much every gap in his wardrobe for less than $50. I, meanwhile, came away with a grand total of one item, but given my track record, I still consider that a victory.

Here's Brian's haul from the two trips combined. It includes:

• Two pairs of shorts. They're both cargo shorts, which aren't his favorite, but they both have the above-the-knee length he prefers, rather than the knee-length fit that seems to be all you can find in stores these days. The light grey pair is actually a 30 waist, so it's quite snug on him, but wearable. Both pairs cost $6.
• One pair of jeans. He actually found two pairs in his size, 32/30, on the trip we made yesterday—a rare occurrence for him, since usually he hunts through the racks and doesn't find any. But one of the pairs turned out to be skinny jeans, and he decided he couldn't quite pull that look off. So he bought only the more conventional Levi's for $8. They had a little splotch of paint on one leg, but he was able to scrape most of it off with an Exacto knife, reducing it to only a barely discernible smudge.
  
• One V-neck shirt. Brian's usual uniform for winter is jeans, a T-shirt, and a sweatshirt over that. He'll occasionally choose a sweater instead, but typically just for slightly dressier occasions. This shirt is kind of a middle ground between the two. It has an inner layer of comfy knitted material like a sweatshirt, but the outer layer is a woven fabric that's a bit more presentable. It also has a neater, trimmer fit than the typical bulky sweatshirt, so it will take his everyday look up a notch. Marked as a sweater on our receipt, it cost $6.
• One pair of sneakers. This was the biggest coup. Brian's favorite pair of shoes is a pair of classic canvas sneakers in a nifty plaid fabric, which he bought for $20 at Old Navy close to 15 years ago. They were the first pair of shoes he ever saw in a store and thought, "I want those shoes," as opposed to, "Well, I need new shoes, so I guess these will do." And other folks agree with him; he regularly gets compliments on them from friends, relatives, and even strangers. Unfortunately, after 15 years of on-and-off use, they're starting to fall apart. Mind you, that's a pretty impressive lifespan for a $20 pair of shoes, but it's clear he won't be able to use them much longer. But of course, after all these years, Old Navy no longer makes them, and until today, he couldn't find anything he liked nearly as much at a price he considered reasonable. But on yesterday's trip to Goodwill, he found three pairs he liked enough to try them on, and this was the most comfortable fit of the lot. Its solid green fabric uppers aren't quite as snazzy as the plaid ones, but the shoes have the basic old-school styling he likes and were well worth the $20 price tag. He might eventually find something else he likes better, but at least now he isn't at risk of having to go barefoot when the plaid ones finally give up the ghost.

So that's Brian's back-to-school shopping done, all for a grand total of $46. Add in the one item we bought for me, a white cotton turtleneck, and the total is still only $52. 

Just for fun, I calculated what we'd have paid for similar items purchased new from a good but not fancy retailer like L.L. Bean. My calculations: $50 each for Brian's two pairs of shorts, $60 for his jeans, $65 for the closest thing to his shirt, and $50 for his shoes (assuming he chose the color that was on sale). Add in $37 for my turtleneck, and the total for the lot comes to $312—six times what we spent at Goodwill. Even buying everything on sale at Kohl's would have cost us about three times as much.

Of course, if we'd had to buy everything new, we probably wouldn't have bought most of it in the first place.

What's the new Etsy for budget-conscious brides?

Sometimes I fantasize about having a little side business helping people plan ecofrugal weddings. I wouldn't be like a normal wedding planner, who makes all the arrangements from start to finish and charges a grand or two for the service; instead I'd let couples hire me by the hour to do exactly as much of the work, or as little, as they wanted taken off their hands. And I'd use the techniques I learned planning my own wedding, and all the tricks I've learned in the years since, to help them have the wedding of their dreams on a budget they could live with in real life.

Since one particular item that takes a big bite out of many wedding budgets is the dress, I'd want to have one of my services be helping brides-to-be (or anyone who wants a dress without the gendered label to go with it) find affordable alternatives. When I got married 19 years ago, I wore a Renaissance-style bodice I bought on eBay for about $35 and a skirt Brian's mom made for me with about $25 worth of fabric. But that was before Etsy existed, so I've always assumed that if I were trying to recreate the same look now, that would be the best place to look.

Recently, out of curiosity, I decided to check the site and see what kind of options it would offer these days for a bride who wanted the same kind of fantasy-woodland-Renaissance vibe I was going for in my dress. I'd done similar searches a couple of times in the past, and I'd found lots of interesting choices in a wide range of prices. But this time, that wasn't what happened at all. I did a whole series of searches on different terms like "white Renaissance dress," "white fairy dress," "white corset dress," and so on (specifically avoiding the word "wedding," since adding that to the front of any phrase usually adds an extra zero to the end of the price tag). And instead of seeing lots of unique designs by individual artisans, I kept seeing the same few listings over and over under different sellers' names. More frustrating still, no matter how carefully I tried to craft my search terms, most of the dresses Etsy kept showing me looked nothing like what I was describing. I knew there used to be lots of sellers on this site who had the kind of things I was looking for, so where had they all gone?

When I asked Google, "What happened to Etsy?" I discovered that this was not just my imagination. There were tons of Reddit threads discussing the problem, and the consensus was that the site had been taken over by "drop shippers" buying and reselling cheap manufactured goods from China. This flood of cheap stuff had completely drowned out the independent sellers who remained, making it impossible to find their wares. And since the site was also making no effort to make sure item descriptions were accurate, these resellers could slap as many popular labels as they wanted onto their products, so that even a search as specific as "white renaissance fairy dress corset top handkerchief hem" would turn up almost nothing that fit all those descriptors and many things that fit none of them. (Cory Doctorow argues in an essay that this same process, which he calls by a whimsical if rather rude name, is inexorably happening all over the Internet.)

But that still didn't entirely answer my question. It explained why I couldn't find the good stuff on Etsy anymore, but it didn't tell me where I could find it. Presumably, the home tailors who used to make these interesting garments were still out there somewhere. So were they still on Etsy, just buried in the search results? Or had they moved on?

To answer this question, I tried searching for "What is the new Etsy?" That turned out to be kind of dead end. There was a story that sounded promising about angry Etsy sellers creating a new platform called the Indie Sellers Guild, but when I checked that site out, it turned out to be more of an informal union for artisans than an actual platform for them to sell their wares. The site did have a directory of member shops, but it didn't provide any descriptions of what they provided. It might be useful for tracking down a specific creator you'd already heard of, but not for finding creators who sell a particular type of item. And a search for "Etsy alternatives" turned up mostly tools for artists to create their own stores, not marketplaces where you could search a whole bunch of those stores at once.

So I tried a different approach: I took the searches I'd been doing on Etsy and plugged them directly into Google. And this time, I started getting a few useful results. I had to get pretty specific with my search terms, but I started turning up thematically appropriate garments from a bunch of retailers I'd never heard of before, like Devil Inspired, Holy Clothing, Scarlet Darkness, Dolls Kill, and Rosegal. Most of these goods weren't handmade, but then, neither was my eBay bodice 19 years ago. The point is, these retailers had the specific styles I was looking for, and all of them had at least some pieces in those styles for under $100. 

The bottom line: affordable dresses for unconventional weddings are still out there. It just takes a bit more work to find them. And the same probably goes true for any of the other fascinating finds Etsy used to offer up, from woodwork to jewelry.

Now, if anyone would like help finding an affordable venue or assembling a tiered cake, I happen to know a bit about those topics too. Reasonable hourly rates!

Recipe of the Month: White Bean Tomato Cucumber Salad

Our cucumber vines have been very productive this year. They're the same varieties that gave us such a disappointing crop last year, so we can only assume the difference is due to the weather: a really hot spell in late July, followed by a few days of heavy rain. Whatever the reason, we've already harvested 18 medium and 6 large cucumbers, and the vines show no signs of slowing down.

