Guest column by Scramble intern Molly Rubel  Nearly three million Americans are allergic to nuts, including me!  A common misconception is that nut-allergic people are only allergic to peanuts, but many of us are allergic to every kind of nut. If I were to eat a nut, I would go into anaphylactic shock, which means that my throat would close up and I would not be able to breathe. It’s a terrifying thought, not only

For most of us, hosting a traditional Thanksgiving dinner is a formidable, if not stressful, event. In addition to the cooking, there are so many details to plan from the decorations to the shopping, not to mention the family dynamics that can come into play or that all of this is often prepared for much bigger crowds than we are used to. We Scramblers know that planning and shopping ahead is the key to saving

Tomorrow Halloween will be over; the kids will be coming down off of their sugar highs, you’ll be removing spider webs, bats and ghouls from your front yard (don’t forget to save them for next year) and trying to resist eating all their candy.  Your pumpkins will be shaking off the festivities by starting to decompose. Now I too have been guilty of leaving the carved pumpkins on our front stoop until they turn black

I grew up with cloth napkins. But when my kids were little I couldn’t quite face the idea of adding cloth napkins to my weekly laundry rotation. But it killed me that we were going through so many paper towels and napkins. So I asked my friends on Facebook and Twitter, who assured me that using cloth napkins is hardly any extra work and that if you take them out of the dryer and fold

Special post by Carrie Witkop In my urban neighborhood, just outside of Washington, DC, and just inside the large freeway known as the Beltway, I am known as the composting queen and an environmental pioneer because of some of the ways I save resources and even use them to beautify my yard.  Through composting, mulching and collecting rainwater, I reduce waste and redirect it to growing beautiful fruit trees and flowers and creating an urban