With the bounty of vegetables that summer has afforded us, I’m always brainstorming new and inventive ways of cooking the many beans, turnips, squash, tomatoes, potatoes et. al. we’ve been getting weekly from our CSA. Then I discovered The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book by Fannie Farmer, published in 1918 but reproduced in its entirety online. The chapter on summer vegetables is helpfully organized by name, from artichokes to turnips. How did I live before, unschooled as I was in the nine different ways you could cook a tomato?

How about kicking it back older school with recipes from the White House in 1887? The White House Cook Book is a “comprehensive cyclopedia of information for the home.” You can also expend little effort but manage to bowl over your dining companions just the same with The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking (1903) by Helen Campbell.

Also, in these unsettled times, please see Foods That Will Win The War And How To Cook Them (1918), by C. Houston Goudiss and Alberta M. Goudiss, because “serv[ing] the cause of freedom” never goes out of style.

You’ll also do well to be reminded of the following advice on vegetables by Mrs. Brian Luck, who wrote The Belgian Cook-Book in 1915:

Nearly all these are at their best (like brunettes) just before they are fully matured. So says a great authority, and no doubt he is thinking of young peas and beans, lettuces and asparagus. Try to dress such things as potatoes, parsnips, cabbages, carrots, in other ways than simply boiled in water, for the water often removes the flavor and leaves the fiber. Do not let your vegetable-dishes remind your guests of Froissart’s account of Scotchmen’s food, which was “rubbed in a little water.”

I’m not sure what that crack about brunettes was all about (should I take umbrage 91 years after the fact?), but rest assured, Mrs. Luck, I will strive not to evoke your idea of gastronomic Scotland in my culinary endeavors.

Photo by Baerbel Schmidt/Getty Images

From the University of California, Davis: “School lunches and vending machines aren’t the only places to look for ways to improve students’ nutrition. Modest changes in the kinds of snacks offered at after-school programs can also have a significant positive impact on children’s diets, UC Davis researchers report in the September 2006 issue of the American Journal of Public Health.”

The study suggests that a healthy snack menu in an after-school program can help low-income children—those at highest risk of obesity—consume more fruit and less saturated fat, said lead author Diana Cassady, an assistant professor of public health sciences at UC Davis.

“Even though school food programs have very limited budgets, this study suggests that with leadership and a little bit of political will, food service for kids really can be improved,” Cassady said.

The UC Davis researchers focused on an after-school program called Students Today Achieving Results for Tomorrow, which serves some 8,000 low-income children from 44 public elementary schools in Sacramento, Elk Grove and Rio Linda.

In 2002, START changed its snack vendor and its menu in an effort to offer more fruits and vegetables, boost nutrition and save money. Kids started receiving more fresh fruit, tastier crackers, more juices and fewer dairy products. For instance, Friday’s snack of a brownie and milk was replaced with animal crackers and grape juice; Wednesday’s snack of a peach cup and graham crackers was replaced with peanut butter crackers and an apple.

Cassady and her colleagues compared the nutritional content of the new menu of 17 snacks with that of the old menu of 15 snacks. They found that the new menu boosted the children’s daily servings of fruit by 83 percent, reduced their daily consumption of saturated fat by 42 percent and cut their overall calorie intake by 7 percent. …

Richard Lincoln, program manager for Sacramento START, said the changes were well-received by students.

“There are kids coming into our program who have never had fresh produce,” Lincoln said. “We’ve found that they love getting fresh fruit, and it’s been great seeing them discover that they like it.”

If all Americans ate at least five servings of fruits and vegetables a day, cancer rates would drop by more than 20 percent, according to the National Cancer Institute. The NCI based the estimate on a review of 4,500 research studies.

However, only 24 percent of California’s children meet the five-a-day recommendation, Cassady said. Even fewer meet the new dietary guidelines that recommend children eat six to seven servings (or 3 to 3.5 cups) of fruit and vegetables each day for better health.

(Emphases are mine.)

Diana Cassady, an assistant professor of public health sciences at UC Davis, offers the following tips for encouraging healthy snacking in children:

1. Avoid serving desserts and chips.

2. Offer kids foods that taste good. For example, serve sliced fruits with a low-fat yogurt dip, or vegetables with a low-fat bean dip.

3. Model good eating behavior by enjoying healthy snacks with your child.

4. Eat fruit that is fresh, canned, dried or frozen. It’s all good. If you do choose canned fruit, select items packed in light syrup or fruit juice to reduce added sugar.

