What's Your Beef?

Research the difference between grass-fed beef and that which is corporately raised.  www.eatwild.com

Unsurprisingly, grass-fed beef has a lower fat percentage which means you get more protein and nutrients with less total calories.  This switch is the caloric equivalent of not having to exercise off 5 extra pounds of fat per year if you were eating a typical amount of beef (2.9oz/day).  Grass beef also has more omega-3's, conjugated linoleic acid, and higher vitamin and mineral content (E, beta carotene, B complex, calcium, magnesium, potassium).  

The challenge with grass fed has more to do with confusing labeling.  "Organic" designation does not guarantee the animal was fed grass.  "Pasture-raised" means the animal spent the last 120 days of its life on grass.  "Grass-fed" is the ideal of cattle who spent their life eating grass.  

Read MaryJane's take on the importance of organic beef at www.maryjanesfarm.org/ieatmeat.asp

Wow, did MJF write this at least 8 years ago?  This post has aged pretty well and it seems public awareness is at a point where this argument isn't that controversial anymore.  I skimmed the Blood Type book cited a few years back and concluded it was more fad than fact, but the fact that we can tell from DNA who is more likely to be able to metabolize dairy, get diabetes more frequently, be heavier than average or dislike cilantro does hint that there may be genetically linked differences in what diets work best for people.  

Write down what you learned and how, if at all, it has changed your mind about the meat you eat.  

I wish there was more discussion about the quantity of meat consumed.  To throw another fad diet into the debate, the high-longevity Blue Zones diets claim their adherents average about 10 oz of meat per month, which is about a tenth of what Jo Robinson believes the average intake of beef is these days.  If we are all largely in agreement that grass-fed is best, would we be willing to cut back our consumption of beef to just the quantity of quality beef our budget could support?  

Within our household, we differ on this point.  I will pre-emptively buy the grass-fed items.  In an effort to not let them spoil, I store them in the freezer, requiring a defrost.  My husband, far more carnivorous, can emerge from his office ravenous often prefers to go to the grocery store over his lunch hour and buy the commercially raised loss leader before considering defrost options.  Now we have leftover mystery meat languishing in our fridge, which out of a mix of guilt and convenience, I find myself eating so as not to waste it.  There is lots of room for improvement in this cycle, don't you think?      

Publicly, I am vegetarian.  My rationale is largely to avoid mystery meats, decrease my ecofootprint and because it is harder to overindulge in less energy dense plant-based entrees.  This started 6 years ago when Covid exposed slaughterhouse supply chain shortages.  I made a game for myself to watch a video about commercial meat production for every meaty meal I ate.  Pretty soon, I was salting my plate with tears and prefering to go without.  I have not done this exercise for dairy and suspect much of my meat consumption was offset by increased cheese consumption.  

Privately, it is more complicated.  I am struggling with body composition in perimenopause.  I've come around to entertaining the idea that increased protein intake (ideally above 100 g/day) will help maintain and build muscle that my excessive cardio was otherwise metabolizing preferentially to body fat.  More protein also seems to help with satiation and avoiding unplanned binges on high carb and processed food that would lay down even more intractable body fat.  I still try to source protein from whole food plant sources (i.e. beans, tofu) first, but supplement with vegetarian protein powders to avoid GI distress when experiencing cravings or too busy to meal prep.  That said, I consider a protein powder and fake meats processed food and am now incorporating carefully sourced meat dishes which have the potential to be less processed.  

For instance, we toured a local cattle ranch that grazes cows in the southern California foothills for fire and flood mitigation.  We have been working through 15 or so pounds of cuts sourced from them.  I converted some of the ground beef into a meat loaf (with home grown celery greens, onions and garlic) we smoked for Father's day yesterday that was surprisingly good.  However, I still prefer to think of ethically sourced meat as a garnish/treat rather than a staple on my plate.  

Get it Together- storage container audit

 

"To be truly able to function on a high level in the kitchen, you need space and organization.  Pull out all your storage containers.  If you don't use them, toss or recycle.  If they don't have a lid, toss or recycle (unless you really do use it lidless), and toss and recycle all those abandoned lids (we all have them!) that don't fit anything left in the cupboard."  

By this point, I've streamlined my storage containers to a few species:  

1.  Wide mouth mason jars - great for dried bulk storage as well as bean/soup easy meal prep

2.  Pyrex 2 cup bowls - double as cereal bowls and everyone seems to have a few of them, so our inventory ebbs and flows with the circulation of potluck dishes and housewarming gifts 

3.  Fit packers (meal prep rounded rectangular containers with see through lids) - go-to for leftovers since we often cook a double batch and can easily eat straight out of the reheated container without dirtying more dishes.  We can stack these 6 or 7 high in our chest fridge without worrying they might fall and break.  They are also the perfect length to span across our chest fridge upper compartment storage baskets to put leftovers that really need to get consumed soon front and center.  

4.  Round deli containers - these are great for sending the kid to the car with a back seat snack and not worrying they will get bobbled and broken along the way.  I also favor these for potluck/hostess type of items when I don't think the recipient will go out of her way to return the empty dish.  The majority of these are retired when my kid turns them into germination stations and bug habitats, for Science!    

5.  Small round plastic snack/condiment containers.  We started with 20 or so of these in order to bring individual materials for an over elaborate preschool snack, perhaps it was single servings of banana ice cream from the surplus that ripened on our trees all at once.  The stock has dwindled to 4 now since these also made great cat food scoops, mini bug habitats, containers for dice and other small toys, etc.    

But even with a limited array of storage containers, there were a few cupboards I had started approaching with dread for fear of a landslide of corroded mason jar lids or the chaos triggered by crowded corner of orphaned lids.  Today was a big day for recycling, plus moving two honey dippers to the donation bin.  I feel lighter.  I will set an annual reminder on my seasonal cleaning lists to reaudit.    

In the future, I also aspire to move away from plastic (did you flinch when you read about reheating the plastic containers and eating straight out of them?) but we haven't yet found anything to beat the stacking convenience of the rectangular fitpackers for leftovers, a drop-friendly serving/"I'm full" (after eating 1 goldfish) storage bowl for little hands, and the plastic mason jar lids have a much longer lifespan because they don't rust and canning isn't really our jam yet (see what I did there?).  

If anyone has any suggestions to level up our storage though, please let me know!    

Buzzing about Bees

**Beginner Level** 

"Watch the trailer of the movie www.vanishingbees.com"  

5/19 - Watched the Vanishing of the Bees trailer.  I couldn't find a source to stream the full length documentary, but I found The Pollinators which explores similar challenges and was filmed 10 years later.  At this point, commercial beekeepers are likened to the last cowboys, herding bees across the country.  Their entire inventory is deployed for the almond bloom.  They are continuing to see losses of 30% per year and say now it is de rigueur to split and re-queen all their hives annually.  The stress of pesticides, herbicides (defoliate apple bloom so only the 1 king apple flower is pollinated for larger more perfect produce), varoa mites and the loss of grassland forage in the midwest to soybeans and corn is unsustainable.  

