Cooking’s always an effort for me, so whenever I come across a delicious, easy recipe, I like to share it. Orzo salad is my new favorite summer meal. I like doubling it and eating it for lunch all week long. And—fair warning—I plan on bringing it to every potluck barbeque that I go to. Thanks to Delicious Dishes for the recipe. Enjoy!

 

Easy Orzo Salad

1/2 pound orzo
1/3 cup pine nuts
1 garlic clove
1/4 cup basil
1/2 pint cherry tomatoes
1/4 pound feta cheese
1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons white sugar
salt and pepper to taste

1. Boil orzo 6-8 minutes, drain, and rinse with cool water.
2. Toast pine nuts in skillet.
3. Mince garlic and chiffonade basil. Whisk together garlic, vinegar, oil, and sugar, and add salt and pepper to taste.
4. Quarter and salt and pepper the cherry tomatoes. Crumble the feta. Toss everything together with the cooled orzo.

By the way, the dressing may be the most delicious one I’ve ever made. (I think sugar may have been the ingredient I was missing before.) I make extra to keep in the fridge for salads.

Okay, okay so these are technically Sunday Green Links. I’m in the middle of redesigning the blog, and that and real life are interfering with my regular posts. Sorry! But you can look forward to a new design in a week or two.

• Bike Your Way Green – Smart Family Tips. I’m a little obsessed with biking lately, so it’s nice to read about others who are obsessed, too.
• Is an Oil Spill Ever Good for Animals? – Slate. Good news? Bristle worms thrive in polluted environments, and help improve conditions for the comeback of other animals.
• Chicken Expert Gail Damerow Answers Newbie Questions – Grist. I especially love her design for a chicken coop.
• Sweet Honey on the Block – New York Times. New York is now allowing beekeeping in the city.
• Finding of Invasive Beetle in Boston Sets off Alarms – Boston Globe. Asian longhorned beetles have been found in red maples in Jamaica Plain.
• Utilities Say They’re Better Prepared than in Past for Heat Waves – Boston Globe. This is in part because of energy-management companies like EnerNOC that contact large power users to reduce demand when the grid reaches its limit.
• Roof Gardens Are a Growing Component of Restaurants’ Usage of Local Sources – Boston Globe. This is so cool.
• Savers Takes on Mass. Stalwart Goodwill – Boston Globe. Intellectually I know shopping at thrift stores is better than buying new, but it takes so much longer, and I hate shopping.
• UPS’s Green Shipping Program – The Greenest Dollar. I like that UPS is taking carbon emissions of shipping into account.
• Vegetarian Diet Key to Living Past 100? – Change.org. Unfortunately, I don’t have a family history of longevity, I drink, and I’m an atheist, so being vegetarian won’t much increase my chances of hitting 100.

In other news, I’ve got a guest post on Cheap Like Me: 5 FAQs about Vermicomposting. Thanks, Cheap Like Me!

That’s all for now. As usual, if you find something interesting, send it my way.

There aren’t many days when I really miss air conditioning at home, but Tuesday was definitely one of them.

Unlike boxy modern condos, our apartment was built pre-a/c, so it’s designed for air flow. An open floor plan and lots of windows allow breezes to blow from one end of the apartment to the other. We’re on the first floor, so we generally stay cooler, and we can open the door to the basement to let the cats cool off down there. Second-floor decks shade the windows on the front and back, and we close the blinds on the sides of the house getting direct sunlight. Ceiling fans in the bedroom and living room move air when we need it. If the heat gets really bad we use a window fan, too, and showers at night help us sleep. All these things make our apartment comfortable on all but the hottest days.

Then there are days like Tuesday, when there’s no breeze and the humidity’s so high that the fans don’t make a difference. That’s when we go to a movie, mall, or restaurant—some public place with a/c.  It does feel a little hypocritical refraining from  a/c at home and encouraging it someplace else, but I guess using communal a/c is more efficient than having our own all the time. And many large electricity consumers, like malls, participate in demand response. They get discounts on their energy bill for being responsive to utilities’ needs. If there’s a danger of electrical demand reaching capacity and triggering a power outage, these customers are asked to reduce their use. If only they could be that efficient the rest of the year!

I’ve decided I’m a bad-news-first sort of person.

• Eastern Bank to Buy Wainwright – Boston Globe. Noooooooo…! I guess now I have to do some research on Eastern.
• Big Ag and Factory Farms Create Acid Rain – Change.org. Modern acid rain isn’t sulfuric acid, but nitric acid, created mostly by fertilizer.
• Turtle Deaths Called Result of Shrimping, Not Oil Spill – New York Times. More than half of the dead turtles studied in the gulf have died because of shrimp nets, not oil.
• Stores See Google as Ally in E-Book Market – The New York Times. Google will allow independent bookstores to sell the company’s ebooks on their websites.
• Paths to Lower Resistance – Boston Globe. Our Nokians weren’t on the list, but it’s good to see Consumer Reports factoring rolling resistance into their tire recommendations.
• Lightbulbs to Get Nutrition-Style Labels Next Year – Treehugger. The labels look really clear, too. Do you think this will make more people use fluorescents?
• How to Make Watermelon Rind Pickles – The Greenest Dollar. I’m bizarrely fascinated by this. I might try it.
• Why Bicycle Crashes Happen, Part Two – An Adventure Called Bicycling. Only 17% of bicycle crashes involve cars.
• Bicycle Highways – Slate. I have to admit to riding on the sidewalk across the bridge yesterday (there was a bus/narrow bike lane issue), and it felt so much safer!

Why are you still reading this? It’s a long weekend. Go outside and enjoy it!

I feel kind of bad that I’ve had my bike for over two months now and I haven’t lubed the chain yet. To be fair, I did take it back to Cambridge Bicycle for a free tune up just a month ago. But I’ve read that you should lube the chain at least once a month, and it’s recommended that you do it every time it rains. Lubricating the chain cleans off the grit that could damage the chain and gears, reduces the chain’s drag, and stops that irritating clicking that develops over time.

It seems like it should be really simple, but I’d never done it before, so I did some research. Here’s what I found to do.

• Clean your chain. I don’t go off-road, so I just did this with a damp rag, but I’ve read of people using a toothbrush, soapy water, or a degreaser. Question for bike people: Should I clean my chain more thoroughly? How do you clean yours?
• Put a drop of lube on each link of the chain. Hold a rag under the chain so the lube doesn’t drip in the tire. This could make your brakes slip.
• Spin the chain around a few times. And spin it through each gear. I forgot to switch gears the first time I did this and while second sounded great later, third still clicked. It’s a good reminder.
• Wipe the chain off with the rag. If you leave excess lube on the chain, it picks up dirt faster.

That’s it. It wasn’t even all that messy—the rag under the chain keeps the lube from dripping everywhere. I used Pedro’s Chainj, because the guy from Cambridge Bicycle recommended it. I know now not to use WD-40 (no thanks to my nephew!), but there seems to be a lot of debate about wax vs. vegetable-based vs. synthetic. What do you other bikers use?