Antibiotics rule! Antibacterials don't.

N-man and B-man came down with strep throat this week, and scarlet fever.

No surprise, a few days later, I was at the doctor. Strep throat for me too. Wow, that hurts!

Anyway, we're all on antibiotics. The boys are much, much better, and I'm well on my way. How awesome are antibiotics? You hear "scarlet fever" and think of some wicked terrible disease. Turns out it's quite easily treatable and no big deal as long as you get on antibiotics. Who knew?

This got me thinking about one of my pet peeves: the overuse of antibacterial products. I think people are starting to understand why it's dangerous to overuse antibiotics. But what I can't understand is why supermarkets (and to a lesser degree, toy stores) are filled with antibacterial products. Unless someone in the house is immune-compromised, why does anyone need it? Just like with antibiotics, antibacterial products can create resistant strains of bacteria. Here's a good article from the CDC.

It seems to me that companies who sell antibacterial products are really being irresponsible, relying on fear-mongering and misinformation.

Not to mention, triclosan, one of the most commonly used antibacterials, pollutes the water supply and may have potentially dangerous health consequences (check this for more info).

What do you think of things like antibacterial soap or products impregnated with antibacterials? Do you use them in your house? If so, are you aware of the risks? My theory is that most people who buy them think it's a good thing that will protect their family and don't realize they are contributing to the rise of "superbugs", polluting the environment, and potentially contributing to health problems. Now there would be some good truth in advertising: "buy our antibacterial soap! It probably won't help you, but it will screw up the world!"

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Green tip for the day: Unless there's an extremely compelling reason (i.e., an immune compromised family member), just say no to Microban products and cleaners containing antibacterials.

As always, do your own research and/or talk to your doctor if you have any concerns. The internet is filled with nutjobs making wild claims about the dangers of this or that. I tried to include links that contained actual scientific research rather than someone just screaming "antibacterials will kill us alllllllll!" I am not a scientist. However, I do find the research compelling enough that we don't use antibacterial products. Says the person who has a house full of strep throat :)

Stove/oven/microwave-free food prep

This week's Change the World Wednesday challenge over at Reduce Footprints was spurred by a green tip from my blog! Pretty neat, huh? Thanks, Small Footprints! Anyway, the challenge this week was:

This week, "plan an oven- and stove-free day, and no cheating and going out to eat! Have sandwiches, cut up fruit, veggies with dip, leftovers from a previous dinner that you can heat in the microwave**. Plan ahead and make a pasta salad you can eat cold for a few days. Have hummus, feta cheese, and spinach on a pita or wrap. There are tons of healthy, delicious meals you can have without having to turn on the stove! As an added plus, many of the meals are quick and easy to prepare!"

**I'd like to bump up What A Card's challenge ... how about including microwave-free, as well.

I thought I'd give some quick background on where this challenge came from. A few months ago, I filled out an online survey on National Grid's site about electricity usage. After you're done, it comes back with a ton of suggestions for conserving energy. Many were fairly obvious, and things I already do, like using a programmable thermostat. Some things were "we can't afford to do that" or "we're saving money to do that" items. But some were things I never thought of. Two of the recommendations were: "Cut weekly oven use in half by baking multiple dishes at the same time: potential savings per year of 292 lbs of CO2" and "Use the microwave instead of the oven: potential savings per year of 1752 lbs of CO2".

I cook a lot. I'm a stay at home mom, and I cook with my kids. Sometimes I'll make three hot meals a day. For dinner, I often have the oven *and* stove going. I love to cook, and I'm still going to do it, but this has made me more aware of my electricity usage related to food. I've been making an effort to reduce my oven and stove usage when possible. For example, I've found that instead of grilled cheese on the stove (which probably takes about 10 minutes), I can make open-faced toasted cheese sandwiches in the toaster oven (about 1 minute). So, this not only saves electricity, it also saves time, not to mention is healthier since it's not cooked in butter. I know that's not a no-electricity meal, but I've been looking for opportunities like this to reduce electricity usage.

