Monthly Archive for October, 2005

I made it! I survived the Breast Cancer 3-Day, and I’m only slightly damaged. Several blisters, some sore muscles, and a serious craving for sleep, can’t keep me down for ever. I’m getting my pics uploaded and I have lots of blog fodder, but I have some things to take care of before I sit down to compose the potentially long posts. If you’re craving info about the Walk, you’ll have to check out Nancy’s blog.

Thanks to all for your support. I couldn’t have made it there and back again* without your help.

Peace.

*with many apologies to A. A. Milne

I would like to give my Whole Foods Tempe a big HURRAH for sourcing local foods. I picked up some organic Granny Smith apples from New Harvest Organics. According to the NHO website, the apples are from southern Arizona. Yay for local food!

Having participated in the Eat Local Challenge this summer, I see the benefits to buying and eating locally. I prefer to purchase foods grown within Arizona. Not only does the food taste great, but it seems to be better quality because it doesn’t have to travel a a six hundred miles before it makes it to the store. The more local produce that WF carries, the more I will buy!

I made sure to email Whole foods and let them know that I appreciate their efforts and that I really like the availability of local foods.

I’ve been getting a lot of comment spam lately. 147 in the last 3 or 4 hours. This is my favorite one: “cool site! i’ll be back. i want to achieve it by not dying!”

ETA, I just added a new spam killer plugin called Spam Karma. If you have any trouble commenting, let me know. (Email link is at the top on the right.)

I found a really great list of substitutions. It gives unit for unit replacements for things like baking powder (yes, it has cornstarch in it) and cake flour – two things that I can’t use in baking because of my corn allergy. It would also be useful for times when it just isn’t convenient to go to the store to by that one missing ingredient. I hope other people find it useful as well.

Substitutions List

The Arizona State Legislature is taking a stand on the health of school children. If House Bill 2544, introduced by Rep. Mark Anderson, R-Mesa, gets passed, starting next year, Arizona’s elementary and middle school students may be eating healthier.

HB 2544 would ban the sales of soft drinks, candy and gum during the school day beginning in July 2006. High schools would be exempt. On Thursday, the Senate voted 19-11 in favor of the bill. It is amazing to me that anyone would vote against such a bill, but there is apparently a contingent that believes the government should be worrying more about standardized testing than health.

While I can understand that the Legislature has a limited amount of time to work (180 days in their year, I think), I would imagine that they could fit in some discussion (and action!) regarding the health of our next generation of Arizonans! It seems that some schools are receiving quite a lot of revenue from vending machines. Several articles I have read, suggest that some schools are receiving $50,000+ a year from vending machines!

California has already banned junk food in public schools. Several other states are involved in the junk food revolution (Maryland, Washington, etc.) . The United Kingdom has banned junk food in public schools. Hello!? The entire United Kingdom?? Wake up America! The Brits are WAAAAYYYY ahead of us. Even Fijians are considering a ban on junk food.

With the help of celebrities like Jami Oliver and Alice Waters, I think that we could actually make this happen. I am not saying that banning junk food from schools is going to solve all of the problems of obesity and weight-related health issues, but at least we can work to help kids learn how to make better choices about food, and help them to find out that broccoli is actually really tasty when it isn’t cooked to death.