Review of LivPure Water Bottle

I bought this thing at Walgreens because I was unaware that such things existed.  A water bottle with a filtration system?  Ideal!  I’ve been looking for a water bottle for some time, because the metal one I own gives drinks a weird taste, and I’m scared of most bottles that are made of #7 plastic (the last thing I need is to have more problems with my knockers.)  The LivPure bottle is periwinkle and pretty and looks like it knows what it is doing, but, then, I’m very susceptible to advertising.  It claims that it will help you save money and the planet by keeping you from buying tons of water bottles that cost an arm and a leg and which, if you are someone other than my badass recycling self, get thrown in a trash can and end up in a landfill.  90% of bottled water bottles get chucked- and every single one of them is recyclable, since bottled water comes encased in #1 plastic.  Anyway, this hippie thought that this water bottle could be okay, although after having lived in Phoenix, Arizona, home of the most chlorinated water known to man, I wasn’t sure if anything save the wrath of God could make tap water taste better in the city.

The bottle’s okay; it smells like new plastic, but that doesn’t seem to make the water taste like new plastic.  You fill it up, screw the cap back on, tilt it upside down over your mouth, and squeeze.  It is not a user-friendly suck-bottle.  If you are the type who has an oral fixation and NEEDS to suck on a water bottle for your refreshment I suggest you search elsewhere… the instructions say to “squeeze gently”, which is the only way the water’s coming out on its own.  Otherwise you’re left with a slight drip- that is, if you’re lucky.

The taste doesn’t seem to be greatly improved.  At best it tastes like tap water not tainted with chlorine, which I guess is all you can ask for.  I don’t know what makes water taste the way it does.  I don’t know if it’s just a placebo effect or what.  I DO know that city tap water is balls, but I’m not sure of the science that makes bottled water TASTE any better.  Maybe it’s the lack of fluoride, hormones and chemicals.  Then again, maybe not.

So as taste goes, I’m not over the moon.  Maybe I should try this in Arizona.  Overall, the difficulty transferring water from bottle to mouth, combined with the unimpressive taste-altering capabilities, I’d say this one’s a dud; however, for $12, with a filter that presumably acts as a filter should- and this review relies on that alone- the bottle’s worth it.  Let’s face it- most water tastes like crap.  The peace of mind of filtering is worth the dough.  And hey, at least you’re not wasting bottles.

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Awesome Broccoli Quiche in Potato Crust

I made this last night and am dying to share.  It’s a great hearty recipe, and the potatoes act as an excellent crust.

One 10 ounce package of frozen chopped broccoli, thawed & squeezed dry (tofu note: i cooked this in a little saucepan for a few minutes to thaw it and drained the water; it didn’t seem to make a difference)
1 cup shredded Cheddar or  Swiss cheese
1 cup of cottage cheese (tofu note: the 1 lb size comes to just over a cup… with nibbles left for the cook!)
4 eggs OR 1 cup of fat free egg substitute
1/4 cup of finely chopped onion (tofu note: about 2/3 of a smallish yellow onion did it for me, but then i love onions)
1-1/2 teaspoon of Dijon mustard
1/8 teaspoon of black pepper
2 medium potatoes, scrubbed (tofu note: I used 2 red potatoes about the size of a fist, and they worked out fairly well.  I still had some potato left over.)

Combine all of the ingredients except for the potatoes in a large bowl, and stir to mix well.  Set aside.  Coat a 9 inch deep dish pie pan with nonstick cooking spray.  Slice the potatoes 1/4 inch thick, and arrange the slices in a single layer over the bottom and sides of the pan to form a crust.  (tofu note: I cut some potato slices in half to make half-moon shapes and lined the pan on the edges with those pieces, rounded parts down.  The eggs fill in the cracks, so it isn’t essential to have it perfectly covered.)  Pour the broccoli mixture into the crust. (tofu note: The mixture should be thick and will pour easily into the pan without being runny.)  Bake at 375ºF  for about 45 minutes, or until the top is golden brown and a sharp knife inserted in the center of the quiche comes out clean.  Remove the dish from the oven, and let sit for 5 minutes before slicing and serving.  Serves five as a side dish or, in my case, two really hungry people.

quiche!

