Green Options

If you love milk (from animals or a vegan option) but are tired of drinking it plain or having it with your cereal every morning, you can try to prepare some delicious drinks and frozen desserts from it. Here are a few recipes you can use to enrich your daily diet.

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!

“Old-fashioned dairy, the new-fashioned way!  CyClone is the first major dairy to raise a herd of clones and clone offspring.  You could say cloning is our passion - where we combine DNA with TLC.”

That is what Cyclone dairy says on their website’s mission page.

Thank goodness it’s not for real…not yet anyway.

Crazy Rumors vegan-friendly lip balms have come out with a new line to compliment their coffee and tea flavors.  A La Mode Lip Balms combine the most

delicious ice cream flavors with nature’s most moisturizing ingredients for a totally sweet experience.

Available in six luscious flavors, like Banana Split and Mint Chocolate, these fun little balms will keep lips moisturized and are good for you and the environment.  Made with organic Shea Butter and Jojoba Oil for maximum softness (without the ”greasies”) and vitamin enriched.  A hint of natural Stevia makes them super yummy!

Last year, Häagen-Dazs announced it would invest a quarter of a million dollars into research on “Colony Collapse Disorder” — the mysterious ongoing disappearance of millions of honeybees in North America and Europe.  Is this mere corporate greenwashing, or does the premium ice cream icon deserve our affection (and our business)?

Häagen-Dazs has a vested interest in preserving and rescuing honeybees, since nearly 40% of their flavours rely on fruits and nuts pollinated by bees.  But we shouldn’t dismiss this as mere self-serving business interests.  If anything, we should wonder why this sort of investment is not much more common.

Lovin’ Fresh is a series of recipes designed to showcase produce gathered from local farms or grown in my own garden.  

I’m really putting my lavender plants to work already this summer.  First a bubbly lavender lemonade, and now lavender scented ice cream!  I’m running to catch up to the bandwagon here, flagging it down like a speeding city bus.   Many folks have long been touting how sublime the marriage of lavender and cream is.  But I hadn’t bought into it until this batch of ice cream.   

One thing that I love about cooking the Passover Seder for my family is that I get two chances to make a memorable meal. While the menus always differ between the two nights of celebrations, I usually incorporate a few similar elements to try out twice.

I am never going to win with the traditional recipes from the old country - these would be inexpertly executed versions of my grandmother’s legendary matzo balls and kugel. Instead, I try to reimagine a dish I love within the dietary restrictions of the holiday: no leavened bread, no corn products, no rice or whole grains, no legumes. (Growing up with the yearly Passover semi-fast has been an education in corn additives, I will tell you, but that’s a story for a different post.)

This year, I focused on dessert. Several bakeries manage to make Kosher for Passover cakes and cookies from matzo crumbs, but these have the cardboard-y taste and alarmingly fake consistency of diet foods. Instead, I coopted this addictive matzo bark recipe from Apartment Therapy’s The Kitchn. But what should go with it? Why, ice cream of course!

Newton, Mississippi, today becomes home to the state’s first retail E85 (85 percent ethanol, 15 percent gasoline) fuel station. But wait, there’s more. Ford’s Fuel, which has set a grand opening for today, is also an ice cream museum.

Whaaaaat?

That’s right, Mississippi’s first flex-fuel filling station is built on the site of Newton’s old Ford’s Ice Cream factory, which was established in 1928. The new facility — a green one at that — will feature not only E85 fuel pumps, but an ice-cream parlor and a museum dedicated to the town’s long-time local ice-cream history.