Muffins. Easy and tasty enough to keep me from buying a pastry with my coffee.

Whole wheat muffins, ready to go in a little pastry bag (which doubles as a napkin!).

These are from The Tassajara Bread Book.
They're deliciously hot out of the oven in less than 25 minutes.

Whole Wheat Muffins
Makes 12 large muffins

2 cups whole wheat flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 egg, beaten
1/4 cup oil or melted butter
1/4 to 1/2 cup honey or molasses
1 1/2 cups milk

Preheat oven to 400F.
Combine dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, combine the wet ingredients. Fold the wet and dry ingredients together with as few strokes as possible, just until the flour is moistened, leaving a few lumps. Spoon into greased muffin tins and bake for about 15-18 minutes.

My notes: I like to add 1/2 cup raisins and 1/2 cup coarsely chopped toasted pecans. I've added 1/2 cup or so of uncooked rolled oats, too. I make the additions to the dry ingredients, before combining with the wet ingredients.
It's almost like you can't mess up these muffins. Seriously. I don't measure carefully and I make all kinds of random additions, and the always turn out tasting great. And please notice that they only contain 1/4 cup of sweetener (I always use molasses but should try honey at some point) and 1/4 cup of butter.
Simon loves to eat these and so do I. They're great right out of the oven and later on when they're cool. I don't know how they taste the next day because we've never had them around that long.

DIY reusable to-do list

Simon's starting Montessori in August (or September--whenever school starts) and I think he'll benefit from a set schedule each day. Currently, our days are full of improvisation and winging it, with me cutting in and out of his playtime to steal a few minutes here and there for my projects and housework.
But no more.
Tomorrow, we try the Daily Routine--a DIY reusable to-do list that organizes the day by chunks of time and activities. It's loosely based on our current loosely scheduled day. My hopes are that:

1. Simon will enjoy the routine. I hear that 2-year olds are big on that sort of thing.
2. The routine will help Simon deal with Jim's travel schedule, which picks up next month.
3. This will make me less likely to try to steal time for cleaning, cooking, etc. while spending time with Simon when he starts to get grumpy and needs attention. (Not every day is like that, mind you, but days when I have stuff to do--baking, cleaning, working, etc.--it's hard to balance it all.)

I wrote out the timeline on a piece of binder paper and had it laminated at our local printer.
I left spaces on the right side of the chart to use a dry-erase marker to fill in specific goals for the day. For example, tomorrow it's supposed to snow here (!) so our outside activity from 9:30-noon is to find some of the white stuff (as I've heard it called) to play in. 10am, snack, which will be packed between 8:30-9:30am while Simon plays, will be hot cocoa.

Jim warned me not to get too uptight about the schedule--as is my way--so I'll try to roll with things tomorrow and see how they go.

PS: Yes, I referred to myself as "Mommy" throughout the schedule. Pitiful.
PPS: No, despite the fact that Simon and Mommy are the only ones featured in the schedule, I am not a single parent. Jim's schedule varies so much with work, training and travel that it seemed best to form the schedule and enjoy the times and places where Jim is able to fit into or vary it.

Coffee, compost tea, or me?

I'm a lazy composter: I fill my green waste bucket with all sorts of table scraps and paper and call it a day.
Someday, if I'm feeling ambitious, I'll make compost tea, as described in this post on Re-Nest.

(Image Amber Byfield via Re-Nest)

Green tip: Bake your own bread

There are few ways around it: bread usually comes in some kind, most often a plastic bag.
You'd be surprised how easy and fun it is to bake your own bread. Though it's a time-consuming project--maybe 4 hours?--it's not labor-intensive, and the recipe below makes so much bread that most households will only have to bake bread once a month. (I slice all of it, freeze most of it and keep half a loaf in the refrigerator to eat.)
Baking your own bread is healthy, saves money, and saves plastic bags. You can choose your own "extras" to make your loaves as healthful and delicious as you'd like. Our most recent batch was sprinkled with crunchy flax seeds.
Best of all, homemade bread is insanely tasty.

Tassajara Yeasted Bread (from The Tassajara Bread Book)

Part I
3 cups lukewarm water (85-105 F)
1 1/2 Tbsp. dry yeast (2 packets)--for faster rising and lighter bread, use and additional packet of yeast (about 3/4 Tbsp.)
1/4 cup sweetening (honey, molasses, or brown sugar)
1 cup dry milk (optional--though I think it's essential)
4 cups whole wheat flour (substitute 1 or more cups unbleached white flour to make the dough more cohesive, if desired)

Part II
4 tsp. salt
3 cups additional whole wheat flour
1 cup whole wheat flour for kneading

Dissolve the yeast in water.
Stir in the sweetening and dry milk.
Stir in the 4 cups of whole wheat flour to form a thick batter.
Beat well with a spoon (100 strokes).
Let rise 45 minutes.
Fold in salt and oil.
Fold in an additional 3 cups of flour til the dough comes away from the sides of the bowl.
Knead on a floured board, using more flour (about 1 cup) as needed to keep the dough from sticking to the board, about 8-10 minutes, until the dough is smooth.
Put into large, lightly-oiled bowl, and allow to rise, covered, for 50-60 minutes.
Punch down.
Let rise 40-50 minutes until doubled in size.
Shape into loaves and place in pans.
Let rise 20-25 minutes.
Brush tops with Egg Wash (see below).
Make in 350F oven for 1 hour, or til golden brown.
Remove from pans and let cool--or eat right away.

