Twinkling Lights

I put up outdoor lights. I know I shouldn't, because it's really just a drain on electricity for no real reason. It's not like I'm keeping up with the Jones', we're the only people on our street that decorate (the family two houses down are Jehovah's Witnesses--which was SUPER convenient with my oldest decided he was running away from home because we wouldn't take him to the YMCA to buy things from the vending machines and he was going to live with the family down the street. He quickly decided to stay when we told him they didn't do Christmas gifts!!) For some reason I like the warm look of our shrubs all lit up when we come home at night. I love the little lighted wicker reindeer and snowmen I bought our first year in this house. I'm nostalgic--therefore I do lights, but not without guilt. Every year my @$#@ strands are half out when I go to put them up, so this year I FINALLY got some new lights! While I was grabbing a few boxes at CVS I found the answer to solving my guilt...SOLAR CHRISTMAS LIGHTS!! These little gems come with a solar panel (about the size of a spotlight) and promise to charge even on a cloudy day (in OHIO?!?!) and turn on automatically at dusk. PERFECT, right?!?! They were a little more expensive ($2 more than the traditional lights I was buying) but I bought a box just to try them out. I got them home, pulled them out of the box and was immediately disappointed. In my haste, I forgot to look at the light count. Yes they were $2 more than the 300 count lights I bought, but there were only 50 lights in the solar box!!! So I had to put them on my sad little azalea that was saved from too much shade a few years ago and still hasn't recovered. The 50 lights cover her pretty well, but I have yet to see how they look lit up...my investment isn't paying off. I'm still hoping fora nice sunny day to give it a good charge, and hopefully they'll burn bright, but I'm not optimistic. But at least I gave it a shot. And at least I didn't waste money on buying ALL solar. Maybe next year I'll see if I can find a different brand of solar lights that may work better.

Giving Thanks Part III

Inspired by the 4-year-olds I taught today, I'm thankful for my family...but I'm extending it to be my support network. As I was writing this blog post in my head, while I pricked 6 lbs of sweet potatoes for tomorrow's meal, it started sounding more and more like an Oscar acceptance speech, so I'll try NOT to make you start humming the play-off music. First I'd like to thank my book club, for encouraging me to even start this blog, after we read a book about a woman who started a blog. After I got it started I'm so thankful that I had a few family and friends that ACTUALLY read the thing and then, even said they liked it! It was what I needed to keep going. I'm so thankful for my support network in my greening en-devour. I'm so grateful for all the comments and suggestions I get about my blog posts. It's nice to know that there are others out there thinking like I do (this means I'm not crazy, right??) and trying to do similar things as I am. I'm also thankful for my blog in general. I've really learned a lot from writing this blog. While trying to come up with topics, I've done a lot of research and learned a lot of facts that I otherwise wouldn't have know. (Like how to eat a pomegranate!) Lastly, I'm thankful to my international readers. I was SHOCKED when I found the audiance tab and clicked on it to find that people all over the world are reading my blog (of course I realize most of them are probably accidental Google searches, but it still counts because they clicked on it!!) Here are my stats for page views in the last month: How cool is THAT?!?!

United States 105

Russia 28

Germany 2

Hong Kong 2

Latvia 2

Canada 1

Czech Republic 1

India 1

Mexico 1

Nigeria 1

Giving Thanks Part II

Tuesday, I'm thankful for curbside recycling. I'm always saying how I really should recycle more. When I was at the height of my greenness (before I started getting lazy!) I recycled EVERYTHING! Every tiny little box, every small plastic part. Now I've gotten lax and pretty much just recycle big boxes and things from the kitchen. And really, why? They actually come to my house and pick the stuff up! I remember when I was young I remember loading up all of our recyclables and driving across town to the recycling center, unload, and driving all the way home. Now all I need to do is walk to the garage, toss it in a bin (Canton City only asks that you separate paper from everything else) then drag it down to the curb on Tuesday night. How EASY! I'd love to know the stats on how this has increased recycling in our community. So, to the City of Canton, thank you!

Giving Thanks

I was maneuvering my way through the grocery store this afternoon (I was the one with the child whinging, "Mommmmyyyyy!!!" and taking up twice as much room as a regular cart with my giant rolling race car.) when I took a second to look around me. (OK, I was doing the thing where I spy in other people's carts again.) I saw HUGE turkeys in carts, in boxes being loaded into freezers, advertised on sale...they were everywhere. I immediately thought, "Ugg look at that factory farm processed bird! Look at all this excess! . blah, blah, blah." When I stopped being so "holier than thou" and gave thanks. (I'm sure this was TOTALLY unprompted by all the Thanksgiving sales and meal preparation that was going on around me.) I'm THANKFUL that I live in a society where I'm able to go to the grocery store and buy what I want. I can choose between organic and conventional, a bag of red or green apples, even strawberries that are out of season are available to me. I'm THANKFUL that it's just a matter of driving a few minutes to the store and picking up the food that I want. I feel like I complain a lot on here, so this week, I'm going to write about something I'm THANKFUL for. Monday, I'm thankful for the abundance of food that is available to me.

