Tereza Okava

ah yes the stink bugs, i hear you. the good thing about sorgum is that at least in my corner of the woods, no bugs love it. sunflowers seem to be everyone's favorite....

I may consider quail, we've had a member here who had them on her balcony in an urban setting (in Spain, maybe?), they seem to take up next to no space and not need too much. We go through a lot of eggs so we might need approximately a hundred to keep up with our needs, but maybe I'm putting the cart before the horse.... I do understand they're tasty and really easy to process.

r ransom wrote:I remember, the 1980s, every suburban town and satellite city to the metropolis had massive parking lots in the middle of nowhere.  We are talking a thosand or more, cars worth of free parking on discarded or old industrial land.  Absolutely middle of nowhere land.  Some of them were even paved.  
These were called Park and Ride.  

I've been thinking about this for a few days. Some years ago when I used to live in the NY area I would park my car and take a train or a commuter bus when I wanted to go to the city, but over the years the buses were phased out and the train stopped running. There also were specific lanes for cars with multiple occupants, but that didn't last very long, and apparently it's still only a thing in just a few US cities.

I did some research and found that in 1980 20% of Americans carpooled, and that dropped to below 8% in 2022. it's starting to go back up but it's not much higher, and also different after covid and work-at-home/flextime schemes. The people that do carpool seem to be using apps or arrangements set up by their employers, or ride sharing (group uber or blabla car) for commuting. It seems there are apps for sharing longer rides (like I did in college.... i remember a bulletin board looking for riders when I had to drive from college to DC, I needed help paying for gas!!).
It's a shame, I know when we've had gas shortages here the first thing everyone does is talk to coworkers and start sharing rides. Maybe it's a good opportunity for someone to vibe code an app.....

We've had similar conversations here about sunchokes and whether they're worth it or not. So far, we think not and that they'll take over the small space I have available-- too risky. My bunnies also really like bamboo leaves, I didn't quite expect that!
As for comfrey, I grow it just for fertilizer, and need to keep up on pulling it/cutting it or, like you said, it smothers itself (or maybe needs dividing? i am the angel of death for dividing plants, everything i divide dies, so i haven't tried). I pull the biggest leaves off my comfrey to use for either smothering weeds or for making comfrey tea. the rabbits aren't thrilled with it, even wilted a day or two, so I don't feed it.

Thanks for sharing your info about the chickens. I would really like to have them but a detailed post like this makes it clear I don't have the space, and also it entails a significant amount of work, much more than a few rabbits.

edited to add-- i see you're in zone 8a. something that grows faster than the grass seems tricky, but i wonder if you might like to try sorgum. i don't think i've heard of an animal that doesn't like it, it is generally pretty hardy and drought tolerant, and if i'm feeding it for leaves, i can cut-and-come-again to get a second round out of it. you could conceivably cut part and leave part for grains for your animals.

Last night I made arepas with a chicken fajita type business, along with avocado sauce, pico de gallo and curtido (cabbage slaw).

Some months ago I saw instant arepa flour in a store and was so excited I bought it. Here in my region they eat a lot of corn but never this type of flavor (and never nixtamalized). Now we have a lot of Venezuelan immigrants and they're bringing their food, and so I grabbed the flour. Then it sat in my cabinet.... It's also avocado season here, so I decided to make some arepas and stuff them. I had some bell peppers that needed using up too, so I made two different recipes together: the avocado sauce and arepas from this recipe https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1024438-arepas and some bell pepper chicken fajitas from here https://www.budgetbytes.com/oven-fajitas/ (made in two frying pans, not putting on the oven for this).
Ah yes and I had a sad cabbage so made some curtido to go with, need to have some kind of veggie on the table.
The kid took the pic, my arepas were too thin (I was only able to cut some of them in half for stuffing). I used half the bag of flour so next time I'll know to make a bigger batch, make them fatter, and send them immediately to the air fryer for a bake til they puff up enough to slice nicely.

Catie George wrote:I will enjoy brussel sprouts or die trying!

You and me both, lady. I went through my seed stash and found several packs of brussels sprout seeds i have bought with great hopes, only to be disappointed with a warm winter. This might be the year though, so I put in some seeds and here's hoping. My daughter and I can put away sprouts like no tomorrow, our first year here (20 years ago!) we grew them successfully so I know it's possible.....
I also have three fruit trees that have been warned but still are producing nothing. Considering how well the citrus is doing, I wonder if it's not time to get these trees outta here and replace them with something that will actually give me some fruit.
I also have a moringa, which I thought would be so amazing to have, but in fact I dry the leaves and make tea and it lasts all year and then the rest of the time the tree just puts out flowers (no drumsticks, alas) and takes up space. I think this winter I'll prune it way down low, the way I do my fig, and see if we can get it to bush out, then I can actually use the greens in cooking.

