"Of course, we recycle", says the woman at the party. "Every water bottle goes straight into the bin!"

whenever i hear things like that, i mentally cringe and applaud at the same time. (it takes practice).
if you ask me (and you didn't, but it's MY keyboard dammit), that whole "recycle" thing is off to a slow start.

the recycle logo was designed by Gary Anderson, who won a contest from the Container Corporation of American with his design back in 1970. Unfortunately, neither the carboard box barons or Gary got any royalties from it. big bummer for gary. (he's an urban planner these days, and is NOT, as rumored, living in a cardboard box under an LA freeway, although that would be a good "reuse" of a recyclable material and great manure for local news shows).

when he won the contest, gary said the three arrows were there to "symbolize continuity within a finite entity."
to which everyone said: "no idea what that means, gary. nice logo though." after-which they promptly re-named the three arrows to stand for:

#1. reuse
#2. reduce
#3. recycle

#1. reuse means use it again. even if it's a different job. (dryer lint+toilet paper roll=good firestarter)
#2. reduce means cut down on using so much stuff that you throw away in the first place.
#3. recycle means when all other ideas are exhausted, banish it to the curb on trash day. hold a small ceremony. applaud it's contribution. wish it well. (you have to practice faking sincerity).

i like to drink bottled water. i like the propel brand, despite knowing that those gatorade guys make the stuff. it comes in a "we tried to make it sound european, even though we're in chicago" bottle that holds 500 ml. i think that means mills, and probably not miles. we, who live in the USA (same country that includes chicago) refer to a 500 ml bottls as the ever popular 16.9 ounces. (hey gatorade guys: nice try, but 500 ml is just lame).

so here's these empty 16.9 ounce bottles. i've only found a few good uses for them so far.

mostly, i build towering forts with them. new job for them, fun for me, qualifies the bottles as card-carrying "reusers".

in my garden, i have midnight meal ninjas. never see them, just know they're there because i used to start days by realizing that a prize few-week-old seedling has been some slimy guy's late-night snack. the poor little pubescent plant is just...gone. roots and all. it's like an arsonist taking down an orphanage. just not cool.

so now i'm cutting the propel bottles in half, and putting them over the seedlings. the top half is easy, it vents out air through the cap opening. a simple hole in the bottom half gives it the same talent. stick them in the ground around the seedling and you now have Fort Propel, featuring protection that goes beyond antioxidants and vitamin enhancements.

that seems to have stopped the armored assasins (snails with shells). it's either too much work, or not in the union rules to climb vertical. whatever. stops them cold. they feast elsewhere now.
it's those other guys, the naked slug gang without shells that were still hitting me. i'm convinced they have a clubhouse/bar directly below my garden.

so now my forts get moats. wal-mart has those disposable aluminum foil do-hickeys that you put on your stove's burners. when they get icky, you toss 'em. they look like donuts. they're cheap. they last a really, really long time.

the burner foil (my moat) goes around my fort (the propel bottle).

it gets better (at least for me): rather than water (which the snails/slugs treat as a pre-buffet spa and stampede their way into), the moat is filled with fresh beer. this requires that i have at least one beer a day, since each moat doesn't take much. i'm willing to consume 2/3rds of a beer for the cause. call me a plant patriot.

more about the beer: apparently snails and slugs are beer experts. fresh beer attracts them for an evening. they drink the night away, get drunk and literally drown in their beer. you find them floating antenna up in the morning. no forwarding address.
on the second night things change. either the word gets out about my jonestown-ish brew, or they're beer experts, but stale beer is actually a deterrent and they stay away from it. still a good thing.
on night three, the game is back on, all bets are off, survivor hangovers are gone and they'll wade through the two-day old beer without hesitation. (stating this means i have technically justified 1.6 hours of exhaustive beer/snail googling to find out all of this. somewhere it will be reflected on my taxes...). quick tip: don't google "beer garden". not the same thing. better images though...

so my plastic bottles are being used as forts. the burner covers are moats.
but i have more bottles than plants, and they're already stacking up in the reuse "pick me! pick me!" pile.
i've been pouting about not having a greenhouse, so i'm thinking of collecting the bottles to make a small one.
the plastic bottles can be filled with water, lashed together and made into a wall. it will keep things on the inside warmer at night. might take a while. might have to hide from that tv show about "hoarders".

there's apparently a zillion things you can do with a plastic bottle, from a bird feeder to how to make a puppet.

so the propel bottles show up, get emptied. some become forts, others get jobs as walls. wifey-poo always snags a few and uses tap water and propel powder, then sneaks them back into the fridge.

maybe, just maybe...when they can't work anymore, they'll be relocated curbside, scooped up, melted down and back on the shelf again, usually within 90 days.

before then, they're gonna work their butts off here first.

My husband is, as my daughter puts it, is “eccentric.” I prefer to think of him as “special.”   

This man of mine came equipped with twelve wind chimes, each tuned perfectly to the black keys of a piano.  He has yard “creatures” of sorts – the dinosaur fossil,  a replica of human bones – well, I’d better not get started – too overwhelming. 

Other than the yard “creatures” he has a wind sock aquarium; humpty dumpty actually sitting on top of our chimney, the ever-changing front yard flags – and I’d better stop here, also. 

He rode motorcycles for a living, wrote for motorcycle magazines, professionally tested all sorts of bikes.  (He even played motorcycles with Steve McQueen – I’ve seen the pictures!  Oh, and he took Jethro Tull on a  motorcycle excursion – kinda freaky!) My hubby still rides bikes – even has some kinds that need pedal power (I’ve seen him on one of those only once, though). 

(The more I tell you about him, the more I see why my daughter calls him eccentric….) 

