Road Tripping and Cloth Diapering

This is not my usual topic for this blog, but today I wanted to talk a little bit about cloth diapers.  Yup.  If you think about it, this is not as off topic as it might seem.  I care about the earth and care to continue my foraging, and gardening for many more years so I feel being as close to zero-waste as I can is important.  Vital, even.  Let's just say that all the disposable diapers you wore as a baby are still sitting in a landfill somewhere.  Just hanging out.  Basically completely intact.  No matter how old you are.  That grosses me out way more than washing a soiled diaper ever could especially with how hassle free cloth diapering companies make their products.

If you've seen my Instagram, you are probably aware that we love using cloth instead of conventional diapers.  This is a huge way we can reduce the garbage that comes along with raising Little Forager, and it is also a major help financially since we are not always buying diapers.  I don't want to spend all my time here talking about why cloth diapering is the way to go - there are many other resources you can find on that topic via a quick google - rather I wanted to talk about whether or not it is practical to use cloth diapers when travelling

As enthusiastic as we are, we are not cloth diapering purists by any means.  There are often times we decide that a disposable diaper is needed.  If we know we are going to be visiting somewhere that doing laundry is going to be really inconvenient for us or our hosts we leave the cloth at home and buy as eco-friendly an option as possible.  This time we knew we knew the laundry wouldn't be a problem, so we decided to pack up the cloth and try them out on a really long road trip and blog about how it went.

This is basically all of my stash.  For the most part we use a combination of Mother Ease and Nuggles diapers.  The Mother Ease diapers (one size fitted diapers with their "air flow" covers) we bought used at a very reasonable price.  These are not the fanciest diapers - there are other styles offered that are, however - and they don't have the trimmest fit, but they are so durable.  We are the second to use them and after two years of our use you can barely tell they are getting on a bit.  Most of our Nuggles products are accessories (Tuck-Wrap-Go covers, wet bags, wallet), although we do have one of their Simplee diapers and it is amazing.  We are seriously considering adding more of them to our collection.  We also have a couple reusable swim diapers, use basic washcloths for wipes, Delish Naturals Therapeutic Yum Bum Butter, and Bummis flushable liners (indispensable now that we have a toddler eating solids), and that basically sums up everything we use for diapering.

The biggest challenge I figured we would have is changing Little Forager during the driving.  Thankfully the travel sized wet bag (pictured above) makes this just as convenient as it would have been using conventional diapers - if changing a wriggling toddler in a public place is ever truly convenient.  The only thing that I had to remember is that since we just use regular baby washcloths for wipes, I had to get them wet first at a sink before I started the whole process.  I could have planned ahead and carried pre-moistened washcloths in a container, or there are even plenty of DIY wipe solution recipes people have made available on the internet.  These wet bags are awesome, because there is a front pocket where you can keep clean diapers, and the back pocket is made of waterproofed fabric (the same kind of thing as the diaper covers) where you can throw the dirty stuff and leave it there until you get a chance to do a load of laundry.  The best part is how well they contain the smell!  I'll be honest that it's not completely 100% smell-proof if you get up close, and if you have dirty stuff and clean stuff in at the same time for a while you're going to want to air out the clean stuff a bit before using it.  Despite those minor concerns we drove all the way from Kamloops, British Columbia to Prince Albert, Saskatchewan and you couldn't tell there were dirty diapers in there.

There were a few times we went to the park, or stopped at a water park, and that was all super easy as well thanks to the Nuggles Reusable Swim Diaper and their Simplee diaper which are both really easy to use on the go.  Thanks again to the travel sized wet bag no one knew we were packing dirty diapers along with us!  

Well, thanks for bearing with me through all my gushing about cloth diapers.  It really was easy to use them even on a long road trip, and I really think it's important to do as much as we can to reduce our garbage.

For those of you who are interested, Nuggles has given me a link to share with my readers to shop their site at a discount!  Click here and happy shopping!

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Nuggles Diapers and Mother Ease have provided me some of their products free of charge, but all thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Where Have We Been?

You might have noticed that the blog has been rather silent for the past month.  The long and the short of it is that we've been really busy!  Here is something in the way of an update, with more posts to follow!

This past month or so we have had way too much traveling to do!  Some of it was a planned holiday, some was work related, and some was to celebrate the wedding of some dear friends.  Though it was all really great, we were just completely wiped out for about a full week afterward!  

