Vegan cookie recipe with only 2 ingredients.

One of the things we missed after going vegan was cookies. I mean, without milk, eggs and milk chocolate, it is impossible to make good cookies right? Wrong! Thanks to the Burlap Bag, we found an awesome and simple vegan cookie recipe made with only two ingredients and then whatever mix-ins you want to add to have the cookies suit your (or your kids) tastes.

So, how the heck can you make a cookie out of only two ingredients? And you can’t cheat and use a cookie mix that has 10 ingredients and count it as one .

Well, it is as simple as bananas and oats. That is it. Here’s the recipe.

Vegan Cookie Recipe – Only 2 Ingredients

 

Print

Prep time

5 mins

Cook time

15 mins

Total time

20 mins

 

2 ingredient vegan, gluten-free cookies

Author: Nate Shaw

Recipe type: Dessert

Cuisine: American

Serves: 4

Ingredients

• 3 bananas
• 1½ cups (gluten-free) oats

Optional Mix-ins

• Chocolate chips
• Walnuts
• Cinnamon
• Vanilla
• Peanut Butter
• Cranberries
• Anything you think would be good!

Instructions

1. Peel the bananas and put them in a bowl
2. Add the oats
3. Mash up the bananas and oats together
4. Add your mix-ins
5. Spoon out in balls and place on a greased cookie sheet
6. Bake on 350 degrees for 15 minutes

Notes

You can use regular or quick oats. However, if you use regular oats, we suggest blending them oh so briefly in your blender or food processor to convert them into quick oats. Also, if you want the cookies to be gluten-free, use gluten-free oats. All banana sizes are different, so if the mixture seems too mushy or thick, just adjust the amount of oats you put in.

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We have found that the above recipe makes about 16 cookies. It just depends on how big your bananas are and how large you make the cookies.

The cookies are a great snack or dessert. However, they are also a great breakfast. Wait… cookies for breakfast, really? Yes, really. If you ate 4 cookies, you would have eaten about 3/4 a banana and just shy of a half a cup of oats. Combine that with whatever mix-ins you used, like walnuts, cinnamon and vanilla, and that is a completely legitimate, and healthy, breakfast!

These cookies have become a staple in our house. Our favorite mix-ins are walnuts, vanilla, cinnamon and chocolate chips. We make them all the time, but, unfortunately, they only last about 2 days as they are just so dog-gone delicious!

Let us know what you think of them and what mix-ins you have used to make them even better!

Cold Medicine is full of weird ingredients that can cause many different side effects.

Every winter, the majority of us catch at least a cold or two, if not something worse, like the flu or pneumonia. It is just the way of the world. Typically when we catch one of these, we reach for over the counter cold medicine to help us deal with the symptoms and get through our day. In fact, in 2011, we spent over $4 BILLION dollars on cough and cold medications.

However, as innocuous as over the counter cold medicines seem to be, they are still full of drugs and chemicals. So, this winter, when I felt myself coming down with a cold, instead of just taking the nearest over the counter cold medicine, I decided to research them a bit to see what there ingredients were and what they could be doing to my body.

The first thing I did was pull out some of the cold medicines we had lying around the house already to look at their ingredients lists. When I looked at the ingredients on the boxes and bottles, I could hardly pronounce any of them (which is usually a bad sign). I saw things like antihistamines, pseudoephedrine, dextromethorphan and acetaminophen. I had no idea what those things actually were, so I started doing some research on them. Here is what I found out.

Antihistamines

Histamine is an important body chemical that is responsible for all of the congestion, sneezing, runny nose, and itching that you suffer with an allergic attack or an infection. So, antihistamines are drugs that try to block the action of histamines in the body to prevent or reduce the severity of all of the symptoms they produce.

However, along with blocking histamines, antihistamines also have side effects, such as: dizziness, dry mouth, fatigue and drowsiness. More severe side effects can include decreased coordination, blurred vision  and changes in blood pressure.

Dextromethorphan

A cough suppressant found in many cold medications, Dextromethorphan helps break up mucus in the sinuses and reduce coughing. However, it also has the following side effects: drowsiness, nausea, confusion, headache and dizziness. More severe side effects include: hallucination, difficulty breathing and seizures.

Pseudoephedrine

Pseudoephedrine is a nasal and sinus decongestant that shrinks swollen mucus membranes. It is also a stimulant, which can cause side effects like: insomnia, nervousness, excitability, dizziness and anxiety. The more rare and severe side effects are heart palpitations and tachycardia.

Acetaminophen

A widely-used pain and fever reducer, Acetaminophen (also known as Paracetamol), is often used in cold medication. When used safely in low dosages, Acetaminophen has very few side effects. For that reason, it is often one of the main ingredients in pain and cold medications for children.

However, overuse of Acetaminophen is very dangerous. Acetaminophen hepatotoxicity is, by far, the most common cause of acute liver failure in both the United States and the United Kingdom. Also, because Acetaminophen is processed by the liver, taking it in combination with alcohol can be very dangerous.

