Last year, I discovered that watching Tidying Up with Marie Kondo really got me moving on cleaning and organizing in my house. Sadly, there was only one season, and not much else available to watch that effected me the same way. Until I found Kim’s Rude Awakenings a few months ago. Which lead me to the host’s prior show How Clean is Your House? And that one is a gold mine of motivation.

Part of what I love about How Clean is Your House? is that they *just clean.* It’s not a home makeover or a renovation. They embrace the improvement a good cleaning and decluttering can do for regular middle-class and working-class homes. I’m more motivated to clean when the house I’m looking at doesn’t look like a millionaire home.

And when I get into the cleaning groove, I put on an audiobook or a podcast – especially My Favorite Murder, Let’s Go to Court, History Chicks, or This Podcast Will Kill You. To name a few. There are more, haha. And I’ve managed to consume them all.

I was thrilled when a facebook friend recommended Murder Mystery & Makeup on Bailey Sarian’s YouTube channel. And then I had this idea. I would tell the stories that I love in the style that I enjoy (ie, not too triggering), while also cleaning up my space in a real way.

It’s my real mess. Every mess I clean up has another mess in the background. It’s real life. Sometimes, I am dressed nice and made up. Sometimes I look rough and am sweating through my t-shirt. I say “so” and “um” way too much and get interrupted by kids and dogs.

These aren’t polished or professional videos, but so far I really love doing them, and I’ve gotten some cleaning done, too. So if you’re interested, please check them out. And drop me some [KIND] advice on how to improve or what to clean up next.

An in the meantime, Learn something new, and clean up your act!

The post A Mystery And A Mess appeared first on Urban Earthworm.

So. Rather than bring you more high quality content you might actually want to read, here is a capture of the 30-Day Song Challenge I’m doing to try to dilute some of the politics and tragedy in my social media feeds.

Anyone want to do a blog hop?

Day 1 – I was genuinely surprised by the first song to pop into my head with a color in the title. I haven’t listened to this in YEARS, but I loved Garth Brooks in high school. The Red Strokes by Garth Brooks

Day 2 – Ok, I don’t think the title of this song originally included the number, but it was so well known by the number that it is now generally included as part of the title. 867-5309/Jenny by Tommy Tutone

Day 3 – So, the first song I thought of was Summertime Blues by Alan Jackson, but that song doesn’t *actually* make me think of summer. It’s just the first song I thought of when thinking about the word summer. So, a song that really brings me to summer every time I hear it is Barefoot Children by Jimmy Buffett. I mean, really Jimmy Buffett is the sound of summer for me. As a kid, we had this amazing deck behind our house that was two levels and wrapped around our above-ground pool and had a suspension bridge to the poolhouse (an old shed :-D). There was a sign on the gate that read “Margaritaville” and my parents played Jimmy Buffett all summer long on the deck.

Day 4 – This is a really hard one. So many songs make me think of so many people. My first thought was songs that make me think of my partner – Moondance by Van Morrison and Because the Night, the 10,000 Maniacs version. But immediately, my brain went, “But what about Boo?” Every time I hear Don’t Stop Believin’ by Journey, it’s like my brother is reaching out to me. And another song that brings him to me every time I hear it in a very powerful way is Some Nights by Fun.

Day 5 – I mean, really any great song needs to be played out loud, but some songs just demand to be turned up and the one song that I absolutely blast when it comes on in the car is Mirrors by Natalia Kills.

So there are the first 5. What are yours?

The post Quality Content is Overrated appeared first on Urban Earthworm.

Why Pressure Cook Beets?

In short, they’re tastier, faster, and it’s the easiest way to peel beets!

For the longest time, I hated beets. I loved basically every vegetable I had ever tried, except beets. To me, beets tasted like dirt (literally, they tasted like garden soil smells). Turns out, most beets – especially canned or otherwise pre-prepared (overly redundant? haha) – don’t actually taste like beets. They taste like dirt. Beets are delicious when they’re done right.

