I am a thrilled customer of TCF Organics.  Every other week, I get a huge box delivered to my door chock full of yummy, organic fruits and veggies.  We are eating healthier, and a greater variety, than we ever did before.  Every once in a while, I’m even stumped, but with the internet at hand and Rita on the other end of the line at TCF Organics, I’m never stumped for long by a new (and always tasty) veggie in my box.

Did you know that kale chips are ridiculously good?  And good for you!  Oh, and turnips are great with carrots!

Turnips and kale not your thing?  That’s okay.

Our contest for today is for the new, exciting WHOLE AND CHUNKY FRUIT BOX from TCF Organics.  The box contains a wide selection of fruits, some whole (obviously) and some already cut and prepped for you!  Anything that is appropriate to cut, like pineapple and melons, will arrive cut up and ready to eat.  Things that would turn brown, like apples, pears, and bananas, arrive whole, perfect for out-of-hand eating.

The box is normally a $35 value, including delivery.  And TCF is letting me give one away!

So, you want the details?  Not a problem!

To win this wonderful box full of fruit, delivered right to your door, you need to live within 100 miles of Chicago.  Please click this link to make sure that you are part of the delivery area.  If you enter, and aren’t eligible, I’m sorry to say that I’ll have to choose someone else.  So please, only enter if you can actually get the box.

Otherwise, all you have to do is leave a comment, saying what day TCF delivers to your area.  (You can find that out, conveniently enough, here.)

The contest will end on Friday, July 3rd.  Don’t miss out!

Have I got a contest for you?  Yes, yes I do.  Here’s a clue.

For dinner tonight, we are having grilled skewers, with yummy tasty veggies and fruits from a company I mentioned last week in my Crunchy Mamma post.

Come back tomorrow for all the details.  You don’t want to miss this one.

I wish I could win it!

Jen, over at beyondmom.com recently posted on her blog, in response to Sheena, from Mommy Daddy Blog, about being a “crunchy mom”. They both got me thinking, am I a crunchy mom?  I know Jen would say I am, but I’m not so sure.  I certainly don’t consider myself crunchy.  Frugal, sure.  Ethical?  I try.  But crunchy?  I dunno.  I think I just am cautious of describing myself in such a “granola” way.  I see all the ways I could be more environmentalist, and I am sensitive about being teased for being “hippy dippy”, so I’m wary.

You be the judge.  How crunchy am I?

I cloth diaper.  Why?  Because I love cloth. Cloth is cute. Sorry, but there are no disposable diapers that compare to this kind of cuteness.  Cloth is cheap. Cloth is re-usable, and I’m a big fan of reusing things.  Cloth also keeps 1 metric ton of waste out of the landfills, per child.  But, when we travel, we use disposable.  I just hate doing laundry on vacation, ya know?

I garden.  Well, actually, my husband gardens.  I putter.  He’s the one who does 90% of the work.  I occasionally pull a weed, I harvest most of the produce, and I feel proud.  This year, we are growing:

• beans (2 varieties)
• peas
• beets
• kale
• spinach
• radishes
• tomatoes (2 varieties)
• bell peppers (2 varieties)
• rhubarb
• strawberries
• raspberries
• and of course the mulberry bushes that are 20+ feet high and came with the house.

I wear Asher in a sling.  A lot.  Not because it is “crunchy”, but because it leaves my hands free so I can chase after Miriam. 

I drive a hyrbid.  It is an SUV though, so I think that works out to a regular car. 

I get a bi-weekly delivery of organic veggies and fruits from Timber Creek Farms.  If you are within 100 miles of Chicago, check them out.  I love my produce delivery.  The cost is totally reasonable, and the quality rocks!

Going back to the cloth diaper thing, I line dry them when the weather allows (which in Chicago is surprisingly rare!)  I hate how much the dryer heats up the house, and love that the sun takes out stains.

I dress my kids in hand-me-downs as much as possible.  I think I’ve bought 6 onsies total for Asher, and probably 12 outfits for Miriam.  Between family that loves to buy clothes for my kids (THANK YOU!) and friends with older kids who’ve outgrown clothes, my kids are very well dressed.  I also plan to hand the clothes on to others, as needs arise.  Waste not, want not.

We go to the library once a week, and the farmers market every week during the season.  And we walk to both, unless it is raining.  Don’t think that we get all our books from the library though!  We are bookworms and could probably start a library of our own. 

We use cloth napkins.  I just like them better, and they take up hardly any room in the laundry anyway. 

In general, I hate the idea of buying things just to throw them away.  Don’t even get me started on garbage bags – at this point a necessary evil.