What can we do?  Opt for local organic produce grown in season, tolerate blemished or otherwise imperfect produce, buy domestic honey even if it is more expensive, avoid the use of pesticides and other "jugs of chemicals" on our own properties, plant flower forage for bees and consider getting into backyard beekeeping ourselves.   

Plant bee-friendly flowers in your garden

4/30 our Girl Scout council hosted a Zoom session with a local beekeeper that young cultivator and I listened to.  Did you know a single honey bee makes 1/12 a teaspoon of honey?!  Savage's book corroborated this finding, but I was so impressed the presenter knew this statistic off the top of her head to answer a young scout's question.  While we listened, YC and I colored in bee finger puppets (see image) and flew them around the yard, mock pollinating.  The lecturing beekeeper also suggested that bees particularly like plants which make small purple flowers.  A UC Davis resource corroborates, featuring mostly purples and a few golden flowers.    

In our yard, they mob lavender, but I am not sure if it the flower color and shape so much as the fact that it is a long-blooming perennial here that offers them a steady supply.  I have had to watch my step on the sidewalks that have jacaranda (another perennial purple flower) because the bees go after this so hard, they are climbing into blooms that have fallen on the ground.  Conversely, our California pepper tree sounds like it is humming with bees but its flowers are tiny white ones, which is a vote for perennial bloomers rather than purples.  That said, our 2+ story house is painted purple and gold so maybe the bees are pulled in just based on the am-bee-ance?  Maybe we should paint it peptobismol pink and see if we draw even more (Secret Life of Bees house (assignment below)).  A Reddit query on this topic and found we have a lot of other favored flowers this year -- zinnias (even saw a big black native bee visit these), sunflowers, fruit tree blossoms.  I am adding a sterile variety butterfly bush to my nursery wish list as this was also upvoted by Redditors but came with the caveat that it is considered invasive because it is so low-maintenance it can outcompete natives...  Gee, I kind of wish they hadn't patented a life form to contain it though, at least it is perennial so you aren't having to repurchase it every year.  

Read... 

Secret Life of Bees

by Sue Monk Kidd

This was delightful.  (spoiler alert next 4 paragraphs)

I loved how with the calendar sisters, Kidd created a black sisterhood that would be considered successful by my New England "waspy" standards.  They have financial independence, academic credentials, an accomplished musician, even an eccentric they care for privately and find cause to appreciate.  However, it was apparent how much hard work and lucky breaks it took to achieve this status; a father who was one of the few high-ranking professions available to him, inherited property, the decisions of the sisters not to marry and disburse.  If a few cards fell in another direction, and the cards likely would for most, they might easily have been in Rosaleen's spot of having a conviction they were not treated fairly, but little recourse to challenge the status quo peacefully or improve their position.  If their business wasn't something which helped local farmers; if their terms for the farmers (free honey and pollination) weren't so generous, would they have been as tolerated in the community?    

I also loved how they had woven together a fellowship, rituals and religion around the masthead and eclectic cultures that really spoke to them and helped them make sense of their struggles and those of their ancestors (slavery, the role/value of women in society).  I found myself thinking it could be helpful to build our own "wailing wall" to process grief, to have an Assumption party if we felt August needed more celebration, to incorporate fruit salad candles into our lunch rotation, to fill our bathroom with sea shells to remind us of the ocean, to give ourselves permission to do the minimum (stay hydrated) on the hottest times of the year.  

The "bee" theme was also intriguing to follow through the human saga.  In what ways did the analogy hold up?  In what ways did it break down?  The discussion guide queried who the Queen Bee was and that didn't seem entirely clear.  August seemed to be the "leader," but it wasn't like she was directly filling the hive with her own offspring.  And when May, who seemed like a selfless "worker" sister passed, they followed the black veil tradition to notify the bees which seemed to elevate her to more queenly status.  You might be able to see June agreeing to marry as the hive spawning a second queen.  You might also look at Lily's apprenticeship as beekeeper as spawning another queen, perhaps the "queenless" hive was the problematic dynamic the Owens household had with the loss of her mother.  The "drones" also didn't seem to fit as freeloading breeders, the men contributed to the hive as employees and legal counsel.     

The only area that continued to feel a bit distant, implausible, unrelatable to me, was ironically within the white family.  Perhaps because this story opened with a pre-teen narrator who I immediately assumed was angsty and unreliable, I had trouble believing T. Ray was that bad of a father figure.  However by the end when he is disassociating and threatening her with a knife while calling her by her mother's name, my opinion flipped, and judging by contemporary standards I was questioning why he had custody of the girl for so long.  This opened a personal can of worms for me, questioning the efficacy of therapy and mental health-- my hot take is that in some circumstances, therapy can be helpful but in a sad way; that historically this therapy role was probably handled by friends and the community and now we've turned it into a transactional experience.  Instead of investing in training more therapists, we should be investing in social capital so everyone has people they can turn to for support without having to submit an insurance claim.  

So yes, overall, I am glad this was a suggested read for a badge.  It might be worth a re-read and a personal copy so I can dog-ear some of the more thought-provoking insights about the human condition, but I felt like I got the gist from a single read-through.  I am also excited that it looks like there is both a movie and a Spanish audiobook of it available so that if I am inclined, I could experience it in another language or medium.  

**Intermediate Level**

"Research the health difference between raw honey and processed honey"

Processed honey is flash pasteurized and micro-filtered to increase its shelf life because it is less likely to ferment or crystalize.  However, this comes at the expense of several nutritional benefits as outlined by Mann Lake below (a beekeeping supplier):

Benefit	Raw Honey	Processed Honey
Enzymes	Preserved	Destroyed
Antioxidants	High	Reduced?*
Antibacterial	Strong	Weaker
Nutrients	Rich	Less
Pollen	Included	Removed
Flavor & Aroma	Richer	Uniform
Glycemic Index	Lower	Higher**

However!  A study from the National Honey Board (possibly more commercial/processed interests?) was less conclusive.  In their 3 producer samples, they found enzymes dropped an average of 35% which made sense because the heating can break these down.  *This study found that antioxidants actually increased on average 16.4% in the processed honey.

The source plant for honey can have a big impact on its glycemic index independent of how processed it is.  For instance, honeydew honey is 30-35 while manuka is 50.  **The same resource says raw honey has a lower GI than some processed honeys with raw testing in the 30-45 range.  It posits that enzymes in honey could make it less problematic than its GI would indicate (and we conjecture that if there are more enzymes in raw honey, the benefit would be bigger for raw honey than processed).  It suggests that lighter honeys typically have higher GI than darker honeys and reminds diabetics to be mindful of the quantity of honey consumed regardless of GI score.      

