stinky and not so stinky

Stinky...

We have been in our home now for 8 years I think and have done reno work on all the rooms... now all we have left is to tie up loose ends - one being the cold air return that is in our front hall.  See it's a large 12" x 36" ugly vent that has old scratched up paint that matches noting in that area - solution paint it.  The only real way to effectively paint a vent is spray paint.  I hate spray paint, it's toxic, it stinks, it's bad for the environment. But when you think about it which one is worst dumping the old vent or painting it?

We decided dumping it would be worst - so we got a can of spray paint.  Today I cleaned the vent and sprayed it ( it was so stinky I had to wear a mask - I though I was going to toss my cookies from the stink) I still don't know if we made the best environmental choice - I guess we could have left it the way it was but I really did not want that.

Not so stinky...

Last week I picked up a Abeego Food Wrap.  I had been looking for a reusable sandwich wrapper for a while now and was so happy when I saw these at Grassroots. So far we have only used it for plain bread and nut butter sandwiches - so far so good.  It does the trick seems to keep your bread fresh and soft.  C Monster loves opening and closing it himself - a plus. Best of all it smells so good - they are coated with beeswax to make them waterproof - it smells divine.

I might even need to get a few of their Abeego Flats.

Looking Forward To

My cold air return vent to be dry and back in the house.

Toy Thursday - BPA

This week toxin is BPA.

Many of you already have swapped out all your plastic baby bottles for BPA free ones; but did you know many toys also contain BPA.

Lets first look at what is BPA. BPA is short for Bisphenol A; Bisphenol A is "a difunctional building block of several important polymers and polymer additives ... Suspected of being hazardous to humans since the 1930s."1

"More than 200 animal studies show that BPA is toxic at very low doses, while the Centers for Disease Control has found BPA in 95 percent of people tested at levels that raise health concerns. The peer—reviewed science suggests that BPA may be contributing to increases in many adverse health conditions in the human population including breast cancer, prostate cancer and insulin resistance."2

In Canada it's very hard to find a baby bottle made of BPA these days, but 1000's of toys that are made from plastics containing BPA line the shelves in our our toy stores. Most people think that you can only get BPA from food but that is not the case. "While most exposure is through diet, exposure can also occur through air and through skin absorption."1 And that would be whi I classify BPA toys as toxic.

Before you start betting yourself over for letting your child play with plastic, I will admit even Christophe has a few plastic toys, we have legos and this ball and tower thing that is made from plastic (they were both hand me downs); however the majority of his toys are BPA free.

How do you avoid BPA in toys:

1. Don't buy plastic toys
2. If you buy plastic make sure they are labeled BPA free
3. If no label exits, take the time to contact the manufacturer and ask them what kind of plastics are used in the manufacturing of the toy. You would be surprised how quick you are will get an answer.
4. Stay away from toys made from polycarbonate usually labeled as number 7.

BPA is not the only type of plastic that is toxic in future weeks we will look at phatale and PVC.

I think it is also worth mentioning other areas that you or your child can be exposed to BPA: Infant formula, canned food, fillings at the dentist, plastic dishes, glasses and cutlery, lunch boxes, water bottles, baby bottles, coffee mugs and bottles lined with plastic, food storage containers, and virtually anything made from plastic could be made from polycarbonate.

My recommendation from one mom to another is to avoid as much as possible BPA but if you can not afford to change everthing in your life the main items I would start with are: baby bottles, sippy cups, your childs dishes and bath toys.

If anyone needs ideas on BPA free items ask me I have tones of products I could recomend but that will be for another post.

1- Wikipidia
2- EWG

teflon out - CERAMIC IN

First of all I would like to start with that I think my kitchen is finally "plastic free". I say this in quotations because we still have a few items left...

Our mandolin; we don't use it often enough to make it worth switching. Our food processor; we could not find a viable option were food does not touch plastic; if anyone out there knows of one let us know. Our glass jars have plastic lids and some of our utensils/kitchen gadget have plastic handles but none of those touch food.

Our last switch was our kettle we traded in our electric plastic kettle for a beautiful brushed stainless steel stove top kettle. We got in on a great deal at Winners, it's from Kuhn Rikon and has such a nice heavy weight to it.

Our next step is to banish Teflon from our home. You ask me why are we banning Teflon and teflon like products from our home...

"DuPont studies show that the Teflon offgases toxic particulates at 464°F. At 680°F Teflon pans release at least six toxic gases, including two carcinogens, two global pollutants, and MFA, a chemical lethal to humans at low doses. At temperatures that DuPont scientists claim are reached on stovetop drip pans (1000°F), non-stick coatings break down to a chemical warfare agent known as PFIB, and a chemical analog of the WWII nerve gas phosgene."

"In new tests conducted by a university food safety professor... A Teflon pan reached 721°F in just five minutes..."


So how are we banishing Teflon:

We started by getting rid of all our none stick pans and replacing them with stainless steel high end pans such as Lagostina and Cusinart. Winners is a great place to get these for reasonable prices. The reason why I say high end is that with past experience unless it's a heavy weight stainless steel you wont be happy with the pan after a few weeks. You need to spend the $ to get something that will last and cook well.

However Geoff wanted to keep one non-stick pan for when he cooks those really sticky items. This is when we started to research alternatives to non-stick pans. After a bit of research and a struck of luck when we were spending some gift cards that we received at Christmas we found Earthchef at Zellers. Earthchef is made from stainless steel with a non-stick ceramic coating. So far we love our pan. I have to say I was also impressed at the weight of the pan, it's nice and heavy and compares well to our $200 Lagostina pan.

Eggs still stick a bit to the pan and you need to use a small amount of oil but it's worth the trade off for our health.

Earthchef also makes baking wear. In case you did not know most of the metal baking wear is also coated with Teflon. So we got a cookie sheet and a muffin tray from Earthchef also. We also love these - no problem with sticking yet.

Earthchef is manufactured by BergHOFF in Belgium. There website claims that the product is "six times stronger than the traditional non-stick coatings"; use "recycled packaging"; "the product line offers cookware; induction cook-tops; bake-ware; roasters; cutting boards; cutlery and knife blocks".

The best thing about Earthchef (after the fact that it's safe) is the cost, our 10" pan was around $30 and our cookie sheet was around $15.

Other then these great ceramic cook and bake wear items we are using glass and clay wear to do our baking; we already had tones of these that were given to me by my grandmother years ago.

We still have a few items that we need to find solutions for such as our rice cooker, waffle iron, spring form pans and decorative cake pans. If anyone out there has seen a rice cooker that is plastic and teflon free please let us know.

Quotations 1 & 2 from: Canaries in the Kitchen by EWG the article is worth a full read.