I knit.  I’m not sure how that would be crunchy to anyone who has seen a real knitters stash, but I guess non-knitters would think it is thrifty, enviro-conscious, etc. 

We eat what I call “ethically”.  We don’t keep kosher, because honestly all the rules Judiasm has built up around kashrut over the years boggle me.  Chickens don’t make milk!!!  (okay, rant over)  But, we do try to eat ethically, which for us means thinking about what we eat, where it comes from, and how the food we take into our bodies becomes part of us, and comes from G-d.  We ate kosher meat, until the scandal last year.  Now, I try to buy ethically raised meat.  I don’t care if it was slaughtered in a kosher fashion if the employees weren’t treated properlly and the animals were abused before slaughter.  I do care that my food is treated well, and that we treat our bodies well.  (oh, and I love shelfish too much, I think if the ancient Israelites had known how yummy oysters are, they wouldn’t have forbidden them!)

And in the not at all crunchy section:

We follow the vaccination schedule religiously.  My mom was a poster child for the polio vaccines.  Seriously, her face was in the newspaper and on posters!  We are big believers in the power of vaccines.

I got to Target once a week.  At least.  No, I don’t know what all I buy there.  I love buying things.  It makes me happy.  I don’t buy junk, but we don’t really need all the DVD’s, books, and other chazerie that I collect.

I love kitchen gadgets.  I have a yogurt machine, a food processor, a stand mixer, a hand mixer, a toaster oven, two waffle irons (belgian and standard), a coffee grinder (which you can pry from my cold dead hands), a drip coffee maker, an espresso machine, an immersion blender, a standup blender, a rice cooker/ steamer, etc.  I could do almost all the jobs these tools do by hand, but the tools are fun damnit!

I don’t compost.  Yet.  Research is ongoing.

I love my AC.  I get very grouchy when I’m warm, so the AC is my friend.  I turned it on this week, and plan to leave it on, and set to 74 whenever I’m home until October.  However, in the winter, we keep the heat on at 68 during the day, and only 64 at night.  Like I said, I get grouchy when I’m warm. 

So, you tell me, am I crunchy?  Are you?

Only 8 people entered my SunChips giveaway contest, so everyone’s odds of winning are really good!

I loaded up Random.org and plugged in that our numbers were minimum 1, maximum 8. Pushed the button, and low and behold, our winning comment is #2.

phyllis Says:
June 5th, 2009 at 9:45 am

It’s nice to see they’re living up to their name!!!!

Phyllis, come on down! I’ll be emailing you shortly for your mailing address so you can get your yummy SunChips and nifty reusable shopping bag.

Thanks to everyone who entered, and stay tuned – more giveaways are in the works!

SunChips are becoming increasingly “Earth Friendly”, which makes me happy.  In addition to using solar power at their facility in California to produce the chips, they are developing a compostable bag!  How cool is that?  It’ll be the very first truly compostable chip bag out there.

To get the word out, they are giving away full size bags of chips, and these really nifty reusable shopping bags!  I love it when my snack foods make me feel good.

So, do you want to win some goodies?

Juts comment on this post by midnight on the 7th, and you can win 2 full size bags of yummy SunChips AND a reusable shopping bag! Don’t miss out!

I know I haven’t blogged in way too long of a time, but folks, I need help.  Seriously.  Eternal gratitude to who so ever can help me.

I’ve forgotten how a song ends.  Heck, I may have forgotten most of the damn song.

So, pull out your scouting song books.  Dust off those old cobwebs.  Please, I beg of you, help me get through “When I first came to this land”

Here’s what I’ve got:

When I first came to this land
I was not a wealthy man
But the land was sweet and good,
And I did what I could.

I bought myself a farm
and I called it Muscle in my Arm

I built myself a shack
and I called it Ache in my Back

I bought myself a horse
and I called him Trouble of Course

I got myself a cow
and I called her No Milk Now

I found myself a wife
and I called her Light of my Life

We had ourselves a son
and I called him Son of a Gun

that’s it.

What comes after the son?

I know you remember this song, It repeats like The Farmer in the Dell.

The last full run through I have goes:

When I first came to this land
I was not a wealthy man
We had ourselves a son
And I called him Son of a Gun
And I called my wife – Light of my Life
And I called my cow – No Milk Now
And I called my horse – Trouble of Course
And I called my shack – Ache in my Back
And I called my farm – Muscle in my Arm
And the land was sweet and good,
And I did what I could.

So help me out here before I lose what little sanity I have left!  What’s the next verse?

Little girls like to play dress up! Oh no! The horror, the shame, the agony!

How dare parents let their little girls paint their nails, or horror of horrors, wear lip gloss?

