Hippie Recipes

I love eco-friendly living - it is better for our planet, better for the creatures we share the earth with, better for our health & longevity and better for my budget! I'm sure we've all heard similar things in the past few years as green living has created a nook for itself in mainstream media and culture, so I won't lecture. But I thought it might be interesting to share the team smelkins attempts at a more DIY, earth-friendly kind of life.

The areas in our home where we have made the biggest changes (aside from the fact that we have barely enough belongings to fill a 700 sq. ft. apartment) is in our bathroom and kitchen. We're pretty simple folk in the respect that if it's not easy or decidedly worthwhile, we just won't do it. In light of this fact, most of the recipes and ideas listed below are pretty basic. 

Bathroom:

Shampoo
I've been without shampoo since November 2010. To wash my hair, I use about 1 tbsp of baking soda diluted in ~1/2 cup of water. I usually only wash my hair every 2 or 3 days. I love getting to spend money that was previously allocated for shampoo on adventurous food products such as raw cacao nibs and chia seeds. More info on being shampoo free here at Babs LJ.

Conditioner
Using baking soda as a shampoo can be rough on your hair, especially if you are using too much or washing too often (mistakes I've made in my no 'poo venture). To keep my hair soft and dandruff free, I rinse my hair with a mixture of ~1 tbsp of vinegar in ~3/4 cup of water every time I shampoo my hair, making sure I give my scalp a really invigorating scrub when I do so. When I first started, I used apple cider vinegar but now I usually use white vinegar (for no reason other than it's what I have on hand).
FYI, Matt uses a 3-in-1 body wash/shampoo/conditioner. The smell of vinegar weirds him out.

Dry Shampoo
In between washing days, my fine textured hair can start to look a little oily so I brush it out with a bit of cornstarch (~1/4 tsp?) mixed with a few drops of essential oils. Too much cornstarch can make my hair look dull, so I am careful to use as little as I need to de-grease my locks.

Lotion
I started making my own oil based lotion so that I can keep the chemicals I put onto my skin and into my body at a minimum. The recipe I use can be found here at Sonoma Garden. I really like a scent mix of lavender, rosemary and mint but you can scent with anything you like.
I've also made a salve using a similar recipe with smaller portions and cocoa butter instead of beeswax that is really moisturizing and good for cracked/dry hands. The cold weather and frequent hand washing at my job make this a twice daily beautifying step for me.

Deodorant
I don't deal with sweat all that often, especially since we live in such a cold climate now, but I am still in the habit of daily deodorant. In the past I have used a homemade deodorant recipe (which you can also find at Sonoma Garden) that I really liked. Now, I just rub on a little bit of my homemade lotion with a thin layer of my dry shampoo on top and that gets me through the day.
I still have a store bought anti-perspirant in my cupboard for those days when I need a little extra help like when I go to interviews or am in stressful social situations, but that's not what I use everyday.

Make-up Remover
I don't often wear heavy makeup (watching the Story of Cosmetics was a major deterrent), so water or a little olive oil usually does the trick. I keep a travel size squeeze bottle of olive oil in my bathroom just for this.

Mouthwash
There are a bunch of homemade mouthwash recipes out there. I stuck with a super simple recipe because I had everything on hand. In a jar, I put two cups of water and added 9 drops of both tea tree oil (for it's antiviral, antibacterial, antifungal, and antiseptic qualities) and peppermint (for it's minty flavor). Just be sure not to swallow it, similar to as if it were a commercial mouthwash.


Kitchen:

All purpose cleaners
Water, baking soda, and vinegar clean just about everything in our home during day to day life. Water for cleansing, baking soda for scrubbing power, and vinegar for disinfecting & de-stick-ify-ing.
I don't want to waste time re-writing what someone else has written better so let me link you to the internet for more info: Gorgeously Green - Natural Cleaners and Earth Easy Non-Toxic Cleaning.

