You want to garden but you don’t have time. Don’t sweat it. Focus just enough to cultivate one small patch, and you might be surprised how committed you become to helping your garden thrive.

May Garden Preparations

If you already followed March planning steps and April preparation of the ground, you can probably get your gardening done before breakfast on a Saturday.

• Gather materials
• Mix soil
• Plant
• Water

Gather materials. Our gathering began as we investigated mystery bags in our garage and found potting soil, we turned over the year’s compost, and we talked to neighbors to borrow a very tiny amount of paint for the trim on our raised bed planter. We didn’t end up having enough compost, dirt, and other material, so gathering involved going to the gardening store. Sad though it seems to buy dirt, we didn’t have other sources nearby. Our county sells top soil, but they didn’t have any available when we went to buy it. If you are fortunate enough to live near a farm, you might find all of the manure you need for free. We had neither easily available, and our goal is not to fret about the garden this year. So, the store.
Goal: use what you have on hand or can borrow then buy as a last resort

Mix soil. The soil mix you need depends on what you are going to grow. We added a lot of manure, peat moss, compost, and top soil.
Goal: give your garden the best possible start

Plant. If you started seeds last month, it might be time to plant out. We had snow just last week, and we may have snow again until the end of May, so we only plant hardy plants outdoors in early May. Whether you plant out or keep your seedlings in the house or garage a bit longer depends on your zone and your plants. If you look closely at our main photo or skip to the close up below, you will see our hops. They were in pots that we moved indoors during the coldest nights over the past month. Since the planter is sheltered, we think they won’t get more snow. So, we planted them today.
Goal: plant out when the zone and plant align

Water. If you plant out, press down the nice, loamy soil, and water.
Goal: wet well the first day then ignore for a couple of days—if you can

Top Soil Mix

Our chosen spot has grown nothing but the same overgrown bush for 20+ years. The dirt is not impressively rich. Building our raised bed up 16″ over an area 3′ x 6′ meant that we would need a total of 24 cubic feet of soil, so we knew we would need to add to our few inches of dry dirt.

There was so much space to fill in my new raised bed that I decided to try lasagna gardening, with alternating layers of material. After digging out my dry, sad dirt and many, many rocks, then setting aside the dirt in buckets, I put down a layer of pizza boxes for my first lasagna layer. I followed this with dry grass and other dry pieces that I hadn’t cleared out from the garden last fall. Dry was followed by green grass clippings, then dried leaves, and peat moss. This brought us up to only 6″ deep, leaving me with another 16 cubic feet to go.

We didn’t have any more dirt or compost left, so we headed to the store to buy bags of top soil, peat moss, and manure. The manure should be about 40% of the total volume, according to our helpful in-store expert. By the time I added bags of stray potting soil I found in my garage, I think we had about 30% manure. Total cost for all of the bags for 16 cubic feet was $34.

My Lasagna Layers:

Top Soil Mix
Peat Moss
Leaves
Green Grass
Dry Grass and garden litter
Cardboard

Total Cost So Far

• Wood for raised bed – recovered from siding
• Paint to match our house – borrowed from neighbor (since we all use the same paint)
• Compost – homemade
• Soil – $34 for manure, top soil, peat moss

Add this to previous $18 for 3 hops plants for a total of $52 so far.

Total Time So Far

We have not been spending just 30 minutes a month. I think we would have been a lot closer if we had chosen a smaller spot and not built a planter. The planter took most of a Saturday afternoon. My husband and son did a beautiful job building and painting our raised bed to blend in with our house and small yard. Apart from the building, we are spending about 30 minutes every two weeks.

Research and planning – 15 minutes
Ripping out old bushes – 15 minutes
Mapping out the area – 15 minutes
Sorting out materials – 30 minutes
Planting hops in pots – 20 minutes
Building raised bed – 5 hours
Painting raised bed – 30 minutes
Digging bed – 15 minutes
Lasagna layers – 10 minutes
Shopping – 1 hour
Mixing top soil – 15 minutes
Planting – 10 minutes

Total so far = 9 hours

Bonus, several of our neighbors have come by to see our raised bed. The siding matches our houses, and they asked how to make a planter like this for themselves. Maybe they were being polite, but we had nice conversations about our gardens, our dogs sniffed one another, and we had an all-around good time.

Your May List: Planting

How much time you spend this month depends on how well you prepared the ground last month. If you already dug in compost to create soil that is ready for the plants you started last month, you will have plenty of time to gaze at your garden in your allotted 30 minutes. Here is one possible way to spend 30 minutes on your garden in May.

• Gather materials (10 minutes)
• Mix soil (10 minutes)
• Add plant (5 minutes)
• Water (5 minutes)

If you didn’t plan or prepare yet, you still have time. Set aside a Saturday, and you’ll be ready to cultivate your tiny patch through the season. Easy.

The Hops

In the time total, I didn’t count all of the time my husband spent fussing over his hops in their pots over the past month—poking the soil, watering, taking the plants in the house or garage at night, and so on. He has been babying his plants, and they are now 1-3″.

