Green Options

Using food as a resource in biofuel production is one of the biggest mistakes our country could make. And while we all shake our heads at the idea of corn ethanol…what about using turkey innards? Or Mountain Dew for that matter.

Shaq Wants Your Leftover Beer and Wine for Making Ethanol

First, who ever has leftover alcohol except maybe these guys? The Shaq-backed MicroFueler is a 250-gallon tank for organic feedstock, such as waste wine and beer, that converts it into pure ethanol. It also doubles as a fuel pump and the only waste product is distilled water.

As you recover from your day of Thanksgiving feasting, you might be curious as to whom you should really thank for your day off from work or school day of celebration. There are many stories, myths, and misinformation surrounding Thanksgiving history. Equally significant are the many strong emotions and opinions evoked this holiday, including everything from the feel-good and sense of hope, to doubt and downright condemnation of the infamous feasting day.

But there’s a little-known truth about Thanksgiving that you may not realize. The real reason we celebrate the fourth Thursday of every November as “Thanksgiving” is because of a journalist, not the pilgrims.

From local turkeys to seasonal root crops, Thanksgiving gifts us with a list of seasonal opportunities to green the holiday. While these all rank tangible, important actions to take, let’s not miss the golden green opportunity rooted in the inherent concept of Thanksgiving: gratitude.

A mindset of green gratitude emphasizes positive abundance, relishing the glass half full perspective. An important concept to keep on the front burner, especially as tanking economies fuel table conversations that tend to serve up sentiments of fear, scarcity and deprivation.

Add a dash of green reflection and gratitude to your Thanksgiving table by throwing these three questions on eating and drinking better into the conversation mix:

My family is coming for Thanksgiving this year and in the spirit of the season, we wanted to try and do something a little different, a 100-mile Thanksgiving.

The 100-mile movement is a local eating experiment whereby you buy food that is locally raised and produced from within a 100-mile radius of where you live.  We have 22 family and friends coming from up and down the East coast from Ithaca, NY to Tampa, and while the family is generally sympathetic to green-living, it required some friendly advice to pull it off. So, I sent an e-mail describing the concept and offering helpful advice, tips, links, etc.

We did our part, ordering a bunch of stuff from our milk man and local farm, Southmountain Creamery. We spent Sunday morning at the Dupont Circle Farmers Market and found all sorts of fabulous greens, yams, “Dr. Seuss” cauliflower, herbs, cheeses and chicken for stock. Once the kids warmed up with hot cocoa and croissants it was a terrific morning all around.

As for the rest of the guests, at first I heard nothing back from my email.

Then a few requests to resend the email.

Finally….

My sister-in-law from Brooklyn jumped in with apple-pear chutney to replace cranberry sauce. She also asked if chocolate from Jacques Torres in Brooklyn qualified. We decided, since one cannot pass up Jacques Torres Chocolate and we’re making a similar exception for coffee, that products with raw materials that cannot be found within a 100 miles (cocoa nibs, coffee beans) can be brought if they are processed locally. So, Jacques Torres is in as is Gimme Coffee! roasted in Ithaca, NY.

With the Thanksgiving Holiday just a few days away, you are probably focusing on how to have a green Thanksgiving. I have enjoyed reading tips and ideas from around the Green Options network and the blogosphere. Here are some of my favorite green Thanksgiving posts.

While we are on the topic of enjoying a local turkey day, I’m reminded of the trusty local foods wheel that was created by three brilliant women to help Bay Area folks decide what’s in season at the grocery store.

Hopefully a local foods wheel will be created for each and every spot in the US, but for now they are focused on the San Francisco Bay Area and New York Metro Area. The concept is simple, just choose the month we’re in, and rotate the wheel to reveal the local foods available. They explain:

If you’re one of the millions of California voters who helped pass Proposition 2 on November 4, chances are pretty good that your Thanksgiving meal will include some sort of free-range, hormone-free dead bird—or, if you fall into the veg camp, maybe a more benign Tofurky or Field Roast. But for illegal poachers like Peter Ciraula of Gilroy, California, odds are good that the celebratory meal will include breast of snow goose, leg of endangered sandhill crane, or perhaps a pot-pie of protected swan.