My takeaway from this is that raw honey is, if anything, a bit more nutritious, that you can enjoy the unique terroir of small batch sizes, and you can feel good about supporting your local food shelf if you can find a raw honey supplier.  Opt for that option when stocking your pantry, preferably in smaller quantities because you might experience a shorter shelf life and some crystallization.  But there isn't a need to be hyper vigilant about how honey was processed if consuming a treat that you did not make at home.  From the Pollinators documentary, if you find yourself purchasing processed honey from a US supplier, you are still doing some good by providing them with a revenue stream to help offset the losses they take on their core business of renting their pollination services to industrial farms.

Find a local honey vendor. 

Our farmer's market carries Noah's bees brand honey.  This is sort of local, in that it is West Coast.  I will quiz the vendor next Wednesday about the sourcing for her products, maybe there are two Noahs keeping bees, maybe Noah has expanded his operations.  Ideally, we could find a supplier with hives in Southern California.  After a lot of online spelunking, I found Backyard Bees which will sell at the farmer's market a town over.  [update: $14 over venmo scored me raw honey harvested in my city!  I used it as a sweetener for a turmeric tea mix I bought at the same farmer's market]  I might be seeing things, but I believe Janet, its founder was the guest lecturer at the Girl Scout zoom session and might even be the contact my Scout co-lead had made who was offering to host a bee field trip for our girls.  Small world.  This farmer's market inconveniently meets at the same time as my long triathlon training rides, but as soon as I finish the 70.3 race in July (get moving advanced badge), I am looking forward to making the pilgrimage and stocking up.  If anyone else is struggling with where to find local honey, this locator site was very helpful.  

Read:  

Bees: Nature's Little Wonders

by Candace Savage

It took me about a quarter of the book to get comfortable with the "aimless" structure of this slender novel.  Readers are loosely following the bee communication research breakthroughs of two German biologists from WWII to modern times.  However, there are plenty of awe-inspiring interludes to appreciate ancient and contemporary art.  The research itself is humbling as well.  I am picturing the discipline it would take to painstakingly watch one bee for 117 hours to be able to report back she spent 56 of those hours scanning her surroundings for work she already knew how to do.  To faithfully carry out that research takes an attention span and faith in the process I'm not sure many of us could muster.  

Some other random connections that crossed my mind as I leafed through these pages-

*  47% of the observed worker bee's time was spent cruising around looking for work seems pretty similar to my MO when in the house, starting a load of laundry, picking up an abandoned dish, emptying the trash, etc.  And husband does seem to be on more of a drone operating system without the same drive to leave the nest nicer than he found it.  It also crossed my mind that my 6 year old understudy could start picking up the more straightforward tasks before graduating to the more exciting provisioning excursions off the beaten path (i.e. shopping at the farmer's market).  

*  Dancing after finding a particularly rich resource before heading back out to reload gave me pause.  I had been ruminating about "To Do List burn out" and theorizing that adding a little more celebration at task completion would help keep up the momentum.  My less adaptive instinct is to gorge on something sugary or retail therapy.  Maybe instead I could dance or share my "wisdom" with friends.  

*  Resource unload speed gives an indication of hive resource bottlenecks.  I wonder if we might see this in the velocity of money through a checking account if a family is living paycheck to paycheck?  What would be the analog in households who are bottlenecked for other resources like quality time?  What would rapidly unloading someone who came home with a juicy batch of quality time look like?  Materially, this reminds me a bit of the minimalist adage about if you haven't worn/used the thing in a season/year, you didn't need it and should declutter it, that is a worker bee hanging out at the entrance for ages waiting to be unburdened.    

*Hive hunting collective decision-making offers us some help as a collectivist species as well.  Savage notes that it works because (1) The bees have conviction about their first hand observation - so often it seems we gaslight ourselves when our experience doesn't match "the collective" wisdom we glean from prior research or social media.  Another youtuber suggests not doing any/much research until you've actually gone out and attempted the project because it is so easy to elide from preparatory research to procrastination that feels productive.  So now I am pondering how to shift our culture to one that holds space for a discipline of first hand observation and the potential for divergent results.  (2) The bees aren't attempting to compromise, this is a friendly competition.  Too often, we end up worse off than either option by compromising between the two.  I think to make competition friendly, we might need to be more blunt about our interests/observations, more comfortable with the potential conflict this could bring.  I also think we need to do this more often, make it a repeated game, so our sense of identity isn't so closely linked to this singular proposal.  I also think we have to have an appetite to follow the winning pitch, even if we think it is dumb, if only to see if it goes off the rails in the ways we suspect it will.  

10 New Ways to Eat More Fruit and Veggies

 

1.  Stock a countertop fruit bowl.  It turns out some produce actually stores better on the counter than in the fridge.  When you see it, you are more likely to reach for it.  My kid eats twice her weight in apples a year because they are the easiest thing to offer her when she complains that she's hungry.  We also stock cherry tomatoes, kiwi, mango, bananas, limes, mandarins, pears, limited quantities of grapes.  We let avocados ripen on the counter and then move them to the fridge.  We also counter-store savory options it is easy to forget you have like garlic, winter squash, zucchini, and peppers. 

2.  Stage your fridge.  We have hacked a chest freezer to maintain fridge temperatures.  We try to stock the easiest to reach upper levels with more nutrient-dense, calorically light options.  You have to physically move a bunch of prepped crudités, salsa, hummus, berries, and easy reheat grilled cruciferous veggies to get to the tortillas, eggs and cheese hiding below.  We even store some of this less-healthy food in a basement fridge/freezer so if you want it, it will cost someone a flight of stairs worth of exercise.  

3.  Eat your weeds.  Weeds are just plants out of place, right?  Maybe the plants are in the right place and our perspective is distorted.  I now think of spiky perennial artichoke as a weed while Granny thinks of it as a delicacy.  So when I inevitably fall so far behind on weeding that there is no hope of defending the perimeter (or interior) of the veggie beds, I checked out some books on edible weeds and did some googling.  Now my kid will eat wild-harvested oxalis (sourgrass) and snack on artisanal dandelion leaves.  

4.  Plant finger food in Zone 0 and 1.  I've strewn peas, beans, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, kumquat and alpine strawberries in containers on the walkway between the backdoor and the garage.  Like an endless Easter egg hunt, the kid or I will pause to enjoy a fresh off the vine snack we found ripening in this high-traffic area. 

5.  Travel to exotic lands.  Ideally to places that don't offer the standard kids menu beige processed food lineup.  Your kid may discover they like sautéed banana, papaya or zucchini.  

