Save Time and Money: Eat With the Seasons

Eating well and eco-friendly inexpensively can be a huge task, especially when you're just beginning the journey. The best bet seems to be growing your own food. But if you've never touched a seed and your thumbs are all shades except green, feeding yourself from gardening probably isn't going to be your first step on the path of eating healthy for cheap. You're going to have to find your healthy, sustainable food somewhere else.

Unfortunately, if you're new to budgeting or bargain shopping, the idea of thumbing through store ads, clipping coupons, and store hopping can be overwhelming as well. It takes a bit of organization, time, and patience. A weird, money-saving obsession helps too. But what if you don't have that passion and you're not ready to cultivate it? Do you still have a chance of saving money while buying quality food?

In short, yes. Although it is best to diversify your money saving methods of obtaining healthy food, the first and simplest step is to eat seasonally. Not only will you save money, but you'll be eating better.

Seasonal Food is:

-Better for you. It's generally fresher, tastier and packed with more nutrition than food transported in from far away or grown in less than optimal, natural conditions. For example, studies have shown that spinach harvested in Summer has a much higher vitamin C content than spinach harvested in Winter.

-Better for our Mother Earth. Since seasonal food tends to be local food, it takes less energy and produces less CO2 emissions than its out of season counterparts.

-Better for your budget. Buying food when it's in season almost guarantees the best price without having to worry about sales. In all truth, it's usually the season that determines the sales. For instance, I love blueberries with a passion. But in the Winter, they stay off my grocery list as they cost outrageously high in Winter. However, when July comes around, they are something I can indulge in.

-Romantic and fun. Eating by the seasons is like living in a French movie or a centuries-old book. You can be a Celtic villager celebrating a harvest or a mountain woman relishing the rhubarb she just got to make a pie for her twenty kids. It's just cool, man.

-Easy. Just take a little time to learn a seasonal food chart and plan your meals and grocery list accordingly.

Luckily, thanks to the continue growth of the Local and Slow Food Movements, there are many great resources available for those looking to eat by the seasons. The Food Network offers a general guide to Seasonal Fruits and Vegetables on their website. To find information specific to the region you live in, try a google search or look for the websites of Farmer's Markets in your area.

As far as recipes, RecipeZaar offers over 25,000 marked as seasonal. There is also some great books on the subject which are usually easy to find at most libraries and book stores. Local Flavors by Deborah Madison marks the top of my favorites list, with over 400 pages of local and seasonal food information, recipes, and gorgeous photographs,written by a well-established writer and vegetarian chef.

Earth-Friendly Freebies

• Free Ink Cartridge Refill at Walgreens today. One per person. Visit this page for listings of the cartridges they will refill and to print the coupon you'll need to take with you.
• Earth Day freebies to the first 100 customer's in each Macy's store on April 22. The give-outs will include saplings and National Park Service packs for kids. Also, the first 150 shoppers will receive free cotton tote-bags.
• On April 19, Walmart stores will be giving out a million resusable shopping bags beginning at 8 am local time. Also, they will be offering free Nickelodeon's The Big Green Help seed cards that apparently are wildflower seeds.
  
• Get a free Earth Bound Farm tote by completely this quiz with 9 correct answers or more out of 10.
• Gilden Tree is offering a free sample of Organic Nourishing Foot Creme here.
• Join the Mothers of Organic online community and receive a free welcome packet from Organic Valley.
  

Quote - Grow Strong

"We are all broken and wounded in this world. Some choose to grow strong at the broken places."

-Harold J. Duarte-Bernhardt

I apologize for not posting much lately, but I'm in the middle of about a million different things, and I'm trying to get myself organized and my mind clear. Until then, this blog is going to be updated sparingly. Hopefully, I'll be more devoted to in it in just a few weeks.

Peace,
Heather

Software for Salon and Spa Owners

Milano Spa and Salon 2007 is a software package that makes running a spa or salon (or Massage Business!) simple and profitable. Operating such a venture is time consuming and takes a lot of hard work. Most people in such a business do it to serve people and want to focus their energy on that. With the Milano software for salons, you can use your energy and brain power on service oriented work while the salon software helps you keep your business profitable.

