I have great animal karma. I always have great animals come into my life. For example, one of my old cats, Cuma, found me one day while I was living in Atlanta in the mid 90s, and randomly working outside repotting plants. This thin, scraggly orange stripped kitten-cat just meowed and starred at me curiously. I of course lured him into my lair with some tuna, and this scaredy cat turned into the prince of the palace within days.\

He, among many other stray dog and cats that I have adopted, have been so absolutely amazing. (When I moved to Guatemala for a few months I gave Cuma to one of my best friends, and she fell in love and kept him. I just saw him last night actually, as I am down here in Atlanta visiting high school friends and getting my teeth cleaned by my brother.)

Maya, my other stray and absolute love, went to live with my parents when I moved to Ireland for a few months.  They too fell in love, and they called and asked for an official adoption.

So recently, I went to the SPCA and fell in love with a HUGE big grey boy, called Froggy. I thought it was hilarious that I would have two animals named after other hopping animals. So I took him home and was of course holding my breath that they would get along. Long story short – they are two fuzzy peas of the same pod!!!  Cricket and Froggy play all day together…. Froggy will hide and pounce on the Crick and then ride on her back, then Cricket flips Froggy and pins him down as his big fuzzy belly aims toward the sky. What is the most precious is that Froggy plays with Cricket with his nails IN.  Sure, he whaps Crick across the face with a paw, but without using claws, Cricket gets to keep her eyes, which is nice.

So if you are looking for a great toy for your dog, I say, adopt a cat.

Off to call the kennel to make sure my fuzzy babies are okay.

- Jen

OK,
so I hardly ever take medication, which tends to leave me in a bit of a
predicament when it comes to things like colds, fevers and hangovers.  So, over the years, I've gotten pretty good at certain preventions and cures.  I'm
not a doctor (but I play one on occasion) - so, if you are up for some
commonsense ideas that I can vouch for, give these a try:

Prevention:

1. 2 glasses of water all night for each glass of whatever else you drink.  This choice is ambitious, and requires a bladder of steel and NOT wearing any restrictive hosiery or difficult buttons.   However, at a wedding several years ago - after 2 back-to-back 30^th birthday parties the previous days - this saved me and all my friend
2. Vitamin B.  It does work.  You might be a little surprised at how colorful your bodily fluids can be, but it's good stuff.
3. Late-night
   pizza slices, Vitamin Water, a litre of regular water and at least an
   hour of CSI reruns on TIVO before even THINKING of going to sleep

Cures:

1. Sweat out toxins in a hot bath with 2 cups of Epsom salts.  DRINK TONS OF WATER before doing this, or you'll just dehydrate yourself more.  Peppermint essential oil dropped in tub can settle the belly, but too much of it will burn your skin.  WARNING: this is not going to make you feel good while you are in the tub or even right after.  But it helps kick it more quickly, and you'll feel heaps better in 20 minutes.  Really.
2. Vitamin Water is the best invention in recent years.  Not as sweet as Gatorade, but serves that "get sugars, salts and fluids into my system in a quick hurry" crisis. 
3. Emergenc-C.  Only if the stomach isn't doing a roller-coaster ride. 
4. If
   the stomach IS rocking and rolling, do absolutely everything in your
   power to drink half a cup of flat ginger ale and go back to sleep.  I have yet to find a true next-day-nausea solution, so if you got one, please let us all know here.

And on very rare occasions, a little hair of the dog in the form of a bloody mary has done the trick.  I
don't tend to be an advocate of morning drinking (I drink enough when
it's dark outside), but about once a year or so, I end up at a brunch
and have that one drink that seems to save my life.

As most of you know, I live in Montana, and Bozeman (pop: 29K) is considered a big metropolis. I was pretty impressed though the first time I came to town when my host took me to an organic restaurant, called the Savory Olive (loved the name, loved the food, and really loved the drinks on the back porch with that intense mountain sun beaming down on my city pallored face.) But even so, bad management or some bad blood (not sure if I care enough to find out the true story) brought it to its demise.

