craft = power

Yesterday, Jacob and I were eating lunch and listening to one of my favorite newer NPR shows, which featured an Earth Week segment on greener parties and celebrations for kids. You can listen to the segment and read the comment thread that inspired this post here.

Just a note on the idea of being "crafty": I have never really thought of myself as crafty in the hipster sense, or even the Girl Scout arts-and-crafts sense. Maybe it's because I've never been much of a visual artist. I don't do any knitting to speak of (yet) and I don't own a hot glue gun (yet). I do have a haphazardly-thrown-together craft box, containing seemingly useless bits of metal and plastic and fabric and cardboard. For the most part, I'm interested in crafts, as long as either a) I can make something useful instead of buying it or b) I can make something out of material that otherwise would have been thrown away, or both.

During the past year or so, I've tried to embrace crafting from this perspective; I wanted to give Khymi a bathrobe for Chanukah, but I was sorely disappointed by the fact that cotton terry seems available only for babies and hotel guests. So I used a newly-acquired sewing machine to make her one out of old towels.


Or there was the maddening situation with the cats. They happily scratch the couch or the rug, but not the carpeted scratching post, which I bought at PetSmart a couple years ago and which remains largely untouched. One evening, after another discouraging walk through the cat aisle looking at overpriced cardboard scratchers, I took a utility knife to a few of the cardboard boxes that cover our basement floor, and inspired by this post over at The Good Human, Jacob and I made a small scratching pad in a couple of hours. Lila took to it instantly (an unprecedented behavior). Free!

So I suppose I've been driven to craftiness out of necessity. But I don't think crafting should be overlooked as a frivolous or decorative pasttime. Check out the etymology of the word:

Old English cræft "power, strength, might," from Proto-Germanic *krab-/*kraf-. Sense shifted to "skill, art" (via a notion of "mental power"), which led to the n. meaning of "trade."

Indeed, in modern German, Kraft still means "power". Many crafts--woodworking, ceramics, sewing, fiber arts, cooking, gardening--have become nothing but quaint upper-middle-class hobbies during this time when goods are cheaply and easily made and shipped far and wide.

But on this Earth Day, I ask you to hold on to your crafts, my friends. Cultivate and maintain them as well as you can. Learn to create and repair objects of lasting function; with your head and hands, give them real use, and with your heart, give them beauty. Don't just think of craft as a way to pass the time or a neat thing to do, although it may well be; don't even just think of it as a way to save money, although it may well have to be; think of it as power. The power to produce rather than consume, to process rather than discard, to sustain rather than deplete. The power to put as much art into your craft as you desire--to make a four-tone Fair Isle sweater, or simply to darn a pair of black socks to save them from the rag pile.

The Western world is beginning to take an interest (see my mom's course offerings for next year if you want proof)--let's hope it lasts. On Earth Day, we hear a lot about saving the Earth. Let's make one thing very clear: no matter what happens, the Earth will be fine. What we're really worried about is saving ourselves, our world as we know it. Which aspects of humanity should we be saving? Which ones are worth letting go?

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yogurt redux

Ever since we got interested in making yogurt (again, thanks to inspiration from Mama Monster), we've found a few different methods that all seem to work. And since then, when I mention that we've started making our own, the next thing I usually hear is, "How?"

Making yogurt is kind of a ridiculously simple but fascinating process. Methods vary, but they always involve the same basic steps:

• Heat milk (of any kind: whole, skim, soy, goat, whatever you prefer) to about 185°F to kill any bad bacteria, but not so hot that the milk curdles
  
• Cool it to about 110°F - 120°F (opinions vary, but this is about the temperature that will get the yogurt cultures all happy)
• Add good bacteria (active yogurt cultures) in the form of a couple tablespoons of yogurt from a previous batch, or from store-bought plain yogurt
• Somehow keep the milk warm for 8 - 12 hours so the cultures can do their thing. In this warm environment, they begin to reproduce, eat the lactose (dairy sugar) in the milk and release lactic acid, which is what makes yogurt taste sour. The increase in acidity also makes the milk thicker. Once the yogurt is chilled, the cultures slow down and go back to sleep. Wow! Science!
  

How you heat the milk, how you check the temperature, and how you keep the milk warm are the variables, and they depend on what you have or what you are willing to buy.

• The easiest option for many people is to buy a home yogurt maker. It takes the guesswork out of the heating and cooling, and automatically maintains the optimum temperature for you. It does use electricity, but if you don't have the time to be watching over a pot of milk, it might be a worthwhile investment.


• If you have an electric heating pad, try the detailed instructions at MakeYourOwnYogurt.com. We used this method for a while, even though we don't have a heating pad. We just piled a bunch of towels over the pot of milk to keep it warm.


• If you have a microwave and a Thermos, try Bean Sprouts' method. Melanie also includes a handy troubleshooting list and an extra step to make thicker Greek-style yogurt.


• Just wing it. I recently showed up for a workshop with the PermiBus folks on their Skills for a New Millennium tour, prepared to make a water jacket and use a candy thermometer like in the MakeYourOwnYogurt directions. While a candy or dairy thermometer is a handy thing to have, it's probably not essential. The people at the workshop suggested a couple of rough measures to tell if your milk is the right temperature: When it starts to froth and form a skin, it's hot enough. When it's bath temperature (i.e. hot, but not so hot you'd scald yourself), it's cool enough to add the cultures. They made the yogurt directly in glass mason jars, which eliminates having to put it in a storage container once it's done.

