Sally’s Trove Today

An Informed Shopper Is a Smart Buyer

Bamboo products, particularly fabrics and flooring, are enjoying quite the eco-hype these days, for some very good reasons.  Bamboo is fast-growing, in some cases growing as much as three feet per day.  It requires little if any fertilizers or pesticides, it reproduces itself without the need to plow and plant, and its cultivation, processing, and distribution provide hundreds of millions of jobs in China alone.  The fabrics made from bamboo fibers can be soft and supple, non-irritating to the skin, and temperature-regulating because of their wicking properties.  Flooring made from bamboo can be strikingly beautiful and cost less than hardwood floors.

However, bamboo products may not be as green or eco-friendly as they appear.

Although bamboo may be a significantly sustainable resource, the way it is processed commercially and then distributed can question its smartness, at least for now.  Large-scale fabric manufacturing requires the use of toxic chemicals, and flooring may be constructed using formaldehyde-based adhesives.  As for distribution, nearly all commercially available products begin with bamboo harvested and processed in China, resulting in a huge fossil fuel cost to move the processed bamboo around the globe.

Before you make that commitment to bamboo flooring, or even bamboo fabric pajamas, dispel the myths and arm yourself with the facts by linking to these excellent resources.

Questions To Ask Before You Buy

What chemicals are used in processing bamboo for fabrics, and what are the known hazards of those chemicals?

What are some of the socio-economic concerns behind bamboo fabric manufacturing that make some people question how green bamboo clothing is?

How is bamboo processed into flooring, and what’s the truth about its durability compared to traditional hardwood flooring?

How green is bamboo flooring, and why?

In a nutshell, what are the pros and cons of bamboo flooring?

Just for fun, is the word “bamboozle” related to bamboo?

Photo by tracyzhang at sxc.hu

May 25th, 2009 | Tags: ask before you buy, bamboo, eco-friendly, fabrics, flooring | Category: What To Know before You Buy | Comments (4)

As I sat down to the table and began to add these simple staples to my shopping list, I found my hand pausing above the paper while memories of my mother’s kitchen flowed through me like warm breezes on a cool day.

A Pantry Short on Sugar, Tall on Fresh

Plain white vinegar and plain vegetable oil.  These were in her pantry when I was a little girl, but she never kept the varieties I had come to use.  The same with cereals; while I stocked up on granola, corn flakes, grape nuts, and even frosted flakes now and again, she kept only raisin bran to eat in the warm weather and cream of wheat to cook when the days turned cool.  And Lord forbid there should be sweet snacks or drinks in her kitchen unless company was coming, while I had boxes of cookies, bags of candy bars, ice cream in the freezer, and plenty of soda pop.

Meat, poultry, and fish came fresh from the butcher and the fish market, vegetables and fruits fresh from the grocery or farm stand, and breads fresh from the bakery.  Occasionally, for convenience, we’d eat frozen vegetables as well.  This fresh fare meant that my mother shopped several times a week, even though she always held a full-time job.

My Mother’s Recipe for Healthy Eating

My mother’s recipe for healthy eating was both simple and rigorously applied:

• Weekday breakfast of cereal and milk (Saturday breakfast might involve eggs or pancakes, while Sunday breakfast came from the Jewish deli in town)
• Lunch of sandwich and fruit and milk, rye bread only
• Daytime snack, fruit or cheese only
• Dinner of salad with homemade Russian dressing, green vegetable, starch, meat, milk, and no dessert
• Nighttime snack (if necessary) of cereal and milk only
• No soda, no sweetened juice drinks, no cookies, cakes, candies, or ice cream (all of these were reserved for enjoying at others’ houses, for having company, or for dining out on rare occasions)

No wonder I loved going to my best friend’s house after school.  Her mother always kept Hawaiian Punch and Pecan Sandies on hand. And no wonder I never gained weight until after I moved out of my mother’s house and set up my own.

Getting Back to Basics

Hand hovering over the grocery list, I snapped back into my own time, with its obscenely overstocked pantry, and began sorting out the expired, the nearly expired, the overly processed, and the sugared.  I tossed some, put some aside for whoever would want it, and kept very little.

Today, although I plan meals with my mother’s principles in mind much more than I did prior to that epiphany a few years ago, I do hang on to the flavored vinegars, and I do enjoy a dessert after dinner.  Who doesn’t love, and need, apple pie?

Photo by funny-p at sxc.hu

May 22nd, 2009 | Tags: food, healthy eating, meal planning | Category: Learning from the Past, Smarter Living in the Kitchen | Comments (2)