Author Archives for Sandy Smith

Top 5 Sources of Local Foods


Want to eat more locally grown and produced foods but aren’t sure where to get the goods? Here’s a list featuring the top 5 places to find the local foods you’re looking for:
1. Down on the Farm: Pick-your-own (PYO) farms, farmers markets, farmstands, and roadside garden stands are all excellent places to go to for fresh local produce. You may […]

Sweet Mysteries of Life: The Waggle Dance


There are mysteries in nature that are simply awe-inspiring: Penguin fathers braving the Antarctic superfreeze to incubate their eggs. Two-hundred-ton blue whales subsisting on microscopic krill (about 10,000 pounds a day). Bioluminescent jellyfish, fungi, insects, fairies. (Just kidding about that last one, folks.)
And then there’s that thing that bees do. Actually, bees do many, many things that are incredible. The […]

Shades for iPod


 
When I read about the new Shades cases for iPod - durable, fully recyclable, available in 9 different colors - I was more than a little enthusiastic to give them a test drive. I like the idea of a product that lasts long enough not to end up in a landfill a couple of weeks after its shipping […]

Tanita’s Solar-Powered Bathroom Scale


My current, conventional, digital bathroom scale is powered by one 9-volt battery, which I think I’ve changed twice in the 7 or 8 years that I’ve owned the scale. Now, two batteries over nearly a decade is not exactly going to create a landfill problem, whereas ditching my current scale to buy a new one might. So although I won’t be replacing my […]

Honibe Honey Drops (and More)


Honey is evocative for me. I can’t smell it without thinking of my grandparents’ home in the country, the honey jar a permanent fixture in the walk-in pantry there.
My grandparents brought their ”old country” way of life with them when they emigrated, locavores before the term even existed. They bought neighbor-made rye bread in loaves as large as couch pillows.  […]

ACT Natural Cleaning Cloths


When I first heard about ACT Natural cleaning cloths I was immediately intrigued. Who wouldn’t be? Reusable microfiber cloths that clean almost any surface, using water as the only cleaning aid? I contemplated the toothpaste splatters on my bathroom faucet, the drifts of cat hair silently collecting beneath every stationary piece of furniture, the spotty dining […]

Honey for Your Honey


Let’s say that your five-year-old is deep in the throes of a chest cold, coughing her poor little head off in the middle of the night (when most of these rib-cracking, neighbor-waking hacking fits seem to occur). Miraculously, your husband appears to be sleeping through the crisis (”appears” being the operative word). And as much as […]

The Joys of (Organic) Plain Yogurt


 
Plain yogurt, like Brussels sprouts, beets, and kale, is one of those foods that makes me feel slightly virtuous each time I eat it. Not because it’s a struggle to choke down these foods, I hasten to clarify, but just because there are so many health benefits associated with them.
Although in the past I’ve purchased […]

Wholemato Organic Agave Ketchup


 
Since I am not the primary consumer of ketchup in my household (that distinction belongs to my kids), I decided to enlist the whole family in taste-testing this product. We sampled Wholemato’s Organic Agave Ketchup on roasted potatoes, which were otherwise flavored only with sea salt, black pepper, and a little bit of olive oil.
Upon […]

FruitaBü Organic Smoooshed Fruit Flats: Grape


Organic “fun snax” have come a long way since the soy-nut-and-dried-papaya gorp of my youth. We now can send our kids off to school with a FruitaBü Organic Smoooshed Fruit Flat in their lunch bag, content in the knowledge that (a) it’s organic, (b) it’s half a serving of real fruit, and (c) they’ll probably […]