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.

1. Wash you hair as usual.
2. Put conditioner on your hair, but don’t rinse.
3. While your hands still are all conditioner-y, rub them on one leg and shave.
4. Rub your hands in your hair again, recoating them with conditioner. Rub on your other leg and shave.
5. Rinse your hair.

Bonus: Your conditioner sits in your hair a little longer, like the bottle says, but you rarely take the time to do.

The only way this could be cheaper is to shave your legs the European way. In other words, just go rugged.

The Damsel has heard about these arrangements for years but was sad because there didn’t seem to be any co-ops operating near the Cottage by the Mountains. But that’s changed! Happiness!

It’s actually a very old-fashioned idea. Grandma was no stranger to co-ops. People relied on each other for many things in the old days, from helping each other harvest, quilting, construction and child care to out-and-out purchasing co-ops. They were completely common–in the U.S. and Europe as well. The Damsel likes the cozy sound of it all.

So in the modern version, co-op organizers negotiate to buy directly from food brokers who normally only sell to grocery stores. You buy a “share” of the total, and often you volunteer to keep things running–helping divvy the food up, clean up, etc. In return you get a nice bushel or two of fresh food–often produce, but some co-ops extend to meat, bakery items, and more. It’s cheaper and usually better quality.

The Damsel ADORES her local co-op and becomes quite cranky if she can’t participate every week as is her habit. She never knows exactly what will be in the offering, but that’s part of the fun. It’s been great to try produce she normally wouldn’t buy. And hello, the family is EATING VEGETABLES. How is this not good? And she doesn’t mean to sound like there is a whole lot of bizarre stuff. Nearly everything is “normal” food like potatoes, carrots, bananas, apples, lettuce, etc.

Here’s a photo of one of the weekly produce baskets the Damsel acquired. There were apples, bananas, a pineapple, potatoes, blackberries, mushrooms, swiss chard, romaine lettuce, carrots, grape tomatoes, and broccoli. THIS COST $15.

The Damsel can only say, “I know!”

But her purpose is not to make you jealous. It is the Damsel’s wish that you partake. If you live in Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Arizona, Washington, or Texas, go to Bountiful Baskets and see if there is a location handy enough for you. Another option for Utah folks is The Community Food Co-op of Utah. In other areas, a Google search may lead you to Produce Nirvana.

The Damsel has heard of co-ops where a person actually buys a percentage of a farmer’s crop. (sometimes called CSA’s, or Community Supported Agriculture) With this type, you know what produce you are getting because you know what he plants. You also participate in the risks and uncertainties of farming, right along with the farmer. The Damsel doesn’t know of this sort of co-op in her area, but perhaps one of you dear students does.

The spirit of the co-op is worth preserving.

and in many lands.

The Damsel likes how this mom has sort of got her kid trapped on her lap in order to do the deed. The Damsel has used this move herself.

It’s true that some types of hair are harder to come out than others.

Baby-fine hair can be bad. Curly, fuzzy hair can be bad. But thankfully, we live in modern times when there is such a thing as “detangler.”

The Damsel bought this by the bucketful back in the day, to use on her darling daughter’s curly hair. There were some difficult moments. The Damsel is grateful that now this daughter is 25, she’s been combing her own hair for years.

It’s easy to make your own detangler, which thing the Damsel never supposed until it was everlastingly too late.

Simply commandeer an empty spray bottle. Fill it 1/4 full of conditioner, then top off with water. Shake well before using.  Go easy–a little goes a long way.

For a particularly bad snaggle, try rubbing a small bit of full-strength conditioner into the spot. Sometimes, the conditioner will make the hair strands slippery enough to untangle them.

Sometimes.

There’s always scissors.

But sometimes!

It makes nothing but a runny, disgusting, oily mess. Sometimes it can be attributed to user error (most commonly, being impatient about letting the egg come to room temperature) but sometimes it seems to be a reason unfathomable, like the phase of the moon or which side of your head you parted your hair.

It’s sad to throw out the ingredients and start over. A sad, sad waste. It’s enough to make a person completely lose control, throw up her hands and buy a bottle of mayonnaise.

Gasp!

Before you do something so drastic, the Damsel has recently come upon a fix. When a mayonnaise emulsion doesn’t work, they call it “broken,” and so it is. But if you’ll invest just one more little egg yolk, all will be well again.

Put a room temperature egg yolk into a container. Add the “broken” mayo to it drip by drip while whisking madly. (you can use your stick blender if you wish) You can increase the drip rate to a small drizzle after half of the liquid has been incorporated.

Magic has returned to the earth!

The Damsel’s daughters made fresh fruit into flowers. Amazing! First, they saw a picture that looked something like this:

Because they are fearless, they said, “We could make these ourselves. We could make LOTS of these and use them for centerpieces at sprog #3′s wedding. People can eat them. It will be fun.”

The Damsel is ashamed to admit she was afraid. She was afraid they’d look funny. She was afraid people would think the centerpieces were weird and not eat them. She was also afraid people would eat them faster than they could be replenished.

