Smokeless Fire Pit on a SERIOUS Budget AND Disabled Friendly Build

This is an account of how I built my really snazzy looking (IMO), smokeless, turbo air charged (OK, not turbo, but you can clearly hear the air rushing in! It's super cool! Err.. Hot, actually) fire pit, mostly sitting down, for about $110.00 +tax. 

First of all, I read a lot of instructionals, and watched even more videos on the topic of DIYing a smokeless fire pit. There were lots of good builds, good ideas, and aspects of various ones that I liked. Most of them were either out of my budget range, and/or required a level of labour that I can no longer do, nor afford to pay for, and a crazy amount of them assumed that "on a budget" means under $1000, or even "really cheap" builds for $300 -$500. 

The ones that were in the under $150 range were mostly ones made from repurposed junk and salvaged materials that were not the aesthetic I wanted, or they required the manual labour to locate, pick up, haul, load, and unload salvaged materials myself, which I'm just not able to do. As mentioned elsewhere in this blog, and known to many of y'all, I am disabled. My walking and standing time are seriously limited, and any serious lifting and working must be done seated. So, I needed something I could afford on a fixed income, DYI-able within my abilities and with very limited help, that still looked attractive, fit with the natural theme I wanted, and was easily usable for me as well. 

I've never been one to give up once I decide I want to make something happen, so, next came the adapt, improvise, and overcome phase! I figured out what elements were really important for what I wanted, and what was just extra work for bragging rights.

I was able to do the majority of the work seated. I did have some help with bringing me stuff, but I also could have used my scooter and my Gorilla dumping wagon (These things are AWESOME, BTW) to do the hauling stuff myself. It just would have added a bit more time to the job. That said, that would be true even if I were fully able bodied, so no net difference. 

I applied for a Dom Depot (AKA Home Depot. LOL) credit card, and got fifty bucks off the whole haul, plus free delivery, which helped a lot! You can get most of the supplies cheaper at Wally World, but with the $50 off, this was cheaper for me. Here's what I ended up with...

Supplies

• Retaining wall blocks x34 ($81.00)

The main structure of the fire pit, obviously. Cheaper stones than these can be had, to make your overall project even more budget friendly, but I really liked these a lot, and they fit within my under $150 cap.

• Sand ($7.59) (Available at WalMart for cheaper)

Insulates, to keep fire and heat contained, absorbs and helps distribute heat evenly, supports and helps even out the base stones, absorbs moisture, to help with drainage. 

• Pea Gravel ($6.25) (Available at WalMart for cheaper)

Helps with drainage, heat distribution, and air flow. 

• Lava rock ($14.29) (Available at WalMart for cheaper and a bigger bag)
Retains heat, to keep the fire pit hotter, longer, absorbs and helps distribute heat evenly, provides additional air flow for hotter and cleaner burning, and drainage.

Instructions

• Lay ring of 12 stones
• Mark around outside & move stones out of the way. 
• Dig out the marked circle 2-3 inches deep.

• Lay sand & level - Dump the bag out in the circle and spread it out with a rake or something. A metal rake like the one shown is best for this, IMO. 

• Replace the 12 stones, using sand underneath to level them as needed. 
• Remove 4 stones opposite one another (make sure remaining stones stay put!)

• Lay 2nd two levels, staggering stones for each layer.

• Optional, but recommended - Place two stones inside, to support wood for fire building and/or for supporting cooking grate. Having the stones there to prop a couple logs on over your tinder and kindling REALLY improves fast and easy fire starting! It will up your fire game for real. 

• Add pea gravel and level. 

• Add lava rock and level.

• Enjoy your new fire pit!.

 

• Optional step - I used a couple cinder blocks to make a holder for fire tongs, poker, skewers, etc. It works well.  

 

 • Another optional, but definitely recommend step - I built a matching bench, right up next to the pit, with some additional retaining wall blocks. It is perfect placement for building the fire whilst sitting, and some additional seating that looks great. 

 

You CAN afford a deep freezer, and you probably have room for one if you're not homeless

A deep freezer is worth its weight in gold; Maybe even worth its filled weight in gold!