5. Choose only 100-percent juices to avoid added sugar in nectars and punch. But whole fruit, because it has fiber, is always a better choice than juice.

Related articles:
1. The School-Lunch Test
2. Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children
3. The Virtual Cafeteria
4. The World’s Healthiest Foods
5. Invisible Danger: Parents Look Inside the Lunchbox
5. Sugar High: Benzene in Soft Drinks

Behold! The Crust Cutter! Another fine example of a product we don’t need but we’re somehow CONVINCED we need—facilitating not to simplify our lives, as it purports to, but to bog it down further, not unlike the stuck kitchen drawer you can never open because it’s been jammed to the brim with assorted kitchen gadgetry you never use, such as the tea-drip catcher, the spoon rest, the Can Pop opener, and the electric ice-cream scoop. They slice! They dice! They sing your kids lullabies and tuck them into bed with a cool, affection-witholding peck on their foreheads!

Help me, Obi-Wan …

In 2001, Americans discarded around 9.8 million tons of textiles into the waste stream—up from 1 million tons in 1960—accouting for 4 percent of landfill waste, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Clothing and footwear alone tallied up to 6.7 million tons. Of these, only 930,000 tons were recovered for export or recycling.

Like it or not, every time we buy something new, we’re contributing to the waste stream, simply because everything, unless it’s completely biodegradable, has to end up somewhere eventually. More often than not, that “somewhere” is a greenhouse-gas-spewing, space-hogging landfill. Couple this fact with the surging popularity of styles from bygone eras in our history, and you have a corresponding revival in the use of vintage fabrics, which should not be confused with vintage-inspired textiles or vintage reproductions. Vintage and repurposed fabrics have little or no environmental footprint—their time (and ecological impact) has already come and gone—which is why green-minded companies such as aGaIN NYC (my personal favorite) are redefining what it means to have sustainable style. Here is just a selection of what some others are doing:

I love Poppy Cotton’s limited-edition pillows, wall hangings, and lampshades crafted from vintage home linens and scarves, but they’re not for the weak of constitution—or wallet. Still, you gotta love a designer who was inspired by both The Stepford Wives (the 1975 original, I hope) and Rosemary’s Baby, resulting in a sublime collection of retro suburban gothic chic, quietly seething beneath a veneer of propriety and normalcy. ($45-$115, Poppy Cotton)

The New York-based BIBette’s Feast tailors vintage-fabric baby bibs “for modern kids” from a selection of vintage and reproduction fabrics. The bibs are backed with cotton terrycloth and are finished off with a vintage button, snap, or tie closure. ($16, BIBette’s Feast)

I usually prefer to limit my scope to North America for practical reasons, but this Australian company was too delicious to pass up. Dedicated to low-impact, environmentally friendly, and local production, Slingfings features a line of clothing and bags handmade in New South Wales off-the-grid using solar power. Its Retro Fabric Baby Carrier comes in a dizzying selection of attractive recycled or reclaimed vintage fabrics from the ’50s to the ’90s. Any other production materials, the company says, are 100 percent natural and sourced from local small businesses. (AUD$180, Slingfings)

Stitched together from funky double-knit fabric from the ’70s , this maisy daisy of a wallet from Two Busy Bees contains two credit-card-size compartments. The company also offers bags, pouches, and hairclips from a range of vintage fabrics. ($15, Two Busy Bees)

Better Homes and Gardens has instructions on how to sew your own lined carryall from vintage fabric. To locate genuine vintage fabric outside of thrift stores, estate sales, and your grandmother’s closet, eBay is the obvious choice. Some of my other favorite online sources include AntiqueFabric.com, eBay’s hipper kid sister Etsy, RustyZipper.com, Katie’s Vintage Kimono, Sharon’s Antiques, and Warm Biscuit. (If you’re ever in NYC, check out Brooklyn General for vintage cottons, plastics, and barkcloth.) For vintage trim, ribbons, and buttons, hit up Accessories of Old, Oh Bara, or Vintage Trims.

Related article:
1. Everything Old is New Again

Photo from BTC Elements

Although this durable lunchbag uses vinyl-laminated nylon fabric, I don’t mind its materials as much because they’re salvaged from old billboards. It’s even lined with mill-end fabric, which ordinarily would be considered manufacturing waste. Relan, which is based in Minnesota rescues approximately 8 tons of billboard and banner material from landfills and incinerators annually. (Chemical additives used to stabilize PVC, such as lead, cadmium, and phthalates, along with carcinogenic dioxins, can leach into the groundwater and release toxic emissions via landfill gases. Burning PVC lets loose hydrogen chloride gas, which turns into hydrochloric acid—the stuff of acid rain. Fun times.)

