For five weeks beginning January 13th, I’ll be working with a small group of 7th and 8th grade girls interested in fashion. My assistant is a fashion design student from the local high school, a 16 year-old honor student who has already showed me her 23-piece collection.

Together, we’ll engage the kids with recycling and reusing everyday items like milk jugs, candy wrappers, toilet paper rolls and cereal boxes, fashioning them into dresses, skirts, innovative hats and whatever else they come up with. It’s Eco Fashion 101 for budding designers.

Not only do …

Vast, open landscapes, clear blue skies and plenty of space for wild horses to run free: The image is a quintessential part of the American West. Yet with changing environments, those wild spaces and the ability of animals to live and roam are under threat.

This week, officials began a roundup of about 2,500 wild horses from public and private lands in Nevada, positing that the 850 square miles of land is overpopulated and could become unlivable to wildlife and livestock in the next four years. The mustangs will be placed …

Would champagne by any other name taste as sweet? Or toasty, citrusy, maybe nutty with notes of baked honey, caramel and coffee? Maybe. But the world likes to think not. “Champagne” (like Bordeaux, and Camembert cheese) is protected. In most countries it is illegal to label anything but wines hailing from the official winemaking region or “appellation” of Champagne as champagne.

The governing bodies in charge of protecting the wine include: the INAO institute, which administers the appéllation d’origine contrôlée (A.O.C.) law, the Comité Interprofessionel du Vin de Champagne …

The Noughties will go down in history as the decade we spent avoiding our biggest challenge.

The headlines of the decade were the terror attacks on New York and Washington DC on September 11, 2001 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that followed. Meanwhile, we started and ended the Noughties with a stock-market collapse and recession – the dotcom crash of early 2000 and the global financial crisis of late 2008. Understandably, this all consumed a vast amount of our attention and energy.

Yet when historians look back on this era, …

Removing shoes, getting scanned and patted down doesn’t cut it anymore amid tightened airport security following the attempted terrorist attack on Christmas Day. Now, we’re being told to “hold it” during the last hour of flight, and the flying public is understandably pissed off.

While there are plenty of green remedies for bladder infections, there is little to placate the anger and stress resulting from the ridiculously long lines and humiliating security steps all resulting from the human factor: the government and airport employees did not do their job to …

Badgley Mischka Red Carpet (2008)

As an international icon, Barbie has been lucky enough to have designers like Anna Sui, Diane Von Furstenberg and Derek Lam custom-create both lavish ball gowns and wardrobe essentials. I can only hope that of these hip designers, there will be one or two visionaries helping the immortalized Barbie evolve into something more substantial – if she has to be part of our toy line-up, at all.

In April 2010, Barbie will get …

An extra hearty vegetarian (or not) soup that can serve as a one-dish meal, Ribollita is Italian peasant food. It’s a great way to use up stale bread and it provides plenty of nutrient-rich leafy greens. Ribollita is rich and satisfying and the beans provide all the protein you need.

It’s a two-step process, but well worth it. I like to cook dried beans from scratch, but if there was ever a recipe in which you could use canned beans without compromising the end dish, this is it.

Ribollita

Serves 6

1/2 …

2009 was a year of flood and fire, Food Inc. and flu, frugality and food waste, foreclosures and floating islands of plastic. We started the year with the worst global economy in decades but also widespread optimism over the inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States and hopes that the United Nations talks on climate change scheduled for the end of the year might yield concrete results. We ended the year jaded and battle-weary. Most of us are probably ready to put …