Save Water – Shower With A Bucket!

Shortly after moving into our new-to-us 1954 single family Cape we of course started discovering issues. One was that the water pipes inside the house were all only half-inch diameter – smaller than more modern houses.The result is that in order to get sufficiently warm water for my 6am 2nd floor shower I must run the shower for up to a minute or more before I dare to step in.

One feature I like is the older 3.5 gallon size toilet – even though modern low-flow toilets use only 1.5 gallons per flush I found myself needing to snake through clogs in the ones we installed in our old house at least once a month.

But after a full 3-month water billing cycle showed we were using the maximum amount in the lowest price tier (up to 15 CCF per cycle – “CCF” = Cento Cubic Feet = 748 gallons per CCF) I decided to work on offsetting the inefficient toilet and shower routines.

By implementing a few small changes to my bathroom routine, in the first week I cut my net water use in half, saving nearly 100 gallons! Here’s how:

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Resources For Writing Grant Proposals

Artists, musicians, writers and other members of the creative community rarely “make it big” in a commercial/financial sense. That doesn’t necessarily discourage us from making art, but it would be nice to have some financial support.

While there are many local, national, and international sources of grant money for creatives, one look at some of the applications scares off many artists who are great at making art but not comfortable with figuring out budgets or writing snappy descriptions of their proposals.

A friend who was recently appointed to her city’s cultural council posted on Facebook that all of her artistic friends should really consider applying for grants even though the thought is intimidating. I posted a bunch of helpful links in the comments, which I am reposting here for future reference, and will add more as I come across them:

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A Recipe To Use Carrot Pulp From Juicing

[NOTE: Edited July 6, 2014 to include changes in cooking and processing the carrots after making this a few more times]

As I’ve mentioned previously, I have an Omega juicer. Using it results in vegetable pulp – the fibrous residue of harder vegetables such as carrots, beets, and leafy greens. I’ve tried a number of recipes purporting to make tasty treats from this pulp, but so far have found none good enough that I wanted to finish the results.

While kale and celery pulp are rather stringy and unappetizing, I really wanted to find a use for the carrot pulp. I started adding to my blended breakfast cantaloupe (frozen in single servings, defrosted and mixed with yogurt) and crockpot oatmeal.

Finally I was inspired by my localvore caterer/meal CSA/event service Cuisine en Locale when they served a mezze plate which included a Turkish carrot dip. Online searching led me to several versions (such as this from local chef Ana Sortun), from which I took ingredient ideas and then winged it with my kitchen contents:

carrot dip

The recipe:

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Rocking at Girls Rock Camp

My July was rather busy, hence the lack of blog posts. One activity was that I took a week’s vacation in order to volunteer at the July session of Girls Rock Camp Boston. I substituted 8-hour days at a computer for 10-hour days co-teaching drumming plus coaching a newly-created band of 8, 9 and 10-year-old girls who wrote an original song and performed it on stage at a major Boston nightclub in front of 300 people!

What is the girls rock camp movement and why might you be interested in supporting it whether or not you happen to have girl children?

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