Round Up

In this round up: reusable grocery bags, reusable produce bags, yummy fat, super yummy chocolate, Rosh Hashanah dinner ideas, uses for coffee grounds, economic indicators to ruin your appetite.

Bolstering my concerns regarding whether purchasing new reusable bags for grocery shopping is really all that green, the Wall Street Journal provides an analysis of the energy required to make reusable bags as compared to the energy required to make disposable plastic bags. Via Re-Nest. But then I see all of Gentle Reader's beautiful new RuMe bags and think, "I'll use 'em plenty because they're so cute!"

Now that we've all got our reusable grocery bags, what do we do about those plastic produce bags? According to Re-Nest we should switch to reusable mesh produce bags. I've got a little green craft project in process presently to finish the edges of mesh onion bags for reuse. Anyone want me to blog about it?

One of the points in Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food that I found particularly interesting was the idea of returning animal fat to our daily menu. Jennifer McLagan's new book Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipies, appears to instruct us how to do just that. Via The Grinder and Serious Eats.

Gristmill's Lou Bendrick explains the "bean to bar" chocolate movement. Two reasons bean-to-bar chocolate is awesome: (1) it tastes better and (2) it's sustainable. He also provides a number of links to sources for this tasty, planet-saving wonder. I'm going to have to look into bean-to-chip resources for my ongoing adventures with the New York Times Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe.

Serious Eats compiled links to a number of interesting dishes that would be suitable for Rosh Hashanah and a cookbook that I might have to check out of the library.

Re-Nest has posted seven uses for coffee grounds that are not entirely ridiculous. I am contemplating numbers 1, 2, and 4.

The Center for Economic and Policy Research compiled a table of economic indicators comparing 2000 to 2008 in order to answer the question is the country better off now than it was before Bush. The answer is, perhaps not shockingly, no. Via Gristmill. Guess you don't need to tell Washington Mutual that.

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