I was also wary of beets because I had been told by countless friends and family members that beets were a pain in the rear to peel and prep. Recipes called for hours of baking wrapped in foil or hacking away with a carrot peeler. The I stumbled across a memoir-esque account written by a woman homesteading through a winter similar to those we see in Michigan. The whole article was cozy and inspiring, but the part that really stuck with me was when she pointed out that she could make beans from dried to ready-to-eat in under two hours (!!!) and that pressure cooked beets would pop right out of their skins. She, like me, had been a beet hater before she tried pressure cooking.

I wish I could cite this article. I’d love to read it again, but alas it’s been years and I don’t even remember for certain what periodical it was in. I suspect it was Mother Earth News. The idea of being able to switch from canned beans to dried was enough to get me to try out a pressure cooker, and it was everything I’d hoped. It’s been ten years, and I still use the pressure cooker at least once a week. And not only do I love beets now, so do the kids!

Instructions:

Creepy Edible Rat Tails for Halloween

One of my favorite Urban Earthworm classics! Creepy Edible Halloween Rat Tails

Pressure Cooker Times for Everything:

Let me know if you try this out, and comment below with your favorite use for the pressure cooker!

Whenever I try something new in my pressure cooker, I always use the times listed on Hip Pressure Cooking. It’s a very complete chart! Hasn’t steered me wrong a single time.

The post The Easiest Way to Peel Beets appeared first on Urban Earthworm.

Additionally, I’ve styled this as a one pot recipe. Any method that dirties fewer dishes is a plus in my book!

Recommended Tools

I’ve mentioned it before, and I can’t stress it enough, if you chop a lot of vegetables, you’re going to want a mandoline. I linked to a couple of fancier versions in the Cheater Chickenless Noodle Soup recipe, but the one I use at home is much more basic:

And then there is the immersion blender. This thing is so. useful. I use it all the time, and it is so much easier and less messy than a traditional blender. If you don’t have one, you need to get one:

Recipe

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Colcannon Soup (Vegan)

This vegan colcannon soup is a hearty, satisfying winter soup hiding a lot of cabbage and an unrivaled depth of flavor.

Course Main Course, Soup

Cuisine Irish

Keyword comfort food, Vegan

Prep Time 5 minutes

Cook Time 30 minutes

Equipment

• Immersion Blender

Ingredients

• 4 medium potatoes
• 1 medium onion
• 1/2 a green cabbage
• 2 tbsp olive oil or cooking oil
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• 2 cups vegetable broth
• 1 15 oz can cannellini beans, undrained
• 1/4 cup vegan butter
• 1/4 cup nutritional yeast
• 1-4 cups water
• salt
• pepper

Instructions

• Scrub and slice or dice the potatoes. Shape doesn't matter since they'll be blended later. No need to peel.
• Boil the potatoes in salted water until they are fork soft all the way through.
• While the potatoes boil, dice the onion and finely chop the cabbage.
• Drain the potatoes and leave them in the strainer.
• Add the cooking oil to the pot followed by the onions, cabbage, and thyme.
• Sautée the cabbage and onions until the cabbage is fully softened, stirring frequently to evenly coat with the oil and evenly sautée. About 10 minutes.
• Return the potatoes to the pot with the cabbage and onions, and add the vegetable broth.
• Add enough water to bring the level of liquid almost level with the vegetables in the pot.
• Simmer 5-10 minutes.
• While the soup is simmering, blend together the cannellini beans (with the aquafaba – liquid from the can), nutritional yeast, and butter until smooth.
• OPTIONAL: For a chunkier soup, remove some of the cabbage and potatoes from the pot with a slotted spoon and set aside. Stir back into the soup after blending.
• Pour the blended bean cream into the simmering soup and use an immersion blender to blend it all together until reaching the desired consistency. I like to leave mine just a little bit chunky, but others prefer it completely smooth – especially if you have picky eaters in the house! If necessary, add more water during blending to thin out the soup.
• Season to taste with black pepper and salt.

