Having Music in Your Life Doesn't Require Electricity

I love to listen to music. I was recently speaking with a lady from my church and we were discussing music.  I mentioned how much I loved music from the pre-World War II era (think Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby) as well as earlier. So she asked me "How do you listen to music without using electricity?" 

I am sure she expected an answer that would involve someone in my family playing some sort of musical instrument.  That isn't possible because we don't have any musical talent at my house.  My solution is more along the lines of stepping back in time. Here is a picture of how I listen to music without electricity.

I made a sample recording so you can hear it if you are interested. I must apologize that I am not an expert at recording so the quality isn't where I would like it to be.  I used the recording tools found in the Accessories folder of my computer. I just held the computer microphone up to the record player and hit record. It is a Windows Media Audio File. It didn't give me an option to make an mp3 file. The link below is to DivShare where I placed the file.

This song is called the Mississippi Ripples Waltz. It was recorded on August 11, 1908 and distributed by the Victor Talking Machine Company. In my opinion, it isn't bad for 104 year old record. Just think of where this record has been and how many people have listened to it!

The Mississippi Ripples Waltz

My record collection is fairly extensive, although I am always on the lookout for more. I like records better than CDs. I bet we own less than 10 CDs. Most of them are in our cars. The only ones I have in my cabinet in the house are a Michael Buble CD and some of Susan Boyle's CDs. 

So while I do use electricity to play some music, having music in your life doesn't have to require an electrical appliance.

Make Your Own Vinegar

Making vinegar was one of my goals for this year and I finally did it! Making vinegar was super easy, but I did learn some lessons for the next time I make it. Here is how I did it.

In my research into making vinegar, I read that you can use any sweet fruit like grapes, plumbs or even peaches. I used the standard apple. Back at the end of September, I purchased two bushels of apples to make apples juice and apple butter. You can read the post on how I made apple juice and apple butter here. I used the apple discards from making juice to make the vinegar.  Here is a picture of some of my apple discards from last September.

The next step to making vinegar is to gather all the discards and place in a crock. I had so many that I used a five gallon bucket. The instructions said I had said to to cover all the discards with water. For me, that meant filling the five gallon bucket almost to the top to ensure everything was submerged in the water. Then I stirred it a bit with a stick and added a teaspoon of yeast. This is a picture of mine.

Since I used all the discards, it ended up looking more like applesauce. If you use just apple cores or apple peels, it may not have such an 'applesauce like' texture. My research indicates that you can use any part of the apple. Next, I covered it to keep out dust, bugs and such. I used cheesecloth.

Since I don't have a basement, I placed this in my laundry room. I put it under an open window during the month of October to help gather the 'good' wild yeast. I stirred it once a day for the first 3 weeks to incorporate some air into the mixture.  After the first 3 weeks, I started to get Mother of Vinegar forming on the top.

When Mother of Vinegar starts to form, you are supposed to stop stirring and let it sit.  The total time I let mine sit still and ferment was five additional weeks; mid October to end of November.  Then, I strained it to remove all the leftover apple pieces.

At this point, I pasteurized it so it would be stable and store well. I heated it to 160 degrees and left it at this temperature for five minutes.

When it cooled, I poured it into storable jugs.  I used old vinegar bottles from the store.

Wow! Homemade vinegar!

A few lessons I learned when making my first batch of vinegar:

