Green Options

As you plan for a season of holiday parties, why not serve eco-conscious cocktails alongside the organic free range turkey and local pumpkin pie? Get started with Organic, Shaken and Stirred. The drink recipe book by Paul Abercrombie will teach you how to make your home bar green and create 100 amazing concoctions using organic liquors, fruits and mixers.

There’s no need to pour guests a glass full of artificial ingredients, synthetic pesticides included. Instead, with eco tricks, you’ll support sustainable farming and products with eco-friendly packaging. And when friends imbibe in an organic cocktail like a Hot Buttered Maple Rum, Acai-Lum Sangria, Kentucky Christmas or Pineapple Caipirinha with Sweet Lime Espuma, you know they’ll be on board!

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…

Fresh, organic fruit salads are so festive and healthy, make someone you love glow with one soon. I love mixing fruit flavors together and I think I’ve found a few secrets to delectable fruit salad blends. Here are some elements that make a great fruit salad sure to please and win smiles:

• Marinade: First off a good juicy base fruit is best, citrus and melons both make nice frescas marinades. If you can find organic watermelon or organic citrus in season near you, go for it, you body will thank you.
• Bite size delights of nutrients: The essence of fruit salad is to combine healthy organic bite size fruit slices that vary in texture and flavor. For instance organic white peach, green and red grape pair well with pear and berry. It is amazing how well fruits meld when combined.
• Freshness: Depending on how fresh the fruit is when cut, it will keep for half the week. To ensure this you may like to wash the fruits or add Grapefruit Seed Extract to the mixture for natural freshness.
• Rainbows: Creating a feast for the eye as well as the palate is key, I like adding edible flowers!

Keep reading for the recipe.

Greening Hollywood, Paige Donner’s column, can be found on The Huffington Post at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paige-donner. Greening Hollywood is Donner’s media platform and green consulting business.

As gardeners, many are already aware of the benefits of successive planting strategies.  Planting a row of beets, carrots, peas, etc. every two weeks during planting season allows for you to harvest continually as long as the weather allows.  But did you know that same concept can be applied when planting fruit trees?

For instance if you like peaches and have decided to plant a peach tree in your yard, why not plant a series of trees that produce at different times, allowing for longer periods of harvesting?  This gives you an extended bounty of organic, local fruit from the closest possible source - your own backyard.

I love organic peaches, and nothing says summer like a fresh peach still warm from the afternoon sun, ripe and juicy, they’re fantastic.  But with a typical peach tree there’s an intensive couple of weeks where hundreds of peaches are suddenly ripe and ready to be processed or eaten.  The massive canning and freezing undertaking can get tiresome and make even the stoutest gardener think about resenting the sudden influx of delicious fruit.

Nothing says Autumn quite like fresh apples, and nothing says organic, sustainable, local agriculture quite like growing your own fruits and vegetables right in your own backyard.  If you’re interested in growing apples but are concerned that your location may be unsuitable for growing them, you’ll be happy to know that there are many varieties well suited for warm climates.

One of the most important factors in deciding if a fruit tree will be successful in your area is the number of chill hours required.  The definition of chill hours varies, but generally is defined as the number of hours below 45 degrees during fall and early winter.  This time is required for the tree to go dormant and begin its preparations for budding and fruiting the next spring.  Figuring out your USDA Hardiness Zone (find it here) will help you determine the number of chill hours in your region and from there can help you investigate which fruit trees will flourish in your yard.

I live in Southern California (USDA Hardiness Zone 10), characterized by hot, dry summers and autumns and warm winters with little overall rainfall.  The three apple varieties I chose for my backyard were: