Comfort Food Tips

Do you enjoy comfort food? Here are some great recipes from around the world. Each of these recipes is considered a "comfort food" in their country. You can learn more at The Kitchn.


TOP ROW
1 How to Make Fried Rice - China
2 Cuban Black Bean Soup - Cuba
3 Korean-Style Steamed Eggs - Korea
4 African Beef & Peanut Stew - The Congo and Ghana
5 Gluten-Free Dessert Recipe: Marking's Bibingka - The Philippines

Authentic Spaghetti alla Carbonara


MIDDLE ROW
6 Vegetarian Pho (Vietnamese Noodle Soup) - Vietnam
7 Shepherd's Pie - Ireland
8 Lamb Korma - India
9 Authentic Spaghetti alla Carbonara - Italy
10 Slow-Cooked Boeuf Bourguignon - France

How to Make Baklava



BOTTOM ROW
11 Enchiladas Verdes - Mexico
12 How To Make Baklava - Greece
13 Sauerkraut, Potato & Cheese Pierogi - Poland
14 Thai Green Coconut Curry with Chicken and Zucchini - Thailand
15 Recipe: Salmon and Black Sesame Onigiri (Japanese Rice Balls) - Japan

Making the Arts Festival Green

The Green Crew at Penn State is turning the famous State College Arts Fest into a zero-waste event.  Every year the borough takes on an additional 75 tons in trash from the event.   They are adding recycling and compost bins in the food areas to cut down on waste this year.  For the group to be more affective in the future, it also involves vendors changing how they serve their food at the festival.  This knowledge they will gain this year will hopefully help reduce waste for years to come.  You can learn more at Statecollege.


No disrespect to the unglamorous job the Trash Crew has done over the years keeping our streets clean during Arts Fest, but I'm happy to report that a more relevant group is taking its place: the Green Crew.

The Green Crew grew out of a group that started meeting back in February with the goal of helping the festival become a zero-waste event. I've been following its progress with great interest.

Like many locals, I count Arts Fest as a highlight of my summer. My first stop typically has nothing to do with music or art. It's the food. But I've always been troubled by the waste. Somewhere there's a landfill straining from a mountain of plastic cups built on the purchases at Arts Fest. In fact, the entire borough takes in an extra 75 tons of trash during the festival.

This was equally troublesome to Brad Fey, a local musician and entrepreneur. But instead of complaining, he acted. He contacted the Centre County Recycling & Refuse Authority to see if his goal of a zero-waste festival was even feasible. After a positive response, he approached Carol Baney, director operations for Arts Fest and a friend from Rotary Club. "I thought Brad wanted his band to play [in Arts Fest]," she recalls of the initial conversation. "But he said, 'I'm here to talk about trash.'"

Baney was sold, and took it to the board, which set a goal to refine the initiative in time for the festival's 50th anniversary in 2016.

Fest Zero was born. The group isn't a non-profit, although that's a goal. For now, it's simply a group of volunteers from the community, local government, and university working around a common cause. The biggest changes from last year will be a recycling can at every trash receptacle and compost bins near all the food vendors. "So if you're eating chicken on a stick on a paper plate, you can just toss that right into the compost bin," Fey says. (Assuming that stick is made of wood, he adds.) And members of the Green Crew will be on hand to make sure you know where to dump your items.

The borough will audit its trash during Arts Fest so the group has a starting point to measure its impact. If all goes according to plan, in future years they'll transition to where all the trash cans are just compost cans.

For that to happen, vendors need to change. As a first step in that process, the group is compiling a database of all the materials brought by food vendors. Fey envisions Fest Zero as a partner in guiding the vendors through the potentially costly transition to compostable items. If the group becomes a non-profit and receives grants, it can even offer the vendors these materials at a discount.

While making changes with vendors is still in the future, the group has plenty it can focus on right now. It's meeting with local restaurants, encouraging them to cut back on their waste. Fey happily discovered that Dante's recently launched its own sustainability initiative. In April the restaurant group enrolled in a commercial composting program with the Centre County Recycling & Refuse Authority.

