Don't go Bananas!

Or at least don't blow your grocery budget on organic bananas!

Okay, I know that sounds harsh. Organic farming is still widely-acknowledged as being better for the soil and water, so organic bananas DO provide a benefit.

If your specific concern is the ingestion of pesticides, bananas are a low-risk produce item. My daughter loves bananas and can eat 1 a day herself, so I bought them a few times at our organic foods store...for $.99/lb, roughly twice what they go for at our other market.

Although non-organic bananas are treated with pesticide, the sprayed pesticides remain on the skin, leaving the fruit 'safe' for consumption. Bananas have appeared on multiple lists of "XX number of foods you don't need to buy organic" including this one at The Daily Green and this one on MSN Health & Fitness (thanks for the link, Andrea!). Paying twice as much for no health benefit...not worth it on my budget!

Another way to save on your banana grocery budget is to REDUCE your waste. I have been guilty more than once of letting the last two bananas go brown and then they are slipped into the garbage (*gasp!*). Here are two great ways to prevent yourself from committing this most heinous produce sin.

1. Reduce your waste by extending the life of your produce. I have not yet tried this method, but am looking forward to trying the Green Bags recommended by fellow-blogger Chele.

2. If you still aren't able to eat your 'nanas before they turn all brown and blotchety, then for heaven's sake make Banana Bread!

This is the recipe I use - an amalgamation from several cookbook recipes.

Emily's Best Banana Bread

Ingredients:

• 3 or 4 overripe mashed bananas, well-mashed
  
• 1/3 cup melted butter
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup whole-wheat flour
  
• 1 tsp baking soda
• pinch of salt

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350 and butter a loaf pan.
Mix together butter and mashed bananas in a large bowl. Add sugar, eggs and vanilla and stir until mixed in. Slowly stir in the dry ingredients until just blended. Pour into buttered loaf pan and bake 45 - 60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
Cool loaf in pan on the cooling rack for 15 minutes, then take the loaf out of the pan and allow to cool on rack.

July Project: Greener Groceries on a Budget

I'll be an honest critic of my own blog and say that my posts have felt a little helter-skelter. I've got so many ideas floating around in my head - some that I'm starting to experiment with, some that I'm not (yet) - but I want to write about them all right away!
For the benefit of you, my loyal reader (singular?) I am going to try to focus on one area each month. Because I LOVE food, I decided to pick groceries as my first area.

My goal this month will be to make changes to my shopping and consumption in order to make more ecologically-friendly AND healthy choices. I will attempt to do this in as budget-neutral a method as possible.
I've tracked my grocery spending in previous months, and I'll track it this month as well. At the end of the month, we'll review and see how well I did.

To Be or Not To Be - Organic?

This is something I've been struggling with for a while. I know organic is often touted as being "better" but the price premiums on so many of the foods makes it just seem like too much money for too little benefit. As a parent of a baby/toddler this past year, I assuaged some of that guilt by buying as much organic foods for my daughter as possible, but left the 'regular' stuff for the adults.
I've been reading a lot about pros and cons of organic foodstuffs. My current thinking is that the most cost-effective way to get the health benefits of organic while staying within my grocery budget is to make informed purchasing decision. Sounds like common sense, right? It is, but it just takes time to do the research, and who has time? I've seen lots of lists on the web of which organic foods to "splurge" on and I'm collating a lot of that information here.
The first change I am going to make is to organic Dairy.

I found this info on The Daily Green.

"Pesticides and other man-made chemicals have been found in human breast milk, so it should come as no surprise that they have been found in dairy products. While any residues detected have been rare, and of low concentration, milk is of special concern because it is a staple of children's diets.
Organic dairies cannot feed their cows with grains grown with pesticides, nor can they use antibiotics or growth hormones like rGBH or rbST."

In addition, I've read from various sources that the hormones in dairy are being linked to early puberty rates in girls. WHOA. I am NOT okay with that. My daughter gets most of her protein from yogurt, cheese and milk and I shudder to think that there could be chemicals in that affecting her so deeply.

I went to our discount grocery and found 1/2 gallon of organic milk (2%) for $2.99. YIKES! I was buying a whole gallon of 'hormone milk' for $2.50. This one is going to hurt, but I would much rather spend the cash now than have it adversely affect my daughter's health.

I was thinking of ways to make this change budget-neutral. I thought about just posting "we'll buy one less liter of soda" but that would be a lie, since we don't normally buy soda and you, my readers, deserve full-on honesty. I think we'll buy less juice. I always swore my kid wouldn't be a juice addict, but when other caregivers come into play, you let some things slide. Once she discovered juice at daycare, I decided to give her some at home, too. I think we'll buy one bottle of juice each week, and when it's out, her options will just be water or milk (or mom's V8, which she loves, bless her heart!).