The beginning of all this travel was a much needed holiday to Whistler.  This was the first family getaway we had taken in the past two years!  Not that we haven't had holiday time before this, but when your family stretches across most of one of the biggest countries on earth visiting them all eats up a lot of vacation days!  This March we took a week to ourselves and had some much needed family bonding time.

This winter has been particularly bitter all across BC, and so we decided to just embrace it and make our "spring" break one last winter celebration!  We got to use our snowshoes again (I love snowshoeing), and visit Whistler Olympic Park.  We lucked out the last weekend since they were having the national championships for Nordic Combined and Ski Jumping.

Sometimes you have to nurse your kid in the weirdest places!  This was at the biathlon range at the Whistler Olympic Park.  I really enjoyed snowshoeing here.  It was really affordable, and so fun to see all the sights from the 2010 Olympic Games!

The drive home was the most beautiful day.  This shot in Pemberton really doesn't do it justice.  It's a long drive through what could be a treacherous mountain road, but thankfully the sun was shining and the roads were bare!

Our next trip down was work related for Mr. Forager, but we still found time to visit the Tulips in the Valley festival!  Little Forager loves flowers - that's one of the words he can already say - and we caught it at a really beautiful moment where the storm clouds were gathering over the mountains.

One of the really fun things Little Forager and I got up to while Mr. Forager was in class was visiting the BC Farm Museum in Fort Langley.  This place was amazing, and admission was only $6!  We still haven't seen everything they have on display and we'll definitely be back again.

It was lucky that our visit coincided with my mom's parents coming to Vancouver as well.  They usually stop by our place on their way, but this way we wound up with some extra time with them, and that was really nice.  Below you can see my mom and her mom "breadwinning" in the kitchen.  My mom bakes a brilliant loaf of sourdough!  Every time we visit we get sent home with one of the incredible loaves!

Little Forager loves visiting Vancouver.  Cars, boats, and puppies are some of his favourite things, so he's pretty happy to be out and about with us there.

I realized our last visit - again to the Vancouver area, this time for a wedding - was so busy I barely took any photos!  Mr. Forager and I were both very involved in the wedding and we simply enjoyed being in the moment of it all and left the photos to the professionals.  I did manage to take a shot of the incredibly dreamy lavender mocha my mom treated me to at Cafe Medina, though!

Now that we are back home and more rested, I have quite a few more posts planned for your enjoyment!  Thankfully there are no more road trips planned until the summer!

Summer Recap

We really love ice cream.  This is a roundup of some of the places we tried this summer!

Of course we had to take Little Forager to his first Stampede!

This year marked our third Ribfest in Riverside Park.  This was one of the first things we went out to do when we moved to Kamloops, and now we always make a point of going.  It's become almost like a little Kamloops-iversary celebration for us.  Misty Mountain is our personal favourite of all the ribbers, since we really like beef ribs, and they have the best sauce.

Little Forager has grown up so much already.  It is hard to believe that his first birthday is coming up in a few months.  This summer we discovered that the absolutely loves swings.

He's already so big, but still looks small in this huge room in the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Later that summer we got a chance to visit Mr. Forager's family on their ranch in Saskatchewan.  Little Forager absolutely loved meeting the horses.

It was great to have some time with them since we are not able to make the long trip out there as much as we would like.

Stretching our legs during the ride home.

This year I actually had some success with growing beets!  This has been a goal of mine that for some reason has never been realized.  This mix of different types of beets from Westcoast Seeds was a huge hit for me this year!

We made our first (and last) visit to the Golden Ears Fruit Stand.  We were sorry to learn that it was closing down due to the highway expansion.

This summer was the most incredible year for fruit.  Many people were blessed with overabundance and felt the need to share with us.  We did not turn it down!  I also picked up a steam juicer from the fruit stand that was closing down and made a whole lot of grape juice from free grapes!  I am now excited to try to juice many other types of fruit.  It has become one of my favourite ways to process fruit!

We are now ready to welcome fall and all it entails!

Bake Some Pies with Fannie Farmer - Apricots Galore and Heritage Pies with Nana

I've got a bit of a backlog of pies to share with you.  I have still been making them, I just haven't got around to writing about it!  These first two I made for our life group - one straight up apricot pie, the other a yogurt custard with mixed fruit.  I found the apricot to be just slightly more tart than I would have wanted it, but others thought it was exactly right.  My personal favourite was the yogurt custard.  I used the most amazing vanilla bean yogurt from Tree Island, as well as duck eggs from a neighbour, and a mix of apricots, cherries, and raspberries for the fruit.  This was a lovely little pie and a super easy process.  Chop fruit.  Mix custard.  Pour over the fruit in the prepared pie shell and bake!

