Green Options

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If you’re like me, you’ve been watching the skyrocketing costs of both fuel and food and wondering where you’ll be cutting back. For many people, it’s food. Sometimes, eating well can mean eating expensively. They don’t call it “Whole Paycheck” for nothing.

I’m here to tell you there are a few tips and tricks to keeping that grocery bill down while still keeping ethics and the environment in mind. It takes a little more planning, some flexibility and creativity, but you can shave big bucks off your bill if you keep them in mind.

An early spring produce cult-fave with the foodies, ramps have been popping up all over the food blogosphere. The wild leek, a member of the allium family, tastes like a cross between garlic and onion and is snatched up at farmers markets by cooks craving fresh veggies after a long winter.

I combed food blogs for the best ramp recipes so you didn’t have to. Check them out after the jump…

For people who don’t regularly read Vanity Fair, one might think it’s not much more than a fashion magazine, but VF is known not only for high-fashion photo spreads, but for in-depth exposés as well.  This month, Vanity Fair is taking on agribusiness giant Monsanto in Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele’s article “Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear”.

We’ve written about Monsanto’s attempts to control both agribusiness and the public perception of agribusiness.  Shirley wrote about Monsanto’s attempts to keep dairies from labeling their own milk “rbGH-free” and  Beth wrote about Monsanto’s genetically-engineered sugar beets.  Barlett and Steele focus on Monsanto’s tactics of attacking farmers for alleged patent violations and their impact on rural communities, and their article is a must-read for those interested in where their food comes from.

Happy Earth Day! One our favorite local dining spots is both a microbrewery and a leader in using local vendors to source their ingredients. They have a great beer bread appetizer, served with blue cheese butter and cheddar-chive butter. We order it almost every time we go there, and I finally decided that I wanted to recreate it at home. Surprisingly, it was a lot easier than I thought it would be, with almost identical results. If you are looking for an incredibly simple quick bread that uses ingredients you are almost certain to have on hand, this is your recipe. I also easily duplicated the cheddar-chive butter, as well.

We’ve talked a lot about eating seasonally, for the taste, health, and environmental benefits. However, if you’re not a gardener or new to shopping the farmers’ markets, you might be unsure what’s available. For careful menu planners, this can be difficult. Wouldn’t it be easier if a cookbook was organized by season, offering recipes using produce commonly available during each of the four seasons?

Then my mom bought me Mary Beth Lind and Cathleen Hockman-Wert’s Simply in Season for Christmas this year. The concept seemed so logical, I couldn’t believe I didn’t already posses a cookbook organized by season. In fact, there are a few other seasonally-organized cookbooks, but my mom picked this up while they were on vacation this summer, knowing it would be right up my alley. She was right. This vegetarian/vegan-friendly tome is packed with recipes that are easy enough for most home cooks, even beginners, and look (and taste!) downright tasty. Right now, I’m planning both the Lemon Asparagus pasta and the Spring Quiche Trio for upcoming meals, and I’m positively salivating for June’s strawberries, so I can make the Strawberry Brunch Souffle

Spring is almost here, but at least here in St Louis, we’re still facing a few chilly, rainy days. In fact, we’ve had several in the past few weeks. On days like this, I love a steaming mug of veggie chili.

Oh, sure, the Texas chili purists will claim that any chili with veggies ain’t real chili. But, for what it’s worth, this thick hearty stew satisfies the need for a filling, savory, spicy dish, and we call it chili in my house. It is naturally vegan and is really healthy–full of veggies and good-for-you proteins like beans and TVP. It can be made on the cheap with standard pantry ingredients and serves plenty. I like to cook up a pot and eat the leftovers for lunch.

In my quest to live a greener life, my Achilles’ heel is my obsession with print media. We subscribe to our city’s daily newspaper, we get the Sunday Times delivered, and I get approximately eight monthly or bimonthly magazines right in my mailbox. There are also three or four magazines I buy off the newsstand on a fairly regular basis. I love the varying lengths of stories, which perfectly cater to my dynamic attention span. I love letters to the editor and dog-earing pages with things I want to explore further. I love finding a new issue in my mailbox after a particularly long day. I even love the ads.

While cleaning my home recently, I realized just how much paper this leads to each month, and my green guilt set in. Unfortunately, I really, really love both magazines and the daily newspaper. It’s something I am reluctant to give up. Fortunately, there may be a solution that seems almost plausible to a printaholic like me. ReadyMade, a design/home solutions magazine for the DIY set with a sustainable sensibility, is now providing readers with a digital version of its print form. You can see every page, just as it appears in print, in its entirety, starting with the current issue #34, their green design issue.

In another move towards sustainable practices in the restaurant industry, Chipotle Mexican Grill, the fast-casual chain famous for oversized burritos made with fresh ingredients, recently started buying sustainably-raised pork from Joel Salatin’s Polyface Farm in Chipotle’s Charlottesville, VA stores.  Chipotle projects that Polyface will be able to supply 100% of the pork needed for the Charlottesville market. Polyface, profiled in Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, is considered the benchmark standard of sustainable animal agriculture agriculture and gives true credibility to Chipotle’s corporate mission to leave a lighter footprint.

The partnership comes on the heels of almost a year and a half of complex negotiations involving equipment needs, recipes, and transportation issues.  Salatin found that his fine-dining clients, snapped up the choice cuts of pork he had to offer, but the market was not as strong for tougher cuts, such as shoulders and legs.  These tough cuts are perfect for the braising method used in carnitas pork for burritos.

Eating seasonally is one of the best ways to green your diet.  By eating food grown in season, you’re more likely to eat locally, cutting down on the amount of miles your food travels.  Obviously, if you’re getting asparagus in December, it’s probably not from your area, unless you live in Argentina.  Eating seasonally means your product is likely fresher, meaning it’s going to taste better and retain more nutrients.
If you regularly eat in-season, you know that the winter can drag on and the promise of spring produce is sometimes the only thing getting you through long months of squash and brussels sprouts.  When asparagus start appearing on the scene, you know spring has sprung and produce will only get better until after the seemingly far away fall harvest.

If you’re new to eating seasonally, spring is a great time to start.  Personally, the coming of spring is highly anticipated, and the weekly surprise of what’s new to the farmers market just adds to my anticipation of warmer weather.  Here’s five food, their nutritional benefits, and ideas for recipes to get you excited for spring eating.

One of our favorite  dishes in our house are homemade potato chips.  Thicker and heartier than your standard store-bought chips, they’re more of a side than a snack food, and I frequently make them to pair with other veggie-based meals.

Wait.  I know what you’re thinking: making your own chips?  That’s got to be more time-consuming than it is worth.  In reality, it’s quite simple and the results are well worth the time spent.  If you own a mandoline (I do not), it’s even easier.  You can control the fat and sodium content,  and, best of all, you can use whatever flavors go with what you’re cooking that day–it’s a very forgiving recipe (if you can even call it that).  Just slice, season, and bake.