• The entire process took eight weeks. I started at the end of September and finished at the end of November.
• I never intended to use this vinegar for food recipes. My orange five gallon bucket is not made of food safe plastic. This vinegar is suitable for cleaning the bathrooms. Next time I make vinegar, I will use a food grade plastic bucket.
• Since I started with a non food grade bucket, I also used my soapmaking pot to pasteurize the vinegar. My soapmaking pot is not used for anything but soapmaking. I never put food in the soapmaking pot for safety purposes. I also stirred the vinegar with my soapmaking spoons and used my soapmaking thermometers to check the temperature when I was pasteurizing it. The glass pouring container and funnel are only used for soapmaking as well.
• The teaspoon of yeast I added at the beginning of the process was bread yeast. The instructions said to use wine yeast for edible vinegar.  While I do have some wine yeast, mine is old and probably dead. I didn't even try it. (You can use wine yeast to make your own soda and that was the intended purpose of mine.) I am going to purchase some additional packets of wine yeast and use that next time. Then, I will use the Mother of Vinegar formed on the next batch to make additional batches after that. My intent is to have vinegar that is safe to consume.
• I started the process with five gallons of water but that isn't what the final yield was. When I checked the bucket in mid November, the total volume shrunk to about 4 gallons. By the time I strained out all of the left over apple pieces, my final yield was 2 1/2 gallons.
• Making vinegar is smelly. Vinegar doesn't really have a pleasant smell anyway and when you are making it the smell is compounded. During the two months mine was fermenting, we closed the door to the laundry room to keep the smell contained. It didn't necessarily smell bad at first. It started out with a fruity smell then switched to a vinegar smell.  Then a beer smell. At the end of the process, my husband said it smelled more like dirty socks then anything else.  I would describe it as a white vinegar smell that was slightly off. This off smell was probably because I used bread yeast and not wine yeast. I don't want you to think the entire house smelled. It didn't. I never noticed the smell until I went to do the laundry. When I walked into the laundry room, I could smell it at first but then I didn't noticed it anymore. My laundry room is next to the kitchen. When standing in the kitchen, you couldn't smell anything.
• There are many, many different ways to make vinegar. Now that I have made my first batch, I may try to make some apple cider first and then try to turn that into vinegar. (The process is different from what I described above but it is fit for consumption.) I may also try making some vinegar with grapes next summer (depending on how many grapes I get off my vines!)
• Lots and lots of apples are needed for a basic vinegar recipe. We planted two new apple trees in our back yard last month to make the process completely self-sustaining.

I hope this post gives you some confidence to try your hand at making your own vinegar! A little bit of research and some simple tools and you can be on your way!

Caring For Poinsettias

It is the time of year when most people bring home a poinsettia plant along with other Christmas treasures. Did you know that poinsettia plants can live for years?  There isn't any need to toss it when the Christmas season is over. It really doesn't take much effort to care for a poinsettia plant all year long. You can even condition them to turn red (white/pink) next year! It isn't hard. My house is a cornucopia of poinsettia plants.  I have them everywhere in all sizes!  My two oldest plants are about 6 years old and they are over 3 feet tall.  I conditioned mine to turn red for this Christmas. Here is a picture of one of them.

Here are some tips to keep your poinsettia plants healthy for the Christmas season and beyond:

• Poinsettia plants like to be cool.  This is easy to accomplish - place them in front of a window! I have found (in the fall and winter) if you live where it snows, give the plant as much direct sunlight as possible. In Florida, or out in the southwest (like Arizona or Texas), place them back a bit from the window or put them outside for the Christmas season!  Morning sun is best when the plant is outside.
• Poinsettia plants like to be moist. Most commercial grower tags say to water when the top of the dirt feels dry. In my opinion, if you do that the plant will die from lack of water.  The issue here is you need to know exactly what 'dry dirt' means. Most people don't. A better way to describe it is when you touch the dirt, you should see the moisture on your finger and/or your finger should feel damp. If that doesn't happen, the plant is too dry. Consistently moist soil will keep your plant looking good all season (and all year) long!  I must also caution you not to let the plant sit in standing water either - that will kill the plant too. I water my poinsettia plants about every 4 days. Then, I go back to the plant a few hours later and remove any excess water.
• When Christmas is over, you can move the plant to an out of the way place if you are tired of looking at the red leaves. I like to look at mine so I leave them on display all winter.  If you move them, put them in a place that gets some sunlight. Or, you can put them in a place that gets bright indirect light all day.  Either one will work. Do not fertilize the plant at this point. Continue to keep the soil moist.
• In late spring when the nighttime temperatures stay above 55 degrees, you can put the poinsettia plant outside for the summer. Morning sun is best. When I put mine outside they get sun until about 12:30. You can repot the poinsettia if you would like. (They should be repotted about every 2 to 3 years anyway.) When you place it outside, you can start feeding it.
• Keep the plant outside all summer and let it grow new lush green leaves. While the plant is outside, continue to feed it on a regular basis. In the heat of the summer, you may need to water the plants daily.
• In the fall, when the night time temperatures drop to about 55 degrees, bring the plant back inside. This is a good time to spray it with insecticide to prevent it from bringing bugs into the house. I usually spray mine with a homemade insecticide made from tobacco. To condition the plant to turn red (or white or pink) for Christmas, the plant must NOT be exposed to any artificial light in the house after the sun sets. The extra hours of darkness are what tell the plant to turn the leaves red. In my house, I accomplish this task by placing the plant in my guest bedroom. At the end of the day when the sun starts to set, I shut the door to that room so the artificial light from the rest of the house does not shine on the poinsettia. I have read in a few books that you only need to do this for about 2 weeks. Based on my experience, the conditioning is needed for about 60 days. I condition mine from September 15 to November 15th. (Remember, your home is not a professional greenhouse with exact controls on the lighting. In a greenhouse, the conditioning time may be as little as 2 weeks. In your home, the extra conditioning time is needed because a home has less than ideal circumstances.) For example, if I turn the hallway light on, light will shine under the door exposing the plant to trace amounts of artificial light. In addition, sometimes I forget to close the door at sundown. Sometimes I forget to close the door at all!  These little imperfections in the conditioning require that you treat for 60 days to get good results. No worries though, it really only takes about a week or two to make shutting the door a daily habit. For all your work, you will be rewarded with beautiful plants next Christmas!

