I started using soap nuts in place of shampoo, on April 27th. Since then I’ve washed my hair four times with them.
The first two times I used just soap nuts. My hair was easy to comb out afterwards, but after the second time I noticed my hair was getting dry on the ends. The next two times I washed my hair, I followed the soap nuts with conditioner.
The soap nuts did seem to be cleaning my hair fairly well and washing out the oils, but each time I noticed there seemed to be a light film on my hair that would get better with brushing. Each wash, there seemed to be a little more.
Today, after the fourth wash, I noticed a waxy build up against my scalp and sadly, my experiment with soap nuts has come to an end. I’ve had this happen using certain brand of shampoo and conditioner as well. It might have something to do with the extremely hard water we have. I would say my hair looks the same, no shinier, or more dull. Although, with the build up my hair has been smoother and less fly aways. I haven’t had shiny hair since I lived in an area with soft water. The scalp build up make soap nuts a nay for me. I was really hoping for a different outcome, but tomorrow I’ll be going back to regular shampoo and conditioner.
I am glad I tried them. Just because they didn’t work for me doesn’t mean they won’t be great for someone else. I bought mine at Bulk Barn. The nice thing about buying them from there, is you can buy a small amount and try them out.
P.S. Does anyone else see a face in my hair? Are soap nuts haunted?
I’m relaxing on the couch listening to thunder and light rain. I love these sounds, they’re relaxing. I am having cravings for chocolate. It hit me hard near the end of the day. I went to Healthy Planet for vegetarian beef chunks and sprouting seeds, and I left with those things, but I also left with a cookie. I’ve noticed that if I stay up too late I end up snacking, so I’m going to go back to going to bed early.
Except for the cookie, I ate pretty good today. Breakfast on weekdays is always an egg and cheese sandwich on a whole wheat English muffin, with black coffee. My spouse is the one that wakes up and makes breakfast during the week, so he gets to decide what we’re eating. I enjoy those extra minutes for more snoozing. For lunch I had my usual Healthy Choice bowl. Dinner was the above photo, with brown rice, sprouts, broccoli, beefless chunks, and avocado, with squeezed lemon and some toasted sesame oil. I also put sauerkraut on it too. These bowls are fast and easy. I steam enough rice for the whole week and if anything needs to be cooked I usually toss it into the air fryer. Easy peasy.
Shark week is coming and I can feel a raging froth of PMS broiling inside me. My spouse is watching television and it’s killing my peaceful vibe of nature sounds. He’s already turned the sound down and it’s still irritating me. I AM GROUCHY!!!! Murderous rage!!!!!! I must look into sound proofing.
I’m still working my way up the treadmill. Yesterday I was on it for 20 minutes at 3.6mph, it’s come up from 15 minutes. I’m working on lengthening the time, then I’ll tackle speed. I’ve been enjoying it!
As for soapy nuts… I fell down the YouTube rabbit hole and stumbled on soap nuts. I’ve known about them for awhile and have even had them before (I think I had them for laundry), but I don’t think I’ve ever washed my hair with them before. This girl in the video washes her hair with them and her hair looks good to me. I tried them this morning. I boiled 7 soap nuts in two cups of water and applied it on my dry hair. I left in on for a couple minutes and then rinsed it off. I didn’t use conditioner either. It seemed to work pretty well.
My hair was still pretty easy to comb out afterwards and it did clean my hair. As a bonus my scalp wasn’t itchy like it usually is after washing it (I think it’s because I let my hair air dry). Once isn’t enough to tell how they work, I’ll post an update after using them for a month. I still plan on using shampoo and conditioner to wash out my bimonthly hair dye. I seriously doubt soap nuts could handle that nightmare, but who knows. Not this person.
I made sauerkraut! I can’t remember if I’ve ever fully finished making it before. Something usually goes wrong for me, like I forget about it for too long, or pieces will float to the surface and go moldy. This time it went perfectly. I got the recipe from here, it was really simple. You just need salt, cabbage, and some jars.
I cut up a head of cabbage and put it into two bowls. There is a lot of cabbage and I didn’t have a big enough bowl to do it in one. I also used pickling salt instead off the salt they used in the recipe, because I didn’t have sea salt. I also ended up using more salt and if I make it again, I would add more. Pickling salt is big chunks. I think it needed more to make up for the difference.
After you add the salt you let it sit for a bit and then you have to squeeze, or mash the cabbage, to get the salt in and for the cabbage to release the liquid. I squeezed it with my hands while my spouse and I watched TV. This method took awhile and I got cabbage EVERYWHERE. It wish I had taken a photo of the couch after. I made a mess. It was fun (not sarcasm, it was fun).
Once you are finished that process you then pack your cabbage into some jars. One head of cabbage filled both of these 1L jars. I didn’t get enough liquid out of the cabbage for everything to get submerged, so I made the brine solution from the Prairie Homestead recipe, and made sure none of the cabbage was floating to the top. In the wide mouth jar some of the cabbage kept coming loose, so I weighed it down with a smaller mason jar. I made sure the lids were only sitting on top, to let the gas escape and then left it for a couple days longer than a week.
