The news these days is chock full of dramatized street theater as the “haves” fight about ridiculous things like super-bonuses for AIG grifters, amazing world-class ponzi money-laundering schemes, and how we on the low end of the totem pole get to pay through the nose (as usual) to bail these crooks out. At this point it’s not even a partisan fight, it’s just rich versus poor. As usual. We who have been actually harmed by these interminable games of economic Risk are just trying to survive with the basics – food, clothing and shelter.

While I hope that anyone who regularly reads this blog has already bought their seeds and planted their ‘taters, there are things we usually have to purchase – or trade for – because we don’t produce our own at home. Sure, it doesn’t take more than a quarter acre of yard to keep a fresh milk goat or half a dozen chickens who give us eggs for free, but often people will be unable to even do that much. Keeping that goat fresh requires breeding once a year, and then you’ve got to either deal with a smelly billy goat or transport to where the smelly billy goat is standing stud. And what about the kid? That’s something my family could never quite conscience (these youngsters, if not also female, are usually slaughtered for meat). And don’t let anybody fool you. Those chickens CAN fly (sorta). At least to get over the fence into your neighbor’s yard.

If you are lucky enough to still have a roof over your family’s heads, there are ways to save a great deal on foods you can’t produce in your garden but need to keep everyone healthy and satisfied. Nothing makes us feel wealthier than a truly fine and healthy diet. Plus, that alone can save us multi-thousands in chronic diseases we really don’t have to get in the first place. The first of these is to join a local CSA. With this membership, which is critical to purchase right now if you can, you get a portion of the crops and products of local farmers near your home. Even if you garden, this can help fill out the take so you’ve got more to work with. Buying local directly supports your local farmers, and helps them to purchase the seeds and equipment they need to keep on producing.

Even better, many CSAs also keep bees for honey, cows and/or goats for dairy, chickens for free range eggs plus poultry, and some even raise pigs and steers for later slaughter so you can purchase a “share” of those as well. When I was young – it was a large family – my mother always purchased a half a steer every year to freeze in the chest freezer, along with as many chickens as she could get locally. Not only are these animals raised humanely and fed on pasture and hay that they’re naturally designed to consume for maximum health, they were always locally slaughtered so that even the ground beef came from just those steers raised on that farm. Nowadays when ground meat from the supermarket may contain the remains of as many as 100 animals, some of whom were no doubt very sick when they went in, this is vastly preferable.

But what I want to talk about in this post is dairy. Not just milk, but also cheese, yogurt, butter, sour cream and other dairy products we use on an almost daily basis to add protein to our diets and keep the kids happy. The reason to avoid store-bought dairy is more than just the fact that big dairy farms often pollute their milk with genetically engineered hormones and such, it also avoids the mass mixing of milk from farms far and wide that must be mass-pasteurized and have much of its useful ingredients neutralized. So that you end up paying $4 or more for a pound of butter, $2 or more for a few ounces of yogurt or sour cream, etc. We can save a great deal of money – and learn a lot about how food works – if we do this sort of thing for ourselves.

If you’ve a CSA with a dairy division, or a local dairy farm, you can often purchase raw milk on the sly (the government is trying hard to close this loophole). This gives you the raw material to work with to produce your own high-protein and full-fat food ingredients. My family once had a friend up the road who got a fresh goat in payment of a debt, a guy who didn’t drink much milk. That goat gave 2 gallons a day, so I did the calligraphy for his craft catalog in exchange for a gallon a day of fresh goats milk. Which he delivered! Now, you need a mechanical separator to get cream out of naturally homogenized goat milk, and I didn’t have one, so we just drank it. Cow’s milk is much easier to work with…

Raw cow’s milk naturally separates just by being left to separate. Cream rises to the top, the regular milk settles below. You should always pasteurize what you have, meaning that before you drink or use it, go ahead and boil for 5 full minutes. This can destroy some of the natural caesins in the milk or cream, but is definitely worth it to avoid any sicknesses that might result from raw. Just separate the cream first, and what’s left after pasteurization makes fine butter, sour cream and rich cheese. If you’re working with goat’s milk and don’t have a separator, make the butter first since this will serve to separate. Just keep it refrigerated or frozen for longer term storage.

