Green Options

Like millions of Americans, we’re celebrating July 4th, Independence Day.

However, we’re celebrating this national holiday by focusing on the many aspects of our life that, in various ways, have led us to quite a different vision for a sustainable tomorrow – complete with local, renewable energy and lots of delicious meals harvested within ten miles of where we live – if not from our own kitchen garden.  Sometimes we even celebrate July 4th with a rainbow.

Here’s how our Independence Day is different — and yours can be too:

•  Be energy independent by generating all our power with renewable energy systems.
For a vast portion of the United States, there is enough solar and wind energy to completely meet our needs right where we live.  True, adopting renewable energy will require an investment either personally or for your business if you work from home.  But with present Federal tax credits and many state incentives, the time couldn’t be better.  We completely power our Inn Serendipity Bed & Breakfast and Farm with solar electric and wind turbine systems.  In fact, we overproduce renewable energy to the tune of about 4,000 kWhs (kilowatt hours) a year.  We share the surplus with our neighbors.

Growing food in your own backyard is hardly a new concept, nor is utilizing any open space available if you live in the city, but turning your rooftop into a garden?  Well that idea has caught on in cities throughout the world, and now is starting to gain a foothold in the United States as well.

Rooftop gardens are by no means new.  Forward thinking, environmentally conscious, or penurious city dwellers have been doing it for as long as there have been city dwellers.  But recently the rooftop garden movement has started to gain some traction, inspired by the environmental benefit of more green space in a city (it reduces the “heat island” effect), and the appeal of home grown organic veggies just steps away have given the movement some serious traction.

Large metropolises across North America - including New York City, Washington DC, and Chicago have also sweetened the deal by offering tax incentives and subsidies to encourage green rooftops, and Toronto, Canada also has a new law requiring buildings of a certain size to have a green roof.  Though the Green Roof Bylaw in Toronto has garnered some criticism (mostly from developers) it has been well received by residents in the city as a means to increase the amount of green space, offset their carbon emissions, and generally to be a greener city.

Chipotle Mexican Grill is once again breaking from the fast-food model.

The Denver-based chain known for its clean flavors and burly burritos is pledging to use a set amount of local produce at each of its more than 730 restaurants around the country — when produce is in season.

This summer, Chipotle is purchasing twenty-five percent of at least one produce item for each of its stores from small and midsize farms situated within 200 miles of the store.

dvGreen designs sustainable events without sacrificing style. They show clients that they can reduce their ecological footprint while still throwing a beautiful party - one that just happens to be Green. By featuring organic food, flowers, and table linens; tree-free paper invitations; donating or composting leftover food; purchasing carbon offsets, and more, dvGreen creates incredible events that you can be proud of forever.

Danielle, founder and CEO of dvGreen spent several years as Event Director and later General Manager of L’Olivier, one of New York’s premiere floral design houses. The driving force in Danielle’s event work has always been her belief that parties are important. They are essential celebrations of life that allow us to freeze time and honor meaningful milestones. If we don’t mark these moments, then they risk going away forever.

It is this belief, coupled with Danielle’s very parallel feeling about the environment (if we don’t take care of it, the planet as we know it will also go away forever), that led her to launch dvGreen in 2006, a company that combines excellence in event design with the latest in sustainable practices.

Here’s is some great advice from dvGreen on how to go green for your next event.

Bare, exposed soil rarely exists in nature, so why should it be in your garden? Mulching with an organic mulch like straw will build healthy soil, conserve water, and help keep weeds at bay. In other words, it creates less work for you! Mulch is truly a gardener’s best friend!

It seems like all I’ve been doing lately is weeding and mulching. It’s taken longer than I wanted, but slowly but surely my garden beds are enjoying a nice layer of straw to help insulate the soil, form a layer that’s harder for weeds to penetrate, and retain moisture. I usually wait until plants are established before mulching, but I’ve recently learned about year-round mulching, which doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.

What is mulch? It’s basically any material (usually organic matter) that is used to cover exposed soil in the garden, and can be used for beds, containers, and even paths. Exposed soil can dry out quickly and be easily eroded by water and wind, so a covering helps keep it moist and healthy. The type of mulch you choose depends on the needs of the area you’ll be mulching, but I recommend staying away from unnatural materials like black plastic and choosing organic materials like straw, hay, decomposing leaves, rice hulls, or even dead & dried out weeds. Organic material will break down slowly and help add humus to the soil, making it richer and healthier for gardening.

As our gardens start to deliver, as I harvest my first spring veggies this time of year, I always make the same resolution:  This year I’m going to eat more fresh out of the garden.

It sounds obvious, but the truth of the matter is I always get wrapped up in the garden work, from watering to weeding, and food preservation, from freezing to fermenting, that I get too busy and loose sight of the key reason why my family started the garden on our Wisconsin farm and B&B, Inn Serendipity, in the first place:  to savor and celebrate fresh, local, healthy food.

