Green Power
Yesterday, just before we turned out the power, we also signed up for Puget Sound Energy’s Green Power program. The City of Lacey issued a Green Power Challenge and we’ve been meaning to sign up. Earth Hour seemed to be the appropriate time. We already try to do things to reduce our energy use. Our computers and many other electronics are in power strips that are turned off at night, we use compact fluorescent bulbs and just do little things like not leaving lights on. Our electric use is still much higher than we’d like but in the apartment our heating, cooking and hot water are all electric. Even so we manage to use less power than the average according to PSE’s reports.
Earth Hour
Today is the day for Earth Hour. Turn your lights off at 8:00 PM, local time, to help increase awareness of climate change. We’re going to take it a bit further and have a voluntary power outage for the hour. Which means that the server will be offline during that time today.
The Climate Crisis site has more suggestions on what people can do to reduce impact. Although they take until page 5 to get to one of the most important.
Reduce the number of miles you drive by walking, biking, carpooling or taking mass transit wherever possible
Not that the others aren’t good ideas — but people are in their cars far too often. Out on my trike I notice how few people cycle despite our expanding network of trails and bike lanes.
Planting!
We’ve been a bit late with some of the planting. Partly because the garden doesn’t stop anymore. The kale, chives, and garlic is all doing well.
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Peas are also already up along with some new lettuce. But we have to get plants started for the new year. We’re a bit late. So today we planted Golden Rave tomatoes, Beaverlodge tomatoes, more peas, and Trombancio Zucchini. Also planted marigolds and nasturtiums from last year’s seeds.
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It’s a rainy day out there and we’ve still had some cold temperatures. But it should be warming up soon. Hopefully by then the plants will be ready and we’ll get them moved out.
Snow! and Baking
I thought Ryan was pulling my leg when he said it snowed this morning at the Olympia Airport but he wasn’t kidding. They really did get a dusting of snow. It was in the 30’s on our patio this morning but no snow here. It is chilly today, only 45° on the porch right now. Temperature aside it’s been a beautiful day, bright and sunny. Now if it would just warm up, oh about 15 or 20 degrees, it would be perfect.
Today’s chilly temps outside made it a good day to be baking inside. The oven kept the apartment nice and warm, plus we needed more sandwich bread and the bananas were about to spoil. So I tried a new recipe for a loaf of bread and made a batch of muffins.
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Banana Oat Muffins
yield 1 dozen muffins
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg, lightly beaten
3/4 cup milk
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup mashed bananas
1 cup mini chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 400°F. Line a muffin tin with paper cups or spray with non-stick baking spray. Combine dry ingredients (including chocolate chips) together in a medium bowl. In a large bowl, stir together egg, milk, oil, and vanilla. Add in mashed banana and mix thoroughly. Add dry ingredients to the banana mixture and stir until just combined. Pour batter into prepared muffin tin. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes. Remove from pan and cool on wire rack.
P.S. by the time I finished typing up this post, looking up how to type the degree symbol, calling Ryan to help me with the dang card reader, etc… it had changed from bright and sunny outside to hail and then pouring rain. Weird spring weather!
Catching Up
We need to catch up on posts. Things have been coming along but we just haven’t been taking the time to post on the blog. I want to do better about that.
As the weather has improved the porch garden is taking off. Kate’s planted lettuce and peas which are up now. The strawberry plants are growing. The garlic and kale that we planted in the Fall are growing well.
[thumb:751:l] I took the picture of the kale last Saturday. It’s bigger now. We used the kale and the fresh chives on some hamburgers we grilled recently. Very good, and I’m not a big fan of hamburgers. Once in awhile they’re fine. We also had delicious pickles that Kate canned last summer. Speaking of canning, we still have lots of jam that Kate canned too. It’s all very good. Last year was our first year canning. The Farmer’s Market was a great source of things to can.
Going back a few weeks I thought I’d share a couple pet pictures too. It was a nice Sunday, February 24th, and we took the dogs out in the field to play. After trying and failing to catch the dogs in the act of catching the frisbee over and over we finally managed shortly before returning inside.
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