Posted: June 13, 2012 Filed under: Food and it's Impact on Our Health Leave a comment
Espresso Kahlua Brownies- Dairy and Gluten Free!
Cooking Time-Wasters You Should Toss in the Garbage Bowl
Posted: June 13, 2012 Filed under: In The Kitchen with Millie- How To's 1 CommentI agree with all of these except the dishwashing method; I wash by hand in two dishpans, pour the water used on my flowers or on the compost.
We do plenty of stupid things in the kitchen, including things that seem smart or helpful, but really just waste our time and make cooking and cleaning up more annoying than it needs to be. Here’s a list of kitchen time-wasters you should stop doing right now.
Cooking Too Little, Too Often: Cook larger meals like soups and stews in a crock pot or on the weekend, and pack enough away as leftovers so you don’t have to spend time cooking when you don’t want to. Check out our tips on healthy eating for people who hate cooking for more time-saving suggestions anyone—even people who love to cook—can use.
Fetishizing Manual Work and Ignoring Useful Kitchen Gear: When we asked Mark Bittman for his cooking tips, he warned against spending too much time chopping and dicing, and not embracing some kitchen workhorses—like the mandoline slicer and immersion blender—that can make cooking easier, faster, and more fun. Speaking of essential kitchen gear, check out this list of budget kitchen upgrades.
Washing Your Meat in the Sink Before Cooking: The USDA says there’s no point in rinsing meat before cooking it. However you plan to cook your meat, if you’re cooking to the appropriate internal temperature, anything on the outside will be long dead, whether your meat is headed for a searing hot pan or the oven. Rinsing meat does one thing though: it washes all of the bacteria off of the meat and all over your sink, raising the risk of cross contamination. Now excuse me, I’m off to wash down my sink.
Using Dull Blades: Dull knives are more dangerous in the kitchen than sharp ones, but they’re also more time consuming to use. Struggling to slice vegetables before you cook, sawing at meats and bread after you cook, it all adds up to precious wasted prep and eating time that could trim down the time you spend in the kitchen. Please, for time and safety’s sake, hone your knives regularly.
Millie; I use a Spyderco for sharpening my knives, easy to use, gets the angles perfect and is as well designed object as I have found…hats of to the developer!
Hand-Washing Your Dishes Before Putting Them In The Dishwasher: Not only does pre-washing dishes waste water and energy; it wastes time. Most modern dishwashers are designed to handle the tough, caked on ick all over your pots and pans, so unless you enjoy hand washing, rinse them off, wipe, and toss right in the dishwasher.
Ignoring Simple, Time-Saving Skills: The few seconds it takes to master many kitchen skills can save countless minutes in your cooking. Some favorites include:
- Use a Two-Bowl Method for Easy Kitchen Cleanup
- Peel a head of garlic in 10 seconds with two bowls
- Keep canned soups from sticking in the can with a knife
- Get the most juice from a citrus fruit
- Make spice kits for faster, more flavorful cooking
- Core a head of iceberg lettuce in three seconds flat
Sprinkle Salt While Chopping Garlic to Keep It From Sticking to Your Knife
Posted: June 13, 2012 Filed under: In The Kitchen with Millie- How To's 1 CommentFrom Lifehacker
When you start chopping garlic or any other vegetable that gets a little tacky when it’s sliced, a little salt on your cutting board is all it takes to keep it from sticking to your knife while you dice. Plus, keeping the garlic on the cutting board means a more even, fine dice with less effort, and some cooks will tell you the salt helps extract the oils from the garlic as well, boosting the flavor of the dish you add it to.
Dessert Tasting at Green Man Gourmet June 16th
Posted: June 11, 2012 Filed under: In The Kitchen with Millie- How To's Leave a comment
Please join me at Green Man Gourmet in Avondale on Saturday, June 16th for Tasting of Gluten and Lactose Free Desserts from 1:00 to 4:00 PM.
These luscious desserts are healthy and taste amazing! You would never guess they are gluten and lactose free!
Green Man Gourmet is one of Jacksonville’s best gourmet retail establishments. The range of salt’s alone will wow you along with a wonderful array of herbs, spices, teas, wines, beers and gourmet foods.
Green Man Gourmet
Say NO to Straws
Posted: June 11, 2012 Filed under: Food and it's Impact on Our Health Leave a comment
Imagine it’s a busy hot sunny Summer day all day and at the moment, a nice, cold lemonade sounds completely satisfying. You then proceed to grab a reusable cup, dump some ice into the cup, pour the lemonade into the cup, grab a straw, and sit down, relax, and enjoy. Now, there is nothing wrong with enjoying a nice beverage, however there was one step in the process you could leave out: Step 4 – Grab a straw.
Straws are made up of plastic that almost 100% of the time will never be recycled. By not using straws at home, you will be doing a number of things to help the environment including, reducing the amount of pollution made during the production of straws as well as reducing the amount of non-recyclable waste you dump into the landfill.
