LIME.com - Healthy Living with a Twist

What Lurks Inside...

Kim D — Wed, 07 May 2008 12:55:54 -0400

Along with drain products, acid-based toilet bowl cleaners are in the top three of the most toxic household products available because they contain caustic ingredients that burn eyes, skin and internal tissues. They can also contain chlorine or ammonia and even pesticides. So here’s another cleaning task where going green can make a serious difference in the safety and health of your household and the environment.

The problem is that cleaning the toilet is, um… gross. Brightly colored solutions that clean automatically or with just a quick brush from you make a lot of sense when you’d rather not hang around too long or get too close to the bowl with your cleaning. Obviously bacteria lurks here though, so what choice do we have anyway?

The truth is if you clean your toilet regularly, those chemicals and pesticides are overkill — even the EPA says regular old soap and water is as or more effective than antibacterial products. But some toilets really do call for the big guns — but make sure those “guns” are green instead of toxic blue or pink.

A good rule of thumb to help green your cleaning is to start as mild as possible and go from there. Here’s the strategy for the toilet.

Regular toilet cleaning:
1. Brush bowl and flush.
2. Pour a tablespoon of liquid vegetable-based soap (for bacteria fighting and cleaning) and ½ cup baking soda (for scrubbing power and deodorizing).
3. Brush the whole bowl. It may take a little more elbow grease than the neon products require, but at least you can still breathe after you’re done. Think of it as arm toning exercises!
4. Keep the brush in the bowl as you flush for an easy rinsing.

When regular cleaning just isn’t enough…
Stains, bacteria and... let's just leave it at that. Think back to the science fair volcano project and sprinkle ½ cup baking soda and follow with 1 cup vinegar (to kill bacteria). Let it fizz. Then brush thoroughly. The fizzing helps start the scrubbing process for you. There’s a psychological aspect here as well: With all that fizzing, it just has to be clean.

For the rest of the toilet, use a nontoxic all-purpose cleaner to wipe down the tank, seat, handle and base.

One last thing: Putting a wet brush back in its holder can create a bacteria breeding ground, so make sure to clean the brush once a month or so. Soak it in hot water, castile soap, and a dash of vinegar. If it doesn’t come clean, it’s time to replace the brush.

There you have it — a clean toilet bowl without risking your windpipe or the environment. And another perk you get when you switch to nontoxic cleaning is that you don’t have to feel guilty when you delegate certain less-than-desirable jobs to your kids. If only my 3-month-old could stop tipping over into the bowl when she scrubs! (Just kidding, of course!)

5 Ways to Save on Groceries

JessicaHarlan — Tue, 06 May 2008 21:51:19 -0400

Lately, it seems that not a week goes by without more scary news about the rising cost of food.

Food prices increased at a compound annual rate of nearly 5 percent over a three-month period ending in February, and nearly every staple ingredient has experienced significant increases: eggs are about 38 percent more per dozen, and loaves of bread cost about 19 percent more. The issue seems so complicated; part of the increase is because investors are suddenly interested in commodities like wheat, corn and soy, which is driving up the prices of these goods, while an increase in ethanol use is also diverting agricultural yields away from the food supply chain. The decrease of available corn and wheat crops means it's more expensive to raise animals that eat them, such as chickens and turkeys. What's more, increasing oil prices mean production and transportation of food items costs more.

All of this means I'm forced to pay $6.00 a gallon for organic whole milk for my toddler, my weekly grocery bills are through the roof, and my work as a recipe developer is netting me less profit.

But even if you're already fairly frugal when it comes to food shopping, there are changes you can make to your grocery-shopping habits to minimize the impact of new higher prices. Here are a few ideas.

