Green Talk

Remember when Halloween was simple and fun?

For the past couple of years I have noticed that Halloween paraphernalia is everywhere. You can’t hide  or run from the numerous goblins, ghost, jack-o’-lanterns, or witches.  They will track you down in your grocery stores, drug stores and garden stores.   They even have their own club in the name of “The Halloween Store.” Am I stuck in a  Freddie Krueger movie from September to  Halloween?

What amazes me is why do we need to have thousands of items to decorate our houses?  Some houses are decorated as much as they are for Christmas. Lights, pumpkins, scary music, and ghosts galore.  Halloween is definitely competing with Christmas for the amount of decorations used.

When I was a child, we had a pumpkin.  Period.  I am curious as to why Halloween has been elevated in status.  Is it because Halloween brings out the kids in us?  Do we define fun by how much we can buy to decorate our lives?  Is it all window dressing, readers?

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This week’s Tomato Harvest.

I am not ready to let summer go.  The last day of summer was this week; however, it seems like summer has been gone for a whole month.  Since August, the nights have already started getting cooler.  Once September rolls around, the nights seems a little nippy to me. Reaching for my coat, brought sadden to my heart since I knew that frost was right around the corner and the end of my garden was in sight.

It seems just like yesterday, I was planting my spring crop. I eagerly wait for Mother’s Day since the fear of frost is hopefully past. (Some eagerly wait for Mother’s Day for the breakfast in bed and kisses and hugs. I am lucky I get a grunt that is supposed to mean “Happy Mother’s Day from my kids.)

With a snap of a finger, by August the nights seems to get cooler and I know that fall is right around the corner. I always lament that I wish I had a greenhouse since I am never ready for summer to end. My endless lists (according to my kids) never seemed to be completed by the end of gardening season.  Isn’t the saying from Mae West, “too little time, too many men?”  Well, I can adapt that to “too little time and too much to grow.”

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Clorox, the North American parent of Brita, is urging Americans to take the pledge to reduce their use of plastic water bottles via their Filter For Good website, in partnership with Nalgene.  They have several commercials depicting our love affair with plastic disposable water bottles in our daily routine, whether at the gym or playing ball.  Such slogans as “thirty minutes on the treadmill, forever in a landfill,” or “an hour on the court, forever in a landfill,” drives home the reality that the vast majority of  bottles end up in a landfills.  More specifically, Americans sent 38 billion water bottles to landfills in 2006. ¹

However, I find this campaign to be ironic.  The Company is asking us to stop sending water bottles to landfills, but on the other hand, its plastic filters that purifies the water are ending up there anyways.  Why? Clorox does not take back its own filters. Watch this video by Jeph and Dorothy of Studio Freshh that nicely sums up the implications.

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Stop making that face as you read my title. You know the “ewww” face.  And no, I have not lost all of my marbles although I have to admit some might be missing.  So, how can you reduce your energy consumption and help save the Planet? Isn’t obvious? Eat your food cold instead of heating it up.

Okay, not everything is going to taste great cold, but I could name one dish that it delish cold.  Well, I could name a few.  SPAGHETTI and MEAT SAUCE.  Stop making that face again. It gives me the creeps.

Today, I was so hungry and I remembered that we had spaghetti and meat sauce in the refrigerator. I tend to eat dinner leftovers for lunch.   I methodically put in only a cup of spaghetti in a glass container for the microwave since carbs make me gain weight.   (I usually don’t use the microwave that much unless I need food heated up quickly. I worry that microwaves destroy the food nutrients. See this article.)

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September 17th is my official birthday, although I celebrate it with my friends before my birthday and after my birthday.  Some make birthday resolutions.  Others hide from the day because it is one more candle on the cake. Who wants to age past 29?

This year is my 49th birthday. Age never bothered me since I never paid attention to it. If I am slowing down it’s because I have not taken care of myself like I should.  I have cut back on my exercising, starting eating wheat again, and diet coke has crept back into my life.

