Environmental news, eco-friendly experiments, and green mess
Quick City Gardening Tips Right Before Earth Day
Kick off Earth Day by starting a neighborhood garden. Gather around a bunch of neighbors and locals, find a vacant lot, and help “green” it by cleaning it up and turning it into a majestic garden. Here are some great tips for community gardens…
Hopefully those tips will aid you on your journey to your very own community garden.
From the incomparable Onion.
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Simple Homemade Granola Recipe
Granola. You love it, I love it, everybody loves it. It’s all healthy and natural and mess. But how can you make your own granola?
Welp, it turns out there’s about a million ways to do it; here’s just one way to make your very own homemade granola.
Here’s what you’ll need to make some scrumptious granola.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Homemade Paper – Ultimate Paper Recycling
“Paper… pure paper!” I think that crazy guy in the epic film “Waterworld” said it best when he uttered those immortal lines about paper. But how can the people in “Waterworld” make paper when there ain’t no trees? Easy. They recycle paper, and now you can to. Here’s how to recycle paper into homemade paper.
First, you gots to make your paper frame. Use some leftover wood and make a rectangle; whatever size this frame is is the size your homemade paper shall be.
Staple some old window screen across the frame, stretching it tightly. There, your frame be done. Now you’re ready to make you some homemade paper, hot dang!
First, get a bunch of scrap paper (some call it scratch paper, whatever floats your boat). Also, feel free to add some of the following:
Remember, whatever you put in will affect the color and texture of your finished paper, so for the love of Pete, be careful in selecting your ingredients for your homemade paper.
Tear up the paper into lil’ pieces.
Put the torn-up paper into a blender, filling it about halfway. Fill the rest of the blender with warm water.
Blend the mess out of that paper, starting with short burts, and finishing with a 20-second blend that purees the paper into a pulpy soup.
Do this about three times, each time pouring the blended paper soup into a basin or tote.
Afterward, put in some more warm water, filling the basin about halfway. Add about two tablespoons of corn starch, too.
Stir the pulp around, then dip your wood frame into the pulp all the way to the bottom. Slowly raise it up, keeping it level. Your screen should be covered with pulp now.
Let it dry somewhere. Once the frame stops dripping, sort of peel the paper around the edges.
Next, gently peel the very wet paper away from the frame. Slap that bad boy on some felt. Fun fact: I got my felt for 20 cents, and it’s made from recycled plastic. Ta-dow.
Use a sponge and try to squish excess water out. Once you’ve done that, let it dry on the felt.
Let all the paper completely dry on the felt or some newspaper.
Voila, recycling old useless paper into new homemade paper is just that easy. If you want to get fancy (and these days, who doesn’t?), try embedding some crazy mess in your paper (feathers, leaves, pictures cut out of a newspaper). Your friends will be TOO jealous of your customized paper, maybe even jealous enough… to kill?
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Glass Creatures from my Creek
Deep in the sprawling Peck Estates there is a meandering brook, full of plants, wildlife, and brisk, babbling water. Whenever I grow weary of my toils to better this planet called Earth, I cast my eyes upon this creek, and tears of wonder carve clean trails down my dusty face.
But it’s not “all good in the hood”, as Mister Rogers would say. Over the last month or so, I’ve cleaned out a LOT of litter just from my small part of the creek. The litter has ranged in size from tiny shards of broken glass to a metal chair to a freaking stop sign.
After cleaning all that mess out, me and Tiff decided to make some creek animals out of the junk, since all the trash had come from the creek. What follows may shock and even horrify you. Prepare to look upon the creek creatures.
CLICK THE PICTURES TO SEE A BIGGER PICTURE
Tiff’s abstract masterpiece.
Made from a gen-u-ine 40 bottle (and maybe an old racquetball?).
If you use your imagination, this pile of reused glass might look remotely like a frog.
Another Tiff creation. My blurry picture does not do this glass snail justice.
He’s all spirally and mess.
