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Four winners, actually, for the four copies of The Diet Cure. From the RSS feed, Sharon; from subscribing via email, Yael; from new customers, Dana (that’s my brother!) and Patricia!

Congratulations, and thanks to all who entered! Buy A Friend A Book Week happens four times a year, so you’ll have lots more opportunities to enter and win cool books if you stick around!

Next week’s PeaceMeals boxes will include:

Basic $40 Box
Organic oatmeal with organic raisins and nutmeg (7 breakfasts)
Organic pasta with chickpeas, spinach, and mild chili pepper (5 meals)
Poached yucca root with citrus and garlic sauce (3 meals)
Organic macaroni and cheese (2 meals)
Vegetarian sausage with a side of parmesan-dusted zucchini (4 meals)

Premium $60 Box
Organic green smoothies [spinach, banana, apricot, and protein powder - tastes like the fruit, but with extra vitamins!] (7 breakfasts)
Homemade macaroni and cheese, starring zucchini (4 meals)
Organic Beans Provençal (5 meals)
Tuna and artichoke pasta salad (5 meals)

Phew! This is making me hungry!

Well, I went from about 20 readers a day (it was 50 before I got hacked!) to 140 all of a sudden this week. Turns out a kind and apparently very popular StumbleUpon user stumbled it!

So welcome to all you new folks - and check out the book giveaway! A winner will be drawn July 2nd - moved from July 1 to give newcomers more time to enter - which means that all the way through July 1 you can enter to win one of four copies by:

1. Adding this blog to your RSS reader; (and leaving me a comment saying you did)
2. Signing up to read this blog by email; (it’s easier, I think, to just drop your email off in the subscription box on the right side here than to click through there! No need to comment because I can see when people subscribe to that, but you are welcome to anyway.)
3. Order a week’s or month’s worth of groceries from PeaceMeals. Obviously you should only do this if you actually want to, not on the off-chance you’ll win a book. Still, it’s a pretty sweet deal: $40 a week for your groceries (plus $12.50 shipping), with easy tasty recipes and suggested meal plans included. You may never need to leave the house again, with this kind of service! I’ll be giving away two copies to randomly chosen customers; service starts in July and is limited to 15 weekly boxes, so it’s not a terrible chance of winning!

   

That’s July 1st wherever you are - I have no intention of staying up till midnight my time to pick a winner, so as long as you’ve entered in one way or another by the time I get up and check my email on Wednesday, you’ll be fine. (And pssst - nobody has yet commented to say they’ve subscribed to the RSS feed, so that one is WIDE open.)

Oh - and Buy A Friend A Book Week is wrapping up fast, but check out the little box in the sidebar for other contests you can enter before it’s over!

I visited Lush this weekend on my way to Dyke March. (It was a wild weekend in old San Francisco, I tell ya….) And I bought a shampoo bar and a bar of lemon-flavored soap, and a big bar of henna and a couple of fizzy bath balls, and a massage bar with beans in it and another one with glitter, and a lavender-flavored blob of solid bubble bath.

And afterward, I noticed that all our Lush bags had little manifestos on them that said what they believed in. Like: “We also believe in buying only from companies that test for safety, without the involvement of animals, and in testing our products on humans.”

And you know what? I need to make one of those for PeaceMeals.

So, just off the top of my head:

I believe in buying organic produce and meat almost all the time, in stuffing the boxes full of organic items every single week. Because it’s better for the environment, and because pesticides are not a snack food - but also because organic foods have been shown to have more nutrients, apparently even milk. (I also believe that this is because the harmful practices in a lot of non-organic farming strips the nutrients from the soil - the organic versions just have the nutrients that they are supposed to, that are missing from their sometimes-cheaper counterparts.)

I believe in supporting independent businesses and independent farms whenever that is an option. And in helping people elsewhere benefit from the incredible diversity and bounty of foods (especially produce) available year-round in the San Francisco Bay Area.

I believe that many people are being screwed over by mega-chains, both in farming and in the grocery business, with the result that it has become unreasonably difficult for a lot of people to either find or afford healthy food where they live; I believe in offering people another option.

