The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now considers our lack of sleep a “public health epidemic.” Currently, Americans spend more than $84 million on over-the-counter sleep aids each year, leaving many searching for natural, cost-effective ways to help manage their sleep deficit. So, what’s keeping everybody up?

Lack of sleep can be influenced by many factors, from medical illness to side effects of drugs to simply having a lot on your mind. Before trying to remedy your sleep deficit on your own, make sure you investigate whatever might be behind your sleep difficulties and seek proper professional attention. Doing so could save you time, money, and many more sleepless nights.

Prescription and over-the-counter sleep aids unfortunately don’t address the root cause of a sleep disorder. They are a temporary fix until the driving force behind the problem can be addressed. Diet and lifestyle changes may be a natural alternative worthy of discussing with your doctor. The types of food and beverages you choose and the way that you consume them can play a major role in influencing sleep.

First, here are a few tips on how to make a bedtime snack really work for you:

• Time your snack. Research suggests that bedtime snacks are most effective when they happen an hour before bedtime (not sooner) and contain carbohydrates plus a little protein. A small nutrient-balanced snack causes the brain to produce serotonin, which helps calm and prepare you for sleep.

• Plan an early bedtime. Short sleep times can cause an imbalance of the hormones leptin and ghrelin; this imbalance increases hunger and decreases satiety cues. What does that mean? It means not getting enough sleep every night can cause you to eat more and feel hungrier, which can make it difficult for you to fall asleep. So, eat a small snack around 9:00pm and try to be in bed by 10:00pm.

• Avoid caffeine and alcohol after 7. Caffeine works as a mild stimulant that causes jitters and gets the brain working into overdrive. If you must have caffeine, make sure you have it no later than two to three hours before bedtime. Foods and beverages that contain the most caffeine include coffee, green and black tea, energy drinks, caffeinated sodas like cola and root beer, and chocolate. And research shows that while a drink or two may help you get to sleep, alcohol is disruptive of restful REM (rapid eye movement) sleep.

With those tips in mind, here’s what to chew to help you snooze:

1. Cherries are one of the top foods rich in naturally occurring melatonin, a hormone that promotes sleep. One study found that healthy adults experienced improved sleep time and a 5 to 6 percent increase in overall sleep efficiency after drinking two servings of tart cherry juice for a week.

2. Carbohydrates before bedtime are one of the best fuels for cranking out sleep-promoting serotonin. But don’t have fatty fries or chips. Have some warm oatmeal or two slices of whole grain toast with almond butter.

3. Milk is the largest contributor of calcium, vitamin D, and potassium to the American diet. Although the scientific literature is a bit thin on milk’s effect on sleep, the nutrients in milk –specifically calcium and tryptophan–are known to induce sleep. Calcium helps the brain use the amino acid tryptophan. Milk’s carbohydrates help tryptophan work more effectively, too!

4. Salmon is rich in omega-3 fats. Research shows that omega-3s deficient diets negatively affect the sleep hormone melatonin and its function, and throw off the natural sleep cycle called “circadian rhythm,” which can lead to sleep disturbances.

5. Chicken is naturally high in the amino acid precursor to melatonin called tryptophan. I’m sure you were thinking that turkey might have a leg up on the competition, but that’s not the case. Tryptophan helps produce the neurotransmitter serotonin, which in turn makes us feel more relaxed and sleepy.

6. Pumpkin seeds are an excellent source of the mineral magnesium, as well as an excellent source of tryptophan. Low magnesium levels have been associated with a poor night’s sleep. Eating a handful of pumpkin seeds was found to be as effective in improving tryptophan levels in the body as taking tryptophan supplements.

7. Walnuts contain a number of nutrients that support a relaxed and healthy nervous system. These include omega-3 fats, vitamin E, folate, and melatonin. Research shows that the melatonin in walnuts is well absorbed and will raise blood melatonin concentrations when eaten in moderation.

David Grotto, RD, LDN, formerly the national spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association, he is now the founder and president of Nutrition Housecall, a nutrition consulting firm that provides nutrition communications, lecturing and consulting services, and also offers personalized at-home dietary services. He is the author of 101 Foods That Could Save Your Life and 101 Optimal Life Foods.

Read more: http://www.care2.com/greenliving/what-to-eat-to-help-you-sleep.html#ixzz2Q4c7itBh

Just started reading Maria Rodale’s Organic Gardening Secrets: Summer where she states – “Anyone who cares about the environment should be a supporter of organic food and farming”.  As someone who is trying to Organically grow food for my family to enable my children to grow up healthy and to be able see, interact and enjoy all the wonders around us that we all take for granted everyday, I can honestly say this is a statement I live by daily.

