Abby Quillen

Freelance Content Marketing Writer and Editor

Abby Quillen

An Ode to Baking Soda

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If you’re trying to simplify and go green, you have a magic helper – baking soda. It’s almost too good to be true – cheap, natural, non-toxic, with a legion of uses. If you’re not using baking soda daily, you may be surprised at how many expensive products you can replace with this one simple substance. You could almost imagine it capable of any feat.

What exactly is baking soda?

Baking soda is a salt that goes by many names: NaHCO3, sodium bicarbonate, bread soda, cooking soda, sodium hydrogen carbonate, sodium acid carbonate, bicarbonate of soda, sodium bicarb, bicarb soda, or just bicarb. In its natural mineral form it’s called nahcolite, and it’s found in large quantities in Searles Lake, California and the oil-shale deposits of Green River Formation in Colorado.

However, most of the baking soda in the United States comes from a natural mineral ore called trona mined near Green River, Wyoming. Trona is mineral residue from Lake Gosiute, an ancient freshwater lake that once covered 15,000 miles of Southwestern Wyoming. When Lake Gosuite evaporated, minerals settled in the bed, creating the trona deposit, which is now 1500 feet below the ground. There’s so much of it there that it could meet the world’s needs for baking soda for thousands of years. Many companies mine the trona deposit, including FMC Corporation, General Chemical, and Solvay Chemicals. After trona is extracted, it must be refined to make baking soda – a multi-step process you can read about here.

In other parts of the world, baking soda is made in laboratories from brine and limestone using the Solvay Process. This method creates environmentally damaging byproducts like calcium chloride that increase the salinity of inland waterways when released.

So, is baking soda really “green”?

Baking soda production requires either mining or creates hazardous bi-products. However, it is a versatile, non-toxic product that replaces far more hazardous chemicals in most people’s homes. As cleaning products go, it’s fairly Earth-friendly.

Is there anything baking soda can’t do?

You probably know that baking soda helps quick breads and cookies rise and that a box in the fridge removes excess moisture and absorbs odor. Here are some lesser-known things you can do with it:

  • Smother grease and household fires.
  • Add it to bath water. It softens skin; relieves itching from chicken pox, measles, or bug bites; soothes a sunburn; or helps clear up a baby’s diaper rash.
  • Wash your face, body, and hair with it.
  • Dust it on in place of underarm deoderant.
  • Sprinkle it in garbage cans, diaper pails, cat litter boxes, and stinky shoes to neutralize odor.
  • Sprinkle it where needed to repel ants and roaches.
  • Clean with it – shower curtains, coffee pots, dentures, thermoses, refrigerators, garage floors, burned pans, marble, bathtubs, and drains.
  • Add a half-teaspoon to a glass of water to relieve heartburn.
  • Brush your teeth with it. Mix it with water to make a mouthwash to freshen breath and relieve canker sores.
  • Add it to the water when soaking beans to make them more digestible.
  • Clean the corrosion from car batteries with it.

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Hen Diaries (Week 3)

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The chicks seem crowded in their cardboard box, so we move them out to their coop. They’ll still need a heat source until they get all of their feathers in three or four weeks, so we hang the brooder light from the eaves. It casts a red glow over the plywood floor. I check on the chicks right before bed, fearing they’ll be piled on top of each other shivering. But they’re lined up on the edge of their wooden nesting box. They’re roosting!

The next day we buy a chicken feeder and waterer, and some organic chicken feed. With the new containers, I only have to feed and water once a day, not three. I recommend buying these right from the start.

We let the chicks out to roam the yard a few times each day. But before we can let them out, we have to put our three cats inside. The cats line up at the screen door and watch the chicks’ every move, flicking their tails, drooling, and licking their lips. Midweek, one of the cats gets outside. He races across the yard and makes a beeline for the chicks. My husband intercepts him, but it’s a dramatic scene. Our neighbor assures us that once the chickens are cat-sized, they’ll all coexist peacefully in the backyard. For now, corralling the cats while the chicks roam is anything but easy, especially because I usually have an eleven-month-old baby in my arms.