He bought Centennial (pictured), Cascade, and Nugget. The Nugget is the most bitter, so he carefully placed it in the center of the less bitter two in hopes that he will be able to tell them apart when it comes time to pick the hops and brew the beer.

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This is the year we are letting go of our ambitions for a perfect garden and creating a garden that fits into our busy schedule. We are planting wild gardens for busy parents.

April Preparations

If you follow last month’s easy steps, you already started small, shared your plan, and set your goal. This month, we prepare the ground and the seed or plant. If you are just starting now, it’s easy to catch up.

• Prepare the ground
• Prepare the seed or plant

Prepare the ground. Dig the dirt in the area where you are going to plant. How deep you dig depends on the plants. About 6″ average will be fine for most plants. For carrots or potatoes, dig at least 12″. For my volunteer pumpkins, I don’t dig at all. They just grow in the hard dirt next to my sidewalk where my kids carve pumpkins each year. How you prepare the ground depends on what you want the dirt to do.
Goal: dig a little

Add organic matter to the dirt. If you made compost over the past year, its time has come. Dig in about 50/50 dirt and organic matter. If you don’t have enough compost, you can add shredded leaves. If you still don’t have enough, go to a garden store, tell them the condition of your soil, and buy a bag of whatever they recommend. If you have clay, you might need sand (though be careful adding sand). If you have sand, you might need peat moss or topsoil. You’ll pay, sure, but it’s a trade off between money and the time it takes to make enough compost.
Goal: add organic matter

Prepare the seed or plant. When you plant outside depends on your weather and your plant. Look at your projected last frost date. You will probably not plant until after that date, but you can make exceptions if you are willing to put in a little more time to do research. Add the frost date to your plan, if you’ve been taking notes. (Gardeners take notes. If you are more wild than that, fine.) That is your target planting date. If you have to order a plant, place your order now. If you need to grow seedlings, check the seeds to see how quickly they grow. Plan your seed start date so you have a seedling ready on your plant date. It could be time to start the seeds now.
Goal: have the seed or plant ready on the planting date

To check your projected last frost date, you can look at these frost charts for Canada, which give you only one date as a broad estimate, or enter your zip code for this very cool frost chart that gives you the chance of frost by date and spring temperature.

If you have chosen your one tiny patch to nurture for this year, preparing the ground should not take you more than 30 minutes.

What I did.

We prepared the ground the difficult way. Preparing the ground is not such an easy task with my ground.

Shallow. My soil is generally shallow, since my house is built on what used to be a stone quarry. I remember one year when my mother planted carrots that all came out bent at 90 degree angles. (I live in the house I grew up in.) After about 8″, we just have rocks.

Dry. I live in a desert. The soil dries out very quickly and easily, so I don’t want to make it even easier for water to drain.

Depleted. For at least the past 20 years, the spot I chose has had the same old bushes, with no improvements at all in the soil. You can see the stumps that we finally pulled out in last month’s post.

Visible. Because my space is along the sidewalk leading to my front door, I also want it to look nice.

Because of all of this and the fact that my husband is very attached to the success of his hops, I planned a raised bed. A raised bed gives us a lot more flexibility in soil quality and depth.

Ground conclusion: preparing the ground did not take 30 minutes.

I presented my husband with the idea of a raised bed. I showed him instructions and pointed out the pile of painted wood in our backyard, left over from replacing the cedar siding on our house. In my mind, I can see how I would do it in 30 minutes, but his fussery has resulted in approximately 1 hour of planning, 2 hours of him deciding where to put the bed (in a space that is only 2-4″ larger than the bed on each side), and I assume another 2-12 hours of him putting the pieces together and filling them with dirt. As you can see from the photo, he isn’t done. I hear the hammering as I write, so I am confident you will see the result next month.

The expected result is a 6′ x 3′ x 1.5′ cedar-sided raised bed that matches the color of our house, with hops that shade the wall of our kitchen, making that room ever so slightly cooler in the hottest part of summer.

Because the hops we are planting are my husband’s babies, intended to be used for home brewing, he is fussing over them and their bed. That’s fine, of course, as long as he has the time to fuss. In last month’s post I suggested that one of the essentials of your wild garden is to share the gardening or the planning. I shared the idea, and my husband took over. I love this. I just need to give him gentle nudges every once in a while, like researching raised beds and pointing to already painted wood in the yard.

You could also have your children do supervised planting, though that probably takes longer than just doing it yourself. It depends whether your goal is the process or the product.

We prepared for the plant. Three hops rhizomes arrived this week. We need to plant them as quickly as possible, but we also need to avoid frost. We had 8″ of snow last week before the two 80 degree days showed up and melted it away, so it’s warm but we aren’t past the threat of frost quite yet. According to the zip code frost chart above, we still have a 90% chance of more frost. So, part of our gardening this week involves planning to protect the plants on cold nights.

Hops can sometimes grow 12″ a day, though 24″ a week is more usual. We have a space 8-9′ then we will train them to grow out. To give them support as they grow, we are running a wire up from the bed to the wire where our grapes and blackberries grow along the edge of our roof.