Initiatives like these send a powerful message to others who visit our town: If they can do it do, why can't we? "People are looking at us," Baney says. "This is great opportunity to spread the word." A powerful incentive: That 75 tons of extra trash equates to about $5,000 in added costs.

As for those lemonade cups? It's complicated. The plastic cups can't go in the traditional recycling stream because they're miscellaneous plastic. And if the lemons remain in the cup, they mess up the sorting process at the county level. At a minimum, someone from the Green Crew will be nearby trying to capture the lemons for compost. And hopefully some day we'll be drinking that lemonade from a compostable cup that can be tossed — guilt-free — into the compost bin.

So while you're enjoying the Arts Fest food this year, stop by the Fest Zero Education Booth, which will be manned by student and university representatives from The Sustainability Institute. Even better, join the Green Crew by visiting Fest Zero on Facebook. They'll need a lot of volunteers to make this initiative successful.

We've nearly conquered cleaning up our streets. But our Arts Fest footprint transcends what we can see — and what's too easy to ignore.

Have You Ever Thought About a Yard Sale?

You are out of school for the summer time to have some fun.  This means that it is time for an old past time.  Yard sales will be popping up throughout your town, and we have found some great purchases that can save you money in the future.  Grab your friends and head to the yard sale to save your household money this summer.  Apartment Therapy has some great ideas for your summer vacation.

1. Rugs. Rugs are notoriously difficult to sell secondhand, which is why you will see plenty of them around at yard sale time. Head out for a few Saturdays, you are bound to find a new rug for the kids' room for under $30. I found one recently, a 5x7 foot 100% wool rug for $5! It had been passed over by others because one small corner was a little frayed - a problem easily solved by tucking it under a crib.

2. Furniture: Do you need to furnish your apartment? Yard Sales are the perfect opportunity to find a cheap piece of furniture for your new home. 

3. Old Music: Have you always wanted an old record player or old music from your childhood you forgot about?  This is the perfect place to find that old music for a decent price.

4. Entertainment:  Yard Sales can be a great source of entertainment and a fun afternoon with friends.  You never know what treasures you are going to find!

Your Guide To A Better Night's Sleep

Is your bedroom keeping you awake at night? There are five reasons that may be the cause of your lack of sleep in your own home. This blog has a list of those reasons. It also includes a list of possible solutions that could help you in your quest for a better night's sleep. You can learn more at apartment therapy.

PROBLEM #1: ALLERGIES


Is your stuffy nose keeping you from getting shut eye? Seasonal allergies are one thing, but dust mites are with us all year round. Your bed is Disneyland for those little critters, who thrive on all the dead skin cells your body provides.


Fixes: Vacuum your room with a HEPA filter and clean your bedding as often as you can— including your pillows, which you can throw in the dryer for 15 minutes to kill off any existing bugs. Instead of scented detergent, use a few drops of eucalyptus oil in your laundry. Put hypoallergenic protective covers on your mattress and pillows. And lastly, strip your mattress before you go out of town to give it time to air out. (I won’t rile up pet owners by suggesting you ban furry loved ones from the bedroom, but it’s worth thinking about.) Read more onbedroom allergies here.






PROBLEM #2: LIGHT


Your room is too bright at night. Whether it’s coming from the outside, a nightlight, the television screen, or your blinking alarm clock, any light keeps your body fooled into thinking it’s not sleeping time.


Fixes: Buy really dark curtains, or add liner, to block out street lamps. Also turn off electronic devices and remove anything else that emits brightness. (If you’re worried about getting up in time, try covering your alarm clock instead.) Lastly, swap out higher watt lightbulbs in your bedside lamp for dimmer ones; these will aid the transition as you’re winding down from the day by reading in bed at night.








