The top stories of the week at EcoSalon.

This week, we’re fascinated by big, big furniture and the attraction of simple, hearty, unfussy one-pot meals. All we really want to be doing is warming our feet by the fire with a good book (maybe one of these). Oh, and reminding people that just because it’s cold it doesn’t mean global warming is nonsense. That, too.

We admired the beauty of the 11.6 million square miles of our planet called Africa, in 40 gorgeous photos.

We pondered some of history’s most famous quotes on living small.

Finally, since those posts probably kept you so busy that your Facebook Wall went to hell in a digital handbasket, our editor has a handy and completely sincere guide for turning your unacceptably messy real life into a cascade of Facebook likes. Tell your friends.

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The winds of change are always blowing.

With Occupy Wall Street serving as a gauge for U.S. contentment, it’s not hard to see we just aren’t a very happy nation. As with any cause, however, there are always bands of people who do more than walk the talk – they shout from the rooftops and actively work to move us away from the negative and into the positive.

In Seeing The Gulf From Above, Anna Brones writes, “A picture is worth a thousand words. The expression may sound cliche, but in the conservation movement, it couldn’t be more true.” In her story, Brones highlights Tom Hutchings, who takes Gulf of Mexico visitors up in his Cessna 182, knowing very well the visual power of seeing the Gulf oil spill’s environmental catastrophe from above. Giving people the ability to see outside of their immediate life circle to see we’re all very connected? Now that’s what we’re talking about.

Occupy Wall Street is giving people a voice to express their frustration with the status quo. But who are the leaders and participants and who are they to think they can rally and invigorate when they themselves lack social skills? In Sex by Numbers: What We Can Learn From #occupywallstreet, columnist Abigail Wick writes: “It is my conviction that the quality of our relationships – how we engage with and support one another – can have profound societal implications.”

Vacant spots as eyesores? Seed bomb ’em. That’s what groups of guerrilla gardeners are doing to forcefully create change in their neighborhoods. In Flowers of War: Seed Bombing Gets Political, London writer Sarah Lewis-Hammond quotes seed bomber Vera Zakharov, “Seed bombing is activism. It allows us to continue a relationship with the spaces around us, even if the law says we can’t.”

Writer Scott Adelson did a series for EcoSalon on Angel Investors “examining equity investment’s relationship with businesses that have traditionally been out of its mainstream, including women-owned, green and long-term-growth-oriented.” What Adelson uncovered in his series VC’s, Angels and Investing in Women: What Are They Not Thinking? was pretty startling and worth the read on how successful women are running businesses with little investment from Angels (and how that should change).

Remember the food pyramid when you were little? Well the triangle has changed quite a few times over the years and it’s because food and diets have actually gotten very complex. Writer Anna Brones interviews Dr. Marion Nestle who weighs in on how food guidelines have changed in Foodie Underground: Dr Marion Nestle On The Complexity of Food Issues.

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EcoSalon celebrates its 5,555th post with something groundbreaking like this really weird 5,556th post.

This week marked our 5,555th post and at first, we thought we should run for cover when all those 5’s lined up. After all, freaky things happen when the shapely number rears its big, flat head: in Egyptian mythology people get beaten to a pulp, cylons in Battlestar Galactica get meaner than hell and let’s not forget the satanic pentagram in all its five pointedness.

To celebrate this major milestone, we decided to pull the strangest articles out from the woodworks that we could find. Here are some goodies we hope will make you keep reading EcoSalon until the end of the world happens on our 6,666th post.

This week we got to learn about a very sacred space in a woman’s drawer, the low income pantie housing section, where dreams and romance basically die and tragic revelations about self-worth emerge. In The Psychology of a Woman’s Underwear, we go to that comedic space and listen to the tale of our new writer Jane F. King-Doe.

What do chickens and Jesus have in common? Religion. And according to one eco-fashion blogger who was completely incensed by our article Jesus, Enough With The Chicken, we got a Letter to the Editor from her stating our stance on fast food chain Chick Fil-A was not only wrong, it was just pure blasphemy.

We can totally appreciate the work that PETA does to protect animals but some of their work borders lunacy. In 5 More Utterly Outrageous PETA Stunts, writer Mike Sowden documents PETA’s denial that fish exist, tries to wrap his brain around how dressing up like the KKK helps prevent dog breeding and wrings his hands over targeting children with profusely bleeding cows via video games.