At this point, we've already made all the pickles we can reasonably eat, so this week Brian started hunting for a good salad recipe to use up some of these cukes. On a site called Nourish and Fete, he found an easy-looking one called "White Bean Tomato Cucumber Salad." As written, the recipe called for English cucumber, baby spinach, and quartered small tomatoes—all things our garden wasn't precisely supplying. But it seemed like a fairly minor change to substitute one of our large cucumbers, some New Zealand spinach (a new crop we tried these year with mixed success), and halved Sun Gold tomatoes. The recipe calls for fresh herbs such as "parsley, basil, oregano, dill, etc."; he went with parsley and oregano. With the exception of the red onion, every vegetable in the dish was fresh from our garden.

The salad certainly was pretty and colorful, with its combination of light cucumber, darker green spinach, yellow cherry tomatoes, purple-red onion, and white (or rather off-white) beans. The combination of flavors worked pretty well too, although the dressing was a little heavy on the vinegar. If we make this again, I'd probably scale back the vinegar to two or three tablespoons—closer to the traditional ratio of two parts oil to one part vinegar—so its brightness wouldn't dominate the flavor so much. Or maybe I'd increase the oil instead to make the dressing thicker so it would cling to the veggies a little better.

But this salad's real weakness was that it wasn't very filling. Even with those white beans in the mix, even with Brian's hearty whole-grain bread on the side, I couldn't eat enough of it to satisfy my hunger. I feel like this dish would do fine as a side to accompany a more substantial main dish, such as vegan Swedish meatballs, Soy Curl kebabs, or the grilled Impossible Brats we tried last weekend. (Brian really liked these, saying they were almost indistinguishable from a real bratwurst. I concluded that I must not like bratwurst that much.) But as a main course, it doesn't really do the job.

Eventually, I ended up opening a can of tuna and adding some of it to the salad in my bowl to give it a little more substance. The tuna blended pretty well with the other flavors; in fact, the original recipe suggests it as an add-in to give the dish a protein boost. After mixing in a little over half the can of tuna, I was finally able to get enough food into my belly to feel satisfied. But it did seem like cheating to add this animal product to what's supposed to be a Vegan Recipe of the Month.

So, bottom line: if we make this again, it'll be as a side dish. It could do a pretty good job of adding a little extra flavor to a protein-dense but not that exciting main course, such as plain grilled fish. But as the basis of an entire meal, it just doesn't cut it.

Gardeners' Holidays 2023: Plumfest

For many gardeners, late July and early August is the time of Peak Zucchini. They're harvesting squash every day, including some the size of baseball bats, and eating it at nearly every meal—in soups, stews, pasta, frittata, and endless loaves of zucchini bread. By early August, many are even resorting to sneaking it onto their neighbors' porches.

Not us. Our new zucchini variety, Emerald Delight, which our new seed provider described as "extremely productive" with "great disease resistance," has so far produced only three measly squash—and two of those were pretty dinky. We've also had to discard a couple due to blossom end rot, despite our use of crushed eggshells to supplement the plants. This pathetic harvest isn't the fault of our old nemesis the squash vine borer; the plants themselves are vibrantly green and flourishing. They just aren't making any actual squash. So we'll definitely be dropping this variety next year and leaving a negative review of it on the company's website.

Fortunately, we have plenty of other crops that are more than making up the difference. In fact, as you can see here, we have a whole rainbow of produce in our garden, including:

