I was never one for New Year’s resolutions. If I couldn’t do something right here and right now, a change in the date certainly wasn’t going to motivate me. I have, though, been putting off using homemade cleaning products. I’m not usually that messy of a person, but when I want to get to the grime, I’d like to try an alternative to chemicals. So I’ll try the homemade cleaning recipes below for a cleaner start to 2009.

I found some cleaning recipes using ingredients from around my home from www.organizedhome.com:

▪ For kitchen and bathroom surfaces
Mix in a spray bottle:
1 cup white vinegar
1 cup water

Vinegar dissolves dirt and soap scum, deodorizes naturally, and has no coloring agents.

▪ For the grimy bathtub and sinks
Sprinkle baking soda onto surface and scour with a damp sponge. For harsher stains, mix baking soda and water to a paste. Let the mixture sit on the grime for 10 to 20 minutes and scrub away.

Baking soda is mildly abrasive and is also a natural deodorizer.

▪ For dirty windows and mirrors:

Mix in a spray bottle:
1 cup rubbing (isopropyl) alcohol
1 cup water
1 tablespoon white vinegar

The rubbing alcohol mixture can also be used on chrome fixtures and ceramic tiles for a shiny finish.

I’ll start using my new cleaning methods in 2009 (maybe sooner!) and I’ll keep you updated on my progress in future blog posts.

The holidays bring many things—joy and celebration to name a couple. Unfortunately the season can also trigger stress and lower your immune system. With the season already upon us, here are a few herbs, fruits and foods to consider to help relieve your aches, pains and anxiety. 

Although headaches have a wide range of origins, a few are inflamed blood vessels in the head region and inflamed sinuses. The beta-carotene that is found in carrots and other fresh produce reduces inflammation. 

Whenever I think of a winter cold, the first thing that comes to mind is a painful sore throat. The dry, scratchy traits of a sore throat are usually the first sign of the cold or the flu. To alleviate any pain in your throat, mix hot green tea with a squeeze of honey. 

Between the pressures of finding the “right” gift and finding enough time to squeeze in holiday get togethers, it’s no wonder people lose sleep and gain additional anxieties during the holidays. A simple satchet of dried lavender or hops placed under your pillow can calm and soothe you.   

Sometimes the holiday season can take a toll on our stomachs (for me it’s the sweets). To cure any indigestion problems, simply sip some chamomile tea. 

Don’t let the flu, a cold or any aches, anxieties and pains get the best of you this season by preventing a lowered immune system. Keep your energy boosted with almonds, dried fruit and walnuts.

Before making a sprint to the trashcan and landfill to discard your tree, holiday decorations and waste, try these eco-friendly alternatives to make cleaning house greener.

▪ Use Earth911.com to find out the nearest real tree drop-off location.

▪ Donate foam packing peanuts to local shipping or postal stores. You can also call “The Peanut Hotline” at (800) 828-2214 to track down your nearest shipping or postal store.

▪ When your rechargeable batteries no longer hold a charge, go to the Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation to find out your nearest battery drop-off location. 

▪ Pass along older toys and clothes that have been replaced to organizations like Salvation Army and Goodwill.

▪ Send your inactive cell phones to CollectiveGood, which allows you to make a tax-deductible donation when you mail in your old cell phone. You can also go to one of 1,500 USPS locations that offer free envelopes to drop your electronics (MP3 players, cell phones, ink cartridges, digital cameras) without any fee for postage.

Photo by JaseMan / Courtesy flickr

I was scrambling. I needed a white elephant gift for a holiday office party that was in t-minus one hour. I didn’t have time to go home and grab a random gift from my own useless junk, so I settled for what was in my university’s newspaper’s newsroom. A 2009 First Amendment daily calendar was the most random gift I could find, and now I needed to wrap it to contain the surprise.

Being in a newsroom, it was almost a reflex to grab some old newspaper and wrap away. I’d always thought it was tacky to use newspaper as wrapping paper—it was difficult to find pages that weren’t text-covered and had appealing pictures. And newsprint is dull looking and lifeless.

After some contemplation, I looked at a fellow staffer’s wrapped gift, which she wrapped in magazine ads. The wrapping was glossy like traditional wrapping paper but not as cheesy as dancing snowmen or cheering Santas.

I reached for the nearest magazine and started flipping. I found a couple of similar full-page ads and began clipping and taping. Advertisers spend up to tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars on glossy paper ads that will most likely be thrown away in time, so we might as well reuse them for more than just advertising reasons.

So keep your eyes peeled for ads that you wouldn’t mind seeing your own gifts all wrapped up in this season.

Every time I travel without my husband, which lately has been pretty often, I make sure the freezer and cupboards are stocked with healthy food he can eat while I am gone. He could eat at the restaurant, but as I have mentioned in previous posts, I don’t think eating restaurant food on a daily basis is healthy. I like to leave him with easy, tasty, yet, healthy fare that will make him want to come home to eat even if I am not there.