How does this salon and spa software work to help you run such a business? Milano Spa and Salon 2007 has features that give you the insights to make you more organized, productive, and efficient, showing you where and how your money comes and goes. It provides a way to organized your appointments, staff information, sales, services, payroll, and much more.

In addition, this software for salons has modules that offer even more benefits for your salon or spa business. My favorites include the Accounting Bridge module which allows you to transfer all your ales, tax, cash drawer and inventory information from Spa and Salon 2007 to your accounting software. I also love the online booking option which allows you to link your website to your appointment book so clients can book appointments anytime from their own computers.

For more info, visit the Milano Systems
website.

Whole Living Speedlinking - 3.12.08

World Water Day at Care2. Educate yourself about those who don't have access to safe drinkable water and celebrate water as a resource for World Water Day on March 22.

The 5 Most Dangerous Food Ingredients

A High-Calorie Snack that's OK for your Waist! Recent Research reveals that eating peanuts may not add pounds, despite their calorie content.

Meijer Organics Bedding and Bath Linens are on sale this week. Get more savings by printing out this coupon for 10% off.

Remind Senator John McCain to vote for the Enviornment. Send a quick email sponsored by the Sierra Club.

Okay, this is a little anti-Whole Living, but in honor of my move to Kansas that is happening next week: Woman Pried From Boyfriend's Toilet After Sitting on It for 2 Years. Oh, how I miss my home state!

Transitioning to Cloth Diapers

I always thought I would use cloth diapers when I had children. Scientifically, I don't think it has been completely proved that using cloth diapers is better for the environment than disposal. But it just makes ecological sense to stop filling landfills with plastic diapers. Plus, it saves a lot of money over time and keeps those synthetic chemicals off baby's skin.

However, when I was pregnant and preparing for Alarik's arrival I was just completely overwhelmed with the whole thing. I have never known anyone who uses cloth diapers and, frankly, I just didn't know where to start. Google searches just made it more overwhelming. There are literally thousands of different kinds out there!

My mom took initiative when I told her my goal to use cloth diapers and bought me a six pack of Kushies Basic Diapers with a diaper wrap. I decided I would try those out when Alarik was born and see how it went before I bought anymore. I also was planning to quit my job a week before my due date so I could experiment with sewing my own.

Unfortunately, illness kept me in the hospital for two and half months and when I was released, I wasn't well enough to mess around with cloth diapers so Alarik has been using disposables since birth. However, this week I decided to pull the Kushies out of storage and give them a try. Luckily they still fit him, although they probably wont' for very long.

I had bought some cheap store brand diapers and they were giving Alarik a diaper rash. One day of wearing the cloth diapers cleared it up without any creams. They do leak a lot more than disposables though. Alarik seems to fill them up with urine every five minutes! Perhaps if I had the Kushies Ultra or some other thicker diaper, it would go better.

With only six diapers and no money to invest in more, we can't use cloth exclusively right now. I have tried the much cheaper Chinese prefolds, but diaper changes are already a battle and adding pins to the equations won't work too well. Plus, I'm sure I'll have the leak problem even worse with those.

So right now, we are switching the cloth diapers in and out with disposables. And I'm really glad I finally took the plunge and started this. It's defiantly not as hard as it sounds and my baby's skin likes it better this way. Plus, I'm slowly reducing the amount of diapers that are being thrown out. Hopefully soon we will be able to purchase some more cloth diapers and use them all the time!

Recycle Your Cell Phone for Cash

I recently posted about how I want to recycle everything down to items like cell phones. Today Tori at Paid Opportunities wrote about Simply Sellular, a company that will pay you for your old cell phone. They will even send you a postage-paid envelope, making it super simple and easy to recycle your unwanted phone while making a few bucks.

I don't have a need to get rid of my ghetto cell phone yet, but when I do, I'm gonna give this a try!

Do you know of any good resources for recycling items that can't usually be throw into the recycle bin such as unwearable shoes or old computers? I would love to hear about similar programs.