The Amazing Cucumber This information was in The New York Times several weeks ago as part of their “Spotlight on the Home” series that highlighted creative and fanciful ways to solve common problems. 1. Cucumbers contain most of the vitamins you need every day, just one cucumber contains Vitamin B1, Vitamin B2, Vitamin B3, Vitamin B5, Vitamin B6, Folic Acid, Vitamin C, Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, Phosphorus, Potassium and Zinc. 2. Feeling tired in the afternoon, put down the caffeinated soda and pick up a cucumber.  Cucumbers are a good source of B Vitamins and Carbohydrates that can provide that quick pick-me-up that can last for hours. 3. Tired of your bathroom mirror fogging up after a shower?  Try rubbing a cucumber slice along the mirror, it will eliminate the fog and provide a soothing, spa-like fragrance. 4. Are grubs and slugs ruining your planting beds?  Place a few slices in a small pie tin and your garden will be free of pests all season long.  The chemicals in the cucumber react with the aluminum to give off a scent undetectable to humans but drive garden pests crazy and make them flee the area. 5. Looking for a fast and easy way to remove cellulite before going out or to the pool?  Try rubbing a slice or two of cucumbers along your problem area for a few minutes, the phytochemicals in the cucumber cause the collagen in your skin to tighten, firming up the outer layer and reducing the visibility of cellulite.  Works great on wrinkles too!!! 6. Want to avoid a hangover or terrible headache?  Eat a few cucumber slices before going to bed and wake up refreshed and headache free. Cucumbers contain enough sugar, B vitamins and electrolytes to replenish essential nutrients the body lost, keeping everything in equilibrium, avoiding both a hangover and headache!! 7. Looking to fight off that afternoon or evening snacking binge? Cucumbers have been used for centuries and often used by European trappers, traders and explores for quick meals to thwart off starvation. 8. Have an important meeting or job interview and you realize that you don’t have enough time to polish your shoes?  Rub a freshly cut cucumber over the shoe, its chemicals will provide a quick and durable shine that not only looks great but also repels water. 9. Out of WD 40 and need to fix a squeaky hinge?  Take a cucumber slice and rub it along the problematic hinge, and voila, the squeak is gone! 10. Stressed out and don’t have time for massage, facial or visit to the spa?  Cut up an entire cucumber and place it in a boiling pot of water, the chemicals and nutrients from the cucumber with react with the boiling water and be released in the steam, creating a soothing, relaxing aroma that has been shown the reduce stress in new mothers and college students during final exams. 11. Just finish a business lunch and realize you don’t have gum or mints?  Take a slice of cucumber and press it to the roof of your mouth with your tongue for 30 seconds to eliminate bad breath, the phytochemcials will kill the bacteria in your mouth responsible for causing bad breath. 12. Looking for a ‘green’ way to clean your faucets, sinks or stainless steel?  Take a slice of cucumber and rub it on the surface you want to clean, not only will it remove years of tarnish and bring back the shine, but is won’t leave streaks and won’t harm you fingers or fingernails while you clean. 13. Using a pen and made a mistake?  Take the outside of the cucumber and slowly use it to erase the pen writing, also works great on crayons and markers that the kids have used to decorate the walls!!

Thank You !

To all Bay Area BōKU® customers & Fans who came out to support us at the 2009 Green Festival in San Francisco!  It was an awesome event!  We met thousands of like minded “green” warriors who came out to find out the latest and the greatest products that are changing this planet for the better and we at BōKU® feel grateful to have been part of this event! My entire family (husband Reno, Son Reno Jr. & daughter Ryann) worked the booth along with Jay, giving out thousands of samples of BōKU® Super food and the response was amazing!  Look forward to the next one!

There are plenty of good reasons to make your own shampoo that will benefit you and the enviroment. On the personal side, the chemicals in most manufactured shampoos can irritate and dry out your hair and scalp, or it can cause an overproduction of oil to compensate for the dryness which leads to greasy looking hair.  Also, shampoo is expensive and making it yourself will save you money.

On the environmental side, making your own shampoo will help eliminate all of the unnecessary packaging filling the landfills, it will save massive amounts of energy in the manufacturing and shipping processes, and it will reduce the amount of chemicals and toxins in the environment.

If you would like to make your own shampoo here are several different recipes to choose from:

Just Baking Soda and Water

• 1 tablespoon of baking soda mixed well with one cup of warm water

Pour over roots of hair, work through and rinse

Follow with

• 1 oz of lemon juice OR
• apple cider vinegar diluted in about 16 oz warm water

Pour onto hair especially ends, let sit for a minute and rinse.

Basic Shampoo For normal hair – use alone or as a base to add your own scents

• 1/4 cup distilled water
• 1/4 cup liquid Castile Soap
• 1/2 teaspoon jojoba, grapeseed, lavender or other light vegetable oil

Mix together all the ingredients. Store in a bottle. Shake before use, it will be thinner than commercial shampoos.

Chamomile Shampoo

• 4 bags of Chamomile tea
• 4 tablespoons pure soap flakes
• 1 1/2 tablespoons glycerine

Let the tea bags steep in 1 1/2 cups of boiled water for 10 minutes. Remove the tea bags and add the soap flakes to the remaining liquid . Let stand until the soap softens. Stir in glycerin until mixture is well blended. Pour into a bottle. Keep in a dark, cool place.