I believe in basing my decisions on a set of basic principles: on being increasingly aware of the impact my personal and business choices have on the world around me, and making choices that are environmentally sustainable, healthy, and support fair wages and fair treatment of workers. I believe in alternative fuels, fair trade, recycling, carbon offsets, and biodegradable packaging - among many other things.

I believe in giving a little extra, like the farmer’s market vendor who throws in an extra plum to try or a funny-shaped carrot or slice of apple for the kids. And in giving extra on the financial side too, like in sending 10% of profits to peace-related organizations.

I believe in planning my meals, bringing lunch to work, eating when I’m hungry, stopping when I’m full, avoiding sugar and wheat and ingredients that sound like computer parts and anything else that doesn’t make my body feel good, and not worrying too much about anything else.

And I believe that, after many years of working on my relationship with food and money, I am pretty good at balancing a budget and drawing up a menu of healthy and tasty food at reasonable prices.

My car eats pretty much the same thing I do: delicious golden fat. Mine tends to come in the form of olive oil or coconut butter (the latter is white, but still); my car’s, according to BioFuel Oasis, currently comes from recycled vegetable oil (canola?) formerly used to fry potato chips.

I don’t really understand what the hell is going on with fuel prices right now. I mean, you know, we start a war that is at least in part around oil and the prices go up steadily - ok, I get that. But why is it spiking now? It’s freaking $5.29 for biodiesel right this second, maybe more, about what diesel costs around here.

I could look through a newspaper or something to figure it out, but I don’t care enough. Because I am preparing to switch over to run mainly on waste vegetable oil. This is awesome for three reasons:

1. It burns way, way cleaner than gas or “dino-diesel”;
2. It is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay cheaper (I’ve seen it for $1.50-$4 a gallon, and obviously I’d rather pay $1.50….);
3. It diverts all that used fryer oil from the landfills and puts it to good use again instead.

I thought this would be a good place to talk about this stuff not only because it’s food-related, and saving-money-related, but also because this is going to fuel all those trips to the store for <a href=/peacemeals>PeaceMeals</a> as well. I only wish I knew of a green shipping company. When’s that going to happen? They’d make a freaking bundle.

So here’s my problem. I have the money, the desire, and the mechanic all ready to convert my car. I know I want a two-tank system, probably, because that allows me to have one tank where the WVO (waste veggie oil) can get heated up and thinned out so it doesn’t clog the engine, and one full of (thinner, no special changes necessary) biodiesel that I can use when the WVO isn’t heated up. Or if it runs out, I guess.

But what I don’t have is a decision about what kit to use. There are two I like: PlantDrive, because they are cheap and good and they have a setup where you can basically let the oil sit for a few weeks and then filter it straight into your car. (A lot of people get fancy machines that filter the oil for them, and dewater it if it’s been sitting out, say, in some restaurant’s parking lot in the rain and damp. That sounds like a lot of extra hassle and cost, to me.) Plus, they have good attention to detail and seem very honest; they say things like, “As for hoseclamps: we give you a phone # for McMaster-Carr and the part number for their finest hoseclamps, and if you order before 5 and you live west of the Mississippi you’ll have your clamps by 10 AM the next morning, 10 AM the following day if you’re east of the Mississippi. You’ll pay less than if we included them in the kit and you can easily order more if you add a heating component like a HotFox or HotPlate later The cost for an average passenger car for hose and clamps will be under $150, and for a truck, under $200.” PlantDrive’s two-tank kit with the really good filter is $615. But they don’t include tanks, because there are so many different potential sizes and things, so I’d have to talk to my mechanic about what to get, whether he has a cheap source for those; a 20-gallon tank from these folks would be about $715. (My ‘82 Mercedes has a 21-gallon tank originally, and I think a big tank is a good idea especially with weird fuel. Also, you can see why I love them - they even link to other companies that sell tanks.)

The other one is VegRev, because they have a little thing called “The Co-Pilot Computer Controller” that handles all the heating up and switching over for you for $350. But then on the other hand, it sounds like PlantDrive’s system heats up quickly enough that that wouldn’t even be necessary. The other thing about VegRev is that they sell filtered vegetable oil to their customers for $2 a gallon.

