Make Something Day, Cloth Napkins

Instead of shopping the day after Thanksgiving, why not make something instead?  If the family’s still around it could become a yearly tradition.  Here’s an idea that I’ve tried recently. If you’re looking for more ideas check out the Make Something Day link above.

Wasted material drives me crazy.  But I’m having to be creative to figure out what to do with it all.  I understand sending good quality items to Goodwill where they can be reused, but what do you do with the kids jeans that have holes in the knees?  Or the zipper is completely kaput?  How about my husband’s plaid shirts that are frayed around the edges but have plenty of usable material in the middle?  I’ve been looking around for lots of different ideas to use up this fabric and here is one that I’ve finally been able to bring to fruition.

For some reason our sheets wear out unevenly leaving one half only ussuable for the kids’ forts and the other half with tons of good material to use for something else.  For my birthday a friend gave me a gift certificate for the bookstore and I decided to buy the book:  Simple Sewing, by Lotta Jansdotter.  The following “Cloth Napkin” process is taken from her instructions with a few variations of my own.
STEP 1.  Cut out all pieces from the fabric.

Measure and mark the dimensions using a yardstick and fabric marker.  (Since I couldn’t figure out which was the right or wrong side I didn’t worry about it, but if your fabric has a wrong side mark on that.)  Cut out each piece, following markings.  Dimensions:  21in. wide x 21in. long.  Out of a queen sized sheet I was able to get 12 napkins this size and 4 smaller ones that I plan to use for the kids.

STEP 2.  Make the napkins

With the wrong side facing up fold each edge over 1/4″ (I used 1/2″ and it looks OK) toward the center of the piece then press.  Fold over another 1/4″ (1/2″) and press.  Machine stitch a 3/16″ seam around all four sides, backstiching at each end.  I pressed two parallel sides, sewed those then pressed the other two parallel sides and sewed those.  You can use a basic stitch, but I used a zigzag and it looks nice.  I was even thinking I could have used a bright color like red to jazz it up a bit since mine are plain blue, but I’ll have to do that next time.  This was a lot of fun and very easy. I’ve been wanting cloth napkins for a long time but couldn’t stand paying $4 each for them.  This was a great project that fits really well with my “green” ideals.

Hope for the Calamities of our Time

I’ve been interested in issues of ecology for several years now as I started to see their connection to issues of justice.  The calamities the world over have roots in our daily choices and as a Christian I started to realize that I couldn’t turn a blind eye to these issues without denying the values I claimed to believe.  ”The use, abuse and misuse of the environment affects everyone:  the old, the young, even the unborn.”

The above quote is from a book I’ve been reading recently entitled:  Ecotheology: Voices from South and North, by David G. Hallman. I wanted something to link my sense of justice with a deeper biblical understanding of the issue and I think this book is a good fit.  The first study is by a man named Jose Pepz M. Cunanan on the book of Joel (a book that if I’ve ever read I can’t remember.)  It’s a fairly small book in the Bible but I found some of his insights interesting and to be honest, very timely.

Joel is a book that is focused around a very specific calamity in Israel; the coming of the locusts.  Joel spend at least a third of the book detailing the extent of the calamity so we know how severe it was.  Swarms upon swarms of locust destroyed successively everything green in Israel.  Vines, figs, grains, even the seed dry up in the ground.  Animals groan for food and fire devastates the trees, water courses dry up.  He then calls the people to wake-up, look around, and mourn.  The times are desperate.   Joel calls the people together to pray, repent, and organize.   He then goes on to show God’s response to the people.

Since I’m no analyst, I’m not going to draw line by line analogies to what’s happening right now.  But some of the thoughts by Cunanan have challenged me to think harder about our calamities, about our eco-disasters:

“We are called upon to change our ways and go by other alternatives.  We are called to be creative, to explore new methods that will sustain our lives and livelihood.  We should aim to rebuild rather than return to our destructive and risky ways.”

“Being alone and separated could make the victims weaker and more vulnerable; in unity they discover strength and solidarity.”

“Ecology is an animating and creative arena, in which the potential for liberation and holistic development of people are to be pursued and gained for the impoverished, deprived and marginalized of the earth.”

