Green Options

There are many sustainable options when it comes to putting food on the table, from eating organic to choosing locally grown foods to avoiding animal products. But there’s nothing quite as truly sustainable, satisfying, and tasty as growing your own organic food. What follows is my homegrown experience in community gardening.

After traveling around in a veggie oil and biodiesel powered “volksvegan” for most of last year, I was eager to have a garden again (not to mention an actual kitchen). It didn’t take long in our small town to find a wonderful non-profit organization teaching organic food production classes and get involved. Before long we were starting seeds in a greenhouse, not quite sure where we’d be planting them when they were sprouted. Luckily, the organization, Noyo Food Forest, was just breaking ground on a new community garden, and we jumped at the chance to get our hands dirty and grow some organic food.

Our gardening experience in coastal Northern California has been quite an experiment. After growing up in the hotter and dryer climate of Idaho, gardening on the coast took some getting used to. But we discovered that with some fertile soil, organic seeds, a few helpful people, and the labors of love, we could grow a bounty of fresh organic produce and community at the same time.

When it comes to eating, I have come to accept the fact that I am a grazer. This analogy is quite fitting given that I am an herbivore, I suppose. I snack often and tend to eat smaller portions several times a day rather than eating huge meals. I hear it’s not a bad idea to eat smaller meals more often, so I embrace my munchies. Of course, I try my best to keep my snacks healthy and green, but occasionally I can’t help but give into organic dark chocolate or Fig Newmans.

My favorite snacks often come from my local farmer’s market, the bulk bin at the co-op, or recently, from my own plot in my local organic community garden! I work from home and am always busy, so sometimes I make them ahead of time on weekends and stock the fridge and cupboards so that I have a quick stash of healthy snacks available to grab quickly. I’ve been known to crowd my desk with small plates of munchies while working. Hey, snacking happens, it might as well be good for you!

So, to the delight of green-minded grazers everywhere, I present my top ten favorite healthy sustainable snacks. As an added bonus, these recipes are all vegan. So dig in.

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

It’s been brought to my attention that croutons aren’t “much of an entry” (this from a man that goes pale at the mere mention of his participation in the nightly dinner preparations), but I beg to differ.  While making your own croutons isn’t hard, it’s something most folks rarely think to do.  The recipes I post aren’t meant to be revolutionary.  Rather, they are here to prompt you, noble Eat.Drink.Better readers, to embrace the freshest, local food you can find.  Homemade croutons made with a fresh herb butter fit in perfectly with that scheme, don’t you think?  I certainly do. 

You swap out your light bulbs for energy-efficient ones, keep your house as chilled as a meat locker in winter, bicycle to work, eat little meat and drive a hybrid — yet nagging at you is this thought: Do my small actions make a difference? Author Michael Pollan says they do.

In last week’s Sunday New York Times Magazine (4.20.08), Pollan wrote a provocative essay, “Why Bother? Looking for a few good reasons to go green.” In it, he wrestles with those lurking questions about our everyday choices to stave off global warming. Some excerpts:

Let’s say I do bother, big time. I turn my life upside-down…, but what would be the point when I know full well that halfway around the world there lives my evil twin, some carbon-footprint doppelgänger in Shanghai or Chongqing who has just bought his first car (Chinese car ownership is where ours was back in 1918), is eager to swallow every bite of meat I forswear and who’s positively itching to replace every last pound of CO2 I’m struggling no longer to emit. So what exactly would I have to show for all my trouble?

He looks at the reasons we find for not doing anything: “There are so many stories we can tell ourselves to justify doing nothing,” he writes.

And yet, he resoundingly concludes that those little things are worth the bother.

Providence, Rhode Island— The Ocean State might be the size of some counties in other parts of the country, but it’s big on going green. A local food co-op in Providence has been bringing fresh, local produce to its capital city dwellers for nigh on ten years now.

Urban greens is a food cooperative on Providence’s West Side with a mission to provide simple, direct access to affordable, local, natural products and to offer a community-based alternative to corporate supermarkets. The cooperative is guided by its values of equal access, local agriculture, local economy, co-operative principles, community partnerships and social entrepreneurship.

According to the Population Reference Bureau, nearly 80 percent of you probably live in an urban area. Some of you may be lucky enough to have a weekly farmers market in a nearby city park or square, but I wonder if you’ve ever thought there might be an actual farm near you. Over the past decade, a growing number of urban agriculture projects have taken root in major North American cities, making it possible for urbanites to get in on the sustainable food movement in at a whole new level. Typically not more than an acre or two, these city farms are redefining traditional cultivation practices and communities alike.

