Apparently the new working term is "No Waste Kitchen" and many people are jumping on the bandwagon to claim they have it.

Sadly, I do not. Of course I've tried to keep waste to a minimum. Since I've moved in the little town, recycling is nonexistent, although after seeing some stories, one has to wonder how much of the recycling stuff that is picked up at the curb or the bag bins at the grocery stores really are recycled, but I'll stop there as far as those topics.

I was raised by Depression Era parents. We didn't waste stuff because they were raised not to. Plus, we had our own money issues; we weren't dirt poor, but we didn't have a lot extra. I'm a product of this upbringing. 

A month or so ago at the senior center, there was a gal who runs an herb farm and we blended tea. It was a reasonably priced adventure costing $5 and we each took home a small bag of tea leaves we had blended so we could have a couple of cups of tea. She has a website so I checked it out and she is leading a class on the No Waste Kitchen for a fairly expensive sum.  I sat there and wondered, how hard could it be to do one's research on this?

Anyway, I won't be attending it. I have read a lot and I try to do some of it. Fortunately we live in the country so I can use a lot of my produce scraps for my compost pile. I reuse as many containers as I can. And I try to keep an eye on food so we aren't wasting it. I'm not perfect by any means, but I figure it is a work in progress.

Our cucumbers and cherry tomatoes are really producing. I've made jars of dill pickles and sweet pickles and canned them. DH loves a cucumber salad with vinegar, sugar, and onions, and I have a jar of that going all the time in the fridge. I've given away some of our cucumbers as well.

The cherry tomatoes are just starting to come on and I've juiced some and today I roasted a bunch while I was baking cookies since I had the oven on. I roasted them with onions (also grown by me) and a bell pepper and with some herbs from our herb garden. I put it all in a blender and now have a pint of tomato sauce in the freezer. I hope to make more as we continue to get more cherry tomatoes. The bigger tomatoes are just starting to come on. 

We save our coffee grounds. I put some in some of the garden areas, and most wind up in our compost pile. I'm using banana peels to make plant food to put in the water when I water them. Egg shells are saved for compost as well as grinding some up to put in the gardens. 

We bought grapes the other day and didn't eat them all. They weren't bad, but they were starting to get soft. I cooked them down and strained them and made some grape jelly this morning. I did the same with some blueberries I had to make jam, and I had some strawberries that I also made some jelly with. Lots of good eats came out of the kitchen today and it makes me feel like I've accomplished something. Granted, if I didn't have jars and rings, this would be expensive, but since I can, I do have the equipment, so that made it easier. We built wooden shelves in the basement in one of the rooms that I store a lot of my canning on. We've eaten quite a bit from it this past year, so I hope to replenish a lot of it. We aren't "preppers" by any means. I'm not planning for the apocalypse or anything. I just like having stuff on hand. 

I am going to try something new soon. I saw a recipe to make soap with cucumbers and aloe. Well, we have plenty of cucumbers and I have two large aloe plants, so I thought that might be something fun to do. Hopefully it will come out and we'll have some homemade soap. 

I've been saving tin cans from stuff we do buy, as well as coffee containers. I usually decoupage on the plastic coffee containers after we use them. I've used them to put cookies in to give away as well as use them for storage. I have one I use for my seeds and a large one I use for my cookie cutters. I save any glass jars. One of the grandsons laughed at me for saving them, but then when he saw some of the things I'm using them for, he thought it wasn't such a bad idea after all. I have been saving maple syrup bottles. We don't go through a ton of them, but I had a couple of extra ones. DH has a laser and I asked him to laser a design on the glass and he did. I made my own vanilla this last year and it was a nice gift to his daughter with the nice bottle with the laser design. I feel rich having my own vanilla bottle with our name on it! 

Speaking of seeds, we have a table on the sunporch that I'm using to dry seeds. I did this last year with some of the plants and used them to grow my own seedlings last spring. I mentioned the idea of having a seed exchange or seed library at our local library and the library director loved that idea, so I'm saving even more so I can donate a bunch. Many of the small libraries around us are doing lots of different programs so they are more community oriented and getting people to come in who might not otherwise frequent them, so that's cool. I've been saving empty presciption bottles and other small bottles to store my seeds for my personal use. 