So, here are some ideas I've had of meals to prepare without electricity:

Breakfast
Cereal
Fresh fruit
Granola bars
Yogurt
Baked goods that you cook the night before while you're already using the oven for dinner. For example, muffins, sweet breads, scones, etc.

Lunch
Sandwiches
Wraps
Fresh fruit
Raw veggies and dip
Salad
Cold pasta salad
Cole slaw
Cheese and crackers

Dinner
Same stuff as lunch

Here's what I made for dinner:



There's baba ganoush, ful medammes, and pita bread that we got at the farmers' market from Samira's Homemade. (As an aside for any locals reading this, that baba ganoush was the best packaged baba ganoush I've ever had!). I made a garbanzo bean salad on the side: 1 can of garbanzo beans, rinsed, a handful of diced tomatoes, juice and zest from half a lemon, and salt to taste (I used Borsari seasoned salt). It's best to let it marinate in the fridge overnight. We also had a simple salad of things we picked up at the farmers' market: spinach, arugula, grape tomatoes, with a few croutons and my favorite dressing, Cindy's Kitchen Wild Maine Blueberry. It was all delightful!

So what do you think, do you have any other meal ideas that don't require cooking?

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Green tip for the day: I'll leave you with another weird one from the National Grid recommendations: substitute buffalo for beef once per month for a potential yearly savings of 91 lbs of CO2. We don't eat much beef, and what we do eat I can source locally. I don't believe there's any local (to Massachusetts) buffalo, so I kind of wonder if the transportation would offset any CO2 reduction. But, I thought this was an interesting one, and I've heard buffalo is healthier than beef anyway, so I'll probably try swapping it from time to time.

Oh, and I guess a second tip is to check out the website for your electric or gas provider and see if they offer any energy-reduction tips. I found these pretty useful!

Reusable Cups

Once again, I'm participating in Reduce Footprints' Change the World Wednesday challenge. This past week's challenge was:

This week only use reusable mugs/glasses. Yep ... for seven whole days, refuse anything that isn't reusable. Bring your own mug to your favorite coffee shop ... haul your own glass to the soda dispenser at the corner convenience store ... carry your own mug/glass to fast-food restaurants. If a drink comes in something that will be tossed out ... either don't buy it or use your own vessel.

Oh, I thought for sure I had this one in the (reusable) bag! We rarely eat a fast food restaurants. I gave up going out for coffee a few months ago (read about how I broke the habit here). My biggest problem is that most restaurants serve kid's drinks in plastic cups that get thrown away after one use. But I've long been taking those cups home to recycle or reuse, and try to bring them back if we're going to the same restaurant. I also got some good ideas here.

Then my husband and I decided to take the kids to Moe's for dinner one night this week. It was a special treat...we all like their Mexican food, and it's fast enough that the baby usually doesn't get upset and we can make it home in time for bedtime. I even brought the kids' cups from last time we were there. But Moe's is a fast food restaurant. The cups for adults are disposable. As a nursing mom, I'm thirsty CONSTANTLY. Skipping a drink just wasn't an option. So I got one. Challenge--FAIL.

Oh well, part of why I like these challenges is that they open my eyes and make me think about things. What did I learn this week? I'm a nursing mom, and it's irresponsible to go out without a drink. I have a reusable water bottle, and I need to be better about bringing it with me where ever I go. That way I won't be stuck somewhere, thirsty, needing to stop to buy a drink. Not only will this help me reduce the amount of garbage I generate, it will also help me save money so I'm not tempted to buy a drink whenever I get thirsty.

SOLE food

This week I'm participating once again in Reduce Footprints' Change the World Wednesday. The challenge this past week was:

This week, for seven whole days, read food labels and refuse to buy anything containing the following:

• Hydrogenated or partially-hydrogenated oils
• High fructose corn syrup
• Artificial colors, flavors, sweeteners or preservatives
• Bleached or bromated flour
• Any ingredients that you aren't familiar with and/or can't pronounce

Following "food rules" has become somewhat trendy, thanks largely to Michael Pollan in my opinion. I'm still a fan of his "Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants." advice. The Change the World Wednesday challenge rules this week really fall under the "eat food, not too much, mostly plants" umbrella, which I've been trying to do anyway as it just seems like a logical way to eat.

