Beeswax Lip Balm

I'm going to hang out with my sisters-in-law tomorrow so I wanted to get some supplies to make facials and lip balm. I tried out the lip balm today to see how easy it was to make. I can't believe I've been buying lip balm for all these years, it was so incredibly easy to make! It took me maybe 5 minutes total and I only needed to buy a couple things that I didn't already have.

Homemade lip balm ingredients

The ingredients are pretty simple: beeswax, almond oil and honey are the base. Then I added vitamin E, tea tree oil and lavender oil to make it a soothing lip balm (my whole family gets chapped lips in the winter), but you can add whatever essential oils you want to give it different properties (peppermint is a good one for a cooling, refreshing lip balm). Here is the ingredient list:

1 tablespoon grated beeswax (that suspicious looking white powder is pre-powdered beeswax)

4 tablespoons almond oil

1 teaspoon honey

10 drops tea tree oil

5 drops lavender oil

400 IU (1 softgel) vitamin E

You mix the beeswax and the almond oil in a small saucepan and heat it over the lowest heat setting you have until it melts (it will be clear). Then remove the pan from the heat and add the honey plus the essential oils and vitamin E if you're using them. Pour the liquid into your containers before it starts to harden and let it cool before using. I only filled a couple of those little metal containers, but I had enough lip balm to fill at least 5 or 6 of them if not more. The mixture gives your lips a nice, creamy feel without the stickiness of the waxes in some lip balms. It's good stuff!

Our big news.

We found out at the beginning of the month we'll be expecting a third child, which we're very excited about. You can tell you're an avid gardener when you find out your due date is March and you go, "Phew, too early for planting season to have started yet!" I was not looking forward to being uber pregnant and trying to plant seeds. Having a baby is much easier to work around, I just throw them in the Moby and off I go!

In any event, that's my news. I have some more stuff to post but it will have to wait until later!

DIY sugar scrub plus dove

So if you're anything like me, you love sugar scrubs, like those made by Bath and Body Works, but you hate the huge list of petrochemicals that they use to make said sugar scrub. Well, worry no longer! While I continue my search for the perfect sugar scrub recipe, here is one that I use to make a single dose, make-and-use batch of sugar scrub for when I'm showering.

Your base ingredients

The basic ingredients are demerara/turbinado sugar, almond/apricot oil and an essential oil of your choice (I went with lavender, this is totally optional, only if you want a scent). I use a half pint jar (of which I have many) for mixing my ingredients. I put in about half a jar's worth of sugar, then I pour in oil until all the sugar is coated (when I mix mine, there is no oil floating over the sugar, but you can add more if you like it with more oil). Then I add 10-15 drops of essential oil and mix it all with my hand until it's all combined. The oil will naturally settle at the bottom and that's fine, you'll mix it up again in the shower when you scoop up a handful.

To use, just scoop up a bit in your hand and scrub it on your skin while you're in the shower. It will leave an oily residue on your skin, which is fine. Rinse off as much as you can and the rest will absorb very quickly and your skin will feel soft, not oily.

One big advantage I've noticed is that I don't feel cold when I get out of the shower. I'm not a scientist, but I credit this to the oil preventing evaporation and thus cooling. This is great because I know that it's keeping in the moisture and keeping my skin from drying out. I really like using the scrub in the winter when my skin vaguely resembles papyrus and itches like crazy from the drying effects of New England air and my wood stove.

In other news, we have an unexpected visitor, a white domesticated dove, who absolutely refuses to leave. Probably because we feed it, but I'm too much of a softy to stop so it will probably be around until it gets eaten by something/flies away/lives to a ripe old dove age and dies.

The gender-unknown dove

My children insist it's a she. I insist it's an it. My husband insists it needs to find its home before he finds out whether dove is tasty or not. We originally took it in because it couldn't fly, but after a few days in a makeshift bird cage consisting of a food dish, a waterer and wood shavings in a big storage bin with an old screen on top, it was able to fly. I thought that was the end of it as it flew off into the sky.

Well, boy was I wrong! Not only has it not left, but it expects me to feed it every day. It's like a chicken, except without the whole egg-producing-not-pooping-on-my-steps...thing. The kids like looking for it and for the most part it keeps up and on the roof. It's fairly low maintenance, no more inconvenient than feeding the regular population of songbirds that live in my front yard. It's just...weird. It has a band and everything but it won't go home!

