nessie1013's Profile

I really like my Ms. Bento lunch jar. The soup holder is leak proof as long as you don't fill it too much. It also has the advantage of not needing to be refrigerated.

Asfoetdia is also called hing. It's used in cuisines in cultures that don't use onions and garlic and gives a roughly analogous flavor. It's a resin so won't go bad really. I found it in an Italian grocery store with an Indian section. I like it in lentils.

I managed to acquire a vintage pull down chart map of the Roman empire under Augustus when a building at my college underwent a renovation. It now hangs in my home office and is a nice complement to my bookshelves. Plus, since I occasionally review books about the Roman empire it actually is useful as well.

For other spaces I think a framed vintage map is always a nice touch when a pull down chart might look out of place.

I used the same Keeper for 5 or 6 years until it somehow disappeared. I'm on I believe year 2 with the same Diva cup, and it's fine. I know the natural rubber in the Keeper would eventually start to crack (it was starting to show some wear on mine). The thing with the Diva cup is that you can see the discoloration that you couldn't with the Keeper, so this may be a problem for some people.

It may perhaps be an issue with bacteria growing in microscopic tears in the plastic, so perhaps more scrupulous cleanliness would be advised after the first year.

As a librarian...that's a great way to give old yucky books a second life and not buy new things to store electronic stuff.

I used that Lush shampoo bar for awhile. At first I loved it, but towards the end of the bar's life my hair was getting really yucky. I think a lot of the appeal for me was no packaging and no struggling to get that last little bit of shampoo out of the bottle. I'm almost done with a bottle of completely conventional shampoo, and I think I might try making my own shampoo next time. At least it will be cheap.

One of my favorites is The Moosewood Restaurant Kitchen Garden: Creative Gardening For The Adventurous Cook by David P. Hirsch. It contains advice for all types of spaces (including container gardening, which I do). The back also has recipes so you know what to do with what you grow, and I also plan to use this to aid with using CSA veggies.

I tried to DIF it with my 1st gen iPod nano when the screen was broken. I bought a screen and got a set of detailed instructions and tools-- I know my way around a computer, and figured it would take 5 minutes. However I realized that the great thing about building a PC is that the parts are larger and there's more room to work. I ended up deciding that I wasn't patient enough to do the job properly, so I did send it off in the end (though the same company I'd bought the screen from). I'm sure a battery would be much easier than any other part to replace.

I became a vegetarian around the age of 16, which is about 8 years ago now. My mother had been a vegetarian for some years before that, so I suppose that was the inspiration. At the time it was just something I wanted to do-- there wasn't any particular rationale, and it just started one day. Since then I've gone back and forth about why I continue to do it, but my eating in general has also evolved to the point where I'm eating a much better diet than I ever have before, vegetarian or not.

Based on Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal Vegetable Miracle I've been thinking of occasionally eating humanely raised meat. However I'm so used to not eating meat that I've not been able to bring myself to try this new experiment yet, nor do I have any idea how to cook meat. I think it will have to be a restaurant thing.

I started doing this when I stopped buying bread at the grocery store and started making my own. Basically whatever bread is left when I make a new loaf (once or twice a week) goes into the freezer. This is usually not very much, and so it's normally just the right amount of breadcrumbs when I need them for a recipe.