Once again this year, I’m on a mission to feast on the bounty, to not get so wrapped up in the process that I miss opportune feasting moments.  As inspirational fodder, I researched this idea further, resulting in an article for the upcoming July/August issue of Hobby Farm Home magazine:  Farm-style Fast Food:  If the growing season has you too busy to prepare well-planned meals every night, follow these tips for healthy “fast-food” eating.” In addition to that article, here are a few more tips I found helpful:

Clean Plates NYC is the only nutritionist and food critic approved lifestyle book and guide featuring the healthiest, tastiest and most sustainable restaurants in NYC for both vegetarians and carnivores. With plans to expand to other cities and focusing on restaurants using local, organic and sustainably raised plant and/or animal products, this informative and easy to use book will change the way Americans dine out.
Jared Koch is the creator and co-author of this guide designed for busy people on the go. It introduces its readers to the concept of bioindividuality as well as the pros and cons of different dietary theories and types of foods encountered at restaurants.  The book provides practical tips and information on how to implement healthier and more sustainable eating into any budget, diet and lifestyle without sacrificing taste for nutrition.

“Jared’s nutritional advice in Clean Plates has the power to transform your individual health and our collective well-being.” Deepak Chopra, M.D., chairman and co-founder of The Chopra Centers for Wellbeing.

Wendell Berry once proclaimed:  “Eating is an agricultural act.”  In this spirit, recipes can serve a broader purpose than just a means to filling our stomachs at mealtime.  Think of recipes as edible blueprints for change. Think of the whole culinary process, from ingredient selection to end result, as an opportunity to showcase how our individual food choices can help both our nation and the world cultivate self-reliance through sustainable agriculture by focusing on what’s local and seasonal.

“Food Independence” champions this idea by celebrating and sharing summer’s bounty as we head towards the Fourth of July holiday.  The Food Independence Day campaign promotes this idea by encouraging folks to eat local on July 4, as well as petitioning our country’s state governors to do the same.

How do you define “Food Independence”?  What things do you do (or would like to start) that, from your perspective, make a statement about fostering a healthy, local food system?  Starting a Victory Garden?  Shopping at your farmers’ market?  Which of your favorite recipes celebrate the flavors and bounty of your region and also manifesto your values and beliefs?

The Spinach Balls (which can be made with various greens) we serve at our Wisconsin B&B, Inn Serendipity, for me exemplify my take on food independence and how conscious eating can inspire a new take on “edible activism.”    Three symbolic reasons why I think eating Spinach Balls can change the world:

Before I can fully jump into savoring all the tempting, fresh flavors of the spring garden, there’s one last chapter I need to wrap up from last year’s growing season:  finishing up what’s left in the freezer.  My taste buds may be craving that tender new asparagus, but my rational mind reminds me to first finish that shredded zucchini, Swiss chard and whatever else may be lingering in my freezer first.

Frozen shredded zucchini is not a bottle of nice red wine.  Age does not improve the zucchini, it only ushers in freezer burn.  On my family’s Wisconsin farm and B&B, Inn Serendipity, I typically freeze most of our garden harvest for the simplicity and efficiency.

All summer long I shred, blanch, or tray freeze my garden goodies, packing the produce into square freezer containers and lining them up in our thirteen cubic foot chest freezer in the basement.  Chest freezers, when full, can run quite energy efficiently as not as much cold air escapes when you lift open the lid, versus the vertical type freezers.  All winter long we defrost and eat through our garden harvest, ideally letting these freezer containers slowly defrost for a few days in the refrigerator, using the defrosting process to cause our refrigerator to run less.  As we “eat through” the freezer and space opens up, I fill the empty space with recycled milk jugs filled with water to help the freezer run more efficiently.

By this time of year, I’m down to the last few freezer containers and a freezer in need of a good clean out, but need a dose of culinary motivation to use up those last lingering items from last year.  Here are three strategies I use for that that final “freezer finale”:

I feel like I’ve finally settled a little here in London now that I am the proud recipient of an organic fruit and vegetable box scheme from a local company called Growing Communities. These box schemes are the equivalent of what we call Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) boxes in the States. As other writers have mentioned on Eat.Drink.Better, it’s a great way to support local farmers and have good produce around to eat!

I feel blessed to live in the same area as Growing Communities, because it means I get access to their boxes of local and organic fruits and veg (the nickname everyone gives to vegetables here). You have to live or work in the neighborhood of Hackney in order to be a part of the scheme, which I’ll explain below. Their box scheme is particularly cool for a couple of reasons:

The folks behind Carrotmob continue to demonstrate the power of using your dollars to vote for environmental change, and they’re starting to get some press as well.

The first Carrotmob “reverse boycott” started with a convenience store in San Francisco.  The store owner out-competed a few dozen other businesses by pledging to use 22% of the profits from one day to make his store greener (in this case by installing energy efficient lighting and other green improvements).  Carrotmobbers flooded his store on the appointed day and left the store owner with $9,200, enough to make multiple energy efficient improvements as well as having the best sales day all year.

Carrotmob and their “reverse boycott” system works like this:

• Businesses are contacted and asked how much they would like to bid in order to win over consumers during one massive shopping day.
• Using social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter, and other fancy technology, members are asked to vote which store they would like to select.
• One day is selected and the store is “mobbed” with consumers who show up and buy goods they would have purchased anyways - food, beverages, hardware, etc.
• The store is mobbed with consumers who in the process of flexing their food (or goods & services) dollars, bring the store lots of money.
• The store uses the percentage of those sales they pledged to make their business greener and more environmentally friendly, while helping their bottom line AND gaining significant goodwill in the community.