I’m sticking with Cosmo and Wanda for now—the first of the 3 Rs is “reduce,” after all—but you can get the lunch sack at BTC Elements for $26. And, hey, besides shipping in used boxes, BTC Elements is also carbon neutral, so as far as online stores go, this one’s a keeper. (And not just because I think Summer’s a sweetheart.)

From the Billings Gazette: “Pink and blue are passé. The hot thing in the children’s market these days is green.”

Parents are increasingly turned on by the idea of organic products—clothing, creams and food made without chemicals that they think are too harsh to be used on their pristine and delicate children.

While organic baby food has developed a strong following over past years—a $206 million industry last year, according to the most recent figures available from the Organic Trade Association—interest in organic clothes and cleansers is growing as quickly as the kids they target.

Sales of organic fibers for infant clothes and cloth diapers rose 40 percent between 2004 and 2005 to $40 million, and fiber for the child-teen market grew 52 percent to $3 million. Meanwhile, organic personal-care products, including baby care, rose 34 percent to $26 million.

Whether organic products offer any sort of health benefits is unclear; most experts say only the most sensitive children could have a problem with conventional clothing or personal-care products. But parents seem more motivated by a desire to keep their kids untainted from some of the harshness and artificiality of the world for as long as they can.

“This is the first time—and I’ve been in business 10 years—that we’re catching up to organic food,” says Janice Masoud, founder of Under the Nile, an organic clothing company based in Milpitas, Calif., that specializes in children’s items.

Under the Nile will launch a test program in 150 Target stores this coming holiday season with towel sets, swaddle blanket sets, a sherpa two-piece cardigan set and flannel footies.

From her regular collection, the most popular items are bodysuits, buntings and baby gowns that can be worn home from the hospital. Masoud thinks that’s because they’re all pieces that are right next to a baby’s skin for long periods of time.

She says she cringes at the thought of the pesticides and insecticides used to grow some cotton rubbing against a newborn’s skin. She also notes that formaldehyde is sometimes used in fabric’s finishing process, as is polyvinyl chloride, known as PVC.

“Cotton is supposed to be a ‘natural fiber,’ ” says Masoud, who obtained fair-trade certification for her brand, meaning that the co-op of Egyptian farmers that grows her cotton she buys her cotton from are paid more—and they, in turn, put the investment into their land.

“A mother would rather spend some dollars on her baby than herself,” Masoud says. “There are so many pollutants in the society today that moms are worried about for the kids. Moms are trying not to add extra chemicals to their babies.”

(Emphases are mine.)

Chekhov and I are taking a mini blogging break to recharge and work on some personal projects¹, along with a few campaign promises I’ve made a couple of people. We’ll be back on Monday, August 28, or thereabouts, though we may reemerge earlier if we feel sufficiently rested and caught up.

When we return: Fair Trade 101! Cradle-to-cradle will rock! Organic wool! EZ DIY book wrapper! Chekhov answers more mail! Plus, COWS!

Meanwhile, feel free to browse the archives by month, category, or search term. Is there a red-hot topic you’re champing at the bit to learn more about? Our research desk is always open to suggestions. And cupcakes.

¹Including catching up on my magazine subscriptions while Chekhov bats around a plastic milk tab with deranged ecstasy.

Photo by World of Good

I’m tempted to kick my Fairly Odd Parents lunch box, which I’ve had before I went militantly anti-vinyl, to the curb for one of these colorful and chic grown-up versions. Available in three different color schemes, the baskets are handwoven by a family in Huanchaco, Peru from reeds, which is a sustainable material, under fair-trade conditions. Maybe I shouldn’t risk lead poisoning every time I take leftovers to work, after all. ($19.95, World of Good)

Photo by World of Good

It’s the return of the recycled magazine bead! Each pretty-in-pink bracelet strings together recycled magazine beads with regular beads, and is created by homeless men and women as part of their drug rehabilitation program in Sao Paulo, Brazil, under fair-trade conditions. Also available in yellow. ($9.95, World of Good)

Infographic by the International Network Archives/Princeton University

Click to expand. (Thanks, Siva!)