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Meat-Eating Environmentalist?

Here’s an interesting article from EarthFirst.com titled “Meat-Eating Environmentalist: A Contradiction in Terms?“  This is one that you meat-eaters should pay attention to, especially if you feel that your carbon footprint is small.  An excerpt:

Consider these facts:

  • The livestock sector is responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions globally.  Cows emit vast amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere – and the impact of these emissions is greater than that of CO2 from cars.
  • Animals raised for food in the U.S. produce 130 times more excrement than the human population.
  • Each and every year, factory farms dump 220 billion gallons of hormone-, antibiotic- and bacteria-laden animal waste onto farmland and into waterways.
  • Pfiesteria, a microscopic organism that feeds off the phosphorus and nitrogen found in manure, is a lethal toxin harmful to both humans and fish. In 1991 alone, 1,000,000,000,000 (one billion) fish were killed by pfiesteria in the Neuse River in North Carolina.

Go read it.

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The “Recession” Diet

Today at BBC News:

McDonald’s has said that its global sales are rising, as more people turn to fast food during the recession.

/shake head

Okay, okay, everyone knows that McDonalds is a global demon sent to make the fat fatter and the poor poorer.  Sure.  I’m used to that obviousness.

Thanks to the film Super Size Me, the chemical composition of McDonalds’ french fries has been called into question.  I was a tidbit upset when I watched that part of the film, quite frankly.  Back when I still ate at McDonalds, I loved McDonalds fries.  Many people do.  They’re chewy and salty and when hot are especially delicious.  If you ignore the fact that if you get them less than piping hot they taste like styrofoam, and the fact that a large order of fries (my usual) has 500 calories, you can say the fries forgive themselves by yummy alone.  Okay.  Okay.

However, I think the best way to sum up this idea was a Fark Photoshop of a McDonalds sign that read: “Hey poor people, vegetables are not more expensive than burgers.  Go buy some”

It sounds callous.  But for, shall I say, fucking fuck’s sake, don’t give me excuses about healthy food being expensive.  It’s not.

When I lived in Venezuela, an extremely poor country, meat was the luxury.  Red meat especially.  Vegetables were commonplace.

“But Tofu Cutie!” you cry.  “This is not Venezuela!  I am broke, and I am so hungry!  Why would I buy tomatoes and squash when I could get a full day’s worth of calories at McDonalds for practically nothing?”

Several reasons.

1. The idea that McDonalds is inexpensive is one that boggles me.  For people who are not buying a Big ‘n’ Tasty off the dollar menu and being satisfied with that, McDonalds is not cheap.  When I ate there I would order a grilled chicken sandwich meal, which came to at least $6.  If I made it a large it’d be at least $7.  You can get a Chipotle (veggie) burrito for that, which fills you up just as well- and for longer.

Then again, maybe everyone is buying a Big ‘n’ Tasty off the dollar menu.

2. Because fast food has taken over our lives, the concept of grocery shopping for longevity is one that most people do not consider.  Living in the country as a kid, we bought groceries to last for 2 weeks.  Think very hard.  Could you go 2 weeks without going to the grocery store?

So look at it this way.  Say I and my boyfriend go to McDonalds and have the aforementioned selection each.  That is $14 (at least) for ONE MEAL.  If we really stretch it and only eat that, it could be a day’s worth of food.  Sure.  Now go to the grocery store and see what you can get for $14.  If you do it right, you can get rice, pasta and vegetables for the same amount.  Have you ever had squash in pasta?  It’s delicious and cheap.  One bunch of spinach usually costs about $1 and is enough for two very large salads (and spinach is one of the best things in the world for you.)

3. Shut up about  being hungry.  Seriously.  Instant gratification is one thing that has made fast food desirable.  Imagine eating a 1500-calorie meal and then feeling hungry again in two hours.  And if you’re not as concerned about calories as I am, you might feel a bit gypped that you ate a greasy, disgusting meal and now feel the strong urge to go eat another one.  Especially at $7 a pop.

