JJ

Header by @rinadragomir \\ she/they \\ 20

[sage-winnebago]

Hey besties! I’m going to be turning this into my Zero Waste blog. I’ve already come so far on this journey, I’ll probably talk a little bit about it, but I also have so far to go and that’s mostly what I’m hoping to share with you all.

I’m hoping that through this we all are able to learn from one another and grow together 💚

[lit-in-thy-heart]

i'd make a caesar joke but someone's already taken a stab at it 22 times before

[curlymcclain]

sometimes i think i’m overblowing the weirdness of the gen z puritan thing but my roommate won’t wear her favorite skirt with a slit in it to a massive kpop concert because a member of the band is a minor

[curlymcclain]

exact opposite energy

[lowspoonsfood]

i’m a huge fan of doing cold silken tofu as low effort meal or just a meal where i don’t want to heat up my kitchen at all. it requires no actual cooking, little to no chopping, and can be easily adjusted to be absolute minimum effort to a little extra effort. also very ingredient flexible. apologies if my measurements are vague, i cook by vibe. everything with an asterisk is optional.

ingredients:

- silken tofu

- soy sauce

- rice wine vinegar (can be substituted with other vinegars/lemon juice/lime juice)

- sweetener (i like using maple syrup, but honey and sugar are also good!)

- garlic (you can use pre-minced or mince/press your own. I often use ginger garlic paste which i buy at the store or make myself in a food processor)

- gochugaru* or whatever chili powder you keep around, or skip if you don’t like any spice!

- sesame seeds*

- water

- persian cucumber* or really any veg you enjoy eating raw. I think the persian cucumber is really refreshing and light crunchy vegetables work best. Might even be good with something like a crisp apple!

- steamed rice*

- nori*

instructions:

0. [optional step] cook some rice, i use a rice cooker bc it’s very easy. while your rice is cooking, proceed with the rest of the recipe. if you have left over rice this is also a great way to use it, wait till the end of the recipe and then heat up your rice up last. I just microwave it with a wet paper towel over it.

1. drain and plop your block of silken tofu onto a plate, pat off excess moisture w a paper towel or don’t if your are feeling lazy

2. chop up your cucumber or other veg into bite sized pieces and set aside. If I’m cooking for one i just do 1 persian cucumber.

3. mix soy sauce, vinegar and sweetener in a 1:1:1 ratio, add ~a clove of minced garlic or ginger garlic paste. and some gochugaru to your own taste, i use maybe 1-2 tsp? and some sesame seeds, maybe also 1-2 tsp.

4. TASTE IT!! and adjust to your personal taste by adjusting the ratio of salt/acid/sweet and by diluting with a bit of water. this sauce is very customizable so go nuts! add oyster sauce or sriracha or chili oil!

5. once the sauce is to your liking, dump the chopped veg on top on the tofu and then dump the sauce over all of it.

6. that’s it! you’re done! I like to eat this with rice and nori, and often kimchi.

[sage-winnebago]

I made soup completely from scratch!

I first started by making my own veggie broth

I do this by (in advance) freezing any vegetable scraps I have. This can include a lot. For me this time, it meant the tops of carrots, the ends of onions as well as the papery part you don't want to eat anymore, the outer part of garlic as well as the roots in the center, the ends of zucchinis, the middle portion of a pepper (without the seeds), and the white end of bok choy.

I bring a pot of water to boil - i normally freeze my veggies in glass jars and to figure out the amount i fill up each of these glass jars once. you really just want enough to cover the vegetables completely. Then I simmer it for about 45 minutes.

I normally just salt the broth when I'm done because on a budget I can't buy as many seasonings as I would like, but season it however you want! Then I throw some rice in the pot and cook the rice that way. I like this because the rice takes on the flavor of the broth, but you can cook your rice (or noodles) however you'd like.

Then, if you want (and are able) you can add veggies at the end! You may want to sauté them in a different pan, depending. My fridge is looking pretty empty today so I just added green onions and garlic.

This soup is delicious, and it puts veggie scraps to one more use before they get thrown out (or composted!). It also is a great way to get a little more nutrients. Happy cooking!