That’s his tongue on the left.
Its tail is made from a LipSmackers brush. He is one menacing mamma jamma.
We recycled all the leftover broken glass and old cans and bottles. All in all, it was a good way to reuse some litter, and make some “art” from it. If anyone else has done cleaned up litter from a creek or stream and made something from it, por favor let me know!
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Roasted Pumpkin Seeds and Homemade Pumpkin Pie Recipe
Halloween. The very name sends tears streaming down any Eco-Hero’s face as they contemplate the mass murder of millions of innocent pumpkins. But fret not. Out of this pumpkin massacre, some good can come. And that good is known as roasted pumpkin seeds and homemade pumpkin pie.
Let us begin with the pumpkin pie recipe. Now I’m not talking about pumpkins from a can, or frozen pre-made pumpkin pies. No. I’m talkin’ ’bout some made-from-scratch, down-home, honest-to-goodness, homemade pumpkin pie.
Pumpkin Pie Ingredients
Here’s whatchu do:
* Find a pumpkin (a jack o’ lantern will do). After appropriately mourning its brutal death, collect all the parts that were cut out (eyes, nose, mouth, the works).
* Skin these pumpkin pieces, and cut them into “manageable chunk” size.
* Boil these in a microwave or on the stove until you can easily push a fork through them.
* Mash up the boiled pumpkin.
* Add condensed milk, sugar, eggs, and spices.
* Dump it all into a pie crust (filling to about 1/4″ below the top).
* Bake at 425 F for 15 minutes, then bake for about 50 minutes at 350. You can tell it’s done if you stick a knife in it and it comes out pretty clean.
* Let cool on rack
* Eat the delicious pie made from the flesh of the defenseless pumpkins, or you can wrap it up using some reused foil from a restaurant, like so:
* When you clean out a pumpkin to make a jack-o-lantern, save the seeds.
* Rinse the seeds, removing any of that orange, stringy mess.
* Add a wee bit o’ oil, some salt, and any other flavors you want (hot sauce, honey, curry).
* Bake at 275 degrees for 10-20 minutes (until they’re golden brown), stirring the seeds when they’re halfway done.
* Congratulations, you have now made a delicious and nutritious snack from the guts of a freshly killed pumpkin. I hope you’re proud of yourself.
These are great ways to use every part of the pumpkin, much like the Indians (these Indians, not these) used every part of the buffalo. Let me know if y’all know any other good pumpkin recipes. Thankee kindly.
Also, it is not too late to enter the free giveaway contest!! Click here for some details.
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Stray Cat House from Reused Wood and Mess
Right, let’s “cut to the chase”, as “they” say. There’s a stray cat that roams our neighborhood (not Gimpy the stray cat, a different one), and me and Tiff have been feeding him/trying to adopt him for a while. So far he’s not ready to stay in our house, and since the weather is ’bout to start getting chilly, I decided it was high time to build him his very own homemade cat house from reused materials. Luckily I still had a bunch o’ materials left over from our kitchen remodeling, even after making a kitchen cart from reused materials.
First, I cut the floor and walls from some old wood I had from our kitchen remodeling. After some screws n’ glue, this is what I had:
I had some carpet left over from mi casa, so I cut out a lil’ chunk and oh-so-carefully fitted it to Charlie’s cat house.
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Simple, Easy Homemade Strawberry Jam Recipe
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Way back in the day, I remember my mom would sometimes make homemade strawberry jam. We would spread it on our week-old bread, crying with happiness as the sweet fruit preserves covered up the normal moldy taste of our bread. An added bonus is that when it’s homemade strawberry jam, you can use organic, local strawberries and also reuse some old glass jars, instead of getting strawberries from who-knows-where and a brand new glass jar.
After much Internet (and soul) searching, I decided to share this secret homemade strawberry jam recipe. Unlike my recipe for homemade protein bars, this actually requires using the stove, so get an adult’s supervision!!!!!
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