Fantastic. Thanks.
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I figure we have been using the poly boards for many years and at our age any relevant damage probably has been done and there is not much to gain from getting rid of these very convenient tools . I also hate the idea of cutting on the beautiful boards my dad made from the trees in the yard I grew up in.
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Not sure what kind of tea you’re doing but at least for me the infusers tend to be way too small and the tea doesn’t have room to expand. If you wind up needing something a bit more spacious, I highly recommend grabbing one of https://www.hario-usa.com/products/maru-chacha-kyusu-tea-pot?variant=35415761453219. I have the 700mL version and use it daily to brew oolong (7-8g of leaves depending on the variety and water up to the neck, which yields about 2 normal American-sized servings).
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I got this one, just right for my teapot. Teas…Mainly Oolong or Darjeeling.
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I gave up tea for breakfast. I’m liquidating my collection of fine Burgundies instead. My internist literally asked me what I had changed in my diet – numbers all around looked better and they weren’t bad to start with.
Tea is an afternoon break for me. The morning is devoted to a pot of French roast. I wish I could afford decent Burgundy and had a place to let it age, but good 4-6 YO Willamette Valley Pinot Noir is easy to find and not a hardship. When I want something more intense, I love the various Zins from Ridge. I would like to drink more Cabernet Sauvignon, but most of them are just too fruity. I like a more austere style, and there are not many California wineries still going that route. Clos du Val is a relatively affordable exception. Sadly the big California Cabernets that can go head to head with fine Bordeaux are ridiculously expensive when first released and still need to sleep twenty plus years. Sadder still will be that most of them will be consumed before they are five, just because they cost $200. I’d rather have a five year old Paso Robles like Daou and spent the other $175 elsewhere. Of course, none of these should be served in the presence of plastic cutting boards. It would just be wrong.
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So, what do you do with them? And why did your dad make cutting boards if he thought they’d never be used and enjoyed?
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I do woodworking. I have made multiple things for myself and my kids.
I would be disappointed if they simply stuck them in a closet and never enjoyed using them.
they were made with love and intended to be enjoyed.
I have tools and ‘stuff’ passed down by family since gone, it’s nice memories when they come out to be used and live again.
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My father in law is remembered to my mother in law, “Why do you always have to save the hell out of nice things?”
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My mother would insist on saving new clothes in a drawer … many I outgrew without ever wearing. When shopping for new shoes, I’d want to wear the new ones right out of the store.
I believe in buying fewer things of good quality and hanging onto them, but using them, of course.
On holidays some have suggested that we just use paper plates!!! No way.
I have a nice wood cutting board that I use daily. It’s so superior to plastic.
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the definition of ‘things’ is pretty broad.
this is a ultra-non-descript wood mallet from my father-in-law.
of all things, I had an exceptionally good relationship with my in-laws - so it has a lot more sentiment attached than appears in the pix.
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I have a stack of quilts that are at least 100 years old as best as we can tell.
Theyre proudly on my bed in my primitive camp at my reenactment events.
Somehow I picture the women who made them shaking their heads that I turn off the modern world to live without even fewer amenities than they had, but hopefully hiding a smile that their quilts are a part of it.
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Where are you guys finding natural rubber cutting boards?
Just today, I have been unable to find any cutting boards made with natural rubber. I found a few expensive Japanese sites offering “rubber” cutting boards, but when I drilled down into the details, the rubber was synthetic, not natural. So, it seems these are plastic, not rubber.
I ordered a set of food grade silicone cutting boards. I recently noticed my homemade wheat noodles had attractive bright blue speckles, just like the bright blue plastic board I roll them out on. So, the hunt was on for better, non-shedding flexible plastic boards.
I use old technology wooden cutting boards (walnut) for most actual cutting, but the flexible boards are useful.
I have that tea strainer and like it. It infuses easily and cleans up easily. Now I can only wonder why I didn’t get one 40 years ago 
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I’ve had a few glass teapots with glass inserts for the loose tea; whenever the insert would break, it could not be replaced.
In about 2017 I bought this German glass teapot at Yank Sing Restaurant (when you buy it there, they remove it from the box to show you it’s completely intact!). I use it almost daily and nothing has broken yet!!!
I love steeping the tea in glass.
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Trying to avoid microplastics is futile. They are everywhere. They are in the rainwater that falls in the Canadian wilderness. They are in everything you eat and drink and everything you are. The ancient Romans had ubiquitous lead poisoning. Our poisons are chemical wastes and microplastics.
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Couldn’t agree more.
That is oversimplified. It’s not always black and white. Yes, you can’t completely avoid microplastics but at the same time you can do relatively easy steps to try to minimize the amount of your intake (limit plastic “equipment” in the kitchen, highly processed food etc).
There is little doubt that the amount of exposure is correlated to your risk of negative effects on your body
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well, the curious thing is . . .
all the current literature/research/etc is
“linked to”
“suspected as”
etc etc etc
now . . . I totally agree . . . ‘un-natural’ stuff in your bloodstream is really not the best idea . . .
however comma but and all that - I’ve not seen a single non-fraud-buy-my-suppliment that has established, , , for example , , , nano plastics in your brain cause x…y…z…
or whatever.
it’s a bit like double masks to protect against covid . . . popular plausible claim, no proof - actually the absence of ‘proof’ makes it super-ultra fake . . .
That’s the typical argument that something can’t be true because there is no “clear” link from a disease to a specific “starting point”. What most people tend to forget that there is rarely a clear “human” link between a disease and a possible cause as this would require sufficient human clinical trials but in these specific cases it would be highly unethical to run those studies. The next best thing to show potential causations are animal studies - they have their obvious advantages (ethical less problematic than human studies, cheaper, faster etc) and disadvantages (an animal isn’t a human etc) but are required for any clinical trial any organization wants to run anywhere because by now we have a pretty understanding how to interpret those animal
study results.
There are a significant number of animal studies run by independent labs that show a very high likelihood of a direct connection between microplastics and a number of diseases. If you run searches in SciFinder or Pubmec you will find them all, here is just one of many for the connection with Alzheimers
Based on these numerous animal studies of independent labs in peer-reviewed journals across a number of diseases there is relatively little doubt in the scientific community that exposure to microplastics have a high likelihood to be one factor for a number of diseases
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