6.  Perpetual Soup.  If the week looks really busy, my texting accountability buddy and I will kick off a pot of "sopa perpetua."  This is usually a kitchen sink affair of whatever aging/freezer burning veggies we want to move, maybe a lentil, tofu or other protein, maybe some miso paste if we don't have stock.  Simmer it on low, sometimes for days on end.  Then we report back on how many meals/bowls of it we managed to eat. The ultimate comfort/convenience food.  Even my kid got in on this when she was playing a video game that has a seasonal event where every character in the town contributes an ingredient to a shared soup.  She contributed cinnamon and sugar but it still came out pretty tasty.     

7.  Garnish your kid's plate.  They asked for pasta or chicken nuggets, but throw some sliced cucumber, seaweed snack, carrot sticks, or apples on there and they will probably disappear too.  If they don't, you can disappear them yourself when you're clearing the abandoned plate.  Sometimes I can get my kid more actively involved in an "eat the rainbow" project, where we try to find and consume a fruit or veggie in every color of the rainbow.  This can also work for carnivorous husbands.  They may not grill broccoli or bake potatoes if they are prepping a meal just for themselves, but if you "strew" those items around the counter in easy reach while they're searing their sous vide, they might scrape some onto their plate if only to avoid offending you.      

8.  Lunch envy.  Most schools in our state do free lunches for everyone, but this Charter has kids pack in a lunch.  I asked my kid what lunch items her classmates bring that she wishes she got.  Sometimes she mentions desserty junk food and occasionally I'll oblige.  But sometimes she mentions things like hummus or carrots sliced into coins that I had no idea she would be willing to eat.

9.  Game- blindfolded taste tests.  There's some trust that goes with this one, that you're not going to feed your kid exclusively challenging foods, but if you can assemble a mix of old favorites and things you can't fathom why they avoid, you can sometimes get them to branch out a little.  My kid won't eat all tomatoes, but she'll sample one if she thinks it might be a grape or tomatillo.  

10.  Kid-lead charcuterie boards.  We had this concept of bringing toppings to "garnish" budget pizza slices at a girl scout meeting.  This was a space-themed meeting.  In searching for appropriately sized and colored food objects to stand in for planets, our kid was willing to partake of capers, olives, pineapples and blueberries.  Not a common pizza combo, but now she doesn't flinch when she sees them as toppings on pasta, yogurt, cereal, etc.  

Know Your Food: 1 Month Food Journal

 "Write a food journal for a month to observe more closely your eating habits.  Do you know where your food was grown?  Read labels."  -Farm Kitchen, 1.  Know Your Food, Beginner Level

This is the most challenging beginner level badge I've attempted so far.  

I wish labels were more specific.  Living in Southern California, a product of Mexico might have traveled less distance than an American grown one.  This grocer is headquartered in Arizona, so I also wasn't sure if food grown in California was first routed to Arizona and back.  I also discovered that Mexico and USA have different "organic" labeling agencies and rules, but it was unclear whether one was consistently more rigorous than the other and it also was vague which agency had endorsed a given product as organic (i.e. a Mexican avocado could be certified organic by either the USA or Mexico).  

But here are 8 improvements that this adventure sparked:   

1.  Planting market staples:  I realized every week organic cucumbers, strawberries, tomatoes, and avocados are on our shopping list.  While there is no way our lot will achieve self-sufficiency this season, and that we should probably scale back on these in the off season, at least some plants are in the ground in our yard.  Fewer food miles, fresher more nutritious food, less plastic packaging, and another excuse to get outside in the sunlight.  win-win-win-win.

2.  Farmer's Market reboot:  In the spirit of less plastic packaging and better food mile visibility, I insisted on a stop at the closest weekly market on the way to a kid activity.  I scored cheaper and more flavorful tomatoes and a copy of the "chef's sampler" of mushrooms (grocery store is currently out of stock) both without the plastic packaging and from less than 100 miles away.  I also added to my weekly to-do lists reminders about several other markets in the area and hope to explore the vendor selection and pricing there as well in the coming weeks.  Hopefully my kid will again relish the ritual of carrying a reusable bag and some cash into the market to make her berry selection all by herself in the market, but at this point, she would rather crawl around in the parked car trying to figure out how to honk the horn.    

3.  Husband's Beef:  Generally, when hubby shops the grocery store, the "deal" to be had with deep discounted meats sparks the most joy for him.  When I online shop for him, I try to get grass-fed versions of his favorite quick-cooking cuts, regardless of price.  Through this project, we discovered he actually prefers the hyperlocal grass fed version of these cuts (sourced mail-order or pickup from a ranch which grazes cattle in our foothills to help as a firebreak) to anything available at the grocery store.  I discovered that the chuck from the same supplier which is supposed to be super good when left in the sous vide for a century stayed gum-tough (maybe I should have seasoned it more?) so I have better intel on what cuts to stock up on and what to avoid.   

4. Hummus lunch box envy:  One of those backseat drive discussions we got to talking about how healthy my kid feels her lunch is compared to peers.  Middle of the road, not a Lunchable, but not as healthy as X's.  What does X bring?  Hummus and bread.  I had no idea my kid was willing to eat hummus.  Now it is a snack time staple.  

5.  Sustainable milk research:  I had waffled so much on dairy and alternatives.  Is it better to just get plant-based milks?  Their ingredient lists look so much more processed and many have lower quantities of protein.  I may one day dabble in homemade soy milk, but in this season of life, it is an appliance I am unlikely to actually use.  So I spent time closely studying the milk brands my grocery carries and settling on a favorite for its regenerative practices (organic, all/80% grass fed) and vat pasteurization technique which might enable me to more easily make things like yogurt or cheese in the future. 

6.  Food-borne illness avoidance/cultural education:  We spent some of this month at a resort on a Caribbean Island with an all you can eat buffet.  While it would have been hard to pull of this trip as a strict vegan, I found that identifying as a vegetarian had its benefits.  My plate was less calorically dense, so less weight was gained.  I could also order "the Typical Honduran" vegetarian plate of rice, beans and veggies, which was delicious and I imagined to be more consistent what the locals ate.  And I did not come home with the souvenir of traveler's GI problems as experienced by poor hubby.  

7.  Cut backs on eating out:  In part, because they were so hard to track in the food log.  We found a recipe for pizza dough that is better than most budget pizzerias and we can dial up the number of organic ingredients and dial back the preservatives and sugar.  We also started a "tacos Tuesday" tradition of home-fried tortilla chips, guac, and tacos and are starting to eat at least a few dinners a week at approximately the same time and in the same room as each other which was the historic benefit of going out somewhere to eat.  I am now aware of the love-hate relationship I have with our local coffee shop.  When I am there, it is so tempting to order a sugary signature beverage (bad!) but their fairly sourced and roasted on premises coffee beans are such an upgrade to mass produced options at the grocery store, I have become a coffee snob.     

8.  Convenience food swaps:  these still count as processed, but I feel like we're moving in the right direction when we swap organic corn tortillas for generic and then fry them at home in our own canola oil rather than buying them bagged as chips, opt for plant-based "chicken" nuggets shaped like dinosaurs, and resupply plant-based protein powder with an eye to which has the most disciplined testing and controls for contaminants.  

