LIME.com - Healthy Living with a Twist

Cold Frames for Cold Weather Gardeners

NG — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 21:02:12 -0700

Baby, it's cold outside, though admittedly "cold" along the Western coastline (the mountains are another story) lacks some of the fearsome implications that beleaguer the East — namely blizzards and icicles and snowplows. But still. It’s cold. And if it’s cold for you, it’s even colder for your garden plants, left to battle the elements outdoors. But surprisingly, winter is exactly the time when you should be preparing seedlings for the spring thaw — and a custom-built cold frame will help you in this endeavor.

Probably the very simplest thing to use as your frame is an old wooden window frame — especially if you still have the glass that fits it. If not, look for an equivalently sized sheet of plexiglass, or even plastic sheeting. Don’t have a window frame? Try an old tractor tire, a few two-by-fours, sunken cinderblocks, wooden fruit crates, or wax produce boxes. We’ve also heard tell of using a wire basket or milk crate wrapped in clear plastic and simply turned upside down. The basic idea is to have a solid enclosure covered with a clear, reflective surface.

Ideally it should be built on a slight incline to allow for better drainage, with either a southern or western exposure. Dig a shallow trench along the perimeter of the frame to anchor it — this will also help trap the heat. Rig your clear cover so that it can be raised on sunny days to prevent overheating, and lowered for nighttime/inclement weather. Keep an old quilt or space blanket on hand to throw over the frame on especially cold nights to keep the frost at bay.

Cold frames are good for lengthening the growing season of already-planted veggies (especially roots, lettuces, and leafy crucifers), warming the soil for early seed planting, and for providing seedlings started indoors with a protected environment for outdoor acclimation. Depending on the size and stability of your cold frame, you can choose to keep it as a permanent structure, or shift it around the garden to wherever it is needed the most. Either way, you’ll appreciate having some of the guesswork taken out of your spring planting, and your garden will appreciate the year-round attention.

Image courtesy of Linda N.

Economic Boost for Eco-Designers

greenlagirl — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 16:02:42 -0700

Crafters, artists, and designers with an eco-conscience can do well economically too by putting their skills to work this year. Here are three enviro-oriented design contests that can put some money in your pocket — or your derriere in a very sleek chair:

DWR Champagne Chair Contest. You have just a couple days left to turn the champagne, cork, and cage from your New Year celebrations into a teeny chair. If you win, you’ll get — you guessed it — a chair, specifically a $1,330 eco-friendly Morgans Chair in polished aluminum. Entries are due Jan. 9, so start designing now!

Fur-Free Fashion Competition. Show off your ethical style by designing a fur-free garment to “help promote the ethical and environmental benefits of foregoing fur fashion.” The first place winner will get fame and fortune — more specifically, $750, an ad in E Magazine, and a profile on the fffashion website. The three judges are all eco-conscious women, so think green while creating your design, which are due April 1.

Artevist T-shirt design contest. This Threadless-like website’s looking for new designs with a progressive, activist bent. Submit your best eco-activism inspired design to win $700, plus 7% royalty on all T-shirts sold with your design! The current open contest ends January 31, so don’t procrastinate!

If designing and crafting aren’t your fortes, you can still visit Artevist to check out and vote on design submissions. User votes help determine what T-shirt designs get printed, so play T-shirt curator and size up which T-shirt’s the most eco-activist of them all.

Which realistic resolution will you commit to this new year?

growitgreen — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 15:06:18 -0700

Fitness Trends for 2009 That Won’t Break the Bank

Micaelad — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 14:21:25 -0700

Hiring a personal trainer to help whip you into shape might not be in your budget for 2009. According to the American Council on Exercise (ACE), fitness trends for 2009 are all about getting your body tight and keeping your budget even tighter.

Instead of a one-on-one trainer, which can cost as much as $150 dollars per hour-long session, try a group-training program. Bootcamp workouts were hot in 2008 and they are predicted to be just as popular in 2009. During one hour-long session, a person can burn as many as 600 calories as they lunge, squat, jump and push to the sound of a drill sergeant’s whistle. The cost of a group class can run anywhere from $12-$20 a session. Use the Internet to find a kickboxing, spinning, or dancing class in your area and save yourself some money while keeping yourself accountable.

Maybe a gym membership is not financially possible right now. There is no reason to panic, fear the worst or give up on exercising all together. According to a recent survey, 2009 is already showing fewer people signing up for gym memberships and more people going to Barnes and Noble to buy fitness books with sound plans and advice. Not interested in a book? Workout in the comfort of your own home with a fitness DVD of your choice. Just like with fitness books, there is an array of choices when it comes to exercise DVDs, and there is one for every fitness type and level. One word of advice though, look for fitness plans (either books or DVDs) that don’t require more than a set of free weights and/or a resistance band.

