Kristin van Ogtrop's Blog, page 349

Eating Well: What's in a Name?

While people are getting savvier and savvier about reading labels and sussing out healthy options, it seems that many dieters are still rather easily misled by the names of foods.

A new study from m newly-beloved Journal of Consumer Research finds that simply adding the world "salad" to a dish can give it a health halo, as well as tweaking a sweet treat from "candy chew" and "fruit chew." Think "smoothies" instead of "milkshakes", or "potato chips" called "veggie chips." (Sure, there may be some carrots or turnips amidst the 'taters, but fried is fried is fried!!)

The opposite holds true, too—an item with an unhealthy-sounding name may get the thumb's down, when in fact it's not all that bad. This might mean a great orzo pasta dish packed with brightly-colored vegetables and a sprinkle of tangy feta cheese may be tarnished by the word "pasta" and thus lose out to to a lump of tuna salad. Of course, the latter is drowning in mayo and light on vegetables...making the orzo dish the more nutritious option! 

The bottom line: Look beyond the names and study the actual ingredients and the key words on exactly how the dish is prepared! 

What is Your Favorite Way to Reuse Plastic Bags?

The plastic bag is the MVP of multitaskers here at Real Simple. We've used them for everything from funnels to packing materials to knee pads. (Yes, that last one might qualify for the what-were-we-thinking category.)

 

 

Now we want to know what are your brilliant new uses for plastic bags of every shape and size?

 

Related:

How to Recycle Anything

20 Ways to Reuse Paper & Plastic Bags

New Uses for Things in the Kitchen

 

Low-Tech iPhone Speaker

Many of you probably saw this new use for a regular old cereal bowl in our April issue.

 

 

I found a speaker "system" via Design Milk today that is very similar to this low-tech idea. Check out the Megaphone from en&is

 

 

Looks like a basic objet d'art, right? But if you add your iPhone or other smart phone:

 

 

The horn shape amplifies the sound of the built in speaker. Pretty clever, isn't it? I love that you don't have to plug it in, and that it would blend in seamlessly with your decor. Most speaker systems are just plain ugly.

 

Sadly, it doesn't seem to be available for retail sale yet, but I'll be keeping my eye on it to see when it does.

 

Do you have speakers for your smartphones or MP3 players? Do you look for ones that will fit in with your decor?

 

(top photo James Wojick for Real Simple, bottom two photos via en&is)

 

Your Answer May Be in the August Issue

Hi, Bookies:

Once again, our friends down the hall on the print side of Real Simple have a question for you: What book taught you the most about life? Reply below—including the book's title and author—and your answer may appear in the August issue. Thanks, Bookies!

Are you reading this via an e-mail or RSS feed? If you wish to comment, please click here.

Can I create a custom bike jersey?

Last month, when my husband started his new business, Steve the Bike Guy, providing mobile bicycle services, he and I discussed all the different items he would need to promote his services.

At the end of the list – logo, business cards, web site – was one unusual item. He wanted a custom bike jersey to wear when he (and I) were riding. The problem? Bicycle jerseys are very specialized, and often very expensive items, which can't normally be printed in batches of one or two.

Need I mention that the quality of the jersey is important also? Not just any jersey would do for my bike guy.

Enter Voler.com where we could design a "semi-custom" jersey – basically one of their 40+ pre-designed jerseys and shorts printed with Steve's logo.

The design process was easy with Voler provided online guidance on file specifications. If we wanted, we could have ordered a blank jersey as a sizing sample, then returned for a full refund minus shipping.

We purchased two Allez Jerseys (one for women, one for men) in Royal Blue, and had the logo printed on the front and back. Each jersey cost $72 and took nearly a month to arrive.

I was really pleased with the resulting jersey – the colors of his logo are vivid and the concealed zipper doesn't interrupt the image on the front. My husband thought the shirt was well constructed and liked lightweight quality of the fabric.

He also loved that he and I will be cycling billboards for his new business.

Is It Just Terrible to Be Vacuuming on Your Birthday?