If your plant will need support, plan for that as you prepare the space.

Your April List: Prepare the Ground

You can do it! Spend 30 minutes on your garden in April.

• Dig the ground (10 minutes)
• Add organic matter (10 minutes)
• Start the plants (10 minutes)

If you have less than ideal soil to start, you might want to spend extra time preparing the ground, though you don’t have to go so far as to build a raised bed like I did. This is definitely the month to spend a little extra time if you want your garden to perform well.

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Artificial fragrances lurk unmarked in many of your household cleaning products. These fragrances can be bothersome as they leave residues, irritating when they are allergens, and harmful when they pose known health risks.

“Fragrance affects us all. For some, it can enhance a moment, invoke a memory, or even improve a mood. As consumers, we seek it out in all kinds of products we use in our everyday lives. And for many of us, there’s a positive sensory experience associated with fragrance. But unfortunately, this may not be without consequence. In addition to the potential health consequences of certain fragrance ingredients linked to cancer, interference with hormones, and reproductive harm, a significant portion of the population suffers from fragrance-related allergies.” Women’s Voices for Earth, “Secret Scents: How Hidden Fragrance Allergens Harm Public Health,” February 2013.

Bothersome, Irritating, and Harmful

Fragrances are just bothersome when they leave a residue. I’ve been writing about residues and the consequences for your cloth diapers, so you probably have an idea that residues of oil, minerals, or any other substances can hold on to nasty stink. It’s just strange to me that we allow ourselves to be convinced that we need to spray fragrance around our homes or plug oil burners into our outlets. Both of these leave a film on the walls, the fabric of furniture, and everywhere else in our houses. That is the least of what artificial fragrances in household products do.

Worse, artificial fragrances are often allergens. Even some cleaning products formulated to be allergy-safe have unlisted ingredients that are known to cause problems for those with sensitivities or allergies. There is a lot of work being done right now to expose then remove allergens from household products.

Worst of all, though, are the toxic chemicals in household cleaning and freshening products that expose us to a long list of harmful effects. We don’t even know all of the effects because these chemicals are not tested and approved for use.

Naturemom works hard to help you remove toxins from your home by choosing carefully which products to sell at bynature.ca and by educating customers about the problems with conventional products. She told me that if she could convince parents to do just two thing to keep toxins away from their children, those would be: 1) ditch artificial fabric softeners, and 2) don’t use fragrances that are sprayed around the house. Those artificial fragranced plugins are her worst nightmare.

So, you avoid the problem ingredients, right? Not quite so easy. You can’t avoid them because toxic fragrance ingredients aren’t on labels. Now what?

Disclosure of Ingredients

Have you ever noticed “fragrance” as an ingredient on shampoo, cleaners, or laundry detergent? What is “fragrance”? Can I get a Material Safety Data Sheet on that? No, of course not. Manufacturers are not required to list individual ingredients. They argue that proprietary blends must be kept secret.

Sure it’s a problem that manufacturers include toxic ingredients in their products marketed to clean our houses, but it’s an even bigger problem that they aren’t required to disclose ingredients. How can I stay away from allergens, irritants, and even neurotoxins or carcinogens if I don’t know what is in these products? I can’t—unless I read studies that have independently tested these products for the offending ingredients.

Some manufacturers argue that their websites (or side project websites, away from consumer traffic) are the best place to list ingredients. That just makes the information more difficult to find when we make our buying decisions. Deep on those websites where they are difficult to find and even more difficult to download to your phone while you are shopping, a couple of manufacturers have provided master ingredient lists. These lists don’t help me know which products to avoid because of specific allergens, though. They are not helpful in the way that we as consumers need help.

Listing ingredients on products should be the standard. Some companies (Clean Well and Seventh Generation) use peel-back labels to list all of their ingredients. The methods are available. Not listing ingredients is a choice that large manufacturers are making because it masks their inclusion of toxic chemicals.

Simple Actions You Can Take

• Go through your house, pull up the Environmental Working Group database, and check every household cleaning, freshening, laundry, kitchen, bathroom, floor, furniture, and other product. Ditch the toxic cleaning products.
• Use simple ingredients like boiling water, vinegar, and lemon to give your house a cleaner clean.
• If you want to add fragrance to your homemade cleaning products, use natural smells, such as orange peels in vinegar for cleaning, or add essential oils, that contain no undisclosed chemicals. When you control what you smell, you can avoid anything that causes allergies or sensitivities for your family members.
• Learn about chemicals of concern and the chemical body burden. The research and campaigns below will give you a lot of information to share with your friends and family.

Consequences of Artificial Smells

One of the consequences of all of the conditioning to artificial smells is that you begin to believe the underlying message: your smell is wrong. If you or your house are stinky, there is a remedy for that. Find the source and clean it up. Doesn’t that sound simple?

Research
A 2007 study by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) found pthalates in air fresheners, even those labelled “all natural.”

