Notes on Mark Bittman’s “Behind the Scenes of What We Eat”

...od. Here’s a few of his recommendations for policy change: Transparency in labeling, in agriculture practice Regulation of damaging foods: basically make it harder to eat poorly and easier to eat well, for instance: Make it illegal to sell soda to kids Tax the crap out of soda Subsidize real food Encourage small family farms De-subsidize companies that make non-foods (junk food) But as we’re always saying around here, real change starts at home. I...

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Airing Our Dirty Laundry

...power. So why air dry? Let’s do the math. Assuming our (gas powered) dryer uses an average of .22 therms of natural gas per load at our gas company Sempra Energy’s August rate of 59 cents per therm, by using our clothes line we achieve the admittedly not too impressive savings of 17 cents per load. If we had an electric dryer we figure that the cost would be about 44 cents per load if the dryer consumed four kilowatts for a 45 minute spin. And rem...

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Moringa!

...ood and medicine the attractive Moringa tree also provides shade. The goal that we have set for the new SurviveLA landscaping is that every plant must have multiple uses with priority given to stuff that is edible. We suspect there may be a Moringa Tree in our future....

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Essential System #10 – Shelter

...wo person MSR “Missing Link”. This tent is spacious for its low weight and uses either hiking polls or trees to stake it out. On the down side, we’re not sure how this thing would hold up in high winds and it requires a lot of room to stake out. The “Missing Link” was also very expensive and, as a cheap alternative, it’s possible to improvise shelter with a large garbage bag or the ubiquitous blue tarp material found at any hardware store. There a...

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Essential System #7 – Repair Kit and Tools

...our belts at all times but, hold the blog press here, self-sufficiency geniuses Stephen Box and Enci gifted us with a category-busting set of tools that, get this, fit within a tiny 30g (1.5 oz) Altoid tin! Believe it or not this pocket size Altoid tin contains the following items: 1 inner tube piece – a section of a bicycle tire that can be used as a tourniquet, bandage, or slingshot 1 boot lace – always handy to have a section of string 1 saw wi...

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