My daughter has loved black beans since we started her on solid foods.  First we blended them up and added them to her oatmeal porridge (Mm-m, doesn’t that sound scrumptious?).  Later, she was able to pick individual beans up with her hands and gum them.  Once she was about eighteen months or so, she enjoyed eating black beans in salsa or chili.  We make three pounds of dried beans at a time, use most of them in Andy’s frozen burritos (we make twenty burritos at a time), and enjoy the rest in other recipes.

Using dried beans instead of canned has a few advantages.  First of all, it’s cheaper.  I estimate that we save a whopping $2.80 every time we cook our own beans.  We also avoid the toxins lurking in cans.  (Holly on the Ecobaby Blog wrote about her concerns with canned beans here.)  Last but not least, we’re keeping more than seven fifteen-ounce cans out of the recycling bin every time we cook a vat of tasty legumes. 

Here’s how we make three pounds of dried beans:

1. Soak dry beans overnight in a six-quart stock pot.  Beans will double in size, so use as much water as possible.
2. Drain beans.  Add fresh water.  The whole pot will seem filled with beans at this point, with only an inch or two of water over the top.  That’s okay.
3. Cover and heat on medium high until the water just starts to boil.
4. Reduce heat to low.  Simmer, covered, for 45 minutes to over an hour, until soft.

Three pounds of dry beans will yield over six pounds of cooked beans.

Note: You can add spices to the beans while cooking, but don’t add salt until they’re done or they may never soften.

Freeze your cooked beans in six or seven glass jars (old peanut butter jars are perfect), and you will have them on hand to use in place of the canned variety.  I like to cook huge batches at a time to make the effort worthwhile.  Although it takes about ten hours from start to finish, the hands-on work involved in cooking three pounds of beans is minimal.  Now I just have to decide what to do with that $2.80 I saved!

For more Works for Me Wednesday tips, visit Rocks in My Dryer.

A few years ago when I was pregnant with Roscoe, I had a sudden Saturday urge to grow zucchini and hustled off to the hardware store to buy the wares for a small raised bed.  I sat in our driveway with the drill and awkwardly put together a rather pathetic little garden box that has nonetheless yielded some beautiful basil and tomatoes over the last few summers.  In this photo Roscoe is trying to prevent the weed-filled bed from being captured on film. 

This year with the help of my neighbors, I plan on putting together a more respectable raised bed.  Although I could just plop the plants in the dirt, raised beds provide excellent drainage for plants and also allow you to heap in all your own rich new soil. 

If you’d like directions on how to build one yourself, go to this website and check it out.  Then get some dirt, dump in those plants and see what happens.  (One tip: some websites recommend using pressure treated wood or painting the wood with stain, but you might not want those chemicals leaching into your plants.  We just chose to skip that step.)

If you have lawn you’d like to cover with raised beds, you don’t have to worry about digging out the sod.  Our neighbors gave us the great tip of going to a bike shop and getting large cardboard boxes.  Simply place the boxes along the bottom of your raised beds to stop the grass from growing up through your garden.  Then pile the dirt on top and you’re ready to go!

Squash, sweet potatoes, zucchini,  cauliflower, and sweet peas are just a few of the plants that you can easily turn into organic baby food as they are harvested.  Remember that home-prepared spinach, beets, turnips, carrots or collard greens shouldn’t be fed to babies younger than six months because of the high level of nitrates they contain. 

If you need further inspiration to grow your own organic vegetables, check out Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.  It documents her family’s year of living off the land and is full of her rich and often funny descriptive writing.  You’ll also find yourself motivated to hit the farmer’s market and maybe even plant your own asparagus.  Enjoy the sunshine!

If both parents have demanding careers and multiple children, how do they manage things like washing cloth diapers, composting, making healthy dinners and spending time with baby? There are also some single parents out there who are handling full-time schedules and parenting while keeping the planet in mind. How do they do it?  I am utterly in awe of people who can juggle so much without feeling overwhelmed. 

My husband and I both work thirty-some hours per week and yet we find the balance of a two career family rather precarious at times. Over the last few weeks illness and injury has made the daily challenge of laundry and homemade dinners seem ever greater.   I often long for take-out, or look lustfully at the frozen entrees in the grocery store,  knowing that those convenience items are designed for the hectic, dual income family.  Even though I’m often overwhelmed,  I don’t want to give into the urge to buy disposable, convenience items, saving time while potentially harming the planet.  At this point it seems we should be able to handle some extra time for green choices since we have just one child, we both work equally hard on domestic tasks, and neither of us are working full time.