To make butter, just fill a sterilized quart jar half full of whole milk or cream and shake it. This will take some time, but is definitely worth it. The cream component will tend to coagulate and this is what you want. It also floats atop whole milk so is easily scooped out. Accumulate a pound or so of this thick butter, fold in a little salt, and it can be used immediately or frozen in wax and plastic for later. It won’t be yellow, but that’s just another coal-tar dye. Who needs it?

To make yogurt, a spoonful of ‘live’ yogurt is added to a jar of milk and well-shaken, allow it to set overnight (shaking occasionally). By morning it should be thick, stir again and refrigerate. Add sugar, honey, spices, flavorings, whatever, and spoon in liberally on your burritos or use it as dip for pita (which is also easy to make). Yogurt is a bit like sourdough, in that your refrigerated starter can last for years. A single purchase, you can turn it into whatever you like! It freezes fairly well, so you can make a lot when you get your local milk and it’ll last a long time.

Cheese is a bit more labor intensive, but worth it if your family gets most of its animal protein from milk products. There are both natural and genetically engineered rennets on the market, go for the natural if you can. These can also be salvaged from commercial, natural cheeses and added. Cream makes the best strong cheeses, but this takes some time. The internet has sources for the necessary ingredients, or perhaps your CSA can help you with that as well. Be choosy – local food is a growing movement as things in the dollar-based global economy fall apart, be on the forefront of making sure you can do as much for yourself as possible!

This sort of knowledge – how to grow, preserve, obtain and stretch food for your family – is not knowledge that ever really “goes out of style.” Who knows what will happen to those jet-setters and politicians who whine endlessly about pieces of paper or mere bits and bytes of information that grant their wealth – so much greater than We the People who are just trying to survive? Do we really care? If we can do for ourselves, they don’t seem so important anymore, and our personal worlds expand locally to include all the things we really need.

Perhaps in the end that would be the greatest lesson any of us could ever teach our children as well as our erstwhile ‘masters’. We’ll be okay, thanks. When you’re hungry, we’ll talk about it…

So get busy, folks! Find out where your CSAs are, start making some friends in the farming community, see if you can turn that shed into a goat barn, and figure out how many chickens you can host in your back yard without compromising the garden. We can live through this, maybe come out the other side more confident than ever that we’ll never be helpless again!

Links:

Local Harvest: CSA
Dairy CSA
Cook for Good: Yogurt
Homemade Cheese
Cheese Making & Supplies
What’s Cooking: Homemade Cheese

Mere days after causing a regular knee-slapping laugh riot with his claim that the average middle class American probably brings home something around $2.5 million a year (by way of being “rich” if you make $5 million a year), Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain told Politico that he’s not sure how many houses he owns. “I’ll have my staff get to you,” he said, since some of those houses are condos, and all condos look alike apparently. The correct answer, by the way, is at least seven, maybe ten.

By the way, if you’re feeling a little low because of that foreclosure notice you just got in the mail, here’s a slide show of McCain’s home (the one pictured above) from Architectural Digest, 2005. They may have sold it by now, but I don’t think it’s because they couldn’t afford the payments plus jet fuel for ‘getting around Arizona’ at the same time.

Democratic candidate Barack Obama’s campaign jumped on the gaffe to highlight just how out of touch with regular Americans his rival is. True to form, the McCain campaign came back with charges of elitism because Obama vacationed in his home state of Hawaii instead of just going to Myrtle Beach like everybody else does.

Meanwhile, out here in the real world where the vast majority of Americans don’t bring home $50 thousand a year and millions are losing their one and only home – and increasingly, their jobs – in a devastated economy, market analysts are beginning to notice that the foreclosure crisis could be hiding even worse conditions in the general housing situation nationwide. Turns out, according to Deutsche Bank analyst Nishu Sood, that half or more of “distressed” (foreclosed) properties aren’t being added to MLS listings.

Shares of mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freedie Mac have lost 40% of their value since Monday (August 18) and are now trading at 20-year lows. Having lost a combined $3.1 billion between April and June, losses will only grow – because foreclosures are just getting started. Still, if you’re a fool with some money, you can pick up a share of Fannie Mae for under $5.

