Making Muffins and Reducing Waste with Silicone Muffin Liners

As a child, my favorite breakfast food was blueberry muffins.  As an adult, I bake muffins anywhere from two to four times a month.  Originnally, I did not use any muffin tin liners since I thought it would be less wasteful to just grease the muffin pan.  Too often though, the muffins stuck to the pan.

It was one Saturday morning that I found silicone muffin liners at a garage sale.  I've never looked back.  The muffins come out of the pan with ease.  Most muffins come out of the liner cleanly, especially if you let them cool.  Waiting though, can be nearly impossible in my home.

Due to the fact that the silicone muffin liners can be reused, they can help reduce the waste generated by our homes.  Through repeated use, they can save you money as well since you are buying disposable liners. As for muffin recipes, I find Better Homes and Gardens has a great standard recipe.

You can also make your own chocolate peanut butter cups.  This is an improvised recipe so there are no exact measurements. I melted chocolate chips and a smaller amount of butter in a sauce pan, stirring frequently over low heat.  A small amount of powdered sugar was added as well.  Once the chocolate and butter was mixed, I filled silicone muffin liners about third full with the mixture.  Be sure to save some of the mixture.  While the mixture was still warm, I dropped a spoonful of peanut butter into each partially filled liner.  To cover the peanut butter, pour the remaining chocolate mixture on top.  Then chill the peanut butter cups in the fridge or freezer.  After the chocolate has solidified, enjoy!

Finding Great Deals and Conserving

One person's trash is another person's treasure.  That is the essence of garage sales.  Whether it is moving away or combating hoarding, people are trying to clear out their homes for various reasons.  You show up, take a look at what is for sale, and maybe purchase something for cash.

Those treasures, or trash, are usually on sale for bargain rates. The sellers want everything to go.  If there is something you might need or want, hold off buying it from the local stores and spend some time going to garage sales.  If you find what you are looking for, you are almost guaranteed to spend less for it than at a store.  Besides being priced for less, you can also save money in other ways.  Although I don't, some people haggle for even lower prices.  Also, I have yet to go to a garage sale that collects sales tax.  Case in point, yesterday, I purchased a small item organizer, seven child's size pants, and a pizza stone for only $7.00.  No tax was charged and things were much cheaper than in the store.

This brings me to another beauty of garage sales, randomness.  Who knows what in the world you'll find.  In my car, I keep a list of items that I am looking for.  When I get caught up browsing, the list helps me remember what I would really like.  However, the randomness of the what might be on sale makes it fun.  Last year I purchased old but unopened Lego sets for my children.  I found a marble mortar and pestle, perfect for guacamole, for $3.00 a few weeks ago.  One place I stopped at had old Playboy magazines for a $1.00 each.  A collector would love to find that. 

How do garage sales help the environment?  Quite simply, you are reusing items when you make a purchase.  In the spring, I bought an office chair for $5.00.  The seller didn't throw the chair in the trash.  And since I purchased a used chair, I didn't need to buy a new one from a store.  That means a new chair didn't need to be manufactured and shipped from thousands of miles away to get to me.  Less trash, less shipping, less cost, and less pollution are all the results of going to garage sales.  What tips do you have for going to garage sales?

Developing an Apppreciation for Nature

  How can you develop an appreciation for nature?  Go outdoors.  A person's appreciation for nature begins with and is sustained by that.  Appreciation does not mean unconditional love.  There are things in nature that can be painful and poisonous, wondrous and beautiful.  But respect and knowledge can be gained for natural things when you step out of the doorway to your home.  My own appreciation for nature began there.

  I had the fortune of growing up in a rural, midwestern town.  Countless unstructured hours were spent outdoors.  A lot of time was spent playing in the yard and sandbox.  As I write this, there are memories that I am recalling that I have not thought of in years.  There were the thistles that grew in the yard, eating fresh rhubarb with a friend, catching lightning bugs, discovering that you can be stung by caterpillars (I do not recall the type).  My sister and I ran laps around the house during a summer shower.  One summer I decided to knock a wasp nest down from the shed using a baseball.  The memories of hearing people yell, "Run!!" now brings a smile to my face.  I don't think I ever ran so fast.  The free play allowed me to discover, and figure things about nature on my own.

  Having 100 percent of your outdoor time to be free play is limiting though.  When a child discovers something, adult guidance can help create further understanding. When I found a small brown lizard on a tree, my grandfather told me that some lizards can lose their tails to predators.  They can then regrow a lost tail.  That was completely fascinating.  Opportunities to learn come from discovery.  Those opportunities give us a reason to learn. 

  There are many things that keep one inside.  Television, computers, phone, unsafe neighborhoods, limited access to green space are such examples.  I admit that I have spent time creating in Minecraft, conquering in World of Warcraft, and exploring other video game worlds.  While these can be fun, they can also be prisons that keep us indoors.  The entertainment that people create is impressive, but nothing is truly as fascinating as the art that Mother Nature has painted.  So take some time, disconnect, and go outdoors.  Take someone with you.

Locally Sourced: Wood Chips

If you are like most people, you probably don't wake up in the morning and say, "I can't wait to pull every single weed in my garden!"  Instead of pulling those weeds, and seeing many return, most gardeners would recommend placing a mulch on your flower beds.  The mulch can save you time and work as well helping to regulate the moisture content of the soil.  You can purchase wood chips from most garden and home stores as well as many big box stores. 