I’ve been wondering lately if it would actually be greener for one of us to quit working outside the home. It’s hard to say, but I do have visions of myself cooking up batches of homemade yogurt, biking everywhere with our son, and canning veggies that I’ve grown in our organic garden. On the other hand, I know from having summers off, that the reality of staying home is much more challenging and less productive than I imagine.  It’s WONDERFUL having lots of fun with my son, but I haven’t yet managed to weave organic clothing from the cotton that’s sprouted in my backyard. 

Since my teaching job provides our health insurance, I don’t foresee taking a leave of absence anytime soon. We just might find in the years to come that my husband is the one to be home with the children, which would still provide us with lots of family time to share during school breaks and holidays.

Really it isn’t fair to pick a winner in the working vs. stay-at-home debate since there are so many creative solutions available to families today.  Many parents have found ways to work at home, work part time, or take a leave of absence for a few years before heading back to their jobs. There is no absolutely right or wrong option, but it definitely seems like having more time at home allows parents to enjoy a more earth-friendly lifestyle.  Since summer is just a few weeks away, I’m counting the days until I get to enjoy a few months of stay-at-home motherhood—even if it’s just as a temp. 

Our old clunker of a washing machine came with our house.  A typical top-loader from the 1970s or ‘80s, it probably used about forty gallons of water per load.  Another downside of this appliance is that it did not even get the clothes clean.  Dark clothes (i.e., all my clothes) came out with streaks of lint, clumps of detergent, and the dirt and grime they had before “washing” them.

A positive pregnancy test motivated me to replace my washing machine.  I wanted to try cloth diapers and figured pre-baby was the ideal time to switch.  I knew a good front loader used just ten gallons of water per load, but I was disappointed that they cost so much more than top-loaders.  The cheapest one I saw advertised was $800.  Knowing I could save hundreds of gallons of water, not to mention all the energy used to heat the water, I convinced myself it would be worth it.

Then a weird thing happened: we got the washer for far less than we’d budgeted.  First, we just so happened to show up on a store-wide 10% discount day.  Also, the washer in question turned out to be on sale.  And, we got a tax credit and some sort of energy credit.  Ask around–someone may want to pay you for selecting an energy-conscious option.  To top it all off, the store offered a rebate on the delivery charge.  The strangest thing was, we did not ask about any of this stuff–the guy at Sears just kept handing us forms and coupons.  Our Kenmore washer–listed at $800 in the Sunday paper–cost us just $350 including delivery!  That’s about the same price as a standard water-guzzling top-loader.

I love my front-loading machine.  All of my clothes come out clean and fresh-smelling and take less time to dry due to the extra-fast spin cycle.  This machine has made cloth-diapering much more efficient.  I wash diapers every four days on the heavy cycle–no extra rinses and no wet pail.  This means I am able to use just 900 gallons of water a year washing cloth diapers.  I also use a third of the detergent I’d use with a top-loader.  Compare that to someone who uses a top-loader every four days: they’ll use 3600 gallons a year!  Add in extra rinse cycles, more frequent washes, and wet pails and they could be wasting as much as 10,000 gallons of water a year on their cloth diaper laundry alone.

My washer has already paid for itself and will continue to save water and energy years after my daughter is out of diapers.  If you are in the market for a new machine, hunt around for special discounts and tax credits.  You may find, as I did, that a new high efficiency machine is well within your reach.

For more Works for Me Wednesday tips, head on over to Rocks in My Dryer.

Now we’ve written about avoiding plastics in baby care products, teethers, and toys.  Parents left and right are freaking out about all the possible health risks associated with some plastics.  You may be one of them.  I try not to freak out over everything I read, but I have become more aware of the preponderance of plastic in my life.  I even have a kind of hazy goal involving eliminating plastic from my house entirely.  But where do I even start? 

Okay, so purging the house of plastic may sound overwhelming, but there are little things you can do to start replacing it with other materials.  I try to limit my plastic consumption one step at a time.  When I needed new food storage containers, for example, I opted for glass.  (Stay tuned for yet another installment in my plastic saga: Eliminating Plastic Containers.)