The post Colcannon Soup (Vegan) appeared first on Urban Earthworm.

Amy’s No Chicken Noodle Soup is vegan and nails the chicken noodle soup flavor, but just isn’t hearty enough for me. Actually, I rarely eat a canned soup without at least adding a bunch of frozen veggies to it. The Amy’s soup can be a little hard to find at some grocery stores, but it’s easy to pick up on Amazon either by the can:

Or a case of 12:

Preparation Tip: Fast and Easy Slicing

If you cook with a lot of vegetables, a mandoline vegetable slicer is an amazing tool you will use ALL. THE. TIME. With mine, I was able to slice all the veggies for the soup in about 4 minutes.

Do you have a favorite “Cheater” recipe?

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Cheater Chickenless Noodle Soup (Vegan)

This vegan Cheater Chickenless Noodle Soup is a quick and easy weeknight comfort food that is "Cheater" because it uses some ready-made grocery store ingredients.

Course Main Course

Cuisine American

Keyword cheater, comfort food, soup, Vegan, vegetarian

Prep Time 15 minutes

Cook Time 15 minutes

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• 2 cans Amy's No Chicken Noodle Soup
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 2 tbsp minced garlic
• 4 carrots, sliced
• 3 celery stalks, sliced
• up to 7 cups water
• 1 can cannelloni beans, undrained
• ¼ cup nutritional yeast
• 1 package noodles of your choice eggless dumpling noodles, orzo, and ditalini work well
• 1 tbsp black pepper
• 1 tbsp garlic salt
• 1 tbsp oregano measurement is for dried, but fresh is phenomenal in this soup; adjust to taste
• 1 ½ tbsp thyme measurement is for dried, but fresh is phenomenal in this soup; adjust to taste
• 1 tsp cayenne pepper
• 2 tbsp vegan butter
• 1 lb frozen mixed vegetables or frozen peas* See note below
• Salt to taste

Optional Add-ins:

• Diced mushrooms shitakes are especially good
• diced potatoes
• green beans
• diced root vegetables parsnips, turnips, rutabagas, etc.

Instructions

• Heat oil in a soup pot on Med-High heat.
• Add the onions, garlic, carrots, and celery.
  
• Sauté until the onions are translucent.
• Add 2 cups of water and the pepper, garlic salt, oregano, thyme, and cayenne.
• Bring to a boil.
• Add the 2 cans of Amy's Soup, the cannelloni beans, and nutritional yeast.
• Add 2 to 5 cups of water based on your broth preferences. I typically use the soup cans to rinse out anything that gets left in them.
• Add the noodles and butter and bring to a boil.
• Boil until the noodles are soft, add the frozen vegetables.
• When the soup returns to a boil, it's ready to serve!

Notes

*Frozen Veggies Mom Hack:  I seriously felt like a genius when I thought of this.  If you are going to need to cool this soup off quickly (say, for instance to children who are starving to *death* and cannot possibly wait 3 minutes for it to cool down), hold back some of the frozen vegetables and add them when you serve the soup.  So much better than adding an ice cube because it doesn’t water down the soup!  Bonus:  If you let the kids add the veggies themselves, they’ll often take even more than you would have given them.  BAM.  #momgenuity

 

The post Cheater Chickenless Noodle Soup (Vegan) appeared first on Urban Earthworm.

Sourdough Inspiration

The day after our wedding in October, I was watching The Great British Baking Show and suddenly became moved to make sourdough starter. I had been thinking about it ever since I read Sourdough by Robin Sloan. If any book will make you want to bake sourdough bread, it’s that one. I love the subtlety of a novel that is just about the struggles and beauty of every day life with tiny bits of science fiction and fantasy sneaking in. Robin Sloan’s first novel, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, is one of my favorite books of all time (granted, that’s a long list, ha), and I know many a sourdough baker who started after reading Sourdough.