Fiber, good fats, complex carbohydrates and protein are what fill you up.  Fast food usually can’t boast these things.  SO- drawing back to the main point- what do you do, if you’re dying of hunger and also dying of poverty?

I suggest rice.  Eating a serving of rice with one of my favorite Trader Joe’s version of Tasty Bites (packaged Indian food; usually $1.99 at Trader Joe’s) will make me so full I won’t be able to move for a few hours.

Enough of this.  Maybe more tomorrow.  Time to relax.  Basic point: hey poor people, vegetables are not more expensive than burgers.  Go buy some.  And if your broke ass can’t live without its animal flesh, at least buy hamburger and make your own at home.  There’s something to be said about cooking being good for you.

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Sorry, you can’t blame the hippies on this one.

An article in the New York Times’ Green Inc. blog, titled Biodiesel Congeals, School Buses Stall, very brilliantly states:

Biodiesel congeals at low temperatures, as John Jones, the transit director for the Summit Stage bus service in the Colorado mountains told me. He stopped using biodiesel in the winter after one of his buses filled with drunken revelers — and fueled by a biodiesel blend — stalled on the interstate in the middle of a frigid winter night.

First, you’re missing a comma.

Second, I can’t believe that an entire alternative energy solution would be abandoned after one night- especially if it was only “drunken revelers” that suffered (as opposed to bottle-fed puppies or the like.)  That’s the U.S. for you.  Brilliant in theory, squeamish in practice.

Third, any idiot with the internet and even a mild interest in biodiesel will have read that it congeals in winter.  Of COURSE it does.  People know this.  About.com tells you.  Hippies tell you.  Biodiesel.org and make-biodiesel.org, two sites that I presume are all about biodiesel, tell you.  Clearly.  Google “about biodiesel in winter” and you get a plethora of helpful information.

If my unprofessional little ass can research it, while tabbing back and forth between my browser, a chat conversation with my father, and the entire five seasons of Daria, then surely John Jones, whose job it was to research this before he put it into action- presumably- could have Googled it as well.

I feel no pity for your drunken revelers.

I’m not a fan of biodiesel.  I’d rather we look for a source of energy which didn’t require killing the earth.  Or maybe we could kill two birds with one stone and solve our obesity problem too by walking to work or riding a bicycle or if we’re really fat and lazy, take public transportation.  (It costs me $4, or 2 bus rides, to go to work and back.  With today’s gas prices, even after they’ve dropped, I couldn’t drive for less than that.)

However, I loved how Minnesota officials were very quick to jump to the conclusion that it was the hippie fuel mucking up their bus system.  The article’s writer updated her post to say:

UPDATE 1/23 12:10pm: The National Biodiesel Board emailed me to draw attention to a report released today that says that diesel, rather than biodiesel, what what stalled the school buses. The study was paid for by Yokum Oil, the fuel distributor. “We found that whatever was plugging the filters was not biodiesel, but a substance found in petroleum,” the brief report states.

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A Compact Guide to Recycling

Recycling is a word that’s in everyone’s vocabulary, but for people who don’t do it, it can seem overwhelming when you want to get started.  There are plenty of great books out there to read if you want a more comprehensive guide to recycling (such as Taking Out the Trash or Bottle Cap Activities: Recreational Recycling) but here’s a quick blog to give you the smartest facts in a compact way to get you started.

What Can Be Recycled
One thing that trips a lot of people up about recycling is figuring out what gets recycled and what can’t.  Different facilities accept different things, so check with your closest one before bringing anything.  Glass, for example, is fully recyclable, but some facilities don’t like to recycle it because it damages the machines and eats at their resources.

