Comments akbeancounter has made

Reuse, then Recycle

eram: When properly done, frying is plenty healthy.  By properly maintaining the oil temperature and not overcooking, steam pressure from within the food keeps the oil on the outside, so very little oil actually gets into the target food.  Besides, blood serum cholesterol levels have been more clearly linked to saturated fats (like butter) and trans fats (shortening); veggie oils commonly used in home frying are far more heart-friendly.

Before disposing, I'd suggest reusing first.  If you've been managing your oil temperature correctly, you should be able to strain, store, and reuse the oil several times before it gets funky.  Signs that the oil is past its prime are funny flavors and odors, an unusually dark color (meaning lots of dissolved solids), and especially smoke.  Once oil heats beyond its smoke point, it breaks down chemically, and that doesn't taste very good.

As for disposal, there's somebody in any decent-sized city who collects and reuses fry oil.  Call your recycling center for leads.  Giving it to local restaurants sounds like a good idea, but I doubt they'd accept it, because of either health code restrictions or the potential liability of accepting deliveries from strangers.

[As nicksauvage stated, restaurants often do get paid for their used oil.  Processors can filter it and use it in biodiesel or cosmetics.]

-- A.On Umbra on used cooking oil posted 1 year, 11 months ago 12 Responses

Print Boring Cards, Donate the Difference

I worked for a bank that basically does what Aimee suggested, albeit for social reasons more than environmental ones.  Instead of sending the same lavish 5"x7" gold-foil-and-tissue cards that our competitors sent, we sent smaller and less elaborate cards, cards designed by a local artist and printed at a local shop, and donated the difference to a local charity selected by a panel of employees.

The idea was pretty well-received; our customers understood that we cared, both about them and about our community.  I never once heard a depositor complain that our Christmas card wasn't flashy enough.

-- A.On Umbra on corporate holiday cards posted 2 years ago 6 Responses

Gee, pay more for non-toxic toys? I don't know...

It's kind of shameful to hear the talking heads on cable news channels.  They acknowledge that lead paint probably isn't a good thing, but warn that Christmas might cost more if we insist upon toys that won't give our children brain damage.

Swan said:
Is this just another casualty of consumeritis??
Absolutely.  We want it all, and we don't care how we get it.  America's children need toys based on their favorite TV characters (after all, the TV is their best friend anymore), and parents want those toys as cheap and as plentiful as possible.  Since we can't see the Asian and Latin American sweatshops, or the pollution generated by producing millions of pounds of disposable plastic junk, we can safely ignore them; I'm sure that if those things were important, somebody would tell us about it.On An illustration and explanation of today's tainted toys posted 2 years, 2 months ago 2 Responses

Microwaves Don't Mutate Your Food

Frantique, while I support most of your suggestions, (CSA, not refrigerating tomatoes, preparing your own food, etc.), your lack of paragraph breaks and random punctuation make my head hurt.  And as for your last suggestion:

stop useing [sic] that microwave...it changes the way your body utilizes the food.

It does, but that's only because microwave ovens, just like conventional ovens or hot oil, heat the food contained therein.  Microwaving does the exact same thing that any other dry-heat cooking method would do.  Specifically, it denatures proteins (including enzymes) and breaks down the cell walls in plants that prevent us from absorbing all of the vitamins present in the food.  Yes, it destroys a few vitamins and shuts down enzymatic action, but it usually unlocks more vitamins than it destroys (especially in cruciferous vegetables), making them available for us to use.  And those enzymes, they weren't going to survive the trip anyway.

For further information, I'd suggest the Ask a Scientist column on the Newton website, an educational resource site run by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Among other things, they say:
Heat, of any sort above about 50 degrees C pretty much destroys any of the
enzymatic activity in most foods.  This will occur when one either cooks by
microwave of normal oven, simmering, frying etc.

as well as:
There is nothing special about the microwave;  it is just a convenient way to heat food quickly.  If you want to preserve enzyme activity in food, do not heat it.

-- A.On Umbra on the impact of food purchases posted 2 years, 2 months ago 21 Responses

Correction

Oh, and lest ye be fooled by the logo, KTUU (the Alaska station reporting on Shishmaref's gradual collapse) is an NBC affiliate, not CBS.

Taking accounting to the extreme since 2004.

Praise for Madison's Book

I love Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.  It's organized in such a way that you can easily look up a fruit or vegetable, and learn five different ways of preparing it.  Some are basic (roast beets) and some are more complex (beet green and ricotta gratin), but none are truly complicated.  It's been a great resource for learning to handle obscure vegetables and taking advantage of the unique flavors and textures of heirloom varieties.

Also, many CSA's offer half-shares or biweekly pickups, designed for families of one or two.  Ask around; if you have more than three CSA's in your area, you'll probably find something.On Umbra on singles and CSAs posted 2 years, 2 months ago 13 Responses

Sorry to Hear That, timdiller

timdiller said:
We were all jazzed to join a CSA and shelled out ~$350 for a CSA near Austin. We got two and a half deliveries before the farmer had a health/nervous breakdown.