Why?
Because when you have one, you can buy in bulk at massive savings, always have meal ingredients on hand without frequent trips to the store, have plenty of delicious, healthy, home cooked meals ready to heat and eat at pennies a serving, and never have to worry about running out of things, even if you can't get to the store (or the store shelves are all bare! Like... I dunno, maybe during a global pandemic?) for a while - even weeks or months at a time! Most properly packaged foods stored at 0°F or less (Home deep freezers will be somewhere around the -6°F range) can be stored indefinitely, without losing their original flavour or quality
(Freezer burn is the result of improper packaging, not deep freezing!).

There are a lot more details and reasons to add, but those are for other posts. This post is to help you figure out how you can reap those benefits, even on a budget (Yes, even in qualify for food assistance level poverty budget!) and/or living in tight quarters. 
It IS doable in most situations!

The first step is to figure out where you could put one. 
If you get an upright, it will take up about the same space as a small card table or easy chair/recliner. That isn't much, considering the benefits.
Be creative. It doesn't have to be in the kitchen, or even indoors, necessarily! It can go in a corner of the living/dining room, or bedroom, on a porch, patio, or balcony, in the yard, driveway, garage, in a in a storage closet/shed, etc. As long as you can run an appliance extension cord to it and there is around six inches of air space around it, it's all good! 
If it goes outside, it's a good idea to protect it from the weather, but not mandatory. If you are worried about it being unsightly or getting flack from management for having it outside/on your patio or balcony, you can easily and cheaply disguise it with a couple sheets of garden lattice and some 2x4s to make a frame, or you can even go extra simple, foldable, and portable by zip-tying the lattice pieces to one another. Put a couple potted, trailing plants (real or fake) on top, and it will look like a mini garden project. 

There are also a couple other DIY disguise ideas running around the internet. Here's one originally using a small fridge, but easily used for a freezer. There are custom made fridge wraps available, but you can get the same effect with a $20 shower curtain or two! 
Again, get creative and make it your own! You've got this. I have faith in you!

While chest style freezers are usually cheaper and slightly more energy efficient (in theory), an upright will be MUCH easier to keep organised, so you can get to things quickly, meaning it is not hanging open for extended periods of time, thus negating any energy savings. Since they take up less floor space, and you can store things on top of them too, that is like double space saving, and, using one is way better on your back!

A brand new one, if you get about the largest home model, will run you around $600-$800, which is a lot, BUT will easily save you at least that much in the first two years or less. 
If that price point is unattainable, even with saving up or (ugh!) renting to own (A freezer is about the only item I feel is worth going the rent to own route. That's how important I think they are.), look for dented/floor models to get significant savings on a new unit, go a little smaller, and/or check local want ads, Craig's List, Freecycle, and Buy Nothing to see if anyone is selling one at a price you can afford or even giving one away. You'd be AMAZED at the things people are willing to give away for free or sell massively cheaply.  



The bottom line is that, for lots of reasons, especially if you're poor, you can't afford NOT to do your best to get a deep freezer.

Thrifty Kitchen Tip ~ Quick, Easy, and Basically Free Marinades

As usual, we're going with the theme of, "don't throw it away"!

Those  unused condiment packs from take out or delivery meals, like spice or seasoning packets, dipping sauces, salad dressings, honey, sweet and sour, soy sauce, hot sauce, jams/jelly/preserves, etcetera, as well as your own leftover bits/dregs of salad dressing, beer, wine, spirits, soft drinks, juice, mixed drinks,and all manner of other small bits of stuff can be reused and turned into delicious marinades, glazes, and other additions to meals. 
Sometimes, you even find something that ends up being the "secret ingredient" that pushes a good meal over the top to awesome! 

I often go hunting in the kitchen for the almost empty bottles of sauces or salad dressings to incorporate into a spur of the moment marinade. 

Use a little bit of water, beer/ale/lager/etc, wine, coffee, soft drink or juice to pour in almost empty bottles and shake up to get the last little bits out of the bottle and into your delicious creation!

As you add each new ingredient, use your nose. Smell the mixure. Smell things you have around to possibly put in it. Smell what you want to marinate. Imagine how those will be combined! Science has revealed what home cooks and famous chefs alike have known all along; 80%-90% of how food "tastes" is actually how it smells!
So put your sniffer to work to whip up an amazing, on the fly marinade for your next meal or few. 


And remember, it's not just meats that you can marinate a few hours or a few days to turn a decent dish into a decadent delight that will impress the heck out of everyone who tastes it. 


As for how to save those little condiments and culinary bits and bobs...