Decide What's Important. If drinking organic milk, buying fair-trade coffee, or indulging in a weekly purchase of fancy artisanal cheese is important to you, then don't beat yourself up about the expense. Instead, find other areas in which to cut costs—maybe the store brand of canned tomatoes will be just as good, or you can drink water or tea at breakfast instead of pricey orange juice.
Join a Warehouse Club. It requires an investment (usually around $50 a year) up front, but warehouse clubs like Costco can save you money in the long run, as long as you shop wisely and use everything you buy. I find that Costco has many organic brands that I like, such as Kashi cereals and Stonyfield Farms yogurts. If you have a vacuum sealer, you can portion out big purchases of freezable items, such as fish fillets or ground turkey.
Buy in Bulk at a Natural Food Store. With reports of rice shortages and flour shortages in some parts of the country, these staples are sure to continue to skyrocket in price. Invest in a sturdy set of plastic or glass canisters and buy your flour, oats, rices, and other staples at your local natural food store. You'll save money and conserve resources otherwise wasted on packging and extra transportation and production costs. In particular, I find buying a big bag of rolled oats is less than $2, significantly less than I would pay for one of those cylindrical tubs of Quaker Oats.
Clip Coupons. I often have the best intentions when it comes to coupons, I'll diligently save them in a drawer in my kitchen... and then promptly forget them until 6 months later, when they've long expired. But all of those $0.50 discounts add up, so I'm going to start sifting through my coupon drawer before every shopping visit. The trick is to only clip coupons for brands and products you'd buy anyway. Otherwise those coupons are likely to end up costing you more than they're saving.
Plan Ahead. I try to spend a little time every weekend planning out my family's meals and making up a shopping list. I'll go through the refrigerator and freezer to see if there are any leftovers or frozen ingredients I can incorporate into a meal or two, and I'll also try to buy ingredients that can be used in both meals, or that can make a larger quantity that I can freeze for a meal later in the month, or to eat as leftovers at lunchtime. Careful planning will cut down on the every-other-day trip to the grocery store that can often become a habit, and you can also give yourself time to think of less-expensive meals you can prepare, rather than wasting money on expensive prepared foods or take-out.

What are some ways that you keep your food budget in check?

Image Courtesy bcmom.

Yummy Foodie Books For the Hungry Environmentalist

greenlagirl — Tue, 06 May 2008 13:50:21 -0400

Read The Omnivore's Dilemma already — and want more? Then check out these hot new foodie books to take you a step further in your enviro-culinary adventures:

For the Gmail crowd: Food 2.0: Secrets from the Chef Who Fed Google by Charlie Ayers. Former Google chef Ayers says "we can all eat delicious, clean, fast cuisine that is good for us, good for the community, and good for the Earth." We can make these foods without spending a lot of time too, he asserts — then proves it in this colorful book of yummy recipes. From must-have kitchen tools to the best ways to make sure you eat your raw greens, Food 2.0 is filled with practical tips and tricks for both the devoted cook and the grab-n-go eater.

For adventure travelers: The Jungle Effect by Daphne Miller. Can the food you eat prevent you from diabetes, depression, heart disease, and other increasingly common ailments affecting Americans? Quite possibly. Miller travels to the “cold spots” — places with a low incidence of a certain disease — all over the world to figure out what in that region’s diet serves to protect its residents from common ailments in the U.S. -— then helps her patients suffering from those ailments adopt these new diets. The book provides instructions — organized into basic, intermediate, and advanced levels — for mimicking the diet of each cold spot. Plus, lots of recipes are included in the back!

For sushi lovers: Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood by Taras Grescoe. Read this book to find out how to enjoy your pescatarian diet without contributing to environmental woes. Afterward, you'll be able to make better choices and eat guilt-free. In a Salon interview, Grescoe says the biggest message to take away from the book is that "You should probably stay away from fish at the top end of the oceanic food chain right now... they're actually a lot of the riskiest ones in terms of having things like mercury, and in the case of salmon, persistent organic pollutants."

How Many Kids is Too Many?

BelindaMom — Tue, 06 May 2008 01:57:17 -0400

You may have surmised that Georgia is an only child. If my husband Hova could carry, nurse and mother a baby, we’d probably have another, but I am done. I’ve always secretly considered big families a little wasteful or ostentatious, plus I’ve never liked my own sibling, so I just didn’t see the point. It took a long time for us to decide to have one child in this world, and I don’t have the energy for another. I’ve never felt bad about this decision, even when one friend called me selfish, because “What about when you die? Georgia will have no one to grieve with.” Considering we’re raising her to be a kind and social person who will surely attract a family of friends and loved ones, I am not worried about that.

But now, Georgia has her own opinions. And they're starting to kick in hard.

“When can I have a little sister?”

Trying to keep it positive, I cooed my response: “We aren’t having any more children because you are our one-and-only!”

“But I want someone to play with that isn’t you or Daddy!” Her logic was tempting… but I shook off my delusional daydream and said, “But all the brothers and sisters we know fight a lot, and little kids get into your stuff.”

“But I would share my toys with my sister.” It’s probably true; she’s endearingly generous with her things. Still, I countered, “If we had another baby you’d have to share Daddy’s and my attention with her. You don’t even like when Pee Wee (the cat) sits on my lap. How would you feel when a baby was hungry and I needed to give her some nursie?”

She knew I had her there. She would not be able to tolerate breastfeeding, something she still talks about with longing. “Welllll," she deduced a solution. "We could just have a three year old, not a baby.”