Cold Medicines and Adults

Cold medicines won’t cure a cold. They only help prevent some of the symptoms. There is no cure for the common cold.

However, most experts agree that cold medicines used in the proper dosages, targeting specific symptoms, and used only for a few days can provide some relief and is generally safe. However, if medicines are over-used, mixed with other drugs or taken by at risk groups (such as those with Diabetes), they can be harmful. Finally, the benefit of cold medicines decreases the longer it is taken. If your cold lasts more than a week, it is recommended that you go see your Doctor.

Cold Medicines and Young Children

While cold medicine use by adults may provide some relief and be safe most of the time, recent research has shown that, for children under the age of 6, over the counter cold medications are usually ineffective, can actually make symptoms worse and be harmful to the child. For example, a cough and cold medication containing an antihistamine has a sedating effect that could potentially worsen a condition in which a small child has trouble breathing. Also, because parents don’t like to see their children suffer, they typically give them multiple medications (for example, a pain medication and a cough medication), which may both contain the same ingredient, thus unintentionally overdosing their children.

Conclusions

Based on all the research I conducted, over the counter cold medications seem to provide some actual relief and be relatively safe with proper use in adults and older children. However, there is always a danger that:

1. They will interact with another drug you may be taking, so always consult your physician first before taking one, OR
2. You will be the one person out of a large number that has a severe side effect to the medication.

So, like most things, it comes down to the rule that we try to follow: If it is not naturally-occurring, try not to put it in or on your body.

When I caught a cold this winter, I did use small doses of over the counter medication at night to help me sleep, but I did not take any during the day. As soon as I felt that I could sleep through the night without taking medication, I stopped taking it. I also researched and found a few natural cold remedies that were very helpful in both treating my cold symptoms and reducing the length of my cold. I will write about them soon.

Photo credit: anitakhart on Flickr.

Green Gift Guide for 2012

The Holidays are upon us once again. As green-focused people, the Holidays can present somewhat of a challenge. You want to take part and celebrate with your friends and family, but you also want to make sure that you do not waste or increase your impact on the Earth too much. Some people choose to make their own gifts or buy only used items, which are both great ideas, if you have the time to do so. However, not all of us do.

Luckily, the number of eco friendly gift choices keeps expanding each year. So, if you do not have the time to make something yourself or spend hours hunting for the perfect used item in thrift or antique stores, you can still buy something and feel good that it does not harm the environment too much.

Here are our Green Gift Guide for 2012.

Gifts for Her

1. Bamboo Pajamas

Women's Bamboo Pajama

The Women’s Bamboo Pajamas from TexereSilk are stylish, comfortable and eco friendly. They are are 95% Viscose made from Bamboo and 5% Spandex, so they are super comfortable and now come in 4 different colors: malachite, orchid, carnation and coral.

2. Mobile Edge MacBook Pro Eco Friendly Laptop Tote

Mobile Edge MacBook Pro Eco Friendly Laptop Tote

The Mobile Edge MacBook Pro Eco Friendly Laptop Tote is available in many different colors, so you are sure to find one that she will like. With a 4+ star rating with over 50 reviews, you can feel confident that it is a gift she will love.

3. Recycled Silver Collection Sterling Wave Ring

Recycled Silver Collection Sterling Wave Ring

The Sterling Wave Ring is a unique design that is both elegant and contemporary. Yet, it is so simple in its design that it can be worn all of the time. As testified by its 5 star review, it is a piece she will absolutely love.

Gifts for Him

1. ReVIVE Series Solar ReStore External Battery Pack

ReVIVE Series Solar ReStore External Battery Pack

The ReVIVE Series Solar ReStore External Battery Pack is an easy to use, multi-functional battery pack lets you take your charging on-the-go. You can charge a huge number of portable electronic devices using solar power, a USB port, or an AC outlet! It also contains an LED light, when you are out in the dark.

2. Wooden Straight Razor Shaving Kit

Wooden Straight Razor Shaving Kit

The Wooden Straight Razor Shaving Kit contains a straight Razor with wood handle and a carbon steel, hollow ground blade, a premium hand crafted leather strap, a sharpening canvas and swivel. (2′ x 16”) and a bristle shaving brush. You also get a wooden shaving bowl with soap.

3. Mobile Edge Eco-Friendly Backpack

Mobile Edge Eco-Friendly Backpack

The Mobile Edge Eco-Friendly Backpack is made of all-natural cotton canvas. It has a padded computer compartment that can fit laptops up to 17″. It also has custom fasteners to help keep your gear secure. With a 4.5 star rating, its a bag you know he will love.

Gifts for the Kids

1. Green Toys Sand Play Set

Green Toys Sand Play Set

Their Green Toys Sand Play Set is awesome because it replaces all of those cheap, junky, chemical-filled plastic beach toys that seem to break every year. It is made in the USA from 100% recycled plastic milk containers. The recycled HDPE (#2 plastic) meets FDA food contact standards and does not contain BPA, phthalates, or PVC.

Now you play with your little ones at the beach knowing that they are not being exposed to harm chemicals from their play toys.