The Damsel hated to forbid the daughters on the basis of her own fear. Then she got a brainwave. “Go right ahead, daughters. But first, how about making a prototype? Then we’ll see how much time it will take.” She sat back with a smug smile. She knew they would struggle to make fruit look like flowers. She knew they’d see it would be time consuming and not look like the professional version at all. They’d decide on their own that this was crazy, and it wouldn’t be the Damsel saying no. It would be their own decision.

A day or so later, sprogs #2 and #3 happily reported that the prototype turned out great, didn’t take too long, and was pretty cheap to boot. Eeek!

Remember the adorable cookie cutters from This Post? They definitely came in handy for this project. (www.annclark.com)

Pineapples were sliced, leaving their cores intact. Flower-shaped cookie cutters made this step easy. (Slightly underripe pineapple cut easier.) Cantaloupe balls formed the centers.

Placing something across the cookie cutter helped to press it down evenly.

Wedges of honeydew were cut freeform with a corrugated cutter thingy.

These were assembled on skewers with cubes of other melon types.

Statistics revealed grapes were eaten at a high percentage rate.

Orange slices, skewered. Also, strawberries. (Some people have cut an x slit in the top of the strawberry and inserted a piece of marshmallow for additional flowerishness. We didn’t.

Our sweet serving girls attended the tables throughout the evening, bringing out fresh skewers so the centerpieces stayed looking good. The Damsel’s fears were for naught.

The fruit scraps were blended up into delicious wedding punch. Waste not, want not. Grandma would have smiled.

But is it possible to make your OWN dishwasher detergent? To use on a regular basis, not as an emergency substitute? Can you really unhook from the crazy that is the price of Cascade?

The Damsel is happy to inform that yes, you can easily make your own. As a matter of fact, the hardest part is trying to buy the ingredients: washing soda and borax. Apparently, these were pretty common items in the olden days, but are harder to find now.

Both of these items are considered laundry boosters, and generally that’s where you’ll find them at the store: in the laundry aisle. Borax is pretty easy to find. It’s the washing soda that’s tricky.

After sufficient sleuthing and you still come up empty, you COULD buy this. The ingredient is the same: sodium carbonate. The Damsel bought this at Wal-Mart in the pool/spa chemical aisle. However, it’s twice as expensive this way. $7 vs. $3.50.

If you’re interested in making other homemade cleaners as well, it’s worth it to keep hunting down the washing soda. It shows up in many cleaner recipes.

To make it, all you do is mix equal parts of washing soda and borax. The Damsel measured one cup of each into a container and stirred. That is all.

To use, try one tablespoon first and see how your dishes look. If you have a compartment that looks like this, fill the little side with the mixture and the big side with vinegar. This will help the glassware come out looking great.

The Damsel hesitates to give this an enthusiastic review. She’s only tried it once so far, and while most of the dishes looked perfectly clean, some didn’t. To be fair, she has extremely hard water and her dishwasher is trying to die. No dishwasher should have to work as hard as hers. She’s going to try it again, with a little more detergent and possibly adding the vinegar to the rinse cycle rather than in the dispenser. This will require more vigilance and hovering than she’s used to, but that is her plan.

1. Cover bowls or dishes when cooking in the  microwave.

2. Clean windows, mirrors, and chrome…  Coffee filters are lint-free so they’ll leave windows sparkling.

3.  Protect china from chipping each other by separating your good dishes with a coffee filter between each dish.

4.  Recycle frying oil.  After frying, strain oil through a sieve  lined with a coffee filter.

5.  Weigh chopped foods.  Place chopped ingredients in a coffee filter on a  kitchen scale.

6.  Stop the soil from leaking out of a plant pot.  Line a plant  pot with a coffee filter to prevent the soil from going through  the drainage holes.

7.  Use instead of a paper towel to drain bacon, or other fried things.

8.   Use a filter as an easy-to-tear-away backing for embroidering or appliqueing soft fabrics.

9.  Use them to strain soup stock and to tie fresh herbs in, for soups and stews.

10.  Use a coffee filter to prevent spilling when you add fluids to your car.

11.  Use them to wrap Christmas ornaments for storage.

12.  Use them to sprout seeds..  Simply dampen the coffee filter, place seeds inside, fold it and place it into a plastic baggie until they sprout.

13. Use coffee filters as blotting paper for pressed flowers.  Place the flowers between two coffee filters and put the coffee filters in  phone book..

Cooking your own beans, as opposed to opening a can of beans, really isn’t hard. It does take a little forethought, of which the Damsel admits she is often in short supply. But the hands-on time is small. Really.

This morning, the Damsel read a recipe on one of her favorite blogs for white chili and decided to springboard off it for a lesson on beans. Let’s take away some of that bean fear.