The chicks get more feathers every day. The yellow chicks are turning brown and white. The black chick without the comb is significantly bigger than the other black chick. I’m not sure what to make of that. By the end of the week, the chicks are mostly feathered from the head down and look less like chicks and more like small chickens. They also now have very defined ears on the sides of their heads.

They love the empty raised bed near their coop. They run back and forth, pecking and scratching, throwing dried leaves in the air with their feet. It’s entertaining to watch them. Sometimes I lose track of time … until I hear a cat moan from the door.

New to the Hen Diaries? Read Weeks One and Two.

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Take Back Your Time

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(The first in a series highlighting U.S. Movements to celebrate, support, and spread the word about.)

Americans, along with Australians and Japanese, lead the industrialized world when it comes to the number of hours we log on the job. We work a full nine weeks more per year than most Western Europeans. And we’re guaranteed no paid sick, vacation, or family leave through the law. American workers have made large jumps in productivity in the last forty years, but our increased productivity has not translated into more leisure time for us. We’re toiling about five weeks more per year than American workers did in 1970.

With so many Americans out of work today, it may seem weird to talk about the issue of overwork. However, the two problems are related. The more hours individuals work, the fewer jobs are available, which is why companies nationwide are instituting voluntary or mandatory furloughs and reducing employees’ work schedules to avoid layoffs. As strange as it seems, with company’s closing, mass layoffs, and sky-high unemployment rates, we may actually start hearing more about overwork. In 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, a thirty-hour workweek passed the Senate. (The Roosevelt Administration withdrew its support, and the bill didn’t make it through the House).

The folks at Take Back Your Time (TBYT), a broad, non-partisan coalition, have been sounding the alarm on American “time-poverty” for years. They contend that overwork and “time-stress” have detrimental effects on our:

  • health
  • marriages
  • families
  • relationships
  • communities
  • democracy
  • pets
  • self-development
  • spiritual growth
  • environment.

Their six part Time to Care Public Policy Agenda fights for:

1.   Guaranteed paid leave for all parents for the birth or adoption of a child.

Currently the U.S. Family and Medical Leave Act only allows 12 weeks of unpaid leave if you work at a company that employs more than fifty employees. Between 2001 and 2003, only 28% of pregnant women actually took maternity leave.

Why is paid family leave important?

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Time off from work before and after a baby’s birth helps strengthen families and has broad societal and health-care-related effects. Consider the findings from two studies conducted by Sylvia Guendelman (University of California Berkeley) :

  • Women who took leave in the ninth month of pregnancy were 73% less likely to have a Caesarean section than those who worked up to delivery. Caesarean deliveries are associated with longer hospital stays, risks of surgical complications, and longer recovery times for mothers. (Women’s Health Issues, January/February 2009)
  • Women who returned to work shortly after delivery were significantly less likely to establish breastfeeding within the first month. Breastfeeding is associated with numerous health benefits for babies and mothers. (Pediatrics, January 2009)

The World Health Organization has this to say about the importance of Family Leave:

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A pregnant woman should have a reduced physical work load and no night work during the second half of pregnancy.

A pregnant woman should have complete absence from work from week 34 to 36 depending on her health status and physical workload.

Women need at least 16 weeks absence from work after delivery.

Breastfeeding is a major determinant of infant health. Infants should be exclusively breastfed on demand from birth for at least 4 and, if possible, 6 months of age and should continue to be breastfed together with adequate complementary food until the age of 2 years or beyond.

How does the U.S. compare to the rest of the world? Here’s a sampling of parental leave benefits in other countries:

  • Sweden – 16 months with 80% of pay
  • Lithuania – 52 weeks with 100% of pay
  • Spain – 16 weeks with 100% of pay
  • Poland – 16-18 weeks with 100% of pay
  • Canada – 50 weeks with 55% of pay
  • Algeria – 14 weeks with 100% of pay

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2.   One week of guaranteed paid sick leave for all American workers.