Just when I was going to move to a town with a good organic restaurant (a girl can’t survive on wine & cheese alone, although some weeks indeed I come close), another organic-ish restaurant opened. Emerson Grill doesn’t claim all organic, but they do what they can, including major emphasis on using local foods. (We love that.) Plus, it is pretty darn good – especially the two cutie boy waiters – but not the always surly waitress. (Sorry, that sounds sexist, I gave her a chance but she did nothing except deny my request for more bread. She has no idea that the original Pillsbury doughgirl was asking, clearly.)

Anyway, I am so excited… Heather is coming into town on the 30th, we will be tapped in the Bite’s Bozeman office for a MT NBC segment that afternoon, and then that night off to Emerson Grill for some locally procured salads and organic rice risotto. We may skip desert in favor of a wine and cheese platter though, of course, at Plonk. If any other Bozemanites are reading, come in to Plonk around 10:30 p.m. on Dec 30th, introduce yourself as a Biter, and the wine is one us.

Off to start my 2006 list of resolutions… I will not be giving up wine… just all non organic wine maybe? Jen

Can we talk for one second about what a scam text books companies are?  They update 3 pages and call it the next edition, thereby forcing the students to keep buying new ones instead of just letting a second market for the old ones prosper.

When I was in undergrad I thought about the waste from the money perspective, since I would always walk out of the bookstore with a $500+ bill each semester.  Then more recently while getting my “green” MBA I thought more about the resources to produce these 300 page behemoths and where all these books went at the end of their short lives, killed for being a meager 3 pages different than version barely-different-but-$10 more edition.

During my MBA, I remember actually taking my $200+ managerial accounting book to the bookstore to sell it back, and they could only offer me $20 since a new edition was coming out. So I took matters into my own hands and went to eBay (which merged with Half.com).  So with a few keystokes (typing in the ISBN numbers) the book cover popped up in my eBay listing and I was in business.  I sold that book for $65 – somewhere else in the country another university wasn’t going with the latest and greatest version I guess. Sure, there are shipping charges, but you can ask that the seller pay, and with books you can ship media rate… like a buck or two a book.

Need to buy a book?  Sometimes you can even figure out which pages were updated, and if not significant, you can buy the older version for much less.  Do you know sometimes all they change is the coverdesign and maybe a few illustrations within???  Urg.  Anyway, highly recommended, and just say no to those book highway robberies by doing the eBay / Amazon.com thing. Both buy and sell.   You and your wallet will be very glad you did.

Off to dust off some of my old MBA books… definitely not to read (I have too many damn emails – who needs books?) to ship off in brown bag wrapping to the next aspiring green business exec –

Jen

Newsprint creeps me out.  The feel of a newspaper on my hands is sort of like fingernails on a chalkboard to me.  Makes my skin crawl.  I have no idea why – it’s just always been that way.  

So I’d love to spend the space of this blog discussing how my news consumption habits – online, cursory – are the result of my mad devotion to living a green lifestyle and keeping acres of trees intact.

But it would be a total lie.  I don’t get a paper, because picking it up would feel like chewing on tinfoil.

A few years ago, I even gave up the news altogether – took a “news fast,” if you will.  It was a necessity: the news was stressing me out too much and I wasn’t accomplishing anything by fretting about it.  It was a nice little break for a bit.

I’m back on the news again, but in moderation.  I do recommend a news fast here and there – give it a try: spend one week NOT reading or watching the news and see whether or not you really feel like you are missing anything of substance.

In other green news – if you DO get an actual paper delivered each day or on the weekends, make good use of it.  Newspaper makes an unbelievably good vehicle for washing your windows.  I have no idea why, and it seems counter-intuitive, but trust me – streak-free and shiny.  Give it a try.

Well, if you can stomach the feel of it on your hands, that is.

When I was in grad school (learning how to quote Shakespeare to great effect - THAT gets a lot of use in my every day), I learned one of the most important facts of my life:

Procrastination is a vital component of the learning process.

