Quote of the Day: Victor Hugo
“Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.”
– Victor Hugo
Found this quote the other day, then I was looking through my photos to find one to go along. I found this series of my nephew and I thought they went perfectly together. Laughter does cure just about anything, especially those winter blues! We make sure we laugh a lot around here at Chiot’s Run!
I’m a big quote person, love love love them. I’ve always collecting them and had quotes pasted up all around my living space. You may notice I post all kind of quotes here.
What’s your favorite inspirational quote/proverb?
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Being Prepared = Saving Money
Mr Chiots and I are savers. We hate to spend money, especially on things that can be avoided, like eating out. Restaurant food is expensive and often unhealthy. It’s much cheaper and healthier to prepare food at home. Once you start eating healthful homemade food, often you find that you don’t really like restaurant food either. That being said, there are times when it can’t be avoided or times when you want to eat out. We do eat out on occasion and try to choose restaurants that serve healthy food. We have a set monthly budget for eating out, and if we do not spend it we transfer it to our vacation fund (which is also a deterrent to eating out, I’d prefer a weekend away to meals out).
The main way we manage save money in this area, is by being prepared. We always carry water with us (in stainless steel water bottles), this helps us avoid the need to buy drinks if we get thirsty (and we can refill at a drinking fountain). We also carry apples with us wherever we go. Apples are the perfect portable snack, they’re filling and you can eat them anywhere. We carry nuts and dried fruit as well and other quick snack foods that are high in protein and nutrition. Often a handful or two of nuts and an apple will keep you full until you can get home to eat a proper meal.
How do you find time to make a snack bag every time you go somewhere? I keep a bag with snacks in it by the back door. We simply grab the bag on our way out. We always carry snacks even if we only plan to be gone for an hour or two. It’s amazing how often you get behind or things don’t go as planned and you end up being out longer than anticipated. If we are planning on being gone during a meal time I will often pack sandwiches and more substantial snacks.
Another way we avoid eating out is by having quick meals at home. I always know that I have a few quick meal options that can be on the table within 15-20 minutes after arriving home. One of our favorite quick meals is homecanned tomato soup. Eggs also make the perfect quick meal, you can prepare them in all kinds of ways that are perfect for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. I often have soup or lasagna in the freezer and if I plan ahead I can thaw some out to be ready on short order.
Despite our best efforts, we occasionally find ourselves out and about without snacks and starving. What do we do then? Sometimes we just eat out and enjoy it, we have money budgeted for this purpose. Sometimes we buy a small snack and then eat a meal when we get home. Sometimes we go to a grocery store and buy apples, bananas, or nuts for a healthy snack that’s much cheaper than eating out. By doing this we save a lot of money and we eat more healthfully.
What strategies do you have for saving money on eating out?
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The Real Food Challenge at Not Dabbling
Over at Not Dabbling in Normal, we’re kicking off the Real Food Challenge today. If you’ve ever seen a Food, Inc. or read the The Omnivore’s Dilemma you’ve probably thought about making changes to your diet by moving away from processed foods. That’s exactly what this challenge is about. Kim from The Inadvertent Farmer saw the movie and was challenged to make some changes in her diet. She decided to make it a group effort and the Real Food Challenge was born. You can read about my goals for this challenge here.
All month long we’ll be running this challenge with posts featuring how to’s for making things at home, ideas for saving time in the kitchen, successes and failures, giveaways and so much more. If you’ve ever considered making a few changes to your diet, this is the time. Join us.
Have you ever been challenged to make changes by something you’ve read or seen?
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Quote of the Day: Henry David Thoreau
Nature will bear the closest inspection.
She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf,
and take an insect view of its plain.
-Henry David Thoreau
I love this quote and thought about it when I was taking a few photos the other day. I had to add this quote to one of the photos, it was a little to small to show up well here and be easy to read so I put it on Flick – check it out.
I have a small fig tree that I’m overwintering in the basement. It was dormant for a few months, but it’s starting to wake up for the season. It has beautiful little leaves that have emerged from the buds, they’re so beautiful! They’re tiny at the moment, only about an inch tall, but so intricate in detail. Plant are truly amazing things! I’m always amazed at the tiny new leaves that appear when plants are coming out of dormancy.
What’s most amazing to you about plants?
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Shelf Life of Seeds
After receiving a few questions about the shelf life of various seeds I figured I’d research a bit and come up with a list for you for you. Obviously different kinds of seeds have a different shelf life. Other things come into play as well, like humidity and temperature. You want to create the best possible environment for your seeds to have optimum shelf life. The garage or garden shed wouldn’t be the best storage place, unlike all the lovely magazine photos show.
There are a few things you can do to help increase the shelf life of your seeds. Keep them in a cool place, about 50 degrees and keep the humidity lower than 50%. One way to help with the humidity is to keep some of those little silica packs from purchasing shoes/bags in your seed box/jar. Some people choose to store their seeds in the fridge or freezer. I have read that storing in the fridge can double the shelf life and storing in the freezer can extend shelf life by 4-5 times. I’m thinking of making a little seed vault with a few varieties of seeds and stashing it in my freezer in a vacuum sealed bag, more about that later.
The seeds with the shortest shelf life are: onions, beans, peas, corn, grains. The ones with the longest shelf life are:
Brassicaceae (cruciferous family) broccoli, cabbage, radish
Solanaceae (nightshade family) tomatoes, peppers, eggplant
Cucurbitaceae (melon family) zucchini, watermelon, pumpkin
I have noticed that onions seeds lose about 50% germination by the second year and peas seem to lose germination rates quickly as well. It’s a good strategy to use most of those up each year or store them in the freezer when you’re not planting. Tomato seeds seem to last forever, I’ve never had trouble with reduced germination on tomatoes even with seed older than 5 years old.
Have you ever noticed changes in seed germination from improper storage or older seeds?