Chickens galore

We currently have...lessee...sixteen chickens right now. At least one of those is a rooster. Another four could potentially be roosters or hens. The other eleven are all hens. Six hens and the rooster are about three years old now, our original egg laying group. They're a Speckled Sussex/Ameraucana mix. We have four baby Brahma hens that are now about...a month or so old? They're already getting big, but they'll also be larger than your average bird when they're full grown. We have four Silkies, about three weeks old, that are of an unknown gender for the moment, they could be hens, roosters, or a mix. You can't sex Silkies until they get older because they're really difficult to tell apart. Then we have one little Araucana, Owen's hen Owen, who is only two weeks old, hatched on May 9th. All in all they make a good little group in our chicken coop. I'm very glad now that we separated the two sides of the coop because it allows for us to isolate the chicks on one side without access to the run while not changing to set up for the grown hens. I try to let the chicks out every day to peck in the grass and get some sunshine. Today I fed them a big fat army worm that I found while weeding my berry patch, and the Brahmas proceeded to fight over it and run around the gated area I let them outside in trying to play keep away. It was hilarious.

Grass, it appears, is the bane of my existence. I agree with my mother's sentiment, which is that a weed is something which is neither pretty nor edible. I would also add medicinal to that list, as I use many supposed "weeds" as herbal teas for various ailments. Just the other day I discovered the weird leaves I used to pull up as a child are in reality broadleaf plantain, which is edible.

Yummmm...

I don't care for it, it's very bitter (anyone who has grown their own lettuce knows that homegrown lettuce can also be bitter due to its high tannin content). I don't like bitter, hence me not ever being attracted to coffee or alcohol, but the kids had no problem with it. They happily ate all the plantain leaves I picked with their lunch! I never would have thought that plantain could be edible. I'm debating going on a search for lamb's quarter to use in a salad because I know I like lamb's quarter and it's easy to find. I have a book on foraging that I hope to make use of this summer. I mostly need a good spot to go in the woods where I can find all this without trespassing or illegally harvest on government property. Hrm...

Adventures in foodstuffs

I've been adventuring with making a greater variety of cheap, good for you foods. Lately it's been beans, rice and lentils. I made a lentil and veggie tostada recipe that was well received by the adults in this family but the kids turned up their noses. Then I made a veggie stir fry with brown rice that was at least eaten by the children with minimal prodding. Then, I made a black bean burger that everyone loved (well, Jon only got to eat one reheated patty because he was gone the two nights I made it and no other burgers lasted). It was a great improvement over the chickpea burger that was all right in taste but kind of dry in consistency. This burger was just perfect. Nice and moist inside with a crispy cornmeal coating (say that ten times fast). Add tomato, lettuce and onion and a whole wheat organic bun and voila! Dinner perfection!

My burger with homegrown snap peas on the left (cooked from peas I picked and froze last year, Maine hasn't been that good to me yet)

So tonight was my second ever try at making homemade hummus. I tried years ago using canned chickpeas and a recipe that for some strange reason did not include tahini/seasame seeds. The result was a lemony chickpea nastiness that no one in the house liked and it scared me off of making hummus again for quite some time. But since we eat hummus like it's going out of style, I figured the time was ripe for me to give it another shot with my super awesome blend-anything machine and with a new recipe. The result was an excellent hummus recipe that only lacks a bit of seasoning, probably because I used garlic powder and not actual garlic.

Here is my recipe:

- 2 15oz cans of chickpeas, one drained, one undrained (I used fresh cooked chickpeas, so 3 cups of cooked plus 1/2 cup or more of water for consistency)
- 1/4 cup raw sesame seeds (I used toasted and it was fine)
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1/4 cup lemon juice
- 1 garlic clove, peeled (here I used garlic powder and it was quite garlicky enough)
- 1 tsp cumin
- salt

You puree everything but the salt until it reaches the consistency you want (add water gradually to make it thinner). Then you add salt to taste. You can easily make this into different flavors by adding things such as pureed roasted red pepper, pureed spinach and artichoke, extra garlic or hot pepper powder to the base hummus. I highly recommend using fresh cooked chickpeas. A 1lb bag of dry chickpeas yields about 6-6 1/2 cups of cooked chickepeas, which is enough for two batches of hummus. This recipe makes about 3-4 cups of hummus depending on what else you add to it, how much you can get out of your food processor/blender, and whether your husband and/or children eat some of it when you're not looking. Cost wise, this recipe is excellent. On a good day, when the big tubs of hummus are going on sale, I can nab two for $5 or $2.50 apiece. On a bad day they cost me $3.49 per tub. This recipe, even with super expensive sesame seeds ($3.99 for a little container), only costs me $1.65 per batch which makes more than I can buy in the tub. Win!

