COCKroach Blocking (Apologies This Wasn't A More Creative Title)

Of all the various mental breakdown stimuli that have caused me to gnash my teeth at the sky like Grendel and cry out I'M A HUMAN DISASTERRRRRRRRRR,

the cockroaches had to be one of the worst.  While I appreciate this landlord's absenteeism to a certain extent, and prefer it to the "hiding behind a van" involvement of prior socially unstable landowners, he is still kind of a slumlord, if a more genteel slumlord (I later found out, from my neighbor who looks like Fat Joe, that my landlord used to also own the building next door, and that he didn't maintain it and eventually they sued and the building was taken away from him?).

So we wrote businesswoman-like emails, we called the super multiple times, and we wrote follow-up businesswoman-like emails.  Out of all the calls, the super came twice and put some tiny, ineffective traps down, and the landlord provided only this Hemingway-esque response:

"Please call andrew [the super] who will take care of it. Boric acid, available in the hardware store, is totally effective against them- but don't leave any food or unclean dishes around."

Valid.  But we weren't leaving food or unclean dishes out, the cockroaches were even going inside the dishwasher, and Andrew was not taking care of it.  When I asked Andrew for an exterminator after two of his visits without continued improvement, he said he was going to have someone come, and then called me to ask if someone was going to be home to give him cash?  This, of course, being suspect, I declined his request, and he said he would figure it out.  He did not.

Result: Leah and I realized we had to address this ourselves.  We researched boric acid and learned that it is non-toxic to humans or pets, and that it destroys the cockroach's exoskeleton as well as their insides, if they ingest it.  The nerd boyfriend got involved and learned that whatever poisoning method used will "work its way through the population," which is super gross because this is achieved by the cockroaches eating other cockroaches.  TMI, amirite ladies?

Our apartment's layout is sort of box-like.  You enter in the kitchen, whose windows face south, and to the left is the bathroom, whose windows also face south.  Behind the kitchen is a windowless living room, and behind that are two bedrooms that face north.  The cockroaches' chill spot was the southwest corner of the kitchen near the sink, oven, and dishwasher, and they never ventured beyond the kitchen.  So Leah lined the back of the kitchen counters with boric acid, and we waited.

Some dead cockroaches turned up, and they seemed to be momentarily slowed.  But then, we'd use the oven or something, and they'd pop out and I'd have a complete mental breakdown and comfort myself with the Rossi.

And then it happened- I found one in my room.

Rationally, I knew the cockroaches were migrating because they were trying to avoid the poisonous trap we'd laid for them.  Emotionally, I completely lost my shit.  I went to Home Depot that night in a rage, spent like twenty minutes talking to an employee looking for something Leah had used in LA that she only knew as "the peanut butter stuff," and I bought a large tube of it and what seemed to be a more chemical-laden boric acid the Home Depot employee called "the blue stuff."  I didn't want to violate environmental principles that have a sound, reasonable basis, but this was a clear quality of life issue that I just couldn't put up with.

As it turns out, I didn't have to.  Behold The Peanut Butter Stuff:

That font tells you everything you need to know: bitches were going down.  I used my Herculean rage strength to pull the refrigerator out, cleaned underneath it, and squirted the thin brown, somewhat peanut butter-like strings liberally about.  I drew a line right underneath the oven on the floor and by the heater. (I blocked the areas off with tape in case Donut was interested, but he only eats organic so he hasn't been tempted.)

This represented a two-fold approach, depending on zone.  On the countertops, where we wanted to repel the roaches, we'd applied a powdery insecticide.  In out of the way places, we applied delicious fake harbinger of their doom peanut butter that would kill them from the inside and also their families would die too because they have no respect for authority figures and they lack a traditional burial culture.  

And they went for it.  YA BURNT, ROACHES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

While the bait is, I'm sure, environmentally questionable, the amount we used and the spots we put it in tend to limit the amount of toxic danger Leah, Donut, and nerd boyfriends faced, and I didn't end up having to resort to the blue stuff.  And in my opinion, it was much more painless than fumigating, since we would have had to remove all of our dishes and food from the kitchen (I'm getting a panic attack just thinking about the level of effort that would entail).  We still see an occasional roach (in case anyone's wondering, it's the small roaches- not like the terrifying ones I imagine are in LA), but after we applied the Combat it declined dramatically.  Should you find yourself in our sad girl roach killing position, I heartily recommend it.

This Is A Game Called "Fun With Dishwasher Detergent." It Is A Boring Game.

As some of you know, I am a ho about Pinterest and spend an inordinate amount of time on it.  Through a girl I went to high school with, I ended up at a blog with a recipe for homemade dishwasher detergent, and I thought, okay, Internet.  I'll bite.

Let me just preface this by saying that I am fucking obsessed with my dishwasher.  I've lived in New York since 2003 and this is the first time I've ever had one.  When I saw it while apartment hunting, I pretty much lost my shit almost as hard as when I recently ate a very wonderful molasses cookie that Jessi made, watched Jurassic Park for the first time on VHS at a ski cabin in Vermont, and Melissa explained that all- ALL- her young years, her whole life, she never understood that it was about embryos.  EMBRYOS!!!!!!!!  She just thought Newton was hungry.