Sexy, sexy, sexy, that’s what garlic is, and cardamom and of course just-out-of-the-oven steaming pumpkin seeds. They are so spicy sexy they can actually get your orgasmic motor running and in Orgasmic Organics: 20 Tasty Aphrodisiacs To Put Sizzle In Your Sex Life we gobble up all the information we can get before we set out to start our (cough) eco-friendly weekends.

If we can’t wear mink we should turn to something furry still like, say…nutria! New Orleans based Righteous Fur says this “colossal waste” of fur from rodents causing major coastal erosion should be recycled into fun hats, bags and other nutria-fur-based accessories. Maybe just clicking over to Guilt Free Fur to see the pictures will be enough for you to realize, fur, any way you slice it is just so, dead.

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A (sort of) vegan-friendly round-up sure to get you talking.

A New York Times article is giving a renewed platform for animal rights activists and vegans worldwide to sound their horns about animals as part of fashion and home decor. With West Hollywood – population 36,000 – leading the charge, Animal Cruelty Activists Spark New Debate For Fashion and want you to pay attention.

To the uneducated, vegan diets are bland, boring and filled with massive amounts of soybean products shaped into blocks that look like astronaut food. In 7 Delicious Meat Alternatives (And Not a Lick of Tofu in Sight), we get to explore quinoa, tempeh and mouthwatering veggie burgers packed with more healthy protein than a meat lover can shake a hot dog at.

When it comes to fashion, eco-friendliness and veganism are often perceived as being in different camps (though some brands are getting better, for sure). Still, it’s a fine line, and in Is Vegan Fashion Sustainable?, we explore why there are still differences in opinion.

Can a principled vegan woman find it within herself to fall for a meat-eating man? “Marinate on that a minute,” says Sex by Numbers columnist Abigail Wick. In Can a Vegan Woman Love a Meat-Eating Man? Wick ruminates “As much as a man’s virtues and joie de vivre might make my heart sing, I simply cannot conceive of spending my life – much less creating a family – with someone who chooses to overlook the implications of his morning bacon and eggs.”

How about if I just pull a quote from the article The Conscious Case Against Veganism: “Eating ethically is not a purity pissing contest, and the more vegans or vegetarians pretend that it is, the more their diets start to resemble mere fashion – and thus risk being dismissed as such.”

And now I’m going to run for shelter.

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It’s not what you think.

Swinging singles? Just by its very sound it seems unsustainable, as if one person can have so much fun, an item should only have a single use or, god forbid, it might take more than one person to save the world. This week’s Friday Five focuses on the extraordinary number one, the loneliest number that you’ll ever do.

As a young woman you had sex just to tell the story. You traveled the world looking for romance finding it in the most unexpected places. Your life was full of it. Your cherished secrets nobody can (to this day) take away but one morning you woke up and realized it had gotten complicated – and maybe even a little crowded. Sex by Numbers columnist Abigail Wick discusses her new life as a single woman in 6 Months and Single: “My habitat is quiet, my heart is crystalline in its clarity, and my mind is no longer buzzing with white noise. It’s just me, my professional ambitions, my new friends, and an abiding sense of silence. ”

We believe there’s a special place in hell for single use kitchen products and thought a nice list with images to show you how dumb we’ve become as a society to want them was in order. Enter The Rachel Ray Garbage Bowl and Other Ridiculous Kitchen Products. If you have any of these things…we don’t want to know.

One of the hardest things you might be faced with as a woman is being single and people not thinking you’re doomed to spinsterhood, not to mention facing people who don’t understand you also don’t want children or the low sex drive that comes with long term marriage. In 9 Things You Don’t Need To Be Happy, writer Kim Derby celebrates celibacy and gives the middle finger to being forced to find a home for her eggs.

You have clothes with only a single use? That is so ’80s. Here in 2011 we like to maximize the use of our clothing to do double and triple duty and how lucky are we that more designers are jumping on the bandwagon to accommodate us. From the Video Vault: Convertible Clothing features designer Lara Miller whose Callie Cardigan made us freak out the first time we saw it in this video.

