megthebaker's Profile

Wait, doesn't this require leaving your computer at home? Which, for a number of us, is the single most valuable thing in the house, and something most of us have to take with us when going out of town. (I know some people may have more than one computer, but most people I know have only a laptop.)

I'm renting a house for the first time (as opposed to an apartment) and boy have I learned my lesson about what to check in houses I'm considering in future.

- electrics: especially if it's an older place, count/locate the outlets - silly me for assuming the house's only bathroom would have an outlet! Also, just because an outlet accepts a 3-prong plug does NOT mean it's actually grounded (bring a volt-meter if you have access)!

- electrics, part 2: turns out the pull-cord to the ceiling fan has current running through it - found this out the hard/painful way. Not fixable without getting an electrician to come in and remove part of the ceiling, due to how the house is wired.

- electrics, part 3: the circuit breaker is OUTSIDE, & the case is constructed in a way that it cannot be locked. Maybe I'm paranoid...but I don't like the idea of someone being able to turn off our electricity from outside the house.

- Location: never again will I live in a place with a bus stop directly out front. I thought it would be convenient. I hadn't considered that between the people waiting, & the people cutting across the (non-fenced) yard to get to the bus stop, the yard would get littered with trash every day. Also people waiting for the bus come and sit on my front steps, which is a little weird.

- Repairs: if the landlord has a dedicated person to do repairs, check the quality of the repairs they have done to the place in the past. Turns out my landlord's handy-person sets the bar at "functional" - the repair jobs are not pretty, & make the house look run-down.

- Water: as others have pointed out, water pressure is important. Also look under sinks & around bathroom fixture seals to look for signs of water damage/leaking.

- Paint: beware obviously thick, multiple coats of paint. It may be far worse than just sloppy painting - it might be covering up mildew.

@Brooklynnina -

It really can vary. Ideally, an "organic" label on meat would mean more humane - for instance, organic beef may actually mean the animal lived outdoors, eating pasture rather than grain, because a cow cannot live on grain without being given antibiotics (the grain diet changes the digestive system's pH, enabling the growth of pathogens). However, depending on the product, "organic" may just mean that antibiotics haven't been administered within a certain period of time before the animal was killed/milked/whatever, so it's hard to know how the animal was raised & what it was fed before that time (I believe that applies to organic milk). Also, with poultry, organic likely means the chickens live indoors and are just fed organic grain - poultry cannot be given hormones or antibiotics regardless of how it's raised, so seeing "no antibiotics or hormones" on chicken is purely marketing.

You're better off looking for grass-fed beef & truly free-range chicken (be careful, though, because there are still lots of loopholes in how something can be marketed - for instance, "cage-free" chicken/eggs often means the chickens still live indoors, but they are all loose in a big building rather than in cages; "free-range" beef may have had grass as only a portion of the diet).

You sound like you're mostly concerned with the issue of animal welfare, but I also wanted to add that the meat/eggs/milk from pasture-raised animals is much, much healthier for us as well -- these products contain healthier fats, including some omega-3 fatty acids (yes, the stuff that large agriculture companies want us to believe only comes from fish. Oh, don't even get me started on most farm-raised fish -- not only is it bad for the environment, but it doesn't even contain nearly the amount of omega-3s found in wild salmon, because of what the farmed fish are fed...)

"an ingredient you'd never use in your kitchen and couldn't possibly make yourself from the whole form"

It's that second part I'm wondering about. How far down the production line do we go? For instance: even raw, "unprocessed" sugar is separated from the sugar cane by a method that's not really possible in the home kitchen. So is that out? Same goes for things like powdered pectin - yes, it is naturally derived and widely available to home cooks, but I couldn't possibly isolate the pectin from citrus peels in my own kitchen.

Where are we drawing the line on what is "processed"?

Any suggestions for renters who are obligated to maintain the lawn, and thus can't make any major changes - or do anything that might look "untidy?" We can't exactly convert it to a garden (as much as I'd love to!) and I'm pretty sure letting clover etc. grow would be frowned upon as well...

The short, quilted-style jar right in the middle of the centre shelf - is that a salt/pepper shaker with a cork instead of a shaker top?!?

Either way, I am totally going to use that idea now! I don't like "collecting" things that aren't useful, so I pass up so many lovely vintage salt/pepper shakers because I already have a set - but now I see that with a new lid, they can serve a new purpose...

Anyone know how I can find (or make) something like the flip-down drawer in #6?! I've never seen one of those before!

By the way, @Slow Lorus, I think one of those could work for boots too - just lay the boots on their sides with the soles facing opposite directions, and the tops of the boots overlapping - that's the way I pack boots in a suitcase. You couldn't store as many, obviously, but they would be out of the way.

Sorry to go off on such a tangent, but I have celiac disease, so reading labels - and often, having to be skeptical of them - is all too familiar to me. Even avoiding processed foods doesn't solve the problem - as I've explained, I even have to closely examine "single-ingredient" foods like nuts, rice, etc. to see if there's any chance the product could contain traces of gluten.

@Soccerjo & ACharmer -

Recently I took a class with a focus on agriculture, and we examined GM crops from a number of angles; one thing that is very clear is that on average, crop losses due to pests and disease are NOT substantially lower for the high-chemical-input, GM crops than they are for other methods, including even organics. Pests adapt. Just like bacteria adapt to antibiotic use, weeds develop resistance to herbicides. The genetic modification, and the high chemical application it permits, is NOT what makes a significant difference in food yield.

The increase in food yield in this country came before genetic modification technology was developed. It was due in part to the use of synthetic fertilizers (which is another environmental issue in itself...) and in part thanks to good old-fashioned selective breeding of the healthiest and most productive parent plants.

My suggestion is to get some deep picture frames - the kind intended for shadow-box displays are often 3-4 inches deep. Fold one quilt up in each and hang them on the wall. You will still get a nice sample of each pattern showing, without the quilts dominating the room.