An open letter to Trader Joes

...ess saturated fat, 2⁄3 more vitamin A, 2 times more omega-3 fatty acids, 3 times more vitamin E and 7 times more beta carotene. It’s too bad that the “all natural feed” that your package advertises does not provide the nutrients of a real pasture. And FYI–we also removed the rooster since that would signify that these eggs are fertilized, making us think that your package design folks were snoozing during their high school biology classes. We repl...

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Grow the Soil

...ogen starved specimen of the same variety of eggplant, planted at the same time, in our parkway garden. The container eggplant on the left is larger, has greener leaves and is obviously more healthy. The stunted eggplant on the right is the victim of depleted soil. There’s some irony here. With our book release and press folks coming around to see things we’ve been doing too much planting and not paying enough attention to soil quality. Here’s two...

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TV Turnoff week April 23 – 30, 2008

...l those evenings quickly filled with activities. We learned fencing, print making, bread baking and countless other skills. We never regretted exiling the TV to the garage. Recently the tube’s come back into our lives with a certain DVD mail service, but we feel like we’ve tamed the beast and can heartily recommend living without TV (definitely without cable and broadcast). It’s become a shock to see cable or broadcast television when we visit rel...

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A Parvati Solar Cooker

...over 180º F, the point at which food begins to cook. The two hour cooking time is much longer than it would take on a conventional stove, but with a solar cooker there is no danger of burning, making the process, in our opinion, easier than stove-top cooking. Consider a solar cooker a kind of low-powered crock pot for lazy and cheap people–good for things like rice, beans, soups and stews, but not good for sauteing. Just remember the oven mitts–t...

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California Dreaming

...national. My 83 year old mom broke her sternum in an automobile accident, making her yet another victim of a city designed for cars that forces everyone to drive, even for distances of less than a mile. After the accident, many hours were spent dealing with doctors, auto body shops, insurance companies and the vile Automobile Club whose lobbyists, by the way, are busy in the state capital pushing for the auto-centric planning that ruins our citie...

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