                                            Pictured: "Newton"

Pictured: What Owen consumed because he could not have any cookies since he is a pilot.  The results can be seen in the background.

So yeah, the dishwasher is wonderful if you cook from scratch, because you just make so many dishes which is the worst.  Obviously, I had to find an eco-friendly dishwasher detergent.  In terms of cost and environmental impact, the powder form is best, and it's best if it comes from a cardboard box rather than plastic.  When Melissa still lived with me, we ended up using seventh generation, which is one of their few products that doesn't disappoint.  But when I saw that DIY post I referenced a million years ago in this post before I got distracted by Jurassic Park and how Jeff Goldblum looks like a swarthy version of Melissa and Jessi's Uncle Darren, I thought it was worth some investigation.

So anyway, here is the DIY recipe.

This, however, prompted concern from Leah, since she was worried a homemade detergent wouldn't get rid of the diseases she felt were possibly lurking on the plates.  It makes sense that she would be nervous- besides the griminess of our apartment, the marketing we've experienced our whole lives has suggested that if we let a piece of raw chicken touch the countertop, we are going to get salmonella and die.  But this made me wonder, just in general- how "clean" do dishes actually ever get?  And if a dishwashing liquid doesn't contain chemical antibacterial agents, how do germs ever get killed?  Moreover- how the fuck does soap even work?

I turned, of course, to The Net.  Because that is what people call it.

Question #1:  How Does Soap Work?

Soap, apparently, works by looking a a combination of lollipops and sperm.  TRY NOT TO THINK ABOUT THAT LAST SENTENCE TOO MUCH I JUST GROSSED MYSELF OUT REAL BAD.  The heads (pause) are hydrophilic.  They LOVE water, almost as much as Donut loves being little.  The tails (pause) are hydrophobic, love each other (pause), and so for whatever reasons they make this spherical joint right here that is called a micelle:

When soap is in water, and it comes into contact with grease/oil and the dirt that is stuck to it, it busts into it and makes a new, grimier micelle with the grease/oil/dirt stuck inside, which the water then rinses away.  If you have hard water (pause), the minerals in the water react with the soap to form a precipitate, which is what soap scum is.  Other effects: "[t]he insoluble salts form bathtub rings, leave films that reduce hair luster, and gray/roughen textiles after repeated washings."  WOW.  It is a good thing I live in New York where I do not have hard water and I have cockroaches instead.

Question #2:  What Is Detergent?

"Detergents were developed in response to the shortage of the animal and vegetable fats used to make soap during World War I and World War II. Detergents are primarily surfactants, which could be produced easily from petrochemicals. Surfactants lower the surface tension of water, essentially making it 'wetter' so that it is less likely to stick to itself and more likely to interact with oil and grease."

"Detergent" used to just mean "cleaning agent."  However, it would appear that in current usage, "detergent" generally refers to a synthetic, petrochemical-based cleaning agent.  

Question #3:  Why Detergents and Not Soap?

According to the net in New Zealand:

"You may well ask why soap, which served well for so many years, was eventually displaced. Soaps are cheap and they are manufactured from a renewable source, whereas many of the synthetic detergents are made from petrochemicals. Soaps are also biodegradable; that is, they are readily broken down by bacteria, and thus they do not pollute rivers. However, due to their gelling properties, soaps do have a greater tendency to clog sewerage reticulation systems than synthetic detergents. The grease trap of a non-sewered house was often laden with soap. But the most important reason for the displacement of soap is the fact that, when a carboxylic acid soap is used in hard water, precipitation occurs....You may live in an area where the water is extremely soft. But calcium and magnesium ions are present in the dirt that you wash out of your clothes, so that some precipitation still occurs if soap is used, and gradually deposits are built up in the fabric.

There are other disadvantages with soap; it deteriorates on storage, and it lacks cleaning power when compared with the modern synthetic surfactants, which can be designed to perform specialised cleaning tasks. Finally and very importantly from a domestic laundry point of view, soap does not rinse out; it tends to leave a residue behind in the fabric that is being washed. A residue gradually builds up and causes bad odour, deterioration of the fabric and other associated problems."

(Also interesting- the amount of foam generally does not correspond to the amount of cleaning power a substance has, unless you have very little liquid involved.)

"Question [#4]: How Do Detergents Clean?

...Modern detergents contain more than surfactants. Cleaning products may also contain enzymes to degrade protein-based stains, bleaches to de-color stains and add power to cleaning agents, and blue dyes to counter yellowing. Like soaps, detergents have hydrophobic or water-hating molecular chains and hydrophilic or water-loving components. The hydrophobic hydrocarbons are repelled by water, but are attracted to oil and grease. The hydrophilic end of the same molecule means that one end of the molecule will be attracted to water, while the other side is binding to oil."