So there are some options. The way we've been doing it recently is heating the milk directly in a pot on the stove, putting the starter yogurt at the bottom of a couple of pre-heated 24-ounce mason jars, pouring the milk in the jars, stirring and closing the lids tightly. Then we roll up the jars in towels and leave them all day or overnight. When it's done, we stir vigorously and stick the yogurt in the fridge. The end!

Homemade yogurt is thinner than most store-bought yogurt, because the manufacturers usually add a thickener like pectin or gelatin (if you use a store-bought yogurt as a starter, make sure there aren't any such additives; just milk and active cultures). If you want to thicken your yogurt, use Bean Sprouts' straining method (link above).

Why make your own yogurt?

• It's cheaper (ours works out to be about half the price of store-bought)
• No waste; no plastic containers piling up
• You know exactly what's in it

And it's delicious! I like it as a snack with fruit or jam, for breakfast with muesli, or in smoothies (hello, frozen strawberries). You can also use it as a substitute in recipes that call for buttermilk. Or make a sort of raita by mixing a few tablespoons with a pinch of salt and some chopped fresh herbs like mint, chives, or if you're into that kind of thing, cilantro. Great as a condiment with spicy foods.

Go forth and multiply some bacteria!

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cheapskate pizza

Making pizza at home is becoming more popular, as are an arsenal of specialized home-pizza-making supplies. You could use a regular baking sheet for your homemade pie, but some folks will tell you that to get that perfect crispy crust, you need a pizza stone to simulate the stone floor of an old-fashioned wood-burning pizza oven. Better hightail it to your favorite kitchen gadget retailer and pick one up for $35 or more, right?

Wrong. No. No. Step away from the overpriced yuppie merchandise. There is a better way, and you don't have to go any further than your local building supply.

We got this brilliant idea from my next husband Food Network television personality Alton Brown, back when we had cable: Those fancy pizza stones? They're nothing but ceramic tiles. The same thing you can get at Home Depot, Lowe's, or preferably, a surplus building supply place like our beloved Community Forklift.

You can buy an unglazed ceramic tile or quarry tile in the dimensions of your preference for around a dollar. (Do not make the mistake of buying flagstone--it's too lightweight and it will crack at high temperatures.) Take it home, give it a good scrubbing, and voilà! Perfectly crispy homemade pizza, without the gourmet price tag. Mmmm.

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spring has sprung!

You can't see, but there are little lettuce sprouts in the cold frame. I built it myself! It was mostly easy and fun. All you need are:

-An old window (from a junk yard or building surplus)
-Some scrap 2 x 6s or whatever other size lumber you prefer (cut to fit the window and build a box higher in the top than the back, which means you'll have to have two triangle-shaped pieces to create an incline)
-Hinges
-Nails or screws
-A saw
-A tape measure
-Some scrap 2 x 2s or thereabouts for corner posts
-A hasp or latch of some kind (optional)
-Weather stripping (also optional)

The only thing that I couldn't do myself was cut the one piece on the diagonal to make two triangles. I had to have my dad help me because he has a band saw. But if you have and are handy with a rip saw (I do not, and I am not), that is an option, too. I also didn't use carpenter's glue, but that might have been helpful.

I would write more detailed directions, but I didn't have any. I had to figure it out for myself, and I imagine that someone with better visual sense would make fewer mistakes than I did if they just took the time to make a diagram. I just made mistakes anyway, and then took it apart and put it back together again. It worked out in the end.

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little green babies...

Maria tells me I am a bad brother. Last weekend, while calling my brother, I noticed that the first tomato seed-leaves were poking up out of the planter. Like any first-time gardener, I couldn't contain my amazement and started shrieking about how we were having a baby! This naturally amazed and befuddled my poor brother, which amazement and befuddlement quickly turned to irritation when he realized I was talking about tomatoes. Apparently nightshades don't exactly put one in an avuncular state of mind.

But I've already gotten ahead of myself.

I've read and been told that first-time gardeners tend toward overeagerness: they plant too early, thin too little, water too much. Even with this warning, and for all our almanac-checking and calendar-comparing, we probably started our tomatoes and peppers too early. Ah well. What can I say: we wanted to stop reading and start planting already!

In order to save money and pursue the reduce-and-reuse-before-recycling ethic, we had some fun making our own planters out of toilet paper tubes. (The VERY VERY EASY process is documented on YouGrowGirl.com.) To spur germination, we made the seeds a greenhouse out of a translucent plastic bin we had lying around, which we covered with a translucent piece of plastic we cut from a bag. We sprayed in a little moisture and set it on a radiator in a window, et voilà! the first tomato sprouts popped out in three days' time! So that the shoots wouldn't rot in the moisture, we moved the sprouted planters one by one off the radiator, into mini-greenhouses we made out of plastic milk jugs.

After two weeks, 3/4 of the tomato seeds sprouted - nine in all. Of the nine fish pepper seeds we planted, four have sprouted so far. We're still waiting on another trio of fish peppers and one of bell peppers.

Care for a tour?

The sprouting greenhouse:


The post-sprouting greenhouses:


Tomato seedlings in their tubes, in a milk jug greenhouse:


A fish pepper seedling in its own mini-greenhouse/planter:

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