There is still a lot about our diet that I'm not proud of -- my daughter's breakfast staple is a pop-can biscuit slathered in Nutella; a nontrivial amount of my monthly fruit/veggie intake is eating the "garnish" she abandons on her plate;  I discovered in trying to make a copy-cat recipe for my favorite beet chip that these are basically deep-fried potato chips.  But I think we are moving in a healthier direction!    

Reading, Writing, 'Rithmatic

 "Not a reader? Now’s your chance to change that. Using your library or books you own, pick out three in three categories: fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. You know the rest (read them)."  

Fiction:  Iron Flame (Empyrean #2) by Rebecca Yarros

I am loving this series.  I am also coming to appreciate the major pitfall of my favorite fiction genre (world-building science fiction/fantasy).  An author can invest excessive time dreaming up such an ornate world that they lose steam in writing the action into their series and it collapses under its own weight.  This seems to have been the case with Game of Thrones and Name of the Wind.  Conversely, Yarros leaves her world and plot a little rough around the edges but I think the compromise is worth it for the sake of keeping the momentum.  If I were her editor, I would encourage substituting "tendrils" (of hair, shadow, smoke, etc.) for some synonyms, spend a bit less time emphasizing what characters' eyebrows and jaw muscles were belying about their reactions and detail out a bit more concretely the physics laws observed within this world so the plot twists felt twistier and less like deus ex machina, but none of those edits would justify delaying the sequel(s?!).  

This was also fun to read as an aspiring writer who discovered the Bookfox's YouTube channel concurrently.  Bookfox has a video up, "9 character mistakes that scream 'a woman wrote this.'"  It was a delight to step through and score Yarros on this rubric, conceding, as Fox does, that books, particularly in this romance genre, violate the rules explicitly to create a fantastic rather than relatable character.  It reminds me a bit of a childhood videogaming and discovering a "cheat code" in a strategy guide that lifts all sorts of constraints and the omnipotent delight you can have on this limitless sabbatical before returning to the mundane discouragements of your real life; in which your health points and damage dealing abilities accrue at a more plausible rate and your boyfriend cannot read your mind.  This contrasts to Kelly Bishop's observation in her memoir (also read concurrently) that Gilmore Girls has such a cult following because the characters are treated fairly, they are lovably flawed and this is true of both genres.

The final thing I love about this series is that while it is fiction and unbalanced fantasy at that, there were self-help elements embedded within it.  Self-help/personal growth is my favorite of all genres.  In this case, the help I found was hunched over the aero handlebars of my triathlon bike, sweating buckets, checking my watch every few seconds to see how much of the two hour prescribed ride remained.  What if this bike is actually a powerful dragon I am learning to ride?  What if I can also learn how to channel the energy of that dragon?  What if that telepathic dragon can also monitor my thoughts and interject like a best friend that has been fully briefed on cognitive behavioral therapy practices when my inner critic's monologue gets too unhinged?  That fantasy lens applied to real life workouts helps them fly by with less thrash.  

Non-Fiction:  Carribbean Reef Life: A Field Guide for Divers by Mickey Charteris 

It is hard to know when you are "done" with reference Non-Fiction.  I took this with us on a 2025 Kids Sea Camp excursion to Roatan, Honduras and paired it with two laminated fish slates.  I'm 8 years rusty at scuba, so across my 8 dives, I found I was mostly focused on my buoyancy and giving the reef wide enough berth not to damage it.  I did not see the micro-fauna detailed in the book's pages like sea horses unless the dive masters pointed them out.  But this book was helpful for narrowing down which of the megafauna like parrot fish, conchs, lobster, four eyes, lionfish, grouper, turtle, etc. I had spotted.  I wasn't alarmed when the dive master speared a majestic looking lionfish because I had read that these were invasive, voracious and poisonous-spined.  There is a family of fish called a suckerfish or remora that attaches itself to larger fish and turtles.  Another diver and I chuckled bubbles watching a poor parrot fish swimming in circles trying to shake one; mutualistic relationship you say?  But I found it was helpful to "steal" the remora strategy on dry land and sit at the dive master table for meals or close to where they were facilitating a class on fish ID (using this same book as reference) to get even more detail on how these sites compared to other Caribbean locations and to themselves in prior years.  i.e. turtles here are skittish compared to Hawaii and even more so on this part of the island where there was more recent history of hunting them.  File that away as a difficulty factor the next time I am admiring stunning photography of Roatan turtles.  

Since we plan to return to Sea Camp in future years as our kid ages into scuba certification age, on other sites in the Caribbean, I will hang onto this book for reference.  I'm not sure I want to go full-on into underwater photography as it is expensive equipment to schlep around the international airport terminal.  There's also something fundamentally "not living in the present" when you're diving with your attention trained on a view finder (even if I am envious of its magnification capabilities).  I would definitely put myself through an intensive drawing or painting course before the next trip to help improve my memory for the details of what I saw underwater.  It might also be useful to pair with a book like those Tristan Gooley wrote for dry land to take a more "Sherlock Holmesian" approach to what you can infer about an environment based on small clues and interactions between plants, animals, and the terrain.     

Poetry:  Gold by Rumi/Translated by Gafori 

How to Read a Book (Adler) suggests first reading the poem through in its entirety, then reading it aloud, then take a vacation from it and revisit.  

First read:  oops, I got bogged down in the background that Adler warned me to avoid.  Now I am watching YouTube videos of Whirling Dervishes and how lovely that phrase, Whirl Derv, the touch of assonance making the first syllables almost rhyme, is that where Farsi has more versatility than English?  

I didn't realize how centrally this Shams character was in Rumi's work...  How odd it is to my westernized ears for a man to speak so openly of love for another man.  I am immediately suspecting the Shams-Rumi dynamic had some carnal undertones.  Wasn't there some of that within the Greek epics too?  Patroclus and Achilles?  I wonder if my belief that men's love and lust are so intertwined is a product of my culture or my lived experience.  Platonic friendship between genders is so often problematic.  My western ears also hear poems that sound more like collaborations to drive cross-traffic to Shams' social media channel- If you love this idea, you'll love my teacher, Shams!  How cynical and commerce-warped is the lens I look at the world.  

The elaboration of the title was delightful: "Gold, the title of this book, is a word that recurs throughout Rumi's poetry.  Rumi's gold is not the precious metal but a feeling state arrived at through the alchemical process of altering consciousness, of burning through ego, greed, pettiness, and calculations, to arrive at a more relaxed and compassionate state of being...  Gold is the deepest love."     

While I love seeking the references to gold within the leaves now, some other ideas feel tediously repetitive as I read cover to cover in the space of a day.  So many allusions to getting drunk on the wine of love.  How much experience would Rumi and his audience have had on being inebriated if alcohol is haram?  So many allusions to the vastness of the ocean and being a sinking ship within it, did he had real experience to draw on?  Afghanistan and Turkey aren't exactly famous for their beaches.  Maybe he had some exposure to the Black and Caspian Seas?    