Americans currently have zero days of sick leave guaranteed through the law. The implications of this has been in the news recently with the threat of a flu pandemic.

3.  At least three weeks paid annual vacation leave for all American workers.

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More than 147 countries mandate paid vacation. The United States is the only industrialized nation that doesn’t .

Are vacations important? Consider these findings:

  • Over 12,000 men were enrolled in a heart health study (Psychosomatic Medicine,2000) and followed over nine years. The men who took vacations most years were 20 percent less likely to die of any cause and 30 percent less likely to die of heart disease than those who forewent regular vacations.

vacation

4. A limit on the amount of compulsory overtime work an employer can impose.

Currently the Fair Labor Standards Act provides no protection for workers 16 and older who do not wish to work mandatory overtime. Adult workers who refuse overtime are subject to employer discipline and discharge.

5.  Making Election Day a holiday.

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U.S. voter turnout for presidential elections jumped about five percent between 2000 and 2008. Yet only 56.8% of eligible voters made it to the polls last November. Contrast that to turnout in:

  • Australia – 95%
  • Italy – 90%
  • Germany – 86%
  • Brazil – 83%
  • Canada – 76%
  • Britain – 76%
  • Japan – 71%

Why are Americans so lackadaisical when it comes to democracy? In a survey conducted by the California Voter Foundation, 28 percent of infrequent voters and 23 percent of unregistered voters said they don’t vote or don’t register because they’re too busy. It can’t help that voting day is on a Tuesday, when the majority of us have to work.

If making Election Day a national holiday seems too bold, we could simply move election day to a Saturday, or as Martin P. Wattenberg proposed in a 1998 Atlantic Monthly piece, move it to the second Tuesday in November, combine it with Veterans’ Day, and call it Veterans’ Democracy Day.

6.  Making it easier for Americans to choose part-time work, including hourly wage parity and protection of promotions and pro-rated benefits for part-time workers.

Part-time work equality benefits families. 60% of working moms say they’d prefer part-time work.

The European Community implemented a directive on part-time work to “end less favourable treatment of part-timers in order to support the development of a flexible labour market, by encouraging the greater availability of part-time employment, and increasing the quality and range of jobs which are considered suitable for part-time work or job-sharing.”

You can learn more or become a member of Take Back Your Time at www.timeday.org.

Are you a fan or member of a movement fighting for social, cultural, or environmental change? Leave a comment! Your movement could be highlighted in a future New Urban Habitat article.

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The Creative Life: Buy less, create more, and transform your life

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When you type the phrase “American consumers” into Google, you get 976,000 results. That two-word phrase is mentioned 1,494 times in Google News stories just today. I don’t know about you, but I’m a little tired of hearing about American consumers. I’m all for supporting farmers, booksellers, manufacturers, craftsmen, bakers, and artisans with my dollars – especially those doing business in a fair, sustainable way. I’m just convinced that this meme that Americans are essentially consumers is destructive, not just to the environment, but to our psyches.

Consumption is passive, bland, and boring. Consumption requires little of us. We humans are creative and innovative creatures. Our minds churn with thoughts, impressions, and opinions. We erupt with ideas. We produce symphonies, skyscrapers, bridges, frescoes, novels, poems, quilts, ocean liners, and airplanes. We’re not mindless buyers, purchasers, or consumers. We are producers, inventors … creators.

How can we buck this oppressive notion that our most important role in life is consuming? Easy. We can buy less and get creative. I’m all for art. Draw, paint, sew, knit, crochet, sing, and dance! But what I’m talking about is more accessible. It doesn’t require a paint brush, knitting needles, a sewing machine … or talent. All you have to do is bring imagination to the day-to-day.

Look at your shopping list; think outside the box, bottle, or container; and ask yourself, Can I make this? Sometimes the answer will be no … or the learning curve, labor, or time you’d spend make it a bad candidate for your efforts. But often you can make things.