CHANGE     CREATIVITY     STRENGTH     SOLIDARITY

ANIMATION     LIBERATION     HOLISTIC DEVELOPMENT

These themes from Joel and from Cunanan’s work are still running around in my head.  But instead of the fear and depression I get listening to the current crisis on the news, this gives me instead a great sense of HOPE.

Processing Apples and Neighborhood Stewardship

Mustard Seed House, the intentional community in which I live, has three apple trees out on the parking strip in front of the house.  To keep these apples organic and fairly bug free, we’ve used various methods over the past couple years; this year they all work nylons socks!  (Not sure where we got this idea but it seems to have helped.)  Each year we get around 200+ pounds and then have the joy of trying to figure out what to do with it all.  

We have a great tool that saves tons of time and if you’re going to process a lot of apples I’d highly recommend getting one; it’s an “apple corer-peeler-slicer” and does exactly what it says all at the same time.  Once they are cored, peeled and sliced and dipped in lemon water we process ours in three different ways.  First, we dry some.  They reduce quite a bit, but they also store wonderfully without any extra energy use and are a great snack on the go.  Second, we freeze some.  These get pulled out all winter and get used in pies, apple cakes, and cobblers with berries.  Yum!  And my favorite, we can them.  We like to make stewed apples by cooking them down on the stove, with a very small amount of sugar, canning them, and then boiling them in a water-bath canner for a half an hour.  A little time of sitting on the counter and they’re ready to be stuck on the shelf.

A quick clarification, when I say WE, I really mean it.   Almost everybody in the community gets in on this project and we have to move fast to get it all done in about 2-3 weeks time.

I feel hopeful in the Spring as I walk around our neighborhood and see many different type of apple trees blossoming and growing new apples.  However, the Fall brings a bit of frustration because that’s exactly what happens to a good majority of the apples.  They fall off the tree and just rot.  It’s got me thinking about the issue of stewardship.  Can we justify letting so much good food go to waste when there are hungry right here in our own city?  What can we do about it?  Should we set up a collection system?  Would they need processing (due to bugs) or could they be eaten straight off the tree?  Where would we take them when ready? 

I have no answers to these questions, they are just something I’ve been thinking about.  To be honest this is a big project.  It would take a much larger WE than just those in Mustard Seed House to tackle.  But who knows?  Maybe next Fall that larger WE will find a way to reclaim the fruit of our city to feed those who need it most.

Finding Community at Grandma’s

 

 

 

My dad’s mom was a “snow bird” for most of my growing up years.  Don’t know that term?  Snow-birds are a group of people who leave the winter white and cold of the north and travel south.  Here in the west many of them head to Arizona for the dry heat.  That’s where my grandparents would head every winter and return from every summer.

My grandmother is on her own now and is living in Yuma, Arizona permanently.  She’s 86 and pretty much confined to a chair.  She doesn’t need nursing assistance, though, so she lives in a “gracious retirement community” called the Desert Rose.  I got to visit her this past week (with my two kids), see her community, visit with her friends, and experience a small taste of what her life consists of.  To give you a sense of the place, the building itself has three floor and about 300 people 55 or older live there.  It’s a fairly nice set up.  There are three scheduled meals served a day, a small pool, workout room, activity room, and many small meeting spaces and couches scattered around the building.  There is also a paved path that surrounds the building where many of the residents walk their dogs.  In many ways it’s a small village that just so happens to be inhabited by people who have predominately white hair and use walkers to get around.  Seeing how the residents lived really got me reflecting on what community means.

Community is a word that is bandied around a lot right now.  In Christian circles as well as secular and I’m glad that’s the case since I believe it should be the backbone to the majority of things we participate in. But it can be confusing since there are so many definitions associated with it.  So I’m offering this reflection on a type of community that often gets left out when we discuss the topic and by no means should be discounted.

Strange as it may seem riding the elevator at the Desert Rose is one of the best places to find out about what is happening in their community life.  That is where the weekly menu is posted; that’s where you’ll see the schedule for all the weekly events.  Here’s some of the ones I remember but I’m sure there are more.