Here is one thing I found particularly interesting from this article:

"Neither detergents nor soap accomplish anything except binding to the soil until some mechanical energy or agitation is added into the equation. Swishing the soapy water around allows the soap or detergent to pull the grime away from clothes or dishes and into the larger pool of rinse water. Rinsing washes the detergent and soil away. Warm or hot water melts fats and oils so that it is easier for the soap or detergent to dissolve the soil and pull it away into the rinse water."

Summary of How Soap/Detergent Works Research:

SO.  Soaps are from animal or plant sources; detergents are (generally) made with petroleum byproducts.  Soaps and detergents/surfactants (let's ignore the other ingredients in commercial detergents for now) are just Mr. Banana Grabbering oil/grease and its attached dirt, with the aid of agitation.  Soaps and detergents do NOT disinfect, like bleach.

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Throughout the history of time, then, scullery hoes rendered dirty plates suitable for eating on again by essentially pushing the germ-attached dirt away.  However, the thinking today is often that old timey people were gross and probably gangrenous, and that if we don't avail ourselves to the triclosany fruits of modern science, we will be too.  This brings me to the next question:

Question #5:  How Clean Do Dishes Need To Be To Be Safe?

At this point, I think we've all heard the arguments against chemical antibacterial cleaners like the aforementioned triclosan because they inhibit our body's ability to naturally defend itself and lead to the creation of superbugs.  But even ignoring that, it looks like a number of tests indicate that use of antibacterial cleaners doesn't actually make you less likely to get sick.  I think this Scientific American blog provides a pretty readable rundown of this (if you want to really nerd out, Rae-style, read some of the comments section).  If you're too busy being a modern 90s businesswoman to read it, it notes that a professor who "surveyed all of the experimental or quasi-experimental studies published in English between 1980 and 2006 on the effectiveness of different hand washing strategies" discovered that plain soap and water was more efficacious at preventing disease than the antibacterials. 

Apparently, the effects of antibacterial cleaners are still not well understood, but some scientists think that they are disruptive because they kill the regular bacteria that live on us, leaving us more vulnerable to freeloading newcomers who just Houseguest their way in.  Because apparently, it seems like the key to healthy cleaning is really in limiting the number of bacteria that gets all up in you, not firebombing them into oblivion. 

Conclusion:

After delaying this post for way too long, perhaps distracted by that Jeff Goldblum painting, my conclusion is that for the dishes to be "safe," any soap/detergent that's effective at removing food debris is adequate, especially since a dishwasher supplies reasonably hot water.  However, a dishwasher that really effectively removes all the grime is somewhat rare in my experience- more often, this process is usually aided by some manual pre-rinsing or scrubbing.  So with both manual and automatic dishwashing, it's not imprudent to consider additives to the dish soap or dishwashing detergent that will make it more efficacious, as long as the environmental or human impact is benign.  The seventh generation detergent includes the following ingredients:

Sodium carbonate (water softener and alkalinity builder), sodium sulfate and sodium chloride (promote flowability), citric acid (water softener), sodium silicate (protection agent and alkalinity builder), polyaspartic acid (water softener and anti-filming agent), ppg-10-laureth-7 (anti-spotting agent), sodium percarbonate (removes stains and water softener), protease and amylase (enzyme soil removers).

Enzymes, citric acid, other shit I don't know about- these all work to make the detergent more effective and to address some of the deficiencies noted about soap above, like its tendency to form soap scum.  From some cursory googling, it looks like it's certainly possible to make your own enzyme cleaners from citrus peels, to get your hands on some citric acid by merely opening a Kool Aid packet, and to throw a bunch of stuff together to make your own detergent.  But unless you have an obscenely cheaper source of these ingredients, per pound, than what this costs, which is not much, it looks like you're better off spending your spare time getting drunk and making bread, because carbs are a lot better baby daddy bait than soap.  
(N.B. That's certainly not to say this is the case with all DIY cleaning products- throwing some citrus peels or drops of essential oil in a bottle of vinegar to make toilet bowl cleaner takes approximately 10 seconds and it definitely saves you a considerable amount of money on something you're literally throwing down the drain.  But with more complicated recipes, again, if you have disposable income, just spend it on the Rossi.)
 

RAW MEAT MUFFINS FOR A YOUNG MAN!

A question I should probably ask myself when I write new posts about homemade dog food is, hey, Heather, do you want to make that same ODB joke over and over again about liking it raw, or do you want to post gratuitous photos of Donut?  And I should limit myself and say, hey, you can have one, not the other.

So here he is in a raincoat!

Here he is in another raincoat!

Okay, now that I've indulged that, I'll get to some content

SIKE HERE HE IS ON TOP OF A SHELF BEING WORRIED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

He is just the tiniest.  Well, that was worth missing out on ODB for

SIKE HERE IT IS!!!!


Like you didn't want to watch this too.