I knew I would need bottled water to create a starter since our tap water is chlorinated, and I thought I needed grapes (turns out I didn’t) – and I had both bottled water and grapes left over for the wedding! What better way to begin a sourdough starter that would live with our family than from ingredients from our wedding?

Sourdough Starter

So I created Lancre, my sourdough starter named after the home of most of the witches in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. I used the water from the wedding and the grapes (even though they weren’t necessary), along with some wild grapes from our backyard. If you’re interested in creating a starter of your own, I find the information over at The Clever Carrot to be the clearest and most helpful of all the sourdough websites I’ve explored.

I’ve been trying recipes here and there to use the starter that I need to discard when I feed Lancre each week. I made some great pancakes a couple weeks ago and failed miserably at making crumpets not long after that. I was really excited to find some recipes for soft pretzels using sourdough starter discard, but none of the recipes gave me exactly what I wanted: vegan, soft pretzels using sourdough starter discard and not using added yeast. I found a great recipe for vegan sourdough pretzels from Holy Cow! Vegan, but it called for added instant yeast.

Vegan Sourdough Soft Pretzels Recipe

What I present to you below is my variation on that recipe without the added yeast. To accommodate the change, I handle the dough much more similarly to sourdough bread dough and my recipe calls for a much longer rise time. For a quicker version, if you have instant yeast on hand, check out Holy Cow! Vegan’s recipe.

If you try these out, please let me know what you think and leave a rating!

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Soft Pretzels – Sourdough Starter Discard (Vegan, no added yeast)

Vegan soft pretzels made from sourdough starter discard with no added yeast.

Course Snack

Cuisine American

Keyword Cooking with Kids, sourdough, starter discard, Vegan

Prep Time 20 minutes

Cook Time 27 minutes

Servings 12 Pretzels

Ingredients

• 1 cup sourdough starter discard
• 1/2 cup warm water
• 1/4 cup warm plant milk (soy, almond, oat, etc.)
• 3 cups bread flour or all-purpose flour (I used 2 cups all-purpose and 1 cup bread flour because that's what I had on hand)
• 1 tbsp maple syrup or other sweetener (sugar, agave, etc.)
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 tsp salt (plus some to sprinkle on top of pretzels if desired)

Glaze

• 1 tbsp sweetener
• 2 tbsp water

Instructions

• Combine the sourdough starter, water, and plant milk. Stir until starter is dissolved.
• Add the rest of the ingredients and mix until a shaggy dough forms.
• Autolyse: Cover the bowl and allow the shaggy dough to rest for 30 minutes at room temperature. This will allow the gluten to start forming and make the dough more workable.
• Knead the dough until it comes together and forms a workable ball. If the dough is too dry or hard, add small amounts of water.
• Place the dough ball in a large, lightly greased (I use coconut oil to grease, but any plant oil will do) bowl. Cover in a relatively airtight manner. I will sometimes layer two plastic shopping bags over the top and secure with a rubber band, and have also found that a heavy pot lid without vents works well with one of my bowls. If you use plastic wrap, that works.
• Allow the dough to rest until it grows 50% to 100% – ie, until it gets half way to doubling or more. I rested it for 12 hours overnight. You can also put it in the oven with the oven light on to gently increase the warmth, which will cause it to rise more. This step will take anywhere from 3 to 12 hours depending on your starter, air temperature, and schedule.
• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F
• Place the dough on a lightly greased surface and knead a few times into a ball.
• Divide the dough into 12 equal portions, covering the portions you are not working with a damp dish towel while they wait.

Shaping the Pretzels – Great fun for kids!