Yesterday was my birthday. It was wonderful: The weather in New York was beautiful, my two older boys made me...interesting cards (including one from Middle, using the letters of my first name to start each line, that began "Kind of a control freak...."), I got a great homemade breakfast (scrambled eggs with cinnamon? A novel idea, although I'm not sure I'm going to be serving it to guests), and we just mostly hung around the house and enjoyed one another's company. Middle also began his full-court press to get a hamster. I have been living blissfully hamster-free for about four years. Even though we have all of the hamster paraphernalia still in the basement, I'm not sure I want to go back to the hamster way of life. But more on that on another day, I'm sure.

Anyway, after dinner I found myself doing what I am often doing on a Sunday night: vacuuming the kitchen floor. I tried for a minute to feel a teeny bit sorry for myself, given that Princess was vacuuming on her birthday, until I reminded myself that I actually really like to vacuum. This is how the conversation went:

Me: "Isn't this sad? Vacuuming on your birthday. You should be lying in a hot tub filled with rose petals instead!"

Myself: "Who are you kidding?"

Me: "Huh?"

Myself: "You love to vacuum. You do not need to vacuum. Get over it!"

And that was the end of the conversation. Because I do love to vacuum, and I don't care if I'm doing it on my birthday. First of all, I love my vacuum cleaner almost as much as I love my children, perhaps because it was almost as expensive as my children are turning out to be. And vacuuming is noisy, so no one gets to ask you questions or demand anything of you while the machine is on, because SORRY YOU CAN'T HEAR THEM, SO GO ASK YOUR FATHER. Vacuuming is cleaning without water involved, and so you don't need to put more lotion on your dry hands afterward. And there's really very little that's as satisfying as rolling the vacuum cord back up. It's all just so neat.

So I think I may have discovered a new birthday ritual, and I'm sure I can turn this into some sort of a movement. Open presents, blow out the candles, get out the vacuum. Doesn't that have a nice ring to it?

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6 Healthy Things I Learned While On Vacation

I spent last week with my family, helping to celebrate my mom's 70th birthday. We headed to a warm, tropical location for some much-appreciated time en famille with sun, sand and sea. While we did little more than laze about and linger by the pool, I did stumble upon a few healthy thoughts while sitting in the shade.

1. Tortilla chips are much better when you're somewhere warm and/or tropical. Think about it: crispy chips consumed in front of the boob tube in the dead of winter may have the whole "comfort", "cozy" thing going for them, but the idea makes me feel shut-in, parched, and puffy. BUT, when consumed at the end of a sunny day, while watching the sunset and accompanied by fresh salsa and a cold beer—oh so much more appealing! And bad for the waistline when eaten at the pace/frequency we did. (Note: Just because the chips we chomped were from blue corn doesn't make them that much healthier. Just marginally so.)

2. A power outage can be a lot of fun. I was not yet living in New York City during one of the most recent, most infamous blackouts (in the summer of 2003) but the several-hour-long power outage in our condo rental last week made for some serious comedy—just me, my husband and my nutty parents, stuck in the dark with nary a flashlight. (The baby was asleep.) I think they call that "quality time."

3. Even a diehard Real Simple-type needs a break from being organized. For whatever reason, my normal tendencies to keep things neat, tidy and ever-so-stacked-up dissolve when I'm on vacation. And by that I mean, I can trash a hotel room in 15 minutes, and looking at my room in the condo you'd have thought that ten slobby teens lived there. I find the time off from housekeeping so liberating—if only for a week, in someone else's house. Back at home I resume my regularly scheduled programming of constant toddler-pick-up, corralling the magazines and books and keeping up with the dishes, but being a short-term slob is liberating.

4. Looser clothes=lifted spirits. At the end of most workdays, I can't wait to tear off my clothes and slip into something more comfortable—literally. While I'm hardly wearing Hérve Léger to work, I am aware of my snug waistband and other sartorial constraints. So what a pleasure it is for the body AND soul to be released from such bondage for a few days—nothing but kaftans and cover-ups and drawstring waists, yessiree. I swear I think that can lower your blood pressure by a few digits.