2. Wooden Balance Bike

Wooden Balance Bike

The Wooden Balance Bike is made entirely from birch wood construction and non-toxic building materials. The tires are made from Pneumatic rubber. The seat adjusts so that the bike can grow with your child and they learn how to ride a bike.

If you have never heard of a balance bike, they are THE best way to teach a child how to ride a bike, hands down.

3. Dabbawalla Lunch Bag

Dabbawalla Lunch Bag

The Dabbawalla Lunch Bag is crafted from eco-sponge, an innovative neoprene fabric that has earned the Oeko-Tex 100 standard of safety in textiles. All Dabbawalla bags are certified free of lead, PVC, pthalates and over 100 other harmful substances. They also come in a wide variety of colors and styles, so you are sure to find one that your little one will enjoy.

Disposing of medicine properly keeps it out of the environment and our bodies.

I was cleaning out our bathroom cabinets the other day, looking for materials to take to our local county special trash collection. While I was cleaning everything out, I came across our medicine box. I opened it up and found that about half of the over-the-counter medicine we had was expired. I threw it all into a box, figuring that I could take it to the special trash collection that was happening in a few days. However, after thinking about the types of trash that I had taken to previous special collections, I started to wonder if they would accept expired medicine or not, so I gave them a call.

It turned out that they do not accept medicine of any type, expired or not. I looked at my box of medicine and started wondering what I should do with it. So, I started researching how to properly dispose of medicine. Here is what I found out.

There are currently 3 main methods of disposing of things and those same methods are used when it comes to disposing of medicine.

Flush It

Each year, hospitals, other healthcare facilities and individuals flush millions of tons of unused or expired medicine into our wastewater. Unfortunately, when you dispose of medicine down the drain, it ends up in the wastewater, where it can slip through the treatment process and end up being put into the environment, or worse, in our drinking water.

As there are millions of different medicines, the interactions between all of these drugs simply cannot be predicted and are probably not good. In fact, in one study done in Davis County, Utah, scientists were able to link drug dumping to virulent antibiotic-resistant germs and genetic mutations that may promote cancers. Another study at the University of Rouen Medical Center in France showed that 31 of 38 wastewater samples showed the ability to mutate genes. Finally, a Swiss study of hospital wastewater suggested that fluoroquinolone antibiotics also can disfigure bacterial DNA, raising the question of whether such drug concoctions can heighten the risk of cancer in humans.

So, flushing old or expired medicine down the drain is not a viable solution.

Burn It

If we can’t flush medicine, maybe we can burn it instead?

Unfortunately, that will not work either. Burning medicine produces Dioxin, a group of persistent, organic pollutants that are among the most toxic chemicals known. Dioxins can persist in the environment for thousands of years and can be transported around the globe via atmospheric or waterborne transport. They dissolve in fat and because they are eliminated from the body only very slowly, they accumulate in the food chain. As a result, top predators, including humans, can have very high concentrations. They are also passed on to mother to child, both before birth, and via breastfeeding. In the 1990s, the USEPA found that some 40% of the US’s dioxin emissions to air came from medical waste incineration.

The production of Dioxin is a good enough reason to not burn medicine, but another reason is that the resulting waste product, such as fly ash, has to be disposed of as hazardous waste.

So, incineration of medicine is not a viable option either.

Bury It

Burying medicine underground is the final option. It is also the most safe method and is the one recommended by the FDA. However, you shouldn’t just throw your old medicine in the trash. There are some precautions you should take to make sure it is disposed of properly. Otherwise, there is a far greater chance that the medicine will eventually make its way back into the environment.

If the medicine is in capsule form, take the capsule apart or crush it to get the medicine inside out. If it is in pill form, crush up the pill to break down the medicine into small pieces. Then, combine the medicine with an absorbing material, such as used coffee grounds or kitty litter, so that it sticks to it and helps contain it. If you have liquid medicine, pour it into an absorbing material so that it is contained by the absorbing material.

Once you have finished combining the medicine with the absorbing material, put it all in a plastic bag or other sealed container and put it in your trash.

As you can see, even the recommended method of disposing of medicine is not all that great. The best way that you can help to keep medicine out of the environment and our bodies is to not buy it at all or buy only the amount you need. By purchasing small amounts of medicine, you save money and reduce the amount you may have to eventually throw away, which keeps the environment cleaner for all of us.

Going green can be easy and save money. Here are five easy tips to be green.

We have known for a while now that the Earth is warming. Granted, there was still some debate as to whether global warming was caused by human actions or not up until a few years ago. But now, it is generally accepted that mankind has at least contributed somewhat to global warming. That is why it was so shocking to see that in a recent survey in National Geographic, the U.S. ranked last in terms of green lifestyle choices.

With all of the advertised green household products we see in advertisements, and the campaigns for environmental sustainability and the drastic weather changes we have seen over the past few years, you would think that the U.S. would be on its way to becoming one of the leaders in global sustainability. Granted, the 2008 financial shock and lingering recession definitely dampened the ability of some U.S. families to be able to spend a little bit more for greener options. However, as we have noted in some of our other posts, being green sometimes does not have to cost anything. In fact, being green can save you money.