• Plums. We're at about the midpoint of our plum harvest right now. The Opal tree has been picked clean, and the Golden Gages and Mount Royals are just beginning to come ripe. So far, we've harvested about 36.7 pounds of purple-red Opals, 7.5 ounces of Golden Gages, and 3 ounces of blue Mount Royals. Now, that may not sound impressive compared to our 2021 harvest, which included 51 pounds of Opals, 21.3 pounds of Golden Gages, and 22.3 pounds of Mount Royals. But as Brian pointed out, that year we weighed all the plums as soon as we picked them. A significant percentage of the harvest turned out to be unusable, either because the plums never ripened or because they'd already gone bad. This year, Brian has been weighing only the plums (or portions thereof) that he's determined to be edible. So it's entirely possible that our 36.7 pounds of edible Opal fruit meets or beats our take from 2021, and that the eventual harvest from the other two trees might do the same.
• Tomatoes. Although our new zucchini variety was a bust, the same cannot be said for our new San Marzano tomatoes. They've only given us four fruits so far, but that's more than we've managed to get this early in the season from any other paste tomato we've ever tried—and there's more on the vines where those came from. We've also harvested 17 Premio tomatoes so far, nearly double the total amount we got last summer. And as always, our trusty Sun Golds are showering us with little orange-yellow fruits—143 to date, with no sign of a slowdown.
• Cucumbers. Normally, as I mentioned, it's the zucchini that tend to sneak up on you this time of year. You turn around, and there's a massive green phallus poking out from under a leaf that you swear wasn't there at all last time you looked. But this year, it's the cucumbers that have been providing that experience for us. The Cross-Country cucumbers have only produced six medium fruits so far, but the Marketmores have provided three medium cukes and six whoppers like the one in the middle of our produce rainbow. We have two quarts of ice box pickles in the fridge right now and plenty left over for salads.
  

And that's only the crops that are at peak production right now. There are several others that are just getting started, like the green beans, peppers, and basil. And there are a few more that are past their peak but still producing, like our new Salad Bowl summer lettuce, green onions, and bush cherries. Plus, there's still the entire second crop of raspberries to come. So there should be plenty to keep our plates filled with fresh produce as summer winds down—especially with our new rain barrel now in place to keep the crops watered and happy. (Of course, it would probably help if we got a bit more serious about weeding, as well.)

Re-roll out the barrel

For most of this gardening season, our rain barrel has been out of commission. When we first hauled it out of the shed in the spring, Brian found a problem with the spigot, so we couldn't use it until we acquired a new one. Then, while he was installing that, he discovered a bigger problem: the barrel itself had a big crack right down the bottom. He tried repairing this with polyurethane aquatic sealant, but that was completely useless; it fell out as soon as it dried. Then he tried a plastic repair epoxy putty from J.B. Weld, which molded nicely into the crack but didn't stick to the body of the barrel. Finally, he tried the regular J.B. Weld epoxy, applying it to both the inside and the outside of the barrel. That worked better than the other options, but it didn't hold for long. Once the rain barrel filled up, the crack partially reopened, draining off all the water above roughly the one-quarter mark.

So, having exhausted the "repair" option, it was time to move on to "replace." And that presented us with a new problem: what was the most ecofrugal choice for a new rain barrel?

I didn't really know how much it was reasonable to pay for a rain barrel, since we'd gotten ours for free from a friend who had an extra. I checked out the selection at The Home Depot and found that for the size we wanted—about 55 gallons—prices ranged from around $40 for collapsible models made of soft plastic to over $200 for fancy wood-look models with multiple spigots. The top-rated choice was a hefty industrial drum that cost $180, but based on the picture, we couldn't figure out how we'd hook it up to our downspout. And the top seller, a utilitarian plastic bin priced at $117, made me a little wary because it looked so similar to our old one, which had cracked after 9 years of use, even though we had diligently drained it and stowed it away every winter. I was hoping for something sturdier that would serve us for decades to come.

But after scrolling a little further, I hit on something that looked ideal: a 55-gallon model upcycled from an old food storage barrel. Priced at $100 and available in three colors, it was made from a sturdy HDPE plastic that, according to the listing, "can be left outdoors even in the winter months so there is no need to modify your downspouts in the Spring and Fall." That would save us time, free up storage space in the shed, and eliminate the step of wrestling the barrel onto and off of the cinder-block pad we built for it, which is what Brian suspected had damaged the bottom of our current one. It had all the features we needed: a mosquito screen on top, a hose hookup on the bottom, and an overflow valve near the top. And the fact that it's a repurposed food container is decidedly ecofrugal.