And, right now, ONLY to their customers - that is, they don’t consider people buying fuel to be customers because they choose not to make any profit on the fuel. Instead, they see it as a way to bring in more customers for WVO conversion kits. I had a fairly pushy, icky conversation with someone there where he just kept pressuring me to get one of their conversions and then gloated about what a great tool the WVO sales are to bring in customers… which, frankly, left me not wanting to have any more interactions with them at all. I could try finding out if they’d consider someone a customer who just bought the computer controller, but that would mean emailing them again.

And did I mention that VegRev’s kits cost two to three times as much as PlantDrive’s - before the list of add-ons that they recommend for each one? (To be fair, it’s not as much more if you factor in the cost of the tank. But even their one-tank system (where you don’t need to buy a second tank) is more than twice as expensive as PlantDrive’s one-tank system.)

No, I guess that in the great debate of VegRev vs. PlantDrive, PlantDrive wins. On the bright side, they’re both local companies. I emailed the PlantDrive folks to ask if they know where else to get WVO, and I suppose the next steps are to ask my mechanic what I would do for a tank, and to start contacting restaurants about taking their oil. Because seriously, the faster I’m not paying the high cost of gas, the happier I will be!

Can I just say how much I love the US Post Office? They are doing so much to make my little business possible. Did you know that you can just print out a shipping label? Right from their website? And order Priority Mail boxes for free? (And some other mailing supplies too.) And your mail carrier will just drop the boxes off? And if (like me) you’re worried that leaving boxes out for your carrier to pick up will go completely ignored, (our local post office is pretty freaking sloppy), you can schedule a day, for free, for your carrier to know to pick things up? And just leave them out for them to grab? (We have a porch you can’t see from the street, too, so it’s… oh, no, I guess that actually means I shouldn’t leave the boxes there because the mail carrier won’t freaking get it. Well, they’ll be safe in sight too.)

That’s a whole lot of awesome. I’m also a big fan of being able to design my own stamps, even though I think it’s prohibitively expensive. Someday I’ll build that into my budget and send people stamps with adorable pictures of our kitten on them.

I just love how easy everything is now. I was reading The Four-Hour Work Week, and it talks at one point about how easy it is to market and sell things online. And it just reminded me how lucky I am to live right now. And right here, in the heart of the nerdland, where I have tons of access to computers and the internet. I don’t have to have startup costs or advertising costs or anything at first, and I don’t have to trade much of my own time and energy for that. And I already have my first order! (Want to be number two?)

Imagine a clever segue here. Here are some fun links for you! (I’m tired! It’s already Thursday!)

Paeans of praise for Trader Joe’s. This is just a long thread of people sharing their favorite finds there. I think it’s proof that I will enjoy reading pretty much anything that mentions food. I mean, it’s not really even Food Writing. Some of it is just people’s lists of food. But there are some fun little anecdotes too. I enjoyed the story about someone’s dad who loved Trader Joe’s and missed it in his assisted living home, and then one opened up within eyesight of the home and “added years to his life.” Now that’s love!

This Peanut Looks Like a Duck…. I bet you can guess what you’ll find there! Speaking of love - it’s obviously a labor of love from a couple of people who (as it says somewhere on there) really love ducks. It’s fun, cute, and a nice size for browsing - not thousands of duck-like or peanutty pictures. (Mmm… peanutty.)

So far, there are three blogs I know of (including this one) giving away books for Buy A Friend A Book Week. BAFAB Week is the first week in July, so that’s the basic deadline for entering, and you still have plenty of time to give a book away yourself too!

Since this blog is all about getting the most for your money and living in abundance, I’ve decided to add a box in the sidebar here that lists all the book giveaways I know of. Let me know if I’ve missed yours, and feel free to go enter for some more books! (Our giveaway only has one entrant so far - for four books - so jump on in!)