It turned out great, it’s healthy, and I plan on keeping some on hand all the time from now on. Speaking of healthy, I also grew some of my own sprouts.
At first I tried using a mason jar with my new sprouting lids. I was so excited to try them out. I soaked the seeds over night and when I went to drain them the next day they wouldn’t drain. The seeds formed this gelatinous goo around them, like chia seeds do and no matter how hard I shook the jar, the water wouldn’t come out.
As I knew it would, everything ended up rotting and going bad. I had to dump everything out and start over. Next I tried again without soaking the seeds. I shook them around with water and drained the jar. That worked fine, but when I went to water them again the next day, they were gelatinous and wouldn’t drain. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. I didn’t hear anyone else complain about alfalfa seeds doing that. Well guess what. They weren’t alfalfa seeds.
I had bought arugula seeds. I bought these seeds years ago by the way, and they still sprouted no problem. I’m impressed! I decided to try again with an old sprouting tray I had.
I sprinkled the seeds over a damp paper towel. I messed up in this photo. They are supposed to be sitting on the white tray (pictured in the photo with the growing sprouts), this green tray is just the base. The white tray is a draining grate that helps the seeds drain so they don’t rot.
The seeds grew really fast and I had sprouts in under a week. They had a little nip to them too. Arugula sprouts are spicy! I will grow more of them, but I really want to try my new sprout jar with the right seeds. I will buy some alfalfa seeds and try again.
As for the snake orgy, I’m not sure if that’s what they were actually doing, but there is a group of snakes that live under this rock and comes out every spring after a couple warm days. When I saw them for the first time this year, they were clumped in this ball. I left them to whatever shenanigans they were getting up to and know I’ll be seeing them throughout the Summer.
I really wanted to title this post “I’ve Got Worms”, the typical title when talking about composting worm bins, but I didn’t, you’re welcome.
I do have a worm bin. It’s not ideal, it really should be a made of something opaque, but I got this bin on sale and wrapped it in masking tape. I used to keep my bin in the laundry room because it was dark in there, but the constant hum of machines were disturbing the worms. I could tell because they weren’t laying eggs. I moved the worms to a lower shelf in a dark cupboard and they are much happier.
Red Wriggler Egg
In the photo above you can see a tiny red wriggler egg. It is the brown, lemon shaped egg between my fingers (on the left side of the little dirt pile). I’m not squeamish around worms and if you want a composting bin, you really shouldn’t be. When it comes time to separate the worm castings from the worms and eggs, you really need to get hands on in there. At least, that is my experience. I’ve never found any of the ways they suggest separating everything, to work. I do it by hand, piece by piece, worm by worm, egg by egg. It takes awhile. On the plus side, you have some great plant fertilizer. I’m sure an outdoor composting bin produces just as great of a fertilizer and if you are uncomfortable with worms and getting your hands dirty, it would be the better option.
You should be careful of what you put into your worm bin and also how much. You don’t want it to turn into a mud puddle. There are only certain things you can but in there (like no meat, or dairy). Whatever you add to the worm bin needs to be covered by bedding, to keep everything healthy in there. This photo is before I covered up all the cabbage. Exposed produce will lead to mold, pests, and it would smell. Signs of a healthy worm bin are no smell (or I should say an earthy smell), eggs, and active worms. If your worms are slow and sluggish you likely have a problem.
You don’t need to buy anything fancy to start a worm bin. I found my worms on kijiji (you can’t use regular earth worms. Composting worms are a specific species. I use red wrigglers), and put them in a plastic tote. For bedding I use newspaper and cardboard. You also have to give them water. I don’t feel like I have the water situation sorted yet because my worm casting usually seem too wet, but I’m worried about dehydrating them. I’ll post a link to a website where you can find more information about them here.
I broke my rule. I was only going to buy $30 in stock, once a month. Thursday, I was playing around on WealthSimple and saw two stocks for under $1.00. The stock was for Bombardier class A and Class B (I had no idea what the difference was at the time). Class A BBD.A was $0.85 and Class B was $0.58. Because they were so cheap, I bought one of each. I figured “Why not?” when the total price was under $2.00. I put a limit buy for each of them for $0.99. I got Class A for $0.84 and Class B for $0.58.
I know now that the difference between the two was voting rights, according to this website. From what I read, I should have purchased the Class B stock, as I am not interested in voting rights and it was much cheaper.
Bombardier is not doing well and will be laying off 1600 employees. I only bought it because I liked the price (and the name. Bombardier, I like the mouthfeel of the word). These are some of the reasons you should never take financial advice from me. Mouthfeel, is not likely a solid method for choosing stocks.
I am reading the book pictured below (I purchased it from Indigo), to learn a better method for choosing stocks.
This long weekend was a fairly quiet one. My sweet spouse picked us up a bottle of vintage wine and brought me beautiful white roses (one of my favourites). We made a charceuterie board and watched TV.