And no, this isn't me, making excuses for the fact that my blog is late this morning.  I was taking a "Teaching of Writing" class (which I mainly found MUCH less exciting than fervent debates about Othello and OJ Simpson), and we learned that people who procrastinate in their work or writing, often do so because they are solving problems with the project - deep in the subconscious.

Suddenly, the fact that I could NEVER start a 20-page term paper until my entire house was clean made sense to me.   It wasn't that I was lazy and avoiding the hard work of writing.  It was - quite simply - that my mind was smarter than my ability to schedule, and was working out the entire treatise well before I sat to type.  (I had a Mac Classic IIC, in case I want to date myself).  The housecleaning example was actually perfect - apparently, mind-numbing, rote activity was the best way to let the brain get the job done.

So - if you are one of the many who have put off your shopping until today, pat yourself on the back.  Clearly, your subconscious has been doing the hard work of of determining the PERFECT gift for friends and family.

Let us know what procrastinating gifts you are buying today - I'd tell you mine, but since I know the recipient will read this, I'll update you on Monday...

-Heather... off to curl up in front of a Montana fire and drink another cup of coffee...

Do you know the notion of “stuff-stress”?  You know, where all your STUFF is causing you stress?  You have to care for stuff, store stuff, clean stuff, find stuff, dust stuff, move stuff, maintain stuff, unload stuff, re-organize stuff, shuffle stuff around to find other stuff. WHEW.  That’s a lot of doing stuff to stuff.

I tend to date some strange characters. One of my boyfriends, after living a few years with me in NYC, decided to absolutely disavow materialism, and even gave up his shoes! Of course this made for a great topic of catty conversation with the girlfriends, but down deep I really understood… you have to look for shoes, clean you shoes, tie you shoes. 

Maybe it is my age, or maybe where I am in the ‘socio-economic’ non-cosmic order, but I feel that most of those around me have ENOUGH STUFF.  My favorite gifts to give are acts of service…. a car wash for my Dad, doing a little water color painting for my friend, a massage for my lover, and yes, a tree or a panda in my mom’s name.

I know it is hard not to give a physically wrapped something, but it is kind of like a diet… it gets easier as you wean yourself from stuff, wanting it less, and needing it less to be representative of how much you care for someone.  If anyone has noticed the same, or has ideas on how to make the leap from STUFF to NONSTUFF for the holidays, chime in!

Off to fill out the Panda gift card… naming it Poopsie after my mom… her nickname.

Happy Holidays everyone! Jen

I don’t have a green thumb per se, and the only thing I can cook is an omelet, but maybe just maybe I could have a green kitchen… and maybe just maybe it will inspire me to cook. 

You know, when I was little (like 3 years old), I loved to cook with my mom.  Mainly oatmeal cookies, where I would eat most of the batter before it would hit the cookie sheet.  I had this huge tummy on me – so they called me the Pillsbury Dough Girl. And then my O/C started kicking in, and I obsessively, compulsively would just eat oatmeal.  Raw.  With a little milk and sugar. It was my own insta-oatmeal cookie.

Healthy Blood? 

After a solid year of eating nothing but oatmeal and maybe a slice of American cheese (if I didn’t make little balls out of it to throw at my dough ball baby brother), my mom took me to the doctor to have my blood tested – I guess she was worried.  The doctor came back with a shocked look on his face after he got the results:  healthiest blood he had ever seen.

Not sure if he would say that now after years of making omelets in my Teflon skillets.

Which is why I will be replacing them once the good kind go on sale after Christmas.  And I can cut my vegetables for the omlet on my bamboo cutting board - which looks oh-so-green-chic hanging on one of my kitchen walls.  And the next time someone comes over (or stays – ahem) for breakfast, they will be impressed with my green kitchen and my egg thumb.

Off to eat some oatmeal… it has been a while…

Jen

OK, so today's Personally Speaking was so, so aspirational.