For something truly frightening, check out the places I can get a frappuccino at, just by work. I’d much rather support an independently owned establishment (extra points for fair trade, organic options), of course, which you can “delocate” by zip code. Remember to bring your own commuter mug for a waste-free caffeine fix.

Photo by Stephen Lewis/The New York Times

The glossy pages of this week’s New York Times Magazine features the battlefield that is the school lunchroom. It’s a lengthy, but worthwhile, read that outlines the complications afforded by the politics of donors, school boards, and government agencies, and explains why ensuring our kids get quality nutrition isn’t as simple as merely adding some carrots and peas to their trays:

By any health measure, today’s children are in crisis. Seventeen percent of American children are overweight, and increasing numbers of children are developing high blood pressure, high cholesterol and Type 2 diabetes, which, until a few years ago, was a condition seen almost only in adults. The obesity rate of adolescents has tripled since 1980 and shows no sign of slowing down. Today’s children have the dubious honor of belonging to the first cohort in history that may have a lower life expectancy than their parents. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has predicted that 30 to 40 percent of today’s children will have diabetes in their lifetimes if current trends continue.

The only good news is that as these stark statistics have piled up, so have the resources being spent to improve school food. Throw a dart at a map and you will find a school district scrambling to fill its students with things that are low fat and high fiber. …

But there is one big shadow over all this healthy enthusiasm: no one can prove that it works. For all the menus being defatted, salad bars made organic and vending machines being banned, no one can prove that changes in school lunches will make our children lose weight. True, studies show that students who exercise more and have healthier diets learn better and fidget less, and that alone would be a worthwhile goal. But if the main reason for overhauling the cafeteria is to reverse the epidemic of obesity and the lifelong health problems that result, then shouldn’t we be able to prove we are doing what we set out to do?

(Emphasis is mine.)

Related articles:
1. Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children
2. The Virtual Cafeteria
3. The World’s Healthiest Foods
4. Invisible Danger: Parents Look Inside the Lunchbox
5. Sugar High: Benzene in Soft Drinks

A little Kawaii Not-inspired silliness I just whipped up a bit slap-dashedly

From RedOrbit.com:

The following editorial appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer on Thursday, June 29:

“Carbon dioxide: It’s what we breathe out and plants breathe in. They call it pollution; we call it life.”

That paradox expressed by the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute is being used to counter former Vice President Al Gore’s scary global warming documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.”

How could a life-giving gas be dangerous to our planet? What right does a president or Congress have to regulate it as if it were smog, acid rain or arsenic?

Those are the central questions the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to answer by hearing Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency next fall. It could be the most significant environmental case ever to come before the court. …

The Clean Air Act specifies some pollutants for regulation, but not carbon dioxide. The act does allow the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate any pollutant that affects the “welfare” of “soils, water, crops, vegetation, man-made materials, animals, wildlife, weather, visibility and climate, and damage to and deterioration of property.” Global warming, caused, in part, by carbon dioxide coming from vehicles, is having those negative effects.

EPA already regulates other naturally occurring substances. Phosphorus, for example, is a critical nutrient for plants, but it’s regulated because in excessive quantities, it kills life in lakes and streams. Likewise, carbon dioxide, in excessive quantity, is hurting the planet.

Yes, the Earth needs carbon dioxide, but only so much. When the supply begins to endanger public health, government should act.

Photo by Cal Crary/Getty Images

The ozone layer, after decades of degradation, is beginning to heal itself. Don’t start breaking out the pom-poms, noisemakers, or your “special occasion” toupee, however: The U.N. Environmental Programme (UNEP) says the protective layer, which filters solar radiation and protects our food supplies from frying and our skin from spontaneously bursting into cancerous boils, is recovering more slowly than experts had previously hoped.

From Reuters: “The earth’s ozone layer is finally on the mend after decades of damage, two UN agencies reported on Friday.”

Over huge areas of Europe, North America and Asia in the northern hemisphere and over southern Australasia, Latin America and Africa, the layer would be back to pre-1980 levels by 2049, the agencies said.

This was five years later than forecast in the last major scientific report in 2002.

The agencies’ message came in an official summary of a report by 250 scientists to be issued next year on the effects of the 1987 Montreal Protocol, which committed signatory nations progressively to ban the use of ozone-harmful products.

“The early signs that the atmosphere is healing demonstrate that the Montreal Protocol is working,” said Achim Steiner, executive director of UNEP.