In a 2011 study, Women’s Voices for the Earth looked at toxic chemicals in popular household products, including not just air fresheners but laundry detergents, all-purpose cleaners, disinfectant sprays, and more.

Women’s Voices for the Earth created the report card The Dirt on Cleaning Product Companies to show what major manufacturers are doing about toxic chemicals in their products.

Campaigns & Organizations
NRDC Take out Toxics campaign points out that 80,000 chemicals permitted in products in the U.S. have never been tested for health effects.

Safer Chemicals / Healthy Families is a coalition of professionals, businesses, advocacy groups, and others. This is an active organization you can follow on social media for alerts about toxics and efforts to remove them from household products. Safer Chemicals / Healthy Families lists the major chemicals of concern and their consequences.

Women’s Voices for Earth Secret Scents campaign focuses primarily on the issue of allergens used as fragrance ingredients in common products.

Women’s Voices for Earth What’s That Smell? campaign focuses on chemicals of concern used as fragrance in cleaning products.

Image © Erik Reis | Dreamstime.com

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Is your skin so dry this winter that it itches, flakes, or just hurts? You can lessen the desiccating effects of winter, but you probably still need to find a natural moisturizer to keep your dry skin soft and healthy.

My skin is so dry this winter that I feel like a fish stretched out to freeze dry in the wind. No amount of my regular lotion is helping. The backs of my hands feel sandpapery. Every winter my husband’s hands get so dry that the skin hardens and splits, leaving him with bleeding sores. We live in the high, snowy desert, so it happens every year, but this is a particularly dry and drying year. Age does make dry skin worse for a lot of people, so maybe this is finally age catching up with me.

So, I’ve been looking for the best, fastest, most natural solution to my dry skin.

Even if your weather isn’t harsh, you may be feeling that combination of winter drying with pregnancy tightness, leaving you scratching until it hurts, then waking up at night to scratch some more.

Just change your winter routine a little and look for a natural moisturizer that won’t cause more damage than the wind alone.

Why Winter Is Tough on Your Skin

In the winter, both temperature and humidity fall. Central heating or a wood-burning fireplace can lower the humidity even more. A long, hot shower feels good in the moment, but it ultimately makes the dry, tight feeling of your skin even worse, especially if you use a harsh soap that strips your skin of moisture then rub yourself hard with a towel when you are done. Stop all of this, and you may notice less dryness in your skin.

Inside the house, you could use a humidifier to keep humidity at about 50%. When you go outside, you could cover up your face and hands to protect them from moisture sucking wind.

You will probably still need to supplement these winter adjustments with moisturizing cosmetics. That brings up the big issue of finding natural cosmetics that don’t do more harm than good.

Natural Cosmetics for Dry Skin

There are several things you want cosmetics to do for your dry skin:

1. Replace moisture
2. Nourish skin
3. Create a barrier between skin and drying elements

As I wrote last week about natural deodorants, there are some ingredients to avoid in general. Among common toxic ingredients used in cosmetics, these include parabens, fragrance, and petrolatum.

Look for natural products with shea butter, avocado oil, sunflower oil, and other plant-derived ingredients. We have collected a few natural cosmetic products for adults, and we want to tell you about one of our favorites.

Cocoon Apothecary

We choose all of our products carefully, and we let you know with our Safe Family Promise icons who stands out in the crowd. Cocoon Apothecary stand out as non-toxic and sustainable products handmade by an ethical company. And, they are Made in Canada.

We love that they are signers of the Compact for Safe Cosmetics by the Environmental Working Group. We mention the EWG Skin Deep Cosmetic Database often. All of the Cocoon Apothecary products listed below get a toxicity rating of 0 in the database. They actively avoid toxic ingredients, and the ingredients they do use are high quality, almost all organic.

We love that ingredients for each formula are very carefully chosen for their nourishing qualities.

If your skin is especially dry this winter, your best choice for healthy skin is Rosey Cheeks Facial Cream as a moisturizer and Rosehip Oil Facial Scrum to rejuvenate. If your skin is a little oily, but you still want to try Cocoon Apothecary, use Orange Blossom Facial Cream as a moisturizer and Argan Oil Facial Scrum to rejuvenate.

For Driest Skin (Winter)
Rosey Cheeks Facial Cream

• Rosehip Oil Contains trans-retinoic acid (extremely rejuvenating retinoid),vitamin E, and essential fatty acids.
• Shea Butter Contains vitamin A, vitamin E, allantoin, phytosterols, oleic acid and antioxidants.
• Rose Absolute Soothing, cooling and full of antioxidants.
• Avocado Oil Contains phytosterols, vitamins and minerals.
• Camellia (Green Tea) Oil Light emollient with polyphenol antioxidants.

Rosehip Oil Facial Scrum

• Rosehip Oil Contains trans-retinoic acid (extremely rejuvenating retinoid),vitamin E, and essential fatty acids.

For Less Dry Skin (Summer)
Orange Blossom Facial Cream

• Argan Oil A dry oil that has high levels of vitamin E.
• Sunflower Oil Contains high levels of oleic acid (omega 9), vitamin E and minerals.
• Neroli Essential Oil Regulates oiliness and minimizes pores.