"Tough on Grime" scrub
This scrub has saved my life more times than I can remember! I use it in the kitchen and the bathroom to scrub anything that is too hard to get off with plain baking soda. It's not too complicated - all I do is mix in a jar ~1/2 cup of baking soda with ~1 tbsp of dishwashing soap, add a few drops of essential oil for good smelling-ness and shake! I use this mixture to scrub away anything from tub grime to food burnt onto the bottom of my pans.

Okay, so now that you know what a hippie I am, I hope we can still be friends. Being unconventional can be hard, often inconvenient, occasionally time consuming and regularly requires lengthy explanations to those around me, but I like a challenge. As many changes as I've made and as much research as we've done, I'm not perfect. My net impact on the environment isn't zero (like No Impact Man) or even close to it, yet every day (or as often as I remember) I recommit myself to doing my best for our world. 

If you have any questions or concerns, you know where to find me!

Wednesday Wise Up: Farewell Food Funk

I think I am finally out of my food funk. For a while, Matt and I have been subsisting mainly on homemade burritos, fish sticks and ragu spaghetti sauce for dinner. I just haven't been inspired to work in the kitchen and create tasty dinner dishes. 

Monday marked a changed cook in the kitchen. I made poppy seed rolls at lunchtime to eat with sandwich fixings. For dinner, I made a creamy garlic & spinach sauce to go on top of fusilli pasta. Afterwards, I fixed up a chai spice concentrate to put in my tea. On Tuesday, we enjoyed a late lunch of sage-rubbed chicken with roasted butternut squash & pecans. That night we enjoyed hot buttered rum while I tried my hand at making yogurt.

Today, I haven't the time to create anything special but I am plotting deliciousness in the near future - chocolate pumpkin spice cake with caramel sauce and spiced wine. Oh how I love food! Just in case you want to cook and bake along with me, I have the recipes and links I used listed below.

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Poppy Seed Rolls from French Women Don't Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano

Makes 12

1 egg

1 tbsp water

1 1/3 cups plain yogurt

4 tbsps olive oil

2 1/2 cups unsifted flour

2 tbsps sugar

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp baking powder

1 tsp poppy seeds

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Mix together egg and water. Reserve. Whip the yogurt and olive oil to a smooth consistency. Sift together the flour, sugar, salt and baking powder. Make a well and pour the yogurt-oil mixture into the center. Using your fingertips, mix into a smooth dough. Make 12 round rolls and place on baking sheet. Brush with egg/water mixture and top with a sprinkle of poppy seeds. Bake for about 30 minutes or until the rolls are golden.

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Creamy Garlic & Spinach Sauce

Makes about 3 cups sauce, good for 1 lb of pasta

3 tbsp olive oil

4 - 5 cloves garlic

1 bunch spinach or about 2 big handfuls

1/4 - 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper (or more to taste)

1/4 - 1/2 tsp salt (or more to taste)

pinch of crushed red pepper (or more to taste)

1 cup heavy cream

1 1/4 cup milk

3 tbsp flour

1 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese, plus more to top the pasta

Saute the garlic in the olive oil. Add the spinach one handful at a time and cook until just wilted, seasoning with the pepper, salt and crushed red pepper. Then add the heavy cream and 1 cup of the milk to the pan and heat until boiling. While that heats, whisk together the flour and remaining milk then slowly add it to the sauce, mixing all the while. Reduce heat to a simmer and let thicken, stirring occasionally. Once thick, add the parmesan cheese and stir until it is a homogeneous mixture. Serve over pasta with extra parmesan cheese on top as desired!

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Chai Spice Concentrate

Makes about 28 cups of Chai

1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk

1 teaspoon granulated sugar

1 teaspoon ground cardamom

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

pinch freshly ground black pepper (optional, but I prefer the concentrate with this additional)


Empty the condensed milk into a jar or plastic container with a tight-fitting lid that you will want to keep the concentrate in. Stir in the sugar, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and pepper. Store in the refrigerator. Mix 2 - 3 tbsp into 1 cup of black tea (preferably Assam or Darjeeling tea). Sip and Enjoy!