It occurs to me that at least one of the men running for President this year has no clue about what it’s like for most Americans just trying to get by day to day in this country. We’re just “whiners,” after all. Luckily, there is one fun recreational activity that most of us can engage in that doesn’t cost a dime. It’s called voting, and if enough people do it we just might keep OUR house – the one at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in DC – from becoming just another house McCain can add to his others.

For Heaven’s sake! Is it too much to ask that our wannabe leaders actually take a moment out of their jet-set lives to find out what’s real on the ground here in the good ol’ U.S. of A.?

Links:

AD: Slide show of McCain’s home
Foreclosures likely skewing housing indicator
Politico: Interview with John McCain

Part 3: Discouraging Bugs, Treating Boo-Boos

In this last installment of the series examining inexpensive and natural alternatives to the many household products people spend so much money on through the year, I want to look at the basic summertime first aid kit.

My family lives in the “deep woods” that Deep Woods Off^TM was invented to de-bug. We have lots of company during the summer season, adults and children. There’s not much one can do about nasty encounters with aggressive poisonous snakes (copperheads are much more aggressive than timber rattlers, who live in the area but are hardly ever seen) or bone breaks or serious puncture wounds or cuts. Those just have to go to the ER, best thing to do is make that happen as quickly as possible. But there are a host of lesser injuries and situations that can be treated adequately at home, without the fancy, expensive products that contribute so much to a weekly grocery bill.

In the first installment of the series I listed the basic ingredients to purchase – brand name or generic (I get generic, but brands aren’t that much more expensive) borax, baking soda, rubbing alcohol, white vinegar, basic soap flakes (or liquid soap made from your disintegrating bath bars), and added ammonia. In the second installment I gave some recipes for laundry soap, kitchen and bath scouring powders, drain cleaner, surface disinfectants, etc. Now, using the same ingredients (plus a few things from the garden) let’s make the first aid kit and general insect management substances…

Insects In The House, Yard and Garden

Chances are your area has its share of mosquitoes, biting gnats, ticks, chiggers, bees, wasps and yellow jackets during the summer. The best thing to do is avoid them altogether, or at least discourage them from taking up close residence.

Mosquito/Gnat Repellant

For some people simply splashing some rubbing alcohol on exposed skin and allowing it to dry will deter mosquitoes and gnats, who are attracted to white clothing, carbon dioxide exhaled by breathing, and the scent of humans. Anything that disguises or (temporarily) eliminates the scent will help repel.

Avon Skin-So-Soft is a strong-smelling bath oil that works very well to repel biting insects, if you can stand the smell.

Crushing and rubbing mint, lemon balm or basil leaves on the skin is often an effective mosquito repellant.

A few drops of essential oil (eucalyptus, cedar, tea tree, fir, etc.) in rubbing alcohol will extend the useful repellant time of plain rubbing alcohol. Oil of citronella, peppermint lemon balm, cloves, geraniums, fleabane (pyrethrum) or rosemary also work.

garlic oil – available as supplements in gelatin shells you can prick with a pin will work if you can stand the smell, and eating a lot of garlic (or taking good doses of the oil supplements) will give your sweat a garlic odor that discourages biting insects. So does a strong decoction of mint, and the mint smells better. Mix with rubbing alcohol, put it in a spray bottle and use liberally.

Wood smoke dispels biting insects too, I’ve found that keeping the campfire going during gatherings and not sweating the smoke very much tends to keep the main portion of the back yard clear of mosquitoes and gnats.

First Aid for Insect Encounters

Wasps, yellow jackets and bees can produce big, painful welts and can cause serious allergic reactions. Bees will often leave a stinger in the skin – DO NOT squeeze or try to pull it out. Scrape it out with the edge of a fingernail or credit card so more venom isn’t introduced. The best immediate treatment I’ve found is a paste of baking soda and cold water. Apply thickly to the sting site and let it dry, then brush the residue off and apply again. As the soda dries, it will tend to pull the venom from the wound.

A good paste for this purpose is also baking soda and rubbing alcohol, so keep these ingredients close together. The alcohol will not only disinfect the site, it dries faster than water and increases the leaching action of the soda.

For pain, applying lemon juice or vinegar to the sting often helps. Ammonia works too, and can definitely help dispel the itch of mosquito bites. A wet tea bag (black tea) applied to bites will help keep swelling down.