Critics warn that large-scale eco-communities aren’t all they’re hyped up to be. Shelter Editor, K. Emily Bond, writes that “despite all of your personal homesteading, composting, upcycling and permaculturing efforts, one-off sustainability is simply not enough to make a meaningful impact on the world. Rather, it takes a village to raise the world to a higher standard of living.” In Does it Take an Eco Village to Save the World?, we learn that plus one might just be one of the most empowering things we embrace.

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A weekly roundup of EcoSalon’s top stories.

The Permacouture institute is a transatlantic business, with education programs in both the UK and U.S. Their courses span small scale school projects to university programs, marking seeds at seed libraries for their fiber and dying potential to running workshops like Dinner to Dye For. In this week’s article by London based writer Sarah Lewis-Hammond called Permacouture’s Dinner To Dye For (London Style), she gives us a first hand look at what dinner is like when “dying” is a main course.

In the latest assault on reproductive rights, losing a pregnancy could mean serious legal consequences for the mother – even the death penalty. In Legislating Misogyny: Miscarriage Could Now Become A Crime (Really), Senior Editor Andrea Newell writes “As you cry for your loss and for the child you will never know, a male police officer arrives and asks you, ‘What did you do to cause this?’ As you are trying to come to terms with your own unfounded feelings of guilt, a man is putting it into words and demanding answers, never mind the fact that in most cases doctors cannot determine the precise cause of a miscarriage. Despite that, the burden is on you to prove that your behavior did not in some way cause your pregnancy to terminate, or you could face life in jail or the death penalty.” A controversial topic and one that has us all talking (and screaming).

HeARTbeat columnist Dominique Pacheco writes this week about Posies for Predators and questions whether colorblindness lends some advantage to seeing the world. In HeARTbeat: Doris Mitch’s Series Posies For Predators Asks “Can You See Red & Green?,” Pacheco writes “And so Mitsch’s series asks us to consider her musings. Though the answers may be harder to suss, she is perhaps encouraging the other 92 to 93 percent of us to understand the striking differences of color recognition as we contemplate her luscious images stripped of their ‘natural’ color. Or, at least our perceptions of it.”

“Local” is the new “global” and fancy is put on the back burner for simpler, more laid back food. We like this (as much as we appreciate a meal with all the aesthetically pleasing trimmings). In Foodie Underground: Haute Is Out, Fun Is In, food columnist Anna Brones says the push for local might be because of the down economy but no matter, “it’s empowering to know that food change could come from the ground up. No longer dictated by big restaurants, it’s the smaller, more local operations that are making a difference and the rest of the world is taking notice.”

In Sex By Numbers: One Night Stands, columnist Abigail Wick might just have us at one night stands. Who hasn’t had one glorious night? Wick writes “In recent weeks, a trend emerged among this column’s readers: namely, one-night stands. Whether you’re actively relishing in its minimal-strings-attached pleasures or simply curious about how to play the field, it seems ladies are of the consensus that life might be sweeter if you adhere to this adage: Why buy the bull when you can just have it for sport?” A must read.

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A weekly roundup of EcoSalon’s top stories.

Anything But Shorts, Please is a fun look at a summer trend we simply cannot embrace unless hiking, biking or post surf: shorts. Instead, we give you a nice round-up of some great skirts that will love you for who you are and add a little more style when cruising about town.

EcoSalon Editor-in-Chief Sara Ost writes that DailyWorth is a “fuss-free, no-nonsense, wouldn’t-even-think-about-patronizing financial tips, guides and advice for women. From growing your savings, making your money work for you (instead of the credit card company), and ensuring you negotiate a pay raise on par with the guys, DailyWorth takes women and money seriously. Because we’ve come a long way, baby, and so have our bank accounts.” Don’t you owe it to yourself to know more about what your money can do? Read the article here to find out more.

Fast furniture retailers show no sign of slowing down, but the essence of slow furniture is something we can settle into. In Slow, Meet Furniture. Furniture, Meet Your Maker, Shelter Editor K. Emily Bond writes: “Like the slow food movement, the slow furniture movement is sweeping cities from Los Angeles to Toronto and is a reaction against mass-produced, cataloged, assemble-it-yourself, “disposable” furniture. Slower also denotes organic, as in the fabrication process is completed with human hands using sustainable materials. Slow food advocates seek a connection to the origin of each meal; slow furniture makers identify with their raw materials.”