Usually at times like this I find a way to let her know I’ve heard her and will consider her idea. This time I knew I needed to make sure there was no room for argument.

“Sweetie, we love you so much, we really don’t want to have another child. We just want to enjoy seeing you grow and helping you through life without anyone else to distract us. Plus, it’s not good for the earth to have too many kids.”

Uh oh. I had never put words to that thought before, but it rang true. And it also seemed like a perfect excuse. I’m glad I stopped myself from saying having fewer kids would help save polar bears. I knew I would hear this argument from the mouth of my babe at a playdate someday — most of our friends have more than one kid, and a few of them even seem to be enjoying them! But for the moment, Georgia seemed to accept that having one child was the prudent thing to do without more discussion, and ever since, the thought has been buzzing around my head. If the Earth’s resources are being sucked dry and population growth is a problem, should we start considering the environment before succumbing to “cute baby belly” urges?

The GIY Guide: (Silk) Screen Test!

NG — Mon, 05 May 2008 12:17:11 -0400

Though silk-screening is a fairly straightforward process, the cost and chemicals involved can still be somewhat prohibitive for the no-budget artiste. Plus, unless you’re really going for quantity, it’s a bit of an overkill to stage the whole process for a single t-shirt or a couple of patches. Fortunately, for the price of an embroidery hoop (less than a buck), and a bottle of craft glue, you can make a perfectly usable screen to satisfy your small-scale production needs.

What You’ll Need:

*Embroidery Hoop

*Sheer fabric — old curtain material works best, but old nylons are an acceptable substitute. Generally speaking, the smaller and tighter the weave, the better.

*Non water-soluble craft glue

*An old paintbrush

How To:

Stretch your fabric over the embroidery hoop and lock in tightly. With a pencil, trace the image you want to use onto the fabric (text needs to be written in reverse for it to come out the right way around during printing). Paint craft glue over the areas you don’t want printed and let air-dry. Place hoop with image facedown on the item you’re printing onto (tape down or iron first for best results) and brush screen-printing ink onto your “screen” until saturated. Placing newspaper behind the fabric you’re printing on will help prevent the ink from bleeding through to the back of a t-shirt or onto your tabletop. Gently remove screen from printed material and leave to dry (many fabric inks require setting with a hot iron as well). Wear immediately with pride.

Variation: Reused T-shirt designs

It’s always a sad moment when a beloved old t-shirt just won’t withstand another go-round in the washing machine without disolving into cheese cloth. But you don’t have to say goodbye to your fave image. Just cut the entire panel out along the side seams and across the top below the collar and sleeves. The resulting rectangle can be hemmed along the edges into a quick patch (use a contrasting color of thread to jazz up the effect), and affixed to another t-shirt, jacket, or bag with needle and thread or fabric glue.

Fortunately for newbie do-it-yourselfers, the homemade, "deconstructed" look is in right now — the humbler the execution, the better. Why pay big bucks to achieve an effect you can create with some pinking shears, your silk screen, a needle and thread and some key finds from the back of your closet?

Rotten, But Far From Spoiled

savasthi — Thu, 01 May 2008 21:47:15 -0400

Turns out that all my favorite foods are rotten.

Or to be more precise, they're fermented — which means they owe their deliciousness to the fact that they were basically left to stew in their own juices for a very long time.

Fermented foods play a much larger role in my diet than I'd realized. I'd mistakenly thought that sauerkraut and kimchi were about it, along with wine, beer and the occasional mojito at happy hour.

I never connected the dots to see that fermentation works its rotten magic everywhere. It's the secret behind artisanal cheese, gourmet breads, Earl Grey (and all other black teas), coffee, yogurt (frozen and otherwise), chocolate, miso, vinegar, soy sauce, Boca burgers (or at least tempeh) and the list goes on.

A food chemist -- or just a knowledgeable foodie -- would be quick to point out that fermented food is not really rotten at all. Yes, microorganisms, such as yeast, do start to grow and multiply on the food. And yes, those microorganisms feast away on any sign of freshness. But they also transform simple sugars into complex, flavor-packed acids or alcohols.

Turns out that these microrganisms could also have health benefits as well. According to an article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, fermented foods are teeming with pro-biotics, healthy bacteria that may boost our immune systems and improve digestion. They may also have more available vitamins and minerals.

I poked around a little to see how much research I could dig up on these claims, and mostly came up with the benefits of specific foods, like wine, tea, kimchi and yogurt. As a broad category, I didn't find much hard science, except that fermented foods could be a trigger for migraines in some people.