The usual grocery list before my trips includes several bags of organic frozen green beans and peas. I buy frozen so I don’t have to worry about rotting food if he is busier than usual and can’t get home for his meals. I also stock organic, raw chicken tenders, which I portion and freeze, (so that he can thaw them as he needs them) organic tomato sauce and whole wheat linguini, which cooks really fast.

I am getting ready to leave again for Christmas, and while he’ll be able to join us for a couple of days, he will be home alone for some time. He loves Italian sausage, and has asked me to buy some for him. Unfortunately I know that all the packaged sausage available at our grocery store has monosodium glutamate (MSG) alongisde other questionable ingredients. I know this because every time he comes with me to the store he stops at the meat cooler to read the labels, he always comes empty handed and disappointed.

When we have the chance to go to Whole Foods Market, we buy a good amount of its store-made sausage and freeze it. This time, however, I can’t make the two-hour trip to my own food heaven, so I offered to make our own sausage (not encased because that would be too time consuming, but loose, like breakfast sausage). He seems to like the idea, so I have been scouring recipes and have realized that the basic recipe is extremely simple: ground pork, fennel seeds, salt, pepper and parsley. If you want a spicy version add garlic and crushed red peppers.  

Of course the meat counters at specialty stores have all kinds of fancy sausage; I have seen apples, apricots, and an amazing variety of peppers mixed with ground meat and stuffed in the casings, but I like to stick to the basics, at least for the first couple of times I make it. I am making one variation using ground chicken, because my supermarket doesn’t carry organic ground pork.

He can’t eat this sausage in a bun, but he can pan fry it or broil it and add it to pasta. This is so easy that I feel a little guilty about having bought all those sausages in the past, except for the fact that every now and again I too enjoy a sausage in a bun. Next on my list is finding an easy bratwurst recipe…does anyone have one?

NPR’s Homemade Spicy Italian Sausage

-1 1/2 teaspoons fennel seed
-2 teaspoons salt
-3 cloves of garlic, minced
-1 teaspoon crushed red peppers
-1 1/2 teaspoons black pepper
-1 tablespoon chopped parsley leaves
-2 pounds ground chicken

1. Toast fennel seed in a pan over medium heat until it becomes fragrant, let cool and grind.

2. In a large bowl mix meat with the rest of the ingredients with a rubber spatula or a wooden spoon.

3. Portion into freezer bags to store.

4. When ready to eat, thaw in the fridge, and pan fry it with a little olive oil until browned evenly. You can also spread it over a rimmed baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil and broil until done, mixing every couple of minutes for even browning.  

5. Add it to pizza, or to a basic marinara for a delicious pasta sauce.

6. Enjoy!

Olivia Blanco Mullins is a journalist and has been eating healthy most of her life, as her parents have owned health food stores for more than 20 years. Currently she lives in Manhattan, Kansas, where her husband owns an  Italian restaurant . 

Last August I decided to give my brother-in-law something different for his birthday. I looked through lots of catalogues, websites and in stores, but I wanted to give him something I made. I am not good at making crafts, but I can bake, so I decided to give him my own version of the cookie-of-the-month.

While you can purchase this service as a gift to yourself or others, I found that the benefits of doing this myself are many: I can save money by making the cookies, choose the type of cookie I make and customize it for my brother-in-law. I can control the ingredients, too. My brother-in-law loves whole, natural and organic foods. I can also keep a couple of cookies from each batch for myself, for quality control, of course.

In September Paul received about a dozen chewy chocolate chip cookies and a card that informed him that for the following six months he would receive a batch of cookies a month; a full year was too long a commitment. I asked my sister for his favorites, and so far he has been pretty happy with the results. My sister and her eldest daughter are happy, too, though I have the feeling they are the ones eating most of the cookies.

So far my gift has been successful. Paul likes to get the cookies, and for both of us it has been more meaningful that buying/getting a shirt. It hasn’t been all easy, however; it takes time to bake and ship the cookies, and the Blondies—a kind of crossover between a cookie and a brownie—I sent in November were not Paul’s favorite (I forgot he doesn’t like nuts). I made it up to him by making his favorite, oatmeal raisin cookies, the following month.

I get recipes from different books and websites, but my favorite cookbook is The New Best Recipe. The recipes usually call for white flour and granulated sugar, but I just substitute my ingredients and so far I haven’t had problems, although most cookies are drier and heavier and they tend to not rise as much. I make every cookie with organic whole wheat flour, organic eggs, organic butter, organic turbinado sugar, organic chocolate and pure organic vanilla extract. Even with a heavier texture, they taste better to me.

I wrap the cookies in as little parchment paper I can get away with, and pack them in used to-go containers I save. I ship them in used boxes with used packing material I have left over from wedding gifts. This gift is very eco-friendly.

The best part of giving this gift to Paul has been that every month I learn something new about him (like the fact that he dislikes nuts). I like this gift idea, and I may do it again for someone else in the future.