[wastelesscrafts]

Some more sustainable decluttering

I've been doing some more decluttering at home, and thought I'd give you all another glimpse of what that might look like:

I gave away a bunch of stuff in my local freecycling group, including several pairs of shoes I can't wear any more due to medical reasons. They've been gathering dust in my closet for a long time because I wasn't emotionally ready to let go of what they represented. I finally did because I'm much more comfortable with my disability today, and feel a lot better now that I have done so.

I learned how to pickle cucumbers! We had a cucumber that wasn't going to be finished before it would go bad, so it's a good way to keep it a little longer.

I mended a sweater that had a hole in it. It was still in good shape, so it would've been a shame to get rid of it because of one hole.

I sold a few things on Vinted. That way, my clothes get worn again while I get some cash in return.

I signed up to join a textile repair café next week. The idea is for people to show up with worn-out clothes so they can be mended for free by volunteers.

I realised I had a bunch of ingredients that wouldn't be finished in time before they'd go off (excluding the cucumber), so I made a large batch of cake with them. We froze some of it, and handed out the rest to people in our neighbourhood. It's a great way to both avoid food waste and get to know your neighbours better.

[falsedetective]

my grandparents have to lock their car doors when they go to sunday mass because people have been breaking in to unlocked cars and leaving entire piles of zucchini

[falsedetective]

i feel like i should’ve added more context when i posted this. my grandparents live in a rural area where farmers and casual gardeners alike are, at this point in the year, suddenly being hit with unexpectedly abundant zucchini crops. there aren’t just some random vandals leaving zucchinis in people’s cars for the hell of it, this is the work of some very exasperated, probably very elderly, folks who have more zucchini than they know what to do with

[thegreenwolf]

Yep. You can also expect to find a bag of zucchini on your porch.

[abwatt]

My grandfather once found his neighbor stealing his tomatoes out of his garden at three in the morning. Red-handed, with a basket of the nearly-ripened ones.  He thought he was going to find gophers or something, but no, here’s Henry, taking his tomatoes. The best ones.

There was a long pause between them.

My grandfather (allegedly) said, “Henry… it’s OK.  You can take some tomatoes if you want them.”

Henry sighed in relief.

“But,” my grandfather said, “you have to take two zucchini for every tomato.”

There was another long silence.  “That’s a harsh bargain, John,” said Henry.  “But I accept.  I’ll tell Joe up the street, too.”

My grandfather said, “Tell Joe he needs to take three.”

[ladypandacat]

a friend of my dad’s came by in the middle of the night, he seemed very nervous when my dad answered the door. he wouldn’t come inside but he leaned in and whispered to my dad in spanish, “i have some fresh grapes for you.” and then this happened:

the melon was a special bonus.

[angeliccelestine-deactivated201]

MY DREAM

[dragoneyes]

A friend of mine lives in a rural area and he has been surrounded by zucchini for most of May, June, and July.

At one point he was so done with the whole zucchini madness that he came to classes actively begging people to “Please please please!! Take some my family’s damned zucchini!! I’ve been eating zucchini for weeks!! I’m going insane!!!”

[kynthaworld]

Having grown up in a rural area and having come home to zucchini on the front step or in the mailbox, i find it highly amusing the OP had to clarify.  I’m sitting here nodding “yup.”

[costumersupportdept]

I have a friend with a garden in Oregon who literally made Zucchini Chocolate Chip Cookies and sent them to me in Indiana. I texted her back “I SEE WHAT YOU’RE DOING HERE”

[ash-of-the-loam]

I’m waiting for the day when someone will hear about my background in Botany and ask me for advice on what someone who’s just wanting to start exploring planting vegetables should try.

I know fuckall about gardening because my background is wild plants and not agriculture, but I’m gonna tell them

“Zucchini. Definitely try Zucchini. Just plant plenty of them and you’ll get a decent sized crop! They’re very rewarding to grow.”

