Reading Challenge Week 2

As I mentioned last week, I'm participating in a reading challenge this year to see who can read the most pages in a year.

In addition to tracking the number of pages I'm reading this year I'm also counting the number of books I read. Mostly because I'm not sure I want to keep track of the number of plays, scholarly journal articles, and magazines I read this year.

During Week 2 I read 446 pages.

I read 1 book and 3 plays this week.

Get a Life Not a Job by Paula Caligiuri, 193 pages

Secret Order by Bruce Ostler, 90 pages

Collapse by Allison Moore, 84 pages

Black Pearl Sings by Frank Higgins, 79 pages

Click here to see the full results of the reading challenge I'm participating in.

January's Organic Produce Delivery

Recently, we received our monthly organic produce delivery from Natural Living, a organic produce delivery service located in Center Point, Iowa.

Not only am I getting organic produce at a great price, but they deliver it right to my door. All I have to do is place a cooler with some ice at my front door on delivery day and when I come home I have a cooler full of delicious produce.

This month our order included Fair Trade bananas, blueberries, lemons, tangelos, locally grown mixed color carrots, garlic, green beans, green bell peppers, mixed baby greens salad, and locally grown turnips.

We started using Natural Living in November and I have been really happy with the produce we've received so far. Hopefully next month I'll remember to take a photo of the actual produce. 

I used one of the carrots (we already had some carrots on hand) and one of the turnips in a pot pie and they were delicious. One of the other carrots was used in stir fry. I'm planning on using the rest of the carrots and the other turnip in a vegetable soup next week. I ate of the bananas, but it wasn't as sweet as the ones I bought earlier in the week, but it was good. I froze the rest of the bananas to make banana bread later. I'm planing on mixing the blueberries in with vanilla and cream yogurt for my lunches. I'm still trying to decide what to do with the rest of the produce, but I'm sure it will all get eaten soon.

Reading Challenge Week 1

d’Artagnan over at Living in Iowa decided to have reading competition for 2012.
 
I'm competing in it and have a feeling that I have some stiff competition.

Click here to see the first week's results.

During the first week of 2012 I read 399 pages.

What did I read?

I read an amusing book,Tune in Tokyo the Gaijin Dairies by Tim Anderson, which is about the author's experiences as 20-something gay, white male, American living in Japan teaching English lessons at a language school. This book was interesting and entertaining. 292 pages.

I also read the January issue of Matchbook Magazine. This magazine is my new answer for the shuttered Blueprint magazine, which I love and miss. I own every issue of Blueprint ever printed. This is a lovely magazine with lots of fun information and pretty items I can't afford. 107 pages.

2011 Reading List

I ended up reading 73 books in 2011.

For reference in 2010 I read 63 books, so in 2011 I read 10 more books than I did in the previous year.

So what did I read in 2011?