• Three times a week:  BINGO (by the way if you’re looking for a chance to talk to other residents and get to know them better I got the impression that Bingo is NOT the place.  They take it very seriously! They’re playing for pennies and my grandma is the treasurer!)
• Twice a week:  Crafts-they have someone from the outside usually come in and teach one of the classes and often my grandma teaches the other.  She’s been doing crafts as far back as I can remember and in about every medium out there.
• Thursdays:  Doctor’s visits on the community van, pharmacy stops, and of course the craft store.
• One day a week:  Wii Bowling.  They actually have bowling shirts, bowling leagues, and everything.  I didn’t get a chance to witness this but I thought it would have been interesting to see.
• Mornings:  Exercise geared specifically for their age group.
• Sundays:  Church services for Protestants and Catholics.
• Community Service:  There is also the opportunity for residents to go out into the community and volunteer at different places, such as the elementary schools.

With so much going on residents can keep very busy and be very involved in each others lives if they so choose.  However their community is no different than ours.  Sometimes it’s just easier to sit at a table by yourself than join others to talk during meals.  You can go to Bingo or go back to your room and turn on the TV.  The option is yours.  As much as I saw an active group at almost every moment of the day, when you take into account how many aren’t there it’s just a small fraction involved.  I’m not really making any judgement calls here, my grandma is often in her room working on crafts for the winter bazaar which I believe benefits a local charity, and I know I do like to watch TV sometimes as well.  But it has challenged me in a couple of ways that I thought I’d share:

1. What is the rhythm of my life set around?
2. Do the activities I fill my life with have value in a kingdom sense?
3. How do I encourage the growth of community in my life with those I live and interact with?

These aren’t new questions of course but ones I constantly need reminders of.  I am very thankful I had the opportunity to see my grandma.  She’s gotten sweeter with age and just adored my kids.  And I’m thankful I’ve learned from the life she now lives.  It’s expanded my view of community and I hope in some way this might have expanded yours.

“Large family” car shopping

We own a two door teal green 1991 Honda Civic hatchback.  And I love this car!  It fits our family of four nicely and we rarely have to refuel more than once a month since we work from home.  (To be honest I drive around feeling rather smug about how little we pay a month for gas.)  We were given this car by my brother and his wife when we arrived in Seattle three years ago and since then the only repairs we’ve had to do are basic wear and tear problems (tires, etc…).  However all of this is about to change.

We are expecting our third child and our Civic is going to be too small. So we’re in the market for something bigger.  Also, due to the fact that my husband Eliacin and I share one job between us, we happily live on a limited budget.  So car payments need to stay small, really small.  I sincerely believe in high fuel efficiency and going as green as possible and that’s where we hit a dilemma.  What type of car do we get? Here’s some of the questions I’ve been asking myself:

• How many seats do we need?  Five? Six?
• Do we get a mini-van or a wagon?
• What are the most fuel efficient cars that actually have five or six seats?
• Should we get a car loan?
• How much can we realistically pay down?
• How much money can we get for our old car?

I’m really struggling balancing the ideological beliefs I have against the practicalities of our life.  To live simply means many times to live on less.  Most of the times this falls right in line with my environmental goals as well.  However without the buying power the money brings buying a hybrid is out of the question and there aren’t that many that will fit our growing family anyway.  So what do we do?

I’ve done a lot of research and the thoughts I have are so far are these:

• We need to buy a car that we can AFFORD.
• We need to buy a car that gets some of the best gas mileage in it’s class, be that mini-van or wagon.
• We need a car that will fulfill our needs for the next 7-10 years.
• And, we need to use that car judiciously, no short runs to the store.

So now, only time will tell, but if sometime next spring you see me driving a mini-van to our local store on a sunny day you have my permission to ask me what’s up?

Bread and Yogurt

In the last post I talked about making bread and yogurt and one of my friends has suggested that I give the recipes for these on my blog so here they are.

