"Slums may well be breeding-grounds of crime, but middle-class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium."

I was pretty psyched to blog about my "homemade" and super simple Sloppy Joes.

I perfected my recipe, tested it out, and finally, finally documented the production of them last weekend.

In the meantime, I've also been becoming more conscious of what I'm feeding my kids, and the funk that has been invading our foods. I mean, I generally cook from fresh - meaning, no boxed meals in my home. Not generally, always, actually... I thought that was pretty impressive. I mean, working mom of 3, coming home and cooking meals from scratch nightly, and inexpensively. It doesn't have to be rough, y'know? A limited grocery budget DOES NOT have to mean you eat junk out of a brightly colored box every night.

In short, I was feeling pretty accomplished, and not a little self-righteous, particularly when watching Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution.

Imagine my annoyance (at myself) when I looked at the labels while I was photog'ing this Sloppy Joe magicalness, and the first component listed on one of my ingredients was HFCS.

Sigh.

So, the search for a replacement ketchup recipe is underway. If you've got one, pass it on.

Also, I'm not blogging my recipe. It seems wrong somehow now.

What HAS been successful for me lately: home-made laundry soap, and No 'Poo.

Someone on the internet made some laundry-soap, and said it was awesome (famous last words....). I had to wait until I ran out of mine, which I FINALLY did last weekend. So, I rushed off to Target to get some glycerine soap. I won't go into this, but... it was an adventure. Note to anyone who is interested: Just buy the giant pack at Target, it's the best deal you're gonna get, I promise. In fact, if you're close by, I've got a boatload that I can GIVE you.

Because, my friends, for this recipe, you only need a half of a bar.

So, the recipe is this:
1 bar glycerine soap (I used Dial White Tea), grated
2 c baking soda
2 gallons of water

It's recipe 8 from this link.

I don't want to blantantly rip off their rad recipe, so you can view the directions there. I actually halved the recipe, for storage reasons, and it was easy peasy. Done in less than 5 minutes!

We've been using it all week, and so far so good. It has virtually no scent at all, but that's fine with me - we already used free and clear stuff, so we're used to it.

My friend Snork has chronicled her No 'Poo experiments for a few months now, and... I dunno how all that is going for her. I know the second my hair started revolting the way hers had, I might be tempted to quit. I don't know if I'm hard enough to take waxy hair all the time.

I'm on day 9, and so far, so good. It's pretty pleasing, so far. I did a baking soda rinse one day, and it was okay. I was looking a bit greasy a day later....

So I read a lot (on the internet!) and concocted some paste out of baking soda and honey, followed by an apple cider vinegar rinse. To be quite honest, I have no idea where I came up with it, where I found that, or why I thought it would be a good idea. It seemed risky, as I was staring at this clumpy mess I was about to massage into my head....

....But it was fab. I massaged it into my scalp, for a minute or so, in a circluar motion, and rinsed it out. Dumped the ACV rinse on, let it sit for a bit (while I shaved - multitasking!), and rinsed that.

This was the result. Soft, non-frizzy, full of body hair. It is pretty quickly stripping my hair of color, I think, but over all....

WIN!

On the "suck-less" front, I seem to have acquired shin splints. Which happens when you lecture other folks about the necessity of making sure you have good running shoes and failing to acquire some for yourself. Sooooo.... we've been ellipticalling. Snork and I started jalking together last spring, which morphed into "ellipti" nights followed by hot tub frollicking while kidlets played in the pool all summer. We were pretty psyched when we did this....


Last night, I did this...


Followed by this, on the same machine, but it was stupid and cut me off at 35 minutes....

That'd be a total of 5 miles.

Because, we rock.

This weekend, I plan on attempting a container garden, inspired by one of my favorite bloggers, The Happy (Athiest) Homemaker. I have high hopes for this. If it works out, it'll be one step closer to a completely clean diet, plus, you know, prep for TEOTWAWKI.

Kidding. (not really).