Scalp Stimulating

• 1/4 cup distilled water
• 1/4 cup liquid Castile Soap
• 2 tsp jojoba oil
• 1/8 tsp peppermint essential oil
• 1/8 tsp tea tree essential oil

Mix all ingredients, then add 1/4 cup distilled water
Store in a bottle. Apply to hair, work through, rinse well.

Shiny Hair

• 1/4 cup distilled water
• 1/4 cup liquid Castile Soap
• 2 Tbsp dried rosemary
• 2 Tbps sweet almond oil
• 1/4 t lemon essential oil

Boil distilled water, add rosemary and steep until fragrant.
Strain leaves and let cool. Mix all ingredients and add to water and stir well.
Store in a bottle. Apply to hair, work through, rinse well.

Softest hair

• Avocado
• Baking soda

Mash them together with a little bit of water to make a paste. Rinse your hair with warm water first, then apply the paste and rinse it out with cold water.

Hair Too Dry?

• 1/4 cup distilled water
• 1/4 cup liquid Castile Soap
• 1/4 cup aloe vera gel
• 1 teaspoon glycerin
• 1/4 teaspoon avocado oil or jojoba oil

Mix together all the ingredients. Store in a bottle and always shake well before using.
Apply to hair and allow to sit for a few mintues. Rinse well with cool water.

There is a lot of buzz lately about reusable shopping bags and there is so much information out there about the topic that it’s difficult for your average busy shopper to sift through. So here is a condensed article on why, and also how, to use reusable bags when you shop.

Environmental Impact of Disposable Bags

American shoppers use an estimated 100 billion bags every year one fifth of the estimated 500 billion used annually worldwide (almost 1 million per minute!). At the most, 3% of these bags are likely to be recycled.

Plastic bags have several environmental effects throughout their lifecycle. From the greenhouse gas emissions from the processes of extracting and refining the petroleum to make the plastic to the energy it takes to transport millions of them to markets around the world, plastic bags cause nothing but harm to the environment. Then of course after their use they are thrown away and become unsightly litter, clog gutter and sewer grates and cause flooding. They also contribute to the deaths of many animals, especially in the ocean, when the animals become entangled in the plastic or mistake it for food. The California Coastal Commission estimates that 60-80% of all marine debris is plastic, the bags making us a portion of this. Since plastic doesn’t readily break down a researcher has estimated that there is a floating mass of plastic and polystyrene foam in the northern Pacific Ocean that is roughly the size of Texas. That’s scary!

Are Paper Bags Better?

While paper degrades much faster than plastic, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency a paper bag takes about a month vs. 1,000 years for a plastic bag! And paper bags are easier to recycle in many locations, there are still drawbacks. Recycling paper requires much more energy than recycling plastic, as does transporting the heavier paper bags. Also, according to the EPA, it takes 40% more energy to manufacture paper bags than it does plastic ones which releases much more water pollution and greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. So if you think that you’re doing the environment a favor by using paper bags, think again! The only bags that really help are those that are reused instead of thrown away after a single use.

Why Reusable Bags May End Up Being Better for Your Wallet

Due to the detrimental effects of disposable bags to the environment, and the reluctance of a majority of the public to jump on the reusable bag bandwagon, some U.S. cities see fit to try to deter the use of disposable bags the only way they know how, taxing!

In 2002, Ireland introduced a tax on plastic grocery bags (the PlasTax) and in one year it reduced the consumption of the bags (1.2 billion or 316 per person) by 90%. With this kind of statistic it’s no wonder why many U.S. cities are trying to follow suit.

Some cities that have proposed a bag tax so far:

Seattle WA, 20 cents per bag

Aurora CO, 12 cents per bag

Washington DC, 5 cents per bag

Baltimore MD, 25 cents per bag

California (statewide), 25 cents per bag; set to begin January 1, 2010

If these taxes passed and your family purchased 12 bags of groceries per week, the bags would end up costing between $31.20 and $156.00! Surely no one would say that the reusable bags wouldn’t pay for themselves.

These proposals in these cities have not been approved as law yet, but one can definitely see that this is a trend that will only spread throughout the country. Many of the governing bodies that have proposed these taxes have also proposed help for low income citizens such as free or subsidized reusable bags.

Smart Reusable Bag Use

A microbiological study has found that reusable shopping bags may become contaminated with bacteria, yeast and mold, which could compromise your health. So here are some tips for staying clean and healthy while being environmentally conscious:

• Always clean your bags and hang them to dry after every use
• Let your reusable shopping bags air out. When you fold them up, although it saves space, it gives bacteria a nice place to incubate
• Separate meats in first-use bag to keep from leaking into the reusable OR
• Designate and use specific reusable bags for the different types of food you purchase (meat, produce, dry goods)
• Don’t use your reusable grocery bags for other purposes. Carrying things like diapers and your gym shoes in them could contaminate the bags and any food that is later used in them

Other Benefits

By using reusable shopping bags you are helping the environment and may eventually save money by dodging a bag tax that may come to your town. There are other benefits to using eco-friendly bags, for instance they can carry at least twice as much as most shopping bags and are easier to carry, typically having long, soft, fabric handles that are easy on the hands and are easy to put over your shoulder, leaving your hands free for other things such as holding your child’s hand as you walk through the busy parking lot.