So, that's my "low waste kitchen" in a nutshell. Not exciting. And I sort of think many others are doing the same, especially with the economy. 

It's been hot and humid here and apparently the garden loves it!

I planted three cucumber plants and they are going wild. I canned 6 quarts of dill pickles yesterday from the garden. We've been eating cucumber and onion salad for a few weeks now. Some of my onions are getting very large. My garlic is almost ready to harvest as well. Our lettuce has produced quite a bit...it's leaf lettuce. And finally, we've gotten a few cherry tomatoes. I've missed the distinct flavor of homegrown tomatoes. I did get a few peas, but I didn't plant enough. So far we've had three good "messes" of green beans which is glorious as well. The radishes earlier in the season were yummy as well. 

Our local Tractor Supply Store was selling out onion sets and small plants for 25 cents each. I bought two geranium plants, three packages of onion sets, and two blueberry plants. I've already planted a bag of the onion sets. I don't kow if the blueberry plants will come around, but figure for 50 cents, I'm not out much if they don't. I know it will be a few years before they would produce, but I've decided gardeners are eternal optimists. 

A couple of months ago one of the county extensions had a class on herb gardening. I asked DH's daugher if she wanted to attend and she did. It was free. I figured we'd get information and maybe a herb to bring home. We not only got a lot of information, we got a two tiered stackable planter and a variety of herbs to plant in it. Mine is sitting on the back deck. I used the dill yesterday for the pickles. I cut basil the other day when I made spaghetti. I've also grown a few herbs from seeds. I plan on starting to dry some soon to have during the winter and spring.

We have some wild blackberries. Last year we didn't get many because it got really dry early in the season. We had plenty of rain, but we aren't getting very many this year either. I've picked what I can and I made some jam. 

One of the cucumbers was hiding and turned yellow. I had it sit on the counter for a bit and yesterday cut it open and pulled all the seeds out to dry. Hopefully I will be able to plant them next year to start my garden inside. Five of my tomato plants and two of my bell pepper plants I planted from seed this year. I was thinking about it while I was working with the cucumber seeds, that some libraries have a seed exchange program. Our little library is pretty cool about doing stuff, so I emailed the director to ask her if she thought they might do that since this would be the time to ask people to save seeds. 

After all this, I am discouraged though. I've planted watermelon seeds three times and none of them have come up. I've planted lavender various times this spring and summer and no dice there either. The same is true with lemon balm. I really wanted lavender and lemon balm for the pollinators. 

Beware, I'm starting this as a bit of a rant...we have noticed that some of the young people in our lives are not good about thanking us for birthday/Christmas/graduation gifts. I'm not expecting a huge thank you note, but a text or phone call or email would be appreciated. I'm not talking about a small gift like a candle; I'm talking about a large amount of money. The checks were cashed, but we did not hear from them at all. 

Fast forward to this May and June...a friend's twins graduated from college. Each graduated from a differrent school. We sent a check to each and my husband made each of them a Christmas ornament with a graduation cap, their name, and the year. We received a thank you note from each. A real snail mail one in fact. It meant a lot. The sad thing is these kids probably aren't going to get anything else from us unless they pursue another degree because we aren't really close so it wasn't like they had an excuse to write in hopes of further gifts. Another friend wrote a thank you note to us because we treated him to a meal. So, in the span of two weeks we received three thank you notes. It was wonderful!

Being the frugal (or cheap if you want) person I am, I decided to figure out a way to recycle the fronts of the cards. I bought some cards and envelopes at the dollar store and so I cut the fronts to fit on the front of the empty cards. I decorated them with a few things that I have since I make many of my own cards. I like the idea of reusing the fronts of the cards. 

It was a good exercise getting to work on these because our "craft" room (read craft, but really it's a room with lots of uses) is in the basement and it's cool there. We are under quite a heat wave here in Central Illinois.

Hope you all have a great 4th of July if you are American as we celebrate the 250th anniversary. I've had the privlege of celebrating both the 200th and now the 250th anniversary.