Argan Oil Facial Scrum

• Argan Oil A dry oil that has high levels of vitamin E.

Image © Jura Vikulin | Dreamstime.com

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It’s time to think about seeds and seedlings. Too busy to think about a garden plan? When you feel guilty that you don’t plant your dream garden or a fully sustainable one-acre farm year after year, scale down your plan. I declare this the year of wild gardens for busy parents.

Every year Naturemom and I get ambitious about planting gardens, hers in south central Ontario and mine in the U.S. mountain west. Every year we plant something, but no year—not one year since we starting writing about it—have we met our ambitious goals. When we talked about what kind of garden posts you might want to read this year, we decided that you might be like we are: too busy to keep up with your big plans.

Somewhere in that gap between the dream self-sufficient garden and going outside once a week for 5 minutes to stare at a patch of brown is the disappointment. Every year I plant something, but I worry and feel a little guilty that it isn’t as much as I had hoped. My garden is wild, going where it wants to go and growing what it wants to grow.

There is too much worry and guilt already, so I propose that we all revise our goals to fit our busy lifestyles. I’m closing that gap by bringing my expectations closer to my capacity.

Wild Gardens for Busy Parents

Once a month I am going to check in with you and suggest actions that will take no more than 30 minutes that will get you closer to that garden you aren’t quite ready to plant.

Here are some simple rules:

• Start small
• Share planning
• Have a goal in mind

Start small. If you have tried and not quite reached your gardening goals in the past, I want you to have a guaranteed win this year. So, start with a commitment no bigger than you can keep. I really do want to be an urban farmer, but I have to be honest about the time I’m willing and able to spend. I stare out the window at my garden a lot (since I can see it from my work space), but I don’t actually go out and get dirty very often. Trying to be realistic about how I don’t tend my garden, I think 30 minutes a month is realistic—yes, probably pathetic, but realistic.
Goal: 30 minutes a month

Share your plan. I want you to share not just in the sense of telling others about your plans but in sharing responsibility for the plans and the planning. When I plan a garden alone then just tell my husband what to do on the weekends, he isn’t quite motivated. You can see the problem: he doesn’t share my vision for a lush paradise. Make sure that you share not just the to-do list but the decisions about what you will do. Share with husband, kids, or neighbor. Just find someone who also cares about your micro garden patch and stay accountable to them.
Goal: share your garden

Have a goal in mind. Don’t go shopping for seeds or digging in the dirt until you know your intentions. My 30-minute plan doesn’t have room for a dozen types of seedlings in multiple raised beds. I figure I can plant one new plant a year and keep it alive along with previous years’ plants. Since I’m keeping my goal very small, I want a plant that is an investment.
Goal: add one new plant

This is what I did.

I’m starting small. I have one bare spot where I recently started (but didn’t quite finish) ripping out an ugly bush next to my front door. This leaves the entrance to my house less than inviting. It was easy to decide where to focus.

I shared the planning. I told my husband I was finally tired of the bare patch, and he said he might have an idea. He has been brewing his own beer, and he is interested in growing his own hops as well. His brew store sent him an offer on hops the very week I mentioned the bare ground. In busy gardener style, we stared at the bare spot together and decided hops could climb up the wire ladder we made for our grapes. We’re taking advantage of our simple infrastructure.

We have a goal in mind. We specifically did not want plants that need a lot of tending, but I suspect my husband will be a doting farmer. He wants to brew these hops, so he’s invested in helping them survive—and thrive.

Total time so far, maybe 1 minute deciding on the spot, 2 minutes talking about it, and another 2 minutes ordering the hops plants at the beer store. Five minutes. That leaves about 25 minutes to finish clearing out the bush, dig in compost, and still keep it all under 30 minutes for the month.

Total cost so far: $18 for 3 hops plants to arrive next month.

Hops join the plants I’ve managed to keep alive from previous years: grapes, blackberries, fennel, a volunteer pumpkin, and a thriving bed of mint. That’s not so bad. That sounds almost like a garden.

Your March List: Find the Spot

You can do it! Spend 30 minutes on your garden in March.

• Find your spot (2 minutes)
• Plan planting (3 minutes)
• Prepare the ground (15 minutes)
• Start the plants (order the seeds or whatever it takes to put planting in motion) (10 minutes)

If you are already doing better than I am, planting a lush, diverse garden every year, I’m truly happy for you. I hope to get there soon, but I’m not there yet. This is where I will start, and maybe hearing about your garden will inspire me to up my game to 60 minutes a month or even commit to a tomato.

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Have you heard that some deodorants have ingredients that put your long-term health at risk? It’s easy to avoid nasty side effects and choose a natural deodorant that works well when you understand how sweat and odor work.

Your underarms have a large concentration of sweat glands. When you work hard or get stressed, you sweat all over, but you probably notice it first under your arms. Sweating cools and detoxifies the body. Blocking the pores with antiperspirants so we don’t sweat robs our body of this natural process.

