So I am slow on the uptake again. It’s always this way. I can write, write, write for days on end and never seem to post them. There are no fewer than five entries just sitting there waiting for me to ask permission to write about someone or needing a little tweaking and yet here I sit wondering which will be published. In any case, I promised to write some things about great products and they seem to fit the Environment Friendly theme so here goes…

First, I have to mention that one of the reasons I decide to accept products from Holly is that she is one of the best e-mailers (some of her stuff should be blogged) but she’s got a great big heart and wants to work for uncompromising companies. Here are my current favorite products from things I love so much I would make out with them. In public. On a crowded street. Seriously. They’re that good.

One of the tricks my mom taught me growing up was baby oil. There are no babies to be found in my house unless they are visiting and their mommies take them home after they spit up and poop in my presence, but I have bought baby oil and applied it after showering on an almost religious basis ever since I moved out of my parent’s house. Because of that, I don’t use lotion. Well, also because the main ingredient is WATER and thus, you are forced to re-apply until you’ve put a metric ton of that viscous substance on your body.

When I first tried the shaving oil from Pacific Shaving I was sure I would have to apply baby oil anyway after shaving because I assumed it would get trapped in my razer and not give me a close shave.

Wrong.

Wrong.

Wrong.

My legs were velvety smooth after shaving and I kept rubbing them all day. It made me want to make out with my own legs and I’m just not that flexible after all these years. Would you be embarrassed if your co-workers caught you running your own hands over your legs under the table while you were trying to have a serious conversation?

Tip: come up with a pre-determined lie to tell them when they do.

“Mosquito bite.”

Works every time.

The products by Recycline are fairly good as well. The cutlery and plates and cups are REALLY cute colors and dishwasher safe, but it’s the fact that I can put them in my bag in the morning for my yogurt and not worry about losing them and paying an arm and a leg for expensive flatware should I misplace them. I have yet to do that, but if I do, I won’t worry. They are reasonably priced. Plus, I doubt if I will miss the purple spoon on my desk after consuming my fermented, bacteria-laden food.

Y um. Doesn’t that sound good?

But see? You’re doing something good for your body AND the environment. Isn’t that worth it?

Uh-huh appears to be the correct answer.

Recycline also make razors and toothbrushes, but I admit they are pretty standard. The toothbrushes are fine, but the razor did break easily after I used it. In fairness, it could be my gorilla-like legs (pre-shaving oil, of course) that broke it. But the end popped off after the third use, so I might suggest that little detail be worked out.

These girly girl products also made it to my mailbox and if you don’t click on that right now you must not want to giggle at their site which asks Do you wash your hair with toothpaste? For women, however, this isn’t really a laughing matter unless they’re with their girlfriends talking about being not so fresh which is, like, every other sentence out of our mouths. Right.

Can’t you just imagine the conversations about Sweet Spot products?

Oooohhhh, girl. I am all about finding out about the pH of my sweet spot. Aren’t you?

Hell to the yes. I am ALL. OVER. smelling like number 11.

Which one is that? The basil grapefruit?

No. Who wants to smell like basil, grrrl? You are outside your mind.

Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.

No, no. Number 11 is the citrus galbanum. Duh. Everyone knows that. This ain’t your mother’s sweet spot wash.

Surely the commercials will be just like this. I’m a geranium lavender gal myself, but you didn’t hear that from me. You did, however, hear me loving all the products. How one reviews this other than to say It’s Good Stuff escapes me at the moment. You ladies will try it if you want so I don’t feel the need to really try to sell this one. You men will ask the women in your life, “What is she TALKING about? Citrus? In that area?”

I’m not certain how eco-conscious Big Bad Mama products are, but I saved this one for last because it’s excellent stuff, but they’re also humorous in their product line. The body wash comes in a beer bottle and smells orangey and clean, but my favorite product by them is the bath fizz. It’s imperative that should you decide to try them that you get it in “Weed” and try just try not to reminisce your high school years or at least that head shop you were so fond of frequenting during your Experimental Years. Or whatever you want to call them.

