This is one of the rare times in New York City, when you can walk down the street and catch a wonderful odor wafting on the breeze. I don’t think I need to get into what urban odors you usually encounter.
Right now my backyard is bursting into bloom and the aroma from this crabapple tree makes my feet float off the ground when I smell it. Happy Spring!
For those who celebrate, I hope you had an enjoyable seder with friends and family last night. We joined friends and had a lovely evening.
What do you think of this box of matzo crackers? There’s always one in the family that doesn’t quite fit in…
DeBrand Chocolate racecars
Here’s something funny. A race car that is fueled by leftover chocolate. Can’t figure out how there’s any leftover chocolate, but that’s another story. Also I have images of premenstrual women lining up to work as pit crew!
BOSTON (Reuters Life!) – Fueled by leftover chocolate and with components made from carrots, potato starch and flax, the world’s first sustainable Formula 3 racing car has a top speed of 135 miles per hour and can go from zero to 60 in 2.5 seconds.
Sound nuts? Not yet — brake pads made from cashews are still under development.
Meet Lola, the England’s University of Warwick’s blend of muscle and eco-friendliness and the world’s first racing car retrofitted with renewable and sustainable materials.
Researchers from the British university showed off their prize possession at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) energy conference in Boston.
“She’s incredibly green, taking materials that would otherwise have ended up in a landfill. It lets people engage with recycling without the finger-wagging,” said Kerry Kirwan, one of the car’s designers at the university.
“The public has really taken the car to its heart, because she’s fun,” he said.
Many of the car’s components would more usually be found at a farmer’s market — or in a trash bin, since most of the materials are actually industrial waste.
The 2.0-liter BMW engine has been converted to diesel from gasoline and configured to run on fuel derived from waste from chocolate factories or other plant-based oils.
Among Lola’s other unique features is a radiator that converts ozone back to oxygen.
“It’s a racing car that cleans up as it goes along,” said Steve Maggs, another member of the design team.
The WorldFirst Formula 3 racing car took the university more than nine months to develop and cost around $200,000.
Kirwan said that the thinking behind the project was to find a way to really put recycled materials to the test.
“A lot of these technologies were a huge leap of application, something that shows the material under a really demanding application.”
(Reporting by Ros Krasny; Editing by Patricia Reaney)
Here’s a Brooklyn Eagle article giving information about an event at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens.
BROOKLYN — The urban gardening community will kick off the spring gardening season at Brooklyn Botanic Garden (BBG) with the 29th annual Making Brooklyn Bloom, a daylong conference on how to green up the borough.
It will be presented on Saturday, March 13, by GreenBridge, the community environmental horticulture program at Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
This year’s Making Brooklyn Bloom, “Soil in the City: Growing Healthy Neighborhoods from the Ground Up,” will focus on revitalizing our soil, the foundation of life in the garden. The free event features a keynote address by Dr. Nina Bassuk, director of the Urban Horticulture Institute at Cornell University, developer of Cornell Structural Soil, and author of Trees in the Urban Landscape.
Exhibits and workshops on rooftop farming, community composting, and soil testing will be offered—all presented by members of BBG’s horticulture staff or experts from other greening organizations in New York City.
“For 29 years, Making Brooklyn Bloom has introduced urban gardeners to sustainable practices and encouraged ecological awareness in city gardens—whether those gardens are on windowsills, in backyards, or in community gardens,” says Robin Simmen, director of GreenBridge.
“Focusing on soil this year addresses an issue that pertains to everyone interested in cultivating green space in the city. GreenBridge is proud to bring together leaders in sustainable horticulture and environmental science to share their knowledge on this critical issue—and in doing so, strengthen the community of Brooklyn gardeners,” she adds.
To celebrate its centennial, BBG is commemorating the renewal of Brooklyn’s urban environment by sharing before-and-after photos of local community gardens.
Attendees are encouraged to bring photos of their gardens on the day of the event; BBG staff will be on hand to scan and share them on the web throughout our centennial year. Like many of Brooklyn’s gardens, BBG itself started from scratch, transforming its grounds from a derelict coal ash dump into an emerald gem in the heart of the borough.
For more details on Making Brooklyn Bloom, please call (718) 623-7250 or visit bbg.org/vis2/2010/mbb/.
This weekend turned out to be a 3-day weekend with Lindsay getting a snow day on Friday. Thursday was weird snowy, slush, which turned to snow during the night. When we woke up on Friday, we had over a foot of snow.