WHEAT BREAD

1 1/2 c. warm milk

2 T. oil or melted butter

2 T. sugar

1 t. salt

2 c. bread flour

2 c. whole wheat flour

 2 T. wheat gluten (opt. this helps it be less crumbly)

1 1/2 T. yeast 

I put this in my bread maker on the express bake cycle in exactly this order and it usually comes out great! A couple of things.  This is a lot of yeast, but I think it’s because it’s on the express cycle.  If you are trying it for the first time, just keep an eye on how fast it’s rising.  I know from experience that bread machines should not be left completely alone to cycle.  Even a recipe you’ve used many times could rise too high and cause it to overflow and burn.  As long as you’re in the house you’ll know. 

 

BASIC YOGURT

(To do a gallon, just quadruple this recipe.)

1 qt. milk (any type)

1/4 c. dry milk powder for a thicker product (opt.)

AND, OR

1 T. thickener; such as carrageenan, pectic, or gelatin (opt.)

2 T. plain yogurt with live cultures or 1 packet yogurt starter

 

1.  Combine the milk, milk powder (if using), and thickener (if using).  Heat the mixture to 180F.

2.  Let the milk cool to 116F.  Add the starter; mix well.

3.  Keep covered, at 116F, for at least 6 hours, or until set to the consistency of thick cream.  (For this step I pour it into old glass peanut butter jars with metal lids and put it in a preheated oven that I’ve set around 150F or so.  I then wrap it in towels and set it in a pan all wrapped up and turn OFF the oven.  Every two or three hours I remove the jars, reheat the oven, turn it OFF again and put the jars back.)

4.  Refrigerate and serve cold.  This will keep, refrigerated, for up to 2 weeks.

5.  Remember to save some of the old yogurt for your next batch!

I got most of this recipe from a book by Ricki Carroll called Home Cheese Making.  If you want to try out something fun someday with kids or friends try making her 30 minute mozzarella.  The banner at the top of my blog shows our community doing exactly that!

 

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

One of my favorite authors is Barbara Kingsolver.  My uncle gave me my first fictional book by her called The Poisonwood Bible.  As I was working as a missionary at the time it really caught me up short in some not so pleasant ways and challenge how I viewed my “call”.  Since that time I’ve read virtually all of her fiction and non-fiction works and I find something in each one to challenge me to live deeper.

My most recent read of hers was a book called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle:  A Year of Food Life.  I loved it.  An excerpt from the dust jacket sums up the premise of the book better than I could:

“This is the story of a year in which we made every attempt to feed ourselves animals and vegetables whose provenance we really knew…and of how our family was changed by our first year of deliberately eating food produced from the same place where we worked, went to school, loved our neighbors, drank the water, and breathed the air.”

So they worked as a family not only to endeavor to eat locally but mostly by their own hands.  Their successes and failures are interesting and at times comical to read and the contributions about the world issues affecting food provided by her husband, Steven L. Hopp, a teacher of environmental studies, and the essays and recipes provided by her her daughter, Camille Kingsolver, really reflect the family nature of the project.  The website for the book gives a lot of good resources and information and I’d advise checking it out!  

 

The question I always find myself asking when I read a book that challenges me is how will it change my life and that of my family?  So am I growing all my own vegetables and making all my own bread and cheese? Do I keep chickens and kill the turkey I eat for Thanksgiving?  Well, no, not exactly.  But here’s a few projects our family has started with to eat more locally and sustainably.

 

• Some friends gave us a hand-me-down breadmaker.  As part of our community we buy our flour in 50lb. bags.  So making bread for me has become a routine.  I don’t get into any exotic bread very often, but our daily bread cost me a whole lot less to bake, has no high fructose corn syrup and with a 5 minute prep time and a one hour express bake can be ready for any meal within the time it takes me to make dinner.
• Yes, I do organic garden but only by the luck of community.  I consider myself an apprentice to Christine Sine, another member of our community, and will probably stay in that role for many years to come.  To be honest I find the preparing the garden, the clearing and weeding, when everything is empty, more fun in many ways than the actual growing of the vegetable, which in my mind seems extremely backwards.  I do have to admit, though, that having an unlimited number of fresh tomatoes exhilarates me.  I vary rarely buy tomatoes out of season anymore because they just aren’t the same.
• Yogurt is something else that we make in the house.  If that sounds hard it isn’t, you just need to be in the house for a good part of the day.  All it takes is milk, old yogurt to get the culture or a yogurt starter, a thickener (like gelatin) if you don’t like it thin, a thermometer, some old glass jars and your oven.  I actually make it a gallon at a time, and to give it that fruity flavor, if your family doesn’t like it plain, I just add in a bit of homemade jelly and stir.

