con-tain-it

13 Ways to Celebrate Earth Day Every Day

How are you celebrating Earth Day...Inside or out?

Today I'm inside because it's raining, it's pouring, the old man is snoring...

But that's okay because April showers bring May flowers...

AND it is also giving me time to reflect on how much DH and I try to appreciate Mother Earth year round here at the Love Shack.  Every year we try to establish new habits that are beneficial to the environment as well as to our health.  So far we have managed to maintain quite a few habits and it really has not been hard to change our ways.

WFMW: Knowing The Dirty Dozen

The Environmental Working Group has created a Shopper's Guide to Pesticides as a key resource for consumers looking for healthier low toxin diets. Since many shoppers can't always find or afford organic produce, they can use the Shopper's Guide to avoid those conventional fruits and vegetables found to be highest in pesticides –The Dirty Dozen – and, instead, choose items from the Clean Fifteen list.  Go here to Download the Shopper's Guide PDF or to Download the iPhone App.

Grow Your Own Drugs

Superfoods...that is!

James Wong, an ethnobotanist from the UK, with an exciting show, Grow Your Own Drugs, airing on the BBC in the UK. In this episode James talks about wild harvesting fruits and berries, including Goji berries (something I really want to try since it is one of the superfoods that I'm introducing into our diet this year ;)

Then James shows a fantastic flu fighting winter soup recipe loaded with medicinal foods (the only thing that I would change is using the "blocks" of chicken stock which can be loaded with salt and MSG ;)  Otherwise, I can't wait to share this with my family and friends...especially with a lot of my blogging buddies whose families seem to be battling multiple attacks of the flu right now!  Seems to me all that SNOW is insulating and keeping the power bills down...but it's also insulating all those germs ;}

However, finding the established plants is NOT an easy thing to do...mainly because this is a dormant plant...which means that it needs to be planted in the winter for spring blooming ;)

On line I've found a great site, the Goji Yogi which has 2nd year Goji Berry Live Plants (4-6 inches tall) for only $5.00 a plant...BUT they are SOLD OUT already...they have a COME BACK IN MARCH sign up on their site so I'm keeping my fingers crossed xxxxx

The only other alternative (stateside) was AMAZON.com...BUT at $26.99 a plant...I don't think so ;[  I'd consider growing my own plants from seeds before I'd pay those prices...lol

Okay blog land...help me if you can with my search!

In the meantime, I'll be buying my goji berries from my favorite superfoods provider...Sunfood ;)

Fondly, Roberta

WFMW: NOT making any New Year's Resolutions!

Making New Year's Resolutions DOESN'T Work-for-me!  I do not make New Year's Resolutions in the way of announcing them as "GOALS" for the upcoming year.  Instead, I usually focus on one area of my life and try to improve upon it through-out the year.  This Works-for-Me because it removes the pressure of "proving" my "improvements" to anyone else.  As I get older and realize just how precious time is...I don't sweat the small stuff anymore...and..."proving" myself to others is "small stuff" to me. 

Last year our decision of, downsizing our home and our stuff to live here at the Love Shack {actually turned out to be a really BIG one ;} was really one that was made for us by the lousy economic conditions.  However, DH and I decided to grasp the situation as an opportunity to simplify our lives and we turned it into our next adventure together...we have had many!

Over the years, we have learned that making small changes in our eating habits and lifestyle has made for some really big improvements in the quality of our life.  So this year we are continuing on our quest to add more plants and super-foods into our daily food plan...especially after watching the movie Food Matters and then discovering David Wolfe:

Wow...once you watch one of these videos you will want to watch the entire series ;)