When I consulted the reviews, I saw nothing to discourage me even in the negative ones. The most common complaint was that the spigot leaked or fell off, but that was nothing we couldn't handle, especially since we already had a whole new spigot we'd bought for our current barrel. (There was also one amusing one-star review from someone complaining that the product was "not only used but used for transporting food items"—a fact that's stated right in the product description and that, in my view, was a feature rather than a bug.)

A quick $100 PayPal payment later, our new rain barrel is on its way. We didn't even have to have it shipped to a nearby Home Depot store for pickup; having it sent directly to our home was free and actually slightly faster. 

As for the old, cracked rain barrel, Brian has a plan to put that to a new use: growing potatoes. We didn't have much success the first time we tried this using 5-gallon buckets, but Brian thinks it might work better if we plant the potatoes in a nice big barrel with plenty of room. The crack in the bottom won't be a problem, since it needs drainage holes anyway. And we won't need to worry about protecting the plants from groundhogs, since the tall, smooth-sided barrel will be too hard for them to climb. Deer may still be a problem, but Brian thinks he can deter those with a little fence of chicken wire around the top. We just need to figure out where in the yard to put the barrel for maximum potato potential.

Vegan Recipe of the Month: Plum Whip

Last Wednesday, Brian and I went to a free outdoor concert of swing music in town. We sat on our camp chairs among a crowd of our neighbors and enjoyed the music and the sporadic attention of a frisky puppy belonging to a couple seated in front of us. Brian remarked that the one thing we could use to make the experience complete was some ice cream...and once he'd said it, I couldn't stop thinking about it. All through the concert and the walk back home. I kept feeling the urge for a scoop of something cold and sweet. 

Even when we got home, I couldn't shake the craving. We didn't have ice cream or any nondairy equivalent in the house, so I started hunting through the pantry and freezer looking for something I could whip up into a reasonable substitute. When I unearthed some bags of frozen pitted plums, I recalled the time we made homemade Dole Whip from frozen pineapple and coconut milk, and I wondered if it would be feasible to do the same thing with plums instead.

We had three different kinds of plums in the freezer, from our three plum trees: Mount Royal (blue), Opal (red), and Golden Gage (yellow). We chose the Golden Gage plums for this experiment, since they were generally the sweetest. We just tossed what looked like a reasonable volume into the blender, shook up a can of full-fat coconut milk, and dumped some in on top of the plums. Then we started pulsing the blender on the "grind" setting, trying to chop up this icy mixture. By repeatedly pulsing and adding more coconut milk and pulsing again, we eventually managed it to reduce it to a smooth slurry—thicker than a milkshake but more liquid than soft-serve ice cream. All told, we used about 10 ounces of frozen plums and 3/4 cup of coconut milk, and we ended up with enough plum whip to fill two of our little IKEA cups most of the way full.

The finished product wasn't quite ice cream. It wasn't as sweet, and it had an icier, less creamy consistency. But it was cold enough and sweet enough to scratch that ice-cream itch, particularly with a generous spritz of our favorite coconut whipped cream on top. As he polished off the last of his cup, Brian remarked, "I think we'll definitely be doing this again." (Next time, he thinks he'll start by blending all the coconut milk with a small amount of the frozen plums, then gradually adding more plums until it reaches the right thickness.)

This improvised plum whip is kind of the perfect summertime treat. It's simple and tasty. It requires only two ingredients—frozen plums and canned coconut milk—both of which we typically have on hand at all times. It's reasonably healthy, made primarily from fresh fruit with no added sugar. It takes only a few minutes to make. And it's suitable for pretty much any type of diet: vegetarian, vegan, raw vegan, paleo. With only about 16 grams of carbs per serving, it would even work on the strict low-carb diet that I'm (mercifully) no longer following. And for those who don't happen to have plum trees in their front yards, it would probably work with almost any frozen fruit: strawberries, blueberries, mango, or what have you.