It may be a bit of a long game, but I’ll enjoy their screams of despair from across the void as they realize that they will eat zucchini forever

[deadmomjokes]

This is NOT an exaggeration, guys. Zucchini (and most squashes, really) will outgrow you so fast. Let our tale be a caution– or an encouragement, whichever. You decide as you hear the story of Squish.

When we were so broke we had to choose between gas and store-bought-food (I think I was about 10?), we had a garden so we could eat regularly (we also had chickens and pigs and hunted, but that’s beside this point). One summer, we planted 6 rows of yellow squash and 6 rows of zucchini. Each row probably had 10, maybe 12 plants in it. We created this giant squash-block in our garden plot so it was all right there together in the middle, and the needier plants like tomatoes were on the outside of the whole plot. We thought we were clever, til the first crop started coming in.

The outside two rows of each squash, yellow and zucchini, were normal. High yield, of course (because squash), but standard size for both summer squash and Italian zucchini. The inner 8 rows, however, created this hybrid monstrosity that we called Squish. It was pretty– a nice swirly yellow and green combination that made it clear the squash and zucchini had interbred.

Squish became a living nightmare for us. Something about the hybridization caused them to forget how to stop growing, or at least how to grow at a normal rate because those suckers were longer than my dad’s forearm, and bigger around than my (albeit child-sized) thighs. They didn’t get all hard and nasty on the inside, either, for some reason, like most squash will at that size. And they just kept coming. I don’t even remember seeing that many flowers, but every day we were pulling upwards of 20lbs of Squish out of the garden, only for there to be more the next day, or sometimes by the end of the day if we harvested in the morning. I don’t know where they were hiding, but it was like some sort of squash portal had opened into our yard and started crapping out Frankenstein’s Squashes.

At first, it was great. We could eat all we wanted and not worry about rationing it. But the growing season in Arkansas is long, and we had incredible weather that summer, so those darn things kept alternating flowers and fruit. Pull off a few Squish, new flowers budded out, and they ripened super-fast in the heat. We were absolutely swimming in Squish, because they were so big that even gorging on them meant only 1 or 2 got eaten per meal. (I think I recall using a few particularly enormous ones as swords for a duel with my sister, if that says anything about their size. I cannot overemphasize how absolutely, heinously gigantic they were. You probably don’t believe me but I am not kidding. Those things were bigger than a newborn by several many inches and a couple pounds.)

We had (luckily) a big deep freezer, and someone gifted us a bunch of freezer ziploc bags, so we started chopping them up and freezing them as we pulled them off. We ran out of bags real fast, so we caved and bought a ton more. We filled that deep freezer near to bursting. It was probably 3-4 feet deep, (as I remember barely coming up to the edge of it), and at least 4-5 feet long, about 2.5 feet across, and we filled it to the top with Squish. And that’s while we’re eating fresh ones every day with dinner! But still more Squish came before the first frost, so we started packing the fridge. And my grandma’s freezer. And my grandma’s fridge. And feeding them to the pigs and chickens. And giving them away at church.

Do you realize how big a deal it is that people who were so broke that they had to choose between gas and the power bill were GIVING AWAY FOOD??? That’s how much gosh darn Squish we had. And little did I know, but apparently, my dad HATES squash. He only planted them because they were a cheap, quick source of food and my mom loved squashes. And he got stuck with the folly of his decisions. For over a year.

Yep. We had Squish in the freezer for over a year. Eating it regularly. It lasted for over a year. A family of 5, plus often feeding my grandmother, we ate off a single garden’s haul for over a year. Of just the Squish. I tell you, if we’d had a farmer’s market back then, that Squish could probably have single-handedly lifted us out of poverty. Well, maybe not, but you get the idea.

We never planted both again, probably because my dad would have combusted out of rage if he’d ever seen another Squish in his life. But man those were the days for thems of us what loved squash.

So survival tip: If you need an absolute crapton of food, plant you a row of yellow squash and a row of zucchini, and keep that pattern going for as many rows as you like. You too can drown in Squish and love it.

[vibropulse]

Oh wow.

[stimblegrime1]

The last story is well worth the read. It might be long but I found it absolutely delightful! Thank you for sharing your childhood Squish gardening adventures!