• Take one piece of dough and roll it out into a long snake – about 8 inches long.
• Lay the snake in a hill or "n" shape.
• Cross the legs of your n so you now have an upside down teardrop with legs.
• Cross the legs over again the same direction you did the first time. Now you have an upside down teardrop with a twist at the bottom and very short legs.
• Grasp the loop of the teardrop and fold it down to the bottom of the twist. This will result in the loop making a circle around the twist, the traditional pretzel shape. You may need to stretch the loop a little during this step to get the shape right, and that's totally fine! Also, you'll see from my pictures that they don't have to be perfectly shaped. It's more important that they're fun to make and taste great!
• Place the pretzel twists on a lightly greased cookie sheet.
• Mix the glaze.
• Brush the glaze evenly over the top of all the pretzels. We used our fingers for this since my kitchen brush has gone missing!
• Sprinkle lightly with salt if desired. Ours were very lightly salted with regular table salt.
• Bake for 27 minutes. For darker pretzels, you may want to place them on the top rack or bake them slightly longer.

The post Sourdough Soft Pretzels – Vegan, no added yeast appeared first on Urban Earthworm.

And really, the internet is probably right. For those trying to turn their blog into an income source, into a business, into their livelihood, a niche is pretty important. It will give you a huge leg up on locating, drawing in, and holding your audience. But Urban Earthworm isn’t a business and it isn’t about earning an income. Do I have that fantasy that nearly every blogger has that one day I’ll be turning over huge ad revenues and I can stop working and just blog for a living? Hell yea I friggin do. Do I think it’s likely to happen? Not even a little bit. Why? Because I’m not going to pick niche. Screw you, Internet, you can’t tell me what to do!

Still, I’d like to have at least a few readers. I’d like this blog to have some meaning to someone here and there. So while Urban Earthworm may fall short of filling a niche, it will have a personality – a realm of topics revolving around… well, ultimately – me. Here is what I have outlined so far:

Everyday sustainability and flippant soliloquies from the working mom trenches.

• Green lifestyle
  • Recipes
  • Gardening
  • Sustainability ideas
• Family
  • Parenting
  • Relationships
    • Polyamory
    • Healthy relationships
    • Sex
    • Divorce
  • Paganism
  • Traditions
  • Legal considerations for families/parents/etc.
• Reading
  • Books
  • Book travel – bookstores, libraries, book locations
  • Kids’ books
• Life
  • Professional Life
  • Mental Health
    • Recovering from abuse
    • PMDD
    • Mental Health
  • Legal tips for everyday life
  • Hobbies and crafts
• Geek
  • Fandoms
  • Cosplay
• Nerd
  • Science
  • History

Exhaustive list? Probably figgin not. Too broad for a “successful” blog? Totally. Should you stick with me anyway? Heck yes – I did say I was going to talk about sex sometimes, didn’t I?!

The post Choosing a Blog Niche appeared first on Urban Earthworm.

So, who thinks I’m going to pull off actually coming back to Urban Earthworm and posting consistently? It’s just one of those things – on productive days, I’m so certain that I’m going to stick around and make the blog as enjoyable as it was before, and then on unmotivated days – well, obviously not.

A lot has gone on over the last year, the last few, the last 10. I’ve been diagnosed with Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder, PMDD, which, for me, means that for about 10 days of the month I struggle with serious clinical depression type symptoms. I’ve been able to control it with medication, but it is still a struggle sometimes and it is impossible to explain to someone who is neurotypical what it feels like to want to get things done, to need to get things done and be very worried about the consequences, and yet you just simply can’t.

It’s not “I’m too tired,” or “I don’t feel like it,” or even “I’m sad or overwhelmed.” It’s that I can. not. And over the years I’ve come up with many ways of coping and making up for the time I lose during the bad days, but over the last year or three – with all the other changes in my life – it has been Urban Earthworm that has been sacrificed to the gods of prioritization and PMDD.

This year, I’m going to try to change that. New Year’s Resolutions always feel kitschy and shallow to me, so when I talk about my goals for 2020, I call them goals. But let’s face reality here, they’re New Year’s Resolutions and I’m just being an old millennial hipster by avoiding the term.

I set some goals for this year, and many of them are private. But one of them is to breathe some life back into this blog. Initially, to do that, I suspect I will need to stray somewhat from the original personality of the site. When I started Urban Earthworm, I wanted to keep it on-point and specific to topics related to sustainability for busy families. Having a niche and sticking with a theme is important for a successful blog.