Anyway, like yesterday's post about trying to simplify cooking oatmeal from scratch, I'm continuously trying to find lazier ways to handle homemade dog food.  Obviously, few things can compete with the convenience of scooping up a cup of dry dog food and adding water, like with kibble.  But since it's undeniable how well Donut has done on raw meat, it's now additional bougie guilt I have to deal with.  So I have to figure out how to make it manageable, time-wise, while making it possible with the space (I have an unnecessarily small freezer) and financial constraints I have.

At first, I'd make a batch of ground beef heart, liver, and old bull, plus some quinoa and vegetables, freeze half, and put the rest in the refrigerator.  He liked it, and dogs can tolerate meat going a little past its prime (pause?), but it still got kind of gross in the fridge, plus every morning it meant I was scooping out raw meat, and he'd kind of make a mess of it on the floor.  Like I said yesterday, in the morning, I am really just tryna handle my morning wood, so this got old.  Plus, if I go away on the weekends I often miss the farmer's market, and I don't get out of work on time to pick up meat (pause again?) in Manhattan.  (Even though I work near Chelsea TERRIBLE JOKES!)

Hence, over the summer I caved, and just bought that dehydrated raw dog food from the honest kitchen that the young man used to eat.  I was also worried that he wasn't getting enough nutrients in his diet, so I liked that the honest kitchen food had so many different vegetables in it.  But I still felt like he needed legit beef.

When I had my shit a little more together, I finally was around to go to the farmer's market, but they didn't have the old bull, just heart and liver.  Heart is muscle meat anyway, and it's the cheapest thing they have, so I figured this was okay, since liver has a shitload of nutrients.  And that night, as I was grinding it in the food processor, I had a moment of laziness inspiration- what if I measured the right portion in each cup in a muffin tin and froze it?  That way, I'd end up with a bunch of little patties that I could throw in a ziplock and keep in the freezer, and every morning I could just take one out and put it in his bowl.

I sprayed the tin with canola oil first- if you attempt this yourself, do not skip this, because those fuckers get stuck.  I put 1/4 cup of the ground meat/quinoa mixture in each, froze it overnight, and in the morning...I could not get them out.  I was about to have another CLASSIC Heather moment in which I was like, EVERYTHING TURNS TO FAILURE but fortunately, after thawing for about 20 minutes, they came right out, and everything went according to plan.

Well, everything except what Donut did with it.  I figured he'd let it thaw a little first and nibble throughout the day, but his ass WENT for it.  On the comforter on the couch.  Ew.  He LOVES spiriting things away!  So I had to train him that he could only bring it to his dog bed under the kitchen table (which gets washed regularly).  But, hey, It Works, It Works For Me- he really likes those meat muffins.

The morning feeding routine now is that he gets 1/4 cup of the dehydrated raw food in the morning with a 1/4 cup meat muffin on top.  And that's literally all I have to do.  With dogs, you can technically feed them only once a day, so I started doing this because I really have no idea what time I'll get home on a given night, so this was the best way to give him some consistency with feeding and not keep him waiting for hours.

So, if you're a real Suze Orman,

Pictured: Who I prefer to think of as *the* Real Suze Orman and the "real" La Prohibida

right now you're probably thinking, Hey Boyfriend, how much is all of this costing?  Stupidly, I'm not sure where I put that envelope where I did all my financial calculations, but it worked out that the meat muffins (made from exactly the kind of bougie beef one would assume it would be, plus organic quinoa) cost about the same per serving as the honest kitchen dog food.  However, the meat muffins had significantly more meat in them (and a more expensive meat- the packaged food has turkey), so I think that if I made the vegetable portion myself, it would all work out to be cheaper, while being local, organic, and all of that shit.

My game plan, should I get my act together enough, is to get really crazy with my dehydrator and make a big batch of dried assorted vegetables so that I can cut the packaged food out entirely.  That way, I can buy whatever is cheapest at the time at the farmer's market (or just steal it from my mom's garden), when it's in season, and keep adding to it continually, such that I never have to worry about running out of dry food for him.  Then, I can put the foods into the muffins that don't necessarily keep forever at room temperature, like the meat itself, flax seed, and the quinoa (or quinoa flour- I'm trying to decide what form I should feed it to him in).

The whole point here, like with the last entry, is that by doing some advance prep work when you actually have time, you can cook from scratch using all the pansy ingredients that are better for you, for your small dog, and for the environment, and you can even make it cost less and behave much like a packaged convenience food.  Making your pet's food from scratch every day is definitely not feasible for anyone with a normal weekday drinking problem or, really, anyone who has a job or friends.  But you might be surprised about how painless it can be to integrate this into your lifestyle.

Even if that small young man in your life STAYS giving you judgment eyes from a bag and throwing up on your hair in the middle of the night...

Steel Cut Oats 2012: My Colon Is Poppin, B (Pause)

A chief hobby of mine, as you all might know, is stealing books from World War II veterans, and also from my mom.  One such pilfering was a Weight Watchers slow cooker cookbook.  WAIT THOUGH I NEED TO QUOTE SISQO HOLD UP.  I know that just seeing the words "Weight Watchers" just made you anxious.  It made me anxious too!  When I tried that foolishness in high school it was basically baby eating disorder training.  It is an excellent introduction into the world of rabid calorie counting that I would one day witness at its apex (which, if I recall, is also a pretty good gay club in Baltimore...THEY PLAYED SO MANY BRITNEY SPEARS REMIXES!) when Suzie and I had that Renfrew suitemate who cooked calorie free salad dressing until it hardened into a cracker, giving an acrid vinegar ambiance to the entire apartment.