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Rubbed Sage Marinade (a recipe from the McCormick Rubbed Sage bottle)

Enough for about 2 or 3 lbs of chicken

3 - 4 tbsp olive oil

1 1/2 tbsp rubbed sage seasoning

1 1/2 tsp seasoned salt

1/2 tsp garlic pepper

Mix all the ingredients and spread over the entire surface of the chicken pieces, including under the skin. Cook chicken as desired.

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Butternut Squash with Pecans and Blue Cheese by Nigella Lawson
Serves 8 as a side dish


4 1/2 lbs butternut squash
3 tablespoons olive oil
6 stalks fresh thyme or 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1 cup pecans
1 cup crumbled Roquefort or other blue cheese
Salt and pepper to taste


Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Halve the squash, leaving the skin on, and scoop out the seeds, then cut into 1 inch cubes; you don't need to be precise, just keep the pieces uniformly small. Put the squash into a roasting tin with the oil. Strip the leaves from 4 stalks of thyme, and sprinkle over the butternut squash. (If you can't get fresh thyme, use dried.) Roast in the oven for about 30-45 minutes or until tender. Once out of the oven, remove the squash to a bowl and scatter the pecans and crumble the cheese over it, then toss everything together gently. Check seasoning and add the last of the thyme, torn into small sprigs to decorate.
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Hot Buttered Rum from Full Circle's Holiday Recipe eBook
Makes about 8 drinks


1 stick unsalted butter, softened
2 cups light brown sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp grated nutmeg
pinch ground cloves
pinch salt
24 oz dark rum
boiling water

In a bowl, cream together the butter, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and salt. Refrigerate until almost firm. Spoon about 2 tbsp of the butter mixture into a small mug. Pour about 3 oz of rum into the mug and then top with boiling water.
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Homemade Yogurt

This recipe is a little lengthy, so I will just link the post at The Frugal Girl blog whose recipe I followed exactly. The jar of yogurt I opened this morning was perfectly set and tasty! I can't believe I have let big companies make my yogurt for so long when it is so easy.
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Autumnal Bliss

Gingerbread man tree stump!!

As you may have noticed by my last post, I am very excited to experience the autumnal bliss of living in the North. I am busy planning day trips we may (or may not) be able to take in the coming weeks to see the foliage. You see, Matt's work schedule varies from week to week which makes it difficult to plan anything in advance. And as I will soon join the workforce as well (with a truly unremarkable job as a waitress to fill my time and buffer my bank account until I manage to finagle a career out of this economy), our ability to venture out into the Washington wilderness will be severely limited. On the other hand, it is going to continue to get colder as the season progresses so I probably won't want to be outside that much anyway.


One thing that I do have planned is filling my kitchen with fall food goodies! Apples, squash, pomegranates, and cranberries. Salted Caramel Mochas, Peppermint hot chocolate and Pumpkin Spice Lattes. Ahhhhh, seasonal treats! The other day, I added a new recipe to my autumn arsenal - Sweet Potato Muffins. A few leftover sweet potatoes had me searching the internet for ideas, until I ran across a muffin recipe and smushed a few versions together into the following recipe.

Sweet Potato Muffins

12 muffins 

Ingredients:
1 1/2 - 2 cups mashed sweet potatoes
2 eggs

1 cup white sugar (or brown sugar if you have it, which I didn't)
1/2 cup oil
3 tbsp milk
1 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp nutmeg (or to taste)
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon (or to taste)
1/4 tsp ginger (optional)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grab your 12 muffin tin and line it with muffin wrappers or lightly grease the tin. In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt, nutmeg and cinnamon. In a smaller bowl, gently beat the eggs then add the sugar, oil and milk. Mix wet ingredients to combine then add the mashed sweet potatoes and continue mixing to combine. Finally, pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix until just combined. The batter should be pretty thick and with some lumps. Pour into muffin tin and bake for about 35 minutes.