My “brother” Austin (what do you do with people who are your brother in all but biology?) imed me today to ask for ideas. He has been married for two months (which is an outrage, since the actual wedding isn’t until October) and wants to surprise his wife (that still sounds weird to me) with dinner. And she’ll only be gone for two hours, which has to include time for him to run to the store!

AND he wanted it to include meat - not sausage, which they just had, and not fish, which she won’t eat. Remind me to go off here about things people won’t eat. I am a great supporter of my girlfriend’s theory that if you don’t like it, you haven’t had it cooked right. But I digress. Oh, and did I mention he doesn’t really cook? So it had to be easy, of course.

I suggested chopping some onions and mixing that and some seasonings into ground meat to fry himself up some burgers. I can’t think of anything that says Austin to me more than burgers, for some reason. But a veggie side was harder for me to brainstorm. So, of course, I went to Tastespotting to get inspiration.

If you haven’t been, I suggest taking a little vacation there right now. It’s a gorgeous, ever-changing collection of beautiful food pictures people find (or post) online, with links to the source. So really, it’s like a gorgeous gallery of brilliant food blogs. And while I tried to find something good for him, I found TONS of great stuff for me. And how can I not share them with you? Some stuff I want to make as soon as possible:

A Sauce of Some Deliciousness: Pooh Bear helps us all flavor up some salads and things. I need to get me some sesame oil and rice vinegar so I can do this up: you mix those with chopped chili, grated ginger, miso paste, and honey (but I’d rather use agave, which has no sucrose)…. oh, and sesame seeds, and a little warm water, and…. yum. Plus, it told me all about a blog challenge that combines books and food… two of my favorite things!

Cheesy Fried Green Tomatoes: I cannot wait until we get some green tomatoes out in my yard. To be fair, two of the tomato plants I bought came with green ones on them, and I haven’t checked how ripe they’ve gotten yet. (So far I have plants that will produce plum tomatoes, tiny red currant tomatoes, and I think maybe some enormous beefsteaky ones.) I especially like the idea here of putting a soft cooked egg on top of the tomato slices. Genius! what a fantastic breakfast that would be. I would use some nice rice flour I have, to get away from the wheat which makes my sinuses all glunky.

We have strawberries growing in the yard too, and we used to have mint. (It’s a constant battle between the mint and the blackberries about which will come back first when they’re razed to the ground, as they were recently… don’t know if we have mint yet but I wish it would smother the damn blackberries on that side of the yard!) So if I wanted to be patient enough for all this stuff to grow, I could make these dishes for Practically Free. Isn’t that the point of summer? That and being warm, which someone should remind my boss about - she likes to keep the A/C going so that we’re as cold in the summer as in the winter! And me sitting here barefoot, in two tank tops and a skirt….

(My beautiful and genius girlfriend just pointed out that we could use the cheesemaking kit I bought her for Winter Solstice to make GOAT RICOTTA for the strawberries. Holy shit.)

This Andalucian gazpacho looks and sounds so fancy, but I do feel a little wary; sometimes the sheer acidity of gazpacho makes it a little painful for me to eat. But as a side dish it sounds cooling and fascinating. And SO easy - you just throw everything in the blender and go! I tried to talk Austin into this one, and he said he’d just come up with something at the store. Pffft. (Come to think of it, we planted two kinds of cucumbers - so if I wait, this will be almost free too. All but the onion. I don’t like onions enough to have them in my yard… yet.)

Wild. Salmon. With. Shiitake. Bacon. Bits. I MEAN. That is genius. I am drooling as I type this. I’m not even kidding. Drooling inside my mouth. This recipe sets out to make the shiitake mushroom bits taste like bacon, which confuses me. On one hand, just use bacon, damnit. On the other hand, not only is making things taste like bacon an awesome art, but also, bacon-tasting shiitake actually sounds a lot better than bacon. It’s bacony AND mushroomy, for gods’ sake! Pure genius. Also: SALMON. LOVE SALMON. Such good ideas.

And finally:
Fava Bean Salad. Fresh fava beans, crushed pink peppercorns, little peeler peels of parmesan or whathaveyou, and a little vinagrette. Simplicity and genius. I want everything here!

Off to make my meal plan for the next week, and a bon appetit to you!