Nynke Muller wrote:Edible tree leaves

that's super interesting! I recently read about using fig leaves to make a syrup to replace vanilla, which seems like a good local solution.
you might find this article about the various uses of fig leaves interesting....

oh dear. in this house it is an ongoing debate.
I like bar soap because of the inherent lower costs in transport and no need for plastic bottles/pumps/etc. I also think that you have less risk of contamination touching a bar of soap than a dispenser.
My beloved family find bar soap icky, yucky and messy. To be fair, even with a bar soap drainer, there is often "gunk" that needs to be cleaned up.
Our solution is that in the shower we use a good bar soap and the bathroom sink has a liquid soap in a foaming dispenser (which helps us stretch it much farther). If it were just me I'd probably use the same homemade lye soap for everything from hair to dishes to laundry, but ... diplomacy.

(i can't help remarking, on a slightly different note, that on my last few trips up to the US I have been shocked at the lack of bar soap variety for bathing in big-box stores. There were maybe 3 brands, compared to all the great ones I remember. It's all about the shower gel now, apparently. thank goodness for artisan stuff!)

This thread is to document cheapo meals I make as I clean out my pantry and freezer!!

Every year I look at the pantry and realize things are getting out of control. In January I started to draw down but it's almost Easter and the situation has only barely changed. So I'm taking the next month to Clear the Pantry (erm, 2 pantries actually) and Freezer!  
My general rules are not to buy anything new, unless it's a great deal on sale or fresh produce (also good deals, generally). Extra points for using garden produce.
I'm going to highlight the components I used that motivated that specific meal (something going bad, something that has been loitering in the pantry for years, etc).

Details: I cook for 3 people who bring lunches, and we try to only go out for one meal a week. Two people are lactose intolerant and one is an ovo-vegetarian (but she'll eat around meat if needed). We are all trying to eat less white flour and more fiber, but my family does appreciate a snack cake or something similar each week as motivation.

We started last week....
Friday, March 20: tomato-basil pasta with ground chicken (very loosely based on https://www.savoringitaly.com/sicilian-pasta-with-ground-chicken/ - no peas, no ricotta, no canned tomato paste or tomatoes). No pic, unfortunately, used up a tube of frozen ground chicken I got a great deal on, with 5 fresh tomatoes that were going bad and a packet of weird twisty pasta.

Sunday:

Peach cake (from https://www.christinascucina.com/peach-cake-easy-recipe-no-peeling-necessary/ , a fabulous recipe I will definitely use again with other fruit... used up half a kg of peaches sliced and frozen when they were in season in December
and
lentils with pasta (very loosely based on https://www.theguardian.com/food/2026/mar/18/lentil-recipes-braised-with-pasta-and-spiced-with-cod-stuart-gillies, using onions, squash from my garden, and a packet of tiny shell pasta that had been cluttering up the pantry for years). The pasta is topped with a panko bread crumb business inspired by that recipe (no brioche in my house, lol) that uses garlic and nutritional yeast and oregano, tastes like garlic bread and gives the whole thing a satisfying crunch. This will be lunches and occasionally breakfast for all of us this week, but it's going pretty fast...

Timothy Norton wrote:Why are carrots so finicky? :(

Hahaha! I grew carrots for the first time last year, they're generally so cheap but I had an unoccupied bed that needed something new and thought why not (I also have rabbits who like greens). They actually grew really well, I was shocked. I broadcasted seed and decided to just thin (the rabbits may have influenced this decision)... By the time they started bolting they were still quite small, unfortunately..... I did get a lot and it was fun. I don't think it saved me much money, but we had a few really fancy meals with tiny whole roasted carrots. They definitely did not reach the size I would normally buy, but they did leave the soil well prepared for my next crop (the beans). I'll probably grow them again this year-- in May I'll put in my 'cold winter' crops (daikon, snow peas) and probably add some carrots.

I will never forget my Brazilian husband visiting my mother's house in the US 30 years ago and his reaction to the myriad salad dressings (and individual salad bowls). Today you can find bottled dressings here on buffets and in markets, and the prices are still ridiculous, but almost always a salad is dressed simply-- some olive oil, some lime juice or wine vinegar, salt. It's generally added to your plate, so no individual bowls.

We don't eat much lettuce, but will make a salad out of any other fresh veg (in college I had a class with an ag professor who suggested banning lettuce and replacing it in every case with cabbage, which in turn would benefit the environment, health, etc. I took that to heart and to this day it affects our salads.....) We eat a lot of Japanese, Korean and Chinese food so I often will dress my salads with options leaning in those directions - sesame oil, shiso vinegar, plum vinegar, for example. Or my old standby, some miso mixed with vinegar, with a wee bit of sesame oil.
But 90% of the time, it's some kind of vinegar, some kind of oil, and something salty.