Homemade Apple Butter

I made homemade apple butter for the first time! And I even canned it myself!

I made it in the crock pot using this recipe (but with half the sugar) and then used this page for instructions on how to can it.

The verdict? Apple butter is delicious and VERY easy to make—even for a newbie like me.

I just prepared an apple sauce the evening before, dumped it in the crock along with some cinnamon, cloves, sugar, and salt in the morning, and when I came home from work, my apple butter was almost finished. It just needed to simmer in the pot on high for one more hour.

The canning on the other hand was not so easy. I had never canned anything before, and I didn't have the right supplies. I figured, eh, I'll manage.

Bad idea. I definitely needed a wire rack for my pot to avoid upsetting the lids of the jars as I was lifting them out of the boiling water. I also needed some sort of funnel. I made a HUGE mess pouring the apple butter into the jars.

All said and done, though, I was successful and now have tons of delicious apple butter. And once it's all gone, I can re-use my jars again and again (which will hopefully help me get better and more efficient at canning). Yay!

Note: If you want to skip the canning stage, you can always make your jam and freeze in in freezer-safe Ball jars. It can't get any easier!

Two Year Anniversary of Life Less Plastic!

It's been two years since I started writing this blog and trying to reduce the amount of plastic I use. It's been a crazy ride, filled with lots of ups and downs, including but not limited too...

The Ups

• Successfully figuring out how to use less plastic.
• Educating myself about plastic, waste, and other environmental issues that I never thought about before.
  
• Experiencing endless support from family, friends, co-workers, and readers.
  
• Watching the readership and comments on my blog grow and grow. It's been great to know that people are interested in what I'm doing.
  
• Being featured in Time Magazine, Mother Jones Magazine, The Dallas Morning News, Positively Green Magazine, and on NPR, the BBC website, and Forecast Earth, the Weather Channel’s environmental website (click the links for the stories).

The Downs

• Trying to figure out how to reduce the plastic I use. The first few months were really tough because I had to completely rethink everything I buy.
  
• Using plastic, even though I write this blog. I hate it, but it happens on occasion and I usually feel like I'm deceiving people. It's just hard not to give into my weaknesses for coffee and fancy cheeses.
  
• Being scared that people will think I'm a freak. Not conforming is hard, even if it's with something like not using plastic. For a long time a didn't even have the guts to tell my co-workers about what I'm doing.

Through all of these ups and downs, there have been many people who have supported me, which I have appreciated immensely.

The Thanks Yous

• My family - Thanks to my Mom and Dad for always being interested in and supportive of what I'm doing, and thanks to my siblings for providing ideas, commentary, and general well wishes. Thanks also go out to my family for making the effort to create my first plastic-free Christmas and my second one.
  
• My friends - Thanks to all of my friends who have put up with my plastic-free-ness. It's always appreciated. Additional thanks to a certain someone who had to put up with me when I was first figuring out what I was doing. I know it was annoying, so thanks for being patient!
  
• My co-workers, who are also my friends - Why was I so scared to tell you at first? Thanks so much for all your support and positive feedback (and for not being too mad that I waited to tell you about this project).
• Life Less Plastic readers - Thank you for all of your interest, as well as for your thoughtful and supportive comments. Some of you have been with me on this ride since the beginning, and I dearly appreciate everything you have contributed.
  

The Blog Contest
To mark my two year anniversary, I'll be hosting another blog contest in the near future. Check back soon for the details.

And thanks again to everyone!

Plastic-Free Cookies

It's a distant memory now, but long, long ago, I made my first attempt to avoid plastic at the grocery store.

It was an endeavor that changed my life and empowered me to do something different. To take a stand and to show the world (or a least anyone who happened to land on my blog) that creating so much garbage, plastic or otherwise, is not necessary. It's possible to live a good and happy life without sending 4.5 pounds of trash to the landfill each day.

I'm happy that I started my less-plastic experiment that day, but after almost two years of blogging about it, that must be obvious.

But now I feel I must also admit something. That day was also the start of a horrible reality. That's right. It was the start of life without cookies.

No Oreos. No Nilla Wafers. No Big & Soft Chocolate Chunk Chips Ahoy.

Life would be cookie-less, or at least I thought it would be until, soon after my experiment began, I stepped into my local bakery and discovered a precious secret—local bakeries make delicious cookies that can be acquired with little or no packaging.

That's right. A shop that might just be right near your house can provide you with delicious cookies that are better for the environment and help nurture the local economy. Who ever thought cookies could be so good?

The moral of the story: The next time you consider buying a box of Keebler Fudge Shoppe Mini Fudge Stripes cookies, put them down and pay your local baker a visit. You won't regret it (unless you eat too many cookies, which, actually, you might regret, but I can't help you with that).

p.s. You can also make your own cookies. Those are good, too.

One Year of Plastic

A Life Less Plastic reader recently emailed to tell me about a project he undertook—to save an entire year of his family's plastic usage.

This is what it looked like:

































Scott, the plastic-saver, explains his endeavor.

"I heard all the talk about plastics being bad for your health and the environment but wanted to know what my family (single parent, twin daughters) was using. So the best way to do that was gather the facts, save the plastic, and see."

His result was a decent-sized, although probably much smaller than average, hill of plastic. He laments, "I'm fairly conservative with waste and I still got this big pile."

"I have [enough] plastic forks, spoons, knives, and straws to last a long time."

Quite enlightening. Thanks, Scott, for sharing photos and info on your project.

Moving Doesn't Have to Be Wasteful

I have to admit something. When I was packing up my apartment back in June, I had a lot of I-should-just-throw-this-out moments.

You know what I mean. You're standing in your kitchen tossing utensils and cans of kidney beans into a box and you come across something you can't imagine bringing to your new place. Maybe it's a half-full box of pasta or a stray teabag. Who knows.

