The Damsel in Dis Dress
Posted in thrifty, Uncategorized on Aug 4th, 2011
Today’s Old School lesson is a hands-on project: how to install a pour spout on a canning jar–great for dry cooking ingredients like sugar. This is the sort of DIY project Grandma could have really gotten into. It’s free It uses up things that would otherwise be thrown away It’s useful It’s easy and only [...]
The Damsel recently posted a lesson on growing your own sprouts, and would like to offer this additional safety information from the nice people at Mountain Valley Seeds. In light of the recent E. coli outbreak in Germany, we thought we would take this opportunity to remind you of the basics of sprouting. Sprouts [...]
From the archives: What do you do when your jeans have worn through the knees, and summer is right around the corner? Make cut-offs. It’s so easy! The first step is to lay the jeans out so the legs are very flat, next to each other so you can eyeball where to cut. If you’re [...]
Posted in preserving, thrifty, Uncategorized on Jun 21st, 2011
Did you hear about the food poisoning outbreak in Europe? Awful! Lots of people got sick, some even died. They eventually traced the source of the e. coli bacteria to sprouts grown on an organic farm. Does this mean we should avoid organic food? Absolutely not. The fact that the sprouts were grown organically didn’t [...]
Oatmeal–is there a more old fashioned breakfast? The Damsel adores it. Yummy, warm, filling. A true basic food, where YOU control how much (or how little) and what kind of sweetener, milk, raisins, or whatever you want. The three main types of oatmeal available in the typical market are: old-fashioned (rolled), quick and instant. Guess [...]
This time of year, squash is plentiful and frugal. And while October seems to be all about pumpkins, the other squashes are also there, waiting for a turn to be noticed. Squash…a good thing to fall in love with. Grandma would have approved. After all, they are cheap, easy to grow, they store well, nutritious, [...]
Posted in clothing, thrifty, Uncategorized on Aug 28th, 2010
First, let’s talk about this. What do you use Febreeze for? Be honest. You use Febreeze to make stinky fabric things smell better. Febreeze works by binding the stink molecules to itself, rendering them unsmellable. It also adds a scent of its own. It doesn’t remove the stink–it’s simply bound up and covered over. Still, [...]
Posted in environment, thrifty on Aug 18th, 2010
The whole idea of using things for a little while and then throwing them away . . . like razors . . . doesn’t seem too environmentally sound, or a way of being self-reliant. After all, if you were required to live off your own resources and couldn’t run down to the store and buy [...]
Posted in thrifty on Jul 16th, 2010
The Damsel wonders if she is the last girl on earth to figure this out, after years of swiping the Knight’s shaving cream. Hair conditioner works really well as a leg shaving cream. And if you do it this way, it’s pretty much free if you normally use conditioner on your hair anyway. Wash you [...]
Posted in thrifty on Jun 4th, 2010
What’s a food co-op? It’s nothing more than a group of people who band together to buy food in bulk. The more people in the co-op, the more buying power. Lower prices. Better access to items. The Damsel has heard about these arrangements for years but was sad because there didn’t seem to be any [...]
