Ted Talk: Dan Barber

Can Fish stay on the Menu:

Found via Treehugger

The Rice has been Milk'd *Update*

Sadly I can't report back on how the rice milk was from the freezer because I forgot to leave enough headspace when I filled the mason jars and they both broke.  Time to make more and try again!

Robin Hood Tax

I support the Robin Hood Tax, how about you?

Trader Joes Wine #10 Rootstock

Wow! Right from the get go, this is a sweet wine.  The first thing I noticed when I uncorked this beautiful colored red wine was the smell.  To me it was a mixed smell of fresh strawberries and blackberries.  The taste is far less sweet then the smell and the finish is wonderfully spicey.

The bottle says "will pair well with hearty entrees," but I enjoyed it both with dinner (homemade veggie soup w/rice) and has a post-work/pre-dinner wine.

Down and dirty info:
Price: $6.99
Average rating (Corkd.com): 78/100 (I would rate this MUCH higher)
Drinkability: 4.5/5
Length: long w/some spice
Dry?: Low

Drink again?: You betcha!

Hand Crank Compost Shredder

This is my weekend project...anyone have any suggestion to make the design a bit better?  My goal is to make a hand powered compost shredder so that I can breakdown our kitchen scraps before I add them to the compost pile.

Miles driven

For a while now, I have been wanting to keep track of how many miles I drive, both for work and personal use.  Why? Because I am curious about Carbon Offset and how much it would cost to balance out my driving.  A while ago I posted that if everyone lived like I do, it would take 2.75 Earths to sustain us all.  While we can't make a few more Earths, I can reduce my impact on the one we have.

The plan is to enter in how many miles I drive daily into a GoogleDocs form I made. (I can walk you through it if you'd like)  When I pull it up on my phone it looks like this:

All I have to do is select one of the four preset vehicles I drive the most (or other if borrowing/renting a car) enter in the millage and hit submit.  The information is then automatically sent to a spreadsheet which I have posted above. (I am going to be making a button on the homepage for this soon)  At the end of every month, I will sort the raw data into total millage per vehicle and post the results.  I am still looking for good data about the amount of carbon produced for each vehicle and once I find that, I will share it as well.

I am going to try and get work to buy carbon offsets (or many plant enough trees) to offset the amount of carbon released by just one employee over the course of a month or year.

If you would like to do something like this as well, let me know and I can post your information as well.  I can make you the same spreadsheet or you can just post/email me how many miles you drive a month and what kind of vehicle you drive.

You can find out your Ecological Footprint here: www.myfootprint.org