“But the delayed recovery is a warning that we cannot take the ozone layer for granted and must maintain and accelerate our efforts to phase out harmful chemicals,” he said in a statement issued in Geneva and Nairobi.

Over Antarctica, where so-called “ozone holes” have grown over the past 30 years, recovery was likely to be delayed until 2065, 15 years later than earlier hoped.

“While these latest projections of ozone recovery are disappointing, the good news is that the level of ozone-depleting substances continues to decline from its 1992-94 peak in the troposphere and the 1990s peak in the stratosphere,” said WMO secretary-general Michel Jarraud.

The ozone layer blocks harmful ultra-violet rays and holes in it have been blamed for increased risk of skin cancer and cataracts in humans. It may also harm crop yields and sea life, according to researchers.

Its depletion is caused by the chemical action of chlorine and bromine released by man-made chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which are used in aerosol sprays and cooling equipment, like refrigerators and some air-conditioning systems.

In 2002, however, NASA reported that global warming will lead to a weaker ozone layer. Greenhouse gases can heat the lower stratosphere, where most of the ozone is concentrated, for instance, and speed up any ozone-depleting chemical reactions. Also, emissions of methane, itself a heat-trapping greenhouse gas, are transformed into water molecules in the stratosphere. Ha, I hear you say, water? Are you KIDDING me? WATER? I DRINK water for BREAKFAST … well, yeah, except that at high altitudes, water vapor can be further broken down into molecules that eat away at the ozone. Suffice to say, climate change and the ozone layer aren’t exactly Joanie and Chachi.

So while you should take heart in the fact that ozone depletion is reversible—and trust me, us tree-huggers should take good news where we can—I wouldn’t be pitching my sunscreen just yet.

Tangentially related P.S.:
Thank you, David Roberts, you’re super-awesome!

With all that’s going on in the world, I overhear someone bemoaning the absence of single-sheet paper towels in the men’s bathroom. (He has to suffer the indignity of a paper-towel roll, quelle horreur!)

This is why we are all doomed.

Illo by Jonathan Cusick, by way of Monsterosity

Remember the killer mutie grass that “escaped” from a test site? Guess which company was behind the unapproved genetically modified turf? Give ya a hint: It starts with “M” and rhymes with “Satan, Prince of Darkness.”

Related articles:
1. Grass! On! The! Loose!
2. They Live!
3. Another BT Cotton Controversy

The authors of Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children recommend a visit to The Virtual Cafeteria, where parents and kids can learn about the nutritional value of lunchroom choices in a fun, interactive way. You pick a school, choose a date from the calendar to your left, decide between the Breakfast or Lunch line, and then go ahead and build your meal by dragging and dropping items onto your tray. (You can click on the item on the tray to remove it.) The app keeps a running tally of the cost of your meal and its nutritional content, including calories, protein, carbs, sodium, and saturated fat.

The clock behind Cathy, the lunch lady, flashes green, yellow, or red, depending on how healthful your choice is. Sometimes, Cathy adds an encouraging word or two for smart choices, telling you “Great Job!” and noting that a food is rich in an essential vitamin.

Play around with the available options with your kids to teach them what constitutes a healthful, nutritious meal. You even get a Print option so you can save your selected meals for future reference.

Ruh-roh, flashback ahead! More than 20 years later, I still remember sitting at the kitchen table with my Mom as we roleplayed a foodseller (her) and customer (me) so I could learn how to differentiate between values of currency. (My older brother, who calls ME gullible, had traded a 50-cent coin for two 10-cent ones with a classmate, not knowing he had been swindled, that more wasn’t necessarily better, and that his younger sister would trot this story out in public for ALL ETERNITY.) That kind of parent-child interaction, where education mimics play, truly, I think, makes all the difference. At the very least, I was never fooled by any cons-in-training—although one kid did have me believing for about 5 minutes that her house was made of gold and she had a wooden leg. Psycho bitch. I wonder if she’s in prison now.

Illustrations by Rosemary Mosco

The genius of artist Rosemary Mosco’s Bulbs for Birds concept is staggering: switch one or more light bulbs to a compact fluorescent, e-mail her, and Mosco will draw you a bird (or other feathered creature)!

[via Water Underground]

Due in stores in September, Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children by Ann Cooper and Lisa Holmes starts off with several startling statistics: 30 to 40 percent of children born in the year 2000 will develop diabetes, while a good percentage of them will face problems stemming from obesity. These children, according to research the authors uncovered, will be the first in the history of the U.S. to die at a younger age than their parents.