Paper
Paper is one of the most commonly recycled items.  Paper fibers can be recycled about 7 times before the fibers get too small.  In 2007, 56% of paper produced was recycled.  And if you buy recycled paper- you’re reducing the production and saving trees even more.  Here are paper products that can be recycled:

  • Magazines (pre-1980 we did not have the technology to recycle these, but things have changed and most centers take them now)
  • Mail (make sure to take out staples or paper clips to reduce problems with the machines on the recycling end of it)
  • Phone books (phone book pages also make an excellent substitute for styrofoam packing peanuts)
  • Computer paper
  • Newsprint (in its original form; if you have used the newspaper for pet cages or otherwise, it can’t be recycled)
  • Brown paper bags (these are still available at grocery stores; most of them require you to ask)
  • Cardboard (cannot be recycled if contaminated with food or oil)
  • Catalogs (all municipal recycling programs accept them)
  • Paperboard (used to make cereal boxes and the like)
  • Wrapping paper
  • Gift bags

Paper that CANNOT be recycled includes books (some programs accept them, but the glue in the binding makes them difficult), stickers, waxed paper, laminated paper, neon paper, fast food wrappers, drink boxes, milk cartons, and carbon paper.

Plastics
Plastics are another area of recycling that can get confusing.  Each plastic is made of a different type of resin.  Some plastics are much easier to recycle than others.  Look on your plastic bottle or container to see what number it has inside the little triangle (this is most commonly found on the bottom of a bottle or container.)  Plastics that can be recycled easily are numbers 1, 2, and 5.

Not sure about packaging?  Plastic packaging is one of the largest types of waste produced in the U.S.  Here are the numbers for common plastic packagings:

  • #3: This is PVC, or PolyVinyl Chloride, most often found in the films around meat and in shrink wraps, PVC piping, and vinyl products.
  • #4: LDPE, used for bread bags, plastic bags and food wraps
  • #6: PS, most commonly seen in Styrofoam, used in egg cartons, meat trays, Styrofoam packing peanuts, plastic cups, and CD cases.  What the fuck: 3 million tons of styrofoam was produced in 2000, and 2.3 million tons of that was thrown away.  If you stop using styrofoam, less styrofoam will be produced.
  • #7: most often seen in reusable water bottles and baby bottles.  #7 plastic is labelled as such because it doesn’t fall into the other plastic categories.  This means you don’t always know what you’re getting in the product, and this plastic has proved very controversial.  Educate yourself before buying #7 products.

Here are some plastic items that can be recycled:

  • Plastic bottles (these are the most versatile plastics and are easily recycled, and yet we constantly throw them away; it took 17 million barrels of oil to produce the plastic bottles we wasted in 2006)
  • Plastic bags (the most common pollutant in many countries, these are mixed with sawdust and made into “plastic wood”; many stores have places to bring plastic bags now, including Walgreens, Walmart, Safeway and Target.  Caron recycles them into yarn)
  • PVC and vinyl (accepted at limited locations; check with your recycling plant)
  • Plastic casing on appliances like televisions (this happens when recycling the entire unit; again, check with your recycling plant)
  • #6 plastic that is NOT styrofoam

You must separate your plastics properly.  If you don’t, one wrong item could contaminate the entire batch and the effort would be wasted.

Glass
Glass is another popular recycled item because it is 100% recyclable.  Most glass bottles are made from recycled glass and glass can be recycled endlessly.  Glass comes in four colours: green, brown, blue, and clear.  Glass must be separated by colour when being recycled, because glasses are almost never mixed.  Here are some glass products that can be recycled:

  • Blue glass: this beautiful glass is made when cobalt is added to molten glass.  It is used to make cosmetics bottles, certain water bottles and some wine bottles.
  • Green glass: a popular choice for beer and wine bottles because of its range in shades and ability to prevent sun damage to contents.
  • Brown glass: found most commonly in beer bottles.
  • Clear glass: used for solid and liquid containers, alcohol bottles, jars, and numerous other things.

Glass that can’t be recycled includes ceramics, pyrex, tablware, windows, lightbulbs, mirrors, and broken glass.  Most products like mirrors that contain glass have been treated with chemicals.

I hope this shed a little light on the topic.  Earth911 is a fantastic site to find out what you can recycle and where.  It has information on topics I didn’t cover, like hazardous chemicals and metal recycling.  It also provides a ton of information on every aspect of the process.

Happy recycling.

