Ivy says:

Oh, Twitter, how I love thee. I tweeted recently that I’m very short on ideas for Home Ec 101 lately and I got this tweet:

You can tell me about how to get all the slugs that have taken over my backyard, dog bowls, and screen doors to die or getting them to die without hurting the dogs or the cat or my bushes. They are grossing me the (censored) out.

Well, dear Twitter friend, they gross me the (censored) out, too. There are only 2 things on this planet that make me so intensely grossed out that even the thought of them makes me barfy. The first one is maggots (I saw Poltergeist at a very young age) and the second one is slugs.

So, there are several ways of getting rid of slugs. Theoretically, it’s fun to pour salt on them and watch them die. I’m too grossed out by that to even consider that as a method of slug murder, but there is that.

You can prevent slugs from living at your house by making sure the bottom branches of all your bushes are trimmed. Slugs love damp, moist areas, so if you trim the bottom branches from your bushes, the damp and moist areas are not so plentiful and they’ll go find somewhere else to live.

Probably the most fun method of killing slugs involves making them a beer swimming pool. Take a somewhat shallow container (like a Cool Whip container, after you’ve eaten all the Cool Whip, ha!) and bury it in the ground so the lip of the container is even with the ground. Then fill it up with beer. The slugs will be attracted by the beer and will come on in, but won’t be able to get out and will drown. If you feel like that’s a waste of good beer, you can do the same with a packet of yeast and some water.

Another method of keeping slugs away from a certain area is to protect that area with copper edging. That’s a bit on the spendy side, but apparently slugs don’t dig copper and would stay off your back porch.

Finally, you can use an iron phosphate bait like Escar-go! to kill them. Iron phosphate messes up something in a slug’s metabolism so they end up starving to death. Man, killing slugs is mean.

Heather says:

I was browsing through some of my hometown blogs and stumbled upon this entry at A Yankee in a Southern Kitchen. It was the perfect use for the abundance of Silver Queen corn I picked up the other day. Don’t be fooled by this absurdly simple recipe, it tastes of summer.

Ingredients:

• 5 ears of corn, shucked and cut from the cob
• 3 TBSP butter
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Heat the butter in a heavy skillet over medium heat.

Add the kernels and cook until heated through, approximately 5 - 7 minutes.  Salt and pepper to taste.

Ridiculously simple, but oh so good.

Enjoy!

P.S. If you have a moment check out this week’s Festival of Frugality.

Ivy says:

Recently I was sent both Cascade Complete liquid dishwasher detergent and Electrasol liquid dishwashing detergent to test side by side to see which one was a winner. For full disclosure, let me tell y’all a few things:

1. I haven’t used Electrasol in years because I thought it did a crappy job of cleaning my dishes.

2. I have a dishwasher that is a total piece of junk and should probably be thrown to the side of the road. Seriously, if you leave one speck of food on your dishes, you can rest assured that it will still be there when you go to empty the dishwasher, no matter what kind of dishwasher detergent you use.

3. It was Cascade who sent me this dishwasher detergent. They told me to be completely honest, so I will. If Electrasol had sent me this detergent, my review would be the same. No other compensation was given for this trial- just a full sized bottle of Cascade and a full sized bottle of Electrasol.

All that said, let’s forge on with how Cascade and Electrasol did with my dishes.

I decided to play with it, doing first one load with Cascade and one load with Electrasol. Because my dishwasher is such a piece of junk, I did the dishes as I normally do them and rinsed the heck out of each dish beforehand. Cascade did its normal fabulous job, and surprisingly, Electrasol did a good job as well.

“Hmm,” I thought. “I might start using Electrasol again. This isn’t so bad.”

Then I put it to the real test. I let the kids do the dishes. This changed things immensely. When my kids (14 year old son and 7 year old daughter) do dishes, I hear a whole lot of water running, but they are pretty haphazard about how well the dishes are rinsed. Sometimes all the food residue is rinsed off, but more often than not, they leave food on at least some of the dishes.

Cascade, again, did a fine job. A few specks of food were left on the dishes, causing me to have to rewash them, but nothing major.

I figured Electrasol would do the same job. Not so. The kids were “kind” enough to put the dishes away for me this morning, resulting in a big surprise when I went to get a bowl so I could eat some cereal. I pulled a bowl out of the cabinet and -bang!- it was still dirty. Not the usual speck or two that’s left, but that ugly nearly baked on, deep down funk. I set the bowl aside and pulled out another one. It was really funky as well. I ended up pulling out nearly every dish I own and hand washed them.

This leads me to a few conclusions. First, I really need to save up and buy a new dishwasher. The whole point of having a dishwasher, theoretically, is to save time. How much time, really, does it save when you have to completely rinse each dish beforehand, then load and unload the dishwasher?

Second, I believe I’ll be hand washing my dishes until I can get a new dishwasher. I think it’ll save water and it will definitely save a lot of time. Total time spent washing dishes by hand with my daughter after dinner tonight: 15 minutes. And it was a fun 15 minutes, at that.

Finally, in the case of Cascade vs. Electrasol, Cascade wins. At least it does in my household, with my crappy dishwasher. I gave the rest of the bottle of Electrasol to my mom, who has a good dishwasher and says she notices very little difference between Cascade and Electrasol. So, if you have a good dishwasher or you like to spend a lot of time rinsing dishes, either might be fine. But for me and my dishwasher, it has to be Cascade.

Or, I’ll just hand wash the dishes. Ha.

Heather says:

Today marks the beginning of birthday season in our home.  From now until mid September there is a high possibility of finding chocolate cake.  Typically we celebrate quietly, but this week we’re doing something a little out of the ordinary for a milestone birthday.  What do you do when birthdays roll around?

• Monday - My stepdaughter will be cooking.
• Tuesday - Gumbo
• Wednesday - Tuna melts, raw vegetables
• Thursday* - Blackened beef tips over Caesar salad, grilled asparagus, grilled corn on the cob
• Friday - Bacon wrapped jalapenos, meatballs, vegetable tray etc
• Saturday - Pizza Night
• Sunday - Grilled chicken, pasta salad, tomatoes and mozzarella with basil

*Happy birthday Tim.

Heather says:

I recently returned to the gym and partly due to my over enthusiasm, I have come down with a nice case of shin splints.  Part of the treatment is to ice my shins three times a day for twenty minutes.   I decided to test a trick I had stumbled across several times in the past.

Fill a 1 qt freezer bag with ice cubes and add approximately 1/4 cup isopropyl alcohol.  Don’t worry about measuring, just eyeball it.   Use and refreeze as necessary.  I wrap the bags in a kitchen towel to keep the condensation from dripping onto my clothing.  So far they work perfectly and are wonderfully cold.

Remember to only use these under adult supervision as small children may be tempted to chew on the ice pack.

*Edited to add* The alcohol lowers the freezing point of the water.  When you toss the ice melts it mixes with the alcohol. When the water and alcohol mixture is placed back in the freezer it becomes a very cold slush rather than a solid block of ice.