One Local Summer: lots of local meals this week and I blanched and froze the excess for winter. Meals include:
- steamed greens (CSA) with tofu (local Boulder company),
- homemade (local flour) flour tortillas with eggs (Jay Hill Farms), greens (CSA), beans (CSA) and salsa (Rocky Mountain Farms),
- radish (Jay Hill) and marinated artichokes (Rocky Mountain Farms) salad (CSA spinach) and of course,
- the requisite almond butter (Justin's, local Boulder company) and jam (Rocky Mountain Farms) on homemade bread (local flour).
- We've been enjoying Jay Hill eggs and (local flour) pancakes with (Rocky Mountain Farm) strawberry syrup for breakfast all week too.
- And loads of strawberries and sugar snap peas from Jay Hill! A delicious week.
This one is easy so far. It is pleasant in the morning and evening. Mid-afternoon is pretty hot, in the low 90s all week. I've brought back the nap (I read this on a blog yesterday and thought it was ingenious!) Napping from 1-3 helps get through that time of day and lets me stay up later at night enjoying the cool night air. We have the AC set to go on when temps hit 86, although with Paul working at home we'll have to see if that's too hot for him. So far, he chose the hottest week to go to Iowa. I'm doing just fine being hot. It's tough in the car but luckily 2 out of 3 kids enjoy the wind in their face (can you guess who hates it?) so we are doing OK there. So far, so good.
5 Minute Shower Challenge
No problem! Having short hair and shaving infrequently make this easy for me. I think my showers average about 2-3 minutes, a bit less than 5 when I'm counting my warm up water time (caught in a bucket to water the garden, of course!) This one is a no-brainer and I'm mad at myself for not doing this earlier.
The One Can a Month and I'm a Bookworm are starting up on July 1, so I'll jump on those when I get back! Going from half a 32 gallon trash bin to essentially a quarter is the challenge. Try and put the trash out just once a month. I'm eager to learn even more tips on reducing our garbage output. It seems like it should be easier but we are still at 2 full kitchen sizes bags per week. Reading one eco book a month will be the push I need to plow through the Michael Pollan books, so looking forward to getting back into The Omnivore's Dilemma when I finish up Ahab's Wife for bookclub.
The Addiction challenge comes to an end in June. Mine was not eating out unless it was planned and I did great until the boys left. We ate out for girls night on Monday (planned, AOK and was my first time in a month and it was delicious!!) but then Wendy and I took the kids to Noodles after swimming on Thursday, and then I brought home some sushi (from a local restaurant in Superior) for lunch today. And now we're off for 2 weeks of probably eating out a lot. Still, it showed me the value of planning my special occasions and I do plan to pick it back up when we return in July.
The Don't Buy It - Put Your Rebate to Work rebate check is slotted to be deposited into our "Boulder House Down Payment" account. We think it will be mailed sometime after July 4, according to the site. We'll see!
I think that's it for challenges! As a general note, previous challenge buttons are moved to the bottom of the list but are on-going. So many of these are great enough (and easy enough!) to do full time.
Posts
1 comment:
If you're under 1 trash can every two weeks and Western is your carrier (I don't know about the others) call them and tell them you want to switch to orange bags. You get prepaid bags, and just put them out on trash day when they're full. Extra motivation to jump on and smoosh the kitchen trash -- "can we go one more week?"
Post a Comment