Let's just put it this way: when describing me, the word "sporty" is hardly the first word that comes to mind.  It's not even in the top 50.  If I were a Spice Girl, I'd be Scary or Baby or Posh, or Ginger, even, before I'd be considered for the moniker "Sporty."

Which is not to say that I didn't play or don't like sports.  I grew up playing basketball and softball.  I
did my volleyball and track stints (but trust me - that was more of a
social thing), and the later "I'm training for a marathon until I get a
stress fracture" moments.  While yoga isn't a sport, I do pretty incredible things with my body (who knew an arm could bend that direction) daily. 

And when I was a much younger girl, my mom taught me football

Yes, you read that right.

Somewhere in grade school, my mom took me to a high school football game - with a mission.  Now, in my home town, EVERYONE goes to the high school sporting events.  They are the social events of the weekend.  So
it wasn't in the least unusual that I was going - what was odd was that
I wasn't being allowed to run around outside the field with all my
little friends for the entire game.  No.  This time, I was being forced to sit with my mom in the stands and watch the game so that she could teach me the rules.  Let me be clear: my mom is NOT a sports fan.  She
suffered through years on bleachers and benches, wearing blue and gold,
just to support her kids and her basketball-coaching husband.  The truth is, I think she'd rather drink bleach than watch sports.

But she was determined that I was not going to go through life clueless as to the mysteries of football.

Now, my mom is a smart woman.  And she does know the basics of football.  But
apparently, she wasn't doing a good enough job in the handing down of
the intricacies of the game, because by the end of the first quarter,
she had been kicked out of her post, and I was being taught the rules
of football by just about every man in town.  Wearing huge
down-filled jackets and hats, but no gloves - their logging hands
cracked and chapped in the cold - they drew on programs and gestured to
the field and beamed each and every time I got it right.

Over
the years of my life, I have pretty much mastered most rules of most
sporting events, so I can appreciate almost anything, even if I don't
seek it out (except for hockey.  I still don't understand icing.  Trust me: don't try to date a Canadian unless you master the concept of icing).  But
that is the one I remember and treasure the most: my mom - who'd rather
be reading To Kill a Mockingbird or attending a theatre event - shored
up by burly men, teaching me to play a game I'd never have to be any
good at.

-Heather... off to figure out how I am going to get around NYC today since the subway's on strike...

Amorous, maybe.  Romantic, not so much.

Why
don't people throw great parties in the middle of March? Why can't I
have celebratory drinks and dinners spaced out all throughout the year,
instead of EVERY SINGLE NIGHT for the past week or so? 

Perfumes
and scarves and delicate vases are hardly the things on my mind today,
when I need to get prepped for holiday travel and yet another week of
every-evening plans.  But if they were, and if I were making wishes, I would give a shout out for those green vases from Uncommon Goods.  They'd look stellar in my apartment. 

Meanwhile, just 4 more days of Ideal Holiday Gift ideas before we go back to our regularly scheduled programming of your Bites...

-Heather... off to eat leftover Thai food from last night's dinner for breakfast...

It one of the contradictions of my life, and I am not sure if I will suffer indefinitely (along with my string of boyfriends). Here is the thing: my Dad, although a pilot by profession, could do everything…. from building a big turtle playground cage when I found Murtle the Turtle at the age of 8, to building houses to make extra money as the airline industry wavered and sometimes faltered.

To this day, he continues to be the guy who can do anything, fix anything.  For example, when he came out to Montana to visit, Cricket had chewed through a hot synch cord for my Pocket PC (bad Crickity!).  I showed him all the things I had to do but hadn’t had time (this huge, huge stack of stuff) and he just went at it, first starting with splicing my hot synch cord back together, and next building extra closets for me to store the stuff he couldn’t fix… or wouldn’t fix, like my pants that needed stitching.

And because I am so “yang” I find boyfriends that are more “yin” – the artist, the compassionate, the dreamer.  Usually “handyman” isn’t one of their qualities.  Which hurts in more ways than one!  I remember literally pulling a hammer out of one of boyfriend’s hands because he was hammering the nail on a diagonal which would have splintered the wood, and then I took over.  (Yeah, wasn’t my finest moment, or his.)