The charceuterie board was made with cheese from the Cheese Of The Month Club and they were all delicious. My favourite was the heart shaped cheese. We added fruit, veggies, crackers, pickles, dips, and chocolate almonds. It was delicious and low key.
My spouse had a sore back all this weekend, so we spent most of the time relaxing. We went for a walk through the woods for Family Day. It was cold and beautiful. I love the woods in Winter. There are a lot of hills. I want to hike through the woods and take a GT Snow Racer and sled down the hills through the trees (I feel that is breaking an age appropriate line, but sometimes you just have to try things).
I made a lot of cards this weekend. My favourite was the headphones girl and the slim line jar card.
This mason jar shaker was my least favourite. I love the lid, but I’m not very good at making shaker cards yet and I just didn’t like the look of it. I would have liked this better as a flat jar. I’ll post a video of the cutting dies I used below.
St Marys is small, but it has some shopping gems. One of these gems is the local cheese shop The Towne and Country Cheese Shop of St. Marys. They are a lunch deli and cheese shop that offers gluten free and vegetarian options (I’m unsure if they have vegan options). They now offer something magical and wonderful… Cheese of the month!
The cheese is only available for pick up and you wont be able to find anything out about it online (There is no information on their website, I only found out about it because it was listed in the local paper). The flavours in this month’s box were Wensleydale Creamery Yorkshire Wensleydale Pineapple, Smoked Chipotle, Ford Farm Cheesemakers Wensleydale With Raspberry and White Chocolate Curls, and Coombe Castle Chocolot cheese.
Every month you will get 3-4 different kinds of cheese totaling about 1.5lbs of cheese. They packaged it up beautifully for a boutique experience that was a delight to unbox. The cheese comes with pairing and serving suggestions and information about the cheese. I love love love that there was a heart shaped cheese for the month of Valentine’s Day (there were more flavours of the heart shaped cheese, at the shop).
I’m excited to try new and interesting cheeses each month and plan on staying signed up for awhile.
Disclaimer. I am not a medical professional, nutritionist, or anyone with any business giving diet advice. This is my own personal journey. When it comes to yourself, seek the advice of a medical professional.
It was a Subway day today. I had wanted a pita, but my schedule worked out that I wouldn’t be near a Pita Pit, today. I am still on the takeout wagon and ended up at Subway. I love the Beyond Meatball sub, but they didn’t have it, so I opted for the veggie pattie sub. You cant tell from the photo because the gigantic veggie pattie is hiding it all, but there are actually quite a bit of vegetables on there. It was okay, but please please bring back the beyond veggie balls. I miss it!
I usually only get a 6 inch, but since I’m doing OMAD (one meal a day), I felt justified in getting a foot long sub (I admit I got cookies too). I was really hungry and thought I could plow through that sandwich, but I couldn’t. I was stuffed after half of it. I’m still going to eat the other half sometime before I go to bed tonight, which is probably not part of the OMAD rules (I don’t really know what the rules are), but I’m still going to finish it.
Disclaimer. I am not a medical professional, nutritionist, or anyone with any business giving diet advice. This is my own personal journey. When it comes to yourself, seek the advice of a medical professional.
Today went well. I was hungrier than yesterday, but I made it until evening. I went out to the Thai Hut and got this dish called Pad La Na. It was okay. I’ve loved everything from the Thai Hut, but this one wasn’t my favourite. I want to try everything on their menu, I love that place so much. I recommend the green curry and peanut noodle dish. I love them. I don’t usually eat out this much, but I’ve lost my cooking mojo. Tomorrow I’ll be going out for pitas. Hopefully after that I get back into cooking. I just haven’t felt like it lately.
I’m very thirsty this evening. I’m currently drinking hot, black tea. During the day I had a small coffee and two Bubly drinks. I don’t normally get thirsty. The Bublys make me pee like crazy. Maybe that has something to do with it. I want to drink another Bubly, but I do worry that much carbonation is bad for you. I also do NOT want to drink water. Even infused water is something I’m not very good about drinking it. It’s something I have to work on.
I had a bunch of letters to mail this morning, that I finished last night. I don’t think any of them contained any cards. I don’t always send cards, usually just a letter. I love hearing from friends through letters, or in person. It’s just not the same through text messages, or phone calls (I would prefer to never to talk on the phone, which is strange because that’s how I happily spend large chunks of my younger years).
I mistakenly used my work address for my Amazon shipment and the delivery agent left it outside a locked office door in a big commercial building! On a Saturday. I was not happy at all. Luckily someone went to the office the same day it was delivered and took it inside for me. I was so happy it was there waiting for me this morning. Amazon did say they would refund me if it wasn’t there today, so they are really good about it. I’m happy to say it wasn’t an issue and I got my parcel.
I got some double sided adhesive sheets and these punches. The adhesive sheets are for die cutting and the punches for shaker cards, or general craft purposes.
I need another vacation so I have time to play with all these things.
Lobster Shorts 