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Compact Composting

Living in an apartment has its perks- the location, the price, the beautiful sounds of your upstairs neighbors moving their furniture.  However, for those souls enmeshed in city life who yearn to get back to the garden, certain aspects of actual gardening can be made difficult by the lack of space.  I grew up in Montana, with a large compost heap that served its purpose well.  It was a great way to recycle plant and food wastes and it enriched the already fertile Rocky Mountain soil.  The best part was spreading it out and then having the chickens spend all day in the garden area, taking what they wanted from it and adding what could politely be called “their nutrient-rich droppings” to the soil.  In other words, they shat everywhere and that helped things a lot.

Since I have no enormous garden here, nor an enormous compost heap to accompany it, I decided to create my own mini-composter out of pop bottles.  There are instructions everywhere on the internet about how to do this, but this is how I did it for myself.  It doesn’t follow all the same steps, but it worked for me previously and I hope it’ll work just as well for me now.

Supplies needed:

1. At least two liter soda bottles (I used three, but only because I messed up the first one)
2. Clear packing tape (for better visibility) or any heavy tape like duct tape
3. A nail or pushpin
4. Scissors or a knife

First, I washed the soda bottles and removed the labels.  The diagrams here show the bottles with caps, but the caps should be thrown away.

Then, I used the scissors to cut them like so:

bottle1Then, I flipped the top piece of the first bottle and wedged it inside the bottom piece.

bottle2

Then, I fit the middle piece from the second bottle on top.  This can be a little tricky.  Sometimes I find that cutting the bottom of a piece to wedge it inside works.  Since the entire thing gets taped, it’s all right if it’s a little wobbly to start.

bottle3Then, I add the top piece from the second bottle to the whole thing.  This part doesn’t get taped, because you need to remove it to insert food items.

bottle4You’re going to want to tape the two places where the bottles were fit into each other.  Wrap the tape well to make the composter strong.  Then, take a heated nail or a push pin (it’s easier if it’s hot, but a push pin will still do) and make holes in the top sections of the composter.  This allows oxygen to get in and assist the bacteria that will break down the waste into compost.

Things that are stellar to put in compost (which, if aerated properly, should not smell):

-Fruit and vegetables- rotten stuff, tops and pieces, peels
-plant trimmings
-dead plants
-sawdust
-eggshells
-teabags
-coffee grinds
-newspaper bits

Things to avoid putting in your compost (these items will make your compost STINK):

-Meat or bones
-poop from meat-eating species (dogs, cats)
-bread or pasta (they get slimy)
-magazine bits
-plastic or synthetic fibers
-cat litter

Sit back and watch nature work!  Composting is basically a human-provoked accelleration of what nature does on its own.  In nature, plants grow where the soil is rich, and the only ones that grow are those that need to.  They die and decompose and enrich the earth for the next time around.  When creating an artificial environment, such as a garden, it is necessary to enrich the soil to grow a larger amount of plants properly.  Most people do this with harmful chemical fertilizers that leach into water systems and grow plants that are large but weak.

A great website about composting is Recycleworks.

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Evil Banana, part 2

I am anti-banana for the sake of all of us.

Hot banana
Bananas like it hot, hot, hot.  Sweltering hot with dripping air.  They also require loose soil and piles of nutrients.  Like many crops in the region, the demand for bananas invites the razing of rainforests to grow them on the land.  Crop rotation is limited in these areas and within a few years the soils are exhausted and the bananas just up and quit growing.  It’s been pounded into us how we need to save the rainforests.  I think you can get the idea there.  But that’s not all…

Poison
Bananas are sensitive.  Not only do they cry at your jokes, they’re also heavily prone to disease.  Being grown in locations where they aren’t meant to be grown, to satisfy the banana lust of a hungry world (the average American eats 28 pounds of bananas per year) means that bananas are susceptible to pests they had never as a species anticipated when evolving to fit in their original world.  Nematodes love them, fungus loves them, and pesticide companies love them.  Bananas get sauced around 40 times with pesticides while they’re being grown.  As if that wasn’t enough, they’re coated with fungicide before they’re shipped to arrive pretty for our grocery store shelves.  This doesn’t just affect the banana- the workers applying it and handling the bananas get exposed to these neurotoxic poisons repeatedly.  Tracy Baxter notes:

“And a recent University of Costa Rica study found that women who work in banana-packaging plants have a high risk of developing cancer and leukemia and of bearing children with genetic defects.”