I wouldn't let that discourage you, though.  You're essentially investors in his farm, and you happened upon the one that went bust.  If you believe in the concept, the best thing to do is to get back up and try again.  Hopefully he'll pay you back, but maybe not.  As you said, though, this really shows how tight things are for American farmers; they either sell out to the agri-giants and barely get by, or they go it alone and possibly don't get by at all.

But there are success stories, like Full Circle Farm up here in the Northwest:
http://www.fullcirclefarm.com .
They've expanded from three acres in 1996 to over 200 acres today by selling naturally-grown produce* to local restaurants and CSA members.

-- A.
* I don't like the term "organic" either.  All plants are organic; that's just how life works on this planet.On Umbra on community-supported agriculture posted 2 years, 3 months ago 9 Responses

I'll Bet Your Grandmother Ate Locally

Ethical consumption means examining the history of a product in order to influence what will be produced in the future. I am a vegetarian to avoid creating more demand for meat. The animals whose flesh is in the market freezer are, however, already dead.

Where are you going with this?  If the animals currently in the freezer don't sell, then there's no need to restock them.  On a large enough scale, that means that fewer animals are bred for food.  That's not history, it's economics.  

If we looked at history, we'd realize that our current situation, where we have 30,000 items to choose from in the average American supermarket, has only existed for about 50 years.  For the rest of human history, eating locally was a matter of practicality, because only the rich could afford imported food.

Ideas like the "100-mile diet" really aren't that revolutionary.  Ask one of your older relatives, preferably somebody born before or during the Great Depression, about canning and pickling produce, about making their own jam and their own butter.  These were common everyday practices well into the mid-20th Century.  Somewhere in the prosperity of post-war America, we lost the ability to do things for ourselves, and started trusting the megafarms to deliver food to our tables.  Sustainability isn't just some left-wing moonbat ideal; it's our American heritage.

-- A.On If buying locally isn't the answer, then what is? posted 2 years, 3 months ago 28 Responses

Attitudes

Anthony, look at your post, then look at everybody else's comments, before and after.  Notice any difference in the tone?

Meg mentioned at least twice in her comment that she doesn't eat meat.  Her goal is noble enough: she wants to shift the market toward more humane practices.  As I said in my last post, I find her approach misguided at best, and probably counter-productive.  But I didn't attack her as "rationalizing her laziness," nor did I have to resort to profanity (see "polluting our watersheds..." at #3) to make my point.

Jumping down peoples' throats for eating meat (even though Meg doesn't) isn't the way to win converts.  I've given up on joining a vegetarian/vegan organization because of attitudes like that.  Any attempt to suggest that humans were meant to eat some meat is met with poorly-researched generalizations, unconfirmed and/or obviously biased studies, and emotional rhetoric meant to shock people into submission rather than to educate.  Yet, such charades are thoroughly unnecessary; there are plenty of facts out there to illustrate how commercial meat production is bad for animal, human, and planet alike.  But I guess that's just not flashy enough for some people.

I wouldn't argue that American meat consumption is even close to what nature intended; we've become a society who wants more of everything, dirt cheap and always available, and we don't care how we get it.  But I refuse to join an organization where facts take a back seat to attention-grabbing charades.

-- A.On Umbra on sustainable meat posted 2 years, 3 months ago 32 Responses

CSA

I second the CSA suggestion.  Often you can find local farmers growing organic produce, and since you're eliminating the middleman, your veggies may cost less than the conventional pesticide-laden produce at the store.  It's cheap, local, in season, often organic, and it supports independent farmers instead of the exploitive megafarms.

As for organic products, I personally don't bother.  It may be slightly better for your health, but all that processing and shipping doesn't do anything for the environment.

--
AaronOn Umbra on prioritizing organic purchases posted 2 years, 3 months ago 10 Responses

Flavor? Who needs that?

That's why Tom was criticizing the low-fat food fad - because of the processed crap that we let into our lives in the name of "healthier eating".

As pressed for time as we Americans claim to be, we love bumper-sticker diet plans.  Anything that can be explained in five syllables or less, and promises spectacular results with minimal effort, we'll do it.  So when we hear that "don't eat fat" or "don't eat carbs" is the fast ticket to Slimville, we're all over it.  Unfortunately, "Natural foods, daily exercise" doesn't seem to make the cut.  Sure, it takes time and will power, but the thesis isn't all that hard to grasp.

But of course, the processed food world is all too happy to oblige our crazy-ass diet plans.  I can appreciate Tom's low-fat guac story; two years ago I saw a bottle of low-carb catsup.  "Only two [grams of] carb[ohydrate]s per serving!"  (I can't stand marketing jargon.) Curiously enough, the normal catsup, made by the same company, also had two grams of carbohydrates, but cost about half as much.  When everything from celery to mayonnaise to buckets of chicken define themselves as healthy, it's probably time to find a new dictionary.