Either way, you're so exhausted that the very prospect of carrying eight ounces of pasta or a half-ounce teabag the thirty feet out to the moving van seems like a serious waste of energy.

I think it happens to everybody, but I'm happy to say that I resisted the temptation to trash everything and start over. Instead, I mustered up the strength, put everything I had into boxes, and moved it all to my new apartment. I didn't toss a single thing out...except for one mostly dead aloe plant that someone ended up rescuing anyway.

And I have to say, moving those extra few boxes really wasn't bad, especially when you consider that I probably saved myself a fair amount of money by keeping those useful things.

Mind you, I did give a lot of clothes and shoes to Goodwill, but I didn't ditch everything in the dumpster.

THIS, I must point out, is more than I can say for the guy who moved out of my building last weekend. I've never seen anything like it. The day he moved out, he scrapped the following:

• a beautiful vintage couch (which got rained on before I could put up an add on Craigslist's free section)
• an antique radio
• curtains
• sheets
• a drying rack (this is mine now, I needed one)
• books
• nice wooden hangers
• a bucket (mine now, too)
• a plant stand
• a cooler
• and much, much more

It was ridiculous. He threw away things he surely could have used in his new home, like food and hangers, as well as things he could have donated or sold to other people. It was really sad.

But why be sad? Moving doesn't have to be wasteful because the following resources and organizations can help you make your next move more eco-friendly.

Resources

• Freecardboardboxes.com - Connect with people who are giving old moving boxes away.
• Usedcardboardboxes.com - Buy moving boxes that have been rescued from large companies that might otherwise recycle them or simply throw them away.
• Freecycle - Give your unwanted things to others who will cherish them. Note that people give moving boxes away on this site ALL the time.
• Craigslist - Sell unwanted items or create a post in the "free" section. You can even do this for stuff you're leaving in your alley.
• Goodwill
• Salvation Army

Summer Break is Over

My co-worker, Nick, won't stop asking me why I haven't blogged since May. Nearly every day his loud, annoying voice curls around the wall between our cubicles and grates at my ears.

What I hear is something like, "So, Jeanne."

It's not a question, but I know there's more to it. I know what's coming. I say, "yeeeaaaah?"

Then he asks, "So, when are you gonna write another blog post?"

"Uhh...I don't know!"

But that's not totally true. I do sort of know why.

I moved into a new apartment last month and was transported into an anti-blogging state of preoccupation, confusion, and plastification.

Excuse #1: Preoccupation
I spent a good portion of June packing up my old apartment and moving into my new place. Then I had to unpack (Secret: I'm still not 100% done. I have one box to left to unpack and I still haven't figured out how to organize my closets).

On top of that, it's the summer, and my usually-super-busy boyfriend has tons of free time, and I went to visit my friend's farm for a weekend, and I've been working on a new photo project. And, and, and.

Excuse #2: Confusion
It is not just the preoccupation. Now that I'm in a new apartment and location, I've had to figure out how to shop again. I had to assess the general plastic-free-ness of the products at my new grocery store and figure out the best way to get to a Whole Foods. I had to reform my routine—the exact routine that allows me to be (nearly) plastic-free in the first place.

Excuse #3: Plastic
I've used some plastic during this busy and confusing time, which left me un-motivated to write. Here's a list of the things I recall using:

• A Starbucks ice coffee cup
• Two coffee cup lids
  
• A carry out container (from delicious thai food)
  
• Blue corn chips bag
• A few straws
• Two plastic forks and two plastic knives (at continental breakfast while on a mini-break)
• Plastic bag (from cherries at a farmers' market)
  

That's all I can remember for now. I know it's not so bad, but I felt terrible for each and every one of these things.

Summer Break Is Over
So that's it. Summer is over, and it's time to say "adios" to preocccupation, confusion, and plastic.

And it's time to say "hello" to my blog! HELLO BLOG!

Thanks to Nick for allowing me to make fun of him in this post. If you've got time, check out his marketing strategy blog, Never A Lack of Ideas.

Why I Love Dumpster Diving, Garbage Picking, and Other People's Trash

A few days ago, I stepped into the alley behind my apartment and beheld a wonderful sight: a pristine, white dish drainer sitting atop my neighbors' garbage can.

Heck yeah! This was a clear message from my neighbors. It read, "Hey everyone. I'm throwing this thing away, but it's in perfect condition, and I know one of you will want it."

They were right.

Immediately, my natural instinct to acquire perfectly usable stuff that other people are throwing away took over. I snagged the drainer and brought it back to my house, where it joined all the other things I've gained from garbage picking.

As I stowed my new-to-me contraption away, I happily thought, "How perfect! I really needed a dish drainer." (I'm moving to a cozy new apartment on July 1. The place doesn't include roommates with useful kitchen gadgets.)

Yep, because of my find, I was enjoying a nice little high--like the one you get when you chance upon a dollar bill on the ground.

But then all of the sudden my high started to wear off. And I got annoyed.

I got annoyed because people look down so much on dumpster diving. They think it's gross and dirty, but what these narrow-minded people don't understand is that it almost never is.

Just like my neighbors, many people leave the "good stuff" outside their garbage cans, making it clean and easy to grab things. That means you don't have to do anything untoward, yet you still get to enjoy all the benefits:

• You prevent the pollution and resource waste that results from making new products
• You divert "good stuff" from landfills
• You get cool shit for free!

How amazing!

Below are pictures of things that were all once trashed. They are now my treasures. I hope they'll inspire you to do a little alley hunting yourself and to always leave your "good stuff" on top of your garbage can.


Isn't my coffee table gorgeous?














I keep this chair on my back porch.














I potted an aloe in a pretty dish I happened upon.














This antique wooden crate was a true find.