But bananas are the food of life!

Several groups have taken steps to reduce the damage that growing bananas does to the areas surrounding the plantations, but we’re still a long way off.

BUT WHAT ABOUT POTASSIUM
When I mentioned my anti-banana stance the other day to a coworker, she replied, “But they’re the only way you can get potassium!”  What?

Potassium is very important.  Its main purpose seems to be helping the kidneys function, but it also benefits your entire body.  Bananas, while touted as containing piles of it, are NOT the only source.  There are a variety of delicious ways to get your recommended daily intake of potassium, including:

  • potatoes
  • yogurt
  • soybeans
  • molasses
  • squash
  • spinach
  • peaches
  • apricots
  • cantaloupe
  • lentils

We can expand beyond the banana, you know.  Give the poor thing a rest and let it go back to minding is business in the places it was originally meant to grow.

</rant>

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Gone Bananas

How the United States has become the chief endorser for everything under the sun that’s evil is beyond me.  It’s one thing to know it’s evil.  But bananas are an evil that has been under the radar for ages.

I know.  It’s almost un-American to dislike the banana.  But bananas were never hawked to the American public until 1876, a hundred years after our country was born.  The banana is a tropical fruit.  We forget that because it’s as common on our shelves as Kleenex.

The banana itself is not evil.  It’s the cultural ideals surrounding it that are.  “Banana republic” is not just a catchy brand of clothing.  The term itself refers to countries that are unstable and which rely mainly on one crop for their livelihood- in this case, bananas.  Several examples of banana republics are Nicaragua, Guatemala, Ecuador, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador.  The livelihood is most often provided by Chiquita, previously United Fruit, which is the leading distributor of bananas in the United States.

Chiquita
Chiquita started off as United Fruit and experienced its first taste of scandal in 1975, when the then-owner, Eli Black, bribed the Honduran government to lower its banana export tax.  When this was revealed, the Honduran government collapsed, and Black offed himself.  A classy end for a classy guy.

But that’s not all!  In 1998, the Cincinnati Enquirer published an enormous piece of work telling how bad Chiquita really was.  Chiquita whipped out its pocketbook and set the hounds loose, nipping the story in the bud.  One of the writers, Michael Gallagher, had stolen piles of voicemails from the Chiquita system.  The Enquirer issued an enormous apology and paid Chiquita a cool ten million.  The funny thing is, though, is that the information acquired was rarely ever questioned, and Chiquita has issued no outright denial of anything the paper said- nothing about the harmful pesticides used, the treatment of workers, the exploitation of countries, the allowance of drugs on Chiquita ships.

To protect its precious skin, Chiquita, over a period of seven years, gave money to Colombian paramilitary groups and was subsequently fined twenty-five million dollars.  That’s right, folks.  To all you red-blooded patriots out there, Chiquita gave money to groups listed on the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.  Bananas for terrorism!

The poor precious banana, once a tropical delicacy, had become a weapon.  Leave it to us to do something so tacky.

The company is faced with a number of allegations, including hiring private militias, the use of highly toxic pesticides, and violating the basic rights of its workers.  For something so simple as a banana, all this nasty business seems a bit over the top.  I’ll continue the discussion of the evil banana culture in my next entry.

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Mother Earth, we love you

robin red-breast

robin red-breast

It’s lovely that “green” has become fashionable.  Whatever works, right?

The truth is, there are so many things we are doing that are hurting the Earth, and we remain completely in the dark about the mechanics of them.  I’m not an expert.  I’m an everyday girl like so many people- I work in an office, I play with my cats, I worry about my waistline.  I’m a vegetarian, I knit, I object to bananas (more on that to come.)  All I know is that there is a ridiculous amount of damage being done that I can do something to change.  This blog is a catalog of my efforts and will serve to educate whoever wants to learn on the subjects I know about firsthand.  If you’d like to know more about something, please, email me and I’ll see what I can dredge up.

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