Our local waste collection facility had a free e-waste collection event today, so we took in the bag of household e-waste we had been collecting. We didn't have much, just one fluorescent light tube, some batteries, an LED aquarium light, an electric wine bottle opener, and various bits and pieces of small household appliances.
There were lots of people lined up to discard stuff when we were there and lots of tires were being turned in. This is GOOD because tire disposal is a BIG problem up here in the High Desert - many many tires end up just dumped on vacant lots because it costs money to take tires to the dump and some people don't want to pay the fee. Dealers and garages bundle the disposal fee into the cost of changing your tires, but some people who do it at home just dump them in the desert rather than paying to take them to the waste facility (ditto for used motor oil and other such things). Today's event was free for e-waste (which usually commands a small fee) and tires were only $2 each to dispose of, so it was good to see lots of people taking advantage of the opportunity to properly dispose of them.
After dropping that stuff off, we went to collect some glass baby food jars and horse manure from our neighbor Maryann, and some more glass jars from our neighbor Chrissy. I had posted a "wish" for these items in our local Buy Nothing group on Facebook. Our neighbor Michael says he's got some more jars for me, but won't be able to gather them up until Monday, so I'll get them later this week. The jars are for storage and the manure is for my compost bin's springtime kick-start. Maryann helped me fill a 30 gallon steel garbage can with horse manure and load it into the back of our pickup. I put about a quarter of it into the bin and will add more later this week after it's had a chance to work its magic for a bit.
Our next stop was at PetSmart and PetCo to get some small crickets and flightless fruit flies for my pet green tree frog. Her name is Shug, which is short for "Sugar". She is named after Shug Fisher, who voiced the character of Uncle Pecos in the classic Tom & Jerry cartoon "Pecos Pest", where he sang "
Froggy Went a-Courtin'". It's always been one of my favorite T&J episodes!
She loves her some crickets and flies, let me tell you that! The crickets cost 15 cents each & I got 10 of them, so that's a really inexpensive meal for her, especially because it will take her a couple of days to eat them all. The flightless fruit flies are a bit more expensive, costing $10 for a small "peanut butter jar" full of their food, eggs, larvae, pupa, and adult flies. Of course, this jar will produce literally HUNDREDS of flies that will take a couple of weeks for her to eat, so it's not a bad value at all. I'll take the lid off the jar & put the jar into her tank in a day or so.
On the way home, we stopped at Stater Bros and I bought a bottle of lemon juice. I was looking for some ponzu sauce, but all they have is the kind with chili peppers in it and I just wanted plain ponzu. One can make a reasonable facsimile of ponzu by mixing soy sauce and lemon juice, and I have a large bottle of soy sauce in my fridge, so all I needed was the lemon juice (because the bottle I had was nearly empty). It's way cheaper this way, too!
I also checked to see if they had any dried konbu seaweed so I could make some more konbudashi pickled onions and mushrooms, but they didn't have any, so I didn't buy any mushrooms. We plan to check out an Asian grocery store on the way home from school on Monday & they will most likely have some so I'll get some then. If not, there's always Amazon, though I prefer to support local business owners. (Local pet stores are a dying breed - they just can't compete with the big chains - and we haven't found any that stock crickets or fruit flies, which is why I go to PetCo & PetSmart for those.)
Once home, I put all 46 of the baby food jars from Maryann into the dishwasher. Their labels had already been removed, so I didn't have to pre-soak them or anything. The 15 larger jars from Chrissy were mostly from dill pickles and pickled peppers and did have labels, so I soaked them for an hour in hot soapy water in the sink until the labels peeled off. After the baby food jars came out of the dishwasher, in the pickle jars went.
Here's a pic of the baby food jars when they came out of the dishwasher:
That's a lot of baby food jars! :-) (Also included in the pic is a pint jar and a 1.5 pint jar that I already had.)
All of the jars I got today had lids attached. Lids are a lot harder to get clean than are jars! I ran all the baby food jar lids once in a special dishwasher basket I have for small things and again in a mesh bag. The pickle jar lids soaked in hot soapy water for an hour with the jars, so they only need once through the dishwasher. The dishwasher is running right now as I write this, so once it's done, I'll inspect the lids and re-wash anything that needs it. If something is beyond salvaging (such as the one old rusty canning jar band that was in the box with the jars), I'll toss it into the scrap metal recycling bin.
And, NO, I don't intend to use any of these jars for canning. The USDA recommends that jars from commercial foods NOT be used for home canning. Part of the reason is that the glass may not be sturdy enough for multiple passes through the canner, and part of it is the lids are for one-time use only, even if the jars are multi-use jars. They also recommend discarding the lids (but not the bands) from home-canning jars (such as Ball & Kerr brands) after one use, too. These jars will be for my own use for storage of ferments and other small batches of things I make, or for the storage of sundry dry goods. Having these jars frees up my real canning jars for things that require actual canning!
Today's food:
Breakfast = smoothie.
Lunch = nothing. I really do need to make a more concerted effort to eat lunch. I just get distracted and forget! :-(
Dinner = Brianne had the last of the mustard-pesto baked pork tenderloin and I had a tuna salad sandwich.
I opened a can of tuna and mixed in 3 Tbsp of Marzetti Simply Ranch dressing, which only has 2g of carb per 2 Tbsp serving. I added some sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, and sunflower seeds, as well as granulated garlic, dried dill, and fresh ground salt and pepper. I spread some cream cheese onto a low-carb tortilla, spooned about half of the tuna salad onto that, and added the last of my green leafy sprouts. Yum!
Addendum: Here's a pic of the jars from Chrissy as they came out of the dishwasher:
The jars are all squeaky clean, but some of the lids still smelled like pickled peppers, so I put all the lids (baby food lids, too) into a dishpan with some white vinegar and hot water & will let them soak overnight. PLUS, I found one lid that had fallen into the sink's disposal opening, and so didn't get into the dishwasher. It is soaking now, too. Sigh.
I still haven't done anything with the grapefruit, oranges, and apples that Vickie gave me yesterday. I'll definitely get them done tomorrow, now that I have jars into which to put them. :-)
Oh, I almost forgot: I had a dark chocolate-covered macadamia nut today. Truth be told, I have one probably every day. I let the chocolate melt in my mouth, then crunch on the nut. Yummy and not too many carbs. The perfect treat! 👍
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