“[Ciraula] said he was going to eat some of them,” said Department of Fish and Game warden Patrick Foy, ”But when we asked him why he had so many, he never really never offered up a very valid explanation.”

The phone rang on Friday. It was our CSA farmer, “Farmer Dan.” We then went through the list of everything he had from the greenhouse and field and how much I needed. Arrangements were made for a special drop at one of the restaurants he sells to. Ten minutes later, part of my menu for Thanksgiving changes, salad is now on, and broccoli, another sweet potato dish, five pounds of late season apples mean a pie and applesauce both.

At the last farmers market of the season, I purchase spinach and more pecans. The pies will now include pecan. My spouse is off picking up our turkey, just butchered Saturday. There, he will get pork sausage and more pecans, both of which will go in the stuffing. Whatever else looks good, more eggs, whatever we can buy, he will get.

Long before the Puritans decided to cop a squat on Native American land and then had the first “Thanksgiving” meal featuring turkey meat, someone managed to discover that the turkey was a good bird to eat. Somehow, despite all logic, some hungry human looked at this rather odd-looking (okay, ugly) bird and thought, “Boy, that sure looks tasty!” Or maybe that lucky hunter was just so desperate that anything would suffice for food.

Whatever the case, turkeys found themselves on the menu. And then after 1621, turkeys became the feature of Thanksgiving–comprising the main course and finding their way into just about everything else, from stuffing to leftovers for the rest of the week.

While gourmands may give praise to the first turkey eater, turkeys themselves have very little to look forward to on Thanksgiving–the Black Thursday for these birds. Even if their intelligence level is as low as it has long been held to be, even amongst (the stupidest) animals, turkeys are yet another victim of the meat industry. Unlike other commodified creatures, though, turkeys practically have their own holiday…with celebration centered on eating them!

Thanksgiving is particularly black for more reasons than the simple acts of killing and eating living beings (however ugly and dumb). Like most other commercial meat industries, the turkey industry is riddled with cruel practices, from raising to transporting to “preparing” the birds that end up on human tables.

I never understood gravy as a child.  My grandmother’s gravy didn’t have much flavor and was lumpy. I was always grossed out by the innards and turkey juices used to make it. Needless to say, when you make tofu turkey from scratch, as we do every year, there really aren’t juices to make the gravy from, so here is our recipe:

Vegan Cashew Golden Gravy

Saute in oil:

• 1 cup mushrooms
• 1 onion

In a separate fry pan, preferably a cast iron skillet, lightly toast. Stir often and be careful not to burn the flour:

• 1/3 cup organic flour (white or whole wheat)
• 1/3 cup ground organic cashews (easy to grind in the blender)

Are you looking for a Kosher turkey this year?

Many interested in organic food are, since Kosher Turkeys are required by Jewish law to be slaughtered in a particular fashion designed to be humane. Sarah Palin’sTurkey video has just increased awareness of the issue this year!

They are also often organic by default, that is raised without pesticides, growth hormones, etc…. and, of course, are considered exceptionally tasty.

I heard this story on NPR’s Marketplace this morning..”There’s a shortage of kosher turkey and beef thanks to the closing of supplier Agriprocessors, which had provided much of the country’s kosher meat…” and immediately wondered how our Thanksgiving would turn out since, the friends with whom we hope to share the holiday meal swear by these birds.

Agriprocessors halted production earlier this week and then closed its doors. The company that supplies an estimated 40% of the country’s kosher turkeys has found it self in well, if not the oven, in hot water!

Agriprocessors was the site of a May immigration raid in which 389 workers were arrested. Plant managers later were charged with violating child labor laws, wage and hour regulations and safety rules.