However, there are some very good recipes in this cook book that you can easily modify to be less dumb.  One of these is for steel cut oatmeal, which nicely addresses breakfast, a meal that is often neglected or suffering in nutrients.  For example, when I was a young person and the whole world was like Portland is now


and I wanted a "cool" flannel shirt for Christmas, I ate either cereal or instant oatmeal packets every day.  At the time, the packaging was bound to make a slew of health claims that moms stayed believing (although such claims on highly processed foods are now generally viewed as quite dubious).  And fuck, if I was a mom trying to Do It All, I'm sure I would have resorted to easy breakfasts like this that kids can prepare themselves and that allow the kind of variety that reduces young person squabbling.  But unfortunately, now we know better and we can't eat vitamin-enriched Lucky Charms, thinking they're healthy, unless we're just going balls to the wall and dipping a giant spoonful of Nutella into the box, twirling it around, and calling it a day.  A sad, sad, downward spiraling day.

Anyway!  No one here does that so it's cool!  Back to steel cut oats!

Steel cut oats have a better flavor than instant, but I find them annoying and time consuming to cook on the stove, especially in the morning when I am just tryna handle my morning wood and stumble out the door.  By throwing them in the slow cooker the night before, they're ready in the morning when you wake up.  Here's the recipe that I adapted from Weight Watchers:

Slow Cooker Steel Cut Oats

1 1/2 c      water
1 1/2 c      milk
1 c            steel cut oats
3               apples, cut up

Cooking spray

Optional: mad other shit

Directions: throw the water and milk in a pot and bring to a boil.  Spray the inside of the slow cooker with cooking spray because it's kind of a bitch to clean.  Pour the boiling mixture in.  Add the oats and the apples and various optional things I will note shortly.  Cook on low overnight (6 hours).

Now,  here is why Steven says my tranny name should be "Options For Days."  There is a lot you can, and should, add to this basic recipe, both before and after cooking.

During cooking:

• Pumpkin pie spices (cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves)
• Vanilla bean- since I make my own vanilla extract by sticking a vanilla bean in a tiny bottle and filling it with vodka, periodically I'll grab a piece of vanilla bean, after it's flavored the vodka, and throw it in with the oatmeal mixture.
• Other extracts- I haven't tried this, but why not?  Life is for living, guys.
• Other fruits- use whatever you have handy.  Strawberries are very delicious in this when they're in season.
• Butter- get fat with it!
• Sugar- get tropical fat with it!

After cooking (both to preserve nutrients and for taste) amendments to add for health purposes:

• Wheat bran
• Wheat germ
• Chia seeds
• Ground flax seeds
• Chopped or slivered nuts (pause)
• Bee pollen- it tastes so weird, but then you start liking it, plus you can pretend that you are a baby honey bee!
• Other healthy things the internet tells you to eat

Also, I always add maple syrup or honey so that it will actually taste good.  I figure that if I'm choking down (pause) that many healthy things I've earned it.

I'm going to guess right now that you're probably thinking that some of these additions are a little time consuming in the morning.  Well, I have put some thought into this, which I'll add in bullet point form to a list that I will entitle

Efficiency Modifications!

1. Dried apples
   
   A slight inconvenience to this recipe process is cutting up apples.  Yes, obviously, this isn't a difficult task, but if you're trying to do this before going to bed, each additional task added to the process gets in the way of you doing this kind of cooking from scratch regularly.  You have to wash the apples, cut them up, wash the cutting board and knife so the cockroaches don't spirit them away in the night, and dispose of the cores, because it's not like Donut is going to eat three of them quickly before going to bed, no matter how much he likes apple cores.  (And then, you're also wasting the apple cores.)  However, if you have a big container of dried, appropriately-sized-for-oatmeal pieces stocked in your kitchen at all times, you can just grab a handful and throw it in.  I tried it this last time, and it worked nicely.
   
   A game plan I'm going to work on is to take some time some weekend to both dehydrate a fuck ton of apples and to make apple vodka.  (This would also work for pears, too!)  Basically, as you're cutting up the apples to dry, you just throw the cores in a jar and fill it with vodka.  I'm even thinking that after the vodka has taken on the apple flavor, you can cook the cores down to make into applesauce or apple butter (you'd need a food mill for this), but I haven't tried this yet.  This way, the cores don't get wasted, and you get three useful products out of your apples, rather than one- my hobo loins are so quivering right now!
   