If a guest is unlucky enough to encounter a swarm and sustain more than one or two stings (yellow jackets are bad for swarming, as are hornets and sometimes bees), keep some Benedryl cream and pills handy. If anyone coming to visit has a deadly allergy to bees, you might ought to encourage them to go to the beach instead.

A slice of cucumber applied directly to bites helps to ease itching. A cucumber mush (run peeled cukes through the food processor) with some chunks of aloe is very soothing to apply to chigger bites. Add some salt for rashes. You’ll also want to treat chiggers with alcohol, they’re some of the worst bites when it comes to infection setting in.

First Aid for Poison Ivy/Poison Oak

…and other plant irritations. The cucumber and aloe goop mentioned above is soothing to poison ivy rashes, helps to ease itching. But the best thing to do if someone has been somewhere on the property where they’re just bound to encounter ivy, is to put them into a bathtub with about 4-6 inches of tepid water into which you’ve mixed half a cup of baking soda or a quarter cup of chlorine bleach. Have them wash thoroughly all exposed skin with soap and rinse well.

Alternatives to the above are baths with white vinegar or epsom salt.

A paste of baking soda and vinegar is often better than Calamine for easing the itch. It will foam, but if you mix slowly you’ll eventually get a paste thin enough to spread. When it’s good and dry, rinse off again in tepid, salted bathwater, then apply aloe in rubbing alcohol.

Other Issues

A tepid baking soda bath also soothes heat rashes and diaper rash, sunburn and windburn, and other skin rashes.

Baking soda paste is an excellent whitening toothpaste, and baking soda in water is a healthful mouth rinse. Half a teaspoon of soda in half a glass of water eases heartburn and acid indigestion as well as upset stomach from gas.

A strong, hot water salt solution is a great gargle for sore throats. My father swore by hot salt water, we never kept sore throat medicines in our house – salt water was it, and it worked.

I advise everyone to keep a healthy aloe plant in a big pot somewhere in the house or on the porch to treat sumburns, minor burn-burns, skin scrapes and lesions, dry skin, etc., etc. Mints aren’t hard to grow either, and like Rosemary are perennial wherever you put them. If the mints escape into the yard (as they’re entirely likely to do), just mow them when you mow the grass. Makes your fresh-mowed lawn smell absolutely heavenly, and you’ve plenty of mint for making teas, stomach-soothers, bug repellant, etc.

If readers have more money-saving recipes and hints, please post them in the comments! One could spend literally hundreds of dollars on these sort of products just for the summer season, or save a lot of money by doing it themselves!

Posts to This Series:

Part 1: List of Ingredients
Part 2: Recipes
Part 3: Bugs & First Aid

Part 2: Keeping Things Clean

In Part 1 of this 3-part series I listed some basic ingredients to purchase that can do double or triple duty in your home cleaning, disinfecting and treating small first aid issues while saving you big money and at the same time NOT polluting your home or our collective environment.

In this part of the series I’ll list some easy recipes for mixing your basic ingredients into useful household products. This doesn’t take a lot of time or heavy effort, and can be done on a weekend afternoon easily once every month or two (as they get used up), or mixed on the spot for particular jobs.

In The Laundry Room: Everybody must do laundry. Whether or not you’ve got an infant in diapers (cloth is best!) or small children who love to make mud pies, or older kids who sweat a lot, or just working adults who must wear good clothes or uniforms daily in their jobs, you’re going to have to wash clothes. And while the price of food and gasoline keeps rising out of sight, most people already know that good laundry products are a significant chunk of change out of the budget.

I mentioned in Part 1 how to make liquid soap out of the dregs of bars that melt all over your tub and sink by just putting them in a container with water and letting them dissolve. That’s good hand soap that can be put into a dispenser, but can also provide the basis of laundry soap if you’ve enough of it. I have a friend who must travel for her job, and who collects those little motel soaps through the year, gifting them to me at Christmas so I’ve got sizeable baskets of rock-hard teeny-soaps still in their wrappers. I use these to make liquid soap, and liquid soap to make laundry soap. Alternatively, you can use Fels Naptha laundry soap bars, which are inexpensive and go quite far. The three bar package can make about 6 gallons of laundry soap, which should get most households through at least that many months even if there’s a lot of laundry to do! Ivory soap bars or flakes work very well for baby laundry, and is still among the least expensive of basic soaps you can buy.