This month we had our holidays, and I took this opportunity to make some heritage pies with my Nana.  We took a break from the regular basic pie crust recipe since of course we had to use my Nana's secret recipe!  So far I have never had anyone be able to guess the secret ingredient!

The first pie was a very interesting vinegar pie.  The main flavouring is apple cider vinegar and I was not sure how it was going to come out.  The few reviews I could find online suggested it was a unique flavour that not everyone appreciated, but a few people absolutely loved.

As a side note, I have such beautiful grandmothers (inside and out).  I hope to grow up to be just like both of them.

This pie looked super weird when it was cooking.  Like really incredibly strange.  The custard was boiling in the oven, and I was wondering what kind of texture it would have when it finished.  The bubble that the top photo shows was twice as large when I opened the oven door!  In the end the custard was so perfect.  When we cut the slices the edges were sharp - almost like jello!

The flavour was very interesting and seemed to change over time.  The vinegar was much stronger tasting in the leftovers we had in the next day or so.  What was really interesting was how much the apple flavour came through.  I would like to try this pie with different vinegars like the fruit scrap vinegars I am making right now.  No time to try things twice right now, but this is one from the overall list that I would definitely come back to again once I am done with this pie challenge I have set for myself!

The other pie we tried was a raisin pie.  I am no fan of raisins in baking and I purposefully decided to do this one when there were lots of raisin lovers around me.  However it turns out I needn't have worried.  Something about this recipe elevated the humble raisins into something even I could appreciate!

The recipe called for golden and dark raisins and that made a rather pretty pie filling.  The sauce they were cooked in to make the filling made the raisins so juicy and accentuated their flavour.  A little bit of lemon zest is not always called for (and often overused) but it truly does help the overall flavour profile here.

I had a lot of fun making these pies with my Nana.  Not pictured here was the deep dish apricot and pineapple pie we also made.  It was incredibly tart, but when paired with vanilla ice cream it was perfect!  Some pies just aren't complete without ice cream!

Grow Write Guild No. 6 - Landscapes

I have traveled a fair amount for someone my age, and have fallen in love with many different landscapes.  The craggy mountain terrain of Scotland stirred my heart.  Mt. Fuji was enthralling.  I have fond memories of long road trips through the United States and Canada and each new scene was exciting.  I love my new semi-arid desert landscape here in Kamloops, but there is something about the West Coast that I don't seem to be able to get past.

It doesn't seem to matter whether it is in Canada or in the USA.  North or south makes no difference.  The west coast of North America is just so special.  Whenever I get a chance to go back - even if it isn't to a shore where I actually lived - it feels like coming home. 

The cities and places I love to visit are diverse, but there seems to be a certain west coast attitude that makes them all feel familiar and comfortable be it Vancouver, Seattle, or Portland.  I have to say I have not been more south than Portland for a very long time, so my memories of those areas are rather dim, but very fond.

Most recently a coastal place I have fallen in love with is a little place called Long Beach in Washington state.  It is just north of the more well known Astoria, Oregon.  The contrast between the quaint town and the vast expansive landscape makes an interesting juxtaposition.  The sandy windswept beaches are perfect for kite flying, horseback riding, and roasting marshmallows over a fire.  Since it is part of the highway system, you can actually take your car out on the beach which is a really interesting experience for someone more used to the rocky coastal areas near Vancouver.  Running parallel to the beach is the 'Discovery Trail' forged by Lewis and Clark on their quest to find the pacific opening of the Columbia river.  Walking or riding a bike along it is a great way to spend an afternoon.  If you look closely you can find beach peas, and wild strawberries all along the trail!  I have never been there when they are in season, sadly, but they are so plentiful.

Just a little further along the trail (or you can use the highway) there are unique places like 'Waikiki Beach' - a small cove only similar to Honolulu in that there are surfable waves - and Cape Disappointment where there are many hiking trails and the Lewis and Clarke Discovery Center.  In the area there are something like 2000 shipwrecks, and some of these are actually visible from the beach.  At the right time of year you can see whales migrating past the cape. 

I actually like visiting here in the winter or very early spring because the misty rain, wind, and fog seem really appropriate as the waves incessantly crash against the sand.  Apparently the waves bring sand along with them which keeps making the Long Beach peninsula longer.

I hope to go back one day soon and enjoy my favourite landscape with a cup of warm, freshly roasted coffee from the local Long Beach Coffee Roasters.