He has trophies for flying kites.   I wouldn’t have believed him, except that there is a menagerie of kites hanging out in our garage.  Oh, and he has pictures – and medals….. He even showed off his talents to me one day. 

This “average” guy also paraglides. And he also juggles and rides a unicycle.  Yep – they are also in our garage. 

So, when he asked if I minded if he bought a Sun Oven – I barely gave it a thought.  I’m used to his collecting unique items.  (Frankly, I adore most of them – one reason I decided to ditch my normal home and furnishings and move in with him – always something new to look at!) 

Okay, about the sun oven – I figured he’d have fun experimenting with it.  Maybe it’d cook some food we could eat – and that’d be that.  It’d be in the garage with the other loved but unused items.   

I also wondered about how often he would get to “play” with it, as we live a couple miles from the ocean.  Most of the year, we wake up to the marine layer, which usually clears up just before lunch, and by late afternon, the marine layer rolls back in and covers the sky again.   

I had a good chuckle over this – kinda like when he washes our truck – it ALWAYS rains before he can finish.  I looked forward to using his “experimenting” as a source of more laughter.  (I get a lot of reasons to laugh because of my husband.) 

It has been so fun seeing him busy in the kitchen, putting ingredients into the black pot, covering it, placing it in the sun oven, and finding out what we are going to eat for dinner when he “unveils” his creations! 

Or, coming home from work, I’ll find that he’s been baking brownies or cookies – in the sun oven of course.   

I have married quite the Suzy Homemaker! 

Seriously, though, I am impressed.  Not only can my man barbecue – he can bake entire meals AND desserts without messing up or heating up my kitchen!  I have forgotten what it’s like to have to plan a meal.  He does it all!  I am sooooo encouraging this new hobby of his! 

Of course, he’d want to talk about the energy we are saving.  He loves to do that.  And, he always reminds me to document every step I take when I use the sun oven.  (Yep, he has gotten me to try it – it’s easy, but I prefer to let him be the “master”!  I’ve learned, once “they” know you can do it, it’s then your new job” 

Well, I’m tired from all of this blogging.  Never blogged before and I probably should’ve blogged less.   

My next blog will have to be about his next new gadget he “asked” if he could get………. 

i just read my wife's blog.

i swear i'm not that weird. i just really like stuff that doesn't leave a footprint, lets us thumb our nose at the energy selling folks and get a giggle out of how well the gismo works.

okay, so i have a unicycle, i juggle, i play with kites and paragliders. i have flags in the front yard. and an orchestra of wind chimes out back. i'll even admit that i enjoy watching t-shirts, towels and jeans wave at me from the clothesline in the backyard.

one of the reasons i enjoy all those things is because they're fun...and they're free.
some of them need wind (flying, chimes, etc) and some need plain old person power (unicycles and juggling).

but they're all free. there's no bill in the mail because you played with them.

motorcycles get great gas mileage, have all the performance you need, and here in southern california, lets you "cheat" and cut your way to the front of the line at every red light. i think that's fun...probably should be illegal.

i get a kick out of environmental stuff. i like the way it feels to eat vegetables we've grown in the yard.
i can't wait to use the electricity that we produce ourselves, for free, when we can finally afford solar panels.

meanwhile, i'm hell bent on getting as green as possible. saving money and leaving a small footprint is kind of a hobby. okay, maybe an infatuation. but i'm not obsessed with the idea. not yet anyway.

at least i don't think so...gimme time...

i've been experimenting with the sun oven for about six months now.

the most important thing i've learned is that you REALLY need a temperature probe.
don't get me wrong~ the sun oven comes with a temperature gauge, which tells me how hot it is inside the oven.
i like that.

but i also want to know how hot my food is, so i cook with a temperature probe.

most times, i set the gauge on chicken. in other words, 180 degrees.

why 180 degrees? two reasons:

#1. there's no such thing as medium, medium~well or well done chicken.
chicken is, apparently, completely "done" when it hits 180 degrees. not before. don't ask me why. it just is.

#2. wifey is a germ-a-phobe.
according to her, nothing can stay alive at 180 degrees. that's why her bbq-ed steaks are cooked to 180 (well done and barely a notch shy of (if you ask me) being officially declared "charcoal").
my steaks are done at 160 (medium-well-ish-but-not-quite).

cooking steaks on the bbq is a lot different than cooking food in the sun oven. you can't see what's going on inside the black pot you put into your sun oven.

which is the reason i've become completely dependent/addicted to using a temperature probe.

just the other day we were experimenting with "how can we cook?" one of those frozen skillet meals ("from freezer to plate in 10 minutes") in our sun oven. i picked a raviolo/sausage/italian red sauce combo, not because it sounded the best...but because it was the cheapest, and i figured it'd be a sacraficial/research meal and quite possibly find it's demise via our good friend, mister in-sink-erator.

wifey thorougly examined the package. "Ah ha!", she mumbled in victory "it says to heat until it hits 165 degrees".

we adopted it, then tossed it frozen and with the temperature probe, into the usual black pot with lid, into the sun oven at about 11:30 AM.

it was a busy day, so i didnt' really adjust/rotate the oven more than twice throughout the day.

at about mid-afternoon, the temp probe (set to wifey's required 180) went off with an annoying beep.

i yanked the black pot out of the sun oven and tossed it in the microwave for safe-keeping.

the ravioli was cooked perfectly. the sausage was done. the sauce wasn't too thick, nor too runny.

a couple hours later, we sprinkled some parmesan cheese on top, warmed it up in the microwave and enjoyed a delicious, germ-free, this-free, that-free, boy-in-a-bubble-qualifying meal.

PS: the next day, wifey dove in and substitute-taught an apparently flu-infested class. her being a germ-a-fobe, it was nice to NOT have the food we cooked be a suspected source of her illness.