Recipe: 2 gallons liquid laundry soap

1.5 cups liquid soap or 1 cup grated bar soap
6 cups water
3/4 cup baking soda
1/2 cup borax

Mix water and soap in a large pot. Stir in soda and borax. Heat over low medium stirring with a wooden spoon until everything is well dissolved. Bring to a boil and boil slowly for 15 minutes. Remove from heat (it should have the general consistency of honey). In a bucket with tight-fitting lid add 1 quart of hot water, then add the soap mixture and mix well. Add enough cold water to make 2 full gallons and blend the ingredients thoroughly. After 24 hours this mixture should set to a light gel. Store the bucket next to the washer, stir it with a wooden slat or spoon before each use, use 1/2 cup per full laundry load.

It doesn’t really have to be a gel, a liquid will work fine. It also won’t suds up in the wash, but that’s okay. The ingredients will all do their jobs. This laundry soap costs about 50¢ a gallon, which is many dollars cheaper than a gallon of liquid detergent at the grocery store!

Recipe: 2 cups dry laundry soap

Some people simply prefer a dry laundry soap to a liquid. This is also easy enough to make.

1 cup grated bar soap
1/2 cup borax
1/2 cup baking soda

Put these into a quart size jar and shake well. Use 2-3 tablespoons per laundry load (depending on size and soil). This mixture takes up less room that a bucket of liquid, and works quite well.

* If you have a baby in diapers, you may wish to use Arm & Hammer laundry soda instead of regular baking soda, as it will absorb more acid than the regular. But for general laundry needs, the cheaper baking soda works fine.

Recipe: stain remover spray

1/3 cup tap water
1/3 cup household ammonia
1/3 cup rubbing (denatured) alcohol

Mix ingredients into a clean spray bottle, shake to mix and use as needed to pre-treat stains on clothing (particularly good on collar and underarm stains).

Recipe: fabric softener

2 cups white vinegar
2 cups baking soda
4 cups hot water

Mix the vinegar and water, then carefully mix in the soda (slowly… or it will foam like you won’t believe!). Add about 20 drops of essential oil (lavender is nice, so is cedarwood, rose, whatever you like). This recipe will make about a gallon, you can put it into a cleaned-out gallon plastic jug. Shake gently before using.

You can also put some of this in a spray bottle and use it as a freshener like Febreeze.

Recipe: starch

If you like your shirts crisp or work in a uniform that needs starch, you can make your own by simply mixing a tablespoon of corn starch in a quart of water. Put it in a spray bottle and keep it near the iron.

In The Kitchen and Bath

The most important household products you’ll be using in the kitchen and bath are scouring powders and disinfectants of some variety. These of course will do double duty, so you’ll want to keep a spray bottle of disinfectant separately in those rooms, along with a jar of powder.

Recipe: surface disinfectant

1/4 cup ammonia
1 cup rubbing alcohol
1/2 cup white vinegar
1 cup water

Mix these ingredients together and put into spray bottles to store in the kitchen and bath. It cuts grease and kills bacteria, can be used to clean countertops, sinks, tubs, showers and toilets.

* Remember… NEVER mix ammonia and bleach! None of these recipes use bleach, but don’t get careless!

Recipe: scouring powder

We all need some good scouring powder on occasion to get tough stains off sinks, tubs and toilets. Mix equal parts baking soda and borax, put into a lidded jar and keep where it’s needed. Shake it a bit and shake onto a wet surface, scrub with a sponge, rag or brush.

* Always be sure to label your home made cleaning products when you make them. You can use printer labels and a Sharpee (waterproof ink). That way nobody makes mistakes!

Around The House

There are other cleaning, deodorizing and disinfecting jobs to do around the house. Here’s some hints on those…

Stains and odors

Salt works great for getting serious stains out of carpet. Wet the stain and shake salt on it amply, let it sit overnight before vacuuming.

Carpet odors (pet or baby urine, general funk) are well absorbed by plain baking soda. Shake it onto the carpet and allow to sit for at least an hour, then vacuum.

Urine stains on kid’s mattresses can be sprayed with a borax and water mixture, allowed to dry, then vacuumed with the brush attachment. You can add a little soda too, it won’t hurt and will absorb even more odor.