On top of the hundreds of health and fitness books and DVDs out there, there is also the Internet to help you come up with a workout plan for 2009. Right here on LIME.com, you'll find dozens of articles to get your heart pumping, and our sister site yogamates.com offers classes for every level of yogi.

When it comes to getting fit or staying fit in 2009 there are plenty of low cost and free options out there. While many of them don’t require a lot of money, each plan does require dedication and perseverance and as well as practice and effort to get results.

01-05-09

jride — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 10:13:44 -0700

Happy New Face: Green Brushes for the New Year

TheGreenMakeupArtist — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 15:51:41 -0700

I don't like change. But sometimes I love it.

Over the years, I've spent a small fortune on the actual tools of my trade, namely, finely crafted makeup brushes. The handles are a very nice (probably endangered) wood, and the brushes are all animal hair (sable, goat, pony).

I have two full sets, which I keep in tip-top shape. One set is 10 years old. I swore I'd never need to replace them, and I didn't intend to... but here's what happened — I met someone new.

Oh, I'll never get rid of my professional sets (they're well worn old friends and I also hate to waste), but I will begin to recommend the new wave of eco and vegan tools available to those of you who need a few brushes in your arsenal, and I'll begin to use the new brushes for my own makeup application.

Several green makeup lines have brushes or puffs that accompany their products, and so far I've been unimpressed by most, preferring to use my own tools, but I was incredibly surprised to find a new line of affordable (cheap, actually), environmentally delightful, and unbelievably soft brushes that do the trick.

ECOTOOLS offers bamboo (sustainable) handled brushes; the bristles are made of Taklon (a vegan, cruelty-free synthetic); recycled aluminum forms the ferrule (the metal bit around the base of the bristles) and the company also has natural cotton/hemp linen cosmetic bags.

ECOTOOLS offers a 100% recycled aluminum retractable kabuki brush for only $7.99 (while major green lines offer their non-green kabuki brushes at around $30).

If you're using mineral makeup, go ahead and get at least one of the two ECOTOOLS sets:

1. A bamboo five-piece travel set for $9.99. I love the brushes in it: powder brush, concealer brush (great for liquid, creams or minerals), an eye shading brush (almost identical to my expensive one in both appearance and effectiveness), and a baby kabuki (which I prefer to the retractable one, anyway — it's super small but works well). The fifth bit is the snap-shut travel pouch made of hemp and cotton. For $10 BUCKS?? Don't even think twice about it. What a great green tool kit for an incredibly great deal.

2. A six-piece set for $12.99. You'll need these brushes, too: blush brush, eye shading brush (if you get both sets, you'll have two of these — use one for darker colors, i.e. crease colors, and one for your light all-over eye color), angled eyeliner brush, concealer brush (you'll have two again, you can use one for your blemish formula concealer and the other for your undereye concealer. And YES, THEY SHOULD BE DIFFERENT FORMULAS!), lash and brow groomer, and the snapping travel pouch.

You can buy the brushes separately, as well, and make your own perfect kit. Something else I like from this company: the machine washable bamboo powder puffs. They're super soft and also have a little strap on the back for your fingers. You get two for $2.99.

I don't like change. I like my old brushes. But it's a new year, and, as usual, I seek the new while clinging to the old. Change keeps us on our toes. Change keeps us invigorated, informed, eager. And sometimes change is just plain good for the world. Happy New Year!

A Passing in Time

derek_beres — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 17:42:55 -0700

Religion begins with death.

During my four years of study in the religion department at Rutgers during the mid-‘90s, this sentiment was repeated over and again, regardless of the country, race, or god being presented. The religious question — there are many, I suppose, but the major one, as in where do we go when we die — is framed around the fact of death. From that starting point, humans have devised as many scenarios as possible, to alleviate some of the pressures of transience, to make us feel important in an, at times, unforgiving world.

That question, for quite some time in many cultures, was framed as a continuity, the way that dead fruits become fertilizer and spread seed for the next generation of plants. Perhaps human beings, these thinkers thought, do the same thing. Indeed, if we think of the religious figures of the past who have come to influence us today, this is indeed very plausible. Words outlive flesh.

While reading the philosopher John Berger’s most recent book, Hold Everything Dear, the question of death is prominent in this fine collection of essays. In one: “Thus living and dead were interdependent. Always. Only a uniquely modern form of egoism has broken this interdependence. With disastrous results for the living, who now think of the dead as the eliminated.”

I’ve long contemplated this issue, and it seems to me that judging by our actions, it is not death that frightens us — it is life. It is life and, more precisely, the quest for everlasting youth that drives us to slice open our skin and stick plastic pieces next to organs and tissue that have no use for plastic; that lets us believe that injecting a toxic substance discovered in mishandled meats creases out the wrinkles in our brow; that comforts us by stating that an omnipotent figure has chosen the few hundred or thousand or twelve-by-twelve thousands of us to live in everlasting bliss while the rest reside in the flames of perpetual waiting.

