Canning Party

Jarden Home Brands & Canning Across America are hosting a National Can-It-Forward Day on August 13.
A canning party for who ever you want to invite. 


Click on the links, sign up and get some pretty nice free goodies including a printable intro to canning download, recipes, templates for canning labels, and coupons (delivered to your email).




~~ pelenaka ~~

Stevia in my Coffee

K, you can accuse me of heaping tablespoons of powdered chemicals in my coffee with the addition of non-dairy creamer but you can't claim that I don't try and go with alternative sweetening methods by growing & using Stevia.
This plant is actually a child of the original which I bought over 7 years ago @ a big box home improvement store for around $5. Since then I've divided & repotted  each either for gift giving or even as a barter opp.

Here is the most current generation thriving in a container on the patio. I'll bump it up to a larger pot before Autumn and let it grow as a house plant over the Winter.
I want to make an effort to grow larger quantities of Stevia leaves to dry & grind into a powder for cooking & baking. Probably won't be able to grow enough Stevia to cover all of my needs but I do hope to be able to replace a fair portion of the Splenda that we now use do to our diabetes.
Icing on the cake is of course that I can grow Stevia virtually for free.
Splenda not @ all.

Besides floating Stevia leaves in my morning coffee I also use it in my Green Ice Tea along with a sprig of mint from a large patch the grows under the clothes in the garden.
Gently bruise the leaves thoroughly before adding to drinks.
Give the leaves a moment to seep before drinking.
Removal depends on how adept you are at not swallowing leaves.
With or without the help of caffeine


~~ pelenaka ~~

It's the Cream in the Coffee

I just ordered Coffee Mate Non Dairy Creamer Lite on Amazon, 12 containers for $12.86.
Used the subscribe & save + a promo code on amazon's website which brought the price down to $1.07 per container.
No biking to the store, no coupon clipping, no swinging by the service desk for a rain check.
Just shopping in my nightgown.
Free shipping.
No handling charges.
$ in my amazon account was all earned by doing swagbucks. So no out of pocket expense.

Now to hunt down a deal on whole bean coffee, anyone got any amazon promo codes out there ?

~~ pelenaka ~~

Rain drops, collection, and solar pumps

Thumbing through the recently delivered All You magazine before I give it to my gf the coupon queen. On page 15 @ the bottom under the magazines giveaways section is a product that me the every "green consumer" that I am yeah ... k, call me what I am a cheap broad, caught my eye.

It's called Rain Perfect Solar Powered Pump System that attaches to your rain barrels so you can water your plants using a hose instead of a watering can or gravity fed irrigation system. All You mag gave it a $139 value but on sites that the manufacturer lists it's retailing closer to $150.
I can't help but think that this product could easily adapt to other uses where water needs to be moved from one location to another. I wonder how far this pump would be able to pump water threw a hose. I'm thinking more along the lines of pumping water to the second floor of my home into the bathroom.
Or as a prep tool.

As much as I sometimes dislike having to water my garden by hand (watering can) I do appreciate the fact that it makes me slow down and spend time in the garden. That said I am so thankful for the good solid rainfall that we got late last night. Garden was parched and all of the rain barrels were dry. Except for the two that have gold fish of course.

Today I'm gonna take those cat litter jugs I get from the neighbor and fill them with rain water for later use. This week we 're suppose to have more rain I'm sure that some August I'll be praying for drops.

If anyone has seen this product in action please give me a review either in the comment section or by email @ thirtyfivebyninety@gmail.com.

Judging a Book by it's Wish List

Sitting here in my new living room sipping on coffee doing my online stuffs like checking my blog, local news which really means weather (rain please rain) and my swagbucks account.
Opened my gift cards section & find that I had a $5 Amazon gift card waiting on me. My 4th for this month. I'm about 93 swag bucks from my next & final $5 denomination (your only allowed five of any one denomination so five of $5, five of $10 ect.)

Logged on to Amazon to apply the gift card to my account and up pops Amazon's suggestions based on my shopping habits. A la personal shopper.
So as I peruse over the suggestions I start to think what if someone else could look over my virtual cart so to speak. Similar to when your stuck in line @ the grocery store and u check out what the person next to u is buying. Then of course u make judgments or observations. Well I do.
Really your buying how much soda and it's not diet ... or hmm I wonder how she cooks that chard ? Wish I could afford steak.

So what does Amazon's suggestions say about me pelenaka, an urban homesteader fugal to a fault? What does it say about me the atypical unemployed middle age married woman with almost grown children living below 30k ?

They believe me to be a cycling enthusiast which I kinda am. If u count my mass produced cruiser style urban bike as a valid Tour de France ride. No you won't see Lance Armstrong pedaling this white wall tire built for comfort pink bike. If u do and it has a coffee travel mug holder call popo I've been robbed.

Amazon apparently knows that I'm into home food preservation since I wander around the canning cook book section @ least once a week. Other suggestions based on my window shopping show that  I am interested in preparedness training, hunting, and intensive gardening heirloom version. Based on my wandering their also think I can knit well which I can't.

So my wish list has taken on a life of it's own since Amazon seems to sell just about everything except ammo. Who knew ... my original  plan was to stock the pantry for free or score a few much needed homesteading tools.

To better organize my Wish List I've separated it into 3 categories.

1. Short term/too good a deal to pass on, this category is mainly food items that are deeply discounted in addition to Amazon's normal prices. The Amour Lard is a good example.
2. Mid-term or snag be4 Fall/Winter - cleats for my boots so I don't fall on icy sidewalks, hunting clothing & gear, long term freeze dried food in #10 cans, extra water filters for the set up hubby built .
3. Long term - items that I wish I had like a bicycle cargo trailer or gamma lids for our long term food storage. There is also a portable solar set up the base camp model from goal0 that I am lusting over. 

Sometimes items that I place in one category are bumped up to another or demoted to the last or completed deleted. An air horn rated at over a 100 decibels for my bicycle is one. Originally that product started out in the long term wish list column, but I've been in a few bike vs. car altercations lately due to texting (them not me texting is extra on our cell plan) and road construction.  My bike bell just isn't cutting it and now with hot weather no one drives with their car windows down so I can't just curse them out.
And of course every time I go out and end up needing to carry more home than my three bike baskets will hold I pine for that cargo trailer. Yeah I know I could buy one of those child bike trailers but it wouldn't match my bike (that for another post - the responsibility of looking good one has when u bike because people can see u when u wear a ratty bathrobe to go to the drive threw ATM on a bike).

Woodsrunner, mentioned building me one but the project is far down on the honey do list. Besides I really need to get our long term food stores increased.

If I had a cargo trailer in my virtual shopping cart would u judge me to be a someone who is concerned about her carbon foot print or one who just needs to lug more stuffs home like diet soda & chard ?


~~ pelenaka ~~

Hot Potato

Hard to see but in this broken recycle bin are both Jalapeno (sale 50¢) & two or three found sprouted potatoes planted. Total cost for this garden container = 50¢.
Truth be told potatoes are a forbidden food for us due to diabetes but every once in a while  it's a treat.

In a shtf scenario with a decrease in our daily calorie intake eating potatoes would be a good thing.  I do have a supply of professionally dehydrated potato in our long term storage.

A space saving method to grow large amounts of potatoes in is the barrel or trash can method.

Besides we're working on decreasing our wastefulness, we need to make amends for neglecting those potatoes on the cellar floor. Bad Homesteaders bad.
Waste not want not.


~~ pelenaka ~~