How arbitrary it all seems.  Persian can't always be literally translated, the translators themselves become derivative poets.  Plus, he'd be writing in a culture 300 years before Shakespeare and we all know how weird some of The Bard's phrases seem today.    Nevertheless, I love this-- 

Ferment like wine

in the barrel of your body.

Second read:  in small sips, out loud, on my feet, sometimes whirling like a dervish.  The message of this body of work is still so narrow, I wouldn't say these opened the floodgates of thought-provoking joy.  It is, however a beautiful way to punctuate one's day.  I still love the idea deep love is gold and all the metaphors that come with it.  I love the above passage and a few others made me smile.  Noticing the word-play on "oil" and "water" being an indeterminate quantity and how if you take them out of their vessels, they literally become one.  

...There's one spirit in countless bodies, 

One oil in countless almonds, 

One meaning in countless words

Uttered by countless tongues.  

Shatter the jugs, the water is one...    

But even so, there is so much talk of getting drunk on spiritual wine, I felt like I was the sober, responsible adult squelching across the sticky floor of a frat house at dawn, doing what I could to square away the empty pizza boxes rather than surrendering to the revelry.  

Cleaning Up- 3. It's Not Easy Being Green

 

Today (4/2/2025) we held a family meeting with our 6 year old Young Cultivator (Fallon) to discuss what going green means and some things we could do.  

Since today is also trash pick-up day, we immediately got to work picking up trash and glass litter along our sidewalk.  We have a landscaping crew tidy up every fortnight but a lot accumulated in the week since their last visit.  Fallon tackled the "less gross" items like fly away candy wrappers.  Mom got to test out her new casabella "buy it for life" dish gloves picking up a cache of rusty razorblades dumped in the grass along the sidewalk.  We are across the street from an elementary school!  Fallon offered to pay mom $1/dog(?) turd from her piggy bank.  This was the going rate we offer when she is inclined to clean up the small family dog's deposits in the yard.  Mom was not convinced deposits of this size could have originated from a dog, and declined the offer, muttering something about the need to save for college and that biowaste was organic enough to break down on its own eventually.  Alas, our sidewalk is therefore not immaculate, but in much better shape than it was.  Once upon a snarkier time, Mom maintained a "trash faeries" instagram account documenting the crazy things that seemed to materialize overnight on the verge along the sidewalk.  No mattresses, milk crates of used motor oil, or Christmas trees today, but here is the 2 gallon bucket haul we collected just from our corner of the block.  

There had been some discussion of sharing seeds.  As it is spring and few things have viable seeds to share at this point, we had to improvise.  Fallon collected and packaged pine needles, dandelion greens, and materials for making humming bird nests.  Mommy transplanted some extra tomato seedlings into warp pipes, corralled several houseplant housewarming gifts that did not spark joy, and combined leftover trick or treat fun sized playdough giveaways with small seed packs of cilantro.  Everything was priced at "free" except for the Big Stick which Fallon insisted was worth $1.  To Mom's surprise, it was the first item to go; with a nice lady who was looking for ginger plants but could use it as a clothes line.  Mom thought it might also be helpful for scaring away whatever unchaperoned direwolves are frequenting the barrio overnight.  

Fallon and mom got in a debate about what types of foods have the highest water footprint.  Fallon felt almonds were problematic, perhaps she has been watching Pom Wonderful Central Valley agricultural vs urban water rights exposes.  Mom felt meat and animal products needed more water because they were higher up the food chain and consumed the plants and their water footprint before being harvested.  In our evening family debriefing, we asked ChatGPT to weigh in and on how much water per 100 calories of food produced for common whole food grocery items.  Mom thinks she won this meat vs nuts debate, but was chagrined to learn 100 calories of coffee tops the charts at 8,000 liters of water...  Let's think of that as a spice, no one is drinking coffee for gains, right?  How do you reckon corn takes 625 L, wheat 471 L, but a product made from those inputs, tortillas takes only 400?  What is going on with apples and lettuce needing more than cheese?  Is it supply chain spoilage?  Something fishy with ChatGPT?  We've been watching The Martian in installments and it looks like if one were to pull a Mark Watney and subsist for a year on just potatoes, they would need 719,000 gallons of water to do it.  That's like draining the backyard swimming pool 22 times for one person!

Sol 1 of this merit badge down, 20 more days to go!  

Sol 3 (4/4) - we read The Lorax, discussed and made a list of ways inspired by the story to live greener.  Mom rates it 5/5 stars.  Fallon rates it 4.5/5 stars because she feels the author took too many poetic liberties-- BIGGERING is not a real word.  

Sol 5 (4/7) - we read The Good Garden (Katie Smith Milway) to learn more about Honduras, where we are traveling in 2 days.  Mom was moved by this because she is also reading Open Veins of Latin America and most of the "technology" the peripatetic teacher introduced to the town like milpas and terracing was invented by Mayans and Incans in this region but seem to have been wiped out over several centuries of epidemics, resource extraction and sugar/coffee monoculture to fuel triangle trade.  Like the protagonist, Maria Luz, Fallon retired to the garden to plant her "cash crop" of radishes, for her next plant market driveway sale.  She couldn't resist also putting in a row of purple carrots which we may remember to look for despite their long germination time as they are planted along the faster germinating radishes.  Disappointed we didn't have any chitted potatoes to replicate Matt Damon's experiment in the Martian, she improvised with a purple sweet potato.  Mom has never seen anyone propagate  potatoes in quite this fashion and has doubts about top-dressing the mounds with pill bugs, but she remains open-minded and relieved Fallon did not hew so closely to Damon's method as to top dress with humanure.  

Sol 19 (4/21) - We have returned from a spring break trip to Roatan, Honduras.  At Kids Sea Camp, we learned how to snorkel/remembered how to dive and explored the second largest reef in the world.  We attended a presentation about coral bleaching and efforts to restore elk and staghorn coral by propagating it in nurseries and epoxying specimen back onto the reef in key areas to repopulate bleached or damaged areas.  Many things can cause coral to bleach including chemical sunscreens (we had packed a reef safe zinc-based mineral one), warmer sea water from climate change, and even bacteria which cause cholera/diarrhea and can run off mainland with rudimentary sewage disposal systems.  At the closing ceremony of Kids Sea Camp, the organizers encouraged families to keep diving because it is such a compelling way to appreciate what is happening to our planet.  

When we got home, mom found an organization which helps educate about carbon footprints and the actions we can take to offset them.  Mom paid to offset the family airfare and plans to do the same for trips planned to Portland, OR; Minneapolis, MN; and Barcelona, Spain.  