Here are five ways that you can save money and easily go green.

Using or Blocking the Sun

Simply by working with or against the sun, you can reduce your energy bills and emissions. Cellular blackout shades are one eco-friendly option that allow you to control how much light and heat come into your house. When it is summer and you are trying to keep your house cooler, leave them down in places where your home gets a lot of sun. In the winter, when you are trying to keep your house warmer, open them up on bright sunny days to allow more sun into the house.

Adjust Your Home Thermostat

Did you know that most American households spend over half of their energy costs on heating and cooling their homes? If you lower your thermostat in the winter and raise it in the summer by only a few degrees, you will see huge savings. You can actually save up to 3 percent of your utility bills for every degree you adjust. If you don’t feel like manually adjusting your thermostat, buy a programmable one and set it only twice per year, once in the summer and once in the winter and reap even more savings.

Paying Bills Online

Online bill pay is a great way to reduce paper usage, which is good for the environment. Signing up is easy and literally saves millions of trees each year. In addition, it saves our natural resource of fossil fuels and reduces emissions because the post office does not have to deliver bills to your house and carry checks from your house. Finally, you save big by not having to pay for the cost of stamps.

Walk, Bike or Carpool to Work or School

If you live close to work or school, walk or bike there instead of driving. Doing so will save you hundreds of dollars each year on gas and maintenance on your car. If you don’t live close, commuting to work or school with a friend or neighbor can save nearly 10 percent of your monthly car emissions from entering our atmosphere. In addition, you save money on gas, and wear and tear on your car. It also gives you a chance to talk or read instead of having to focus on traffic, all of which can help you spend your time better and make you less stressed when you arrive.

Don’t Buy Bottled Water

Americans spend $20 billion a year on bottled water. If you break it down, that is about $66 per person spent only on bottled water. Tap water costs about $.02 per gallon while bottled water is over $1.50 per gallon. Not only does not buying bottled water save you money, it also helps reduce the number of plastic bottles that enter the waste stream each year. In 2006, 30 billion plastic bottles entered the waste stream and less than 20% of those were recycled. So, don’t buy bottled water and save yourself some money and help keep plastic bottles out of our landfills.

It really is our duty as Americans to do what we can to help conserve our natural resources and lead more eco-friendly lifestyles, even if it’s as simple as recycling. Implement our five easy green tips today to save money, live greener and do your part to make our planet a better place for future generations.

Could the chemicals in shampoo be harming your health?

For many of us, our routine includes a daily shower, which includes washing and conditioning our hair. It has been a habit for so long for most of us that we don’t think twice about it and if it could in fact be harming us.

I was in the shower the other day and reached for one of the numerous shampoo bottles in our shower holder like normal. However, this time I took a second to think about what I was putting on my head. I took a glance at the ingredients list on the shampoo bottle and found that it was a very long list and that I could not pronounce half of them. This worried me. Over the past few years, I have found that when the ingredient list is long and there are many ingredients that you are not familiar with, it usually means the product contains things that can be harmful to your health.

After I got out of the shower, I decided that I was going to research shampoo and the main ingredients found in it and if they can have harmful effects on your health. Per usual, I was shocked and amazed at what I found.

The first thing I learned when I started researching shampoo chemicals was that there are a lot of them. If you take a bottle of shampoo out of your shower and take a look at the ingredient list, you will be blown away by the length and complexity of the list. When looking at one of the shampoo bottles in our shower, I found ingredients like:

• Methylisothiazoline
• Sodium Lauryl Sulfate
• Phthalates (Fragrance)
• Parabens
• Formaldehyde

Ugh. What are those? None of them sound natural and I put them on my head almost every single day? It was definitely time to find out what those ingredients are and if they are harmful to my health or not.

Methylisothiazolinone

An ingredient in many popular shampoos, like Head & Shoulders, Suave and Pantene, Methylisothiazolinone (MIT) has been linked to neurological damage in humans by MIT. Pregnant mothers who use products containing MIT put their unborn children at risk of developing brain defects. MIT has also been linked to the development of Alzheimer’s disease and allergic reactions.

Sodium Lauryl Sulfate

Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (SLS), and its related chemical Sodium Laureth Sulfate (SLES), are found in almost every popular brand of shampoo and body wash. They cause soap and shampoo to create suds and foam as we all expect soap to do. However, both SLS and SLES can have an irritating effect on skin and hair. They are also commonly contaminated with 1,4 dioxane, which is a know carcinogen.

Phthalates (Fragrance)

A very popular ingredient in personal care products, Phthalates can both add fragrance and also add flexibility, transparency, durability, and longevity to products. Phthalates have been shown to cause changes to hormones and birth defects in studies with rats and have been shown to disrupt the endocrine system in humans. They are most often listed in ingredient lists as “fragrance.”