As Guy Garcia wrote in his most recent book, The Decline of Men, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons reported that of all breasts reduction surgeries in 2006, 70% were on boys aged thirteen to nineteen. This is not a fear of death; it is the fear of the living, that the creator we believe created did not create well enough, and so we must take things into our own hands. It is a feeling that we are not the carbon copy of the Photoshopped figures we see in advertisements, and must be, or we are failing something. Or something is failing us.

I agree with part of that sentiment, leaving out the creator part. We do indeed create our reality. Not that I’m one to hold up a microscope to society and refer to millennia-old books for verification; that would simply be silly. But there is something to be learned from history, and I take this idea from the cultures of Mexico, Morocco (as well as many African countries), Jamaica, and beyond: death is a celebration.

While standing at my grandfather’s funeral two years ago, I noticed that while there was certainly a sadness about the loss of that man, what was really affecting the crowd was that everyone present would one day be on the other side of that coffin. Someone else’s death is a reminder that this is the true path of humanity: it is a rite of passage to an unnamable, unexplored terrain. I do not take refuge in the churchly liturgy presented at that and other funerals; instead, I heed Seneca’s words: “Unlike life, death cannot be taken away from man, and therefore we may consider it as the gift of God.”

Celebrating death is a skeleton key to unlocking the ritual of life. When you live each moment fully, there is no need for concern of an ending. We are present, in the moment, existing to our potential at all times. Death has no place in that moment, even if it surrounds us. It’s a part of life, not separate from it.

This is hard to find, though, for someone like my grandmother, who after her husband’s death went to live in a retirement home, where the staff told her children not to visit anymore because it caused them too much trouble to “calm her down” after they left. You can learn a lot about a culture by observing how it treat its dead; you can learn even more by noticing how it treat its aging. My grandmother will live out her final years surrounded by people she has just met, and who care about her as much as her money allows them to. This is not living.

Death is not an option for any of us. How we live is. By turning a blind eye to death, by doing everything possible to deny it — anti-aging creams anyone? — and refusing to recognize it as a part of and not separate from existence, we do ourselves and our world a great disservice. By celebrating the dead, the aging (once known as the wise), we celebrate life, and begin to comprehend what the passage of time really means.

Make Resolutions You Can Keep

AbigailLewis — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 16:19:39 -0700

When I was in my twenties, I worried obsessively about my weight. It didn't stop regular visits to the bakery, however, and I often joked wryly that I was "a fat anorexic." Just to give you a sense of my craziness, the "fat" was about 10 pounds, but on a 5'4" frame, that's a lot.

Flash forward to now and weight has become almost a non-issue for me. Once in a while someone eager to learn my "secret" has asked me how that happened, and I honestly believed my body had somehow readjusted somewhere along the line. I could pretty much eat whatever I wanted as long as it wasn't constant and I continued to exercise even moderately. So I was surprised this holiday season when after a few days that included delicious dishes like eggplant parmesan, pie with whipped cream, pasta, eggnog, chestnuts and a few more fabulous goodies, my weight had suddenly leapfrogged up the scale to a number I hadn't seen in years. It was a very tangible reminder that it is my choices that determine not just my body weight, but so much about my life. The magical balance scale that keeps my weight (and my life) where I want it to be is between my ears.

I'm freely extrapolating this timely reminder and applying it to all my New Years' resolutions. I'm adding to that a determination to be specific. Saying "I want to get into shape" is a message that the subconscious has no idea how to support. But if I say, "I resolve to go to the gym at least three times a week for at least an hour, and to get my heart rate up for at least half of that time," my subconscious knows just how to help me achieve my goal (and remind me when I'm slacking off!).

As I write this, I can already sense myself backing off some of my goals. Do you ever do that? Kind of back away from them so you don't feel so committed? Yikes. Anyway, here goes. Maybe putting them into writing will make them easier.

1. I'm going to get stronger and healthier by going to the gym a total of three hours every week. (I know, sounds puny, huh? That little bit is what three one-hour or four 45-minute sessions add up to).
2. I'm going to write at least one major story a month. (Again, negligible. Someone in my writing group is doing eight a month!)
3. I'm going to buy Quicken or QuickBooks by January 15 and finally get my budget onto the computer.
4. I'm going to take at least one trip outside the United States.

If #4 seems a wee bit like self-indulgence in resolution's clothing, let me add my conviction that travel is the best way to help create peace on our planet, and to get a fresh perspective on just about anything you can think of. This is the first year I've ever included something so totally enjoyable among my resolutions, and I like it! It actually seems more balanced than just committing to things that take work.