So this goes out to all our boy Biters…. get some rechargeable batteries so you can be the night in shining vegan workboots when the remote goes out, (and maybe take a shop class if you think you might not know how to drive a nail straight) and let the good times roll.

Off to chop some wood for the very energy efficient wood burning stove. (Kidding, I had the wood delivered.)

- Jen

Coming back from grabbing an early morning cappuccino in the bracing Brooklyn wind, I just dropped my iPod in spectacular fashion.

So far, so good, as it seems to work still.

But in the mad panic that ensued while I was unsure about whether or not it survived its tumble, something became quite clear to me: I am an iPod addict.

I mean, I am fairly certain that most normal people can handle a 5-minute walk down the street without needing a soundtrack to be playing in the background. But not me. I feel weird when I head to the subway WITH someone and thus have to forego my iPod. While we sit or stand on the train, talking, I have a little bitterness that I can't put my buds in my ears - that there is no music providing the backdrop to the rocking of the train.

I'm pretty sure this is not healthy. In fact, maybe I need to go on one of those intervention reality shows to wean myself off my addiction. I can see it now: crying friends, explaining to me how they felt unloved while I "tuned" out, neighbors articulating how I have destroyed our relationships - strutting down the street, completely missing their pleasant greetings, family members waxing nostaligic about the "Old Technophobe Heather" who couldn't even figure out how to make her Walkman work correctly...

Oh, that wily Steve Jobs. He's my pusher.

-Heather... off to back up all my digital music in case the blasted thing really broke...

I really don't like raffia.  I can't explain why.  There is absolutely no logic to my dislike of the stuff.  I just don't like it (sort of like I don't like black olives out of a can - no reason, really - just have a general distaste for them).

But other than that, there are plenty of Martha-esque ideas that I do love.  Some faves for this time of year:

Wrap gifts in tea towels.  Go buy a great cotton dishtowel with a pretty pattern, put a small gift in the middle, bunch up the sides, tie with a ribbon (or raffia, if you must) and viola!  Gift wrap with no waste.

Bake or make goodies to give.  Unless you are Jen.  It sounds corny, but people LOVE fudge.

And because I can't have a whole blog entry that doesn't mention wine:

Buy mulling spices and cheesecloth, put some spices in the middle of a small square of cloth, bunch up the sides, tie with a string (or raffia, if you must) and dangle over the neck of a bottle of wine or spiced rum so that they can make mulled wine or cider.

So, Biters - what are your favorite Martha-esque gifts to give?

-Heather... off to get ready for my close-up... (more information to follow on this)...

So, I already know that I am getting a new eco-friendly yoga mat for Christmas (so if you are reading this and were planning on sending me one, please keep it for yourself. Unless you are my parents, in which case, good luck trying to wrap it in a way that doesn't give the gift away).

Since we have had quite a few blog entries lately about what I want for the holidays, I figured we'd give the topic a little turn today.

This weekend, a friend and I were discussing meditation - specifically, we were talking about the near impossibility of truly meditating when you are afraid that you aren't going to come out of the meditation in time. Say you have to get to work, or take a client call, or get ready for a date or pick up the kids - do you ever REALLY let yourself fall deeply into nothingness?

Not if you don't have some security that you are coming out of it.

The options for ensuring that "wake up" point, however, aren't much better than NOT fully meditating. Setting an alarm? That is the last thing that I want to hear at the end of a solid chunk of letting my mind rest. A little too reminiscent of the Monday-morning garbage trucks waking me up at the crack of dawn this AM.

I have a decent alarm that I can set that will end my meditation time with bird song or bamboo chimes or frogs chirping, but here in Brooklyn, that feels a little bizarre to me as well.