I’ve also started figuring out which plastics are “bad” and which ones are okay.  National Geographic’s Green Guide has an article about how to tell the good plastics (numbers 1, 2, 4, 5) from the bad: numbers 3, 6, and 7.  They also have a down-loadable “Smart Shoppers’ Plastic Picks” card available through the above link.

Glad freezer and sandwich bags are phthalate-free

I’ve been using ceramic or glass to microwave foods for a while now.  Freezing and microwaving causes phthalates to leach into foods.  “Microwave Safe” only means the plastic won’t melt–it does not necessarily mean it’s “safe” to eat foods microwaved in them.  Softer plastics such as Ziplock bags are more likely to be phthalate-free than harder plastics, so freezing in bags may be a better choice than freezing in plastic containers.  According to this website, Ziploc regular and freezer bags, Glad sandwich and freezer bags, Hefty OneZip bags, Glad Cling, and Saran Cling Plus are all phthalate-free.

One day I’m sure I’ll have that beautiful, plastic-free house of my dreams.  All of my storage containers will be glass.  All of my furniture will be wooden (yes, I have plastic furniture–it was free!).  And I will hand-carve all of my daughter’s toys out of twigs that have fallen to the ground.  Until that day, though, I will just take it one step at a time. 

Right around when Joy wrote her post about diaper-friendly detergent I was in the process of phasing out my conventional laundry soap. I hadn’t switched over to an eco-friendly brand because I kept getting hung up on the price. Imagine my shock when I discovered that eco-friendly detergent can be cheaper than conventional detergent! I no longer have any reason to use a mainstream brand.

Laundry Detergent–from cheapest to most expensive

T.J.’s powder  / $5.49 / 40 loads / $.137 per load

Biokleen laundry powder / $13.99 / 100 loads / $.139 per load  BEST DEAL

T.J.’s liquid HE  / $8.99 / 64 loads / $.14 per load

All (not eco-friendly)  / $14.00 / 96 loads / $.145 per load

Biokleen liquid laundry detergent / $9.49 / 64 loads /$.148 per load

T.J.’s powder  / $10.00 / 64 loads / $.156 per load

Biokleen laundry powder / $8.29 / 50 loads / $.165 per load

Planet laundry powder / $10.00 / 32 loads /  $.31 per load

Ecover laundry powder / $9.00 / 20 loads / $.45 per load

Seventh Generation laundry powder / $8.00 / 16 loads / $.50 per load

 

Some Notes on the Eco-friendly Detergents

• Even though T.J.’s 40-load box is cheaper than Biokleen’s 100-load box, Biokleen gets the “Best Deal” award because it uses less packaging.
• Trader Joe’s larger box of detergent (64 loads) is a worse deal than their small box (40 loads).
• Biokleen is often on sale. I got my ten-pound box for $11.99 (.119 per load). Trader Joe’s prices stay constant.
• If you read the text on the Biokleen box, it says you’ll get 100 loads by using three-quarters of the scoop provided. With a high efficiency machine, the box recommends using just half a scoop. That means I’ll actually get 160 loads out of my Biokleen box. The actual price per load on my $11.99 sale box will be just $.074. That’s half the price of many other eco-friendly brands and the cheap conventional brand.



• The Ecover and 7^th Generation are bad deals. Not only do they cost a lot, they also come in plastic bottles that would have to be replaced frequently. (1 box of Biokleen = 10 plastic bottles of 7^th Generation!)

Some Notes on the Conventional Detergent

I wanted to see how eco-friendly brands compared to the cheapest conventional brand and was pleased to find that Biokleen powder is actually cheaper than All. Now, I’m sure you can find cheaper detergent at a big warehouse store, but I was looking only in the stores within walking distance of my house. One huge plastic container of All costs $14 ($.145/load). That’s almost twice as expensive as the Biokleen.

My frugal friend (we’ll call him Thrifty Bob) told me that he’d just found a container of All on sale for $9 ($.093/load). Not bad, Thrifty Bob! However, if you read the fine print on the container, it says you’ll get 96 loads if you fill the cup half-way full. If you have a top-loader, you may be filling the cup to the top, so you’d actually get just 48 loads out of the container. Thrifty Bob has a front-loader and admitted that he often filled the cup more than halfway full. Not only does this waste detergent, it may ruin a front-loading machine. The guy who delivered our front-loader warned me to never, ever, ever use more than a third-cup of detergent.

