Whirley-Pop Stovetop Popcorn Popper, $22.39 at Amazon.com Pros: Easy to use and clean. Stores easily. Makes delicious popcorn. Comes with a 25-year warranty on all mechanical parts. Manufactured (mostly) and assembled in the U.S.A. (Lid assembly pieces are made in China; Pot is manufactured here in the States as per Wabash Valley Farms customer service.) [...]
Category Archive for 'Food'
Arsenic and Lead: Two More Reasons to Skip Juice?
Posted in Consumer Packaged Goods, Eating Healthy, Food, Going Green, Health, Organic, Siblings, Toxins on Dec 8th, 2011
A recent Consumer Reports story took a look at the safety of apple and grape juices, and the results were less-than-comforting. The organization tested a variety of juices including some organic options and found both arsenic and lead — neurotoxins that can cause a multitude of problems such as bladder, lung, and skin cancer as [...]
Turkey Talk: Why Organic Rules
Posted in Eating Healthy, Environment, Food, Going Green, Health, Organic on Nov 21st, 2011
I’ve been buying the Thanksgiving turkey for a few years now. I fight the crowds at Whole Foods, spend a crazy amount (last year I paid $75 for a 20-pound bird), and hand it off to my mother for cooking. And every year at least one or two people tell me I am insane to [...]
Teflon and Non-Stick Pans: Ban Them in Your House
Posted in Eating Healthy, Environment, Food, Going Green, Health, Research, Safety on Nov 16th, 2011
I recently participated in a food-related Twitter party. During our discussion about Thanksgiving turkey and whether or not stuffing is safe to eat, the host asked about cookware: what were people cooking their turkeys in? I immediately tweeted that I used to cook in a non-stick Teflon pan, but about two years ago I banned [...]
Fighting a Cold: Food and the Neti
Posted in Eating Healthy, Food, Health, Illness, Preventative medicine on Nov 11th, 2011
Little Girl came home on Monday with her first preschool cold. No sniffles, just a cough. She’s actually really good about covering her mouth with her elbow, but she’s also only three. Sometimes she coughs on Mommy. Yesterday I started getting that tell-tale burning in my sinuses as well as a pain behind my left [...]
NECCO Wafers: Going Back to Bad
Posted in Consumer Packaged Goods, Eating Healthy, Food, Health on Oct 27th, 2011
A fellow Twitter pal clued me in that the New England Confectionery Company, the company behind NECCO Wafers, decided to go back to its old recipe — and all the artificial colors that used to be in it. I confirmed the news by reading this piece, Customer Outrage Forces Necco To Put Artificial Ingredients Back [...]
WhoNu Cookies: Not What They Seem
Posted in Consumer Packaged Goods, Eating Healthy, Food, Going Green, Health, Reviews on Oct 26th, 2011
I was on Twitter last night checking in when I noticed an interesting hashtag: #WhoNu. For those who are uninformed: WhoNu cookies are being billed as “nutrition rich cookies.” They have, according to the manufacturer: as much Vitamin C as cup of blueberries as much iron as a cup of spinach as much calcium and [...]
Favorite Things Friday: Getting Back to Business
Posted in babies, Cool sites, Favorite Things Friday, Food, Organic on Oct 7th, 2011
Things crunchy and green tend to take a backseat when someone is going through a major life crisis. (I don’t want to even think about the carbon and waste generated by my night in the hospital. All that gauze! All those tubes, needles, and chucks!) I’m feeling more like myself these days, so much so [...]
Composting Before it Was Cool
Posted in Environment, Food, Going Green, Organic, parenting, Reduce, Sustainable on Aug 19th, 2011
Growing up, I lived in a house with a huge (for Long Island) backyard. It was a stretched pentagon-shaped piece of property 60 feet across in the front but about 300 feet across in the back. It went back at its deepest 250 feet deep, and the house wasn’t big so there was a wide [...]
Cheap Food’s Heavy Price
Posted in Eating Healthy, Food, Health, Illness on Aug 4th, 2011
It costs more to eat well, according to a research study out of the University of Washington. Hoping to see what effect the new U.S. dietary guidelines would have on a family’s pocketbook, researchers – including Pablo Monsivais, acting assistant professor at the University of Washington and part of the Nutrition and Obesity Policy Research [...]