Parabens

Parabens are a preservative that kill bacteria to allow a product to have a longer shelf-life. However, parabens have been linked to increased estrogen levels, which can lead to the development of hormone disorders and cancers. Parabens can be listed as methlyparaben, propylparaben, or ethylparaben in the ingredients list.

Formaldehyde

Believe it or not, Formaldehyde, an ingredient also used to help embalm the dead, is also found in many shampoos and soaps. However, it won’t be listed under its original name. Instead, it can be listed as doazolidinyl urea, imidazolidinyl urea, or quarternium-15. Formaldehyde can cause allergic reactions and can be a neurotoxin as well.

As you can see, many traditional shampoos are full of nasty chemicals that can cause harm to your body. Once I learned this information, we started switching over to natural and organic shampoo. We have started evaluating several products and will post the results of our trials soon (like we did when we reviwed natural deodorants).

Photo credit: rockylubbers on Flickr.

Natural cat litter is a better option for both health and environmental reasons

Like many people, we have cats. Despite the fact that their litter smells sometimes and that they throw-up hairballs on the carpet and shed all over our couches, we really do love them and try to do our best by them.

In truth, they are really my cats, as I am the one that takes care of them, gives them food and water and cleans out their litter boxes. The other day, I was cleaning out the litter and started to wonder what the litter was made of  and if it was safe for them to use. I mean, every time I poured new litter into the litter pans, I would hold turn my head and hold my breath to keep from breathing the dust in. I knew litter was primarily made out of clay, but I did not know what else was in it or what kind of environmental impact it had.

I also wondered if there was a better way to deal with the dirty litter. My existing method was to scoop the dirty litter into a plastic bag and then throw that plastic bag in the trash, which is not green at all. But, as far as I knew, there was no other way to dispose of dirty cat litter.

So, I finished cleaning out the cat litter, filling up their food and water bowls and set out researching my questions. I soon found out that traditional clumping cat litter is not very good for cats, people or the environment and that there are much better options out there that also help with the problem of disposal of dirty cat litter.

The first thing I researched was traditional clumping cat litter. I wanted to know what it was made out of and if it was safe and what impact it had on the environment, if any.

It turns out that most clumping cat litter is made out of clay, just as I thought. However, there are many other chemicals and products added to it to make it clump, absorb and deodorize that are not good for you or your cat.

Dangers of Clumping Cat Litter

The first ingredient usually added to traditional clumping cat litter is Sodium bentonite. Sodium bentonite is a clumping agent that helps the litter absorb and clump. It can expand up to 18 times its dry size, which makes it useful in grouting, sealing and plugging applications.

If your cats are anything like mine, they often lick themselves soon after they have been in the litter box. When they do this, they can ingest the Sodium bentonite, which will expand and absorb fluids inside of their digestive tract. This can cause major digestive issues for your cats.

The second ingredient typically added to traditional clumping litter is Quartz silica, which is a known carcinogen for humans and household pets when inhaled. Again, think about when you scoop litter and add new litter to the litter pans and how much dust can be thrown into the air to be inhaled.

Environmental Impact of Clumping Clay Litter

Once I learned how bad traditional clumping clay litter is for both you and your cat, I set out to learn how it is made and if its manufacturing process had any adverse effects on the environment. I very quickly found out that clay litter is pretty awful for the environment.

In order to get the clay for cat litter, the clay is Strip mined. If you do not know what strip mining is, it involves stripping off the topsoil of an area of earth to get to the materials underneath it. Strip mining is bad on many levels, from the massive oil and energy use required to move the tons of earth, to the negative impacts on the area that is strip-mined.

So, the manufacture of traditional clay clumping cat litter is pretty bad for the environment. However, to make matter worse, clay litter NEVER degrades in the landfill and because of its ingredients, there is no other way to dispose of it. So, just as I was putting the dirty clay cat litter into a plastic bag and throwing it into the trash, so are millions of other people. It does not take much imagination to see how this leads to billions of pounds of dirty clay cat litter going into landfills each year that will never degrade.

So, if traditional clay clumping litter is bad for you, your cat and the environment, both in manufacture and disposal, what is a cat lover to do?

Natural Cat Litter

Swheat Scoop is one natural cat litter option

Luckily, there are now natural cat litters, which provide good alternatives to traditional clay clumping litters. These natural cat litters are made out of corn, wheat, cedar and other natural ingredients and offer many benefits over traditional clay litters, including:

1. They contain no silica or Sodium bentonite, so you do not have to worry about you or your cat inhaling or ingesting nasty chemicals that can cause health problems.
2. They biodegrade, so if you throw them out in the trash, they will biodegrade in the landfill eventually (assuming that they are not wrapped in a plastic bag).
3. Some of them are flushable, although, whether it makes sense to flush them depends on whether you are on a sewer or septic system and how much you worry about potential clogs. Also, there is still some debate about whether it is safe to public water supplies to flush litter containing cat feces, as most waste water treatment facilities are not equipped to deal with Toxoplasma, a parasite found in some cat feces that can cause health problems in humans and other animals, even though it does not affect most cats.
4. They are compostable. However, you want to make sure that you do not use any of the compost on anything that will be eaten, only plants used for landscaping purposes.
5. They are usually made of leftover materials from other manufacturing processes, so they give good use to materials that could otherwise end up in a landfill and require no manufacturing process of their own, which means that they require little energy to produce.