They are that evocative. And yummy smelling.

Now when was the last time you heard that combination of words?

Most people spend the Labor Day weekend grilling food, swimming one last time before the neighborhood pool closes, and soaking up some sun. I spent it with a gooey substance dripping from my eyeball, sleeping after taking Benadryl, and taking my boys to the Abraham Lincoln Library for a lesson in the consequences of hatred. It was a rip-roaring, helluva fun time weekend.

What I wanted to do was write about these fantastic hot dogs that a nice lady named Britt (if you have an interesting name, I kinda always want to know about you and be your friend) gave me after my visit to California this summer. She assumed, since I was writing about California, that I was a Californian but alas, I hail from the Land of Lincoln. Still, she let me try the Hoffy Extra Lean Hot Dogs and, as a Chicagoan by birth is expected to do, I like hot dogs. There was only a short time in college after I read “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair that I became a vegetarian. That lasted a few years and then one day I drove by a Burger King and the smell was too much for me to put off anymore.

I was sick for three days after eating that double Whopper.

The hot dogs she sent were, without a doubt, the best I’ve ever tasted. I tried them without the obligatory mustard and onions (my current preference) though I get a hankering for a Chicago Style hot dog once in a while and give in to temptation again.

Normally, I’m only sick for a day after a Chicago Style hot dog.

Hoffy Extra leans taste like real meat, they’re not fatty at all, and those suckers are enormous.

So big, in fact, that I posted it here for you. See! Enormous! Huge! And really really good.

Too bad I didn’t grill them up for Labor Day while enjoying some last few minutes of Summer Sun. Instead, we had open faced onion and beef sandwiches with buttery potatoes and watched “Bull Durham” with my mom. That movie has some of my favorite lines ever, excellent music, and not one damn hot dog can be seen in the whole movie.

What kind of baseball movie is that?

*you used to only be able to purchase them in SoCal, but now there is a website to order from with a good introductory offer. Click here for details.

One of the things we’re committed to doing for our very active children is to give them:

1. Plenty of exercise (”Damnit. Go run a lap around the cul-de-sac before I sit on your head.”)

2. Lots of water (”No, you cannot have pop for breakfast. Are you crazy? Pppfffttt. WhatEVER. No!“)

3. Daily vitamins (”I don’t care if it’s not shaped like a freakin’ manga character, just take it.“)

and

4. Nutritional foods. (Must. cross. Cheetos off my grocery list now. You would have to wrestle me to the ground to give up my Twizzlers, though. You do NOT want to go there with me, for I am wicked and will devise ways to put them up your nose when you are sleeping.)

Since I’ve been taking classes, however, Kennimus is famous for his frozen pizza dinners. He’s a damn chef extraordinaire with that remarkable feast.

Because of the Frozen Pizza Marathon my boys are currently competing in, I was thrilled to be contacted by Matisse and Jack’s to try their bake-at-home energy bars. There’s no refined flours (Bad! Bad flour for being refined! Normally, being refined is a good thing, but with flour? Bad!) or hydrogenated oils. It’s like a brownie mix, but you add yogurt, applesauce, and vanilla for the healthiest bars possible. Morgan is the best child chef I’ve ever had who makes a mean egg sandwich, so naturally, he helped in the baking.

He also helped in “product placement”, so this isn’t the best picture, but hey! You get lemons! And my dirty tea kettle!

Morgan proved that he is now to be trusted with scissors. We’ll give him that rusty axe to play with next.

Then, we added yogurt and applesauce to the dry mix.

You must have the very best vanilla. I traveled to Juarez, Mexico for this. (Not really. I was there on a mission trip a few years ago and picked this up at the market and I’m making this bottle LAST. It’s divine.)

Furious stirring isn’t necessary, but he somehow felt manly doing this. Not to worry. No chocolate chips were hurt in the making of these bars.

He did well to spread them in the pan, but, as you may be able to tell, we are using the wrong size pan to do this in so we added some foil to the empty part. We probably didn’t need to do so because the batter was thick and didn’t ‘run’.