More than 35 percent of our nation’s children are overweight. 25 percent are obese, and 14 percent have type 2 diabetes, a condition previously seen in adults. Processed foods favored by schools and busy moms for their convenience not only contribute to obesity, they also contain additives and preservatives and are tainted with herbicide and pesticide residues that are believed to cause a variety of illnesses, including cancer. In fact, current research shows that 40 percent of all cancers are attributable to diet. Many hundreds of thousands of Americans die of diet-related illnesses each year. People in America today simply do not know how to eat properly, and they don’t seem to have time to figure out how—so fast food, home meal replacements, and processed foods take the place of good, healthy cooking.

Although the narrative can get disjointed in places, Lunch Lessons adroitly stitches the basics of proper nutrition (and how to instill healthy eating habits in your children) together with examples of revolutionary programs pushing for change in lunchrooms across the nation—an invaluable resource for parents, parents-to-be, and anyone interested in advocating for children’s nutritional health, which has obviously suffered in a climate where kids are being subjected to about $15 billion a year worth of marketing engineered to sway them and their parents into believing they need their own special kind of food. “Once you understand that this is marketing that is designed to undermine parental controls it loses that ‘isn’t-that-cute’ factor,” says respected nutritionist and food author Marion Nestle. “That’s the complete explanation of Lunchables. It isn’t cute at all, it’s quite subversive.”

From an article in the New York Times:

“Historically, there was no such thing as children’s food,” said Andrew F. Smith, who teaches culinary history at the New School in New York. “Babies would eat what adults ate, chopped up, until Gerber created baby food in 1927.” “Children’s meals” didn’t exist until the McDonald’s Happy Meal came along in the late 1970’s, Smith said, and only when snack-food producers concluded that their real market was children did they start sponsoring events and advertising in the 1950’s.

“Beyond the Lunch Pail” encourages sustainable living, from using eco-friendly cleaning products to composting, as a way of extending good health beyond good nutrition, and making “your child’s world a richer, healthier place.” A generous portion of the book is dedicated to healthful and balanced, yet tasty, recipes. The authors demystify what counts as a serving of calcium or healthy fats, while breaking down the dangers of mercury in seafood and trans fatty acids. You’ll also find factoids peppered throughout the pages, such as the one that informs us that a McDonald’s hamburger in the 1960s was 250 calories, while a Big Extra today weighs in at 810 calories.

My favorite part of the book is the case studies of successful food programs, such as the decade-old Edible Schoolyard at King Middle School in Berkeley California. Children of all grade levels work in the garden, cook in the kitchens, and receive the kind of sensory experiences a traditional classroom could never have afforded them.

Overhauling school lunch programs, where ketchup is considered a “vegetable” and Taco Bell and Pizza Hut options are available on cafeteria menus, though challenging, has resulted in quantifiable improvements, including increased concentration, increased cognitive development, fewer health complaints, increased attendance, fewer disciplinary referrals, less moodiness and more calmness—even an increase in the practice of good nutrition outside of school. A group of sixth graders at the Ross School in East Hampton, New York, where food is part of a fully integrated curriculum, effused about the timing of the spice tasting when the class was learning about India. When asked why, they replied, “Because our palates have grown so much since last year. We can taste so much better now.”

Here’s a really quick, easy, and cheap skin-care trick: use a tablespoon of white cane sugar (preferably organic and fair trade) with a carrier—such as lemon juice (for oily skin), olive oil (for dry skin), plain organic yogurt, or aloe vera gel—as a facial scrub.

Sugar contains glycolic acid, which is a potent alpha-hydroxy acid, to smooth skin and slough away dead cells. Rinse with warm water and remember to apply an astringent, such as diluted apple cider vinegar or witch hazel extract and water, to close your pores after.

Your skin will feel incredibly silky.

Related articles:
1. Pinch of Salt
2. One Good Egg

If there’s one thing I categorically cannot abide, it’s a stupid person—whom I usually have the good breeding and grace to ignore, because arguing with an irrational person completely devoid of common sense is like trying to unstick gum from your hair. And to me, smoking is the EPITOME of stupidity. This morning, losing all grace and said good breeding, I yelled at a woman for tossing her cigarette butt callously into the street. As she wriggled her skinny tuckus away, I searched desperately for the absolutely worst epithet I could think of. “AND … YOU’RE FAT!”

