Young Chefs’ Club

Who’s it for?

Kids who...

·Are aged 5 and up

·Are interested in food and cooking

·Like getting mail

·Like trying recipes tested by other kids

·Enjoy working independently or with family

What do club members get?

·Every month, kids receive a themed box filled with kid-tested recipes, hands-on activities and experiments, and other creative items.

·Explore our digital library of kid-approved recipes, activities, experiments, quizzes, and more! Plus, find each month’s shopping list so you can have all the ingredients(食材)on hand when your box arrives.

·Young chefs share “Make It Your Way” cooking challenges. America’s Test Kitchen experts are always available to answer questions.

How we are different:

·For the first time ever, America’s Test Kitchen, a brand trusted for more than 25 years, has offered its food and science expertise to kids.

·Each and every one of our recipes, activities, and experiments is tested at home (or in our kitchen) by members of a group of more than 5,000 kids across the country.

·Explore our digital library of family-friendly recipes, hands-on activities, videos, and other educational resources.

·We break down the fundamentals of science and cooking in family-friendly recipes. Each box contains projects that range from 15 minutes to a few hours, with recipes that can be cooked again and again.

·We encourage kids’ natural creativity through monthly “Make It Your Way!” recipe challenges. Fees:

·Monthly: $24.99 per month

·Six months: $21.99 per month(Best value-save$18 )

Thailand’s “loneliest tree”, a tree growing on a rocky island only a few meters in diameter, is being seriously threatened by tourists desperate to get a selfie (自拍) with it.

The small patch of land located just off the country’s eastern coast in Trat Province has been called “Koh Khai Hua Roh” because it looks similar to the island featured in drawings of funny scenes involving a man and a woman trapped on an island in the popular Khai Hua Roh comic. The uninhabited island is quite a sight to behold, as it is home to a lonely tree that struggle to live despite being surrounded by salt water. Unfortunately, the tree’s popularity might just be the death of it.

On Tuesday, the Koh Mak Tambon Administrative Organization led a team of Thai reporters to Koh Khai Hua Roh in order to observe the country’s loneliest tree. They knew that photos of the lonely tree shared on social media had been attracting an increasing number of tourists to the island, but they had no idea how much damage that could produce.

According to The Nation, several small branches of the tree were found broken off, the tree’s exposed roots appeared to have been stepped heavily on to the point where the outer cover has peeled off (剥落), and the trunk appears to be tilting (倾斜) more than it did a few years back.

Koh Khai Hua Roh island is so tiny that it can only accommodate up to five people at a time, but local authorities admit that selfie-addicted tourists sometimes crowd there in much greater numbers, with some even climbing the poor tree.

The Koh Mak Tambon Administrative Organization plans to kickstart an educational campaign to hopefully teach people to conserve iconic landmarks like Thailand’s loneliest tree. It also plans to take more drastic actions, like restricting the number of tourists allowed to visit the island and making the island only accessible in certain seasons.

Refill shops have been around for a decade. The first stores were small but appealed to many people who wanted to ditch plastic packaging and be more environmentally friendly. These zero-waste grocery stores allowed people to bring in their own refillable containers to buy food stored in large bins.

While these small shops are common in Europe and the US, they have recently gone from being trendy to being very mainstream. That’s because the UK supermarket giant ASDA rolled out its own chain of sustainable refill shops, according to The Grocer.

These refill stores offer the usual bins and have many household brands without the excessive(过度的)packaging including Kellogg, Yorkshire Tea, and Nestlé. Even Unilever and P&G shampoos and soaps are represented.

“We hope the varieties offered across our range of 100 branded and own-label loose(裸包装的)products can bring together several simple ways for customers to reduce, reuse or recycle at home,” ASDA director of commercial sustainability Susan Thomas told The Grocer.

Cutting back on single-use plastics is a big win for the planet while many people make an effort to recycle. But according to Greenpeace, while the government of the UK claims that 50 percent of household plastics is being recycled, over half of that is being sent to other countries. There is no way to know how much is actually being recycled. The best way to ensure that plastic doesn’t end up incinerated(焚烧), in landfills, or in the oceans, is not to use it in the first place. That’s where refill shops can help.

Many of these shops stock products from brands that are also being enthusiastic about selling sustainably sourced and local products, which helps reduce your carbon footprint. Only buying the amount of food that you actually need will also help cut down on food waste and the environmental cost of food production.

It’s not hard to be poetic about the broad and deep benefits of spending time in natural spaces,from amazing national parks to the simple loveliness of a walk around a city park or tree-lined neighborhood street, and some time working in the dirt of your own garden.

A new study from researchers at Clemson University has found another benefit to simply putting your body in a natural space: it can lower the amount of money you spend on health care.

“The mechanisms linking nature and health are very diverse,” said Matthew H. E. M. Browning, the principal investigator on the study, "but the benefit is believed to be in part because being in green space can decrease stress, promote healthy behaviors and enable you to breathe fresh air.”

Browning and his team used satellite data to investigate how much green space was within 250,500 and 1,000 meters(820,1,640,and 3,280 feet) of five million northern California residents who were insured by Kaiser Permanente. They then determined the costs the insurance company paid out to those same members over a two-year period. They took into account age,gender,race and a number of neighborhood characteristics including population density and education levels.

Even with all these factors included into their analysis, the researchers found that those who lived near the most green space had an average of $374 less per year in health care expenses compared to those who lived farther from natural spaces.

The researchers hope their findings will support public policies that prioritize(优先考虑) natural elements in residential areas. For you, maybe this learning will inspire you to plant a tree or a potted flower today-or create a beautiful garden to enjoy, with a view of some health-giving, green goodness.