Eat Beans for the Earth (And Save a Little Money, Too!)

I'm not a vegetarian (at least not any more.) But if you are, good for you! Modern methods of meat production contribute to massive groundwater contamination and greenhouse gas formation in the form of methane from animal waste. Plus we burn an obscene amount of diesel to produce grain and soybeans for animals, when we could support ten times as many humans per acre if everyone just ate plants.

So I'm trying to make it a point to eat vegetarian more often. Here's a dish I came up with that everyone seems to like. At home we just call it "casserole," but I'll give it a fancier name here to make it sound more enticing:

Texas Chili Pie

Soak a bunch of beans (Any kind of chili bean, black bean, pinto or kidney bean works well.) Two cups of dry beans work pretty well for one casserole's worth. (I once made the mistake of letting my son put the beans on to soak in a 16-quart stock pot. He loves casserole and piled in so many beans that by they time they swelled up with water they knocked the top off the pot. Needless to say we ate beans for what seemed like weeks.)

Anyway, drain the beans the next day and boil them up until they're soft. Then make chili out of them.

I'm purposely keeping this vague for two reasons. One, that's the way I cook. Two, a lot of people have their own favorite chili recipe. If you do, use it! If you don't, don't worry. Just saute an onion or so and some green pepper and garlic, spice to taste (chili powder, cumin, oregano, jalapenos, habaneros if you're brave, or what have you.) Don't forget the salt or it'll be disappointing. Throw in some frozen corn kernels if you like. Add a big can of tomato paste and enough water to make it seem like chili, and you're good to go.

Pour the stuff into a casserole or roasting pan and top it with corn bread. (If you don't know how to make this look it up.) Pop it in the oven at 350 for half an hour until the top is golden brown. Then take it out and enjoy!

It's good with a big tossed salad and fresh fruit. (And I wouldn't know, but I suspect a good cold beer might just be the ticket, too!)

Give it a try, and let me know what you think!


P.S. It's cheap and filling, too.

P.P.S. Now you know why I've never written a cookbook!

How I Saved 14 Minutes by Taking my Bike Instead of the Car

I rode my bike to work today. It took a little longer than driving, but it saved me time, anyway.

It takes me exactly seven minutes to get from home to work by car. (That's assuming I don't catch more than my share of red lights.) Riding the bike takes me about 18 minutes. So you'd think commuting by bike would take an extra 22 minutes, right?

But in reality, it saved me 14 minutes - allowing me just enough time to log in this blog post without screwing up my schedule for the day.

You see, I've got this thing about exercise. If I don't get enough you don't want to be around me. So I try to get in to the Y several times a week to work out. And guess what? A typical workout takes about 30 minutes, plus time to get in and out of the building. About the same amount of time as my bike ride.

So by skipping the Y and gonzoing up and down Grand Avenue both ways on my bike I get in the same amount of workout time - without having to park my rear end in the car for 14 minutes.

Cool, huh?

(By the way, if you don't work out regularly you can still save time commuting by bike. But in your case, don't measure it in minutes but in years - bonus years tacked on to the end of your life for giving your body what it needs!)

National Teach Kids to Do As You Say, Not As You Do Day

Got a newsletter in the mail today. Amongst other things it said that April 24 is "National Teach Your Kids to Share Day."

Funny how our country can have a day dedicated to teaching our kids to share but can't share the wealth and provide them with universal health coverage so they can be reasonably assured of decent medical care no matter what kind of household they were born into.

Sunsweet "Ones" - Asinine Money-Grubbing Gimmick of the Year Award

OK, I've just come across an idea so moronic, I had to create an award just for it.

Keep in mind, I just recently found out about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a ten-million-square-mile area in the Pacific Ocean that has become the ultimate destination (read: garbage dump) for unwanted plastic refuse.

Since then, I've become acutely aware of our society's cavalier use (or more often, abuse) of plastic products, particularly packaging.

So when I happened past a TV at my local YMCA the other day, the commercial that was airing stopped me dead in my tracks. It was for (get this) individually wrapped prunes! (I can't find an English version of the commercial online, but you can see an Italian one here.)

That's right. Sunsweet, in its quest for the largest share possible of the digestively-challenged market, has resorted to turning an otherwise innocent snack into a packaging nightmare.

So prunes give you sticky fingers! So what? What's wrong with licking them? And how hard is it to pack a couple of prunes in a reusable container to bring along? Why the HE-- do we need to add even more plastic waste and estrogenic compounds into the environment just so a few spoiled individuals can avoid a little mess?

(Oh, sorry. maybe Sunsweet figures they're doing the environment a favor by reducing the world's net consumption of Wet Naps.)

I love dried fruit, and applaud Sunsweet for producing natural, healthy treats. But please, let's not turn them into yet another vehicle for trashing the planet.

Going Green at the Office

Boy, seems like life has taken over for a while and I haven't been posting as often as I'd like!

One of the things I've been up to is figuring out what to do about the toner cartridge problem at work. I write a monthly newsletter for one of our family-run businesses, Michelsen Music. It's easy enough and cheaper to copy it off myself, but I go through a cartridge of ink every couple months.

Now Canon will take the things back for recycling, but it's a hassle to have to package them up and take them to the post office. Plus they cost about $60 a crack. Not cool!

I figured that finding a way to refill them would not only save the energy costs of melting the darn things down and turning them into new ones (or however they do it), but it could possibly save me money as well.

So I did a little online search. Not to brag, but boy, did I get it right!

There's a site called TonerKits.com that sells refill kits for virtually any copier ink cartridge out there. It's easy to use and it works!

I was so impressed I wrote up a glowing review for them and posted it on Associated Content. You can read the whole story here if you want all the lurid details. But for now, suffice it to say it works great, it only took me 10 minutes and I saved forty bucks. How cool is that?