After baking them and waiting FOR-EVAH (a la The Sandlot) for them to cool, we forgot to take a picture of the entire pan, so you have to settle for what we happened to leave after trying some of the bars. They were chewier than I thought they’d be, but my mind focused on the This Is Healthy part, so we loved them. You have to refrigerate them after they’ve cooled, but I highly recommend heating them up for about 8 seconds in the microwave (Screw the healthy, right? Don’t worry about those electromagnetic waves and infrared lights. We like our chocolate melted.)

This got the Mocha Family Stamp of Approval (ribbon cutting to take place during a ceremony next week) so we suggest you go buy some. They offer free shipping with 5 boxes or more and you can always try the other recipes they suggest for the mix. You know what really helped to sell it for me? The name. Matisse and Jack’s. Honestly, it doesn’t get any more hip than that.

Since I’m all about food right now I have some requests. Two, to be exact, and if you could leave me some help in the comments I would be eternally grateful and promise never to try that Twizzler trick I mentioned earlier (and that’s not all I know about Twizzler fun, either).

First, I’m going to Kansas City, Kansas next week for a business trip and I have an evening free to myself without a group of people so I need help in deciphering where the very best in rib joints in the city are. Suggestions? Do you know of an excellent place to eat and get ribs? Do you LIVE there and know it intimately?

Second, I’m trying to retain my Super Bowl Appetizer Championship status from last year. Not too long ago someone sent me this amazing recipe for battered onion rings that I have yet to try, but are also too hard to make for this kind of party. So, what is a kick ass recipe that will keep me in the winner’s circle? I mean the very best thing you can think of to eat, you know? While surrounded by lots of other people? Aaaaand alcohol? I will accept soul food recipes, too, seeing as this is the Soul Bowl, but I don’t do chitterlings. Nu-uh. No way. Not happenin’.

My junior high offered a typing class which I took even though my mother taught me the proper way to type much earlier so she could enlist me in some free child labor for the printing business she had when I was a kid. Somehow she was safe from laws against it and didn’t get in trouble for doing so. By the time I took typing class I was ahead of everyone else and was able to write dirty notes to Billy “Gummy Hair” Duffy and amuse ourselves enormously with Muammar al-Gaddafi jokes which I probably barely understood.

Billy got a wad of gum slapped on the top of his head by a girl on the bus ride home when he joked: “Hey, you want to hear a joke that will knock your tits off? Oh. You already heard it.”

His hair grew back like crab grass that year and my amusement of him doubled. Still, he knew how to type fast and became my partner in crime in that class. Remember when we had correction paper to fix typing errors using typewriters? And the white film on it used to rub off on our fingers? Billy and I thought it was funny to take it to the bathroom with us and rub it on our noses so that when we returned our typing teacher thought we had been snorting coke in the toilet stalls.

God, I miss junior high!

Except, I’m sort of still in it. Probably serves me right.

ANYWAY, I type fast and that story was to tell you that I typed Steve Case’s answers to my serious health care questions about his new website. Obviously, I cleaned them up a bit and added some helpful addendums.

Kelly: I like what you have been saying about the “Wisdom of the Crowds” [contributing to the culture we build on the Internet] especially as an educator and the mother of 2 children with ADHD. How can Revolution Health help address issues that are such a gap for parents, teachers, and health care providers? I realize that this is a huge question and I’m asking if you will have places where ADHD questions can be answered for parents and teachers can use it as a resource and doctors will aid in that discussion.

Steve: It is a huge question because health care is a $2 trillion industry and we’re launching the site to be able to help address those issues. We do have a section on each of these divisions partnering with leading non-profit organization to have more of a policy aspect on issues like this. Part of it is just giving parents tools to better understand what might be going on [with regard to] their options – over time we’re hoping to build momentum. We do want to partner with everybody! It’s so fragmented that we hope to be a place this can come together. I’m sure it’s a big number, but if you were to Google ADHD you would come up with too much information.