A better, and inexpensive alternative would be to find out if your local municipality or park district has wood chips available for residents.  If they do, all that may be required to obtain some mulch is time, a vehicle, and a shovel.  If you do not have a truck, you can use a car.  If you are using a car or SUV, be sure to place a tarp in the trunk in order to make it easier to clean out the remaining wood chips when you are finished.

On Saturday, I made several trips to the large pile of wood chips in a parking lot near city hall.  In total, I took around 24 cubic feet of wood chips.  All of it came from trees in the community which had either been knocked down in storms or from branches that were trimmed.  The amount of carbon dioxide produced shredding local branches is often far less than what is made commercially.  Commercial wood chips is often shipped from other sources, and consequently, the carbon footprint of using those wood chips is greater. 

If I had went to my local hardware store, the least expensive bag would have been $3.33 for 2 cubic feet.  The total cost for the 24 cubic feet of wood chips would have been $39.96, not including tax.  The locally sourced wood chips were completely free.

How have you used locally sourced products to reduce your carbon footprint?  

Is It Past Time to Jettison the Cargo?

After driving to a destination, you leave your vehicle and go take your belongings with you.  However some of the items in your car are staying in the car.  Perhaps your hands are too full and you can't make a second trip back to the car.  Whatever the reason is, the stuff in the car is staying put.

If it is possible, you should take the extra cargo out.  According to the US Department of Energy, there is an approximate loss of 2 percent of your vehicle's miles per gallon for every 100 pounds of extra weight in your car. 

This may not sound like a big deal.  My old car gets about 22 miles per gallon of gasoline in city driving.  100 excessive pounds in my car reduces my mpg by .44 mpg and now I'm only getting 21.56 miles per gallon.  I lose just under half a mile of driving on that gallon of gasoline.  If I leave that stuff in the car and keep driving, I waste more gasoline, spend more money, and pollute more.

                  Normal 22 MPG                          vs.         21.56 MPG due to 100 extra pounds
I can go 220 miles on 10 gallons of gas.                        I can go 215.6 miles on 10 gallons of gas.
With 100 gallons of gas, I can go 2200 miles.               With 100 gallons of gas, I can go 2156 miles
With 200 gallons of gas, I can go 4400 miles.               With 200 gallons of gas, I can go 4312 miles.

While the difference is not great, even considering driving for longer periods, it is still important to reduce our energy consumption.  The next time you exit your vehicle, consider taking everything out with you.  If many, many people reduce the extra weight in their car, the effect would truly become beneficial. 

Saving the Environment, One Library Book at a Time

We are in the midst of a major cleaning event on the homestead.  Maybe you've experienced it yourself.  Someone, or more than one someone, has an overwhelming urge to clean out all of the clutter.  Our urge has been born out from the desire to simplify our lives with less clutter and consequently, less picking up. Many families throw the discarded items in the trash, give them away to friends or family, donate to charity, or have a garage sale.  For us, it will be the last option.

In the midst of all of our cleaning, we have discarded very few books and slightly more DVDs.  Everyone in the house is an avid reader and we do own plenty of books.

Over the past few years, we have purchased very few books and instead go to our local library.  When I think about it, we have reread few of the books of we own.  Additionally, there are few movies and shows that we have watched a second or third time.  So with that in mind, we only purchase books or DVDs that we feel we will use multiple times.  For everything else, we go to the library.

Why the library?  To begin with, you've already paid for it.  Libraries are often supported through local and state taxes.  If you own a home, part of your taxes supports your library.  If you rent, your landlord paid the taxes with money he collected from you in the form of rent.  Since you have paid, why not use it?

By going to your local library, you will lower your impact on the Earth by reusing items from the "commons".  Today, I checked out The Hobbit after being on a reserved list.  When I signed up for it, I was the 42nd person in the queue.  My library has six copies of the movie.  Instead of 42 copies being purchased, only six were.  There are thirty six copies that do not need to be shipped halfway around the world.  When we use the library, it means less pollution, trash, and packaging,  It also means more money saved in our pockets (assuming you don't have late fees).  Then imagine if a million people, or even better, 100 million people used their local library instead of buying a copy of each movie or book that they want.  What a difference that would make. 

I Just Mowed the Lawn. Now What?

Now what indeed?  Leave it where it lies.  Why rake it, blow it, or bag it when you could use that time to enjoy your yard instead?  Grass clippings decompose quickly and will return nutrients back to the soil.  By doing this, you will drastically reduce the amount of compost or fertilizer your yard will require.

If you insist on raking up the grass clippings, place it in your compost.  Or let the clippings dry out in a mesh bag.  When they have turned yellowish brown, use the clippings as a locally sourced mulch.  If you do not let the grass dry before you mulch, you run the risk of having too much nitrogen being emitted into the soil.  Too much nitrogen at once can harm the plants that you are encouraging to grow.

As a final note of caution about using grass clipping for mulch or placing them in the compost bin, only use grass that has not had any synthetic chemicals added to it.  Conventional soil fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides could potentially damage or kill plants and beneficial species that help to sustain your micro ecosystem.