Some people don’t realize that they can have a positive effect on our environment by changing their grocery shopping habits. Here’s five tips you can use for greener shopping.
1. Buy locally and you’ll lessen packaging and transportation costs.
2. Buy concentrated forms and stop paying for packaging water.
3. Buy in bulk and lessen the amount of packaging of lots of smaller packages.
4. Using reusable cloth bags when you go grocery shopping.
5. If you use plastic bags, or even paper ones, be sure to recycle them.

I love coffee and haven’t gone a day without at least one cup in a very long time. I have two cups a day on a typical day. I have noticed for the last couple of years that more and more people seem to buy their coffee while they’re on the go rather than make it at home. I see people lined up ten people deep in the coffee store and 8 cars long on line at the drive through and they’re there every day. I asked someone once why they bought Dunkin Donuts coffee every day and they told me theirs didn’t taste as good. Now don’t get me wrong, Dunkin Donuts coffee does taste good. But it’s too expensive to buy every day. These people could save a lot of money if they made coffee at home. There’s lots of really good coffee makers out there. Anyone who says their coffee doesn’t taste good should try either different coffee or a different machine. I love the taste of fresh ground coffee so I have a coffee maker with a built in bean grinder. It tastes as good or better than any restaurant out there.By making coffee at home you’re saving the trip out, which will cut back spending on gas and coffee as well as your time. Do you buy something out that you could make at home?

There’s a new fast food restaurant in the US called Cereality. It’s a restaurant that serves breakfast cereals. Yes I mean regular boxed breakfast cereals, the kind you get at the grocery store. Their menu consists of a couple of options that are simply two cereals mixed together. There are already several of these restaurants open and more of them are planned. There’s even franchise opportunities for them. I can’t believe people would actually pay to eat out what they can eat anytime at home, and surely for much less money. I wouldn’t go to one of these. Would you? What do you think of this idea?

Where do you keep your cookbooks? I’m always curious to see where people keep their cookbooks. I know some people that keep them on bookshelves like regular books. I have actually run into two people that keep their cookbooks inside the kitchen cabinet. I have a small bookshelf about two foot long that I have on the far end of my kitchen counter near the frig that holds all of my cookbooks. They look nice there but besides taking up space sometimes I don’t feel like looking through book after book for something, maybe a nice French toast casserole. I had an idea for a kitchen appliance that would allow me to get rid of my cookbooks. It would be about the size of a open cookbook but instead of open pages it would have a horizontal touch screen. Recipes could be stored in it like ebooks and you’d just navigate through by touch. It could be connected to the internet or stand alone. The whole thing would probably not require much more computing power behind it than a good pda has.What do you think?

Of course I’m not referring to noses. Or butts. I’m referring to picking your own fruits and vegetables. It’s a fun way to spend a day with family and/or friends and save some money on foods you love. The Pick Your Own website allows visitors to find farms in their area, as well as offering how tos, guides, picking tips and canning instructions. Farm listings are available to the US, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, South Africa and New Zealand. Fruit picking can be lots of fun and fresh fruit tastes soooo good. Have you ever gone picking for fruits or vegetables?