After 25 years of serving up healthy, organic foods and local treats in the DC area, MOMs is celebrating with friends and employees in all stores this weekend, June 30-July 1, 2012.

We’ll have tons of recycling drives (our favorite type of fun): bring your old jeans and denim, eyeglasses, shoes, and all types of electronics to MOMs this weekend for environmentally-responsible re-use and recycling!

We’re also delighted to host some fun kids activities, provide delicious food samples, games and raffles.  The MOMs staff have received our newest 100% organic employee T-shirt, made by Econscious, with our 25th Anniversary design.

And don’t forget our furry friends: you’ll find a fun Ice Cream Social (frozen yogurt, actually) for Dogs going on at our Mighty Healthy Pet location next to the MOM’s in College Park, all weekend.  Homeward Trails will host one of their awesome dog adoption events on Sunday, July 1st from 12pm to 2pm.

As always, you’ll find tons of your favorite local products at MOMs, including milk from the organic dairy fanatics at Trickling Springs Creamery in PA; healthy, tasty smoothies from B’More Organic; whimsical soaps and bath salts from the fun sisters at Biggs & Featherbelle in Baltimore; salty, sweet deliciousness from Salazon Chocolate Co; award-winning sparkling Spencerville hard cider from Montgomery County; certified organic chicken from Ayrshire Farm in Upperville, VA; sensational sweet & crunchy granola from Timonium’s  cult-worthy Michele’s Granola, and loads of certified organic produce that we hand-select from a bunch of awesome, small hyper-local farms!

Recommended reading: if you’re looking for some words of wisdom, or tantalizing tales, we recommend you check out a few of these publications, which are often available right near the checkout at MOMs: Flavor Magazine, Maryland Life, Edible DC, Eating Well, and Mother Earth News.

The book that’s hot right now among MOMs employees (sorry, we do not sell books, but we do love to read) is the masterpiece Organic Manifesto by Maria Rodale.  We highly recommend this quick read which is packed with revelations and recommendations.

Lastly, we’ll do some quick shout-outs to companies/organizations that are doing some great work in our area, whom we’ve had the pleasure of supporting over the past few years: Savenia Labs, Clean Currents, Bethesda Green, Alice Ferguson Foundation, Chesapeake Bay Foundation, and Solar City. Check them out if you’re looking to get greener.

We hope to see everyone this weekend! Thank you all for your love and support. Most of our customers have learned about us from other (bright & beautiful) customers who spread the word far and wide & we can’t thank you enough.  This anniversary celebration is a tribute to you!

Locations: www.momsorganicmarket.com

Maria Rodale grew up on an organic farm and a third-generation advocate for organic farmers and farming practices. She spend much time researching and talking with both organic and non-organic farmers to see what their beliefs were and why they were farming in such a way. She discusses the effects that non-organic farming with pesticides is doing to our climate, earth and health.

The first part in this book is titled “The Great Chemical Experiment (In Which We Are All Guinea Pigs)”, and I don’t think this could be a more right on! She discusses how “we have poisoned our soil, our water, and our air” and the importance of carbon. Maria says, “While there have been antivivisection movements around the world to protect animals from testing, I’ve never heard about a single protest to save our children from this vast experiment.” The worst part is, this is true! The government is allowing farmers to use pesticides and chemicals in the food we are all consuming, yet limits the testing on animals. Yes, I do love animals, but why are we allowing these chemicals into human beings and believing that there is going to be no serious health effects?

Now, I’m not going to go through and try to summarize each part of this book because simply, I just don’t have the time. But I would like to graze through what I have read, and share with you some of the statistics and things I found most interesting.

“We prefer our nature in the macro—the postcard vistas and views. When it comes to the micro, we’d rather not look or know. We know more about outer space than we do the ground we live on, about the soil that sustains us.” “Right now, soil scientists understand less than 1 percent of all the living things in the soil.”

The next topic that she covers and really what I found to be the most interesting to me, “We Have Poisoned Ourselves and Our Children”. This chapter is where the nausea started to kick in, and I had to literally put down the book. I felt like I was both suffocating and wanted to curl up in a ball and cry.

“…autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), diseases virtually unheard of a few decades ago, are now diagnosed regularly. Of every 100 children born today, one will be diagnosed with autism before the age of 8. About 4.4 million children between the ages of 4 and 17 have been diagnosed with ADHD. Rates of asthma, diabetes, and childhood obesity are at all-time highs and scientists can’t explain why the number of children with food allergies has increased 18 percent in the last decade. It is a coincidence that the prevalence of these problems had increased as we have increased the use of chemicals to grow our food?”