I encourage you to write your resolutions down somewhere. Put them in the comments section below if you really want to give them some power. I just read mine over and they actually seem more doable already!

May your 2009 be filled with peace, health, prosperity and whatever you resolve.

Photo by Darrell Taylor

Say Cheese!

JessicaHarlan — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 19:24:24 -0700

I often wonder if my husband's preparing himself to live off the grid. At one time or another, Chip has taught himself to make beer, root beer, sausage, kombucha (a vile, in my opinion, fermented tea that's supposed to have all sorts of health benefits), pasta and ice cream. Usually his experiments result in a messy kitchen and an end result that ranges from passably edible to truly delicious. But his latest homemade craze is something I can really get behind: cheese.

I think it was his friend Henry who turned him on to the idea. Henry, who lives in Maine and once bought half a hog from a local farmer, mentioned breezily in an email one day that he had to go wax his Colby cheese. Like me, I don't think Chip realized that cheesemaking was something you could do in your own kitchen. To me, cheesemaking conjures up images of a pastoral dairy farm with a kitchen that's all gleaming white tile and stainless steel counters. But, it turns out, all you need is a handful of special ingredients like rennet and citric acid, all of which you can get in a kit from New England Cheesemaking Supply Company.

We sent away for the mozzarella making kit and, when it arrived, set aside a Sunday afternoon to try it out. We'd bought milk from a local dairy at Whole Foods, since the quality of the milk is the single most important factor in ensuring your cheese's success, according to the handbook that came with our kit.

Making the mozzarella was shockingly simple. It basically involved heating the milk with a solution of dissolved citric acid, then adding the rennet, and letting the mixture sit for a few minutes. The rennet caused the milk solids to coagulate into a custardlike mass, which we then broke up with a knife and slowly stirred as the curds separated from the watery whey. Next was the fun part: the curds got heated in the microwave a few times, in between which we folded and pulled the mass like it was taffy or bread dough. When it smooth and springy, we formed the cheese into balls and dropped them into ice water to quickly cool them. That was it. It all took about half an hour.

Later we tried out our handiwork on pizza, making the dough from a recipe that used the leftover whey for the liquid in the pizza dough. I couldn't taste a difference in the dough, but the cheese topping our pizza was another story. Creamy and delicate, with a slightly sweet flavor that reminded me of something I couldn't put my finger on, the cheese was really incredible. And not just because we made it from scratch.

Next up, we'll be trying cheddar, marscapone and maybe some sort of goat cheese, especially if we can find some really fresh local milk. While I'll probably never become a cheesemaker of the caliber of artisanal heroes like Cowgirl Creamery or The Mozzarella Company, knowing how to make cheese gives me new appreciation of where my food is coming from and what goes into its creation. As for Chip, it's just one more helpful talent he'll be able to use if we do indeed go off the grid.

Image courtesy Ross Berteig.

Green NYE in the Big Apple

E.B.Boyd — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 13:31:15 -0700

I can't walk through Times Square at night without my stomach turning at the kajillions of watts of electricity roped into powering the acres of electronic billboards and neon signs lighting up the place like an amusement-park-meets-Coney Island on steroids.

So it was exciting to learn that the city's giant "2009" New Year's Eve sign was powered by renewable energy this year -- human power, to be exact. Almost 140,000 tourists and locals jumped on stationary bikes-cum-generators to pump out the electricity needed to light the sign after the ball drop. Battery manufacturer Duracell set up the six bikes — dubbed "snomobikes," after they were redesigned to look like thematically appropriate snowmobiles — in a Times Square installation at the beginning of the month. Visitors logged about 230 cycling hours to produce the electricity, which was stored in four large battery cells and unleashed December 31 at the stroke of midnight. (See the bikes in action.)

It wasn't the only green touch in Times Square this New Year's Eve. Organizers ditched the traditional incandescent lights used to bedazzle the ball itself and instead turned to LED lights, which consume less energy — the equivalent of two conventional home ovens, according to lighting manufacturer Philips. And as for all those billboards? Coca Cola is now using wind power to illuminate its approximately 30 Times Square signs, which purportedly cuts almost 1,900 metric tons of carbon emissions — or as much as if you took 75 cars off the road for a year. Office equipment manufacturer Ricoh is also powering its Times Square billboard with wind and solar power — specifically, 16 wind turbines and 64 solar panels installed right on the sign itself.

It's probably not surprising that Times Square turned the corner this year. New York mayor Michael Bloomberg has recently been leading a charge to turn the Big Apple, normally portrayed as a red varietal, into something more along the lines of a Granny Smith. So great news about the lights. Now, as Village Voice blogger Roy Edroso pointed out, if only they could do something about the confetti. Any ideas?

^{Photos courtesy of UB1 and Duracell.}