Green Options

We are obsessed with food-based fibers around here! From banana yarn to pineapple cloth, I’m starting to wonder if we’re feeling more hungry than crafty.

Of course, when Kelly hipped me to coir, a natural fiber made from coconut, I couldn’t pass it up!

Going to a body and nutrition expert with my husband is one of the best things we’ve done for ourselves. What was the key take away? Warning! Turn Alkaline!

Turn Alkaline? Are we magicians? Well according to biochemists we are! You can change your body chemistry with what you eat!

Chemicals have seeped into foods, air, and water, which in turn lower our system’s ability to control the chemistry of our body fluids, increasing illness and chronic disease.

The sad fact is that most food consumption in the wealthiest nations has shifted from nutritious raw foods to low nutritional value processed foods and we need to shift it back. Now that our total biological terrain is at risk, we urgently need to do some clean up by shifting our body chemistry back to the raw, organic foods it was designed to function on as we’ve evolved.

Below I’ve listed out a quick list of the good foods (alkaline) to treat your body to often…

Summer is starting to wind down, and it’s time to say goodbye to weeks of eating far, far too much delicious ice cream. Thanks for all of the great comments and suggestions. You guys really helped take this challenge to the next level!

After six weeks of grueling, scientific research, here is my favorite flavor and the runner-up:

It’s been hovering in the upper 90s here in Atlanta, and weather like this makes me crave ice cream like no other. This year, I’m on the hunt for my favorite vegan ice cream! The plan is to try new pints each week and share my findings right here. I know, it’s a tough life I’ve got.

This week I tried Luna & Larry’s Coconut Bliss, another coconut-based ice cream, on a suggestion from commenter Hungry Hungry Veganos. Coconut Bliss is soy- and gluten-free, and they use some fair trade ingredients. We used to get coconut ice cream from time to time when I was growing up, so feeling a bit nostalgic, I picked up a pint of their Naked Coconut variety to try it out.

So, let’s see how it stacks up!

My kids love to make muffins, and one of their favorite vegan recipes is for chocolate chip muffins. We like to put a special dash of bran on the bottom and a dash of coconut on top for an extra treat.  If you’ve never tried chocolate chips in a muffin, you will be pleasantly surprised!  These muffins are quick and easy to make, but be warned:  they will be eaten up quickly!

Raw nuts are a healthy addition to any diet, and in my house we go through them almost faster than we can buy them.  They’re a great snack on their own, added to recipes, or turned into milk.

Every week after I’ve make homemade nut milk (our favorites are almond or Brazil nut) I’m left with nut pulp I’ve strained out of the milk mixture.

This pulp (which by the way can be frozen for later use) is great when dried and ground into nut flour, or used in recipes like the raw truffles my family enjoys so much.

This recipe is quick, easy, healthy, and delicious!

A team of researchers at Baylor University, Texas, have figured out a way to make car parts from coconuts, opening the door to the replacement of environmentally damaging plastic with an abundant, renewable resource.

The team have also created biodiesel from coconut oil, and are confident the new fuel could be an economically viable substitute for gasoline, as well as a vital source of income for more than ten million coconut farmers worldwide struggling on tiny annual incomes, typically as little as $500.

Simple Shoes such as the fuzzy ones shown above, are not only super cute they are made out of smart materials:

The shoe image courtesy of Simple shoes, is an adorable design! Now there are more ways than ever to measure our eco footprints, and with footwear no less! Did you know you can recycle shoes? Nike has also recently started a shoe recycling campaign. With large retailers on board,

This is a story that will likely make you hungry, inspired, and hopefully thinking a little broader than you started. This is a story of passion and mystery, with a twist at the end. This is about an ice cream that uses no dairy, yet tastes as good as, if not better than its milk based counterparts. And you won’t want to choose it because you can’t have dairy, you’ll just like it because it’s good. Or so that’s what the folks behind Coconut Bliss are aiming for. Now I know, you’re saying, coconut based, that sounds (insert gushing or repulsed adjectives here)

Hang on.

Coconut Bliss makes all the standard flavors you’d expect and far beyond, from Vanilla Island to Chocolate Hazelnut Fudge, with some Strawberry Lemon Love thrown in for good measure. The flavor, when it hits your tongue, is distinctly focused on the flavor at hand. Coconut sits very much in the background, nearly undetected. It’s more the messenger rather than the flag bearer. They use very clean ingredients, all organic, and skip insulin spiking sugar for its more even keeled cousin, agave nectar.

People often refer to non-dairy milks, such as soy and rice, as "alternatives to" or "substitutes for" cow’s milk, and the dairy industry scathingly calls them "imitation milks." By definition, the words "alternative" and "substitute" imply that the thing they are being measured against is the superior choice; that is, you choose the "substitute" when you can’t get the real thing, and so on.

However, I don’t like the use of these terms

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