Variations:
For the 3 cups of flour in the second part of the recipe, the following ingredients may be substituted: rye flour, rolled oats, cornmeal, millet meal or whole millet, wheat bran, wheat germ, rice flour, barley flour, soy flour. If cooked grains or cereals are added, additional wheat flour will be necessary to compensate (or the amount of water at the start can be reduced). Generally only one or two of these grains or flours are added in addition to the wheat flour. When more grains are used, the bread tends to lose the distinctiveness of its taste. The use of rice flour, wheat germ, wheat bran, and soy flour in particular will tend to make the bread heavier and denser, although this is also true of any of the flours besides wheat.
For Cinnamon-Raisin bread, fold in 2 Tbsp. cinnamon and 1 cup of raisins along with the salt and oil.
For nut or see bread, add a cup or more of any chopped or whole nuts or seeds of your choosing along with salt and oil. Slightly roasting the seeds or nuts accentuates their fragrant nutty qualities.
For Fruit Bread, add a cup or more of chopped, soaked, or cooked dried fruit: apricot, prune, peach, date, apple, etc. Add along with salt and oil.

Egg wash
Beat an egg with 2 Tbsp. cold water or milk. Brush on the top of the bread before baking. More water or milk can be used if you want the egg to cover more loaves.

Green Tip: Reuse plastic bags

Seriously. It's not that bad.

1. Take whatever produce bags you already have. If they're in use, put contents into jars or other containers to store in your pantry or refrigerator.
2. Wash the bags, inside and out.
3. Dry bags on a line over bathtub or outdoors if weather permits.
   
4. Reuse bags at grocery store or farmer's market next time you go. Add to grocery bag kit--see below.
   

Coming soon: Tips for creating kits to use at each shopping location (for me, that's Whole Foods, farmer's market, and Costco) that you keep assembled in the trunk so you'll always have what you need--no excuses!

Product review: Lunch Bots

In an effort to reduce plastic use in our house, when it came time to purchase food storage containers last month--we were stuck with a useless mess of mismatched containers and lids--we purchased glass ones with snap-on (plastic) lids. The upside: they're durable, and mostly not plastic. The downside: they're glass, so they can break and aren't ideal for using to take lunch.
The solution, at least for Simon's lunch--was a Lunch Bot. It's a small, divided tin box that fits Simon's lunch perfectly. Yesterday, we packed half a sandwich, some berries and carrots into the Lunch Bot and it kept the food uncrushed and tasty. What's more, the single divided container makes for less to juggle around.
We packed the Lunch Bot into his Mimi the Sardine reusable lunch sac along with his Mimi napkin, and he was all set.

Overall, I give the Lunch Bot the Green Light. I might consider a larger one for my own lunch at some point, but for now I'm alright with carefully toting my own glass container.

Lunch Bots Stainless Steel Duo Container ($14.99 at Whole Foods)

No, not a zero waste home. Not now. Probably not ever.

But I'm doing what I can.
Inspired by Zero Waste Home and a longtime nagging feeling that we had to do something, this January, my household began a concerted effort to reduce our footprint on the planet.
I'm intending this blog to be a place to compile ideas I find online--to easily access for current and future use, and to share with friends who are also endeavoring to cut back on what is brought into and put out from their homes.
So.
What now?

I guess I'll start by sharing a few of our current waste-reduction efforts.
The effects of two particular efforts that we've made are, I think, most noticeable to me.
First, we've started composting in earnest. Fortunately, our town makes composting insanely easy! Our green waste bin is now approved for kitchen scraps (including meat!), paper, cardboard, and a variety of other items. For Christmas, Jim gave me this compost bucket, and we keep it on the counter, where it's handily reached whenever we need to dispose of table scraps, veggie cuttings, and unavoidable paper waste. The bucket's great (in spite of the horrible reviews on BB and B; ours hasn't started to rust or break and hopefully won't any time soon!)--it looks nice, is big enough to fit an average day or half-day's worth of compost, and is kept smelling fresh with the carbon filters. I know, I know; buying a compost bucket amounts to acquiring yet another "thing" and all of its packaging and manufacturing, but I do agree with Bea (ZWH's author) that your efforts need to be manageable, and without this bucket, I don't know that I'd be game to compost--running outside with each load of clippings or maintaining a smelly open bowl of compost on the counter (like we did before Christmas) are options that don't appeal to me at all.
Second, we've stopped buying packaged foods almost completely. What we continue to buy in packaging--meat, poultry and fish, cheese, eggs--I'm actively looking to purchase differently. More on those efforts and their outcomes later. Since the beginning of the year, I've mostly weaned myself off of packaged dry goods--cereal, crackers and other snacks, bread, etc. Certain exceptions apply: Trader Joe's Seaweed Snacks are irreplaceable and must be purchased, though I've cut back on my consumption, for sure.



Whenever possible, we're shopping in the bulk food bins for dry goods like flour, cereal, grains, spices and snacks. Bulk purchases, as well as produce, are only put in bags or containers that I bring with me to the store. If I don't have a bag or jar for it, usually I won't buy it--it'll have to wait for my next shopping trip.
It has certainly changed the look of the pantry. (Of course, a "before" shot is suddenly impossible to find, but trust me that there used to be way more boxed and packaged foods in there.)

That's the gist of things. Specifics to follow soon!