Anyway, this week's challenge is one I think is really important. Thanks, if we're being perfectly honest here, to my son's food allergies, I've become an avid label reader. (Yay, food allergies! See, it's not all bad. In my experience, people with food allergies in the family tend to eat more deliberately, and often healthier. I know our transition to a healthier diet was spurred in a large part by B-man's allergies!)

I think everyone should spend at least a week reading food labels. It can be an eye opening experience! Find out what those weird ingredients are, what they're made of, how they're manufactured.

While I love this week's challenge, I think those rules are covered by trying to eat SOLE food, which has been my aim. SOLE stands for Sustainable, Organic, Local, and Ethical. No, there's no way to eat a 100% SOLE diet, or at least, no way for ME to do it. I'm sure someone could! But I'm all about the babysteps, so I try to hit at least one of those 4 points as often as I can. If you eat SOLE food, you're pretty much guaranteed to be following the rules of this week's challenge.

So what do those things mean? Here's some brief points:

Sustainable: food that is grown in a sustainable manner. For example, not a monoculture that saps the soil, not reliant on chemical fertilizers. Basically, farmed and produced in a manner that isn't actively destroying the planet. This is harder than you'd think.

Organic: The most well-known and defined of all the points, so I'm not going into much detail. However, I will say it's the least important to me. Many small farms can't afford organic certification. Both CSA's I've belonged to grow food organically but do not have organic certification. I'm also not completely opposed to IPM practices and buy quite a bit of locally grown IPM produce in the summer.

Local: Again, pretty well-known, and certainly well-discussed here and on the local New England blog I write for. I love there to be a relationship between me and a farmer; to actually see where my food is being produced. And even when that's not possible, a local food choice saves food-miles--the distance food is shipped. Eating locally also means eating in season, and let's be honest: in season food just tastes better. So really, that's no hardship. But, I'll never be a full-time locavore. I like coffee, and lemons, and chocolate. Bananas and avocado. Unless we move to Florida or Southern California, which we won't, I'm never going to be 100% local.

Ethical: This is what I actually think is the most important point, and at least for me, the most overlooked. How is our food produced? Are the workers subjected to dangerous conditions in slaughterhouses? Are they paid a living wage? Are the farmers applying excessive fertilizer that is running off into the ocean? Are the animals being treated humanely (even if you're not a big animal-rights activist, it's hard to ignore this after having seen Food, Inc.)? Do the fishing practices destroy the ocean floor? Are the rain forests being destroyed to clear land for the product you're buying? These are just a few of the ethical considerations raised. By trying to adhere to the S, O, and L, you eliminate many of these issues, but certainly not all.

Anyway, I don't have any answers. Just things I've been thinking about. And don't think for one second I'm claiming to be perfect, or passing judgment on those who can't or don't eat this way. I don't want to be hypocritical, but I've had to stop using my inability to commit 100% as an excuse. No, I'm not prepared, either time-wise or money-wise or food-choice-wise to eat a totally SOLE diet. However, this is another one of my small steps. Even one SOLE ingredient a meal is a good start. And I've found that as I become more cognizant of these issues, and try new types of food and new sources of food, it becomes easier and easier. My cupboards and refrigerator become stocked with better choices, and my repertoire of meals expands to include many in season, local choices.

Thank, Small Footprints, for another interesting, thought-provoking challenge!

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Green tip for the day: plan an oven- and stove-free day, and no cheating and going out to eat! Have sandwiches, cut up fruit, veggies with dip, leftovers from a previous dinner that you can heat in the microwave. Plan ahead and make a pasta salad you can eat cold for a few days. Have hummus, feta cheese, and spinach on a pita or wrap. There are tons of healthy, delicious meals you can have without having to turn on the stove! As an added plus, many of the meals are quick and easy to prepare! Have an idea for an energy-saving, no-stove/oven meal? Leave a comment!

