Hunter's Canvas

Bento!

I'm always looking for better ways to get my food from the store to my apartment and my apartment to my office.   We have the all-important canvas grocery tote, the increasingly-important mesh produce bag and now (by now I mean 2001) there's the absolutely indispensable Laptop Lunch! It's a lunch box with four containers for main dishes and a little container for dressing and such. 

I found this lovely contraption on Flickr where there are many folks posting pics of their bento lunches.  This particularly tasty-looking lunch (I love quinoa!) was made by Bento Jane.

Krugman: Gore Derangement Syndrome

Very much worth reading the entire article, but Krug sums it up nicely:

"Today, being a good Republican means believing that taxes should always be cut, never raised. It also means believing that we should bomb and bully foreigners, not negotiate with them.

So if science says that we have a big problem that can’t be solved with tax cuts or bombs — well, the science must be rejected, and the scientists must be slimed. For example, Investor’s Business Daily recently declared that the prominence of James Hansen, the NASA researcher who first made climate change a national issue two decades ago, is actually due to the nefarious schemes of — who else? — George Soros.

Which brings us to the biggest reason the right hates Mr. Gore: in his case the smear campaign has failed. He’s taken everything they could throw at him, and emerged more respected, and more credible, than ever. And it drives them crazy."

Is it too much to ask?

To have naturally raised meats and organic beans in our burritos?  Apparently not!

I ran into some very nice folks from Chipotle at Farm Aid a couple weeks back (working with OROE to make sure folks recycled/composted at the show).  It was an eye-opening conversation.

I've been going to Chipotle for the last year or so and always felt mildly guilty considering their association with McDonald's.  But the Chipotle peeps gave me the scoop - McDonald's fully divested their shares last year so Chipotle is free to be a great company.  They use local, naturally raised meats as much as supply allows (100% in NY stores), as well as organic beans and rBGH-free sour cream.  Hence their presence at Farm Aid.  They call it FWI - Food With Integrity. 

I had a lot to thank my new Chipotle friends for - besides freeing me from the fast food guilt, they also gave me a coupon for a free burrito and some chapstick ("guac-stick" it's called).  And as if that weren't enough, I went back for lunch the next week and once again got a free burrito - this time for simply bringing back the bag from my previous lunch. 

Check out their fun website. Good stuff.