Packs that are unopened and/or already individually packaged can go right in the freezer as-is. I like to put them in Ziploc, freezer bags, just to keep them together and easy to find. 

For stuff that isn't pre-packaged, check out this post.

Getting the most out of your lettuce harvest!

So, as you already know, if you've been reading this blog much at all, I started growing my own food with a couple AeroGarden setups last December. I have gone from some seeds/seed pods and water to a kitchen that looks kinda like a jungle with all the potted plants (from transplanting) everywhere as well as the AeroGardens, and it's ALL edible, and in many cases, also medicinal. Which is awesome, but isn't really what this post is about.

This is, specifically, regarding my lettuces, which, by now, I have divided and regrown countless times. I went from 6 pods initially to... I don't even know now. I have lettuce everywhere. 

Seriously, just today I harvested about 2.5 POUNDS of lettuce leaves, cause even though I still had about 1/2 pound left in the fridge (and I eat a LOT of salad), it had gotten tall and big enough to interfere with the grow lights and keep new leaves from growing properly! 
There's still enough left on the plants that I could make another huge salad just with another harvest, but I can also let them grow just fine for another few days or so before I have to prune any more. 

That is a freaking LOT of lettuce! 
I have enough excess now that I can start trading my extra salad greens with a friend who keeps chickens, for fresh eggs. How awesome is that!? (It's pretty dang awesome!)

Anyway, initially, I was thinking the harvest "season" for them was going to be a lot shorter than it is, because that is what everyone said, including the AeroGarden folks. Well, I've already had about double the "expected" harvest season, but I still thought I was going to need to "retire" some of the plants pretty soon. Here's why. 

At a certain point, the lettuce starts to bolt, no matter how well and faithfully you've been pruning. The stalks start getting taller and more woody, and you still have a decent amount of leaves, but you also have the lettuces trying to flower, and you've got a lot more thick stems that are just too tough to enjoy in a salad, even if you chop them up pretty well. So, in terms of growing "real estate", if you have a limited area in which to grow all that you are going to grow, you end up with more by-product than it's worth to keep the plants growing, rather than starting new plants, which are almost exclusively tasty, tender, lettuce leaves. 
Right?
Wrong!! 
As it turns out, these stems and flower buds are totally usable in anything where you'd use broccoli stems, carrots, thicker asparagus, etc. 
Like the awesome "stratarole" that is in the oven as I type this. 

Also great chopped up and roasted with root veggies or Brussels sprouts, tossed in stir frys, minced finely into soups, sauces (like spaghetti sauce), or anywhere else you want to sneak in some extra leafy green veggie nutrition. 

And, speaking of nutrition, get this; The stalks and stems often have an even higher concentration - up to double for certain nutrients, like vitamin C - of the vitamins and minerals found in the leaves! 


The flavour of the stalks is generally going to be similar to the leaf flavour profile, and may be a little bitter, owing to lactucarium - the milky, white sap that is produced in this phase of growing (which also has medicinal properties, as a mild sedative and analgesic, in sufficient quantities). It's perfectly edible and not at all harmful, but you could rinse it off if you wanted to. I never bother. Once the stalks are cooked and even lightly seasoned, it's not at all noticeable, and even less so cooked along with other ingredients. 

The leaves you get from these stalks are going to tend to be a bit more bitter than when the plant was younger, but as long as you're mixing them in with your younger lettuces, it isn't at all unpleasant. You may not be as prone to want to munch them directly from the stalk as you harvest, like the more tender leaves, if you prefer only sweeter lettuces, but they will still be a super tasty addition to your salads too. 

To keep harvesting the stalks and leaves, just use sharp scissors or small pruners and cut the stalks right off, as far down as you feel like. Just make sure there is still some budding leave growth showing below the cut, and it will be all good. Strip the leaves off and put with the rest of your leaves, and store the stems like you would store broccoli or asparagus. 

I suppose there may be a point at which even this extended harvest ends, but it's been four months, and I have yet to find it. I'll update when/if I discover it. 

Enjoy your new cooking vegetables, and please feel free to comment or contact me with any new recipes or uses you find with it!

Aerogarden and kitchen scrap regrowing update #3 ~ Plus MICROGREENS!

Holy crap! 
I planted the microgreen seeds on the 31st. When I  left for a 2 night, 3 day staycation on the 2nd, some of them were barely sprouting. 
This is what I came home to last night!

 This is four days' growth, folks!! I harvested a decent amount for my salad that I had for supper.

And speaking of four days' growth...

 Everything is growing like a champ. Except the Thai basil. It is officially a dud. Gotta contact Aerogarden in the morning to get it replaced. 

 Yeah, that basil is that size AFTER I pruned off what I'm holding in my hand in that pic. Basil in my salad tonight. Ommnomnom. 

I had to prune the thyme a bit too, cause it was getting a little leggy. It does tend to do that, but I'm gonna do my best to get it as dense and compact as I can. Guess what else is going in my salad.  And the dill is really taking off! Not enough to harvest any just yet, but I think by next week, if not sooner, I may be able to have a bit of fresh dill to use in stuff too. 

Just look at how much the leeks and green onions have grown. And there is a great root system on one of my basil cuttings, good ones on another, and finally some roots forming on the one I wasn't sure about and the one I cut on the 31st.

 And now that they aren't fighting with the big leaves WAY up top, there are several new leaf sets on the original. 

Did I mention yummy salad? I think I did. It was SOOOOO good!

I'll probably be harvesting some of the sprouts and more of the microgreens tomorrow for another tasty salad. 

In other news, I ordered a "used" Aerogarden Classic Six last week, and it is scheduled to arrive tomorrow. In this case, "used" simply means that it was returned, is brand new, but the packaging is damaged. Boo hoo! Damaged cardboard means I got it for half price. Yay me and yay Amazon!
Also arriving tomorrow: An Aerogarden grow anything pod kit and some more seeds, with still more seeds arriving Tuesday. 

The new garden is going to have rosemary, lavender, oregano, tarragon, marjoram, and sage.  At least, that is the plan for the moment. There is always the possibility I'll change that around a bit. I'm also keeping my eyes peeled for additional "used" Aerogardens for super cheap. Or maybe even actually used ones. 
I'm sure there are plenty of folks who started the gardens and failed or lost interest.

Aerogarden and kitchen scrap regrowing update # 2 ~ On reflection, the plants are growing better this way!

That's a very bad light booster joke. You're welcome. 

I decided to make a reflecting enclosure for my grow space, and just in the space of a day and a half, it has made a tremendous difference! 

 This photo is from the evening of the 29th, just after I set it up.


 These were taken just a few hours later, and the basil roots are already way bigger!

These  next few are from the afternoon of the 31st. Look at how much bigger everything is!

  The dill is growing some true leaves/fronds now, and starting to actually look like dill.

 I decided to cut the tall basil stalk down so the water and nutrients wouldn't have to work so hard to get to the top leaves. That should help the formerly mid-stalk leaves grow better, and I put the cutting in water for another new plant. If all goes well, I'll have to rustle up some more pots before too long.

 Here is the cut down to size, original plant, with its one, remaining stalk. 

And look at how much the leeks and green onions have grown in that same day and a half with the reflectors!

 The new leek growth is also MUCH darker green than the original leeks. Better lighting and nutrients will do that. 

And, last, but not least, my tomatoes are finally sprouting...

 ... and the lettuces are coming right along.

 I'm planting microgreens tonight and starting some sprouts tomorrow. 

My new year will be rung in with new, yummy, growing things!

Aerogarden and kitchen scrap regrowing update # 1

It's day 15 for the small Aerogarden, and day 3 for the big one. They are both coming nicely along.


Both of these are from yesterday. The dill doesn't have any true leaves yet, and the Thai basil still hasn't sprouted.


These are from today.

 Here, you can see the parsley finally sprouting.
 



Meanwhile, in the big garden...

 
The lettuces are sprouting, and so is the dill and basil. 
There are no pics of the tomato side, cause nothing is visibly happening there yet.

My celery died because I was too rough when rinsing them, and the dill cuttings did nothing. It turns out dill won't grow from cuttings. 
Luckily, I looked it up and discovered my folly in time to take them out and use them in a giant batch of Tzatziki, so no waste.

 The original basil plant has nice little sets of leaves mid stalk, and teeny, tiny, new leaves on the top set.

Here is a close up of the tiny leaves.

 Meanwhile, the basil cuttings are finally growing roots!

You can kind of see them here.
 
Annnnnd.....
I put my green onion and leek bottoms in water today to regrow.



They've both already got some new growth and it's only been a few hours!


I'll update again in a few days.