If you think of it early enough, it’s nice to soak beans first. To do this, you simply cover beans with water and walk away. That’s it. For this recipe, put about 3 cups in a pot and run some water over them. Don’t fuss. Cooking with beans is not an exact science. (By the way, a pound is about 2 cups)

About 3 hours before you want to eat, drain the water from the pot, leaving the beans in the colander. After soaking they look a little plumper, a little wrinklier, but not so much that you’d think, WHOA! The Change!

At some point along the way, cook some chicken. 1 whole chicken breast would do, or for even better flavor, use a bone-in type. Just cover with water and simmer until cooked through, then shred. You want to end up with around 3 cups of cooked, shredded chicken.

Dice a medium onion and three or four cloves of garlic. To peel garlic the easy way, just smash it with the flat side of a knife. The papery peel comes right off. Then dice. This is the Old School way to deal with garlic, and it’s lovely because it doesn’t get extra kitchen stuff dirty, such as a garlic press.

Put a glob of butter in a pot, perhaps the same one you soaked the beans in. The Damsel is all about making fewer dirty dishes. Add a matching amount of olive oil. Maybe 3 tablespoons of each, but don’t fuss. Turn the flame to medium, and in goes the onion and garlic.

After the onion and garlic have gotten accustomed to each other, add the drained beans. Then add five or six cups of chicken broth, depending on whether you like your chili super thick or soup-like. You could use the water you cooked the chicken in, or you could use something like this:

Class, meet Better Than Bouillon, the Damsel’s favorite way to cheat. This is a paste you stir into water–a handy shortcut to good broth, especially if you’re using boneless chicken. Cooking that stuff makes a very weak broth.

When the beans are nearly tender, add the shredded chicken. How can you tell when they’re tender? Bite one. Soft, but still with a little firmness is perfect, but don’t stress. If they are already quite soft, nothing bad will happen.

The Damsel can’t resist telling you a random bean story here. Apparently, the Knight discovered as a missionary in Denmark, that the words for “bite a bean” are almost exactly the same as “say a prayer” in Danish. Imagine the hilarious confusion for a moment…missionaries asking folks “do you mind if we bite a bean?”…errr ok…

Add between one to three teaspoons of dried cumin. This spice says “chili” even more than chili powder to the Damsel. Just remember, it’s easier to add than subtract. As a matter of fact, subtracting cumin from a pot is downright difficult. Throw in salt and pepper, too, according to your taste.

Now take a cup or so of milk, and add a tablespooon of corn meal. Stir well, and add to the pot. This will thicken it slightly and give it a nice chili-ish flavor. Cook for another ten minutes or so, or until when you “bite a bean” everything seems right.

The Damsel freely admits this is wimpy chili. You could add green chilis, hot peppers, cayenne pepper, etc. It’s up to you and what your dream of the perfect white chili is.

While this cooked, the Damsel’s Monday afternoon crop of piano students drooled over the delicious smell floating from the kitchen. The Damsel cruelly declined to invite them to dinner. It was a purely selfish act, because the Damsel wanted three bowlfuls all to herself.

Topped with grated jack cheese and cilantro, this felt great going down.

You can melt the crystals by reheating the syrup, either in the microwave if the syrup is in a glass container, or on the stove. On the stove, stand the jar in a pot of water and warm over low heat. It may take a while. Just saying.

The Damsel is afraid to know what commercial syrup has in it that prevents these crystals from forming.

Also, here is a wonderful article about how to make REAL maple syrup: (Thanks, Fish)
http://www.food-skills-for-self-sufficiency.com/making-maple-syrup.html

Pop some corn (like this?). and if you can stand to wait, let it sit out and get stale for a day or so. Fresh popcorn is crisper, and sometimes breaks when you poke it with a needle. So yes, for once you are purposely trying to make stale popcorn. (Air-popped, plain popcorn would be the best choice to avoid attracting pests. Insect-type pests, that is. You’re on your own for keeping children-type pests out of your tree.)

Choose a medium needle…long and stiff enough to pass through a popped kernel. Don’t stress. The majority of the needles in your pincushion fall into this category. The thread can be most any kind, but a nice quality thread will last longer, and popcorn garlands can be saved for many years if you treat them nicely. Some people like to use waxed dental floss, but the Damsel isn’t sure why you should go to that expense. Others use fishing line.

Thread the needle but leave the thread attached to the spool. This way you can keep going as long as you like–until you run out of popcorn or get sick of the project.

Insert the needle slowly and pull through. You’ll get the hang of it soon enough, and if a few kernels break in half, oh well.

When it’s long enough, loop the end of the thread around the last popped kernel into a knot to secure it. Do this at each end.

You can also alternate popcorn with dried fruit for even more old school fun. Cranberries are traditional. If you use fresh cranberries, it’s easier to work with them frozen, so less cranberry goober gets all over the place. These garlands can’t be saved until next year, so when Christmas is over, you could drape this on a bush or tree outside and make a bird happy.

You could use dried cranberries or other dried fruit as in this picture, for a long-lasting garland. Use whatever pattern makes you smile.