Check out more at a great little blog on Environmental Issues-
http://blog.ctnews.com/ego/page/6/
Getting Your Monies Worth…and Saving Resources
Posted: June 11, 2012 Filed under: Non-Toxic Choices Leave a comment
Yesterday my son threw away a ketchup bottle and a toothpaste tube. The ketchup bottle had another serving it it, about 1 1/2 Tablespoons. I grabbed it and turned it upside down on the counter and used the rest last night.
I took the toothpaste tube and showed him how much product was being thrown away.
Americans throw away 1 BILLION toothpaste tubes a year, along with shampoo, conditioner, and lotion bottles. On average, they leave 10% of the product in them. Not only does this waste the earths resources, it wastes your money!
Recycling your used toothpaste container helps you go green because…
- It keeps usable materials out of the landfill.
- It provides resources to the post-consumer manufacturing industry, and requires fewer virgin resources for the creation of new products.
- It saves energy and water since creating products from recycled materials is less resource-intensive.
About 1 billion toothpaste tubes are sent to landfills every year, many of which are recyclable. Toothpaste tubes are generally made of with aluminum or plastic. Recycling aluminum instead of mining and processing virgin ore results in energy savings of up to 95 percent. The process of converting raw bauxite (the source of aluminum that makes up 8 percent of the earth’s crust) into aluminum is an energy-consuming one, requiring roughly 7.5 kilowatt hours for each pound of virgin aluminum. In addition, reusing aluminum means that less bauxite needs to be procured to create new materials: open-cast mining of bauxite leads to deforestation and destruction of ecosystems.
Plastic is not biodegradable, taking up to 700 years before beginning to decompose.Recycling plastics keeps this non-biodegradable waste out of landfills and can reduce energy consumption by 70 percent. Recycling paper products, like cardboard packaging, results in energy savings of 40 percent.
Cut open those containers with scissors, use the rest of the product, them wash and recycle it!
Also, use a Squeeze It to get more paste out of that tube!
Millie; Since toothpaste is highly toxic I use Neem Tooth Powder, it comes in a jar that I reuse. It is FAR less expensive than toothpaste and whitens as well as being an anti-bacterial agent that promotes gum health. Their Neem Mouthwash is also wonderful and so are their lives plants and seeds! Neem Tree Farms
More options for recycling;
Do you ever find yourself wanting to do the right thing… use less and recycle more, but find that your recycling system can’t quite accommodate your sensibilities?
Well, here’s a list that may help make life easier! Between curbside recycling, these 5 recyclers and good old fashioned waste not want not thinking, you can bring your waste quotient down to almost zero!
It may require a periodic trip to a local retailer or a few postage stamps, but when you account for how much trash can be diverted from the landfill or how much less smoke could be produced by incinerators, I’m sure it will be worth it!
1. TerraCycle – M&M wrappers, Starbucks coffee bags, toothpaste tubes, flips flops and more!
TerraCycle has teamed up with scientists and designers to figure out how to take almost any packaging and turn it into fashion, home and other products!
Through their Brigades program, schools, communities, groups can collect all sorts of hard to recycle or normally non-recyclable products, send them to TerraCycle (for free), earn points, and know that their ‘waste’ will be recycled or upcycled into other useful products. The company manages to divert BILLIONS of pieces of waste from landfills and incinerators!
Candy wrappers, Colgate toothpaste tubes, brushes and packaging, Lay’s chip bags, coffee bags, Garnier product containers, and even flip flops…!
The full list is unbelievable. You can find it at TerraCycle Bridgades.
CD Recycling Center of America – CDs, DVDS, outdated CD software, ABBA, BeeGees…
Remember when CDs came with everything? That was so 1990′s. Today, millions of CDs and DVDs end up in landfills or incinerated.
The CD Recycling Center of America accepts and recycles discs, the paper booklet and any other paper or cardboard that comes with the disc. The CDs and DVDs are processed, the metal and plastic are separated, and the remaining plastic is used in automotive and building materials industries.
Not sure it’s worth the effort? Just collect your unwanted CDs and DVDS fro six months. Tell your friends you’re collecting and ship them off at once. It will cost you a few dollars at the post office, but think of how much waste you can keep from the landfill.
Send your CDs and DVDs to:
The Compact Disc Recycling Center of America
68E Stiles Road
Salem, NH 03079
Whole Foods and Preserve – Brita filters, yogurt cups
Yes, I know. Some refer to Whole Foods as whole paycheck, but if you can get past that, you should check out the Preserve Gimme5 recycling program. They have partnered with Preserve, Stoneyfield (yogurt) and Brita to collect yogurt cups and Brita filters for recycling.
I don’t know if you realize this, but most curbside recycling does not accept yogurt cups or other plastics with the number “5″ on the bottom. If you toss those in with the recycling, they will just end up in the landfill.
The recycled materials are turned into razors, very cool toothbrushes (the handles) and takeout containers.