   Even if you're not getting a multi-product, I think drying other fruits to add in to the oatmeal would be great as well.  So far, I've only found that apples and pears yield a useful side product for liquor flavoring (although I guess quinces have cores too?), but I'm sure there other things I could try...
2. Pre-ground jar of flax seed in the refrigerator
   
   Okay so obviously, you are probably not going to grind whole flax seeds that you bought from the bulk bin a the grocery store in the morning when you're just trying to go to work.  I grind about an eight ounce jar's worth and keep it in the refrigerator.
3. Dry oatmeal add-ins container
   
   In terms of adding the dry options above, I've tended to haphazardly spoon a bunch of stuff into the oatmeal before heading to work.  I'm thinking that it might be smarter to make a giant mix of all the things that don't have to be refrigerated (I think that's everything except the flax seeds) so you can just dump one scoop in and be done with it.  (And, as always, it's a good idea to buy these things in bulk bins, where possible.)
    
4. Freezer storage
   
   Since the oatmeal is, obviously, hot in the morning after I make it, I don't put it in the refrigerator or otherwise package it, since it's not good to put hot foods into a fridge or freezer.  I just leave it out and deal with it when I get home from work.  Then, I package up the remaining servings (usually three more), including the dry toppings, the flax seed, and the maple syrup, and keep them in the freezer, so when I leave for work in the morning all I have to do is grab it (pause).

So there you go.  Oatmeal, apple vodka, grabbing mad nuts.  It's going to be a VERY deluxe 2012 for this intestinal system indeed!

Note: I couldn't find the original Weight Watchers recipe on the net to give proper credit, but here is this other exciting Weight Watchers recipe, to fatten up as you choose: Pumpkin Steel Cut Oats (you can also sub in sweet potatoes)

This Is A Text My Intercourse Partner Sent Me About The Response He Hoped Would Follow Him Announcing His Resignation from Our Mutual Workplace

Because this is a public forum, I will redact who it is referencing.  It reads:

"I bet he goes home and thinks about it for a good, long while.  The icy shadow of a thousand finger-like barren tree branches casts ominously over his face as he peers out of a window.  He slowly swirls a glass of brandy, his eyes transfixed on the night to come.  He knows what storm is on the horizon, and knows that he is powerless against it.  He turns to his bride, sleeping peacefully in the large four post bed in their ornate master bedroom.  The softness of her 400 thread count full body pillowcase fills the room with an invisible glow.  Her silk screened turkey, lettuce, and tomato hero embossing glistens gently in the moonlight.  [Redacted] draws a heavy breath and lets out a beleaguered sigh.  It's going to be a long night indeed."

Dispatches From A Cock Hiatus, or Exile from Bonehenge

So I think we all know how I rang in the new year this year, because a story of throwing up in a jumpoff's bed is appropriate and charming in party settings.  That incident aside, I got the job done one more time like two weeks later (birthday present), and then I was like FALL BACK INTERCOURSE I'M OUT.  And so, Cock Hiatus 2011 commenced.

There were several reasons I decided to go boneless.  For one thing, I was paranoid that sex put me off my game, and I'd watch friends get dickmatized and feel like they fell off, which I wanted to avoid.  Also, the simple act of placing a penis in a vagina very dangerously leads to relationships, with the accompanying saccharine displays of emotion that I find so unbecomingly unmanly, since I've classically been viewed as a stallion and a real Guy's guy. So I started to have this visceral reaction to it like, NO THANK YOU SIR.

The most compelling reason to hop off, though, I guess, if I'm going to admit to being a pussy, was that I felt like I'd made some poor coupling decisions the past year that had been detrimental to me hustle-wise and emotionally, and I wanted to be extremely careful that I didn't repeat that.  I mean, duh, I know at least Melissa is really happy that we have Have A Merry Christmas I'm Sure You Will, the pink fur blanket story, and Was His Dick Bigger Than Mine.  And actually, yeah, I'm not entirely mad at that.  But it made me very reticent to enter into anything else (pause).

[At this point I should probably mention that I started writing this with Snowtober (ugh) outside and Leah and I were sitting in the kitchen drinking three buck Chuck, eating bread (with and without the Thai red curry/cilantro compound butter, from a Martha Stewart Living recipe), and dancing to LMFAO's "Shots," because we've been down with I'm In Miami Bitch since 2008.  So this writing is just terribly disjointed, but I've got to get back into the habit somehow...]

Anyway, so I made that cock hiatus decision, and I was like, I am going to vet the fuck out of anyone else who's tryna get it in, I am going to get some crucial homesteading done, and I am going to be a sick ass businesswoman.  And, in the past few months, although work and irresponsible drinking has made it somewhat difficult to do projects AND to write about them, being penis-free really allowed me to focus on sloppily imitating Joan Holloway in the workplace and bending over in pencil skirts whenever possible and cooking whole chickens and accidentally lighting my hair on fire and crying in nerd offices. 

In that vein, I give you Dispatches From A Cock Hiatus, or Exile From Bonehenge, which has come to a finish, though I know this might be hard news to hear (HAHA GET IT FINISH? HARD? LOLZ!).  So, compared to unemployment, I spent a lot more time the past year adjusting my shoulder pads and tryna hop on pretty much anyone who can write an automated platform in Ruby, and less time actually documenting projects.  But despite regularly feeling like, as Leah puts it, a human disaster, I did try a fair number of projects, which I will very briefly and mostly photographically document below.