So - I throw it out to the Zen Warrior Biters amongst you: if you meditate or hang out in Savasana, how do you come out of it? Please share your best tricks and tools in our comments section. I'd offer a prize for the best idea out there, but then Jen would kill me after the overwhelming response we got the Jonathan Swift "Modest Proposal" tip trivia (BTW - thanks for that, Biters. You all truly rule).

-Heather... off to catch up on the 285 unread emails in my inbox... meditation clearly NOT on the agenda today...

We've said it before, we'll say it again. Solar toys are the adult Cabbage Patch Kid/Furbies/Pokemon Cards of the 2005 holiday season. By this time next year, everyone will be charging their iPods and cell phones while walking down the street, so if you want to stay cool and cutting edge, you better get your solar toys this season.

Since we heart solar toys here at the Bite today (oh yes), here's a little list of some of the best the industry has to offer:

• Reware Juice Bag
• Voltaic Systems

• Mr. Light - Christmas Lights
• Gaiam Outdoor Spotlights

• Solio
• Reware Power Pockets

Or... be the BMOC with the biggest toy on the block - kit out your whole house. Get a contractor to install a roof system and get a 30% tax credit starting January 1^st (up to $2,000): http://www.findsolar.com/index.php.

So listen, Biters, every two minutes the sun beams as much energy down on Earth as everyone on it generates in a year... go grab yourself some.

Dear Santa:

OK, so if you have been paying attention (I know you are busy, but I like to think you read our emails and blog - if only to chuckle at the fact that Jen uses a goat to mow her lawn, sort of like you use animals to fly around at night)... anyway - I digress...

If you have been paying any attention at all, you know that I like to talk about all the great green things I want for Christmas.  And if I were to get any of those things, I really would be tickled beyond belief.  But let me tell you this: if you really do exist, here is my real and true and deep down wish:

I want a green roof.  And I've been a very good green girl.

Green Roofs Are Cool

I mean, I realize that installing a green roof isn't the easiest or least expensive proposition.  However, it happens to be one of the cooler things (literally and figuratively) you can do for the planet - esp. if you live in an urban corridor.  And I really need some help feeling cool these days, since I don't yet have a solar backpack.  So if you could just bring me a green roof, I wouldn't ask for anything else for a long time.  I promise. 

(And with the amazing rooftop access you have, bringing a green roof should be child's play for someone as connected and aeronautically superior as you).

A Few Other Small Requests to Get Started

Of course, to get the green roof, I'd have to be able to re-do the roof of my brownstone apartment.  And in order to do that, I'd really kind of need to own my apartment.  And since I am such a good green girl, I'll have to get an energy efficient mortgage with my apartment.  In order to qualify for one, I'd also need to get a bunch of low-energy appliances in my place and install some solar panels on top of my office (which sits in the middle of my future green roof).

So, really, I guess I am asking for an apartment, new appliances, a green mortgage, and some solar panels.

But only so I can have the green roof, OK?

I promise I've been really, really good.

Love,

Heather in Brooklyn.

PS - I make KILLER sugar cookies and am not vegan, so I'll also leave some milk out.

Fashion is one of those tempting things, like fattening food, smoking, drinking, unprotected sex. . . very self-indulgent and bad for you.  However fashion is also very bad for the planet.  Think about it..  every time Vogue says that square-toed shoes are out and pointy are in, we all want to get a few new pair of shoes to keep up with the times. And some people probably have the financial ability to transform their wardrobe every season.

Heather and I were just interviewed for an upcoming article in the Sierra Club’s e-zine, and the writer asked what I missed most about NYC, to which I answered public transportation - I loved to just zone out and watch people and read a book while being productive (I was being rapidly transported to work with little eco-impact).  And what did I not miss at all?  The fashion temptations.  Just by walking home from work I would pass fabulous stores and boutiques and convince myself that I needed these new _________ --fill in the blanks, and yes it was usually shoes because unlike jeans because they usually fit!. 

And have you been to a Goodwill lately? The majority of the ones I have tried to donate my stuff to are only taking donations during very small windows of time, and if you leave stuff there you can be fined $500!  The point is that they are bubbling over with STUFF, and last year’s fashions.