You might have seen the headline, All We Are Saying Is Give Peas A Chance, and thought columnist Susan Goldberg was really into The Beatles – but no, she’s really into not tricking kids into eating veggies. Goldberg writes: “Besides the inherent ethical issues of deceiving one’s offspring, the problem with tricking children into eating vegetables is that they will grow up completely unaware that they have ever eaten or enjoyed a vegetable. If you steam, strain and puree spinach only to hide it in brownies, your kid will have no idea that he likes spinach – he will only know that he likes brownies. With childhood obesity at epidemic levels, do we really want to push more desserts on impressionable young people?”

In this week’s Sex By Numbers: Taking You For Granted, writer Abigail Wick encourages us to stop wasting time being so self-conscious and instead, live life to the fullest. She writes: “It’s this disproportionate focus on perceived lack that has really started to rub me the wrong way. Rather than celebrating their abundant gifts, there is a systematic zeroing-in on self-doubt. It frustrates me to see lovely, lovable female friends mired in such petty preoccupations. ‘Wake up!’ I want to scream. ‘Stop taking it for granted, stop thinking about yourself so much, stop this self-indulgence. Don’t wake up 30 years hence and rue the potential and pleasure you frittered away in a misery of your own making.’”

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A weekly roundup of EcoSalon’s top stories.

Conscious Dying: The Right To Choose is a sensitive examination of physician-assisted suicide. Libby Lowe writes: “Jack Kevorkian’s recent death brought back a flood of memories for me. He was my grandmother’s hero. While she was admittedly—and quite proudly—a touch twisted, I happen to agree with her and Jack: We should have a choice when it comes to end of life decisions. Growing up with her in my life, it was impossible not to see suicide as an option. Our first conversation about this took place when I was four. She explained to me that it would be up to her, that made sense to me then and it makes sense to me today.”

In Part 4 of our series on The Post-Recession Fashion Industry, we take a look at the new Sewing Circle Rebellion and ask the question: “Did the recession birth new DIY designers tired of being branded with corporate logos?” Certainly in times of economic despair, there will always be a surge in the use of hands to quell the storm of financial uncertainty and to give meaning to otherwise challenging lives, but this new generation is more rebellious – and business-savvy – than ever.

Shelter Editor K. Emily Bond interviews Todd MacAllen and his creative partner at Molo Design, Stephanie Forsythe, about the Nebuta House in Aomori, Japan. In Merging Form And Function, The Nebuta House Captures The Japanese Spirit, Bond gets the Molo partners to discuss “the mercurial nature of the Nebuta House project, its new function as a community cultural space, and what he learned about the Japanese spirit along the way.”

This week EcoSalon Launches Our New Foodspotting Channel to help you navigate your way through the foodie world. As columnist Anna Brones writes: “In need of a place to eat? Use the mobile app to help you track what dishes are close to you and what looks appetizing. It’s visual, it’s positive, it’s global and we are in love with it.” To celebrate the official launch of our new EcoSalon Foodspotting channel, we want to hear what local foodie destinations you love. Is it a taco truck, a hole-in-the-wall vegan joint or a wine bar with a local selection of wines and cheeses? We want to know! Submit your own list of Top 5 Locavore Picks from your city and we’ll compile a Readers’ Picks guide with a selection of our favorites. Even better, the person with the most intriguing list will win a Root of the Earth Platter from our sister company, VivaTerra.

From Vegan Women Loving Meat-Eating Men: At the beginning of a relationship, any faux pas is sufficient grounds for termination. Columnist Abigail Wick writes:  “Love isn’t the exclusive domain of romantic partnership. Love is a choice about how you will show up in the world. Love drives my opposition to the death-penalty in America; it governs my decision to ride a bicycle rather than drive a car; and it motivates me to extend equal consideration of interest to animals. I am an animal. I am also an animal who doesn’t eat other animals.”

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A weekly roundup of EcoSalon’s top stories.

