Highlights: In Case You Missed It

This week was sort of nuts for me, personally.  It seems that the powers that be decided that, even it was a 4 day work week, the same number of things needed to happen as do in a 5 day work week.  So, there were 3 after school meetings and I had to finalize grades for my seniors and proctor standardize tests which meant writing sub plans and eventually, I looked up from the chaos and it was Friday afternoon.  Thank goodness.

So, in case your week left you buried as well, here’s some of the most interesting things that crossed my reader this week.  You really shouldn’t miss them:

Last Friday was National Donut Day.  I know, it’s disappointing if you missed that.  Brian and I actually elected to skip out on the free donuts at Dunkin Donuts, which is rare.  Nevertheless, you can still enjoy America’s obsession with donuts by checking out this interesting infographic on Huffington Post.

The USDA released a new food “pyramid”, which isn’t a pyramid, but a plate.  As you’d expect, there was tons and tons of press about it.  Marion Nestle’s Food Politics blog has a excellent compilation of reactions to it. 

Over on The Chic Life, Diana has started the Project Veg Up Challenge.  I haven’t written about it here, but I am sort of doing it, to the extent that I’m monitoring how many fruits and vegetables I’m consuming.  It’s depressingly low, despite all the green stuff we take away from our CSA every week.  Anyway, you should join in-the calendar she made for tracking servings is so handy!

There was also a lot of press about how much food is wasted globally as found by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.  I know I’m pretty guilty of this and saying that we don’t have anywhere to put compost in our current living situation is a pretty lame excuse.   Chow highlighted the 7 most shocking food waste statistics from the study and  Grist has an interesting related piece on why wasting food wastes nature too.

Healthy Living Blogs has started a referral program. I joined HLB last fall and it pretty well changed my life, introducing me to local blogger and now good friend of mine, Cynthia, who in turn got me involved with the CDNY Eat Drink Blog ladies. If you’re a healthy living blogger and you haven’t joined HLB yet, sign up to be a member and tell them that I sent you. Then we’ll both get great things out of it.

Finally, there is a minor obsession with John and Hank Green (aka The Vlog Brothers) in our home.  Frankly, I’ve loved John Green since I read all of his young adult books when I was working in a high school library 2 years ago, but we only got into their videos recently.  They post regular videos which are increasingly enjoyable the more you watch, given that you understand more of the recurring jokes.  Anyway, the most recent video from Hank was particularly excellent: