Never has the category “Greenmarket Grub” seemed so apt. I found this dude (and family? what the hell are those little black spots?) in my peaches. Not that it’s going to stop me from from buying food at the Greenmarket in any way, but let’s just say, I’m off peaches for a while.

Yeah. All set with peaches, thanks.

Share This

The first week’s delivery sat at the wrong door of the brownstone in 93° heat all afternoon. I called and gave them instructions of which door to go to.

The second week, I found a box of humid, wilted produce in exactly the same spot. I called and gave them explicit direction of where to leave the box, and just to be sure, I left a note at the wrong door: wrong door, don’t leave my box of food here, thanks.

The third week, I stayed home all day, hefting my pregnant self up and down the stairs every hour or so to check the wrong door. And there it was, my note on the door and my box of produce. I canceled my Urban Organic subscription immediately, but that still left me with something that looked like this:

(more…)

Share This

One problem: they don’t actually exist.

Yet.

Share This

Share This

Now, I am not especially a Disney enthusiast. In fact, the last time I went (long before I had a kid), I had to be physically removed from what was then The Monsanto Hall of GMO Awesomeness, dragged away by my husband as I shouted that it was lies, all lies!

Still, this Fabricant piece really takes the mouse ears. The premise of the piece seems to be that Fabricant, as the benevolent self-sacrificing grandparent, agrees to take two young granddaughters to Disney World. And, aside from her disdain at finding children in the swimming pool, it turns out Disney World isn’t the complete sucking hell-hole of despair she thought it would be! You can get thousand-dollar-bottles of wine! And prix fixe dinners for $185!

But then again, what did I really expect from the grandmother of children who “know what capers are and who eat foie gras” — while the rest of us plebes need to “show children that there is more to dinner than chicken fingers and hot dogs.”

Well, congratulations, Florence. You’ve now made Disney World less appealing than ever, knowing it’ll now be filled with assholes like you.

Share This

I’m usually anti-individual packaging, because it’s just so much waste to be thrown out.

Yet, I still think this is so brilliant:

And if it makes people say I think I have a snack… hey, maybe I’ll have some Brussels sprouts, how bad could it really be?

Share This

Wii. Fit.

Here’s a little film¹ of how it works, if you’re out of the video-game-peripherals loop.

Upon buying the Wii Fit, which is basically an oversized scale with a bunch of really fun games, we learned a.) my kid was solidly in the underweight category, which I pretty much knew already and b.) my husband fell right on the Body Mass Index border between normal and overweight, which I didn’t know.²

So, for the past month, there has been some culinary chaos in Maison Gezellig kitchen: how does one plan meals that will fatten up one family member without fattening the other two?

It’s not as if I’ve got any great dietary revelations here; it’s just all about the calories. My husband and I have been using The Daily Plate to see exactly where all our calories have been going. Having never actually been on a diet of any sort before, that site’s been a freakin’ eye-opener, let me tell you. I now understand the allure of crappy diet sodas and fat-free salad dressings. I also now completely understand why I gained weight this winter (after following my patented Fast Food Free-for-All® diet).

And the kid has been getting as many calorie-dense foods as I can convince her to eat, and doing a little fancy footwork on my part:

(Yes, I spelled the kid’s name out in dairy products.)³

So, right now, we’re settling into a trend of calorie-dense foods for the kid and low-calorie foods for the adults, and then we all meet in the metaphorical caloric middle for dinner. And how’s it working so far?

Well, in a month, the kid has gained about a pound and my husband has lost almost ten pounds.⁴

Coming highlights of this site: More food posts! My neighborhood Greenmarket resumes tomorrow! I’m going to visit my mom and pig out on Massachusetts-exclusive food for a week!

1. And coincidentally, that charming blonde child at the start of that clip? That one’s mine. [↩]
2. I, like Mary Poppins, came in right in the middle of the normal range: Practically Perfect In Every Way. [↩]
3. And she ate it all, so… I win! [↩]
4. I, however, have stayed exactly the same. Hey, why mess with success? [↩]

Share This

A consumer advocacy group called on the Food and Drug Administration Tuesday to ban the use of eight artificial colorings in food because the additives may cause hyperactivity and behavior problems in some children.