There's also helpful site called Wild Fermentation for anyone who wants to learn more about it, try fermenting their own foods, or just understand the nitty gritty chemistry behind the process.

On the other hand, there's nothing wrong with kicking back to savor the many benefits of (to borrow a friend's term for an especially good bottle of wine) the noble rot.

5-5-2008v2

jride — Thu, 01 May 2008 18:34:08 -0400

5-5-2008

jride — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 13:52:54 -0400

Fiddlehead Fern Alert

JessicaHarlan — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 21:51:38 -0400

The other day I was shopping at Whole Foods and I spied one of my favorite springtime delicacies: fiddlehead ferns. If you have access to a good produce store, you've probably seen these strange-looking greens; they're flat, tight coils, wrapping around tiny budding leaves.

Fiddlehead ferns always remind me of a trip to Alaska I took four years ago. It was memorable because I got engaged during that trip, but I'll also never forget the tiny reindeer sausage stand that we came across in the little Denali village of Talkeetna (most famous for being the town in which the television show Northern Exposure was set). With your reindeer sausage you could have French fries or fiddlehead ferns. It was August, so the season was long over for them, but the woman who ran the stand told me that in the springtime she had harvested a good 60 pounds of them, blanched them, and froze them to serve at her stand all year round.

So to me, fiddlehead ferns always taste like Alaska, and of the excitement of a new life with the man I love.

Sorry to get sentimental. If you don't have such halcyon memories associated with fiddleheads, they'll probably taste grassy and slightly bitter. People liken their flavor to asparagus and artichokes, a comparison that I think is apt. I think they're best sautéed in a little butter or olive oil, and either eaten on their own, or atop risotto or pasta.

The fiddleheads I bought at Whole Foods were from Oregon, but they're also common in the Northeast. In Maine, they appear in April and May, the new-growth fronds of any fern plant, but usually the ones that we eat are from the ostrich plant.

When you find them, you should choose small, tightly coiled ferns that are bright green in color and firm, not limp. They don't keep well, so you should cook them as soon as possible after you've bought them. Rinse them well under running water, and rub away any brown residue inside of the coils.

There have been reports that people have gotten food poisoning from eating fiddlehead ferns, so it's recommended that they are blanched for at least 10 minutes before eating.

As for me, I sautéed my stash of fiddleheads in butter, along with one of my other favorite springtime indulgences: morel mushrooms. Try my recipe here.

What is your favorite springtime treat?

An Ounce of Prevention Beats a Pound of Hair

Kim D — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 20:02:33 -0400

You may think the toilet or trashcan is the dirtiest spot in your home, but believe it or not, your drains have them beat. Yet, we never really think about — much less clean — all that scary bacteria, hair, skin and myriad of other scummy drain inhabitants until it backs up.

Unfortunately, commercial drain products can contain sodium hydroxide, also known as lye, and sodium hypochlorite, code for bleach. Both of these chemicals are designed to eat away whatever is clogging your sink and are highly caustic. That means they can burn your respiratory system, skin and eyes. Using them in your bathroom or kitchen exposes you and your family to these chemicals. When you send them down the drain you are also polluting the waterways.

Fortunately it’s easy to keep your drain clean and clear by using just a few products that you may already have in your home. The key to greening this area of your cleaning is to be proactive in your drain maintenance and to treat the clog when it starts to slow down instead of waiting until it’s fully stopped up.

Weekly maintenance
To kill bacteria and melt soap and other fatty materials that can build up and cause clogs, pour a teakettle of boiling water down the drain every week. This act alone may eliminate clogs completely so you won’t have to do anything else. For glass or vitreous china sinks that can crack, use hot (but not boiling) water.

Slow-running or stinky drains
Sprinkle a ½-cup baking soda followed by a ½-cup vinegar down the drain. Cover the drain with a wet rag and let the baking soda and vinegar fizz for 5 minutes. Flush with boiling water.

Clogged drains
If it’s too late and the sink is already backed up, try a plunger without any cleaner at all. This may unclog the drain all by itself. Then you can follow with the above step for slow-running drains.

Smelly garbage disposals
You can deodorize and sharpen the blades of your disposal all at the same time. Pour white distilled vinegar or lemon juice in an ice cube tray and freeze. Put 4 or 5 of the cubes in the drain and run your garbage disposal. Save the rest for another time or use your extra lemon cubes in your vodka tonic.

So the next time your spouse or roommate requests that you shave off all your hair to keep the drains clear, tell them that a little prevention and these common household ingredients can handle the clogs just fine.