Nestled in the peaceful beach bordering countryside of southern Maine, you’ll find one of the most sustainable yarn companies on the planet. Unexpected, no?

Hope Spinnery has prided itself on being as eco-friendly as possible: the fiber processing mill is run completely on wind power captured on-site; all fibers are purchased locally from sustainably-dedicated Maine farms; only Earth-friendly soaps and natural dyes are used on the yarns; by-products from the spinning process are reused elsewhere at the mini-factory.

The company’s yarn, made from mostly wool and alpaca, are available by skein and in 6 different patterns kits (5 hats and 1 mitten pattern to choose from). Hope Spinnery recently launched their online store, so you can see the stock they have right away and choose the color and fiber that would be perfect for your next project.

As a big proponent of the Triple Bottom Line concept for businesses, one organization floats my boat for a lot of different reasons: BALLE, the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies. Why? Because BALLE sees business as a way to strengthen our communities, as well as our local economies.

Though it can be difficult to understand how BALLE works, I’ll try to nutshell it for you. BALLE, a national organization, is made up of local business networks.  The networks are spread out all over the country, and each is focused on improving the sustainability of its own unique local economy. The businesses that make up each network are locally owned - they work together to share local resources and ideas, and to improve their local economy. BALLE provides resources to these member networks, like conferences and trainings.

Editor’s note: This guest post was written by Danae DeShazer, a student in Professor Simran Sethi’s Media and the Environment course at the University of Kansas. Danae originally published this post to the course blog on February 26, 2008.

We’ve all heard of the organic craze. People are switching their diets to “organic” foods. This is all supposed to be healthier and better for the environment, right? Organic food sales are on the up-and-up, increasing 22 percent in 2006 to a $17 billion industry (for the full article, read here). A lot of people have jumped on the bandwagon—with reasons of personal and planetary health—but how do we know exactly what we’re getting?

What does organic even mean? According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, “organic food is produced by farmers who emphasize the use of renewable resources and the conservation of soil and water to enhance environmental quality for future generations.” Also, products that come from animals aren’t given any antibiotics or growth hormones (see The Meatrix if you’re unsure about the standard practices of processed meat companies). Ding, ding, ding! We have a solution. Go out and buy all the organic food you can.

Wrong. There’s a lot more to “buying organic” to save the planet than just looking for that USDA Organic label. Yeah, maybe if your food is organic, it’s probably going to have a better taste and more nutrients (read more reasons to eat organic food in this Prevention magazine article), but you’ve got to read a little closer into those organic labels. Say you want to buy some organic honey. Sure, they probably carry it at your favorite mainstream grocery store—and you’re probably patting yourself on the back for a totally organic purchase. But, take a look at the label. Many honey packages, even organic ones, are produced across oceans from us. Try Hawaii (Volcano Island Honey) and Africa (Zambezi Organic Forest Honey). Even if it doesn’t come from far away lands, it may even be in Illinois (Y.S. Organic Bee Farm) or Pennsylvania (Dutch Gold Honey). Some may even contain labels including multiple countries, such as Full Circle Farm Organic Honey, which can be bought at Hy-Vee, but is made in Mexico and Brazil.

In October, GO writer Jessica Jane French took a look at efforts by community organizations to address “food deserts” in Detroit. What’s a food desert?

According to The Low Income Project Team, food deserts are “areas of relative exclusion where people experience physical and economic barriers to accessing healthy food.” This does not mean that people in food deserts do not have access to any food… just the stuff that is relatively good for them.

In fact, a food desert often has an abundance of “fringe locations,” or businesses that do not serve the sole purpose of selling foodstuffs, yet where food is available think dollar stores, gas stations, liquor stores, etc.). The type of food sold at these stores is usually the worst type of food, and when the only food available is pre-packaged, and full of preservatives, there are bound to be health risks.

Non-profit organizations aren’t the only ones working to address this problem, though: as The Michigan Citizen notes, one budding entrepreneur has plans for a “green” grocery store in midtown Detroit. Tawnya Clark, a student at Bizdom U, “an entrepreneur training program housed on Wayne State’s campus,” sees opportunities to create a thriving business and play a role in urban redevelopment. Her concept: “…an organic produce market with locally produced and based products and items, from Detroit and Michigan.” Her vision:

Clark sees her store as not only providing healthy food, but as a destination point, a way to keep money in the city.

Stop in at most diners around the country and each breakfast menu reads nearly the same: Two eggs, toast, bacon. Pancakes with sausage. Cereal. Add grits, if you’re in the South. Perhaps a variation on toast in other parts of the country.

Despite the fact that we run Inn Serendipity B&B and “breakfast” is part of our business, we find the average American breakfast is, well, boring. With the same old, same old

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