Critter Creak

Who in your house is big enough to make the floorboards creak??

In our house, it's practically everybody, even the cats. Especially Serik. He used to be skinny, when he was a shelter kitty. Now he's not.

to buy or to make? what is your answer?

I just saw a review over on The Crunchy Chicken of a great-sounding book that's going on my next library order -- The Green Teen: The Eco-Friendly Teen's Guide to Saving the Planet. It must be synchronicity, since just this morning I watched the DVD of Kilowatt Ours: A Plan to Re-energize America, and am more determined than ever to reduce and reuse as the leading edge of my own family's battle to live as more responsible citizens. My summer employer found out just today that Jeff Barrie, producer and director of Kilowatt Ours, is available and will be coming to speak next week!

Recycling is a tricky third leg of the 3 Rs, because large-scale recycling depends on finding a market for recycled materials. That means somebody (= consumers = you and I) has to buy whatever the finished product might be. The recycling program where we are has been discontinued for the summer, because the guys that collected all the materials can't sell them anywhere that will pay enough to make it worth their while.

I'm happy to buy recycled when it's something I need and was going to buy anyway. But what about something that I could make myself? Enviromom was musing about the Mylar that comes into her house, and what to do about it now that it's not recyclable in her town anymore. TerraCycle is a company that collects consumer waste like juice bags (they call them pouches), chip bags and yogurt cups, and remakes them into consumer goods -- very cute tote bags, pencil cases, cardboard fire logs and other neat products. They even pay a small amount per waste item (2¢ per pouch, for instance) to schools and other organizations who collect and send them in (like the cereal box or soup label programs many schools use for fundraising).

Are you like me? When I see great ideas like this my first thought is -- I bet I could make that! So my question is, is it more responsible to send in my juice bags and buy a finished product, thereby supporting a good eco-company and large scale recycling? Or better to keep our (very few) juice bags out of my trashcan, not buy yet another thing at a big retailer, and save my own money, by making similar products at home? What would you do?

what's up with the naked chickpeas?

Somewhere amidst the several times I've tried to make hummus I read that to get a silky smooth result you really have to cook the chickpeas yourself. OK, so I finally got some dried garbanzos at the co-op, and cooked them today. The first batch seemed soft enough after a quick boil and 3 hour soak, but I can't get it the hummus really smooth.

That was only with half of the soaked batch, so I went ahead and cooked the rest of them (about 2.5 cups of chickpeas) for 30 minutes. Then, following a suggestion in Crunchy Chicken's hummus recipe, I soaked the cooked peas in cold water and started collecting the skins.

Oh my goodness!! Who knew that chickpeas had skins? or that you could take them off? Or, most amazingly, that chickpea skins look like tiny jellyfish floating in the pot? Alternately, if you've never seen a bunch of jellyfish in the sea, imagine floating chickpea skins, only much bigger. Not gross like it sounds, just wierd.

Naturally, now that I've skinned the peas, I'm out of tahini, garlic and lemons, so there's a container of shivering naked garbonzos in my fridge. Poor things.

Does anybody know exactly why one would bother to skin cooked chickpeas? Is it aesthetic, or nutritional, or what? Do tell!

why only four and a half?

I first started this blog when the kids and I were "expecting" -- our chicks to arrive in the mail, that is. The first few posts are about planning for the chicks, and then they arrived. Whew! Our cat died, school started, and taking care of two kids and seven chicks was too much for this one mom, so the blog waned.

Five months later, I'm still only just ahead of the tidal wave most days, but we're back into a decent routine. Our chicks are now pullets (mature enough to start laying ANY DAY NOW! but not hens until they're a year old) and we're down to five. One Barred Rock was a foster chick, and she's gone to live with her permanent family now. Lily, the Ameraucana, started crowing on Thanksgiving Day, and now lives on a horse farm about an hour east of Atlanta. Four of our flock - Raquel, White Storm, Silver and Lacey -- are regular-sized girls, but Baby Madge is a bantam, only about half the size of the others. She'll lay little eggs too. So, in FSHE (Full-Sized Hen equivalents) terms, we're a "4 and a half hen" family.

Thanks for asking. Welcome to our flock and I hope you enjoy our adventures.