80,000 chemical compounds have been introduced since World War II. “More than 2.5billion tons of these chemicals are released into the environment in the United States alone each year. In addition, more than 4 billion pounds of pesticides are used annually in the United States—to kill everything from agricultural pests to inner-city cockroaches to microbes and bacteria in schools and hospitals. Traces of all these chemicals can be detected in virtually each and every one of us. Yet only half of the compounds have been MINAMALLY tested and less than 20 percent have been tested on their effects on fetal nervous system.”

“At least 75 percent of the manufactured chemical compounds that HAVE been tested are known to cause CANCER and are toxic to the human brain.”

If these statistics don’t scare you, then I don’t know what will!

“The devastating practices employed in large-scale meat production have been the subject of entire books. Dr. Landrigan characterizes these facilities as “animal slums.” Animals raised in those conditions frequently suffer from stress-related infections, so they are routinely treated with antibiotics as a “preventative” measure. Even worse, antibiotics are fed to livestock to PROMOTE GROWTH (since it’s cheaper than using real food). The rampant use of antibiotics to treat all food animals (cattle, hogs, and poultry) in these slums is shortsighted and dangerous, as many doctors have attested. Even the FDA is calling a ban. Could you imagine keeping your children on antibiotics full-time just to keep them “healthy”?”

CHEAP FOOD= HIGH HEALTH CARE COSTS!!

“The European Union, South Korea, and many other countries prohibit preventative use of antibiotics in the factories where animals are raised for meat. Not in the United States. In fact, farmers can jus go to their local farm stores to buy a 50-pound bag of antibiotics—without prescription.”

These statements make me proud to have chosen a healthier life style as a recent vegetarian!

“Diabetes and autism are both increasing to epidemic proportions. Until recently, synthetic chemicals have escaped blame.” “Research involving pesticide applicators in the AHS shows that exposure to some agricultural chemicals may increase the risk of diabetes, confirming the findings from earlier studies. The study found a link between diabetes and seven pesticides: aldrin, chlordane, heptachlor, dichlorvos, trichlorfon, alachlor and cyanazine. The strongest association with the disease was found for trichlorfon, although the number of applicators with heavy use was small.”

NOW ON TO GMO’s (GENETICALLY MODIFIED ORGANISMS)
…now that just doesn’t SOUND right!

“Currently 91 percent of all soybeans, 85 percent of all corn, and 88 percent or all cotton in the United States are grown from GMO seeds.”

“You might be thinking this isn’t such a big deal fi you don’t each that much soy anyway. Just the occasional edamame serving or soy milk in your latte, right? Wrong. Soy is in everything from Crisco to infant formula, nondairy creamers to vegetable oil, ketchup to crackers, crayons to veggie burgers and vegan cheese. So if you are a vegan or vegetarian who is not eating primarily organic foods, you and your family could be eating a lot of contaminated GMO foods. And thanks to our government, none of these products need to be labeled as containing GMOs.”

This is all the summarizing/quoting I will do for now. I will continue to update as I finish the book. I do hope that some of you enjoy this, and I do encourage ALL to go out and purchase this book. It really is an eye opener as these diseases are more prevalent, yet the government continues to discourage funding for these studies. Tell me what ya think!

Mother’s Day moms can get naked in the garden, grocery

Stumped for something useful and unique to give Mom on Mother’s Day on Sunday?

Why not give her some tips on how to get naked in the grocery store or garden – the organic garden, of course! – and get healthier while she’s at it.

There’s actually a new book scheduled for release in June: Eat Naked: Unprocessed, Unpolluted & Undressed Eating for a Healthier, Sexier You by Margaret Floyd (New Harbinger, Oakland, Calif., $16.95).

Of course, the title doesn’t refer to actually getting nude, but rather the dos and don’ts of processed foods, and regarding organic and sustainable farming practices and how they relate to the foods we eat.

In it are all manner of facts that tend to get glossed over; for example, most folks know that soy is a great protein source. But what Floyd points out is that soy also has in it enzyme inhibitors that make it less than ideal as a food source. Preparation can make soy more useful to the body, such as through fermentation, she notes.

Floyd outlines other issues that affect nutrition, such as gluten intolerance, “good” and “bad” fats, best ways to eat nuts and seeds, along with meat and fish facts (it’s not strictly vegan or vegetarian).