This chickenhead set my hair on fire.

Based on a somewhat whack Martha Stewart reuse tidbit, I made what turned out to be a pretty delicious mustard vinaigrette in this old mustard bottle.

Hey quit STALKing me- LOL!  GET IT BECAUSE IT'S STALKS?  The picture above and below demonstrate how I tried to cook the stalks of tougher greens (I want to say...crap, it's not kale or chard.  I straight up don't remember.) and also onion greens.  It was okay, and a good way to use parts of vegetables you might sometimes throw away, but if I'm going to be this healthy I should be adding bacon to this.

My propensity to wear exclusively shoes from the thrift store means that after a night out and crashing at Miriam's apartment, I had to do a walk of shame not based on intercourse, but based on the fact that I needed tape to hold my shoes together.  However, my thought on this is that I feel like even when I buy shoes from real stores, you just put them through such a beating living in New York that your pumps might as well be $3.  Unless anyone has solid recommendations on something durable, comfortable, fashionable, and environmentally friendly?

Growing plants from a cutting!  With some plants, like the basil and lemon verbena below, if you snip off a piece and keep it in water, in a couple of weeks, roots will grow.

If your onions start doing this, you can snip the greens off and use them like chives or scallions.

The oldest mom trick in the book- cut herbs (here it's cilantro), add some water, and freeze them in ice cube trays.  Pop them out and store in a separate container or ziplock.  I used these for that Thai red curry paste butter Martha Stewart recipe.

(The aforementioned Martha Stewart butter.)

Corn muffins- these were a little dry.  That butter I made was pretty good on them, but I'd like to try a different recipe next time.

Chive harvest

I beefcakely installed both air conditioners in my apartment.

Not related to homesteading, but a building safety note I taped up in our office.

My work bro Kunal got me orchids!  Look at my classy covered with bags workspace!

The next few pictures are of the calamondin orange tree BFLAN got me last Christmas- as the oranges ripened, I pierced them and stored them whole in vodka.  AND NOW THERE ARE EVEN MORE READY TO BE PICKED!

I also made rosemary liqueur (rosemary vodka + sugar syrup below).  I think I still need to find the right things to mix it with, and to play around with cooking with it- Brooklyn social has a lemon drink with rosemary that I'd like to replicate.  But the rest of this bottle lives with Laura now!

Straining the Meyer lemon zest from YES THAT'S RIGHT the lemons I grew and soaked in vodka.  In the picture under that, I dried the strained zests in the dehydrator, but I haven't tried to use them in cooking yet...

Above and below, parts of the process of making the Buddha's hand citron liqueur, and dehydrating the pieces after.

This is the first page of my former students' favorite Stephen Hawking joint, that I found in Miriam's apartment...no wonder why they love it and "pink holes."

Sweet majoram and nasturtiums- currently thriving hanging from the curtain rod in the kitchen window.  While this is technically a sub-irrigating planter I built (with a takeout container inside to function as the water reservoir), I think it's broken, so the way it gets watered is that each day, I empty out Donut's water bowl into it, which magically seems to be just the amount of water it needs.

A FLATTERING PICTURE OF JESSI AND MELISSA WASHING UP AFTER STRAWBERRY PICKING THAT WASN'T ACTUALLY AS MUCH FUN AS THE IDYLLIC BACKGROUND IN THE PHOTOGRAPH SUGGESTS!

Above: the haul.  

Below: I used it to make strawberry vodka, left, and strawberry rhubarb vodka, right.  

Not pictured: Me, Steven, Dan, Garrett, and surprise homo Marjan mixing the strawberry rhubarb with champagne in McCarren park, somehow drunkenly ordering chicken delivery to our Mexican blanket in the park, and me falling asleep on Steven's couch while they watched Dance Moms.

The next three pictures are my attempts at cooking vegan macaroni and cheese, using white beans and ground cashews to make a creamy sauce.  I caved and added cheese to one batch.  Because like...fucking not eating cheese.

At one point last winter, I was able to buy frozen whole tomatoes at the farmer's market.  It's typically been difficult to find local frozen vegetables in the winter, although resources have started to pop up. You can freeze tomatoes whole, if you have the freezer space- they won't have the right texture for eating raw, but they cook well enough.

Before I switched bedrooms, I installed this air conditioner, and my mom made these curtains, which are insulated to keep heat in.  She also made the gold quilt.  The two crocheted blankets were made by my grandma, who I sometimes refer to as "Osteoporosa."  Donut was probably made by two very sad dogs in a puppy mill OR "Tha Streetz."

Cochito, Puerto Rican holiday drink that people are not that crazy about when the summer is really hot and you're offering them a thick milky drink (pause).  I didn't care, and I drank that almost entirely myself in the July heat.  Sara's mom introduced it to me and it is delicious.