Related articles:
1. Smoking Ban Without Borders
2. Read the Pre-nup Again
3. Dana Reeve, 1961-2006

Photo by Amy Eckert/Getty Images

(Part of my Green This House program.)

Rainshow’r Shower Head
Mentioned previously here, suffice to say, we love it. The hub marvels at the higher water-jet pressure despite the shower head being lower flow (due to its great many pinhole perforations). I love the pause switch that saves gallons of water during lathering, but doesn’t lose your carefully calibrated balance of hot and cold water. Plus, the dechlorinating filter, which is supposed to last six to nine months for a family of four, can be mailed to a company that will recycle it at the end of its life.

DIY Skin & Hair Care
My skin is so much happier and clearer since I began mixing up my own skin-care products, and the cost savings have been substantial. Plus, everything is completely edible, which is always the safest bet health-wise when you’re debating over what to smear on your face. I don’t even buy commercial hair conditioner at all, now, but prefer a mix of olive oil, lemon juice/apple cider vinegar, and a few drops of tea tree oil. (Occasionally I add an egg yolk.)

Newbie Gardening
I have a wee catnip seedling and an even-more wee lemon balm seedling growing in TerraNotta pots on my windowsill. A broadleaf thyme cutting I planted taught me a hard lesson about misting young leaves in the mid-afternoon and encouraging leaf burn. Poo. Oh well, ever onward, upward. Oh, I also have three lavender seeds in an Earth Plug I’m quite excited about. (Poor hub has to endure my bursts of “Grow For Me” from Little Shop of Horrors because he’s married to a complete ham.) I didn’t get to go to the farm on Sunday because we weren’t able to get a ride, but I’m sure other opportunities will arise (even if I have to put a bell on Chekhov and pretend he’s a cow). Update: Cause of plant death may in fact be Felis cattus. We made a protective cloche out of an empty cider jug.

Cat Litter
Remember our non-sustainable litter box? I finally managed to convince the hub to unplug the beastly thing. Because the corn-based cat litter we use is biodegradable and flushable, it’s easy to just scoop any kitty byproducts when we visit the bathroom and send it whooshing down the toilet. Chekhov sometimes leans over the toilet to watch, a bit aghast. Most notably, our bathroom doesn’t smell as it sometimes did before.

Bamboo Cutting Board
I am absolutely over-the-moon in love with our attractive, functional, and sustainable bamboo cutting board. It really makes it much more of a joy to prepare food on, as silly as it sounds.

“Commercialism is making people live on only the periphery of their whole beings. Things don’t make you whole and happy, they can divide and disorientate. Putting all of oneself in a task makes you real—makes you whole!” —Woman, 65, Single, Big City, Midwest, as quoted in Voluntary Simplicity: Toward a Way of Life That Is Outwardly Simple, Inwardly Rich by Duane Elgin.

• The Simple Living Network
• Frugal for Life
• The Frugal Life
• Forget the Joneses
• Getting A Life
• New American Dream
• Simple Living America
• Lifestyle for a Small Planet
• A Simple Living Primer
• Three Ways to Get Over Possession Addiction
• Living Gently Quarterly
• The Dollar Stretcher
• Jewish Simplicity
• Reasonably Simple: A Voluntary Simplicity Newsletter
• Online Organizing: Voluntary Simplicity in Your Life

Related articles:
1. What is “Voluntary Simplicity”?
2. The Golden Rule
3. Simplicity and Consumption

Photo by Trevor Wood/Getty Images

A perfect example of why biodiversity is so important, and our interconnectedness to all things, even an obscure, uncharasmatic fish species in a river in South America. From Newswise: “Dramatic population reductions of a single fish species in a South American river could degrade ecosystem function in an entire river system.”

Dramatic population reductions of a single fish species in a South American river could degrade ecosystem function in an entire river system, according to an article in the Aug. 11 issue of the journal Science.

The authors, Brad W. Taylor and Robert O. Hall Jr. of the University of Wyoming, and Cornell University’s Alexander S. Flecker, studied the ecological consequences resulting from overfishing of the flannelmouth characin, a migratory species in Rio Las Marias, one of several Andean piedmont rivers in Venezuela’s Orinoco Basin. They discuss their results in the article, “Loss of a Harvested Fish Species Disrupts Carbon Flow in a Diverse Tropical River.” …

The researchers report, “Size-selective harvesting may have long-lasting negative feedbacks on fish populations, ecosystem function, and the flow of protein to humans and other animals, eroding an important ecosystem service.”