Anyway, I would say try to buy classic cuts, classic styles, and next time you pass by that store window without succumbing to temptation, pat yourself on the back – your pocketbook and planet thanks you.

Off to get a pair of pants stitched. (They are classics but I don’t sew… and someone recently pointed out the hole in the crotch - not too fashionable in anyone’s opinion.)

- Jen

It never ceases to amaze me.  All throughout my 32 years of my green existence,  some people would make fun and say I cared too much, and why did I waste time trying to change the world since it was impossible.

OK, so Jen and I have this running conversation about how she likes pretty boy businessmen while I like grungy dudes who can't hold down a job. We practically came to blows over writing the Personally Speaking part of the Businessman Green Gift tip last week. In the end, she sort of won out in the Businessman one while I got today's Metrosexual one, so she can say how much we like guys in suits, while I can say we can't stand dating pretty boys.

But the funny thing is, she's dating a fly fishing guide in Montana, while all the men I have dated over the past years have been - there's no way around it - straight-up Metrosexuals. As another friend puts it: "Heather, you like the Shiny Object."

There's some debate as to who coined the term "metrosexual." Personally, I like Mark Simpson's Salon discussion of the topic, centered around an analysis of David Beckham. Embarrassingly, I also like David Beckham. But apparently, I don't like metrosexuals.

According to me. Somehow, though, almost every single man I have dated in the past 3 years has been buffed and polished and more concerned with his hair than is normal or healthy. (Let's face it - I want to win in the hair department). Perhaps this is just a New York thing, but I can't even chalk it up to that - it happens in Italy, too.

So, I hereby make a 2006 pledge NOT to date anyone better groomed than I am. Stay tuned for updates.

Meanwhile, go check out Lucky Tiger's shave stuff - metrosexual or not, it's juicy.

-Heather... off to get a much-needed haircut (seriously)...

But after about 2 days, truth be told, we got a little bored, and decided to rent a car to go wine tasting in the country. (Let's face it, when bored, my choice is to drink wine). So, Jack and I headed to the hills where we discovered the magic of Cava.

Can We Just Get Some Wine, Please?

Cava is Spain's answer to champagne. It takes its name from the caves used for wine storage since the middle of the last millennium. Because Jack and I took a tour of one of the biggest and oldest cava-producing estates in the world, I could tell you tons more about the making of cava, except for one thing: the entire tour was conducted in Spanish, and I have to admit, I probably caught about every third word.

Now, Jack and I had a functional linguistic travel relationship while we lived in London. He spoke French, I could get by in Spanish and read some Italian, so all-in-all, we could muddle our way through several European countries. But at this winery, all we really wanted to do was do was drink some wine. I didn't want to sharpen my rusty collegiate Spanish skills and he didn't want to have me trying to translate the few words that I could catch for him as we wandered through dark and dusty-cool caves. We had a vision of sitting in a vineyard and sipping bubbly, not trolling (note: not "trawling") behind the families in their Sunday best on a long march with wine as a prize at the end of the road. In the end, we decided to adopt the "Faking It" plan: we would just take our cues from everyone else in the group and smile and nod and laugh and look like we were intrigued when everyone else did.

And so we did. Of course, by the end of the tour, while standing in front of the tilted bottles where the sediment was collecting (or at least that is what I could understand of what was being said), we got busted. The tour guide looked right at me and asked me a question, and I stumbled and fumbled and finally mumbled "Yo hablo espanol muy mal..."

They still let us drink.

And I've loved cava ever since.

What to Buy And this year, cava just happens to be my answer to the proverbial question "What on earth am I going to take to the 75^th holiday party I need to attend?" The great peeps at Organic Vintners import a good organic cava - Can Vendrell Cava Brut Reserva ($17.99). You might find it at your local shop, or you can get it right from Organic Vintners.

-Heather... voy a practicar mi espanol... (OK, that is probably so incorrect, it's sad).