Just as an aside, Matt ate three of these muffins in quick succession right after they came out of the oven because he loved them so much. We quickly polished off the batch by the third day of our muffin's short lives. When I first made this, it was late at night and I was on a baking frenzy. I just hope I managed to give you all the right recipe notes...I'm making these again tomorrow so I can verify everything (Oh, darn!). If you make a similar dish or have any good ideas about this one I would love to hear about them! I read a suggestion to use 1/2 pumpkin puree and 1/2 sweet potato =D

Anyway, Matt and I still regularly venture out into the state park wilderness in the immediate area. Here are a few pictures from our last trip:

Coastal beach on the Puget Sound.

A sad beached jellyfish the size of my shoe. I (gently) kicked him back to the water.

A random treehouse built into the shoreline trees on a public beach.

And of course, I had to venture up! Neat place, but it
didn't improve the already awesome view.

The forest side of the shore was a wall of some clay-like substance. It
appears to be the preferred place for adolescents to graffiti.

The trail we took leading from the beach into the forest.

And here I am on the trail reppin' UTD Soccer!

A mushroom colony that gives me the urge to hunt for smurfs.

And here is the Matt man in all his goofy glory!

Today, success tastes like spinach & artichoke dip

At dinner the past two nights, Matt and I have enjoyed spinach and artichoke dip. It has been delicious and tastes exactly like success to me. Can you guess why? If you thought it had anything to do with being able to cook in my apartment with my own dishes again, then you would be correct! Hoorah!

Our beloved stuff finally made it to Washington and I can quit whining about eating off paper plates (remind me to hate myself for that later on). When the moving men were bringing our stuff into the apartment I was jumping around like a crazy monkey! Interestingly, our belongings arrived in more style than we did. See!

Hello big truck that is double parking all my neighbors!

This seems a bit excessive for our tiny amount of stuff but apparently,
they had several families worth of stuff.

And just for giggles here is a picture of Matt taking a picture of me from
our ground floor bedroom window!

Yes, did I ever mention that Matt and I are actually down a half flight in the building? It is very strange thing staring at people's feet as they walk by. Typically, houses in Texas don't even have basements so it is bizarre that buildings in the ground are normal even in apartment complexes here! Ah, the strange things to become accustomed to when you live up North.

Can you guess the very first room of stuff that I unpacked? The kitchen. Yes, I missed my dishes more than my books and I am not afraid to admit it. The first thing that we ate was cereal - from legitimate bowls instead of out of a cup! After that, we moved on to a real meal - homemade spinach and artichoke dip with toasty bread. 

I have copied the recipe we used below, in case you get the urge to bake yourself up a batch of this tasty dip. We adapted the recipe from a vegan cookbook of all places, because this version is definitely not vegan! There are a million recipes out there for this dip, so by no means will I promise you this one is the best. But for today, this spinach and artichoke dip tastes just like success.

Spinach & Artichoke Dip

6 servings 

Ingredients:

3/4 cup tightly packed fresh spinach

3/4 cup Parmesan cheese

1 cup mozzarella cheese

1.5 tsps lemon juice

16 oz canned, drained artichoke hearts (If you use marinated artichoke hearts then you may not need or want to add the spices listed below. Be sure taste test before baking to ensure good flavor!)

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

1 tsp garlic powder

1/2 tsp crushed red pepper

1/2 tsp paprika

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a food processor (or a blender would work), blend all the ingredients except a 1/4 cup of the Parmesan cheese until well mixed. Taste test for tastiness and adjust the spices and ingredients as necessary. Then spoon thick mixture into a greased 8x8in casserole dish and top with the remaining 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese. Bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes or until bubbly. Once finished, allow to cool for a few minutes before digging in (if you can stand the temptation!) with toasty bread, crackers or chips! 

And for those of you who are interested, I did a quick write up of this version on nutrition data. So if you would like to check out the nutrition facts or calorie count, you can do so here. Also, do any of you have a spinach and artichoke dip recipe you would like to share? I hear lots of recipes include cream cheese or mayonnaise.