Sol 20 (4/22) Earth Day.  We read aloud What is Climate Change?  We learned that Earth Day is 55 years old today, having been started by President Nixon's legislation about clean air in 1970.  

Sol 21 (4/23)  We used our repaid Kiva loans to make a new microloan to Juan Ramon, a Honduran coffee farmer/bodega owner to buy urea fertilizer, foliate sprays, and insecticides.  This was inspired by learning about the extortionary coyotes mentioned in the Good Garden (sol 5) and Mom's admiration for the quality of the coffee available on vacation in Roatan--  even in the giant buffet carafe.  

Sol 23 (4/25) While waiting on the pool deck for a swim lesson, we read the graphic novel pages of World Without Fish and compared our experiences on the reef to the little girl (turned adult marine biologist) in the story.  

Sol 24 (4/26) A pre-owned copy of Made You Look: How Advertising Works and Why You Should Know (by Shari Graydon) arrived.  We are reading a chapter or so a day of this graphic novel to be more aware of when and how we are being persuaded by advertisers.  Mom relishes the irony of now "promoting" this book product on our blog, but we have not been paid to do so and think that if you read this book, it might actually save you money.  It doesn't directly address "cleaning up," we think it will be a force multiplier for avoiding buying things we don't need and will be disappointed with which would then go into a landfill.  For instance, we talked about how the "toys" in McDonald's Happy Meals are often just promotional materials to encourage us to see new movies, play new video games, or collect Pokemon cards.  

Sol 26 (4/28) We bike/ran to the playground, practicing stopping at intersections and sharing the sidewalk.  On the way back, we used our city's app to report 2 graffitied walls.  We talked a bit about why people tag, gangs, how fighting can be dangerous (two kids have been shot in front of our house because of gang disputes and it is so sad to see how the survivors keep candle shrines going in remembrance).   

Sol 27 (4/29) The end of driveway Plant Market was again in business.  We greeted a lot of neighbors, but didn't move merchandise today.  Mom eyed the many racks of bananas that have set and thinks we might need to do this again, or something similarly inspired (i.e. "take what you need" farm stand).  Between customers, we noticed our potato propagation (Sol 5) was not growing and in fact was getting eaten by the rolly pollies.     

Going Green - Intermediate

 

"Make your own soap" 

Sapindus mukorossi, the Indian Soapberry ould grow in our climate if one were so inclined to add a 30-50' tree to their urban overstory.  Most preparations as laundry detergent call for throwing a few dried berries in a sachet and washing as normal.  You could get 2-3 washings out of them.  Birtwhistle in Clean & Green notes that powder detergents do not have adequate time to dissolve in short cycles (with cold water).  This detergent cast on dark fabric is my main, if only occasional, laundry complaint with Charlie's Soap.  I thought soapberries might also be more efficacious if they were in a liquid format as well.  At a minimum, it would give me the option to clean things besides laundry with my soap.      

On a stove, I boiled 200 mL water with 12 soap nuts.  This should cover roughly 7 loads of laundry, which amounts to a week-long experiment for us.  I was delighted to return to the pot to the berries obscured by froth, with bubbles climbing almost to the lid.  I removed from heat, allowed to cool, strained into a mason jar, and discarded the nuts into the compost.  

If I were doing this again, I would have doubled the recipe to thoroughly submerge the soap nuts.  However, I am not sure I would make an attempt as husband objects to the smell of the boiling berries.  Birtwhistle's book contains similar recipes for Hedera helix (English ivy), an institutional/commercial property favorite ground cover around here.  I've planted my own drift, but might have to pack scissors and borrow some from my business neighbors.  She also recommends "conkers" or horse chestnuts, but I believe our climate zone is too high to have many of these specimens.   

 

"Make your own laundry detergent"

Following Birtwhistle's guidance, we dole out 2 tablespoons of soapberry syrup and 1 tablespoon of washing soda (the advantage being it softens hard water).  So far, no discernable difference (better or worse) in its cleaning power.   

"Make your own all purpose cleaners, window cleaner, floor cleaner."  

My go-to all purpose cleaner is white vinegar.  I use it for windows and counters.  If something is really caked on, I use baking soda as a mild abrasive.  The team that refurbished our hardwood floors insisted the best cleaning approach was a damp mop of warm water.  If something really sticky (or slippery) got on the floors, I spot-clean that area of the hardwood with Bronner's soap (or soap berry syrup).  

Green Up Gift Basket

 "Make a gift basket of green products for a friend or to give away as a housewarming gift."

I cringe at the idea of "gifting" someone cleaning products.  Family lore of my own youthful mother exchanging looks with my father as she politely watched her soon-to-be mother-in-law effuse as she dragged her husband's gift of a vacuum cleaner out from under the Christmas tree...  My careerist hippy Mom wanted to be clear she had a different sort of marriage dynamic in mind.  Years later, Dad would drag teenage me into Williams Sonoma to pick out some gag housewares Christmas gift for Mom, a salad spinner, perhaps?  All the while, he happily subsidized (and obligingly hid from) the weekly cleaning service that relieved his sweetie of that housekeeping burden.  Is that why they are still happily married?  

But gifting misgivings aside, an opportunity arose to make more headway on this Green Up merit badge series.  As part of executing her estate, my husband's family had sold his grandmother's house.  I hope the new owners won't resent a bucket full of eco-friendly supplies as a housewarming gift.  Here are the contents, if a similar opportunity presents itself to you.  Anything worth including that I forgot?    

Contents:

Home Depot 5 gallon bucket - can never have too many!

Rolls of Who Gives a Crap TP and PT - FSC certified, B corp, 50% profits donated, 100% recycled product with cute snarky labels.  

Repurposed glass vinegar bottle + sprayer nozzle of white vinegar surface cleaner - Birtwhistle's label-removing prescription of veg oil, baking soda, and a cloth worked great to remove the original ACV label.

100 gram swing top jars of citric acid and baking soda - with instructions for converting the citric acid into a toilet bowl cleaner/descaler

How to Keep House While Drowning book - I loved this at first read through, but it is more of a mindset adjustment book than one I wanted to keep for reference in my personal library

Microfiber dish sponge alternative that is machine washable

White cotton washcloth (these are slowly taking over my rag drawer as the default cleaning cloth)

Dawn power wash - this gets rave reviews for efficacy on Reddit, but I had a still shrink-wrapped bottle under my sink I hadn't yet found a use for

Homemade lavender + sage soy candle in a mason jar - because I'm still on a candle making kick and they say sage is good for purifying energy

7 clothes pins chained together as a sort of floral pick to hold the congratulations card

Candlemaking Intermediate

 "Make two different mold candles.  Use a different wax, scent, or color for each candle.  Let us know how each turns out!"  

What an educational mess!  Pictured are 6 molded candles (plus 5 over poured tea lights).  None pinterest-worthy.  

