Best-ever eco stain stick is back, braised cranberry beans

I must alert you to one of my favorite green products that I've not been able to find in ages but which has just reemerged on soap.com: the Ecover stain remover. It works like a charm, is biodegradable, and is made from plant-based ingredients. I also must admit that after a relatively austere dinner of a salmon burger and tomato & daikon salad, I enjoyed 4 or 5 madeleines for dessert. They are beyond! Heh. Also last night I set up a pot of dried cranberry beans to soak overnight. Today I'll be making a batch of braised beans with cipollini and herbs. Divine. Kids a'calling. More later.

Recent article from NRDC's newsletter

The National Resources Defense Council, a great (!) pro-environment organization, publishes a monthly enewsletter called This Green Life. I find it informative, fair and very user-friendly. Click here for this month's letter which begins with a nice, easy-to-read starter piece on factory farming vs humanely raised animals.

Good/useful/interesting articles and blogs

Creative ways to use Thanksgiving leftovers, by Mark Bittman: here. Let's hear it for Elizabeth Warren, my new lady-hero: here.

Have you seen this blog, Superbug? Interesting!

Two other good blogs about food politics: Food Politics and Politics of the Plate.

A fun, adventurous blog about sustainable living and eating: The Perennial Plate.

With full awareness that PETA and other animal welfare organizations are not always objective and can be dramatic, it is nonetheless crucial to try and find out what we can about how the animals that feed us are treated, during life and slaughter, and I appreciate the work these groups do. As you might know from reading Em-i-lis, animal welfare is a hugely important moral issue to me, and I use my purchasing power to vote in favor of animals treated with kindness, dignity and respect. If you're planning to cook a turkey for your Thanksgiving meal, please consider buying one raised in a humane fashion. If you're on the fence about this, consider watching and reading the following: PETA/turkeys, The Humane Society of America/Report on Chickens and Turkeys, The Sustainable Table's piece on Thanksgiving turkeys.