Whether you wish to keep your poinsettia plant all year or not, follow these tips and you can have beautiful plants anyone would be proud of! 

Today is Black Friday

I hate shopping.  It doesn't matter what it is for, I hate shopping. So as you can guess, I have never in my life, gone shopping on Black Friday. That is, until today

My husband and I got up at 5 a.m. and out the door we went.( I was grumbling the entire time about how obscene it was to get up early just to purchase something.)  Why did we go?

Well, we need new kitchen appliances.  The big ones, the ones that need electricity.  We purchased our current appliances new when we bought the house.  Neither the refrigerator nor the dishwasher work correctly any more. Over the 12 years that we have owned them, we have had the repair man out at least twice for each appliance. I was not going to pay $350 to $400 for a repair order for each appliance again. The refrigerator was my biggest concern, it won't keep things cool and the milk and cheese keep going bad.  It has been this way for about 6 months. The ice maker hasn't worked in over 3 years. My response has been that we will just do what the pioneers did and that is not to need to refrigerate much. If you plan meals carefully you can eliminate the need to refrigerate leftovers.  For example, when I make cheese, my plan was to just make enough for the recipe or for the pizza or whatever and then I won't need refrigeration.  Well, with a busy life it isn't always possible to spend so much time making this stuff every day, on demand, when you need it. If I loose electricity I know I can compensate for it by using ideas I wrote about here. However, if and when I ever loose electricity, I won't be as busy as I am now (work, church, appointments and such). I know it will be possible to live without the refrigerator then.  It isn't now. I had resigned myself to the fact that we need a new refrigerator.

The dishwasher is a different story. I tend to wash dishes by hand.  My thoughts usually lead to the fact that I can do it quicker then the dishwasher and it will save electricity and water.  My husband has a different point of view. He always reminds me that he likes living in the 21st century!  He frequently uses the dishwasher. So, a new dishwasher went on the list too.

We started comparison shopping a few weeks ago. I wanted control knobs, not computerized buttons on the appliances. Computerized panels tend to break and need replacing.  Do you know how hard it is to find appliances without computer chips in them?  We looked at a lot of appliances, price shopped and asked about Black Friday deals.  We narrowed each choice down to two models at two different stores.

This brings me back to this morning. I was dreading the trip to the stores. I thought hordes of people would be out shopping. (We have all seen the pictures on the news of people fighting over deals. I didn't want to be part of it.) 

Well, was I surprised!  While there was traffic on the streets, there wasn't anyone in the appliance section of any of the stores we went to.  The parking lots were not full, we parked  the car and walked right in.  It looked like a normal weekday shopping event - except for the fact it was 5 a.m. We were waited on right away and all the sales people were extremely nice. Our new appliances will be delivered next week!  We saved money too because we got Black Friday deals!

Overall, it was a fairly pleasant experience. I think it took too much time to research everything but because we did, we made informed choices. It wasn't crowded this morning and we got a good deal on each appliance. We were home in about 1 hour. My overall impression is that the Black Friday crowds are a bit of an overstatement of the news media, at least at 5 a.m. they are. 

I don't plan to ever go out again on a Black Friday, I still hate shopping. However, if I find myself needing another large item, the deals you can get on Black Friday are something to consider!

It's Turkey Day!

It is Thanksgiving here in the US! The start of the Christmas season and my most favorite time of year!

Let's all pause to give thanks to our Heavenly Father for all the blessing we have.

Happy Thanksgiving!