Zero-Waste lunches

Have you checked out the Reduce Footprints blog? Every Wednesday is "Change the World Wednesday". Though I don't often participate, I love the idea of it as I'm big into making small changes. It's too much to try to be "perfect" or to change everything about the way I live. It's too overwhelming to expect that, and then it's too easy to give up entirely. So I've been trying to make small changes to the way we live our lives, in the hopes that over time, it will add up to big changes.

Anyway, enough about why I love the idea of "Change the World Wednesday". Let's get on to this week's challenge:

This week we're all about kids ... after all, they will take the "green torch" and become environmental "Olympians". So this week, your challenge is to do an environmentally friendly activity with your kids (or grand kids or neighbor kids or nieces/nephews, cousins, etc). Get them involved. Need some ideas? Here you go:


Awesome Activities

Kaboose

Kids Links (Teaching Green)

Gardening for Kids

Once you've done the activity, we want to know about it ... so come back here and leave a comment (either with the activity or a link to a post) ... or if they did something fun during the summer like an Eco-Camp, tell us about that. We'd also be interested in little Eco-Stars ... kids who have taken it upon themselves to come up with green living ideas.

Or ...

If you don't have any accessible kids to have "green" fun with, then write an article about ways that we can get kids involved in an Eco-friendly lifestyle.

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So that's the challenge for the week, and it dovetailed perfectly to something I was already working on with N-man and B-man: zero-waste lunches. Friday was their very first day that they were eating lunch at school. Working in schools in the past, it was kind of appalling to see the vast amount of garbage generated at lunch time. And I'm not talking about the food thrown out (that's a separate topic, though I did briefly sub at a school that had the kids compost all their compost-able food so it is possible!). I'm talking about the juice boxes, single-serve packets, water bottles, ziplock baggies, paper bags, aluminum foil, disposable silverware and napkins, etc, etc, etc. Kids' lunches just seem to generate huge amounts of trash, and most of it can't be recycled, or just plain doesn't get to a recycling bin.

That's where a zero-waste lunch comes in. The idea is to pack the lunch in reusable containers, with reusable silverware and napkins. If all goes well, the child shouldn't have anything to throw away after lunch (besides those pesky sandwich crusts!).

The boys and I brainstormed some ideas of things that would be good to include in the lunch, and things that wouldn't be good. That was a bigger hit for the boys...they were very good at listing things that come in single-serve packaging (i.e., nutrigrain bars, yogurt tubes, etc...things I get for treats but have been trying to wean myself off even in our own house!)

You can get official bento boxes, but I just used a regular lunch box with tupperware I had around the house. And the Rubbermaid Litterless Juice Boxes that some readers recommended last year are still going strong (love these!).

Here's what the boys had for their first school lunch:



Apple cider for a drink

Cream cheese and jelly sandwiches (cut into the shape of dinosaurs! I have a cool sandwich cutter that cuts one sandwich into two dinosaurs with only a little crust waste.)

Cut up strawberries and kiwi

A scoop of hummus and some bagel chips

And for dessert, a soybean butter and honey oatmeal ball. I (kind of) followed this recipe, but with some changes to make it nut-safe:

Ingredients:

1/2 cup soybean butter
1/2 cup honey
1 1/2 cup old-fashioned oats
1/2 cup chocolate chips (if you're not dealing with allergies, I'd use mini-chips. I just can't find any nut-safe mini-chips. Though heck, if you're not dealing with allergies, I'd go to the original recipe and use peanut butter and nuts in these!)
1/2 cup raisins

Directions:

Mix soybean butter and honey until blended. Add all the other ingredients and stir until mixed and thoroughly coated.

Roll into balls (I made them from about 1 heaping tablespoon each). Freeze or refrigerate until firm.

N-man ate almost everything in his lunch! B-man didn't do quite as well, but said he liked everything.

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So here's why I like the idea of zero-waste lunches:

• The obvious, of no trash for the kids at school
• More economical in that I can buy large containers and apportion them into smaller servings.
• The packaging from the products can be recycled at home, while there might not be recycling available at school (or the kids may forget to use it).
• Buying large containers means less packaging than the single-serving packets.
  
