What are you eating?

I'm sure we all have quirky little things we love to eat that would make others cringe. I know I do. Maybe yours is pickles and ice cream. Mine is a bizarre mixture of peanut butter, syrup and butter (because, apparently peanut butter isn't fattening enough on its own) that my grandmother used to make me. Comfort food at its nastiest. It's all sort of homemade, though, and if I use organic plain peanut butter, organic maple syrup and organic butter, I pretty much know what's in it, at least.

Can you really say the same about your favorite snack foods or that microwave dinner you love so much after a hard day's work? How about your breakfast cereal or the baby formula you give your precious bundle of joy? Do you even know what's in them? A bit of sugar, some kind of grain, maybe, but is that all? What would you say if I told you many of your favorite foods most likely had Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO's) in them? Would they taste as good then? They wouldn't to me.

What can you do, though, since none of this is written anywhere on the packaging? Luckily, these days, if we know where to look, someone else has usually done the leg work for us, and we get to kick back and read their findings. That's what I did today, and I was both very interested as well as quite disturbed by what I found. In the US, for example, you can almost always count on the fact that if you're eating a product made by a large company, there will most likely be some GMO's in them somewhere. Post, General Mills, Kellogg's, Kraft, Mars, Nestle, Quaker - the list goes on and on. Granted, they buy their raw materials from so many producers, I'm sure it can be hard to trace their exact origins, but are you okay with that? I'm not. I don't find it alright to feed the people of the world with experimental organisms without at least the presence of proper labeling to inform the consumer of what they're ingesting.

We are not completely helpless in this matter, though. In fact, if large numbers of consumers voice such concerns by boycotting brands that offer up GMO's with a side of fries, perhaps these large corporations will find it a little easier to trace their ingredients back to more reliable, less suspect growing practices that the majority of consumers don't find inappropriate (sure, there are people who are all for the use of GMO's as a way of fighting world hunger or other problems, but studies have found that a full 2/3rds of people polled are either against it or at least unsure). Is it fair to sneak such ingredients into the general food supply without first warning consumers of what they are purchasing? If you don't think so, you may want to have a look at these lists to get a better idea of which products you can safely purchase and those you may want to avoid.

In the US (there are several multi-national corporations on this list): True Food Now

In France: Greenpeace

Have a little peek before your next shopping trip. You may find some products you'd rather do without next time. If you're curious about brands in your own country, you may want to try doing a little internet search for GMO and "list" (in your own language, of course). That's all I did, and the results were quite eye-opening.

Note: Almost any non-organic prepackage food containing corn syrup or soya lecithin in it will probably have GMO's. Those are two of the most genetically modified plants around. And, since corn is fed to all kinds of livestock, that's why see milk products and meats listed as GMO containing foods (not because the animals themselves have been genetically modified, but because, if they're eating modified foods, the meat and milk produced from them will contain GMO's as well).

Brilliant Bathrooms

I'll admit I find it somewhat disturbing to show you my dirty home, even if only in bits and pieces. The other day, you caught a glimpse of my dishwashing woes. Today, we're in the bathroom, and, once again, I've let the housekeeping slip for your benefit. Normally, I'd try to keep a tight ship, but I want to make sure we really test Etamine du Lys' Brillance Salle de Bains (bathroom cleaning spray) well. We can't expect someone to believe that a product works wonders when they see an immaculate sink miraculously turned into an... immaculate sink. So, I've allowed an undisclosed amount of time to pass between scourings, so we can really see how well this particular cleaning solution works.

Take a look at that before picture. Don't be squeamish, now. It's mostly just calcium build-up from our very hard water, but I'll have to admit that a fair amount of grubby children's hands get washed in that sink.

I only used the spray shown above and a very soft sponge specially designed for use in the bathroom (Incidentally, I couldn't say I've ever understood the purpose of this special design. I can only tell you that it definitely isn't made for scrubbing). So, no abrasives were involved in cleaning the sink, and I can promise you I didn't even put much elbow grease into it. And, yet, it sparkles. I think we can give this product an enthusiastic thumbs-up when it comes to cleaning ceramic sinks and chrome fixtures. In fact, I even gave the mirror a quick wipe down with it, and though the results weren't ideal, the mirror was far cleaner afterward. In a pinch, when forced to work quickly before a surprise visit by the in-laws or your boss, it'd do the job with only a streak or two to show for it.

Scrubadubdud?: Ecover Cream Cleaner

I think even the most die-hard user of eco-friendly cleaning products can relate to the urge to pick up a bottle of the toxic stuff when their favorite treehugger cleaners just aren't cutting it. Here's an example:

In a home with three small kids (and a mommy who's a kid at heart), we love our mushy, hot cereals. Comfort food at its simplest... until the milk burns on the bottom of the pan. Then, the pan is quickly taken out of rotation for a week-long soak until Mommy gets around to scrubbing it. What to do? What to do? Why, pull out the scouring cream, of course. Ecover makes one that I've had lying around the house for years. Yep, the same bottle... lying around the house for years. Is this because I rarely burn the bottoms of my pots? Hardly. Because I never wash them? Maybe. Or, perhaps because it never seemed as efficient as it needed to be.


Take a look at this pot. Ouch. That's going to be a tough one. It's already been through the customary soak, the scrub-down with regular liquid dish soap and then the customary resoak. It's not looking good. Let's see what a 60 second (or so) scrub with Ecover Cream Cleaner does for it.




Okay, so that obviously didn't go well. I used a scrubbing kitchen sponge (with one side soft and the other hard). And, I promise you I put some good elbow grease into it (I even tore a hole in my kitchen glove - yes, I do use plastic kitchen gloves, because I have eczema when I have dry skin). As you can see, a little came off, but you could hardly cook another pot of cereal with that. At this point I was a little uncertain of what to try next. I was kind of expecting the scouring cream to work and that would be that. I've used it in the past for other things (the stove top, for example) with some amount of success.



Then, something I once read came to mind. I have a modern copy of an antique cookbook, where scouring pots with sand was mentioned. Those frontier ladies were pretty ingenious, weren't they? Actually, I suspect that dates back a little earlier than the American frontier days, but what about sand? I was a little against the idea of going outside to grab up some dirt and whatever bugs might come along with it. So, I scanned the kitchen for a good substitute. I once read about cleaning iron skillets with hot oil and salt. Could salt do the trick? I grabbed a handful of fine sea salt and threw it into the pot. With the same sponge, I scrubbed again for about a minute. Look at the difference. Good old-fashioned sea salt. Can't get more eco-friendly than that.

I guess the moral to this story is that you don't necessarily need to get out the big guns (ecological or toxic) to do even the hard jobs. Some of nature's most basic gifts to us may well do the trick.