After learning about natural cat litter, we decided to make the switch. We reviewed several of the natural cat litters available and decided to go with Swheat Scoop, as we had heard good things about it, it was available in our local stores and seems to be more easily flushable than the other natural cat litters.

So, if you have cats, consider switching to a natural cat litter. If any of your family or friends have cats, tell them about natural cat litters to see if they want to switch. The more cat owners we can get to switch, the healthier all of our cats will be and the less environmental impact they will have.

Photo credit: littleREDElf on Flickr.

Smoothies are a great way to cool off and get great nutrition as well

It is hot these days and getting hotter every single year. Fortunately, there are many different ways to beat the heat. But, if you don’t have air conditioning, a pool or live near high-elevation mountains, your options are a bit more limited.

One of our favorite ways to beat the heat is with a cool drink. Sure, you can grab an ice cold soda, but as we have seen, sodas are not very good for you. You could also grab a milk shake, but who wants all of those calories and fat? No, the best drink we have found to cool you off in the heat is a smoothie.

Not only are smoothies cool, but they can taste great and be packed with nutrition as well, if you make them right. We started making smoothies about a year ago and now make them pretty much every day. During that time, we have tried many different smoothie recipes, including some that are very bad and some that are so good that you won’t believe that it is a smoothie and not a shake.

Below are our favorite 3 recipes. We come back to them time and time again as they are healthy and delicious.

Our favorite smoothie is a variation on what is usually called a “green smoothie.” We were first introduced to green smoothies by the web site Oh She Glows, run by Angela Liddon. If you have not seen her web site already, it is worth checking it out.

Green Nutter Banana Smoothie

• 1 cup milk (almond, soy, rice or oat milk all work too if you are lactose intolerant or vegan)
• 1 banana (preferably frozen to make the smoothie more creamy)
• 1 tablespoon peanut butter (you can substitute almond butter for peanut butter and add more or less to suit your taste buds)
• 1 handful spinach (you can substitute mixed greens or kale or chard for spinach, but use a bit less as they have a stronger taste)
• 3-4 ice cubes

Throw all of the ingredients in your blender and blend until smooth.

Hints: If you use a fresh banana, you will need to add more ice to produce a cold, smooth texture. Play with the ratio of the nut butter and banana to find the one you like the best. If you like chocolate like we do, trying using chocolate milk or add a dash of chocolate protein powder. You basically end up with a chocolate peanut butter banana shake. SOoooooo delicious.

Chocolate Mixed Berry Smoothie

• 1 cup milk (almond, soy, rice or oat milk all work too if you are lactose intolerant or vegan)
• 3/4 cup mixed berries (preferably frozen strawberries, blueberries, blackberries and raspberries)
• 1/2 scoop chocolate protein powder

Place all ingredients in your blender and blend until smooth.

Hints: If you use fresh berries instead of frozen, add 3-4 ice cubes to make the texture thicker and the smoothie cold. If you do not have protein powder or if you are lactose intolerant or vegan and don’t want to use it, use a chocolate almond, soy, rice or oat milk instead or regular milk.

Purple Banana Smoothie

• 1 cup orange juice (you can also use milk – almond, soy, rice or oat milk all work too if you are lactose intolerant or vegan)
• 2 bananas (preferably frozen to make the smoothie more creamy)
• 1/2 cup blueberries (preferably frozen)
• 1 tablespoon honey – optional (or agave nectar or stevia)
• 2-3 ice cubes (if you use fresh fruit, not frozen)

Place all ingredients in your blender and blend until smooth.

Hints: Try adding a dash of vanilla extract in this smoothie to change it up a bit. You can also use pineapple juice instead of orange juice.

So, there you have it, 3 amazingly delicious and healthy smoothies. However, you can actually make the smoothies even more healthy without affecting the taste much at all. Try sprinkling some flaxseed (check out the health benefits of flaxseed) or wheat grass in before you blend everything to add a extra boost of nutrition (you may want to consider taking wheatgrass capsules separately anyway, as it is a superfood and has many health benefits).

Do you have any good smoothie recipes to share? If so, post them in the comments below so that we can all try them out!

Photo credit: Minor9th on Flickr

You can get rid of ground bees naturally without damaging the environment or your yard

Ah, summer. The time for cookouts, outside fun and, sometimes, unwanted visitors to your yard. One of these unwelcome visitors are ground bees (much like wasps, which we wrote about how to get rid of naturally a while ago).

I was out in the front yard a few weeks ago picking up some branches that came down after a rainstorm and our daughter came up and told me she had seen bees coming out of the ground. I was skeptical at first, as I had mowed the grass recently and done some other yard work and had not seen any bees. But, she took my hand and led me over to where she saw them. Lo and behold, there they were, small black and yellow bees flying out of the ground.