Purslane- either a weed your mom steps on in between the raised beds in her garden, or an expensive, highly nutritious farmer's market green.  It has more Omega 3's than almost any other plant!  Also it's sort of gross!

Still not literally but figuratively scarred by lighting my bangs on fire, I tried slow cooking a chicken this time.  The skin doesn't come out crispy unless you follow it by a little time in the oven, but it will be pretty moist (pause) and very suitable for sandwiches.

On that note, a chicken salad sandwich made with purslane is much more delicious if you add a shit ton of mayo.

Moments later, Steven, careening out of control, spurred on by the jingles of his tambourine from Night of 1,000 Stevies, collapsed into a blanket of lesbians.  He texted me the next morning that he had literally calloused his hands with it but "wasn't mad."  This is only homesteading related in that his manic percussive energy is what gives me inspiration to make beautiful sloppy creations of my own.

Bigger is not always better.  I bought these two cantaloupes from the farmer's market, and they kind of sucked.  I tried to make vodka with them, and it was literally the grossest flavor of Top Shelf Spirits I have ever made.

Before I trimmed this bad boy down to make basil vodka, this is how big it got (pause).

In case anyone wonders where my pack rat tendencies come from, this is my mother's sewing workshop in our basement.

Fancy specialty sewing machines!

Mint I picked from my mom's herb garden in a desperate attempt to discourage mice from the apartment, next to clothing she altered for me and an old cigar box that she does not know I now use to store condoms.

A ridiculous failure.  I spent a day researching sources online for uses for pineapple skins, and found that Central American people have been making pineapple ale from them for centuries.  You add water, heat it to a certain temperature, add some spices, let it sit for a few days, and then...I'm not really sure, because I somehow fucked it up and it tasted real gross.

A summer homemade dog food mixture- raw beef heart mixed with ground squash.  It went over okay.

Atlantic City is RIPE for a hipster overhaul.  They just don't know it yet.

Breakfast casserole- just throw cubes of bread, eggs, vegetables, some milk, and a ton of cheese over it.  BLAMO.

According to Putting Food By, which my grandfather said "is a loan, not a gift" even though I still haven't returned it anyway, for best results you should blanch corn before freezing it.

The lemon tree, before a tragic plant-knocking-over and subsequent underripe-lemon-falling-off incident.  HOWEVER I moved it to the bathroom, next to the orange tree, and guess who has a bunch of new leaf growth?

Mama Flan taught me that an easy way to get the skins off of tomatoes is to boil them in hot water just briefly until their skins crack, at which point you can slide it off with your fingers.  Then, I attempted to make tomato sauce by cutting the tomatoes up in the food processor and dumping them into a slow cooker.  It tasted good, but to have the right sauce consistency, you really need to add some tomato paste.  So the way I use it now is to add vegetables and flavor to those boxes of organic tomato soup.

Also I added this basil, which I gave to my mom for Mother's Day as a little six pack of seedlings.

I did all of these activities during the hurricane.  Before it hit, we picked a lot of what was in her garden in case it was going to get destroyed.  Luckily, her plants fared much better than expected and almost nothing was damaged.

My mom's herb garden!  Pictured: lavender, chamomile, mint, lemonbalm, oregano, sage.  Not pictured: comfrey and some kind of busted rosemary.

Partially due (dare to dream!) to my obsessive insistence, when my parents took down the pool, my dad used the wood from the deck he'd built (MY PARENTS ARE OBSESSED WITH DECKS) to build raised beds for my mom's vegetable garden.  This year, she grew beans on a trellis, tomatoes along one side, peppers, basil, and dahlias.  In the corner is the compost bin my mom uses now (yay!).  Next year, I'm hoping to get some companion plants into the mix.

I sent my second calamondin orange tree to my parents' plant sanitarium to recover from its hoodrat existence.  At first I thought it was basically dead, but it came back!  However, the chives I'd planted around it grew much quicker. 

A somewhat sloppier version of the sub-irrigating planters I'd made in the past, I stuck this in a stainless steel bucket and called it a day.

When Kailin and Brian got married in October, her mom had these made, and we're all pretty jealous.

In what was perhaps one of the best moments of my one year Businesswoman career, one of my co-workers mailed this tumbleweed to the office because I requested one pretty desperately when they all went on a business trip to Dallas.  His name is Tumbleweed, because my childhood was a history of uninteresting generic nomenclature for my stuffed animals, like "black rabbit" or "Puffalump."

MANZIES that is a lot of pretty okay memories.  So, this is what I remember from my cock hiatus, which ended right before Brian and Kristy's wedding in a historic barn which was really fun even though Melissa and Jessi and I didn't get to wear period-appropriate costumes the venue advertised for rent on its website, and before LEAH MOVED IN THE NEXT DAY BRINGING WITH HER AN OIL PAINTING OF CATS AND A MUG THAT SAYS "YOU'RE PURRFECT."

But, here's a sneak preview of all the botanical adventure that ensued AFTER the cock hiatus...

 

LADY PAUSE!!!! (GET IT BECAUSE THEY LOOK LIKE VAGINAS)