Something else to think about: The more demand there is for organic milk, the more producers will jump into the game. As that continues to happen, supply will increase and drive the price down. We're actually already seeing the benefits of our economic system in the widespread availability of organic foods.

We also buy organic yogurt from Stonyfield Farm Organic Yogurt. We can find it at our local grocery and big chains like Wal-Mart.

Happy Independence Day

We had a sunny, cool day (a rarity in July) today and enjoyed a nice, small-town parade and dinner with the extended family.
Because it's July 4th, I was thinking of my college friend who is currently serving our country on his second tour in Iraq (the picture at left is from his send-off party earlier this year). He read on my blog about the Shower Challenge, specifically the part where I wrote how I couldn't imagine turning off the water while I lathered up. He said that is what they are required to do for every shower. Well, if that didn't make me feel like a class-A whiner.

At the very least, it reminded me that the sacrifices made by the men & women in our Armed Services are so complete, it permeates every aspect of their daily lives. Not only are their lives at risk every day, but they are far from home, working without weekends or vacation days, without all the comforts of home, family, friends and possessions, and having every aspect of their lives governed and inspected.
So today I just wanted to send out a big "THANK YOU!" to all of the men and women who have served and are serving our country in the Armed Forces. You truly are heroes!

A Bright Idea and a Coincidence

Whatever the reason, I received my power bill in the mail today and it contained a nifty little sheet on the many wonders of the Compact Flourescent Light (CFL) bulb.
With credit to Ameren, here is what it said:

"Even one person switching to compact flouescent lighting will save money and give the environment a boost. If every American home replaced just one traditional bulb with an Energy Star-qualified CFL, we would save more than $600 million on annual energy bills and enough energy to light more than 3 million homes for a year. Why CFL's are a bright idea

• CFL's use 75% less energy than incandescent bulbs
• CFL's last up to 10 times longer than incandescent bulbs, and produce less heat
• You can save $30 to $60 over the life of each CFL bulb you install
• CFL's help reduce the demand for electricity, which in turn helps delay the need for new power plants."

We already have approximately 50% of our lights using CFL's. I made a trip to the local discount grocery and bought a single CFL bulb for under $2. Yes it's a little more than an incandescent, but it definitely more than makes up for it in energy bill savings. There really is no excuse NOT to use these nifty little bulbs.

Shower Challenge - Day 2 - Improvements all around?

Hmmm. What to make of this. First off, today *I* forgot to time my shower, but Husband remembered to time his. He apparently is sneaking peeks at this blog and suddenly decided on the day he times his shower to NOT shave until afterwards! He was pretty proud of his 3:42 shower. I have to admit, I was secretly impressed. It almost made me forget how annoyed I was that he only "half-listened" to my instructions (which was to time a 'normal' shower first).

It must have flustered me, because I forgot to time my shower. I know it was shorter than usual though, but that's only because of the psychic connection I share with my daughter. Yes, that's right. Allow me to explain: She has the uncanny ability to sense when I'm about to relax/take a shower/fall asleep and that is the exact moment she decides to wake-up crying. So this morning, as soon as I turned the faucet on, she let out a wail over the monitor. I hopped in and did an speed-suds-and-rinse routine and by the time I got out, she was back to sleep. I can't complain, though, because she slept a whole hour later than usual!

Tally: I'd have to say Husband and I were both under 5 minutes today, but I'm inclined to call it a fluke. We'll see how we fair tomorrow.

Shower Challenge - Day 1

Well, I accomplished half of my mission. I forgot to time my husbands, but I did time my shower this morning and it was right at 8 minutes. I'll be honest, that is A LOT better than what I thought it would be.

Just knowing I was timing it, I was thinking of what I could be doing differently. One thing I came up with was to wash my face in the sink, after I get out of the shower. That will save maybe 45 seconds or a minute? Hmmm. I was thinking 8 minutes was pretty good, but I'll be honest, I'm not sure about making it to 5 mintues.

Quick sidebar here: I've looked at some of the suggestions on other blogs. I've seen gems like "turn off the shower while you lather up your hair and body, then turn it back on to rinse"...um, no thank you. Can you imagine doing that in the winter?! Let's get real. This is what annoys me about so many of these Going Green blogs. Unless you are uber-dedicated and/or don't work outside the home, it's nearly impossible to achieve their standards of "green." Maybe I'll never be a nice, deep forrest green. I can be happy with chartreuse. I just want to keep it real, folks.

Okay, well, I'll take out my face-washing and try to streamline the shower process and see where that leaves me tomorrow...I'm always game for a challenge =)