Don’t have a Whole Foods near you? Check out this list of other Gimme 5 participating markets. You can also mail items to:
Preserve Gimme 5
823 NYS Rte 13
Cortland, NY 13045
Call2Recycle – antiquated cell phones, rechargeable batteries that won’t recharge…
Do you have old cell phones or rechargeable batteries to get rid of?
This is the one service, of those listed here, that I haven’t used yet. But, they provide pretty good detail about the who, what when, where and how. They offer a great deal of information about recycling, in general.
According to their website,
New batteries and stainless steel products are made from the precious metals recovered from used batteries. Cell phones are recycled, refurbished and/or resold. None of the broken down material makes its way into landfills.
Ready to drop off old cell phones and batteries? Call2Recycle has partnered with many well known retail outlets including: RadioShack, Ace Hardware, Apple and Home Depot.
You can find a location near you using the Call2Recycle drop off locator.
Little Cognitive Benefit from Soy Supplements for Older Women
Posted: June 8, 2012 Filed under: Food and it's Impact on Our Health, Non-Toxic Choices Leave a comment
In case you are eating soy thinking that it will help you stay mentally sharp, read this. Along with all the other reasons to not eat soy, this should help convince you that here is little reason to include this toxic food in your diet.
ScienceDaily (June 4, 2012) — In a new study of the effects of soy supplements for postmenopausal women, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the USC Keck School of Medicine found no significant differences — positive or negative — in overall mental abilities between those who took supplements and those who didn’t.
While questions have swirled for years around a possible link between soy consumption and changes in cognition, this research offers no evidence to support such claims. "There were no large effects on overall cognition one way or another," said the study’s lead author, Victor Henderson, MD, professor of health research and policy and of neurology and neurological sciences at Stanford.
The findings from the 2.5-year study in middle-aged and older women, which was larger and longer than any previous trials on soy use, appear in the June 5 issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The results are in line with the largest previous study in this area: a 12-month trial of Dutch women during which daily soy intake showed "no significant effect on cognitive endpoints." That work was published in a 2004 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
More reading;
Soy Alert! Brochure
Tragedy and Hype: Third International Soy Symposium
Complaints About Soy
Studies Showing Adverse Effects of Isoflavones, 1950-2010
FAQ-Soy
The Ploy of Soy
Bananas Are as Beneficial as Sports Drinks, Study Suggests
Posted: June 6, 2012 Filed under: Food and it's Impact on Our Health, Non-Toxic Choices Leave a comment
ScienceDaily (May 29, 2012) — Bananas have long been a favorite source of energy for endurance and recreational athletes. Bananas are a rich source of potassium and other nutrients, and are easy for cyclists, runners or hikers to carry.
Research conducted at Appalachian State University’s Human Performance Lab in the Kannapolis-based North Carolina Research Campus (NCRC) has revealed additional benefits.
"We wanted to see which was more beneficial when consumed during intense cycling — bananas or a carbohydrate sports drink," said Dr. David C. Nieman, director of the human performance lab and a member of the College of Health Sciences faculty at Appalachian.
"We found that not only was performance the same whether bananas or sports drinks were consumed, there were several advantages to consuming bananas," he said.
The bananas provided the cyclists with antioxidants not found in sports drinks as well as a greater nutritional boost, including fiber, potassium and Vitamin B6, the study showed. In addition, bananas have a healthier blend of sugars than sports drinks.
A Better Sunscreen- Totally Natural, Non-Toxic
Posted: June 4, 2012 Filed under: Non-Toxic Choices Leave a commentI’m sure you have been following the info recently of how toxic sunscreen is. Here is a link to an article published today in EWG’s Skin Deep Blog.
Nanomaterials and Hormone Disrupters in Sunscreens
If you have not discovered Environmental Working Groups’ site then please take a look. You can use their huge database of beauty and personal care products to check the ingredient and toxicity of almost any product you can think of!
Several years ago I began looking for a non-toxic sunscreen when I was going sailing off the coast of Venezuela. I normally do not use any but new my sun exposure was going to be intense. This is the product I found and still use occasionally.
A sunscreen that not only protects the skin from the harmful effects of the sun but also provides hydration so that your skin glows with health and youthful vitality.
Want to know more?
UV Natural is a new skin product formulated from completely natural derived ingredients and Zinc Oxide to screen the sun’s harmful rays.
Light and pure, UVnatural is formulated to also moisturize and soften the skin. UVnatural products are Fragrance and Preservative free.
UV Natural products include:
• UV Natural Sunscreen SPF 30+ (water resistant)
• UV Natural Baby SPF 30+ (water resistant)
• UV Natural Sport 30+ (very water resistant)
• UV Natural Lip sunscreen (water resistant)
• UV Natural Sport Lip Sunscreen (very water resistant)
• UV Natural Sunscreen SPF 15
• UV Natural Sun and Body Oil
The UVnatural range of sunscreen products are listed with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Meal Delivery Service by Millie Barnes 