Batch 1:  Kai the dog memorial

This one probably turned out the best.  Hubby had given me a silicon fox candle mold for some holiday which I had never gotten around to using.  Emboldened by the beginner badge literature about how to add a wick after allowing the wax harden, without needing to poke a wick hole in a brand new silicon mold, I thought I would give it a try.  This candle was to commemorate my OG packmate who we said goodbye to last month.  I used my tried and true soy wax from Candle Science which has clear instructions on boiling point.  I weighed out extra wax because I wasn't entirely sure how big of a candle the mold made.  I added a CS lavender ember fragrance, but no color.  I prepped a silicon release spray in the mold.  The excess I poured into some flower silicone molds we had used for diy bath bombs.  I had tried spraying with edible silver and gold glitter just to see.  What I was most curious about with this project was how easily the wax would release from the silicone molds and how smoothly a hole could be drilled/awled/needled and a wick threaded through.  Sadly, I returned from an errand run to discover hubby had "helped" me with those steps in absentia.  

Batch 2:  Xaden dragon

Lots of wildcards in this batch.  MIL gifted me leftover candles from SIL's wedding.  They had no documentation of what they were, so I assumed it was paraffin.  Paraffin allegedly takes color better than soy and I had never tried coloring a candle so I gave these a crack.  My vision for these was inspired by an Etsy dealer who creates candles scented to match descriptions of characters in books.  I hadn't seen an entry for the protagonists in Yarros's YA romance series.  The male lead is shadowy and smells like leather, citrus, and mint.  So I poured a black candle with said scents (leather, mint mojito, garden mint, dragonsblood).  The good news about a black candle with recycled wax was that impurities like burned wick aren't noticeable.  The bad news about no-name paraffin is that it bubbles more, shrink-settles into divots more, and seemed to more quickly crack when trying to wick post-process (or maybe that was my light touch vs. hubby's).  The dragon mold shrunk so much, I ended up topping it up with more violet wax from batch 3.  Prior to seeing the shrink, I threw some in 4 tea lights which is my go-to approach for non-wastefully dealing with excess wax.  The dragon popped out of the mold easily and cleanly without lubricant, but the purple and the black segments never fused together and came apart when driving a nail through it to add a wick.  I'll need to test how good this smell combination is at it burns as well, when they were cooling, it smelled like very little leather and mostly orange notes.  Not exactly sexy.      

Batch 3:  Violet pillars (same eve as Batch 2)

On to the female protagonist, the bookish "Violet."  Still using the recycled paraffin, warily.  I used floral violet, ozone, and library scents with a dash of dragonsblood.  I was interested in this reusable putty several books said they used to keep wax from seeping out of candle molds with seams.  Hubby had 3D printed some such molds I had used for a batch of citronella candles for a past project.  I haven't found a great way to thoroughly clean these 3D plastic molds without warping them, so their finish came out chalky, but serviceable.  I found the putty was strong enough to hold the molds together without needing the plastic bands, which makes things even simpler.  I also didn't have the challenge of shattering the paraffin wax by wicking them after they were poured.  The silicon pillar hubby had ordered came out the cleanest and most vibrant purple, however, it didn't have a hole for the wick and the tip of it shattered when I tried to add one.  The smell on these is pretty neutral.  After I had mixed them, I wished I'd added something a bit grittier, like the leather smell.  I wonder if their smell improves or overwhelms if you burn black and purple scents together?  Perhaps we'll find out because I don't feel like any of these besides the fox are polished enough to be a good gift and I want to keep the fox.  

So there you have it.  I'm thinking the upcycled paraffin works best in containers you can pre-wick.  Colors are kinda fun, particularly if masking the upcycled material or following some sort of story-scent conceit, but not something I'd go out of my way to get good at.  That putty is magical, as are having a lot of tea light containers on hand.  But if you're working with paraffin, I might have poured into one of those melts containers without a wick so I could pop it back into the melting pot and top the molds off with the same color and fragrance I had started with when they sink.  I need to figure out better strategies for cleaning wax off plastic molds.  It is a good idea to take notes (mine were 3x5 index cards) on your candle recipe and weigh the final products of your molds so you can recreate or refine it without as much guesswork and waste.  

[3/25 updates]  I have burned several Xaden tea lights and concluded that soy wax holds and throws fragrance better than unknown extraction paraffin and that I had entirely too much mint mojito and not enough leather going to achieve a ruggedly "sexy" throw.    

"Gift a candle to a friend and be sure to let them know that it was handmade by you. "

There are two activities many of these sisterhood merit badges call for that I find I am dragging my feet to complete.  

One is the challenge of gifting things.  What is my hang up?

#1 hubris.  This Twitter-X post craft-shaming sums up my fears:  

"wish i had the confidence of the woman trying to sell this cheese grater as an earring rack on etsy" 

I don't think my sloppy first/second/third/nth draft of something is polished enough to justify saleable and it follows giftable status.  Gifting someone something I made seems a bit arrogant unless they are explicitly asking for the item.  

#2 minimalism.  I have been on the receiving end of so many inconvenient but "character building" gifts.  They are sad in that they emphasize how little the person knows you that you are secretly thinking it would have been better to forego the gift-giving ritual entirely but the Emily Post acolyte in you still feels obliged to hand letter a diplomatically worded thank you note.  The gift card to an alcohol store when hubby and I are celebrating our sobriety streak, the Costco charcuterie board when trying to eat less/more regeneratively harvested meat, the plastic melting toy found at the swap meet that was recalled by its manufacturer several years before my husband and I were born.  At the extreme, there are a few acquaintances where it feels like the gifting gesture isn't an extension of "knowing" or "caring" and more of a transactional dynamic of wanting to bank goodwill and curry a sense of reciprocity when what works better for our family is respect for boundaries and a bit of distance.  The gifts feel manipulative if such a paradox makes sense.  Plus, every day the small human chaos machine walks in the door with a backpack pinata full of glitter-encrusted doo-dads of the moment that we didn't want, don't need, and now need to find a place to store for a culturally acceptable interval before dumping in the landfill or "donating" where in all likelihood many will meet the same demise.  I don't want my handicraft to be a burden on someone else, make them feel a sense of reciprocal obligation, or force them to wince through scribbling or muttering a polite rather than heartfelt thank you back to me.  Perhaps I am overthinking this?    

But as I grapple with my personal hang ups on handmade gifts (handmade Christmas badge, here I come!), I did manage to find a work-around for candles:  think of them as zhuzh or garnish on a more thoughtful gift bundle.  In this case, in reflecting on our coffee chat, I knew my buddy was looking for a good title for the kid's book club she runs, her parents were deliberating on back surgery, and her daughter had missed our space-themed girl scout gathering.  Plus I was looking to practice Spanish and she has been a supportive sounding board so I scribbled her a note en espanol with an invitation to keep/borrow the items as she preferred.  Crown this bundle with a candle, drop it off at her preschool and call it a day!