Category Archives: Health

Flighty Friday

As I write this, our brick oven apartment approaches 85° F. Not quite hot enough for my yoga session to technically be “hot yoga,” but we’re getting there.  It doesn’t feel too bad under the ceiling fan, but between the heat and the music from downstairs that I’m trying to block out, serious writing eludes me.

"Feels more like summer" rolls

Try your hand at homemade spring rolls for a cool summer meal.  Don’t forget the peanut dipping sauce!

Sunbrella

The hat alone just wasn’t cutting it.  Enter the sunbrella . . . just watch out for the creepers.

Isn’t this how everyone cleans the kitchen floor?

I recently started seeing a homeopathic medicine practitioner.  On my first visit, she prescribed faerie dust a homeopathic remedy and ordered lots of blood work.

The results?  While not technically deficient in anything, my levels of some micro-nutrients (in this case, iron, zinc, vitamin D, and vitamin B12) came in a bit on the low side of the ranges.  While I would prefer to get all my nutrients through real food, I agreed to go along with a supplementation plan.  Our bodies do not readily absorb the form of iron found in many typical OTC iron supplements (which may explain why my levels were low, despite the fact that I take a multi with “100%” of the RDA of iron).

My doctor initially recommended an iron supplement consisting of fractionated liver bits, but moved on to plan B upon remembering that I’m vegetarian.  What was plan B, you ask?  An atrociously expensive — but supposedly effective — liquid iron supplement.  At the recommended adult dose of 2 teaspoons, twice a day, it costs $1.76/day.  Hmm, now that I’m looking at the numbers, maybe it’s not quite as pricey as I thought, but still not cheap.

They package this magic iron elixir in a bottle that is impossible to pour from without dribbling liquid down the bottle and/or all over the counter.  To make matters worse, the top is a bit tricksy.   So, the other evening, I shake it (as instructed), only to find that the lid was not on tightly.  Expensive liquid iron supplement splashed all over the kitchen floor.  Distress and desperation!  I decided the quantity on the floor was close to my 2 teaspoon dose, and I proceeded to clean up the mess.

A bit extreme?  Yes!  Was the kitchen floor clean?  Probably not.  Matthew grabbed the camera and started snapping these pictures and much laughter followed.  Oh, the frugality!

Open Streets in St. Louis!

Open Streets is coming to St. Louis, with four events from May through October!  The first Open Streets takes place this Saturday, May 1, from 8am to 1pm.  This great event features five miles of city street from Forest Park to Busch Stadium open exclusively for bicycles and pedestrians (i.e., non-motorized traffic), with lots of fun activities along the route.  Click the image above to go to the official website for more details and a route map.

Sadly, I will miss the inaugural event this weekend, but I plan to volunteer at all of the others.  To sign up as a volunteer, visit the St. Louis Regional Bicycle Federation website.  View this Trailnet blog post for more information on volunteering and the event in general.

If you’re not dead when you enter . . .

We recently attended a visitation at a funeral home in FAR AWAY (in this case, St. Charles).  My smoke alarm sounded immediately upon entering the funeral home.  My first reaction?  Denial: certainly they don’t allow smoking INSIDE this funeral home.

Sadly, I was dead wrong.  This particular establishment, did, indeed include a “lounge” area that allowed smoking.  I guess allowing smoking is a good business model for a funeral home.

Hello, people!  Last time I checked this was the 21st century.  We’ve received repeated warnings about the dangers of tobacco smoke for A LONG TIME.  Even the masterful marketing spin doctors have given up arguing that tobacco is not harmful and have moved on to creating doubt and skepticism about other things, like, oh, global warming/climate change/global weirding (whatever term floats your boat).  Not that I should be too shocked to find this here, as the St. Louis Airport still has indoor smoking lounges.  Ah, life in the Dark Ages.

Like so many other human behaviors and inventions, tobacco is not only bad for human health, it’s also bad for the environment. Chemicals used to grow tobacco poison the land and the tobacco workers; trees are destroyed to make and package cigarettes; butt litter pollutes land and waterways and kills animals.  Click here for more details about the environmental impacts of tobacco production and use.

Green lunch

Tiny Choices recently posted about lunch kits.  Sadly, I did not win the kit they were giving away, but really, you don’t need anything special to have a waste-free lunch.

Since I have access to a refrigerator at work, I don’t worry about an insulated lunch bag on most days.  I just toss everything into a reusable canvas bag, and I’m good to go.

I use a glass Pyrex container whenever I have food that I’ll be heating, which is most of the time, thanks to the beauty of leftovers.  By using the glass container, I avoid the whole issue of figuring out which, if any, plastics won’t leach chemicals into my food when heated.  While I’m on the subject — those frozen vegetables that you microwave in the plastic bag?  Who thought that was a good idea?  Oh, the lengths to which we go, and the health risks we take, for convenience food.  Anyway, suffice it to say that I refuse to microwave anything in plastic.  My Pyrex container has a plastic lid that I remove before heating.

I do use plastic containers for snacks, or parts of my lunch that don’t require heating.

I keep silverware and a cloth napkin at my desk, always at the ready, along with my water mug.  I prefer not to drink out of a water bottle (reusable, of course) all day, but I don’t trust myself with an open cup of water near a computer, so I compromise with a lidded travel mug.  If you’re on the go a lot and frequently find yourself resorting to plastic utensils, you may want to look at To Go Ware, which I wrote about here.

The cloth napkin is the newest addition to my lunch arsenal.  We use cloth napkins at home all the time, but, until recently, I never thought about having one at work.  No, I was not using paper napkins at work — I guess I just wasn’t using anything . . . or maybe I was using my pants.