Eating Organic and cooking Green.

I’ve posted a few times about loving my trips to the grocery store. It feels great to be buying organic and healthy food and green products and that you’re doing your part for the environment and keeping your body healthy. However, buying the right food is only part of it in terms of eating healthy; a lot depends on how and on what you cook it. There was an article on Yahoo News last week that talked about various cooking surfaces and the hidden dangers. I’ve tried and tried, but I cannot find the link. So using the vast resources of the Internet, I found –>this great article about the subject. You can bet that all of our teflon pans are going to disappear quick! I’m even considering replacing our stainless steel. Although this particular article was somewhat approving of stainless steel, the article on Yahoo I referenced earlier was not so complimentary. The doctor that wrote that article expressed concern about the metal eventually leaching into your food even from stainless steel. Both articles highly recommend porcelain and cast iron cookware.

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Here’s a quick tidbit I picked up from Green Living by the E/The Environmental Magazine: Want to know if your buying something that’s been genetically engineered? Just check the bar code. If it’s been genetically engineered, the code will begin with an “8″. If it’s organic, it will begin with a “9″ and if it’s conventionally grown, it will begin with a “4″.

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Whole Foods is debuting its first ever –>online weekly cooking show! Here’s the release:

Whole Foods Debuts Weekly Online Cooking Show
MAY 11, 2007 — Natural and organic grocer Whole Foods Market has launched “Secret Ingredient,” its first-ever weekly online cooking show and resource for home cooks looking for helpful tips and easy recipe ideas, reports Progressive Grocer.

Shoppers can access a new episode of the video podcast every Monday on Whole Foods’ Web site, www.wholefoodsmarket.com/secretingredient, as well as on iTunes and YouTube.

“Secret Ingredient” highlights foods exclusively carried by Whole Foods or that meet the retailer’s strict quality standards. Featured items will include the world’s first nitrate-free prosciutto, award-winning aged Balsamic vinegar, fresh artisan-made goat cheese, and hand-selected Parmigiano Reggiano.

“We hope to deliver inspiration,” said “Secret Ingredient” host Scott Simons, who also works as Whole Foods’ associate marketing director for the Southwest region, in a statement. “Because we focus on only one ingredient per episode, viewers really get to know the featured item and take away practical cooking tips and recipes. Top that off with easy yet tasty meal solutions, and ‘Secret Ingredient’ is a home cook’s treasure.”

The inaugural episode spotlights antibiotic-free farm-raised catfish, which Simons uses to prepare Thai-inspired fish tacos.

The video podcast is filmed in high definition at Whole Foods stores and the retailer’s culinary centers across the United States. All episodes will be archived so consumers can view them anytime.

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Other Blogs

From Crank and Pedal, –>a great post about reducing your carbon footprint by riding your bike. Very appropriate post during Bike to Work week. Cycling is not only good exercise, but part of a green lifestyle.

Speaking of good exercise, came across –>this post about yoga in Jane’s Here’s to Life! blog. According to an article in Yoga Journal, yoga is a pretty complete form of exercise, building not only flexibility, but also strength, cardiovascular fitness and helping with reducing unwanted body weight. Pretty good endorsement for including yoga in your workout regimen.

That’s all I got today. Peace!

Growing up green…

We’re expecting Child #3 within the next two weeks, and it got me thinking about this baby ‘growing up green’ – no it’s not a new reality show (although it could be ). One of our favorite green companies, Seventh Generation, has –>a great line of baby products. Yes, they’re a bit more expensive than the other stuff, but the payoff both for the environment and the little one’s health is worth it. The way I see it, if I don’t do something now, he or she won’t have much of a world to grow up in. By the way, on their site you can sign up for downloadable coupons. One of our other favorite places, Henry’s Farmers Market, our regular grocery store, has a great –>section on their website for expecting mothers and new parents including nutrition and diet tips for baby as they grow up.