She even has a checklist not only for shopping, but “How Naked is My Dinner?” including: “Is it made from fresh ingredients? Are they organic? Are the veggies local? Is the meat from pastured animals or industrial? …”

It’s a fun title for a sound book on food and nutrition. Since it won’t be out until until next month, you can clip out this article and hand it to her on Sunday along with a gift card for your local bookstore and a note: “Run free, Ma!”

If Mom already has a handle on how she grows, eats, and shops, how about how she views food, farming and gardening and the ethical responsibility of consumers in shaping food choices?

For an interesting read, see: Organic Manifesto: How Organic Farming Can Heal Our Planet, Feed the World, and Keep Us Safe, by Maria Rodale, Rodale Books, 2010, $23.99).

Folks my age will remember her father, Bob Rodale, who died in a car accident in 1990, and her grandfather, J.I. Rodale, who died in 1971, and were among the founders of the modern organic movement.

Maria Rodale is following in their footsteps, although, some might say that, despite the rather aggressive title of her book, she’s a bit “soft” on industrial farming and latitude given Big Ag in adopting the “organic” label.

The fact is, as she notes, her father and grandfather would be astounded that organic was now “mainstream.”

Nonetheless, the book is “must read” in the current state of the evolution of organics and offers great insights into how modern farming is being transformed – and areas in which greater transformation is needed.

As she notes, the consumer is dictating the future of agriculture through food choices, requiring sustainability, accountability, transparency and safety. The challenge is to keep organic standards rigorous and reliable.

Finally, if you’ve wondered how young moms or moms-to-be may be faring in agriculture, there’s a wonderful book about a couple of 25-year-olds starting their own organic farm.

The Wisdom of the Radish: And Other Lessons Learned on a Small Farm by Lynda Hopkins (Sasquatch Books, Seattle, 2011, $23.95) is a sweet, sometimes humorous and sometimes bittersweet tale of a young woman learning the joys and heartaches of growing food for others.

I found myself sadly shaking my head in agreement and wishing some things were different; such as the harsh realities of the marketplace, the hard work involved for little pay. But it remarkably outlines the optimism of young people going into farming, a trend called The Greenhorn Movement, and speaks with love and tenderness toward the magnificent calling that is being stewards of the earth.

A great book. I won’t tell how it ends, but it does surprise!

Jim PathFinder Ewing is a journalist, author, writer, editor, organic farmer and blogger. His latest book titled Conscious Food: Sustainable Growing, Spiritual Eating (Findhorn Press) is in bookstores now. Find Jim on Facebook: http://bit.ly/cuxUdc or follow him @edibleprayers or @organicwriter or visit blueskywaters.com.

I just LOVE Maria Rodale’s March 21st Huffington Post article titled “Top 10 Ways to Make Organic More Sexy”. I completely agree with all 10 points but where Fresh Unlimited is concerned, point 4 (design), point 6 ( packaging), point 7 (decadence) and point 10 (Fun!) are especially relevant. Please click here for the entire article…

This article articulates what we believe so perfectly and is the basis for the creation of Fresh Unlimited. The “organic” or “green” philosophy has suffered somewhat from a… well negative is not really the right word here… but a certain perception due to it’s association with the “60′s hippie/granola” movement. The organic movement, however, I think suffers more from this, whereas the green movement, in general, suffers from a perception of deprivation and restraint or the idea that we have to give up on the pleasures and indulgences we’ve become accustomed to for the sake of the planet.

But if you look at the facts, the only difference between organic products and conventional products is the ingredients/materials used to create them (and probably also the intent behind their creation but that’s a whole other post). Pick any gourmet food item and it can be created with organic ingredients to provide not only the same amazing taste experience but can do so without having to ingest toxic chemicals. Pick any gown, dress, suit, jeans and they can be recreated to perfection with organic/eco materials (see Olivia Firth post as an example). Same with shoes etc…. So in principle, organic products should be seen as equal or superior to conventional products but the disconnect, as pointed out in Maria Rodale’s article, lies in perception, which includes packaging and design.