1. The Blind Contessa's New Machine by Carey Wallace

2. Day Out of Days by Sam Shepard

3. The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham

4. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

5. The Camel Bookmobile by Masha Hamilton

6. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

7. Survival of the Prettiest:The Science of Beauty by Nancy Etcoff

8. The Invisible Gorilla: and other ways our intuitions deceive us by Christopher Chabris & Daniel Simons

9. How I Killed Pluto and Why it Had it Coming by Mike Brown

10. Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

11. The Sunday Tertulia by Lori Marie Carlson

12. Hotel Iris by Yoko Ogawa

13. Making Scenes by Adrienne Eisen aka Penelope Trunk

14. BUtterfield 8 by John O'Hara

15. Selected Short Stories of John O'Hara

16. An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin

17. White Ghost Girls by Alice Greenway

18. The Princess, The King and The Anarchist by Robert Pagani

19. Your Money the missing manual by J.D. Roth

20. A Partisan's Daughter by Louis De Bernieres

21. All Medicines are Poison! by Melvin H. Kirschner M.D.

22. One Fifth Avenue by Candace Bushnell

23. Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids by Bryan Caplan

24. Guerrilla Marketing for Free by Jay Conrad Levinson

25. Liza of Lambeth by W. Somerset Maugham

26. New Miss India by Bharati Mukherjee

27. Dimanche & other stories by Irene Nemirovsky

28. Traveling on One Leg by Herta Muller

29. South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami

30. The Most Beautiful Book in the World by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt

31. Normal People Don't Live Like This by Dylan Landis

32. Diamond dust: stories by Anita Desai

33. Fasting, Feasting by Anita Desai

34. The Invisible Wall by Harry Bernstein

35. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

36. After the Quake: Stories by Haruki Murakami

37. While Mortals Sleep by Kurt Vonnegut

38. The Guide to Owning a Parakeet by John Bales

39. Vanishing Point by David Markson

40. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling

41. Greeting from Below by David Philip Morris
 
42. Why do Cockatiels do that? Real answers to the curious things Cockatiels Do by Nikki Moustaki

43. There Is Something Inside, It Wants to Get Out by Madeline McDonnell

44. Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

45. Dreams of Joy by Lisa See

46. Madame Tussaud by Michelle Moran

47. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

48. Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut

49. Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut

50. Saving Fish From Drowning by Amy Tan

51. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

52. The Visible Man by Chuck Klosterman

53. A Russian Affair by Anton Chekhov

54. What Do You Care What Other People Think? by Richard Feynman

55. Lord of the Far Island by Victoria Holt

56. The Problem of Cell 13 by Jacques Futrelle

57. The Sari Shop by Rupa Bajwa

58.  Falling Angels by Barbara Gowdy

59. Problem of Dressing Room A by Jacques Futrelle

60. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling

61. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling

62. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

63. The Pleasure of Finding Things Out by Richard Feynman

64. Grace Immaculate by Gregory Benford

65. Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami

66. Pure, White and Deadly by John Yudkin

67. Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin

68. Pacific Vortex by Clive Cussler

69. The Classic Ten by Nancy MacDonell Smith

70. The Island of Dr Moreau by H.G. Wells

71. Crazy Me by James Patrick Kelly

72. How to Sew: Basics

73. All Our Worldly Goods by Irene Nemirovsky

I finished the year by reading a book by one of my all time favorite authors, so it was a great way to end the year.

For 2012 I'm doing something a little different. I'm still going to count the number of books I read, but I will be counting the total number of pages I read this year as well (books, journal articles, magazines), as part of a read off friend/fellow blogger over at Living in Iowa came up with. More details of this will be posted later this week.

2011 Highlights

Now that 2011 has come to a close I thought I would compile the highlights and big events of 2011.

Late January: I finally joined my husband full-time in a new city with a new job in a new (to me) field.

Late May: We celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary by going to Milwaukee for the weekend.

Summer: Attend an art fest, book fest, author reading, summer theatre festival, farmer's markets and checked out an art museum.

Early August: Checked out a zoo and museum.

Mid August: Got our first pet as a couple. Buster, a male cockatiel. 

Fall: Start volunteering at the local public library one afternoon a week.

October: Day trip to dairies and a state forest in Wisconsin.

Late October: Join a women's social group.

Late Fall: Sign up for an organic produce delivery service and a food buying group.

December: Did training to become a volunteer at the local university hospital.

Although I do not know what 2012 will bring I look forward to seeing what the future holds.

Mini Pizzas

Mini pizzas have become one of our favorite quick, go to meals lately.

They take about 10 minutes to make, are easily adaptable, and delicious.

The best part is everyone can have their own with their favorite toppings. For example, I cannot eat pepperoni (as seen on the mini pizza above). I get horribly sick if I eat it, but my husband loves it so, he can have pepperoni and I can have stuff he dislikes on mine.

Here's what you'll need to make
Olive oil and herb bread rounds
Olive oil
Cheese (Parmesan, Asiago, Mozzarella, ect.)
Pizza Sauce
Toppings (meat, cheese, veggies, ect.)

Set the oven to 375 degrees, while it is preheating gather all your ingredients and split the bread rounds in half, so you have 2 thin rounds instead of 1 thick round. Brush each round with olive oil and pop them in the oven for 4-5 minutes depending on how crisp you would like them to be. After they have been toasted in the oven, pull them out and make your pizzas.

I use Trader Joe's pizza sauce ours. I then put homemade bruschetta spread on mine and cubed or sliced pepperoni on my husband's and top them with Asiago, Parmesan, and Mozzarella.

I then put them in the oven for 6 minutes. After that you have delicious mini pizzas that you don't have to share with anyone.

Laundry Detergent - Making vs Buying

This fall, I started making my own powdered laundry detergent using this recipe from shelterrific.

Prior to that, I had been using a dye free, scent free store brand liquid laundry detergent from Target.

Both of us are sensitive to certain laundry detergents, so an easy to make homemade detergent seemed like a cheaper alternative. Powdered detergent is also a lot easier to store. Last year, I stocked up on liquid detergent when it went on sale from $8 a bottle to $6. It is was really hard to find room for 6 bottles of detergent in our apartment.

The shelterrific recipe is really simply: washing soda, borax, and shredded laundry bar soap.

I ordered the washing soda and borax from alice.com and was able to find Fels-Naptha laundry bar soap at HyVee.

Using those ingredients and the recipe of 2 oz of laundry bar soap (shredded, using a free shredder I got at the grocery store), 1/2 cup borax, and 1/2 washing soda, I made 6 batches of powdered laundry detergent, which came out to approximately 2 quarts. There was just a little extra shredded laundry soap, so I threw it in for good measure as I couldn't find laundry soap in 2 or 4 oz bars. I stored it in 2, 1-quart plastic sherbet containers because they seal well and I had them on hand.

I then started making a tick mark on the lid of one of the containers every time I did a load of laundry. Tonight I did my 64th load with the homemade powdered detergent.

So, I did a little math to compare costs between the detergent I had been using and the homemade detergent I'm using now.

It costs me $8 to buy store brand laundry detergent at Target. The bottle contains enough liquid detergent to do 64 loads.

It cost me ~ $4 to make powdered laundry detergent. So far I have done 64 loads and have enough left to do at least 10-20 more loads.

That alone shows that it costs approximately half the price to make my own powdered detergent. So how much is that per load? 12.5 cents per load for store bought detergent compared to 6.25 cents per load (or less once I find out the exact number of loads I can get out of 6 batches) for homemade powdered detergent.

So, if you have 5 minutes to spare every few months I would highly recommend making your own detergent.