Then there is the smell. We begin to smell when bacteria feed on sweat. To avoid body odor, kill the bacteria before fermentation begins. A deodorant prevents the smell only.

Go natural for natural’s sake. Go natural because the alternatives can harm us. Or, go natural because it works. Whatever your reasons, you need to know the desired result, ingredients to avoid, and ingredients to accept.

Ingredients to Avoid

As with far too many mainstream cosmetics, there are ingredients in many antiperspirants and deodorants that can harm us.

• Aluminum is a metal used to block the pores to prevent sweating, and it is absorbed through the skin, contributing to your chemical body burden. This is the active ingredient in many antiperspirants. Unfortunately, it has been linked to breast cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.
• Paraben is a synthetic preservative that is absorbed into the body and acts as a hormone disruptor.
• Propylene glycol is a petroleum product used for consistency. It makes a product glide onto the skin, but it is suspected to cause damage to the central nervous system.
• Phthalates are plastic softeners, another petroleum product used for consistency. You may remember that all children’s products in the U.S. must now be certified phthalate-free, but adult products—including cosmetics and medical products—can still contain phthalates.
• Triclosan is a pesticide and probable carcinogen that kills odor. This is the same ingredient as in antibacterial soaps and gels. Because of the known issues, many companies have removed this ingredient from antiperspirants and deodorants.
• Synthetic fragrances can be hormone disruptors.

Beyond the harmful ingredients you should also look out for irritating and allergenic ingredients.

Ingredients to Accept

Once you know exactly what the job is that needs to be done, it’s not so difficult to find natural ingredients that will help. Look for natural bacteria inhibitors, bacteria killers, and skin soothers.

• Mineral salts in crystal deodorants keep bacteria from growing on your skin, so they prevent smell.
• Some essential oils have antibacterial properties. Kill the bacteria, and you avoid the smell.
• Witch hazel is a soothing substitute if you are sensitive to alcohol. Both witch hazel and alcohol are astringents that shrink the pores.
• Aloe vera is another skin soothing ingredient for those with sensitive skin.

Choose a Deodorant

Your current deodorant. Start by evaluating the product you are currently using. Look it up in the Skin Deep cosmetics database. Zero marks the cleanest of clean, and 10 marks the highest hazard products. I looked up my deodorant, and I was relieved to find that it is considered low hazard with an ingredient score of 2.

Natural deodorant. At bynature.ca we carry Lafes Natural Organic Deodorant Spray in lavender scent. This gets a rating of 1 in the Skin Deep database. There are many products in the low hazard range, including several with a rating of 0.

Nothing at all! Another alternative is just to go bare. You don’t need a database to tell you that the lowest exposure to hazards is no exposure at all. My husband has never used deodorant or antiperspirant. He’s fortunate to be a fairly dry person, so he just showers every 2-3 days. Not everyone can get away with this in a society where extreme cleanliness is expected, but it is an option.

There are many natural deodorants that work well. You can find one at a price within your budget that doesn’t put you and your health at risk.

Image © Irina Brinza | Dreamstime.com

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Do you ever just need a small amount of some ingredient that takes a long time to make (like homemade broth) or that you get in larger amounts than you can use before it spoils (like the annual zucchini harvest)? No problem. Make it now and freeze it in small portions so you can easily add a tablespoon here or a cup there when you are cooking later. You’re still cooking from scratch without doing all of the cooking at the same time.

What ingredients do you use for a lot of dishes? Stock, puree, and shredded vegetables freeze well. In my family, we save finished chickens and turkeys in our freezer until we have enough for our largest stock pot. Then, we make amazingly intense and tasty reduced stock in cubes for use in a lot of the other foods we make. We don’t need to buy those dried granules or cans of stock because our freezer is well stocked.

Growing up, there were a few weeks in late summer when it was just inevitable that everyone in the neighborhood would find giant zucchini on their doorstep. it was an adult version of the game “Dink Dong Ditch.” Everyone grew it, and no one could use it all. It was the local joke, but we really did reach our limits very quickly. When those overwhelming weeks of giant zucchini come along next summer, just shred them raw into 1-cup portions and freeze. The frozen texture doesn’t make a lot of difference for baking zucchini bread, cookies, or sauces.

Freeze in amounts appropriate for the particular ingredient. I freeze in an ice cube tray then transfer to my regular freezer containers. If you freeze in cubes, you can drop multiple different vegetable puree cubes into sauce for spaghetti or lasagna, and no child need ever know how many vegetables they are eating. Cubes are perfect for smoothies, baby food, or toddler snacks.

Start Small. Try a small amount at first. You might not like the taste or texture of certain foods when they have been frozen. If you freeze a gallon of banana mush only to find that you don’t like the texture of frozen banana mush, you’re just stuck. I have never managed to freeze strawberries in a way that they were the least bit appealing to me afterward. Just go slowly since your tastes for frozen foods might not match your tastes for fresh foods.

Buy in Bulk. Once you know you do like an ingredient, you might be able to save money when you buy it in bulk. Any food that you love, that freezes well, and that you can also get less expensive in bulk is a perfect candidate for freezing.