So what does it mean for something to be perceived as “sexy”? When people think of sexy, they generally think of something exciting, vibrant, energetic, and fun. These are life affirming emotions. Is it any wonder that people respond more positively? Compare this with the notions of deprivation and restraint that we often hear about in the green movement, and combine it with bland oatmeal colored packaging and well…

We began Fresh Unlimited because we started seeing products coming into the marketplace that were decadent as well as organic and wanted to raise awareness about their existence. In recent years, more and more such products have come on the scene including Olsen Haus and Beyond Skin shoes, clothing designer Leila Hafzi, Alberto Parada jewelry and most of the world’s top chefs including Alain Passard, Marc Veyrat, Mauro Colagreco, Wolfgang Puck, Jamie Oliver and the list goes on…

So we are definitely making headway when it comes to the decadence, packaging, and design now if we could just make some noise and, as Maria Rodale phrased it “Go Big!” and make more noise to change the perceptions many still have about organic and green products and show off their fun and sexy side!

What do you think?

Photo: Zuma press

“….I find most people are really confused about what a GMO is and where GMOs are found. Some people tend to think that GMO seeds are similar to the type of hybridization that has been going on amongst gardeners for centuries. Not true! The type of genetic modification that happens to create GMO seeds involves the forceful insertion of things like E.coli genes or genes that produce glyphosphate (an herbicide) or cause Roundup resistance (allowing farmers to dump more Roundup onto the plants) into corn and soybeans and cotton.

GMOs exist for one reason only: for the chemical companies who make them to enable themselves to sell more chemicals to farmers. Do not, I repeat, do not fall for any marketing sales efforts that claim GMOs will help feed the world and save farmers from drought. It’s a lie!!!!

And remember, as I write in Organic Manifesto, the only safety testing on humans or animals for GMOs is happening right now, on you, on your kids, and on farm animals around the world. Early results are showing everything from digestive failure to kidney and liver failure and accelerated aging. Terrible stuff.

Here are 10 ways to avoid GMOs:

1. Buy USDA-certified organic food. It is currently the only official way you can avoid GMOs, since GMOs are not allowed to be used according to USDA organic regulations. THANK YOU, GOVERNMENT! (For once!)

2. Avoid all nonorganic soy products like the plague. That means things like nonorganic veggie burgers, tofu, tempeh, edamame, and miso products.

3. Don’t buy anything that claims to be “non-dairy” that isn’t organic. Soy is used to create everything from Cool Whip to Coffee-Mate…in addition to the obvious non-dairy soy treats in your health-food store freezer. Yup, they are filled with GMOs, too.

4. Don’t buy or eat anything with corn in it that isn’t organic. That means corn chips, cereals with corn (or soy, for that matter), or even corn bread!

5. At all costs, eliminate high-fructose corn syrup (a.k.a. “corn sugar”) from your diet. It is just an excuse for chemical companies to convince farmers they can keep growing GMO corn and poisoning you and your family….”

Read it all on The Mother Nature Network.

So does Maria Rodale.

I’m just a local blogger.  My restaurant territory is limited:  from Tiger Bowl (on the Southport line) to John’s Best (Norwalk border).

Maria, though, is a nationally known (I guess) foodie.  Her Maria’s Farm Country Kitchen blog is a place to share “yummy organic recipes, thought provoking ideas and issues, organic gardening tips and techniques, recommendations for everyday happy and healthy living, and visits from (my) friends.”

(Oh, yeah.  Her day job is “chairman and CEO of the largest independent publisher left in America.”)

Maria has just posted her 3rd annual “Top 10 Farm-to-Table Restaurants” list.  Her criteria is simple:  “locally sourced organic food, cleanly cooked; not too pretentious; and most important of all, delicious and yummiful!”

There, sitting at the top of the list — above Back Forty, New Leaf Cafe and Rouge Tomate in New York; above Prairie Fire in Chicago; above even the Inn at Blackberry Farm in Walland, Tennessee and (of course) Weczeria in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan — sits our humble little Dressing Room.

“Chef Michel Nischan and his lovely wife Laurie serve food grown from their own garden,” Maria writes.  She adds:

But most important, it’s comfort food cooked with love and passion.  I’ve been meaning to get here for years, and it turned out to be an easy on/off from the highway on the way up to Maine.  The salad is divine.  Corn bread with honey?!  YUM.   Ribs.  And the cold cucumber soup was amazing, too.  I highly recommend you find your way here.

Westporters (and those from much further away — like Maria) have been finding their way to the tucked-away-next-to-the-Playhouse Dressing Room ever since it opened.

If you haven’t been there, too bad.  Besides the $19 meatloaf, the menu includes artisan cheeses, awesome salads, “cast iron corn bread,” raised-right-around-here oysters, lobster and swordfish, and a “heritage pork plate.”

If you’re really inspired, you can go tonight.  A special Christmas Eve menu includes stuffed leg of lamb with rosemary potatoes and pan jus, and seared duck breast with hen-of-the-woods mushrooms, brussels sprouts and an orange jus.

