Green Product: WIN!

If there is one category of eco products that is full of more lies and propaganda, it's beauty and health products. You either aren't getting what you pay for (false packaging, greenwashing, etc), they make you feel like a hippy, or are ridiculously expensive. I've tried various flavors of Nature's Gate and have been super unhappy with dried out hair - smells great, looks gross, and I'm definitely not getting my $8 out of it - $1 Suave works better.

But, alas, I am a child of the guilt driven eco friendly generation and had to find something that was both eco friendly and ethically sourced.  So I found the Body Shop (thanks to my sister in law) and decided to give their Rain Forest Moisture therapy a go.

 My in-store tests:

• Smells good
• I can pronounce the ingredients
• Has a warm fuzzy feel good story about where the ingredients came from.
• It's not cheap - $14 per large bottle. But with my rewards from their customer loyalty program, it was about $5 per bottle.

Test? It was super thick out of the bottle, the directions actually recommend  adding water to your hands first. So, despite its smaller size, it's pretty concentrated. My hair feels clean, not too many frizzies, and smells GOOD.

Info from their site:

 The Body Shop® difference: Our Rainforest Moisture Shampoo contains no silicones, sulphates, parabens or colorants. It also meets our eco-conscious standard*. It is respectful to the aquatic environment, meets strict biodegradability standards, and minimizes the use of non-sustainable packaging resources.

 That's the warm and fuzzy. Now the ingredients are just damn neat.

The pracaxi tree grows in the wet tropical climate along the Delta of Amazonas River and its precious seeds are cold pressed for its oil. Manketti nut oil is traditionally used as a body rub during the dry African winter to moisturise skin. We buy Community Trade honey from organic sources in Africa and sugar from the Montillo Co-operative in Paraguay. Our trade rewards local suppliers fairly for their expertise, and helps them invest in their futures.

 Moral of the story? Don't be a hippy. Wash your damn hair.

Green Product: Fail

If you haven't heard by now, phosphates are bad for the environment, specifically aquatic habitats (cheap and easy education found here). So bad, in fact, certain states have banned their use in dish washing products where they are most commonly found. So, wanting to help save the ol' gal Mama Earth, Brian and I decided to give the Seventh Gen powder a shot.

Fail. Epic fail. I suppose if I had read the reviews on their website,  I would have known better. Our dishes are clean of food scraps, but they are very filmy, especially with our hard water.So filmy you can rub lines in it with your fingers. Seventh Gen said they are reworking the formula to perform better. Until then, they recommend soaking dishes in a sink of vinegar water before you put them away.

What?!

Really.

To get any dishes that have filming on them back to normal, you can soak them in a sink of water with a cup of vinegar. A quick rinsing afterward should have them back to normal. For any dishwashers that are getting film on the inside you can again use vinegar. Add about 1/2 cup to the bottom of the machine and run a rinse cycle, this should restore in the interior of your machine.

We'll finish this box, and we'll be testing their capsules next. Anyone use their liquid for automatic washers?

Inspiring Recipes

I hate buying cooking magazines because I know I can find it all online, but there's something about flipping through those glossy pages with drool inducing pictures that makes me spend the money. At $9.99, the Yankee Magazine Recipe book was pricey, but I got a good feeling at the checkout line.

No ads. No crazy weird ingredients. Easy to follow directions, lots of pictures, and nothing but recipes - some of the more unique recipes have cute back stories on their origins, which I enjoy.

Go buy it, now. I'll be baking a lot out of this one for a while.