Readit NewsThe Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Miami, Florida (mentioned in the podcast episode) has been hosting a Mango Festival for nearly 30 years. https://fairchildgarden.org/events/mango-festival/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Tropical_Botanic_Gar...
I live in a country which fortunately gets Alphonso mangoes from India. On the few occasions I have offered it to uninitiated guests and colleagues (making sure they aren't allergic first), the reaction has been a wide eyed disbelief of how good this variety is. Of course there are other varieties that are good (Langda is a close second).
If you ever get a box at home, unless rules are set and respected, it quickly becomes a free for all and people who hate welding a knife or peeling a fruit quickly become adept at it.
It is that good.
On a separate note: we live in interesting times where I can almost have a culinary-credo like I want to try the amazing food each place has to offer. Someone needs to put a list of these things - fruits, dishes, what have you and we need a serious conversation about how some of us can sample them from far away.
Imagine how much hardwood you'd suddenly have to cut down if everyone started buying these instead of IKEA furniture.
You can use the price as a rough proxy for resource consumption. In my experience IKEA furniture lasts a good fraction of a lifetime. You can buy several for the price of one of these solid wood furniture, and I think you can also buy several before the resource impact is the same as well.
I'm honestly quite impressed with the engineering they're doing with cardboard these days. We have a coffee table and two wall shelves mounted below a TV.. and we have kids. They get treated badly, and they can take it. I hope to replace the coffee table with something nicer one day, but the IKEA one can get a second life in the basement.
The only thing I would have wished was solid wood is our dining table. The veneer is a bit damaged from moisture or heat. If it was solid wood we could've sanded and treated it.
I think the sustainable thing is a combination of IKEAs approach and solid wood. Every solid wood furniture bought will hopefully reduce the amount of trees we cut down over the long term, if they're well taken care of. Eventually it'll reduce the amount of IKEA-style furniture that has to be made. But right now that the population is still growing so much, and we need so much new furniture for new households, I suspect the best thing is to use the fastest growing wood and use as little as possible of it in the furniture.
Try the IKEA JOKKMOKK. Made with solid pine and stained with clear lacquer. https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/jokkmokk-table-and-4-chairs-ant...
I grew up poor, living on the cheapest possible option for everything, and no option at all for many things. Then I wasn't poor anymore. So I would spend time researching the absolute best toaster oven, say, reasoning that paying more would mean not having to worry about a toaster oven again in my life.
Later still, I got married to someone who grew up in Hong Kong, a city famously filled with tiny living spaces and street markets filled with goods from right across the border in China. Her philosophy, shaped by her upbringing, is that things are generally disposable. She will happily buy a $20 toaster oven from Walmart[0], and do so again whenever she decides it needs to be replaced. At $20 every three years, it would take several decades before she spent more than I did, and in the meantime maybe she has decided she wants different colors, or uses a toaster oven much less and doesn't even need one anymore.
While I look and see waste and a deleterious effect on the environment, she see flexibility and cost savings.
Back to the furniture: part of me wants to see if Ethan Allen is still making high-quality long-lasting furniture here in the USA, and buying a new couch there whatever it costs. Another part is on board with my wife's approach, which is pick the style of couch she wants, buy it cheaply, and just know it's going to need to be replaced in five years, but that's okay, because she'll want a different style then.
0. Literally, $19.96! https://www.walmart.com/ip/Mainstays-4-Slice-Toaster-Oven-Bl...
It's a really good toaster, surprisingly. Still going strong for me, even after 4 years.
There is an electric kettle in the same brand series, also very good. I still use it several times a day.
1. espresso drinks
2. order one shot extra (starbucks will only put 1 shot of espresso in an 12oz tall--so you should order AT LEAST one extra shot).
3. ask for blonde roast, which is actually not half bad. pike place/standard is a disaster.
it will not parallel any craft coffee shop, but this actually makes for drinkable coffee, which is convenient since there are starbucks literally everywhere.
Cafe latte, tall, non-fat milk, one splenda. (This is fairly zero calorie.)
A stronger option is: Cafe latte, tall, an extra shot of espresso, non-fat milk, two splendas.
Ask for it to be made with Reserve beans.