Tell ‘em Maria sent you.

Lots of folks seemed sure that it was the pesticides used by farmers that were killing the bees.

Turns out they were wrong.  A new study published last week and reported in the New York Times shows that it was a combination of a fungus and a virus working in tandem that was killing off the bee populations.  Scientists aren’t yet sure exactly how they worked together—did one make them sick and the other kill them off?—but they’ve got a pretty good idea that it was iridovirus and microsporidian that were the culprits.

But wait.  What about the surety proclaimed earlier this year?  An April 7, 2010 article in The Daily Green entitled “To: Bees; From: Scientists; Re: Pesticides that are killing you” said “bees are encountering agricultural and landscape pesticides almost wherever they go” and that “this toxic cocktail is their staple… their day to day diet… now made from poisonous parts per million . .  . We live in the same pesticide-laden soup our bees do, and now we can prove it’s a killing field.” 

And a March 22, 2010 Rodale Institute promotional item for the book Organic Manifesto by Maria Rodale shouts in its headline, “Scientists blame pesticides for honeybee decline; New research finds systemic pesticides in 60 percent of tested honeybees and their hives in U.S., Canada.”

The less-credible activists aren’t the only ones guilty of proclaiming pesticides to be the killers.  The headline of a Yale University School of Forestry & Environmental Studies “Environment 360” article says “Behind Mass Die-Offs, Pesticides Lurk as Culprit.”  The story goes on to say that there are too many pesticides in too many places to build a definitive case against one in particular, but the “evidence…is accumulating fast.”

To sum up, we return to the murder mystery metaphor.  In “A Scandal in Bohemia,” the great detective Sherlock Holmes says, “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”

Interestingly enough, the fictional Mr. Holmes retired from detective work to become–you guessed it–a beekeeper, producing a definitive work on the subject: “A Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, with some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen.”

We can only hope that this premature indictment of pesticides serves as a lesson to trust the science when it comes to agriculture.  Farmers know what they’re doing because the proven science is sound—they can’t change methods whenever an activist proclaims some new theory—especially when the theory turns out to be flat-out wrong.

New Mexico’s monsoonish season may be gone, but its effects are still being felt here. And by effects, I mean the zillions of *^$#@ weeds the rain spawned. Goatheads (also known as Puncture vine, Tribulus terrestris), Foxtail (green Foxtail, yellow Foxtail, Setaria), White Horsenettle (also known as Silver Nightshade or Purple nightshae, Solanum elaneagnifolium), and of course, Dandelions (Taraxacum officinale).

I don’t really mind the Dandelions, because at least they’re not thorny. My main priority is to eliminate the prickly, thorny painful weeds first because, well, they’re prickly, thorny and painful. Duh.

Anyway, I’ve been all over the Foxtail this summer, so they’re not as much as a problem as the Goatheads and the Horsenettle. The Goatheads in particular have had a spectacular resurgence in the last several weeks. So I’ve been pulling. And pulling. And pulling some more.

I wish there was an easier way to get rid of them. And there is, I could use weed killer. But I’m not a big fan of spraying toxic crap all over my garden.

A few months ago, I read on Maria Rodale’s blog that you can use boiling water to kill weeds. She cautioned that it wouldn’t be nice to use boiling water on garden soil, because then you’ll harm all the worms and other bugs living there. But she said it was perfect for those pesky weeds that like to grow in cracks or hard to reach places.

Hmm, weeds that grow in cracks? Like these cracks in the street in front of my house?

Oh the little buggers! Impossible to pull unless it’s right after a heavy rain.

A few days ago, I remembered her tidbit of advice, and decided to try it. Afterall, I know how to boil water:

So I did try it:

She said after you pour the water on them, they would turn bright green. True so far:

Then she said they’d be dead within a few hours. I could barely contain my anticipation. Here’s what they looked like after a few hours:

Not exactly the picture of death I’d hoped for – some were still green. But lots were dead. I thought about a second treatment of boiling water, but decided to give them some more time to die, first.

Here’s what they looked like the next day:

Hah! Take that, stinkin’ weeds! The boiling water fried those weeds to a crisp. Thank you, Maria!

I mentioned to Mom that boiling water worked great on the weeds, and she said that vinegar would kill weeds as well. Really? I wondered. I decided to test her theory, too.

Here’s one of the weeds before the vinegar:

And a few hours afterward:

The vinegar left a white residue around the weed, but it was effective. The weed was dead. The next day it was so shriveled that I could barely find it (the white residue was helpful then).