Newsweek is full of crap.  I’m sorry, but it’s true.  I’ve never been so disgusted by an article in a so-called reputable publication.

the new normal: a generation that primps and dyes and pulls and shapes, younger and with more vigor. Girls today are salon vets before they enter elementary school.

Really?  How about some numbers to back this up? Hello?  Anything?  Nope.  Not a single statistic to show that little girls are going to salons at higher rates than in decades past.

If these trends continue, by the time your tween hits the Botox years, she’ll have spent thousands on the beauty treatments once reserved for the “Beverly Hills, 90210″ set, not junior highs in Madison, Wis.

I don’t know of any junior high kids who are in their “Botox years”, do you?  Hyperbole at it’s best.

According to market-research firm Experian, 43 percent of 6- to 9-year-olds are already using lipstick or lip gloss; 38 percent use hairstyling products; and 12 percent use other cosmetics.

Anyone out there remember tinkerbell lip gloss?  Oh, and folks, you better believe that I use a hairstyling product on my toddler’s curls.  It’s called a spray-in-detangler.  I dare you to find one mother with a curly haired child that doesn’t!   “Other cosmetics”, could that possible include nail polish? Hmm, how many of you women out there remember painting your nails as little girls? Or more correctly, having your mom or big sister paint your nails for you?  I know when my mom or babysitter painted mine, I felt so grown up! Then I’d put on my mom’s dress shoes,  throw a boa over my shoulder, put on a pith helmet, and announce my adventurous plans for the day.

Little girls play dress up. So do little boys. It’s a perfectly normal part of development.  Preschools have dress-up boxes!

Yes, tweens are “over sexualized” in our culture, but this kind of fear mongering, shock nonsense isn’t even fit for Fox News during sweeps month.  Much less Newsweek in March.

I know a lot of people out there, people I love and respect, are turning off their lights in 45 minutes for Earth Hour.  I just don’t see the point.

One hour of sitting in the dark, lit by candles, isn’t going to make any difference.

We do lots of “environmentally friendly” stuff, most of it because we are cheap.

We cloth diaper our kids. We use fluorescent light bulbs. We turn off lights when we leave a room. We line dry a lot of our clothes. We use re-usable bags for our shopping. We use cloth napkins instead of paper.  We drive a hybrid vehicle. I could go on, and on, and on until you want to smack me.

Sitting in the dark won’t make one bit of difference.

All it will do is add to my baby-blues.  We couldn’t turn off the server or Jason’s computer anyway as he is on call this weekend and must be connected, or risk losing his J-O-B.

The kids are already down for the night, which means this is my chance to sit, watch some t.v., read, knit, play a video game, what have you, and unwind.

Sorry politicos, but you can’t have my hour.  I need it. I need my lights. I need my time.

To those of you turning off your lights and sitting in the dark, more power to ya, and I hope you get the warm fuzzies from your “effort”.  Me, I’ll do something more effective for the planet than make myself miserable for an hour, thanks.

I need one good reason to not kill my husband.  Please.

He twittered today that his Ipod was dying, so I chatted him back and asked how bad it was. He didn’t reply.  I said that if it was indeed dying, we’d go get him a new one.  He uses the thing all day at work, and it is more than 2 years old. It’s a justifyable expense.  Not what I was planning to use our “entertainment / household” budget category for this month, but okay.

I figured that I need a few things at the mall anyway, and I could certainly use to get out.  Lord knows I can’t do a mall trip by myself with both babies.

Several hours later, my darling husband calls me.  It turns out he already went out, leaving work, and bought a replacement.  A zune.  Considering what all he does with his Ipod, a Zune is not an appropriate replacement, but Mr. Know-it-all with a history of buying inapropriate MP3 players (you think I’m kidding) and having to replace them within 48 hours (again you think I’m kidding) is sure he did just fine.

Did I mention he used up an hour of comp time to do this?  One of his 8? With which we had already discussed that he was going to take a full day off and give me a hand?  Yeah.  One of those hours.

So now, I don’t get a mall trip (which I was actually looking forward to), he blew the budget on a non-returnable item which will not meet his needs, and I lost my day of having help.

Oh, and he called to tell me all this after Asher projectile-vomited 5 times in an hour.  Each time immediatly after I got him bathed, cleaned up, changed, and changed the blanket etc.  Seriously, I’d get everything all clean and nice, and 5 seconds later, erruption.

Oh, and Mr. Helpful has to work all weekend, after working all of last weekend, and two 12 hour days this week.  In addition to his normal 8+ hour days.

And it is supposed to snow.

Well, both kids are crying again. There goes my break for the day.

Want to see what happens when a male geek dresses a female toddler while Mommy sleeps in?

Are you sure?