Om nom nom...homemade hummus.

Green and growing.

I joined Pinterest which may or may not be to my detriment (depending on how much time I spend pinning and repinning things...ok, let's face it, this could get ugly...) so you can find me on there. I've been slowly going through my links and pinning things up that I find useful. One thing I found was the website of the Thrifty Mama which has a lot of good suggestions on living a natural life on a smaller budget.

That is definitely one thing we're struggling with right now. I really believe in the benefits of organic food and whole food and local food, but it is so hard to buy it without it costing an arm and a leg! One thing I've found is that good staple meals like beans, lentils and brown rice go a long way for making a lot of cheap but good for you meals. Also, spices are a huge part of it, in my opinion. Just adding spices makes boring brown lentil mash much more interesting. I cooked a lentil and veggie tostada meal recently and the spices really made it a lot better.

The other difficult thing is finding good proteins without overloading on milk, cheese and other dairy products, or eating too much meat. Don't get me wrong, I'm hardly an herbivore but I try to limit my meat consumption to two meat dishes (where the meat is an accompaniment, not the main course) or less for the family a week. But that means that I need to make sure we're upping our protein intake from plant sources, in particular making sure we get enough complete proteins which is difficult with a mostly vegetarian/vegan diet. Well, I suppose it isn't that difficult. Nuts and grains make a complete protein. So do grains and legumes, legumes and veggies, or veggies and nuts. So it isn't impossible or even really all that hard, but it's more difficult than, say, grilling a steak or drinking some milk.

Mostly I'm a traditionalist. If our ancestors didn't eat it in the 1700s, we probably shouldn't eat it now. GMOs, antibiotic and hormone treated everything, high fructose corn syrup, refined flour and refined sugar. It all inundates our culture to the point where we just don't even see it. It can be hard to break away. By far the most difficult thing is buying organic, which (sad to say) is the lowest on my priority list. My first priority is to buy healthy foods, and if I can find organic so much the better, but if now I'll buy conventional. Luckily we're involved in the Heron Pond CSA this year as well as growing a garden for the fourth year, which will help with our veggie sources. I'm also hoping to make use of the various farmer's markets that are around to buy the staples like maple syrup and honey. Hopefully Jon will have some hunting success and we can get our meat from that. I've also ordered a book on Amazon about foraging in New England which will help supplement our food intake. There is a lot of good foraging that we already take advantage of. My blackberry and blueberry jams last year were entirely foraged stock, the blackberries from the road next to our property and the blueberries from Kennebunk Plains. I plan to get even more blueberries this year because the blueberry jam was quite popular. Our rhubarb patch is prolific as always and I will be looking for more sources of good rhubarb recipes so I can use it as it grows. I might also start selling it along with our extra eggs.

Sad, sad day...

Of the 30 duck eggs we acquired, one was cracked to begin with. So we were down to 29 from the get go.

Of those, only 3 made it to a point with a moving, living embryo.

Of those 3, only 2 started pipping (peeping and tapping at the shells) on Monday. They were still tapping yesterday.

Apparently they took too long to hatch and died, as we have two fully formed otherwise healthy ducklings who are dead in their shells. The saddest part of this is that tomorrow is my son's fifth birthday. We've been hoping to have ducklings in time for his birthday, but now it seems he'll be helping me bury them tomorrow.

I still have a faint glimmer of hope for the third egg (a Cayuga duck egg), but not much. I'm done with ducks. We gave away our pair that weren't laying because there wasn't any point in keeping them. I really wasn't terribly keen on having ducks anyways, but I'm so sad that our poor little peeping ducklings have died. I wish I had known that I could crack their shells for them or I would have done it yesterday to help them along. Sadly, I had no idea how to hatch a duck and now they've died. I'll move on I'm sure, I have chicks to take care of and animals to feed and life to do. But I'm a sucker for baby animals, I tell you what. I cried like a baby when I cracked their shells and saw two perfect little ducklings that weren't moving an inch.