• Any leftover lunch comes home, and if appropriate, can become an afternoon snack so there's less food waste. B-man ate his leftover bagel chips and hummus yesterday after school!
• Gets kids involved in reducing the amount of garbage they generate.
• Opportunity to make healthier lunches by not relying on prepackaged individual serving (and often highly processed) "convenience" foods.
  

And as I said, this is a small step. There's always room for improvement...here are some future "small steps" I may try to take to make this idea even more effective.

• I'm not sure what kind of non-plastic options there are for containers, but as the tupperware becomes lost or worn out, I'd prefer to replace it with something that isn't made of plastic.
• Okay, my zero-waste lunch wasn't ZERO-waste, because I had to include a disposable napkin. I have fabric to make into cloth napkins...I just need to do it!
• I could do a much better job making local choices for their lunches. For example, I got them strawberries and kiwi, their favorite fruits, as a special treat for their first school lunch. But come on! It's apple (and peach) season here. That would be a much better choice for future lunches this fall.
• What other ideas do you have for me?

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Overall, a very fun, and easy activity. As I said, this was my boys' first school lunch, so we're not in the habit of relying on convenience packaging. Hopefully it will remain just as easy to continue with zero (or very little) waste lunches!

Leaky cups

What's on my mind today? Leaky cups. Ah, the trials and tribulations of a mom.

Here's the deal: I'm a big fan of the zero-waste snack/lunch for school. I think it's really important to get in the habit of giving the kids as little disposable packaging as possible. It's been easy with snacks. The pre-packaged, individual serving size snacks of things like goldfish are ridiculously expensive anyway. I much prefer buying the big box of goldfish and doling it out into reusable little tupperware containers. Plus, then I have the option of preparing healthy snacks like cut up fruit in those same little tupperwares. You know, when I'm actually up early enough to cut up fruit, and actually have fruit in the house. Okay, fine, mostly it's goldfish.

But drinks: those are difficult. I'm firmly against the idea of juice boxes in theory, but I just can't find a reusable drink container than doesn't leak. The boys don't finish all their drinks, and then it leaks all over their backpacks, making a disgusting wet mess that ruins all their papers in their backpack.

I've tried giving them less in their cups, but it seems like no matter how much is in their cups, they'll always drink 3/4's of it, leaving plenty left to leak all over.

So does anyone have a great solution to the leaky drink problem? Some wonder product appropriate for 3 or 4 year olds that won't leak all over? Maybe they're ready for a thermos-type open cup...what do you think? Give me brand names, people! I'm at wit's end.

Of course, it wasn't a long trip to the end of my wit, but that's besides the point...

Canadians, Food, and The Best Way to Be Kind

We just returned from a trip to Buffalo to visit my family, which as always was lots of fun. We go every summer for the Taste of Buffalo, a huge food festival. You may guess from my blog entries that I have a bit of a love affair with food, and most of my family is like this as well. So a food festival is a perfect reason to make a trip to Buffalo. I had something called chocolate sin. It was rich chocolate cake drowned in chocolate fudge, with a few strawberries. It was the most delicious food on earth. I also had about 1 zillion calories of other food, most of it incredible. It was wonderful!

One thing I love about the greater Buffalo area is the Canadians. We brought our wii with us on vacation, but of course forgot our wiimotes. So at 9:30 pm one night, I was off to Target in Niagara Falls, USA. I think I was the only person who didn't have Ontario license plates! I don't know what's up with the late night American shopping needs of all those Canadians, but the Target was completely hopping.

The guy checking out ahead of me ran out of American money and tried to give the cashier a coin. I couldn't see it well, but I think it was a toonie. With an annoyed tone in her voice, the cashier asked, "Don't you have any *paper* money?" He rooted around in his wallet and pockets, and pulled out some other coins to hand over to the cashier. With such disgust, she said, "What ARE these?"

I'm of two minds about this. First and foremost, you're a cashier working near the US/Canadian border. You're going to get Canadian money. Suck it up, or get a different job. However, having worked as a cashier near the US/Canadian border, I know what a pain in the tushy it is to get all the weird Canadian money. It takes forever to close out your drawer at the end of your shift, and it messes up your reconcilation (especially for me who had to do currency conversions in my head). Mostly, though, I was just annoyed that I once again picked the wrong lane and spent approximately ten thousand years to buy a wiimote.