Back to the point of the post, though:  if you know anything about the processed foods industry, you should know by now that everything they do is done in the name of cutting costs, boosting yield, and maintaining consistency.  Flavor and texture don't matter a bit.On On the peculiar American habit of demonizing food posted 2 years, 6 months ago 22 Responses

Non-Extensible Cheffery

The bottom line is that certain professions, in fact most, aren't extensible to mass marketing.  They tend to lose the thing that made them appealing in the first place...which is great.

Indeed.  As Alton Brown stated in Feasting on Asphalt, once the owner gets too far removed from the restaurant's daily operations, bad things happen.  I'm sure Emiril's a great chef and a swell guy, but am I really getting the Emiril experience by going to some restaurant in Orlando with his name on it?  When was the last time he stopped by?

Fortunately, in any town possessing more than one traffic signal, there's usually a dedicated culinary figure to be found.  They're not on television, and they'll never have their own custom-branded knife set, but they love what they do, and they're darn good at it.

Taking accounting to the extreme since 2004.

Handcuffing the Poor

Either way, we're going to have a problem with rising heating costs for the poor.  I'm not just talking "starving artist" poor.  I mean "don't eat at all so you can afford to feed your daughter" poor, "walk three miles to work at 11pm because you can't spare fifty cents for the bus" poor.  These are people who already economize anywhere and everywhere possible, who have few or no luxuries they could give up, and who would be devastated by even a modest increase in their monthly bill.

If we're going to employ either a cap-and-trade system or a tax, we'll need to pair it with either efficiency projects or further subsidies for low-income utility customers.  Otherwise, we risk making things even worse for our most vulnerable citizens.

Taking accounting to the extreme since 2004.

If you don't like it, don't buy it.

For all his punctuation problems, Spaceman makes a good point.  Wal*Mart started as a handful of stores in Arkansas, and grew into the giant we know today because they deliver what consumers demand.  We (mainstream America) want our goods cheap and readily accessible.  We don't really care how much the employees get paid or how much power the stores consume, as long as the products are cheap.  If you don't want another Wal*Mart built, don't shop there, and encourage other people not to shop there.  The market works.

Despite what the cable news channels might try to suggest, environmentalists aren't one international cabal of treehuggers who meet every Wednesday night at Bill Maher's house.  We all have different opinions of what it will take to clean up the planet.  Although this "greening" campaign doesn't qualify Wal*Mart for sainthood, it's a very big step in the right direction.  You said it yourself: 3.5 MILLION megawatt-hours.  Think of how much coal will go unburned because of that.  Internal bickering about "this doesn't go far enough," or "I'm greener than you, so my opinion matters more" doesn't help anybody.On The impossibility of a green Wal-Mart posted 2 years, 8 months ago 27 Responses

Hardly Shocking

This report doesn't really surprise me.  I don't think that "organic" is really supposed to be about conservation, so much as about allowing plants and animals to grow in the way that nature intended.  Often, that means easing up on the cost-saving measures.

Of course mega-farmed chickens use less energy: the boys are promptly killed, and the girls spend their seven-week lives[1] in a space about the size of an 8.5" x 11" sheet of paper.  Everything the megafarms do is done in the name of efficiency.

I wouldn't go as far as anthony11 does, particularly because I think that the "greener than thou" attitude is a big turnoff for average joes trying to be more earth-friendly.  But I would agree that being green is more than just buying a carbon offset sticker for your car[2].

[1] Speaking of "the way nature intended," a healthy chicken would normally live 7-10 years.
[2] I have a TerraPass, and I think it's the best idea I've seen in years, but I see it as a starting point, not a solution in itself.

--On The Way to a Manchester's Stomach posted 2 years, 9 months ago 2 Responses

Worst. Interview. Ever.

I was willing to listen to what Horner had to say.  There are still plenty of people out there who think it's all in our heads, or that making the Earth seven degrees warmer isn't such a big deal, so I was prepared to hear him out.

When he first came out, he made his point with creative historical analysis, vague factiods, and random speculation.  After that, he started going downhill.  The NYT found a scientist who would tell them what they wanted to hear about icebergs: CONSPIRACY!  Some guy from the German Green Party (did he even have a name?) said that he envisions a communist society, and apparently wants more young boys in brothels: COMMUNISM!

It was almost as if he had copied his arguments from How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic,, but couldn't be bothered to read the rebuttals.  

--

Taking accounting to the extreme since 2004.

Saturn?

Yeah, I have to agree, half of those articles were totally irrelevant.  Interesting, but certainly nothing that would suggest that they're experiencing climate change in the way that we are.  The articles that do mention climate change suggest that it's a shift in regional temperatures, as Coby pointed out with the Jupiter article.

Triton:
Elliot and his colleagues believe that Triton's warming trend could be driven by seasonal changes in the absorption of solar energy by its polar ice caps.
There's no big surprise that planets warm and cool over time; the difference here is that Earth is experiencing climate change on a scale never before seen.

So at best, Triton and Jupiter are relevant.  Considering that there are over 100 planets, dwarf planets, and natural satellites (moons) in our Solar System, I wouldn't consider those two to be significant evidence of System-wide warming.

Taking accounting to the extreme since 2004.