As one of the most sustainable cities in the U.S., it’s not hard to fall in love with Austin. In fact, the love is so strong that 1,500 people move there weekly. In Austin: Texas’ Most Sustainable Oasis, our new EcoSalon writer, Shira Levine tackles all the reasons why people do consider it an oasis and what her own trek was like while there recently.

Since 1995, Japanese artist SASAKI has been creating portraits from human heartbeats, which he does by spraying a steady stream of paint to the sound of beating hearts. HeARTbeat columnist Dominique Pacheco writes in HeARTbeat: Sasaki connects with heartbeat Portraits, “What can one expect from a live Heartbeat event? During a recent 6-day workshop, Sasaki gave us a taste by creating ‘Heartbeat Portraits’ of 139 participants. A pulse monitor was attached to the finger of each individual and the measured signal was output as audio in real time through a set of speakers – the sound and rhythm echoing and reverberating throughout the space.” The result is a multi-sensory experience unique to all involved.

In Part 3 of The Post-Recession Fashion Industry: A Return To Nature, we again look at how the fashion industry is emerging from its cocoon post-recession, a changed sector where consumers are more cautious, manufacturers are on their toes and designers are struggling to stay afloat doing business as usual. In this five-part series, we take a hard look at the fashion world, speaking with industry leaders, luminaries and experts. This week we asked: Now more than ever, is eco-fashion inextricably linked to conscious connections with land and place?

This week marked the summer solstice, and if there’s any place that knows how to celebrate this time of year, it’s Sweden. Foodie Underground columnist Anna Brones writes: “Its northern latitude makes the winters dark and long and the summers light and short, which means there’s plenty of reason to celebrate the official start to the summer season which kicks off at midsommar.”

In Foodie Underground: Celebrating Midsommar, we learn all about this Swedish food fest and even learn a few recipes.

EcoSalon Senior Editor Kathie Butler writes, “If you are an American woman who decides to get married, you will likely change your name. In fact, three million American women do so every year, roughly encompassing the 90 percent of women entering matrimonial bliss. This leaves the 10 percent of women who decided to keep their birth surnames, or the men who decide to change their own, navigating an interesting cultural landscape.” In 7 Reasons Married Women Keep Their last Names, Butler makes us reflect on the history of how this whole tradition even started.

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A weekly roundup of EcoSalon’s top stories.

In Part 2 of The Post-Recession Fashion Industry-Discounted Sells, we take a look at how the fashion industry is emerging from its cocoon post-recession, a changed sector where consumers are more cautious, manufacturers are on their toes and designers are struggling to stay afloat doing business as usual. In this five-part series, we take a hard look at the fashion world, speaking with industry leaders, luminaries and experts. This week we asked: Has the recession turned us into cheapskates so we can feel like fulfilled consumers?

At the forefront of the film industry is an upbeat environmental consultant, Lauren Selman, CEO and Producer of Reel Green Media, an organization designed to “help green the entertainment industry both on and off screen and create a new culture of entertainment that is committed to environmental protection and sustainability.” In Shade Grown Hollywood: Can A Film Shoot Ever Really Go Green? columnist Kathie Butler had the opportunity to speak with Lauren, who took her through the greening of Hollywood and the weirdest thing she ever had to recycle on set.

We never know what columnist Dominique Pacheco is going to come up for her weekly HeARTbeat. This past week we got to learn about Suzanne Tick’s weavings made from discarded materials. Pacheco writes: “The ethereal quality of thin metal doesn’t immediately give way to the knowledge that the medium is recycled from discarded coat hangers from dry cleaning shops. In fact, 2,555 dry cleaning wires make up RefuseDC, which was commissioned for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Offices in Seattle.”

Luckily this week, food columnist Anna Brones did a round up of The Top 10 Stories In Food You Might Have Missed. Brones writes: “In honor of food, and given that it’s the season for dinner parties and farmers market strolls, here are the top 10 food stories that you may have missed the first time around but are certainly worth a read, be they thought provoking political pieces, or just reminders of why we love food.” Happy reading!

Ever wonder what men think about when it comes to sex and love? Relationships are tricky but one thing we love at EcoSalon is that our columnist Abigail Wick is never afraid to dive in and attack delicate issues. In Sex By Numbers: Hot German Men In Cold Northern Climes, Wick interviews four Northern European men who offer insight into their culture’s subtle approach to love and loyalty.

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