Thoughtful Thursday Links

Here are some links to some of the things I've been reading or thinking about this week:

This article from the Inspired Economist talks about whether or not fast food restaurants should offer customers a no bag option.

Consider taking this $5 challenge, where you are invited to take back the 'value meal' by getting together with family, friends and neighbors for a slow food meal that costs no more than $5 per person.

Look here, isn't it nice that target and gap have agreed to consider eliminating the toxic metal cadmium in jewelry and other accessories they sell? How nice of them.

Here is a cool little blurb talking about how some college campuses are banning bottled water. Did you know:

• It takes 17 million barrels of oil per year to make all the plastic water bottles used in the U.S. alone. That’s enough oil to fuel 1.3 million cars for a year.
• In 2007, Americans consumed over 50 billion single serve bottles of water; between 30 and 40 million single serve bottles went into landfills each year.
• The United State FDA describes bottled water in this way: “Bottled water is water that is intended for human consumption and that is sealed in bottles or other containers with no added ingredients except that it may optionally contain safe and suitable antimicrobial agents. Fluoride may be optionally added within the limitations established.”

There is also more greening happening on school campuses, read about it here.

Read about some ways to make your traveling greener too.

And there is this little PBS series that I've been checking out called e². It is a bit dry, but the soothing voice of Brad Pit and Morgan Freeman always helps. There is some interesting stuff in this series, consider checking it out (I am watching it on netflix streaming).

And the last thing that I want to leave you with is my solution to having too much fresh cream on my hands every week. See, I get cream once a week to make fresh butter... and while my family was blowing through it at first, it turns out that the equivalent of 2 peanut butter jars packed with butter is, in fact, too much for us to keep up with. Luckily, butter freezes well (and in glass too!), but I wanted to find something else to do with some of that fresh cream... so I'm trying my hands at making homemade ice cream without an ice cream maker. I took some advice from this blog, but I didn't load it with as much sugar as she suggested. I also added chocolate chips to it after it sat in the freezer for a few hours. Oh, and I didn't use lemon, but I did add vanilla... so I guess I didn't really follow her recipe at all actually. The end product isn't quite ice cream consistency, it's more like sweet cream... but it's really good and everyone in my family loves it. If anyone out there has some other tips for improvements, let me know!