So they both work. For future weeds in cracks, I’ll stick to the boiling water because it’s free. But really, either one works great.

For those of you keeping score at home, it’s currently Liza, 41,983, Goatheads, 0. Only two or three hundred thousand more to go!

I was recently notified by Slam Dunks that he selected me to receive the “Prolific Blogger Award.” I never knew anything like that existed! I feel like Sally Fields when she was awarded and said, “You like me–You REALLY like me!” However, out of humility, I’d just like to say thanks, REALLY!, and hope you keep reading my blog and be blessed.

As part of accepting this award, I’m to mention and notify seven other bloggers I think you’d be interested to read. I’m still new in the blogging world and am sure there are many others with fascinating reads I know I missed, but so far these bloggers I’ve stumbled upon (in my opinion) are great reads and hope they too become yours. Without further adieu, here they are:

1. Slam Dunks – Riveting, intriguing accounts of missing persons and more to jolt the mind!
2. Brian Solis – If you’re learning about public relations, working in public relations, want to explore more about pr, this blog should be a must add to your list. Insightful, clear-cut, and trendsetting information.
3. Maria’s Farm Country Kitchen – Publishing House (Rodale) CEO Maria Rodale is an ambassador for all things organic and despite her busy work life she takes the time to share chuck full of other things that you might not have known. A refreshing and an informative read.
4. Living Dilbert – Think  you know what it’s really like to work with lawyers? Living Dilbert is a no-nonsense and light-hearted fun read that unravels behind-the-scenes look into her working world.
5. PR Breakfast Club – This is another PR blog that provides fantastic reads to enhance the pr professional. Especially geared for pr students looking to make a start in public relations.
6. Social Media Examiner – Perfect for anyone looking to learn more about social media. Great tips, points, How-To’s on present social media and up-and-coming social networks.
7. Matthew Humphrey – On his tweet bio, he’s a ”NASCAR blogger for the Orlando Sentinel, Singer, Guitarist, and Songwriter for Groove Illusion.” He provides up-to-date and concise reports on NASCAR, its drivers, teams and more. 

That’s my seven. You don’t have to take my word for it, but if you do, I know you’ll enjoy or learn alot!

Now, I wonder if my award will be mailed to me with a nice sized matte and frame? j/k : )

Maria Rodale’s book, Organic Manifesto: How Organic Farming Can Heal Our Planet, Feed the World, and Keep Us Safe (2010) will be available for a reduced price of $12 at the Lehigh University bookstore until Monday.

Head here to learn more about Maria’s book, and here to learn more about Monday’s lecture.

Please join us for this presentation and discussion of how to apply Organic Manifesto to our local food systems!

And here’s some further (local) food for thought:

The farm-to-table food movement is another exciting development in the growing effort to support local food economies, one that is directly related to other ideas discussed on our blog and at recent events, including new possibilities for farmers markets, the benefits of community gardens, and health and nutritional concerns, just to name a few. Further, it is a philosophy that some government officials would like to expand to large-scale food economies. In early March, FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg went so far as to suggest that the entire country needs to adopt a ”farm-to-table approach” in order to ensure the safety of our food before it reaches our tables, rather than relying on after-the-fact recalls. Members and friends of the Southside Community Gardens project, as well as like-mind people interested in strengthening the resources for buying local and supporting area farmers in the Lehigh Valley, should take a few minutes and search out some of the many resources available on the web in order to learn more about the farm-to-table discussion. A simple google search of “farm to table” quickly yields links for co-ops, collectives, non-profits, and other groups committed to this movement across the country, from Pittsburgh to New Mexico to Montana to Austin, Tex. In fact, just this weekend (March 26-27, 2010) an annual event is taking place in Pittsburgh, put on by Farm to Table Pittsburgh (FarmToTablePA.com), a collective source for supporting the local food economy in the Western Pennsylvania region. Here is an article from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review about the 2010 event, which could be a model for future activities sponsored by the growing local food community in the Lehigh Valley.

Farm to Table Event in Pittsburgh

On Monday, March 29th, Maria Rodale will lead a forum on “Organic Food:  A Manifesto for the World – and the Southside.”

The talk will include a presentation by Maria and discussion about how organic farming and food can be more fully achieved on the Southside specifically, and in Bethlehem and the Lehigh Valley in general. The forum will be held in Room 200, Linderman Library, on Lehigh University’s lower campus.  It will run from 11:30 to 1:30, with lunch provided.