My Special Case: Spent Grain

My husband has been making his own beer for the past year. Every few weeks, he ends up with a giant bag of spent grain. The grain is still usable and it smells nice (usually), but I don’t have any recipes that call for 50 cups of wet grain. The first few times, I just couldn’t let him discard any grain. I made granola. It turns out that the spent grain is really not the best primary ingredient in anything. After a couple of bowls of that granola, I was finished. As I’ve tried various recipes, I’ve learned that a small amount of spent grain adds a nice chewy texture to cookies and bread, but I never need more than a cup at a time.

Most spent grain recipes (yes, surprise! There are many great collections of spent grain recipes) recommend drying the grain, and I have done that. I’ve also frozen a lot in cubes. Now, when I know I’ll be making any recipe that will work well with rough, chewy grain, I get out a few frozen cubes to thaw in advance.

There is no chance I will ever be able to use all of the spent grain, so a lot of it goes to feed the deer—to encourage them not to snack on my bushes. But, I am really glad that I’ve finally figured out how to use a lot of the grain in recipes that are improved by it. Freezing is a perfect way for me to keep it moist and fresh until I need it. Now that I have a mostly empty chest freezer, I have room to freeze as much grain as I can use.

Look at the way your family eats, and figure out what you need only in small amounts. It’s a big time and money saver to freeze ingredients that you can use in cooking later.

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Oh, no! It’s 5:00PM, and I don’t have a clue what’s for dinner. Don’t you wish you had a nice, home-cooked meal in the freezer you could just pop into the oven. So many of us are stressed and busy beyond our ability to cope well. No time for dinner too often means resorting to feeds that we know very well are not good for us.

My solution has been doubling my favorite meals, but keeping my family from getting bored by freezing half. Then, I have a quick, easy meal later.

A month ago, I bought a chest freezer, so I’ve been excited to fill it up. I’m not so excited that I’m likely to go the way of once-a-month cooking (cooking a month’s worth of meals in a day), though. That thought fills me with the dread of standing in the kitchen all day and of eating the same food for a month. If that idea overwhelms you, too, take baby steps. Just double some of your favorite meals. As this becomes routine, you might even get more ambitious.

Containers. Using freezer-safe, tempered glass containers makes it very easy to stack and store your frozen food. If you are going to freeze more than a week in advance, you might want to invest in labels and markers so you don’t end up leaving food in the freezer too long.

Recipes. Start with your favorite foods that are easily frozen. Many soups and sauces freeze well. We double time-consuming meals like lasagna and pot pie, freezing one uncooked. We don’t usually freeze foods with a lot of vegetables because I don’t like the texture of some thawed and reheated whole vegetables. It is easy to add fresh vegetables to reheated meals, though.

Buy on Sale. Be flexible enough to take advantage of a good sale when it happens. Looking for red-label foods that are set to hit their expiration date in a couple of days saves us money already. Don’t just freeze the raw ingredients. Double what you make as well as what you buy, so you can freeze the meal.

Don’t double new recipes. For the same reasons, don’t plan to freeze foods that you haven’t tried before. If you didn’t like it the first time around, you’ll likely just leave it to wither away into ice dust in the corner of the freezer.

If you are ready to save time and save money but you aren’t ready to make freezing meals a new lifestyle, doubling what you already love to eat is a great way to create no-stress dinners for your family.

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You may have heard that this is a particularly tough flu season. Simple actions like choosing healthy foods can boost the immunity of yourself and your family to give all of you the best chance of fighting off flu and colds.

Your Immune System

Your immune system defends your body against disease by ridding your body of foreign invaders. Your immune system is not a constant, though. Your actions can boost or inhibit your immunity. If your body is already struggling because you are tired, for example, you will have more difficulty fighting off a cold.

The simplest way to boost your immunity this winter is to understand which foods provide your body with the nutrients it needs to function well.

Basic Immunity-building Pantry

Foods help your immune system through the vitamins, minerals, and micronutrients that help the system function. The most important immunity building vitamins are: Beta carotene (increases number of cells fighting infection), Vitamin C (increases white blood cells and antibodies), and Vitamin E (increases B-cells that destroy bacteria). Immunity building minerals are zinc (helps white blood cells reproduce quickly) and selenium (increases fighting cells). Don’t run out and buy a supplement pill, though. You can get all of these vitamins and minerals in food.

Stock your pantry with colorful fruits and vegetables. Carrots and sweet potatoes have beta carotene. Citrus has vitamin C. Blueberries, cranberries, pomegranate seeds, cherries, and other dark blue, purple, and red fruits are high in antioxidants, which reduce inflammation. Elderberries are particularly good for helping you fight colds and flu as an antiviral an antioxidant. Mushrooms have selenium and many other minerals an vitamins. Garlic is a great flu fighter with antioxidants and other immune-building properties.

Choose a variety of proteins. Beans, nuts, fish, and lean meats can all contribute toward your immune-boosting diet. Almonds provide vitamin E. Salmon is rich in omega-3 fatty acids. Sunflower seeds have selenium, as do many nuts, whole grains, and seeds.

