This is part of a series on French idiomatic expressions that relate to food. Browse the list of idioms featured so far.

This week’s idiom is, “Ça ne mange pas de pain.”

Literally translated as, “It doesn’t eat bread,” it is used to say that a thing or an action can’t hurt: it may never amount to much or be of much use, but if it costs nothing and entails no risk, why not?

It is a colloquial expression that is usually delivered with a shrug, and when spoken, the ne and the de are often swallowed, so that you will hear it as, “Ça mange pas d’pain.”

Example: “Passe un coup de fil à ton médecin, ça ne mange pas de pain !” “Give your doctor a call, it doesn’t eat bread!”

Listen to the idiom and example read aloud:

Continue reading »

I have never been particularly drawn to energy bars and their spooky ingredients lists. But then I discovered the hugely popular Lärabars while in New York, and they won me over quickly.

If you’ve yet to make their acquaintance, here’s what you need to know: Lärabars (I just ignore the umlaut and say “larabar”) are compact but tender energy bars made of ground dates mixed with nuts and other flavorings (spices, dried fruits, coconut, cocoa powder…) but no added sweetener.

They come with a string of honor badges (non-GMO, gluten-free, raw, vegan, the list goes on) and in many different flavors, each with just a few of ingredients, all of them from the normal world we inhabit.

Well, how about homemade Lärabars?

The downside of such simplicity, for the company who sells them* at least, is that it doesn’t take a girl very long to think, “Hey! I could probably just make my own.” And so I did, and never looked back.

Continue reading »

As promised yesterday, when I announced the winners of the green kitchen tip contest, I have compiled a digest of the other submissions.

I want to thank you all for taking the time to share your tips. It was an exciting feeling to have all 288 of them pour into my inbox throughout the day, proving yet again how much you care about these issues, and how hard you try to minimize your impact on the environment.

I learned a lot, too, and I will work to incorporate as many of these habits as I can into my own kitchen routine. The good news is, green often equates frugal, so now is the perfect time to put them into practice.

Some of those tips may only make a small difference, one that might seem negligible in the eye of glass-half-empty people, but small differences add up, and the important thing is the mindset: once you start to consider your actions and your surroundings with environmentally-conscious spectacles, everything matters, regardless of scale.

I will add that those tips should all be taken with a grain of salt, and a whole shaker of common sense: depending on your personal situation, location, equipment, etc. the greener choice may not always be the one suggested here.

 1. Buy Local and Seasonal
 2. Reduce Food Waste
 3. Reduce Packaging Waste
 4. Reuse Packaging and Containers
 5. Eat Fewer Animal Products
 6. Grow Your Own
 7. Compost
 8. Avoid Using Disposable Paper and Plastic Products
 9. Bring Your Own
10. Save Energy
11. Conserve Water
12. Use Natural Cleaning Products
13. Share

Continue reading »

For my Earth Day post last week, I partnered with Eva from flip & tumble and asked you to help plant trees in Malawi, and to submit your best green tips for a chance to win a reusable shopping bag.

Some 500 tree-planting comments were submitted. Eva and I had planned to have two trees planted per comment, but then we got excited and decided to double the stakes, and in the end each of us funded the planting of two trees per comment. Congratulations and thank you! You have effectively helped plant 2,000 trees, a combination of indigenous, exotic and fruit trees, in the Nkhata Bay District in Malawi. Let’s all make the wish that these saplings grow to be strong trees that thrive for decades.

As for the green tip contest, your response was overwhelmingly enthusiastic, and I received 288 submissions. Today, I am publishing the ten I picked to win a reusable shopping bag. I must say it’s been hard to choose the winners in such a wide-ranging collection of thoughtful, smart, and inspiring tips, and I am working on organizing the rest of them as a digest to share with you next.

See below for the ten green tips that win their submitters a flip & tumble bag (they should have received an email from me) and check back tomorrow for many more green kitchen tips.

See also: Tips for a Green Kitchen, Part II.

Continue reading »