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Weeds are unwelcomed guests in your garden beds, cracks in the sidewalk, and throughout your lawn. We curse them, try and kill them, and they bring out the beast in us as we yank them root and all from the Earth. Personally, I never have so much satisfaction as when I am pulling those suckers right out the ground. It is down right peacefull except when I end up pulling flowers that I thought were weeds.

When I plant my garden, I always swear that I will mark where I plant. The best laid plans of mice and men (in my case, women), right? Well, my markers fall down and I am not sure what I planted. So my weed friends grow and I am not sure if they are flowers or foes. Sometimes, I wait until they are large and call for reinforcements by sending my weed pictures to my county master gardener extension. I am always hoping that they will tell me that some bird dropped a master piece in my garden.

One day, I sent my pictures over to the master gardeners. I was all excited about one weed and swore it was special. The woman on the phone explained that “weeds are flowers that we don’t think are beautiful.”

Wow. Pretty profound, don’t you think?  Some weeds have really beautiful flowers and I wonder why they are weeds.

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So, what did Boz Scaggs teach me? No, this is not a trip down memory lane.  And yes, this is about the same Boz Scaggs, who produced such hits as “Lido Shuffle” and the “Lowdown.”

Your probably thinking, this better be good, Anna, because either a) you have no idea who Boz Scaggs is, or b) you are wondering if I have gone off the deep end since he was a 1970s icon and this is 2008.

Last night we saw Scaggs in concert in a small concert hall right near my house.  This 64 year old can still belt out the tunes that made his name a billboard wonder in the ‘70s.    

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Do you think we have enough energy bars?

I have a confession. I have not organized my pantry for three years. I just clean around the multiple boxes of who knows what my husband buys and leave it at that. He is the food shopper in the family. And thank goodness for that, since I don’t look at prices when I shop. I just pick up and go. If it is organic, then that is okay with me.

When I get home with my prized organic food choices, the conversation always goes something like this.

Husband: “Did you look at the price when you bought it?”

Me: “No. It was organic.”

Husband: “Do you realize you paid three times the price for xyz?”

Me. “No, it was organic.” Then I swear I would look at the price next time. Then forget the next go around because I am not sure how much I should be paying for something organic.

On the other hand, I don’t keep count when he brings home literally dozens (not really) of the same item because it is on sale. 2 years later, we still have the same item in the pantry. So, read on about my clutter busting kitchen pantry journey!

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Your mission if you dare to accept it (Mission Impossible music, please) is a thirty day promise to junk-free your house. It is your challenge, and therefore your decision how far you want to rid yourself of your junk. Why am I issuing this challenge?

Right before my son’s bar mitzvah, I went crazy trying to clean up my house. It was an occasion that pushed me to look at my junk and start creating a clean slate. I always found such events as a new baby coming, a move, or celebration inspired me to get my house in shape.

Some people have explained to me that my need to clean-up before an important event in my life is called nesting. Unfortunately, I was not able to complete the clean-up since I started too late. The reason for this post is to help me finish the clean-up. So, readers lets make it a communal effort to clean up our work places and/or homes.

You may ask, Anna, what does junk have to do with “your life should be greener” theme? Read on and see how cleaning up your junk is not only good for your soul, it is also good for the Earth.

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What I love about visiting colleges is that I get to see so many different towns.  For years, I have heard about Ithaca, New York because of the famous restaurant, Moosewood.  This restaurant is known for its inspiring vegetarian and fish cookbooks.  I have one of the Moosewood cookbooks and I must say, every recipe in the book is fantastic.

When we decided to take my oldest to see Cornell, I knew that at long last I would get to eat at my beloved Moosewood.  I also heard that Cornell’s campus is one of the prettiest in the country.  So, this trip was going to be a treat.

What I did not realize is that Ithaca is uber-green not only in the nature sense with its beautiful gorges but in the way of life offered by the town. It has a hippy feel to it as if time has stood still.

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