Mildew anywhere in the home is best cleaned with a mixture of salt and enough lemon juice to make a paste.

To deodorize plumbing drains pour a cup of white vinegar down it once a week. Let stand for half an hour and flush with cold water. If your drain is slow due to hair/grease clog, pour a handful of baking soda down the drain and then add 1/2 cup vinegar. Rinse with hot water, the clog should dissolve.

If your dishes from the meal are greasy, add a tablespoon of vinegar to the soapy wash water. Vinegar also cleans dishwashers, steam irons and coffee makers well, just run some vinegar through once a month. Wash microwave ovens with vinegar and water.

In the third part of this series we’ll look at some recipes for first aid and insect repellants that will come in handy over the summer months, using these same cheap ingredients. See you then!

Posts to This Series:

Part 1: List of Ingredients
Part 2: Recipes
Part 3: Bugs & First Aid

The market news reports that consumer spending is up again this month. The problem is that this is not as a sign of possible economic recovery from the deepening recession we find ourselves in. It’s a reflection of the fact that people must spend more on basics like fuel and food – prices for both rising much faster than regular people can keep up with – thus must spend less on all that consumer junk our capitalistic system expects us to buy with our overrated “disposable income.”

If you’re reading this blog, chances are you’re like me – I have no “disposable income” because all the income we have must go to simply pay for the necessities of life, and there’s hardly enough even cutting corners. Food, clothing, shelter, transportation, utilities. I have previously posted about the clothing thing, as I haven’t actually purchased new clothing for at least a decade. Used clothing is good enough – even suits and formal clothing – though I don’t dress up much. But the mortgage is what it is. Gas prices are what they are, they cannot be bargained down. And as the price of fuel rises, so does the cost of food and electricity. Thus more of our money must be spent on necessities, even if we never had any left over for junk in the first place!

It’s spring, my tiller should come back from the shop Saturday, and all my garden terraces will be put into production this season. Of course that also means I must purchase seed and starts that I haven’t grown in flats, but all that will pay off as the food comes in. Spinach, lettuce, collards, kale and peas are all up, the asparagus (a perennial) is coming in rushes, and the strawberries will ripen if the nights ever stop dipping into the 30s.

Even if you live in a cramped apartment, you can grow a few tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers in pots on the patio or porch. Buy into a CSA for fresh produce as your share of a local farmer’s crops, or plan a weekly visit to your area farmer’s market and buy fresh produce in bulk. That supports local farmers, lets you get to know the people who can keep you from starving, and saves real money over the whole supermarket system where locally grown tomatoes compete with tomatoes grown in Mexico or Guatemala and they all cost way too much.

A series in the Washington Post examines the issues in depth and is worth a read. The final installment appeared today (May 1) and deals with the American consumer’s issues. Clipping, Scrimping, Saving takes a look at how people are coping with the rising price of food.

There are some good hints and resources in the Post series. But there is another issue that people who really are having trouble making ends meet must consider as even more important. The diet for poor people in this country consists of worse than junk. We all saw the class divisions during the Katrina crisis, and understand that the shape of poverty in America is obese. I know it’s hard to think that people are actually hungry who weigh twice or three times what a healthy person weighs, but it’s true. They’re hungry for real food, but limited to eating worse-than-garbage.

We could be smug and say that rising food prices might cure that obesity epidemic, but it won’t. The fake grain paste and high fructose corn syrup diet is designed to pack on pounds even as it starves the body of necessary nutrients and energy. The result is crippling obesity, diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and a host of cancers. It’s a “killing diet,” not a basic level of necessary nourishment.

Given the even worse health care crisis in this country, we who live on shoestring budgets cannot afford to get fat and unhealthy. If the best thing I could offer my readers is the advice to pay attention to nourishment – buy fresh food, I offer it now. Sam’s Club and coupon-cutting will save you money on junk food, but it won’t help you stay healthy and fit. Do not be fooled – take the time and trouble to seek out healthy food, don’t give in to cheap obesity.

Links and Resources:

WP: Global Food Crisis Series
NYT: As Jobs Vanish and Prices Rise
Food Crisis Hits America
Disappearing Amber Waves of Grain
Where Every Meal Is a Sacrifice