Add herbs and spices to your foods. Medicinal herbs, like echinacea, goldenseal, and astragalus, are all immune boosters that fight viruses or increase the efficiency of white blood cells. You don’t want to add these to your foods, though. Culinary spices, like cayenne, oregano, and ginger, are also bacteria fighters. Use them fresh if you can, but use them in any form. Even black pepper can give you a little immune boost.

Every Day Foods

The range of immunity building foods is broad. It wouldn’t make any sense for me to tell you that only 5 or 10 or 50 of them are best for you because there is enough variety for you to choose your favorites. Still, I am going to suggest a few foods that will help you build immunity every day.

Smoothies. Start your morning with smoothies. Add dark fruits and vegetables, almond milk or yoghurt as a base, a few ice cubes to make it cool and reduce the intensity. That’s it! Just choose a colorful collection every morning.

Soup. With lunch, have a cup of soup every day. Chicken or vegetable broth both make a good base, but make sure you add garlic, perhaps ginger, lots of herbs and spices, and a few colorful vegetables.

Salad. With dinner every night, have leafy greens. Spinach and romaine lettuce are both very nutritious. Choose your dressing carefully. Better yet, make your own from olive oil, vinegar, and herbs. Each of these gives you a little boost. Maybe sometimes you have cooked kale with cider vinegar instead, but make sure you eat leafy greens every day.

Whole Grains. If you are going to eat cereal or bread, make them rich and nutty. The variety of grains, nuts, and seeds will help you over time.

Doesn’t that seem simple? It is. Boosting your immunity really isn’t difficult to understand or to do. These choices are easy to make every day, and the benefits build over time.

Keep in Mind

Avoid processed ingredients like white sugar and bleached wheat flour. Just avoiding those two will help you avoid many processed foods that have been drained of most nutritional value.

Get enough sleep. Yes, that isn’t a food, but rest is important enough to the healthy functioning of your immune system that you can undermine all of the good work you do with nutritious food by not getting enough sleep. Sleep for your health.

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Craving comfort foods this winter? There is an explanation for that. When the temperature outside drops, your body has to work harder to keep warm, burning more calories to create that energy. Simple, hearty foods like stews have many of the elements your body needs right now: protein, fats, and spices. Don’t avoid those foods you crave, just keep it healthy and you and your children will stay toasty warm.

You don’t want just to be hot for minutes; you need foods that keep the kids feeling cozy and warm for hours. Choose foods that burn slowly rather than simpler carbohydrates like crackers and sweets. Potatoes, bread, pasta, and rice are all great foods, but they will metabolize more quickly—and you will feel hungry sooner. Winter is the time to eat true slow foods.

Winter Foods Kids Will Love

Nuts. If you need to tide kids over with a snack, give them nuts. The protein and fat content make them an ideal winter snack food. Cook with nuts and seeds as well.

Spices. Whether you tend toward cinnamon, chilies, or ginger and garlic, spices are particularly good for you during the winter. Ginger helps you digest the fatty foods your body craves in the winter, and antibacterial and antiviral effects of foods like garlic help you fight off infections.

Curry. My favorite winter food is curry. I have a long list of my favorite Indian and Thai curries with lots of chilies and ginger. These make an ideal winter lunch. I feel warm and full all afternoon with no temptation to snack before dinner. My children favor peanut-based curries that aren’t quite as spicy.

Stew. Do you have any holiday leftovers, like a ham bone or a desiccated turkey carcass you put into the freezer to think about later? Your holiday leftovers can make a great base for stew, but you can also make a hearty stew without any meat at all. Add a variety of root vegetables, and caramelize those onions to give it a nice flavor. Or, make nut-based sauces for African stews. Or, make rich tomato sauce for gumbo. Any flavor-way can be used to make a rich stew. This is the perfect place to experiment.

Pie. Pot pies are one of my favorite post-holiday dishes. My mother always made great turkey stew in her flakiest pie crust. For children, you might consider making the crust more of a feature. A Cornish pasty is a pie with the crust folded over in a half-moon shape. You can eat it with your hands without too much mess and it keeps the family full all afternoon. That is why the Cornish miners took these little pies with them to work. Any stew you can dream up will (probably) also make a great pie.

Beans. My kids often just have spiced black beans for lunch. This is my daughter’s absolute favorite comfort food—a food that she almost missed when she first saw it. She told me, the first time I served her black beans, that she didn’t like it. She knew immediately, but we have a rule that one has to have at least one taste before one can form an opinion about liking a food. It turned out that she actually loved it, and she’s been eating beans happily in many forms since.

Chili. Chili is another kind of stew. Either chili or stew can include almost anything you have on hand or anything your children favor. It’s easy to make vegetarian chili or meat chili. A slow cooker, a bag of beans, and a (glass!) jar of tomatoes, and you are almost there. It’s easy to make simple chili, and you can involve children in choosing the flavors.

Keep those toes and bellies warm. Eat up!

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