The thing is, though, I don’t need this blog to be “successful” right now. It will mean more to me to simply revive it a bit, and if that means shifting it somewhat from the sustainability focus and diving into a *gasp* mommy blog, then so be it. I’m going to make an effort to identify some primary categories into which most of my posts will fit. I suspect sustainability will remain a popular one, as well as recipes, my ever expanding list of hobbies, parenting, paganism, my family’s life, and yes even some just random spitballing. For instance, one of these days I need to subject the internet to my unpopular but completely accurate opinion of the Star Wars franchise.

So if there’s anyone out there still popping in to say hi, join me on this journey to try – once again, to bring Urban Earthworm back online for 2020.

And HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

The post Happy New Year! appeared first on Urban Earthworm.

A few tips to keep in mind:

• It is best to use “second snow” or “later snow”: snow from after the first couple hours of snowfall.
• Make sure to collect your snow from a clean surface (above and below) that has not been trodden on or touched.
• Fluffy, dry snow works best for this recipe.  That’s one of the bonuses.  My kids are always disappointed when the snow is not packing snow, but at least we can make snow cream!
• Packing snow occurs when the temperature is within a couple degrees above or below freezing.  Fluffy snow comes when the temperature is more than a few degrees below freezing.

Vegan Snow Ice Cream Recipe 

INGREDIENTS
All amounts are approximate and should be adjusted to taste 

• 4 – 8 cups clean snow
• 1 cup soy milk* (or other plant milk)*
• 1/3 cup or maple syrup
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 pinch salt

* You can use any flavor of milk that you choose – vanilla, chocolate, sweetened or unsweetened, almond, coconut, hemp, flax, macadamia, cashew, etc.  If you use a flavored and/or sweetened milk, you may desire to adjust the amounts of sugar and vanilla.

DIRECTIONS

1. Whisk together all the ingredients except the snow in a large bowl.  (Leave the snow in a bowl outside or in the freezer until ready to stir it in.
2. Place the mixture in the freezer for 10 minutes.  (This step is optional, but snow cream melts very quickly and this step helps it last just a bit longer).
3. Mix in the snow about 1/2 cup at a time until the snow cream reaches a consistency just thicker than soft serve ice cream.
4. Serve and enjoy immediately!

As always, if you try this recipe, please let me know in the comments, like, and share this post!

Disclaimer:  All food comes with a risk.  I can’t guarantee that eating snow is safe, though I certainly feel comfortable with the snow ice cream we make and enjoy.  I find this article has good information on the comparative safety of consuming snow:  So You Want To Eat Snow. Is It Safe? We Asked Scientists

The post Snow Ice Cream appeared first on Urban Earthworm.

• 3-4 cups cubed butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cut into small cubes
• 1/4 cup vegan butter (something like Earth Balance)
• 1/2 cup vegetable broth*
• 2 tablespoons miso paste (yellow or red), dissolved in the broth
• 1/2 cup unsweetened plant milk (soy, almond, etc.)*
• 1 and 1/4 cups nutritional yeast
• 1 tablespoon garlic salt
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• Optional: shredded dairy-free cheese (like Daiya cheddar shreds)

* In a pinch you can do all broth or all plant milk, for a total of one cup liquid.

1. Boil the squash cubes until completely tender and then drain.
2. Meanwhile, heat all the other ingredients except the optional shredded “cheese” in a saucepot until the butter, miso paste, and nutritional yeast are dissolved and the liquid is hot.
3. Combine the cooked squash cubes with the liquid and blend until smooth using a standard blender or an immersion blender.
4. Serve over prepared noodles of your choice.  I prefer to stir the noodles and sauce all together in the saucepot.
5. If desired, stir in Daiya cheddar shreds until they start to melt and stretch.
6. Add more salt and pepper to taste.

The post Vegan Butternut Squash Mac and Cheese appeared first on Urban Earthworm.