I've determined now to never, ever, EVER do this again. I am not putting myself (or my kids) through this. I just hate incubating eggs myself. So we got four Brahma pullets in the hopes that at least one will go broody (and the rest can lay eggs and produce fertile eggs that don't come from inbred siblings). Then I can let Mama Hen do her thing and stay the heck out of trying to hatch another animal's baby. Ain't gonna happen!

Now with more...er...stuff?

So I've decided to revamp this blog with a new look and a new name.

A little background is that I am not a natural-born Mainer. Having been born in Massachusetts, however, I come with all the sarcasm and coldness of a born and bred New Englander. Our ground is cold and tough and full of rocks and our people can often be very similar. We talk too fast and speak too snidely for most people from warmer climates (and that is of course assuming you get us to do something other than glare at you menacingly like you're trying to sell us a used Pinto). That being said, however, I wouldn't live anywhere but in New England. I take for granted a lot of the advantages I enjoy here, not the least being the accessibility of all the necessities for a simple, natural life.

My husband and I have been married for nigh on eight years (ok, well, more like seven and counting) and have two children to show for it so far. My husband slaves away for his taskmasters doing disability claims (so if you have a broken leg and you talk to some guy named Jon be nice to him, ok?). My children generally run amok and get dirty, which seems to be what they excel at. My eldest will be school age this year and I look forward to sending him off on his own and not listening to the perpetual "HE STOLE MY BINOCULARS!" "WAHHHHHHHH!!" "STOP HITTING YOUR BROTHER!" that seems to occur every. single. day.

Yeah.

I grew up eating a diet that roughly consisted of a bag of sour cream and onion potato chips washed down with Coke and chased with a bowl of ice cream. I consider it a small miracle of genetics or fate or something that I managed to escape both a) obesity and b) type II diabetes (dia-BEE-tus). I may also credit the fact that my mother insisted that we have no access to anything processed, sugary, fatty, or generally appetizing to a child so long as we were staying in her house. My father's house was another story, where my brother and I had free range of a variety of unhealthy, non-Michelle-approved snacks.

That being said, when I married my husband as a budding college freshmen in the land where Macy's is a really crummy grocery store, we mostly focused on the cost and not the quality of our food. If it was cheap, it was worth buying. Fresh fruits and vegetables were good, and appreciated, but certainly not at the top of our list of foods to buy. We never at terribly, but we certainly did not eat particularly well.

Four years, three cats, two degrees and one child later, we left lovely Deseret for our home turf in New England. Yet again, we were more concerned with the price of the food we were buying, especially as we shortly added a home and baby number two to our family.

So fast forward a little more and we have now! Over three years of home ownership later and I've started to get some of this natural living stuff down. I've always loved gardening, I grew up with a mother who had a large and productive garden (a little overproductive in cabbage and parsnips if you ask me...) and I always dreamed of having my own garden. Before we were asked ever so politely to vacate a duplex we were living in with three cats and a newborn so the new owners could live in our spot, I had a nice little garden in Utah that was producing fairly well (let's ignore the carrots that were mostly weeds and the failed corn venture). So, when I finally got my hands on my own piece of land, I decided to try my hand at gardening again.

After year one, I was pretty sure I was ready to throw in the towel and live off of chips and soda again for the rest of my life. Bugs, weeds, weather and fatigue (ok I was pregnant, so sue me) pretty well did me in. Despite all that, I had a decent year and I for some unknown reason decided to try it again the next year.

Year two was much better! I improved my technique and increased my yield. I had the world's largest bumper crop of cucumbers (anyone want pickles? seriously, I think I have a canning addiction...) and summer squash. I was very happy with my garden.

Year three was decent. Some odd weather again caused a few crops to fail, but over all I had a good run of it.

So now here we are at year four.

Somewhere in all that I also managed to acquire: six hens, one rooster, two ducks, and numerous duck eggs that will be hatching in a couple more weeks.

So mix that all together, hit puree, wait a bit and you have: a family of four with seven chickens two ducks and lots of soon-to-be ducklings planning garden number four. Ta da!

Hello!

I promise this hasn't been forgotten! I have quite a bit of updating to do so I'll do that when I get the chance over the next few days. I hope to add pictures and make this a bit more interesting (if anyone out there sees it anyway!).

Toodles!