From a nutrition/dietary perspective, we’ve got our other two children eating healthy and organic as much as possible. Any of you with little ones knows this isn’t always the easiest thing in the world given all the temptation kids have with candy, cereals, drinks, etc. and weaning them off junk food isn’t easy (that’s why we’re not even going there with our new one). For cereals, the kids love a couple from –>Cascadian Farms and some from –>Nature’s Path. Both of these companies have healthy organic alternatives to the usual sugary cereals. For a great snack try the new kid bars from Clif, their –>organic ZBar. My kids are devouring these; they’re much better than granola or snack bars that are loaded with sugar and additives. Given their popularity with my kids and the relative ease in which they took to them, I highly recommend them.

Based on the tough time we’ve had correcting our two young children’s diets, we’re being very conscious of how we start off the new one. The good thing is that, for at least a year, we won’t have to worry about it because there’s nothing better than mother’s milk – of course, that means Mom has to worry about her diet

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Blog stuff:

Seems like shampoo was on a couple of peoples’ minds, or is it that heads Vanessa ran out of her regular stuff and is trying something new. She gave a great website, –>Skin Deep, to check on your health and beauty products. If yours isn’t listed, you can also check the ingredients (the one I use rated very well).

Juice Bar reviewed the Miessence line of personal care products and gave them an emphatic thumbs up. Always good to hear about products that work well for others. I’m going to keep an eye for these.

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In yesterday’s post, I wrote about riding to work and getting out of the car for a day. Funny thing happened on the ride home…I didn’t go home. Instead I rode to the beach (I’m lucky in that I work 10 minutes from home and 10 from the beach ) and met up with my family. Played with the kids – building sand castles only; the water is still a bit cold, although they didn’t seem to mind – and then watched the sunset over the Pacific. Perfect way to decompress from a bad day at work!

Ride your bike! 

Yoga, bikes, and blogs…

For you yoga fans out there, I found this great site through an ad in Yoga Journal: –>Yoga Today. Everyday the site hosts an hour-long yoga video for FREE! They also have some back episodes for download. I tried one last night and found them to be of excellent quality and you can download in various formats including HD WMV. Free is good!

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May is Bike to Work Month, next week is Bike to Work Week, and Friday, May 18 is Bike to Work Day. I ride my bike everywhere, except to work. Why? Well probably because I only live a few minutes from where I work. But I figure that’s all the more reason I should stay out of my car and make the quick bike ride to work. So today, I rode in for the first time. It takes a little bit of planning; I have to get up earlier, leave earlier, take clothes in the day before, take some toiletries, etc. But the payoff is worth it. I don’t sit in traffic, I get some exercise, I get to ride in the beautiful Southern California sun (sunny and 75 deg at 8am!), and best of all, my car is in the driveway. –>Read up here.

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From around the blogworld:

Panda Dan’s –>blog entry today included a nice little list of –>Top Ten tips for lazy environmentalists. Careful when you click over! Looks like Bert has been a bad influence on the other Muppets…

Green As A Thistle.com’s post today has a great tip, –>the green hangover cure. Some of us can use this information once in while, right?!

Geoff –>posts on his The Way We Live blog about Google’s new eco-search engine Blackle. Apparently viewing Google’s homepage (which gets over 200 million hits a day) with a black background instead of the traditional white background saves a bit energy. Add up all those visits and now you’ve got substantial amount. What’s truly amazing is that Google did this apparently in response to a blog entry – ahh, the power of the written word, or is that the typed word

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Don’t forget: ride your bike to work!

Of plastic bags, hybrids & iPods…

I was interested to find –> this article regarding plastic grocery bags in San Diego’s largest local newspaper . Apparently, some cities have either banned plastic grocery bags altogether (San Francisco) or are contemplating bans (Santa Cruz, Berkeley, & Los Angeles). The issue has surfaced here in San Diego and it will be interesting to see if it gains any traction. Until and if that happens, the solution is simply to reuse bags wherever possible.