I will admit that before I found Biokleen laundry powder, I was using All detergent, too. Now I’m kicking myself, because not only was I paying more, I was polluting the Earth with toxins and adding a huge hunk of plastic to the recycling bin. Even worse, I had to throw away three non-recyclable plastic parts of the container: the plastic cup, spout, and cap.

Another big advantage to green detergent is that it doesn’t contain chemicals that can cling to skin or petroleum-based oils that coat diapers and cause unpleasant smells. Thanks to Biokleen, I’ll be saving money, keeping toxins away from our bodies, and helping the planet.

Every time I pull the plug on Roscoe’s bath, it pains me to watch several gallons of relatively clean water vanish down the drain.  Perhaps this angst is inherited from my resourceful mother, who always transferred our bathwater to the washing machine for a load of laundry after we were tucked into bed.  She currently keeps a bucket in her shower at all times to capture water for use in her garden but she wishes that there was a better solution for all that gray water waste. 

Thanks to Brac Systems, an innovative Canadian company, there is!  They have designed a grey water recovery system that filters bathwater and redirects it for use in toilets.  The entire system costs just a few thousand dollars (plus installation) but Brac claims that the system could save people up to 40% of their water bill costs.  It’s possible to redirect the water for landscaping use as well and to use the system to harvest rainwater. 

Since my life is too complicated for a new Brac System at this time, I’ve turned to simpler solutions for saving bath water in the short run. 

• We wash Roscoe’s cloth diaper covers in his leftover bath water. 

• I sometimes soak my toes in his tub, getting a mini-pedicure while he plays.

• Roscoe uses his bathwater as a beverage.  (Gross I know!  We’re working on this.)

• A few nights a week, Roscoe showers with daddy to save water and time.

• Rebecca opts for weekly baths for her toddler, saving at least 120 gallons of water a week by forgoing a daily tub time.

• Some people use leftover bath water to flush toilets.  They leave a bucket in the bathroom, scoop up some leftover bath water and pour it into the toilet, activating the flush mechanism.    

Roscoe accrues enough grime in a day to truly create his own gray water.  Someday it shall all end up watering our petunias or supplying our toilets.  Until then, we shall dutifully do our best to make it a darker shade of gray before it goes down the drain.  For a huge list of simple tips that just might make your Wednesday a little easier, go to Rocks In My Dryer.  

I’d always heard that diapers needed to be washed in the hottest water possible.  After two years of washing diapers in hot water, a post on Treehugging Family made me think about whether I could wash diapers in cold.  Peggy writes about saving 72 pounds of carbon dioxide in one month just by washing four out of five loads in cold water.  Keep that up for an entire year and you’ll save $60-100 on your energy bill. 

But doesn’t washing in hot water kill germs and bacteria?  Everything I read said no–unless your washer has a built-in heater, the hot water in your machine does not get hot enough to kill anything.  Most water heaters are set to 120 degrees.  You’d need a temperature of 160 to kill anything and 212 to actually sanitize your laundry.  Jennifer (Peggy’s co-blogger on Treehugging Family) pointed out that the dryer does get hot enough to kill bacteria.

Armed with all this information, I figured it was worth a try.  I loaded the diapers in the machine and set the knob to “cold.”  At the last minute, I almost turned the knob back to hot.  After years of believing the hot water I was using was beneficial–no, necessary–to the cloth diapering process, it was hard to make the change, even for investigative purposes.  Then, in one of the most daring moves of my cloth-diapering career, I pressed the start button and let the cold water gush into the machine.

Now that you are all on the edges of your seats, I’ll break this amazing news: the diapers came out of the dryer white, clean, and fresh-smelling.  Now, if anyone has some scientific evidence in favor of the hot-wash, please post a comment.  Until I hear advice to the contrary, I am going to wash diapers in cold water.  I just wish I’d had the gumption to take the plunge years ago!

You may recall from my Earth Day Resolution blog that I’m a struggling grocery shopper. Deciding what’s for dinner is hard enough, but figuring out how to get healthful eco-friendly food for reasonable prices has felt nearly impossible.  I want my child to munch on organic fruits and veggies, but when I see the prices my inner tightwad has a nervous breakdown. 

