When I first heard about Ideal Bite, I was like, "Great concept, but there's gonna come a day when they run out of things to write about. Then what?"
Almost 700 tips later, we're still going strong, with enough excellent tip ideas to take us well into 2009. Right now the big thing on my plate is planning a theme week for next year called Biter's Believe It Or Not Week. Each day we'll focus on something that's kind of hard to believe, but true. Wanna make my job way easier? Submit a green tip that really, really surprised you when you learned about it, and maybe you'll see your name in lights that week...well, maybe not lights, maybe more like light-gray text in the email tip, but you'll definitely have my gratitude! -Toshio...off to brainstorm... Whether washing your hands in a public bathroom actually gets rid of germs or attaches more to you probably depends on the place, but for my part, I don't really see the point in scrubbing up, only to then put my freshly cleaned mitts on a faucet and door handle that strangers-who-have-touched-god-knows-what have wielded. So if I need to wash hands before, say, eating out at a restaurant, my choices are to a) use a liquid hand-sanitizer or b) wash my hands in the bathroom, then use my forearm and/or elbow to turn on the faucet and turn the door handle on my way out.
I recommend that latter, if you can bust the moves, since it means one less thing to carry around and one less plastic bottle to recycle. If you use a paper towel to dry, you can even use it as a kind of mitten until you've opened the door, then hold the door with your body, crumple the mitten, and shoot for the trash can. It's fun. Try it, and see. -Jenifer Morgan...off to make a basket... There are few moments that really sum up the college experience like dressing up as character in Greek mythology (after finishing up a paper on The Odyssey) for a drunken toga party (see today's Personally Speaking section). But like so many times when strange things come together, magic happens.
Now, you'll forgive me if I don't...quite...remember what went into that batch of "cocktails" we mixed up and threw some pomegranate seeds into, but it was something like this punch. Pretty much, pomegranates, sugar, and miscellaneous booze equals good times. Happy holidays! -Jenifer Morgan...off to Hades... Just in case you missed it in your Ideal Bite Daily Tip, check out today's Green Tuesday specials just for you Biters. Your power to affect change through your purchase choices continues to grow, so if you are gonna spend anyway, go on and make that money green(er)!
My family used to pile into the car a few nights before Christmas to drive around town and look at all the holiday-light displays. Cruising slowly down streets with no particular destination isn't the most eco-friendly thing ever, but as kids, me, my brother, and my sister loved it.
With new LED technology, these light shows can be just as spectacular at a tiny percentage of the energy costs. In addition to switching to LEDs, consider getting a timer for your lights - nobody's looking at 'em at 3 a.m. anyways, and the birds will sure appreciate it. -Toshio...off to fly south for the winter... Nothing compares to the first time, but unlike twice-worn underwear, Thanksgiving leftovers don't have to be a total bummer.
Witness the results of my recent conversations with the Biter team: Brett (tech guru): "We always make turkey sandwiches the day after Thanksgiving. Just some little buns, turkey, and mayonnaise (or some other condiment)." Kinsey (graphics master): "My mom's favorite thing to do with leftover mashed potatoes is to make patties out of them and fry them up in a pan. They get all crispy and delicious on the outside, and gooey-mashed-potato-goodness on the inside. She's half-Swedish, so I guess it's sort of her take on a potato latke. Yum." Beth (NY Bite editrix): "We always made ‘Thanksgiving on a sandwich,' which was turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, and cranberry sauce on bread. Messy, yummy, awesome...especially with the cranberry sauce. Otherwise, we'd make a turkey casserole - boil up some lasagna noodles, layer or dump everything in (except the cranberries), add some chicken stock, and bake it for a while. Nothing fancy..." Hannah (party planner): "Here's one from my Dog: Kelsa says that instead of wasting plastic wrap or tinfoil, and in order to conserve the water and energy you would use to wash Tupperware, leftovers should just be placed on the floor for the dogs." Jen (close friends with a chef): "Well, you could always make soup stock with the turkey carcass. Strip off the meat, throw it into a pot with as little water as possible, and boil the crap out of it. Don't worry about clingy bits of skin or herbs, since they'll add to the flavor. Add lightly sautéed veggies, water, a little white wine or sake, barley or rice, salt, pepper, and fresh herbs at the end and voilà! Add the leftover meat just before serving." We know you can do better, so post your own ideas in the comments. -Toshio...off to change my skivvies... One of my roommates just threw out the chore wheel that used to be posted on the fridge - I believe in protest of someone (s/he knows who s/he is) not keeping up with her/his assignments.