Kelly: That’s true. There are over 129,000,000 hits on Google for that search.

Steve: That’s a lot! This is where we hope to help.

The site offers a place where you can register and keep a medical profile of your own. Since they employ former insurance company workers who will advocate on your behalf with your own insurance company when you have difficulty, I wondered about how comfortable people will feel about giving out personal information.

Kelly: Are there confidentiality issues with giving out information like that?

Steve: We’ve put together a privacy policy. If you want us to call your insurance company, we do ask that you sign the policy and fax it to us.

My next question came after Jenny asked about the influence that advertisers could have over the site and was a follow-up to his answer about providing advertising from drug companies but not in an unfair manner.
Kelly: Will you have a rating system or a way to determine if this is successful? How will you provide a check and balance for yourself?

Steve: Every article will have a rating system and people can rate them [at will]. We also have Mayo Clinic and about 25 other different sources which will contribute to the site that can be rated. This is the ‘people powered’ aspect of this. Ultimately, people rate doctors and articles and this gives us that kind of feedback.

In retrospect, I was happy with his answers and the way the whole thing played out. If I had to do it over again I would only change the fact that once all of us “clocked in” with our conference calling code that no one gave a BlogHer Reunion shout out and hollered, “Wazzup, girls?!”

It would have also been a great time for a tit joke.

When I think I’m getting too big for my britches and that I’m all that and a bag of chips (my personal bag o’ chips would be the Sesame Garlic Herb Tortilla Chips from Harry & David if you’re wondering - I’m tasty, good with dip, and easy entertaining at it’s best. How many women can claim that?) I remember that I write this small, humble blog on the internet and that I really can’t run around to people saying, “Excuse me, but do you know who I just spoke with on the phone? The founder of AOL, that’s who!” simply because, for the most part, I don’t share the fact that I write with my colleagues. They just see the boring, academic newsletters that I write and trust me, they don’t think they’re all that great.

However, you may be interested in it since you’re here so get your own favorite bag of chips and read on, if you will.

The conference call included Sarah of Sarah and The Good Squad, Jenn of Mommy Needs Coffee, Jenny of Three Kid Circus and me, though we were also to have the brilliant minds of Grace of State of Grace and Mary of Mom Writes who were unable to attend. Let me just tell you that these women are bright and educated and expressive and remarkably concerned mothers who asked some excellent questions.

Via conference call, we spoke with Steve Case who has launched his new health care initiative entitled Revolution Health. He described it as something that’s been in the works for 2 years and has a great concern for health care in general after losing a brother to brain cancer. He even correctly called our system “broken” and has an interest in being a change agent for how our system can be improved.

Revolution Health is a way to empower the consumer to take charge of their health by offering advice, forums, and a way to receive feedback from medical professionals. Mr. Case believes that part of the problem is that not enough emphasis is on wellness and prevention as well as the fact that women are the gatekeepers of healthcare.

Which is why I’m writing about this.

It’s also because I am a teacher and my interest in students getting the proper care for things such as ADHD are of the utmost importance. I want all children to get that help and I want to bridge the gap for parents and educators and physicians. I want all educators to know this is a REAL problem and that they have a responsibility to help it by learning how to teach these children, not stare at it from a distance and admire the problem by claiming that they just don’t know what to do with these kids.

Because I’m here to tell them.

There’s a free year-long membership to the first who sign up to such services as advice, medicine, etc… but check it out for yourself. Tomorrow’s post will include some questions I posed and how he answered them and NO, I’M NOT THE PRESS OR MR. COLBERT so it’ll be neither slanted nor funny. Just honest answers.

All these issues must be important for Steve Case, too, because on the day of his launching this new comprehensive medical website he took time out of his schedule to talk to real women, real mothers, real concerned consumers of American Health Care. He knows the power of what we have to offer and isn’t that feminism coming around to knock on our doors and ask what it can do for us?

It can give us better health care options and create community. Here’s to a healthy you and me both. Minus the chips, of course. All that cholesterol…