We stayed in the immediate neighborhood and played in the snow. It’s fun going down the street in a sled. It makes the grown-ups who are trudging off to work, break out of their funk and smile. It’s good to be a kid!
While Lindsay was playing, I made this little snow kid.
When I was a kid I loved to stay up late and watch Saturday Night Live. I was usually pretty tired because it was way past my bedtime. It was always a bit unsettling when I was watching what I thought was a real commercial only to realize it was a spoof that was part of the show. That is how I felt the other night when I was watching tv and there was a pro-high-fructose corn syrup (hfcs) commercial. Unfortunately Neil wasn’t home, so I didn’t have anyone to turn to and scream, “Did you just see that??”
The video above is one of the commercials the Corn Refiners Association is running on tv. They have spent 30 million dollars launching this pro-HFCS campaign.
I find the commercials disturbing because of course they appeal to morons, who haven’t read anything about food in the past 20 years. But I also think it’s a good sign that the corn refiners must be getting hit with bad press. Otherwise they would never have coughed up $30 million.
Just in case you are like the woman in the video and can’t think of reasons why HF Corn Syrup is bad, click here for 4 very good reasons to avoid it.
The New Green Blog has now become Brooklyn Feed. You might have noticed that you were automatically redirected. I think the program might even have updated your bookmark (I don’t even pretend to understand this technology!). But just in case it didn’t, please change your bookmark to come here directly.
Thanks!
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My father lives in the South of France, which to me is one of the most beautiful parts of the world. The landscape has orange/red craggy rocks, deep blue skies and lots of silver foliage in the form of olive trees and lavender plants. With fields of lavender and sunflowers it’s no wonder that many painters such as Van Gogh were inspired to paint the scenery. They even mine ochre for paints from the deep red soil in a nearby area.
Besides the lovely sights, the food is fresh, local and delicious. Although you are starting to see asparagus from Chile and grapes from Spain, you still find an overwhelming amount of local produce, cheese, bread and charcutrie. Farmers and artisanal bread bakers and cheese makers are treated with respect. The French love their food and take a great source of pride in living in the country or specific region where it is produced. When Cavaillon melons are ripe, they are the pride of the local town markets. Slices of sausages and cheese are proudly offered for tasting, because they know that if you have one taste you won’t be able to refuse buying. This is the ultimate place for eating locally.
My father lives in the tiny town of Lorgues, which is about 45 minutes north of Nice and about an hour from Aix en Provence. The town is tiny, and yet they have a big market day every Tuesday. I went today. Feast your eyes on this bounty.
This tuesday evening I took a compost workshop at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. It was an interesting workshop run by Luke Hall. Most of the information I already knew, but it was great for filling in some gaps and refreshing my memory of other things. The workshop was worth it alone just because taught me a new term. Freegan. Maybe I live under a rock, but I had never heard of freegans before. And for those unenlightened folks like myself, here is a description of a freegan from freegan.info.
Perhaps the most notorious freegan strategy is what is commonly called “urban foraging” or “dumpster diving”. This technique involves rummaging through the garbage of retailers, residences, offices, and other facilities for useful goods. Despite our society’s sterotypes about garbage, the goods recovered by freegans are safe, useable, clean, and in perfect or near-perfect condition, a symptom of a throwaway culture that encourages us to constantly replace our older goods with newer ones, and where retailers plan high-volume product disposal as part of their economic model. Some urban foragers go at it alone, others dive in groups, but we always share the discoveries openly with one another and with anyone along the way who wants them. Groups like Food Not Bombs recover foods that would otherwise go to waste and use them to prepare meals to share in public places with anyone who wishes to partake. By recovering the discards of retailers, offices, schools, homes, hotels, or anywhere by rummaging through their trash bins, dumpsters, and trash bags, freegans are able to obtain food, beverages, books, toiletries magazines, comic books, newspapers, videos, kitchenware, appliances, music (CDs, cassettes, records, etc.), carpets, musical instruments, clothing, rollerblades, scooters, furniture, vitamins, electronics, animal care products, games, toys, bicycles, artwork, and just about any other type of consumer good. Rather than contributing to further waste, freegans curtail garbage and pollution, reducing the over-all volume in the waste stream.
I haven’t met any self-proclaimed freegans, so I have no real opinion on their manifesto. I do agree that we add a shameful amount of perfectly good items to the landfills. My sister and I used to call the weirdly disposable joke gifts our mother used to give us landfill fodder. I commend any group in America for trying to curtail the flow of goods to the garbage dumps.