It may be hard to shift your consciousness from buying to creating at first. Most of us have watched and listened to literally years of commercials selling everything from boxed rice, to jarred baby food, to taco seasoning, to deodorant. Corporations have convinced us we need loads of products. And the government and media have even conflated consuming with civic responsibility. So it may seem strange that a lot of the products and packaged food we buy are unnecessary. Some don’t even save us time; many are inferior to what we can make ourselves; and worse, many (and their packages) are destructive to our health and to the planet.

When you start thinking about what you can make and start practicing that first (and most ignored) part of the recycling mantra – reduce, reuse, recycle, your grocery bills will inevitably shrink. You’ll probably experience an incomparable glow of satisfaction when your creations taste fabulous or nail the job they’re intended for. You might also notice positive changes in your health. But the best part is you’ll begin to see yourself as the imaginative, resourceful, amazing creator that you are.

Four easy ways to start buying less and getting creative:

1. Grow food
Turn your lawn into an edible landscape, put a few containers of tomatoes on your balcony, plant a fruit tree, or just grow some herbs in your kitchen window. When you garden, you and nature become co-creators in a grand project. And fruit, veggies, and herbs are never again something you mindlessly buy at the supermarket year-round.

2. Cook from scratch
You can easily afford some good cookbooks with all the money you’ll save by ditching expensive, nutritionally-deficient, processed food. Cooking is easy. If you’re a newby, just follow the recipes closely. Of course, cooking with whole foods takes more time than heating up processed food or spinning through the drive through. But you’ll save buckets of cash, eat healthier, and the taste difference is nothing short of astounding. Some of my favorite cookbooks: Cooking for the Whole Family by Cynthia Lair, Laurel’s Kitchen by Laurel Robertson, and America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook.

3. Make bread

The authors of Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book insist there are “subtle, far-reaching, and distinctly positive changes that can take place when you begin to bake (bread) regularly.” They claim the process is therapeutic, creative, calming, and can transform a house into a home. I agree. I’ve been making my family’s bread for much of the past year, and I’m amazed by how much I look forward to bread-making day, not just because the house smells delectable and I get to eat slices of steaming hot bread fresh from the oven. There’s also something about the process. It leaves a lot of room for learning and growing. Bread-making undeniably takes time, but you can use a bread machine, stand-up mixer, or food processor to help with the kneading, and for most of the rest of the process, the dough simply rests and rises on the counter, leaving you free to kick back or attend to some other chore. Start with a basic loaf, and you might find yourself moving onto more complicated recipes, like desem or sourdough, before you know it.

4. Mix up green cleaners
Years ago my friend Beth told me she started looking forward to cleaning when she started making her own cleaners, but it took me years to heed her advice. It seemed complicated. It’s not. Trust me, you do not need to be a chemist for this. All you need is distilled white vinegar, baking soda, and liquid castile soap (Think: Dr. Bronner’s). And Beth’s right – homemade cleaners make housework more fun. You can mix up an all-purpose bathroom cleaner with 50/50 vinegar and water. Find more recipes for everything from furniture polish to mildew remover in The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-Sufficient Living in the Heart of the City by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen or Organic Housekeeping by Ellen Sandbeck.

You don’t have to stop there. You can make herbal teas, tonics, tinctures, cosmetics, lotions, salves, yogurt, butter, ice cream, beer, wine, kimchi, sauerkraut, kombucha, pickles, jams, and so much more. And for the more crafty – of course, you can sew clothes; crochet blankets; knit sweaters; create art for your walls; or build furniture. You may find that the more you create, the more creative you become.

Are you already buying less and getting creative? I’d love to hear what you’re doing!