I wanted to get a better sense for the bees and their behavior, so I watched them a while. They were very small, only about an inch long. They were also not very aggressive towards me as I watched them, which made me think that they were not yellow jackets. However, I did not know for sure, and I had heard before that yellow jackets could nest in the ground and be docile at first and get very aggressive later in the summer. So, I started researching ground bees to determine what type they were and how I could get rid of them naturally if it made sense to.

The first thing I learned was that there are several different types of ground bees.

Mining Bees

Mining bees, also know as digger bees, are a type of bee that nests in the ground. They range in size from the size of an average honeybee to smaller. They also range in color from a furry yellow and black striped bee, to a bee with a shiny green metallic look. They are fairly docile and are considered solitary bees, as they only live in colonies for a short time to mate. Mining bees are also beneficial in the pollination of many different types of plants.

Ground Nesting Wasps

Ground nesting wasps include wasps like yellow jackets and Cicada Killers. Yellow jackets are social wasps, so they live in large colonies and can be very aggressive in defending their nests. However, Cicada Killers are solitary wasps and are fairly docile.

Now that I knew about the different type of ground bees, I knew that we had Mining bees in our yard. Given that they are fairly docile bees and are solitary and only nest for a short time, I considered just leaving them alone. However, their nest was right next to our driveway. Anyone getting out of the passenger side of the car parked on the right side of the driveway got out right by the nest. I was worried that, as time progressed, the bees may become more aggressive towards people getting close to their nest and start stinging them. So, I decided to persuade them to move their nest.

How to Get Rid of Ground Bees

I set about researching how to get the bees to move. There were plenty of ways to get rid of the bees that would both kill them and do environmental damage to our yard, such as pouring gas, turpentine, pesticides or bleach down the hole or even light fireworks and putting them down the hole.

While I have to admit that putting fireworks down the hole and watching the reaction to that sounds like a bit of fun, I did not want do kill the bees if I did not have to and I did not want to do any environmental damage to our yard if I could avoid it. So, I kept looking for safer and more environmentally-friendly ways to deal with the bees. Luckily it did not take long before I found some great ideas.

* Warning: All of the below ideas should be done at night when the majority of the bees are back in the nest and are at their most docile state! Also, be sure to find ALL entrances to the nest before doing anything. The last thing you want is to try an idea on one hole only to have the bees fly out of another hole and sting you.

1. Put a tarp over the hole. This is a brilliant idea and I ended up using a variation of it in my plan. The tarp blocks the entrance and exit hole so the bees inside of the nest cannot get out and those outside of the nest cannot get back in. However, you have to make sure the tarp is flattened the ground and secured or the bees may find a way to dig under it. The downside of this idea is that you have to leave the tarp in place for a few days, which can kill the grass underneath of the tarp.
2. Pour water down the hole. This is another great idea. Ground bees do not like their nests to be wet and don’t like water. So, after dark, sneak up to the hole and put the end of a garden hose in it and then turn the hose on and let it run for a few minutes while taking cover to avoid any bees that escape and come after you. Repeat for a few nights to make sure you have gotten to all of the bees. If the bees do not drown in the water, they will get tired of the nest being all wet anyway and will leave.
3. Pour vinegar down the hole. Much like water, bees don’t like vinegar and it will not do any damage to your grass. Simply sneak up to the hole after dark and pour a good bit of vinegar down the hole. Repeat for a few nights to make sure you have gotten to all of the bees and convinced them to leave.
4. Put a glass bowl over the hole. This is probably the best idea of them all. The glass bowl prevents the bees from being able to fly into or out of the nest. Because the sun comes through the glass, the bees don’t realize that they are trapped and don’t try to dig under the bowl. They just keep trying to fly through it. After several days of no food and water, the bees inside the nest die and the ones outside of the nest relocate. Best of all, the glass bowl allows sunlight to get through it, so it does not kill your grass like a tarp does.
5. Put diatomaceous earth all around and in the hole. Diatomaceous earth is a naturally occurring powder made from crushed shells. Once it gets on the exoskeleton of an insect, it dries it out, killing it. By putting it around and in the hole to the nest, bees flying into and out of the nest will get it on their bodies and will slowly dry out and die. They will also spread it to other bees in the nest, which will cause them to die. After enough bees die, the rest will probably decide to relocate.

I chose a mixture of ideas 1 and 2. I went out after dark and put some window screen mesh over the hole and weighed it down with bricks. I then poured water down the hole and ran for cover. The next day, I saw 2 or 3 bees around the hole. I watched them and confirmed that they were trying to get into the nest, but were not successful in doing so. That night, I went back out and poured more water down the hole.  The next day, I saw no more bees. I left the window screen in place for another day, just to be safe. On the third day, I took the window screen off and removed the bricks and saw no more bees. Unfortunately though, I did have a small patch of dead grass where the window screen mesh had been.

Have you ever had ground bees in your yard? What did you do to get rid of them safely?

Photo credit: Flickr.

Nonstick cookware makes cooking easier, but is it safe?