I’ve only been a Community Supported Agriculture member for one week, but already I feel vastly better about our family’s grocery habits.  Wondering what a CSA is? It’s a farm that provides seasonal organic produce directly to community members for a regular monthly price.  In our case we pay $135 each month for weekly bags chock full of organic goodies.  Click here for more info on CSA’s in general and here to find out if there’s one in your area.

Our CSA, Sweetwater Farm, allows people to join a month at a time so I was able to make the giant leap over to a farm subscription without worrying about a year-long commitment. After just one week we love it, and here’s why:

It’s easy!  Every Thursday we head to a shopping center close to our home to pick up our bag of mystery veggies and fruits.  They’re fresh, mostly local and so very good for us.  I don’t have to run around town to get the best prices or scrub my non-organic veggies to get the sludge off. 

It inspires healthy eating.  My friend Andy lost 18 pounds when she joined her CSA just because she found herself surrounded by glorious wholesome foods and subsequently began eating better each week.  She ended up quitting Weight Watchers but sticking with her CSA.

It gets us out of our comfort zone.  The idea of getting a large bag full of unknown produce was daunting at first, but already we’ve had some amazing meals with cabbage, asparagus, and fingerling potatoes that I wouldn’t have picked up on regular trips to the grocery store.

It exposes our toddler to a variety of produce. He’s still young enough not to stick out his tongue when we pile veggies onto his plate.  If he gets accustomed to eating lots of green stuff now, we may be able to avoid the long “cheese pizza” phase that some youngsters undergo.  (My fingers are crossed!) 

It comes with recipes. Last night I made an amazing frittata with Swiss chard and earlier this week we ate a scrumptious stir fry with cabbage and fresh asparagus.  I NEED weekly ideas for meals so this has been a treat!

It sends money directly to farmers. When we buy produce at the grocery store a tiny fraction ends up in the hands of the people who labored to grow the food.  With a CSA your money goes directly to the grower, so  you are sustaining your local economy, eating organic food for less, and helping the planet. 

We’re certainly spending more than we did on produce, but that motivates us to value our veggies and buy less meat, which happens to be environmentally beneficial as well.  My only regret in joining a CSA is that I didn’t do it sooner. What are your tips for finding good prices on organic fruits and vegetables?  

Because I have a small house and harbor illusions of leading a “minimalist lifestyle,” I wanted to limit the amount of baby gear I bought. When I was pregnant, I kept wondering if I really needed all this stuff: a wipes warmer, a bouncy seat, a swing, a white noise machine, a mobile, an arsenal of how-to-raise-your-baby books, a travel crib, a baby monitor? (The list goes on, but you get the point.) How was I supposed to know? Every time I’d consider not getting something, the consumerist girl scout in me would decide that I just wouldn’t be prepared without it.

After fretting over each purchase or non-purchase for a good three or four months, I had a breakthrough: Yes, I can live without (fill in baby doodad of choice here). And if I can’t, I can always get it later. That’s right! Contrary to popular belief and the aforementioned girl scout motto, you do not need to “be prepared” for every possible baby emergency. Not sure you need a bouncy seat? Don’t get one until you do. You may find, as I did, that you can indeed live without it.

Every parent’s list will be different, but here’s a list of gizmos I never had. My daughter is over two now and hasn’t suffered from deprivation. (She can always sort it out later in therapy, if need be!)

Bouncy seat. My baby slept in a Moses basket for the first six months of her life, so if I needed to set her down, I put her in there.

Baby monitors. Because our house is so small, there is no way I wouldn’t hear her if she cried.

Wipe warmers. We use cloth wipes dampened with a squirt of water from a squeeze bottle. Our baby never seemed to care that the wipes weren’t warm.

Swing. We actually broke down and bought a swing after a week or two of sleepless nights (and days). Unfortunately, the swing didn’t help at all, so it went right back to the store. Joy and her husband made the same sleep-deprived decision, with the same result!

Exersaucer. I knew I didn’t want this huge plastic contraption in my house . . . so I didn’t get one.

Glider. First of all, I find this piece of furniture hideously ugly. Second, I have at least two chairs with a rocking motion. I never missed having a gliding rocking chair.

You may be tempted to register for as much as possible so generous friends and family can pay for it. Remember you can always ask for gift cards if you find the need to stock up later. I didn’t feel like I was scrimping by not buying every item on the Babies-R-Us registry list–I felt resourceful, and my house remained blissfully clutter-free.