Even without the construction paper and brass brad contraption, I continue to uphold my duty as trash-taker-outer. Like doing laundry and washing dishes, it's one of the few tasks I actually don't mind. In a post-chore wheel world, I'm hoping I can convince the others to let me stick to the trash and forgo scrubbing the bathroom floors and vacuuming, both way worse fates, IMHO. -Toshio...off to call a maid... The only thing I enjoy less than ironing is single-dish washing. Rolling up your sleeves, filling the basin with soapy warm water, and digging in is one thing, but when need to get going and require a specific tool or dish to continue on, it's truly annoying to stop what you're doing and suds up (not to mention that is wastes more water than doing a batch at a time).
This has always been my problem with owning a commuter mug-the need to wash it every day before getting to making a cup of tea or coffee...and so many of them have complicated parts, so it can take some effort to clean it thoroughly - clearly, not a morning person. (Feel free to chuckle at how pathetic that sounds - nay, is.) For me, it's all about the regular old ceramic mug (preferably one with a funny message or cute animal on it to fight a.m. grog) that gets a quick rinse daily, but a real wash only on weekends. I can't take it with me, but I'm sure you won't be surprised that I also consider walking to work in the early morning and drinking tea or coffee at the same time...challenging. -Jenifer Morgan...off pick up a commuter mug for my favorite carpooling rise-and-shiner... The fur section-in most big department stores, there's a little more wall space separating it from the rest of the store and it's tucked in a back corner. There's no curtain, but it's always seemed to me like the porn room at a video store, the opium den at the back of the restaurant, the sorry little power-hungry man behind the Wizard of Oz...
So is the desire for real fur somehow akin to "indulgences" like sex, drugs, and rock ‘n' rule (um, power)? Huh-uh. No. Knowing what happens to animals whose fur we take, knowing that people profit from cruelty, and especially knowing that there are faux-fur options that match or exceed the 40s glamour we all occasionally covet...there's just no reason to move the curtain aside and delve into that dark place. OK, so most of us don't-but if you haven't already clicked through to the article about misleading faux fur labels in today's Personally Speaking section, please do. It may give you a shock (no graphic photos or anything), but it'll help make your future faux-fur purchases that much more informed. As an aside, the team was in New York last week to celebrate the launch of our first local editions (you're reading those, right?!). We got to meet actress Jennifer Coolidge, who impressed us by wearing a faux-fur jacket with a sign on the back, "Faux Fur Forever." -Jenifer Morgan...off to admire an Arctic fox wearing its own fur coat... I was a champion babysitter back in the day. In a move that might seem strange today, I started babysitting a 3-month old for 3 full days a week during the summer when I was 11 years old. 11. For like 9 hours each day. If I ever have kids, I'm hiring a 65 year-old nanny and doing an FBI background check on the person before I even let them near my kid's juice bottle. But in Montana in the mid-80s? No problem - let the 11-year-old handle it.
And I loved it. Everything about it. The little jammies and red wagons and playing and nap time (and the fact that they had satellite TV when we only had 4 very fuzzy channels). But the diaper thing? That wasn't so pleasant. And on the occasions when I babysat for people who used cloth diapers, I always swore to myself that there was absolutely no way I would EVER use cloth. It seemed so backward. Yet now that I've seen the stats about the horrors of disposable diapers? No way. Rest assured, my kids are going in cloth diapers (it helps that there are now diaper services to do the really heavy lifting). But I have a soft spot in my heart for babysitters. And I think that I'm probably going to let them use more earth-friendly, but still disposable diapers on the nights that they come over to sit. I have a long memory... -Heather...off to clean house in prep for the nephew's arrival... Biters: The time has come for a new generation of Thanksgiving dinners. A local generation that is light on the pesticides and heavy on deliciousness. Submit your local Thanksgiving menus, reap the rewards (a copy of Paul Hawken's latest book), and if you ever falter, let this training montage from Wet Hot American Summer help you get your booty back on track. -Toshio...off to drop and give you 20... The first time I bought my own pair of sheets, I was 26 years old. I'd been living away from home for eight years, and probably slept in a different bed each year, between dorm rooms, dodgy collegiate flophouses, and apartments after my foray into the work world. But for whatever reason, sheet-buying was just something that I let my mom do for me. Never once occurred to me that I could buy my own.
Ah, how the mighty have fallen. Now, I love to buy sheets. In fact, I'm sort of a sheet connoisseur, and a trip to the linen aisles of department stores is nearly a religious pilgrimage for me. Thus, I'm quite pleased that there are now organic options popping up in those aisles. Kitting out a bed in fab linens and fluffy pillows is just one of those strange joys in my life - ranks up there with champagne and face cream and laundry and babies' necks. -Heather...off to figure out how to childproof my house for my perfect nephew next week... Thanks to search engines, it takes all of 15 seconds to find out what arch-nemeses, past boyfriends, and classmates voted most likely to succeed are up to. And if you tell me you've never Google-stalked anyone, I'll tell you you're lying.