Lumped together, this sounds like a lot, but writing always makes things look more gloried than they really are.  For me doing these things on a regular basis has been a process of three years.  I figured out long ago that trying to change it all at once didn’t work for me and as long as I take it in small bites I can really begin to change the way we live.

 

 

Simple Living

People dive into the world of simplicity for many reasons and mean many different things by it.  So here’s a little of what it means for me and my family.

•  Simplicity is a means of identifying ourselves with our sisters and brothers around the world. (A story told to me by a college student returning from a short-term mission to Africa probably explains it best. In talking with the people where they were serving and building homes the Americans were telling about what their own homes were like.  When it came to explain the purpose of the garage the Africans were incredulous, “You have a house for your car??? Many in our area have no houses at all!”)
• Simplicity it a way to live lightly on the earth.
• Simplicity is usually a slower-paced way of living day-to-day.
• Simplicity can usually allow you to live with less expense and therefore opens up many choices you might not otherwise have (such as living on a single income.)
• Simplicity allows you to have more to share with others, either of time or money.

I grew up in the United States and the story society gave me to live out was one of individuality, personal identity, personal acheivement, and accumulation of wealth.  More, more, more seems to be the eternal goal.

The story our family buys into is the one shared in the gospels.  Community, hospitality, sharing of wealth, sharing of our lives, sharing of our selves.  We have no set blueprint of what this looks like, but I will share some of our successes and failures as we try to live it out.  

The Summer Laundry Challenge

One of the intersections of active spirituality and practical faith for me has been to see in which ways I can be more environmentally aware.  My current challenge for the summer was to hang as much laundry outside as possible from May through October.  It’d be no problem of course, right?  Just let the kids play outside for the day while I ran in and out of the laundry room to hang up the clothes on the line.  I even convinced Anneke, another member of my community, to try this with me.  We both set a goal.  Mine was 60% and hers was 33% of washed clothes hung on the line.  I work at home and have a family of 4 and she and her husband both work so we thought these were realistic goals.

Anneke met her goal plus some, and until she moved was acheiving around 50%.  For me it hasn’t worked out exactly how I’d planned.

I wash about ten loads a week including diapers and in our community we all share the washer so to make it easier we have assigned days.  Would you believe its rained on every one of my wash days?  Well it hasn’t but it sure feels like it.  And when it hasn’t I’ve had to have a day of running errands.  Nothing is working as easy and as idyllic as I’d hoped.  I’ve had months as high as 50% and my lowest was around 23%.

I haven’t given up in frustration but I am cutting myself some slack. Life is complex.  A goal like this assumes a sense of great scheduling and organization and to be honest I don’t think I every quite get there. And I think I’m getting to that point in my life where I can say that’s OK (and really believe it most of the time.)

The Revolution Starts at Home

Making coffee to open our eyes in the morning, food preparation to sustain our bodies, washing clothes, cleaning our homes, nurturing our children, sleeping (maybe?). The list goes on. These activities and hundreds more like them take significant blocks of time out of our days and weeks. In our society which tries to “box” everything into neat little categories, these things are in the, “Ugh, Do I have to do that again?” category. Which in my mind brings up several questions:

• How many hours do we really spend on this stuff each week?
• Are these sacred or secular activities?
• If secular, does that mean that much of our lives are godless?
• If spiritual, WHAT ARE WE DOING ABOUT IT!?

That’s what this blog is about. Reclaiming those areas of our lives, by many viewed as boring and dull, to be sacred and taking small steps each day to bring them back into the spiritual realm of our lives; or better yet, expanding the spiritual to leave nothing out.