If you have been following are blog, you have learned that modern, processed and prepackaged foods contain very little nutrition and can be full of hormones and nasty chemicals. Not only are processed and prepackaged foods not that healthy, but producing them typically causes great damage to the environment in the forms of: dangerous chemicals used as herbicides and pesticides,  hormones used in meat production, GMO’s used in the growing of corn, wheat and other crops, and extreme use of energy (read: coal and oil) to produce and transport food across the globe.

Hopefully, you have switched over to eating natural and organic foods when you can. If you have, you are likely eating out a lot less and cooking at  home more, which is great. However, how you cook the food you eat is just as important as the actual food itself. You can buy 100% natural and organic food or even grow your own food in your backyard, but if you cook it in the wrong pan, you can still introduce dangerous chemicals into your body.

Today, the most ubiquitous type of cookware available is non-stick. It is heralded as a quick and easy way to cook food and clean up afterwards. But, is nonstick cookware safe?

History

Non-stick cookware has an interesting origin. The first main ingredient in nonstick cookware was Teflon, which was discovered by a scientist as Dupont in 1938. Like most discoveries at that time, it was being researched for military purposes. However, once World War II ended, Dupont scientists started looking at it for commercial applications. They found that it was very slippery and when they applied it to a solid surface, almost nothing would stick to it. A few years later, the nonstick pan was invented and started undergoing testing. It was officially released to the public in 1960.

Back in the 1950′s and 1960′s, cooking required a lot of oil (typically oil containing saturated fats) to ensure that food did not get burned and that pans were not ruined. Because you had to use a lot of oil, post-cooking clean up could be messy and the excess fat in the oil could lead to heart problems, especially with a sedentary lifestyle. So, when nonstick cookware was introduced, people flocked to it en mass. The nonstick coating enabled you to use less oil when cooking, which made clean-up easier and provided health benefits.

Ever since its introduction, non-stick cookware has been the reigning champion in terms of cookware material. Just walk into a home goods store near you and visit their cookware department. You will quickly see that non-stick makes up 70% or more of the cookware offerings. It makes sense, as non-stick cookware can make life easier and is supposed to be safe. But is it really safe?

Safety

According to experts, non-stick cookware can be safe, if it is used properly, which means staying within the recommended temperature range, not damaging the pans and replacing the cookware when needed.

Overheating

The maximum recommended temperature for non-stick cookware is 500 degrees Fahrenheit. If the pans go above that temperature, the non-stick coating can break down at the molecular level and seep into your food. If the pans go over 660 degrees Fahrenheit, they can more significantly decompose and produce noxious gasses that can cause flu-like symptoms and kill household birds (see the Environmental Working Group study).

But, do the pans ever get to 500 degrees or higher? According to a study done by Good Housekeeping, non-stick pans can easily get to 500 degrees or higher. In their study, an empty pan that was preheated for 1.75 minutes went to 507 degrees. An empty pan preheated with 2 tablespoons of oil went to 514 degrees. A pan used to cook hamburgers for 8.5 minutes went to 577 degrees. Finally, a pan used to cook a steak for 10 minutes reached a maximum temperature of 656 degrees. So, it is safe to say that non-stick pans can easily reach temperatures of 500 degrees or higher.

In order to keep nonstick pans from overheating, experts recommend not preheating them for longer than a minute and not cooking with them on high. They also recommend using larger pans, as they take longer to heat up because of the larger pan area.

Damaging and Replacing

When using nonstick cookware, it is heavily recommended to use plastic utensils (this in itself is a big red flag, as plastic utensils themselves can break down under high heat), as metal ones can scratch or chip the surface and cause the nonstick surface to degrade. Pans can also be damaged by:

• Stacking them in cabinets. Experts recommend hanging them or separating them with sheets of paper if the pans are going to be stacked.
• Extreme temperature changes. If your pan is extremely hot from the stove and you dunk it directly into ice cold water, the pan can warp or the coating can become compromised.
• Cleaning with Scouring Pads. Rough cleaning pads and steel wool will scratch and damage the nonstick surface.
• Cleaning in the dishwasher. Dishwasher detergent can be too abrasive for nonstick cookware. Hand wash nonstick cookware.
• Storing food in the pans. The acid in some foods can break down the nonstick surface.

Chipped or scratched pans are much more likely to release dangerous toxins. So, if one of your pans becomes chipped or scratched, do not use it anymore. However, even if your nonstick pans are not chipped or scratched, Dupont, the company that holds the patent for Teflon and produces a lot of nonstick cookware, recommends replacing your non-stick cookware every 5 years.

The Bottom Line

In the best case, nonstick cookware will not harm you if you do not overheat it, scratch it, pit it or clean it improperly. We think it is just not enough reward for the risk involved. When it comes to your health, you really should not compromise. If there is even a small chance that something can release toxic chemicals into your food or air, we recommend that you do not use it and find better alternatives (which we will be blogging about in the future).

Do you use nonstick cookware? Will you still use it after reading this? Comment and let us know what you think.