[thunderandthugnificence]

Meanwhile, people are starving to death.

[gothvegas]

Ands What do you expect poor rural farmers who just have excess zucchini to do about that exactly? Mail them to Africa?

[elodieunderglass]

I was just talking to a friend today about gardening and she said “I’ll plant zucchini for this project.”

“Oh dear… what’s your damage control plan?”

“Oh,” she said, intuiting what I meant. “Eating the blossoms. Love stuffed blossoms. Pumpkin, squash, zucchini. It keeps the crop down, and you get lots of mileage out of them. You keep a mixed crop that way, too. Plus, people don’t always welcome gifts of zucchini, but they find gifts of blossoms exciting.”

This struck me as absolutely game-changing.

[apple-bottom-jeansx]

Hi everybody! I have made the decision to deactivate (kinda). I love this app but lately coming on here makes me really sad. I’m happier when I’m interacting with people, which hasn’t been happening a lot lately, and also when I’m creating, which I unfortunately haven’t had the time to do. Everything I ever have created is linked at the end of this post. I may continue to post my theories on here simply because I’m going to continue to make them anyways and I like to share them so if you want to continue to be tagged in those let me know. Please continue to tag me in things like fanfics and theories in case I decide to pop in (very possible). Also, if you tag me in a follower celebration it is likely I will still send you an ask! The best way to stay in contact is through my Twitter or my tiktok. If you don’t use either no worries! I will definitely still be responding to messages on this app. I will miss you all but I think this is what’s best for me💟

Tiktok masterlist

Theory masterlist

Spotify playlists

I wish I was better at keeping up relations and I’m really sorry but so much love to every single one of you even if I am leaving

Edit: I will also respond to asks if you feel more comfortable reaching out that way, but please be understanding if I don’t answer them right way. I obviously am hoping to not be checking this site every day (but they are still welcome if you wish!)

[sage-winnebago]

I’m pinning this on this account too

[raph-stims]

a highland cow stimboard for @dogbi! they look so pettable 🥺

🦬-🐂-🦬//🐂-🦬-🐂//🦬-🐂-🦬

[expressions-of-nature]

by Mohamed Fathi

[technicolourstation]

Glencoe National Nature Reserve, Scotland // Glencoe Valley Viewpoint // (2020)

[thyming-deactivated20220220]

Friendly reminder ~ Even the most hopeless situation can receive an happy ending, so keep fighting because you can do it. ✨

sources: 🍯 🍯

[echo-at-the-pond]

Guys if I get 271,100 notes on this till my 21st birthday (November 27th) I'll get

Don't walk on my roof

tattooed in ancient greek

[echo-at-the-pond]

Okay guys

I did the math.

It's 157 days till my birthday and 245085 notes to go

To make it we would have to add 1561 notes per day

Do you really think you can do that?

[amillionandonefandoms]

I am so sorry to all of my followers but yes. Yes we can.

[solar-punksocialist]

Baby Bok Choi and green onions grown from scraps :) I’m gonna plant them once a get a container 🪴

[sage-winnebago]

I knew about green onions, how do you grow bok Choi from scraps??

[nicostiel]

#let nature heal us

[guerrillatech]

[sabelmouse]

This fake yarn is supposedly better for sheep.

Aimed at people who don’t know where wool comes from, it’s 100% plastic. Yes, plastic.

So any garment you wash will release microfibres into the sea. It’ll never decompose.

You’re supposed to believe that sheep shearing is violent and cruel. There are imbeciles out there that work in an unprofessional manner while shearing, but that’s not the case overall.

Sheep don’t suffer from having their fleece removed.

Left on, the fleece can become a home for fly eggs and the subsequent maggots which can eat the sheep. Chemical treatments are available to prevent that happening. It’s much better for the sheep, the land and the farmer to avoid chemical use.

Don’t be fooled. Wool is a sustainable material, one we should make more and better use of.

[scrimblobimblobadimbo-deactivat]

Any garment you wash will release microfibres into the sea. It’ll never decompose.

This is very important.