These fish, which feed on particles deposited on the stream bottom, play a significant role in carbon flow and nutrient cycling, Taylor says. As the fish feed, they stir up, consume and egest large amounts of dissolved and particulate nutrients. The researchers say these processes are important for nutrient transport and the flow of carbon through the ecosystem, especially during the dry season when transport by floods is reduced. The researchers discovered that during a six-year period, larger migrations of the flannelmouth characin were associated with greater downstream transport of organic carbon, which is an important energy and nutrient source to downstream ecosystems.

They also identified another adverse consequence of the species decline. The bottom-feeding fish remove organic matter that shades nitrogen-fixing algae. When the fish were taken out, bacterial respiration increased, so more organic carbon was consumed and converted to carbon dioxide by bacteria rather than being transported downstream and more evenly distributed among organisms.

“The loss or decline of this fish species could extend throughout the stream network and food web, affecting populations algae, bacteria, insects and other fish species,” says Taylor.

Photo by Miguel Salmeron/Getty Images

Almost done reading Voluntary Simplicity: Toward a Way of Life That Is Outwardly Simple, Inwardly Rich by Duane Elgin, and I wanted to record the following passages, regarding simplicity and consumption, for posterity, inspiration, and future reference because it’s THAT GOOD:

To bring the quality of simplicity into our levels and patterns of consumption, we must learn to live between the extremes of poverty and excess. Simplicity is a double-edged sword in this regard: living with either too little or too much will diminish our capacity to realize our potentials. Bringing simplicity into our lives requires that we discover the ways in which our consumption either supports or entangles our existence.

Balance occurs when there is sufficiency—when there is neither material excess nor deficit. to find this balance in our everyday lives requires that we understand the difference between our personal “needs” and our “wants.” Needs are those things that are essential to our survival and growth. Wants are those things that are extra—that gratify our psychological desires. For example, we need shelter in order to survive. We may want a huge house with many extra rooms that are seldom used. We need basic medical care. We may want cosmetic plastic surgery to disguise the fact that we are getting older. We need functional clothing. We may want frequent changes in clothing style to reflect the latest fashion. We need a nutritious and well-balanced diet. We may want to eat at expensive restaurants. We need transportation. We may want a new Mercedes.

Only when we are clear about what we need and what we want can we begin to pare away the excess and find a middle ground between extremes. No one else can find this balance for us. This is a task that we each must do for ourselves.

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From my in-box:

Knit for survivors. Sue Rock Originals seeks to restore humanity to survivors of domestic abuse who still have to work, tend to children and maintain normal appearances during extraordinary times. Sue Rock Originals teams knitters, crocheters and weavers with the raw materials they need to create clothing and accessories for survivors of domestic violence. In the two years we have been in existence, volunteers have contributed over 200 pounds of shrugs, sweaters, ponchos, hat/scarf sets, gloves and handbags. Yarn companies nationwide have come to the table and contributed exquisite yarns of every color and description. Your hands can help uplift another person’s life. To contact Sue for yarn and pattern, pick up call 212-574-1422.

Photos by KarenInTheWoods at Etsy.com

I’m quite besotted with the wonderfully nubby textures of KarenInTheWoods’ handwoven rugs, which she weaves from surplus cotton or surplus sock loopers (I had to look that one up) on her 60-plus-year-old rug loom (!) They look so squishy and absorbent I wish I could knead them with my bare feet right now. (Top: Plum Gay Day, $26; bottom: Wisconsin Homestead, $36; KarenInTheWoods at Etsy.com)

If you know how to crochet, here are instructions for making a rag rug of your own. You can make a braided rug out of rags, too—KarenInTheWoods even provides a photo tutorial—a utilitarian and frugal way to dress up a bare floor in 19th century Americana fashion. Lots of inspiration here, as well. Another item on my veddy long to-do list.

Tonight’s dinner: Pasta with lemon-basil pesto and sautéed tomatoes.

Organic whole-wheat spaghetti from DeBoles, manufactured in Melville, NY, which is about 35 miles of NYC, where I picked it up. On sale, too (20 percent off, baby!)

From my CSA organic farmer: A Cherokee purple heirloom tomato, a hybrid tomato I forgot the name of, garlic, sweet onions, and lemon basil. The only non-local ingredients were the olive oil, salt, pepper, and dashes of dried herbs (rosemary, thyme, and oregano) from my spice rack.

Tasty! I do love me some lemon basil.