House Plants

Well the good news is that I still have all my house plants that I bought back at the beginning of the summer. I've managed to keep them all alive and some of them are even thriving! But now that the seasons are changing, I'm going to have to do a little more rearranging and detective work with them as the amount of sunlight they get changes. Most of the plants I bought are low light, but some are medium and even high light. Those guys are going to need some attention in the winter months. I'm probably going to have to keep a close eye on them to make sure they're still looking healthy as we have fewer and fewer hours of daylight. I'll probably have to do a rotation with some of the other plants to make sure that they're getting a fair share of light. My houseplant book suggested two weeks on and two weeks off, so maybe that's a good schedule to work with. I have 4 lucky bamboo in hanging vases on my dining room wall. The other day I was shocked to see how much bigger the one closest to the window was than the one that was all the way at the other end. (Too bad I'm not in 6th grade--Science Fair Project!!) So those have already been rotated.
Besides the benefit of purifying the air, house plants are supposed to boost your mood. I have a feeling as the weather gets cold and everything outside dies and turns brown, it's going to be nice to still have some green around me inside...I just thought about the heat being turned on so I'll have to adjust my watering schedule too since they'll be drying out faster. See, we get one cold day and a forecast of snow flurries and I'm already thinking about winter!

Reduce Reuse Recycle

That's the mantra. I'm all for reusing and recycling, but there's still the whole process of production with that. So what I've been trying to think about all morning (as I plan my blog post is, "What can I do to reduce the amount of trash we create each week?" This is pretty timely for me since today is trash day (in that I collect the trash from around the house). We really don't have a ton of trash in the cans around the house, it's mostly in the kitchen. So that's where I need to focus. I was actually thinking the other day about how my kitchen trash can never seems to be empty. I feel like I'm ALWAYS smashing it down to fit more things into it. That makes me think that I've got a lot of things in there that can be compacted, like OJ containers and soy milk containers. So I guess I should go back to the Raisin Rack's glass milk jugs and maybe buy frozen oj concentrate?? But that seems a little more processed than fresh. I'll have to look to see if what I buy is from concentrate or not. This is probably something I should probably already know! OK, so there are two things...not too great. I also throw away a lot of papers my kids bring home from school...those should go in recycling. Still not so good. This is a lot harder than I thought! I'm already not throwing away diapers and wipes, baggies (since I use reusable bags for lunches and reusable storage containers for leftovers). I'm just going to really have to think before I throw anything in the trash can, "What could I have used instead of this that wouldn't need to be thrown away." Along with that I'll need to go back to recycling every bit of paper and plastic that I can. I've gotten into the habit of throwing away smaller boxes, like those that the razor blades come in, where I used to collapse them and put them in the recycling tub. I hope this is good for me! I feel like I've gotten away from thinking about how to live greener...I'm getting content with my current level of green. That's what my blog is about after all...getting greener.

Chestnuts

Today in preschool we are talking about Native Americans, animals they hunted, hibernation and migration. We talked about the link between Native Americans and our holiday of Thanksgiving. Now that we're only a few weeks away from the holiday, I feel like we're REALLY into November, not just getting over Halloween (although we still have all that #@$%$!@# candy left!!). So I've been thinking about Thanksgiving, which is really just thinking about eating. One of my favorite fall foods is the humble chestnut. When I was little we had a chestnut tree by our driveway and I can remember how it was the PERFECT tree to climb for a five-year-old. I used to sit in the tree and eat the nuts that I found on the ground. The other day we were at Sunny Slope orchard and I bought a bag of these guys, and I STILL love them! My youngest also has taken a liking to them so I've decided to look into the nutritional value of them. The general rule is, if it's a seed, it's packed with nutrients since that's the powerhouse of the plant. This holds pretty true for the chestnut.

Health benefits of chestnut

• Chestnuts, unlike other nuts and seeds, are relatively low in calories; contain less fat but are rich in minerals, vitamins and phyto-nutrients that benefit health.

• Nutritionally, chestnuts are similar to other starchy foods such as sweet potato, sweet corn, potatoes etc, consisting of mainly starch. However, they also contain high quality proteins.

• They are good source of dietary fiber; provides 8.1 g (about 21% of RDI) per 100 g. Fiber diet helps lower blood cholesterol levels by remove excess cholesterol absorbing in the intestines.

• Chestnuts stand out from other nuts and seeds because of their nutrition contents. They are exceptionally rich in vitamin-C. 100 g nuts provide 43 mg of vitamin C (72 % of DRI). Vitamin C is essential for formation of matrix in teeth, bones and blood vessels. Being a strong anti-oxidant, it offers protection from harmful free radicals.

• They are the one of the nuts rich in folates. 100 g nuts provide 62 mg of folates (or 15.5%). Folic acid is required for the formation of red blood cells, DNA synthesis. Adequate consumption of food rich in folates during peri-conception period helps prevent neural tube defects in the fetus.

• They are rich source of mono-unsaturated fatty like oleic acid (18:1) and palmitoleic acids (16:1). Studies suggest that monounsaturated fats in the diet help lower total as well as LDL (bad cholesterol) and increase HDL (good cholesterol) levels in the blood. Mediterranean diet which is rich in dietary fiber, monounsaturated fatty acids, omega fatty acids and antioxidants help prevent coronary artery disease and strokes by favoring healthy blood lipid profile.

• The nuts are excellent source of minerals such as iron, calcium, potassium, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus and zinc. Provide very good amount of potassium (518 mcg / 100 g). Potassium helps counter hypertensive action of sodium, lowers heart rate and blood pressure. Iron helps prevent microcytic-anemia. Magnesium and phosphorus are important components of bone metabolism.

• They are also rich in many important B-complex groups of vitamins. 100 g of nuts provide 11% of niacin, 29% of pyridoxine (vit.B-6), 100% of thiamin, and 12% of riboflavin.

• Chinese nuts (C.mollissima) are good in vitamin A; provide 202 IU per 100 g.

So they're pretty good for you. You can eat them raw or roast them. I tried to roast some a few years ago and we had a very messy explosion so I've attached a clip on how to properly roast chestnuts!