Experiment Updates: 1)Freezing Squash, 2) Dandruff, 3) Lip Fungus, 4) Sweet Potato - Experiments Update.

It's been over a month since the Summer Squash Freezing Experiment, so I pulled a random paper bag out of the garage freezer and set it on the counter to defrost for the evening's supper. It turned out to be the 4-bag experiment, and maybe you can see that only the very inside 2 bags got any moisture AT ALL, but certainly not as much as I might have thought. Photo was taken after squash defrosted in bags on counter.


So, only the two inside bags absorbed miniscule amounts of water from even the defrosting squash. Unfortunately, I lost track of which bags were the inside bags [These things happen to people who don't live alone] for this batch, so recycled all four (Em's preference all along). Can't say how "juicy" frozen yellow squash is expected to be, as I've never bought frozen squash, but my meal plan for this first batch was to add with fresh veggies (shown here), chop, and dump in a stove-top chicken dish with a can of Rotel. The dish turned out tasty, but the squash was just a vegetable among many, so no taste test was possible.


The Dandruff Experiment started mid July, so it's probably been about six or seven weeks, but I don't have dandruff anymore.

I probably could have gotten rid of the dandruff earlier had I followed the instructions and washed my hair twice/week after doing the hair treatment, but after several weeks of scalp treatment, I forgot about washing my hair because my scalp didn't itch anymore, or if it slightly itched, I found that simply massaging my scalp with
eliminated the itch. My hair isn't oily, so washing maybe twice/month always made more sense than twice/week.

Em got the Studio 35 scalp stimulator shampoo brush at Walgreens for $2.00. Made a lot more sense for someone with long hair (like me) to use a massaging brush on my head during times I watched TV than it did to use a hairbrush leaning over at the waist (which tangled my long hair).

I did scalp treatments (when I did them) early in the morning because I'd gotten addicted to old reruns of Poltergeist, followed by reruns of Millenium. I'd massage my scalp with the Studio 35 brush while I watched and then squirt a solution of 50% hydrogen peroxide and 50% Apple Cider Vinegar. When I started, I even sprinkled Borax on my scalp before the massage with the Studio 35 brush. That was pretty messy (requiring vacuuming afterward no matter how careful I was to brush only over the recycling bin), so I discontinued that. I also went through a period early on when I thought that the brushing only pulled the scabs off my scalp just to have them grow back again. It took 40 years for me to get rid of my dandruff and I'm under no illusion that it won't come back again. I achieved my goal, though, of discontinuing use of dandruff shampoos, and I know now how to keep my scalp healthy and what to do if it does. Whoopee! Yay! Free at last from the grip of big business shampoos. Looks like dandruff just might be a fungus, afterall, which leads me to discuss what happened to my lips last week (also cured now).

There are a number of ways to "cure" a lip fungus, just like there are a number of ways to "cure" fungi anywhere on the body. None of them are pretty. No telling where my lips caught the fungus. I do things in the garden and without even thinking use my hands (in dirty gardening gloves that have been EVERYWHERE) to flick hair out of my eyes (or off my lips). Could have been the green beans, but might have been lots of places outside the garden, as well. We don't consider the consequences of these robotic actions until we find ourselves with some weird dermal condition that doesn't want to go away on its own. Probably the first thing to remember with any fungus is that fungi thrive in moist environments. As women, we like to keep our lips moist, simply because it feels (and looks) better, so we might exacerbate the problem before we cure it.

As usual, I took a shotgun approach to my lips. I used apple cider vinegar, coconut oil and even powdered ammonium alum with a petroleum jelly base as astringent styptics. By the time No. 1 stopped by on her way somewhere, my lips were scabbed and cracked. Later the same day, however, I rubbed my lips with coconut oil and the scabs fell away to reveal normal lips. Took a few days to get there, but happy to report that the fungus lips are as gone as the dandruff.

We still have the one already cured sweet potato on the kitchen counter waiting for me to get around to making a sweet potato pie, but I suggested one day to Em this past week that we ought to feel around and see what the other sweet potato mounds are offering because they need to cure for 7-10 days after sitting on the patio table for a day & night. I didn't really want to expose my already exposed lips to the adventure, so Em took a turn.


He didn't feel like he knew what to do, so I got in there and pulled up a few sweet potatoes that probably shouldn't even be labeled as such.


Four sweet potato beds and they seemed to all want to put their effort into one big potato. Once I plucked that huge sucker out that looked like elephant man's head, the sweet potato plant that delivered it pretty much laid back and died. Not lookin' quite as bad a few days later, but on the day it was pretty sad.