Maria will be speaking from her brand new book, Organic Manifesto: How Organic Farming Can Heal Our Planet, Feed the World, and Keep Us Safe (Rodale Books, 2010).

By the end of this week, Organic Manifesto will be on sale at Lehigh’s bookstore for $12, half the current sales price. The South Side Initiative (SSI) is subsidizing the discounted sale of the book, as well as sponsoring Maria Rodale’s visit. The forum will be held in conjunction with SSI’s Southside Community Gardens project.

For more information, contact John Pettegrew at jcp5@lehigh.edu, 610-758-3355.

David Carr(l) and Ken Auletta have a Google chat

Did you know that employees at Google’s Mountain View, CA campus get free oil changes and car washes on Thursdays? Or that there are five doctors on campus? How about the fact that engineers can spend 20% of their time working on what they want? This 80/20 rule, which has spawned Google Wave, Google News and Gmail, is part of a corporate culture where boss and cofounder Sergey Brin rollerblades (late) to meetings in his gym shorts. Every building has its own cafeteria serving everything from Mexican food to sushi and free food is everywhere.

These delicious facts emerged at the Magazine Publishers Association of America’s first ever Magazine Innovation Summit, where David Carr, media columnist for The New York Times, interviewed New Yorker writer Ken Auletta, author of the new book “Googled: The End of the World as We Know It.”  “I went to Google and walked out of there with my pockets full,” confessed Carr. “Why wouldn’t you? It’s free!”

The laughter that followed was one of the lighter moments in a conference where Google loomed large for its success in contrast to the devastating loss of magazine advertising revenue in the last 18 months. As Auletta pointed out, Google got it right in more ways than their unique corporate culture: they manage to give away much of their content while generating more money from search than  the combined revenues of all the major magazines companies gathered for the MPA conference.

In fact, the quest to avoid the mistakes of the music industry through innovation and collaboration were leitmotifs at the conference. Instead of the false optimism or beleaguered pessimism that have prevailed at recent MPA conferences, this time participants talked excitedly about new e-readers, shared magazine digital storefronts, mobile as the bridge to truly engaged content, and paid content as a no-brainer–the secret sauce that will hopefully do for magazines what Adwords did for Google. “In the end you have to have guts to say I’m not going to give content away for free,” said John Squires, Time Inc.’s Executive Vice President, who is leading an effort to join Time Inc., Hearst and Condé Nast in the creation of a shared digital storefront to showcase their magazines. The principle focus, Squires added, was the development of new paid mobile apps. “People will pay for content on mobile,” he said with great assurance.

At points in the conference, the technology talk was deafening. Doug Carlson, CEO of Viv and Managing Director of Zinio,  prophesized that “the world is going wireless and mobile. The future of the magazine industry is portable tablet devices so that consumers can have content with them wherever they are.”  Mary Lou Jepson, CEO of Pixel QI, confidently predicted that e-readers and laptops would soon merge. Josh Quittner, former editor of Business 2.0 and now Editor-at-Large at Time Inc., hailed the arrival of the Apple Tablet. “We all know it’s coming,” he said. “When Apple’s [tablet] device is announced, there will be a mass ascension and everyone will go to media heaven.” Those on the ground, he noted, can look forward to even more advances in the next six months including devices that give a great reading experiences through color, eight-inch-on a diagonal, multi-touch screens and broadband-only network access. “Tell your readers not to buy e-readers for the holidays,” he urged the audience. “They will be stuck with TV’s with rabbit ears.”  And speaking of TV’s, Netflix founder and CEO Reed Hastings professed with great certainly that Wi-Fi- enabled TV’s will be here by Christmas.

Of course, whenever magazine executives gather, there’s no shortage of talk about the longevity of print, no matter how snazzy the new technology that threatens to eclipse it. When Scott Donaton, President and CEO of Ensemble, asked his panelists whether they cared if their brand existed in print, David Carey, Group President, Condé Nast publications, neatly sidestepped the issue: “Each platform will create a new audience,” he answered.  Efrem (Skip) Zimbalist III, President and CEO of Active Interest Media, shrugged and said it really didn’t matter. “A great e-reader can help the environment and make edited content very immediate.” But Maria Rodale, Chairman and CEO of Rodale, Inc., would have no part of that debate. “Fifteen to twenty years from now, what matters is that our brands stay relevant and viable,” she declared. “Magazines will still be here because everyone likes to read in bed.”

For more about the longevity of magazines, check out the MPA Video: The Twenty Tweetable Truths About Magazines

Andrea Chambers