PROBLEM #3: TEMPERATURE


Some nights you're too hot, and other times, it's too cold. Sleep is induced when you are at rest and your core body temperature lowers. If your heat is on too high (or too cold for that matter), your internal thermostat fluctuates which leads to restless sleep.


Fixes: Everyone is comfortable at different temps, so experiment to find the right one for you. There's no right answer but cooler is generally better - start in the 65 degree range. There are always fans and blankets to help you regulate, but know that bedding material makes a difference too; memory foam pillows and mattresses, for example, are hotter than more traditional ones. If you are still having trouble staying asleep, look into bedding and pads that keep you cooler at night.








PROBLEM #4: NOISE


There’s the 5 am garbage truck variety that’s impossible to ignore. But when it'stoo quiet, the slightest disruption can reach epic proportions and you find yourself focused on that weird hum or dripping faucet. Either way, you need a way to soundproof your sleep.


Fixes: If it’s too loud, wear earplugs as a first resort. Or, try a white noise machine or app —or even a basic fan— to drown out any noises that violate your REM cycle. If it’s really bad, get as far away from the offending noise as possible. Either move your bed to another wall to dampen neighbor noises, or, if you have the option, try swapping your current bedroom with another room entirely. Read more on bedroom noise here.








PROBLEM #5: MATTRESS


Having a healthy, comfortable, supportive mattress is critical to a good night's sleep.


Fixes: Flip your mattress with the seasons, alternating between end-over-end and side-over-side rotation. If it's time for a new one, check out Danny Seo’sgreat tips on mattress shopping. A couple of years ago, Maxwell also experimented with different mattress brands for twelve months and wrote about it in his Year in Bed series.

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to all of the mothers out there! We hope you have a great day with your friends and family.

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to all of the mothers out there!  We hope you have a great day with your friends and family.

Storage In Your Small Space

Are you running out of room to store items in your apartment? Apartment Therapy has some great tips on how to get the most out of your living space. There is always a nook or cranny that become a new organizational home for your items. You can learn morehere.

Use the space above your kitchen cabinets
Pictured above: Loved a lot of the ideas (plus the very cute baby) in My Small Home: Carrie's Small Space Solutions. But there was one idea that stuck out because it was so simple and functional: Don't waste that space above the upper kitchen cabinets, but don't clutter it either. Use a uniform bunch of decorative baskets or boxes to store utilitarian things like light bulbs, tools and other things that you don't need every day. By keeping them uniform you don't overwhelm the senses. We'd suggest doing what Carrie did and leave a little space between each container so it doesn't feel too heavy, either.


Remember that storage is still sometimes display

We loved the idea to remember in How To Deal When Your Closet Isn't in Your Room (or Maybe Isn't Even a Closet). Taryn talked about remembering that in small spaces where lack of closets causes the need to store some items out in the open, it's important to remember that this storage is actually display. Spending attention to make it more attractive will make it feel intentional, and not just like you're living in a closet. The post is talking about clothing, but you can make this argument with just about any object. If you've got to store out in the open — say like your toiletries in your bathroom — create a lovely visual display so that it becomes decoration and not clutter.

You can buy or DIY magnetic knife holders to save space

We always forget about this neat space-saving idea. Perhaps because our parents never used them, but it is a great idea for keeping tools handy and utilize previously unused wall space. And consider expanding the idea beyond knives...what other metal kitchen utensils that you use could be treated this same way? Find options you can buy and DIY here: Small Space Kitchen Tip: Use a Double Magnetic Knife Holder.


Transform your dining room to double duty

We know just about any room can pull double duty in small homes when needed, but we can't think of a better space than the dining room. Why spend energy to transform it into a space you can also do work in? Well because you're probably already using it in that way a little bit anyway, so taking a little extra time to incorporate some furniture that might help you tuck the creative/work objects away when it comes to food time might help keep a compact dining room uncluttered — and more enjoyable — more often. Find an example of doing it right: 5 Double-Duty Room Combos that Always Work.