Crunchy? Yes, please.

Hi. My name is Kate, and I'm a crunch-aholic. 

Honestly, I annoy myself with how quickly I adopt any and all crunchy trends. 

I wash my hair with baking soda and I condition it with apple cider vinegar (or ACV for those of us in the crunchosphere.)

I should probably write a post dedicated to the marvels of Baking Soda. To the gallon of it in the back of my fridge and to the cup of it in my shower. I will speak to it as the king of all crunchy ingredients. I will say, "Hail, active agent in my homemade deodorant, thank you for exfoliating my face and disinfecting my toilets and counter tops."

In this post I will tell you how baking soda can do anything.

I will entitle it: "Just a Bunch of BS."

Or I won't do that. 

Mr. Baking Soda has a lot of friends in the crunchy home. These friends include Mr. Vinegar. Ms. Coconut Oil. Cousin Ghee. Grandmother Juicer. Rich Aunt Bronner. And a bunch of cultured and fermented cousins.  

The crunchy family comes over and doesn't know when to leave. Before you know it the family's exploded into five pound bags of chia seeds and organic locally grown produce you get off someone's porch and cloth diapers drying on the clothesline. 

Hi. We're the Rhodeses. We only flush the toilet when it counts; our only pets are the earthworms in our compost pile; and our kitchen is paperless except for the napkins left over from the Thai food take-out we ordered over six months ago.
    
Yesterday, we went to get our organic bulk foods off the back of a semi. Everyone had their babies in packs and talked about things like how much they loved Seattle. We loaded our boxes into our 1982 diesel Mercedes while it was parked next to three others, each with Ron Paul bumper stickers. 

I have become the cliche. I could say I don't know how it happened, but I think I was born with it. Being crunchy goes hand in hand with being thrifty. And thriftiness has been a second religion for me. 

When I was nine my mother received a series of books from my aunt in Vermont. The Complete Tightwad Gazette. I read them all.

With a highlighter.

I was in fourth grade, and I was sawing our paper towels in half and putting gallon jugs in the backs of all our toilets to displace water. I saved the plastic tabs that cinch bread bags and used them to label wires underneath the computer. I saved the plastic rings that disconnect from the lids of milk and juice cartons and used them to match socks before they went in the washing machine. (Betya never thought of that now didya? Huge timesaver. HUGE.)

What possessed the daughter of two conventional doctors to feel so pressured into money-saving and echinacea? I have no idea. Someday some much needed crunchaholic therapist will help me understand all of this I'm sure. But right now I have to go eat dinner - which Jacob made on our nontoxic cookware.