Maybe that doesn’t mean much to you, but as the parent of kid who is sensitive to food dyes, this means so much.

I know I’ve talked about this before, but I’m not sure people understand just how pervasive food dyes are. Virtually every mass-marketed product aimed at children has food dyes in it. Every fun, junky cereal with a prize in it. Every ice cream that isn’t chocolate or vanilla. Candy, popsicles, birthday cakes — even some brands of yogurt and macaroni and cheese — all off-limits for my kid. Even over-the-counter medications have it. When she’s sick, my kid has to swig down a massive amount of nasty-tasting liquid baby Tylenol, simply because it’s the only dye-free version available.

Every time my kid tells someone she can’t have food with dye because it makes her “crazy,” or when I offer her a safe red food — like a strawberry — and she still asks me if it has red dye in it, I just want to cry. I know there are plenty of kids in the world with more pressing problems than this, but those kids aren’t my kid, and all I want is for my kid to be able to eat whatever she wants.

The British government is already successfully getting food manufacturers to remove all food dyes… so why can’t we do that here?

Share This

Anyway, Subway made one fatal flaw. Buried under the prizes is this:

Contest is open only to legal US residents, over the age of 18 with children in either elementary, private or parochial schools that serve grades PreK-6. No home schools will be accepted. (emphasis mine)

Oh… Subway dudes, you do NOT want to piss off the homeschoolers.

Homeschoolers, already irritated by the world at large, are easily angered and are organized. This contest started a couple of days ago and already Subway’s been deluged with emails.

And yet! Does Subway change the rules of the contest? Add a clause saying if a homeschooled kid wins, s/he can donate the equipment to the school or organization of their choice? Noooooo.

We at SUBWAY restaurants place a high value on education, regardless of the setting, and have initiated a number of programs and promotions aimed at educating our youth in the areas of health and fitness.

To address the inadvertent limitation of our current contest and provide an opportunity for even more kids to improve their fitness, we will soon create an additional contest in which homeschooled students will be encouraged to participate. When the kids win, everyone wins!

Oh, NUH-UH. You did not just say “[w]e sincerely apologize to anyone who feels excluded by our current essay contest” because that is a shitty boyfriend apology. If the apology has an “if” in it (as in, “we’re sorry if you felt excluded”): it’s not really an apology.

You could have settled this once and for all, but no! You just took a bad situation and made it even worse. “Yeah, you still can’t enter our contest, but we’ll make up another one or something later. Good enough?”

Subway dudes: FOR THE WIN!

Hilarious addendum!: The original page for the Subway contest had several words misspelled: the prizes included a “bastket” and the contest was only open to people in the “Untied States.” Those errors were fixed. The most glaring one of all… not so much.

Share This

Even if I wasn’t the self-proclaimed eco-nerd I am, I still border on freakishly chemically sensitive. Cigarette smoke, Lysol, almost all perfumes, the detergent aisle at Target — all these things give me a stabbing headache. And the worst of all? Paint. The super painted the halls in my building and it was like going on a free dive: deep breath in, then hold it… hold it… hold it… until (gasp!) I got outside and could breathe the delightful city air again.

And after much searching (and sticker shock at how much some of these zero-VOC paints cost), I think we finally have a winner:

The Freshaire Choice paint, available at Home Depot for only a few bucks more than regular paint.

I’ll admit, I’m not exactly thrilled by their color palette; it’s a lot more muted than I would like, but I think that’s due to the no VOC¹ colorants they use. I do like that it has a lifetime warranty and you can get three 2-ounce free samples in whatever colors you’d like. As for me, I just ordered Beckoning Sea, Delightful Daffodil, and Charted Voyage.

1. I just realized I’ve used the VOC acronym twice now without explaining what it is. VOC stands for volatile organic compounds: basically, they’re the gases that give paint its paint smell. [↩]

Share This