Hen diaries (Week 2)

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The first week of May is cool and rainy. The chicks spend most of the week in their box under the brooder light. It feels like I am changing their water and refilling their food bowl constantly. On Friday, the sun finally makes an appearance, and I tote the chicks’ box out to the yard. They have grown considerably. They’re scruffier, with balding spots on the backs of their necks where feathers are sprouting. Their wings are almost entirely feathered. They look even more reptilian – like baby dinosaurs huddling together on the grass. One of them pecks the ground and eats a grass stalk. The others follow suit.

In the gleaming morning light, I notice something strange. Three of the four chicks have combs. Yes, there are definite yellow ridges sprouting from their foreheads. I have a sinking feeling. I’ve heard that you usually end up with at least one rooster when you buy sexed pullets, but did we get seventy-five percent males? That seems like bad luck. But wait a minute, maybe hens have combs too?

But wait a minute, maybe hens have combs too? After I return the chicks to the guest room, I do a little research. In the pictures, hens do have combs, albeit smaller than roosters’. This would settle my mind, except that one of our black chicks does not have a comb. I click through an online forum hoping to get a definitive answer as to what we have. The more I read, the more I realize that sexing chicks is anything but straightforward. It might help if I knew the breeds, of course.

Later in the day, I ask my hen-keeping neighbor what she thinks, and she assures me that you just can’t tell for eight weeks – “until they start to crow.” She laughs. “Oh and sometimes hens crow a little too.” Hmmn. Well, I guess we’ll wait and see. But, just in case, does anyone want a pet rooster?

New to the Hen Diaries? Read Week One.

Bicycle love

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May is National Bike Month! Oh bikes, how I love thee. Let me count the reasons…..

10.  Bikes are quiet.

You’ll never get woken up at midnight, because your teenage neighbor’s revving his bike engine. And imagine if they replaced that freeway next to your house with a seven-lane bike path.

9.  You can cart groceries home on a bike.

Baskets are classy. Panniers are sophisticated. Cargo bikes are cool. And you can make your own hauling machine with a simple grocery cart.

8.  Bikes run on renewable resources – food, water, and human calories.

With the obesity rate hovering around 35%, quite a few of us have some calories to spare.

7.  Cycling tones your muscles, heart, and lungs.

The American Heart Association says all healthy adults ages 18 to 65 should get at least 30 minutes of moderate intensity exercise five days a week. With a bike, you can probably get that on your commute to work.

6.  Bikes enable you to smile and wave at your neighbors.

Social isolation is growing in the U.S. Let’s get out of our cars and take a spin around our neighborhoods.

5.  Bikes are thrifty.

Check out Bike at Work’s calculator to see how much cash you can save by dumping your car.

4.  Bikes emit zero pollution.

Automobiles belch out 333 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, not to mention nitrogen oxide, sulpher oxide, toluene, benzene, formaldehyde, and more. All bikes emit is a little human sweat.

3.  Once you’ve learned how to ride a bike, you never forget.

What can I say … it’s like riding a bike.

2. Bikes are economical.

What’s the world’s most efficient mode of transportation? You guessed it – the bike. For energy burned per miles travelled, cycling is three to five times more efficient than walking. And it trounces running, driving a moped, taking a train, car-pooling, horseback riding, and swimming. (Sadly the least efficient mode of transport seems to be America’s favorite – driving a car with no passengers.)

And finally, the ultimate reason I love the bicycle…..

1. Bikes took down the bustle and the corset.

That’s right, ladies. The bicycle craze in the 1890s changed womens’ fashion forever. Women abandoned their confining corsets and adopted what was known as common-sense dressing.

In 1896, Susan B. Anthony said, “I think [the bicycle] has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives a woman a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. The moment she takes her seat she knows she can’t get into harm unless she gets off her bicycle, and away she goes, the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.”

bicycling not buttons

Let’s celebrate our two-wheeled friends all month by taking them everywhere. Note that Bike-to-Work Week is May 11-15, and Bike–to-Work Day is Friday, May 15. Employers can find out how to participate here.

What are your top reasons for loving bikes? Comments are welcome!

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