As I walked out to my car, a bright yellow Hummer raced through the parking lot. It had Ontario plates. It made me glad to realize that us Americans don't have the market cornered on bad taste.

While at my parent's house, I perused my mom's People magazine. In it was a blurb* about some book called Quantum Wellness. I highly doubt I'd like it as apparently Oprah likes it. She's a pretty good judge of what I'll hate. If Oprah recommends it, I can almost guarantee I'll loathe it. But one quote really caught me: "It's making tiny changes that affect your health and the global well-being in a big way." I very much agree with this, and try to make the small changes in my own life that will add up to big changes. However, the author immediately ruined it by giving this example: "Like cutting out animal products: you're decreasing your chance of getting cancer, but you're also helping animals by not eating them."

Wow, there's so much wrong with that statement. First, I would argue that becoming vegan is not a "tiny change" in your own life. Also, it shows a complete lack of understanding of the affects to the environment and animals if everyone immediately became vegan. But, what really got me was the idea that you help animals by not eating them.

I was thinking of trying to do something to help the homeless. Oh, I've got an idea! I can not eat them. They'll love that.

Well, I'm back now, so expect some more blog entries. Leave me a comment about any crazy Canadian stories you have, or food festival memories, or just to say hi. Yes, I'm whoring for comments. What can you do?
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*or was it a review? I don't regularly read People, and it seems like everything in the entire magazine is just a blurb. I don't recall it being quite so devoid of content in the past, but perhaps that's because I normally read it while distracted in doctor waiting rooms.

Get used to it, kids! That's life!

Every once in a while, I'm taken aback by a children's toy. It's happened once again. My grandmother gave the boys a large set of matchbox-type cars, trucks, and related stuff. It was some cheap off-brand I'd never heard of, not particularly well made, but my boys are absolutely loving it. And while it's turned my house into a giant disaster of tiny little toy pieces, I can see that it is a lot of fun so I'm not overly disturbed by these toys.

My problem, however, is with one of the small toys included. It's a barrel. Okay, that kind of makes sense. There are a lot of construction-themed pieces of the set (pylons, cones, etc.). What would you think the barrels contain? If you guessed "toxic waste", you'd be correct. Yes, you heard me: toxic waste. I've got to give you photographic proof:



Look closely: that's a picture of a person's hand being dissolved by a drop of what I assume is some kind of acid.

I wish I had been at the meeting at this toy company. I imagine it went something like this:

"How about we include some barrels in the set? That would be fun for kids."

"Great idea! What should be in the barrel?"

"Monkeys?"

"No, that's already been done."

"Rainwater?"

"What does that have to do with construction?"

"Um, those barrels that keep cars from being destroyed when they miss the exit and ram into the concrete?"

"Doesn't that seem a little dark for a kid's toy set?"

"Oh! I've got it! How about some toxic waste?"

"Yeah. I can see that!"

"What a great idea!"

"Kids love toxic waste! Just look at the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!"

"And what parent doesn't want their kid to play with toxic waste?"

"Okay, it's a go."


Of course I'm letting them play with the barrels. Hey, kids, that's just the kind of world we live in. Filled with toxic waste. Sorry guys, get used to it!

Random unrelated thought: We bought the boys twin beds this weekend. They'll be delivered in about a month. Oh my, how did this happen??

I'm LESS green than the average US citizen??

Wow, according to this test, my GreenIQ is slightly lower than the average US citizen, which I find hard to believe.



I think I must have entered something wrong, or maybe they don't take into consideration that it was winter in New England and therefore energy costs were high. Or maybe my lack of public transportation usage puts me behind all those city-dwellers. Who knows. Anyway, it was an interesting test, and there are some good tips on the site (as well as some annoying advertising while you're taking the test).

Plus, they'll donate a tree just for you taking the test. How's that for a pretty painless way to participate in Earth Day? Well, we'll see how painless it is when I see how much junk email I end up getting as a result of this. Oh well, at least they only ask for an email address so they won't clutter up my actual mailbox with paper waste :)