I Google most of the people I date - usually before the first time we go out. I'm guessing many of them have done the same. Kind of weird that we're in a world where you know so-and-so's mom's maiden name before the first make-out session. -Toshio...off to get voted most likely to spend tonight all by his lonesome... ...a man after midnight! (If you know what band sings those lyrics, consider us friends.) One of the best things about having a library card: If you're too embarrassed to buy a book, you can just borrow it instead.
Trust me - paying good money for that copy of Nicole Richie's The Truth About Diamonds would've been way worse than the walk of shame I endured leaving the circulation desk. -Toshio...off to see how the baby's doing... Growing up in rural America, where every neighbor has an acre or so of land, you quickly learn how self-sufficient you need to be to keep up the place. With no landscaping company to take care of the lawn, no condo HOAs to ensure that trees are pruned, "keeping up with the Joneses" takes on a whole new meaning and carries with it a whole lotta necessary tools.
Do you have your snowblower? Ladder? Giant pruning shears? Riding lawnmower? Small edging lawnmower? Compost chipper? Compost bins? Chainsaw? Leaf blower? Power paint roller? Thousands of dollars and a very full tool shed later, you kinda need to step back and reevaluate. Really? Really, do you need all of that? You're gonna mow your lawn once a week, maybe. Prune a few times a year. Paint the house every so often... So here's a radical idea: Go meet your neighbor. Loan, borrow, buy together. That ladder you have and use three times a year? Let everyone on the block have at it when need one. Then, when you need a chainsaw to get rid of that downed tree across your driveway, you can feel just fine asking to borrow the Jones's. Sharing isn't gonna make your roses the prettiest on the block, but it might remind you to stop and smell them every so often. -Heather...off to borrow someone to prune my roses... When I moved to London in 2000, I loved some things about the pace of life there. While I hated the fact that it seemed like most shops and stores closed well before I could get home from work (in spite of the fact that you needed to go to the market nearly every night to pick up dinner because refrigerators are TINY there), I loved the whole process of shopping.
Mainly, I loved it because it all seemed so genteel. Well, and because it made me feel like I was living in a fairy tale. Instead of heading to a mega-conglomerate-sanitized-to-high-hell supermarket, my meals all originated in small shops aptly named for the people who ran them... the butcher, fishmonger, the greengrocer, the cheesemonger, the wine shop... There was something dreamily old-fashioned about that single-minded commitment to expertise and quality. Today, in San Francisco, I find it harder to live that way. Even the most holistic lifestyle gives way to the convenience of a local green-focused supermarket. It's times like these, craving those shops that have names from childhood storybooks, that I give thanks that here in the US, we still have our cobblers and tailors. Even if I find it hard to wander into a local fishmonger on foot, I can always make sure that foot is wearing a re-heeled boot. -Heather...off to get my jeans hemmed... You wouldn't actually...well unless you want a good laugh. But behold the mighty power of Flexcar membership (pardon the crusading zeal) for urban dwellers like me who don't drive every day: no late-night cringing upon hearing a car window shatter (yep, vandals), three fewer bills per month, no trips to the mechanic, no "surprise, you owe us $1,500" mechanic bills, no endless searching for parking, no "garage is full" angst, 80% reduction in road-rage-like behavior (due to less driving), less swearing, one less fracking (obscure Battlestar Galactica reference) car alarm to sound off. Life is just better. I mean it. Not just for me, but for everyone except my mechanic.
And yet, I still have something to complain about: urban walkways. Wow, they could be so much better. Here's the thing: The more of us who walk instead of driving, the more likely it will be that city planners put time and cash into creating pleasant pathways from point A to point B to point Z - ones either raised or set apart from roads. How much would our quality of life improve if we filled in some of those parking lots with trees and ponds and urban open spaces that reduce stress and encourage walking? -Jenifer Morgan...off to think about that while I walk next to some traffic... Newsflash: Fires are really inefficient as far as producing heat goes. It would probably require more energy (I'm talking gas, oil, or wood) to keep a fire burning than it would if you took off all your clothes and turned up the thermostat all the way. Unfortunately, taking your clothes off isn't going to help you roast any chestnuts.
-Toshio...off to keep the fire burnin'... I just closed a credit card that I've had for so long that the magnetic strip stopped working and the numbers were beginning to wear down - threadbare and wearing thin, she was. Cutting it up got me thinking about how many little sheets of plastic are floating around out there and arriving unsolicited in the mail, and no matter how threadbare they get, they'll still take eons to decompose.
Then there are all the toxins that are in the plastic, and all the toxins that are emitted during the production of the plastic. How annoying. It appears that attempts at creating truly biodegradable cards haven't been so successful, and although cards like the one from Greenpeace are made from safer PET plastics, there has to be a better alternative, right? -Jenifer Morgan...off to lobby for payment via retinal-scanning?... PHOTO ALBUMS |