5. When groceries are that expensive, you HAVE to eat simply and healthy. As in many tourist destinations, the items at the grocery store were very, very expensive—in many cases nearly double the cost. So when it came time to whip up healthy but tasty dinners what weren't double digit expenditures per person, the fewer, the simpler, and the more local the ingredients the better. Fish with a few veggies, grilled meats, fresh fruit for dessert (even a pint of ice cream was nearly $12)—nothing too fancy or involved, and certainly not packaged or processed. In the end, while it may have been challenging at first, our meals were easy and healthier than the ones we might have prepared if we'd been able to fill the cart in ways we might ordinarily!

6. Fear of the sun is a generational thing. Each afternoon, as we headed out for a late visit to the beach, I'd slap tons of sunscreen on myself and on my toddler. After all, even though it was 4 pm doesn't mean the sun wasn't still capable of burning! And yet every day my mom made a comment about how this time of day was so wonderful, since the "The sun can't do anything now!" I gave her a hard time about it, even though I myself didn't start wearing sunscreen until I was a college student and willingly fried myself on many a teenage vacation. (Of course, the latest news is that it's not too late to lotion up—most people get just 23 percent of their sun exposure before age 18!) My parents' generation didn't wear sunscreen AT ALL, of course. It wasn't widely available until the 60s and 70s and even then—usually billed as "sun tan lotion" it wasn't as protective as today's varieties! So I can hardly blame her for still holding onto some beliefs from an earlier, bronzed era. 

Which is the "Greener" Way to Wash Your Car?

If you're concerned about water usage, pollution, and your utility bills, head to the car wash instead of sudsing up in your driveway. 

 

 

Although it might seem counterintuitive at first, car washes are more eco-friendly because they have better systems to recycle and filter the water that washes off of your car. When you clean your car in your driveway, all of the dirt, oil, and chemicals (not to mention the detergent you use) runs into your yard and the storm drains that empty directly into local streams and creeks.

 

Do you wash your car at home or go to your local car wash?

 

 Related:

9 Things You Can Do to Save Water

How Green Are You?

25 Easy Ways to Help Save the Planet 

 

(photo via knottyboy on Flickr)

 

Who Hasn't Voted Yet?

Hello, Bookies:

 

So have you voted yet for your May book? The poll is open until 11:59 p.m. ET this coming Wednesday, April 20. Make your choice from the four titles below.

 

 

Then We Came to the End, by Joshua Ferris

This impressive and amusing first novel, set in a Chicago advertising agency facing layoffs, deals with the jockeying personalities and swirling emotions familiar to anyone who has worked in an office (or watched The Office).

 

Brideshead Revisited,  by Evelyn Waugh

Waugh's classic novel of upper-class life in Britain between the wars tackles issues of wealth, religion, and love, in all of their complexities.

 

The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy

The funeral of a young girl opens The God of Small Things, which delves into the politics both of the family it depicts and of India in the late 1960s, told in language and cadence that verge on poetry.

 

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, by Muriel Spark

At an Edinburgh, Scotland, school for girls, strong-minded, outspoken Jean Brodie forgoes conventional teaching methods and devotes herself to (and overly involves herself with) a handpicked group of students—one of whom will betray her.

 

 

What Should We Read in May?customer surveys

 

Amy Butler: New For Spring 2011

I just returned home from a week in London where I had a gorgeous launch party at the amazing LIBERTY (wow!) for my book, Decorate, on Wednesday night followed by two customer talks on Thursday that were very intimate and lovely. In the process, I met Amy Butler who happened to also be at Liberty on Thursday to sign some of her books. One thing leads to another as the expression goes, and so we ended up hanging out for a bit in-store and then we went shopping together on Saturday in Notting Hill -- it was so inspiring!

While at Liberty, I was able to see one of Amy's gorgeous catalogs showing her new knits collection called River Camp Knits and her line of organic yarn by Rowan. I adored the big photos and the outdoor shots, such an inspirational catalog/book. I also liked seeing the video for this collection today on her website (watch it here). Very, very pretty. I also like her gorgeous new fabrics and can't wait to see what else Amy is up to in the months to come. What a charming and talented lady!

(images: david butler)