Are you planning on gifting food this year?

Olivia Blanco Mullins is a journalist and has been eating healthy most of her life, as her parents have owned health food stores for more than 20 years. Currently she lives in Manhattan, Kansas, where her husband owns an  Italian restaurant . 

Last week I tried pre-packaged organic soup, and I was surprised at how good it was. Normally I would not buy soup in a carton or a can, but I was sick all of last week with the flu and my husband brought it for me, along with ingredients to make grilled cheese sandwiches.

The soup I had was Imagine’s Organic Creamy Broccoli, which has all-natural ingredients and is made with soy milk, instead of dairy ingredients. It wasn’t as rich as the cream of broccoli soups you get at restaurants, but it was definitely creamy and had a very distinct broccoli flavor. It really was the perfect meal for a sick day.

The grilled cheese was delicious too, even though I probably shouldn’t have had it, because I find that dairy makes my body create more mucus, which is what I’ve always believed even though I know there is research about this not being true. Nonetheless, having all of the ingredients at home made the dairy impossible to resist.  

To make the sandwich, I used whole wheat rustic bread and havarti cheese, which melts very nicely. I spread a little bit of butter on the outside of each slice of bread and grilled it in a small cast iron pan. It was really good and pretty much the highlight of my day—so much so that I had the same exact meal the next day.

When I am sick, and this was an especially bad case, I eat very erratically. I am usually not interested in food all day, and then all of a sudden I am so hungry I can eat anything I have in the house. I also become more lenient with myself; if I hadn’t been sick I would have probably heated my sandwich in the oven, instead of in a pan with butter. I know this is not such a great idea because when you are sick you should eat healthier, to be stronger and get better, right?

My soup and sandwich were good choices…the chocolate éclair from the local bakery I had on Sunday was probably not, but it made me feel good after a full week of feeling miserable.

I think I have found my emergency food in this soup and sandwich combo. Aside from chicken soup, which is sometimes referred to as Jewish Penicillin, and seems to be everyone’s go-to meal when sick, what do you eat when you have a cold or the flu?

Olivia Blanco Mullins is a journalist and has been eating healthy most of her life, as her parents have owned health food stores for more than 20 years. Currently she lives in Manhattan, Kansas, where her husband owns an  Italian restaurant . 

My husband owns a restaurant, so even though I love to cook, I end up eating at his place several times out of the week (at least 4 times) so we can have dinner together. In addition, we love going out to other restaurants, both for research and for fun.

While I really enjoy being able to do this with my husband, I know that it is not the healthiest approach to eating. So in the last years I have come up with a couple of ground rules that have kept me from gaining weight and feeling sluggish. I don’t always follow them, but I do keep them in mind. I have been successful at staying healthy, and I think this will be useful to you through the holidays and the rest of the year.

1. Always enjoy your food. Don’t order a salad you don’t like if you really want pasta. The salad won’t satisfy you, and you may end up eating your partner’s cold leftovers when you get home. Order something you want, but eat only what you need.

2. Skip the bread. I never eat the bread at our restaurant. It comes with garlic and herb butter and it is delicious, but it is not what I go there for. No one really needs the white flour or the butter, so ask your server to take it away. If you are used to eating with bread by your side, resist the temptation to eat it until your entrée has arrived; this will keep you from filling up on it and asking for more.

3. Look for protein- and vegetable-based dishes, and ask the server to skip the starches. I usually ask my server to substitute the mashed potatoes and risotto for extra vegetables. For example, a salmon steak and green beans is an excellent dinner choice; will you really miss the buttery spaghetti? For me it is like the old saying ‘out of sight, out of mind.’

4. Ask for your meal without the sauce. Many entrées come smothered in cream or butter-based sauces, and while they are tasty, more often than not they are unnecessary. By asking for a dish without or with little sauce, you’ll be avoiding some major calories and fat.

5. Indulge, but in moderation. When the restaurant first opened, I had dessert each night I ate there. It was a fun month, but the daily sugar rush was less than healthy. Now I have dessert only when we are celebrating something, like our anniversary or a promotion. Sometimes we end up celebrating the fact that we are alive, but we really make an effort to indulge only occasionally.  

6. Whenever you can, eat what you cook. I bring food to the office 99 percent of the time. This saves me money and calories. I find that eating at the restaurants around my office is not that enjoyable as a culinary experience, and while I do miss the camaraderie that develops during these lunches, there are other ways to bond with your

There are other rules in my life for staying healthy, of course. I haven’t been to a fast food chain in a decade, and I always look for quality and not quantity when it comes to restaurants. These rules set the tone for my dining experience, however, and I’d like to know if other people think about what they order when they go to a restaurant. Do you have any tips on staying healthy while eating restaurant fare?

Olivia Blanco Mullins is a journalist and has been eating healthy most of her life, as her parents have owned health food stores for more than 20 years. Currently she lives in Manhattan, Kansas, where her husband owns an Italian restaurant .