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We’re expecting a new addition to our family soon, and are facing a situation that many families do as they grow: the need for a larger car. We’re considering our options and weighing our needs and financial capacity with our green and eco-goals. At the top of our list is a –>Toyota Prius. Below that are various smaller station wagony-type vehicles. An SUV is out of the question for obvious reasons, and sedans just don’t seem versatile enough for busy and kid-oriented lifestyle. I’ll be posting more as we get deeper into the process. I’d love to hear from anyone with a Prius or other hybrid about their experiences with these vehicles.

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Don’t know about y’all, but I love my iPod. I rarely go anywhere without it. It’s just nice to have instant access to my entire reggae collection and the rest of my tunes. In an effort to green my music listening and iPod use, I’m going to get one of –>these solar chargers. One of these little guys can charge your iPod, cell phone, digicam, and a host of other gadgets. Now, to score one off eBay for $20…

Weekend is here = good reggae!

It’s Friday and I’ve got the weekend on the brain. After a long work week, it will be nice to spend the time listening to some good reggae. With that in mind, found a couple of posts by fellow bloggers worth sharing:

Mg –>wrote in his blog about Bob Marley’s –>”Slave Driver” from the Catch a Fire album, saying it “speaks profound truths about past and present oppression, of far-reaching societal machinations that hold people down and the power it takes to combat and resist those forces.”

Well said! This has long been my favorite Marley song of all-time (and you fans know how hard it is pick just one)! The first time I heard it, I said to myself, this man is worth listening to because he has something to say. I recommend the version found on –>Catch a Fire Deluxe Edition album. Stripped of all post-production embellishments added by the record label, you get the raw, unadulterated recording as laid down by the Wailers in Jamaica. I also highly recommend the version of “Concrete Jungle” found on this album.

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Here’s a classic Steel Pulse clip from YouTube performing “Babylon Makes the Rules”, found in this blog –>MixMasterE.

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Lately I’ve been very concerned about how green my employer is or isn’t. Luckily, I am closely involved in promoting green policies within my company and actually moving us in that direction. Our company has some very exciting things looming that is going to make sure that we are not only at industry standard for good green practices, but way above. I’ve been doing some research into what some other companies have doing in this arena, and obviously there has been a lot of media interest in this as well lately. Apple, has received some –>recent coverage (–>more here) for –>their green approach. Marc Gunther, a writer for Fortune Magazine, has published a book called Faith and Fortune, a look at how some of America’s biggest corporations are actually changing for the better. He profiles some well known companies such as UPS, Southwest Airlines, HP, and Starbucks, and shows how they are not only engaging in socially responsible practices towards the environment, but towards employees and customers as well.

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From the Ideal Bite newsletter, a green minded auto insurance company: Better World Club Insurance. Get a policy with them, and they’ll offset the first ton your auto’s carbon emissions for free! Oh yeah, and for us cyclists, they offer free roadside bicycle assistance. Sweet!

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Besides good reggae music, I hope to get some good trail riding in this weekend. Any MTB’ers out there in blog world? I love the feeling of being out in nature with my bike free from my car, my job, and well, just about everything else. That freedom is hard to come by these days, so I’ll take a couple hours of it any day. Hopefully I’ll get some good pics here and there to post on the blog.

Enjoy the weekend!

Tips, Coupons, Books and of course, green…

It’s fun to surf the Web and other blogs looking for green tips and information – I’m finding more and more great stuff everyday. I love the momentum that this gaining. Here are some things I’d like to share with everyone:

Silk Soymilk is running a –> Green Caps Promotion for which they donate to clean energy production for every entry. Also, you’re entered to win earth-friendly appliances. Check out the site for great clean energy information, including a –> Carbon Calculator you can use to calculate your carbon footprint and how you stack up against the national average. A quick run through for me showed my family’s footprint was below the national average – YAY! For more information and tips on how to reduce your footprint, visit –> Safe Climate, a project of the –> World Resources Institute.

And here is quick “Did you know?” from the Silk Green Caps site: If every American home changed out just five high-use light fixtures with energy-efficient ones, together we’d prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions from more than 8 million cars.

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Here’s a couple of green tips that we’ve taken up over the past week:

• Reuse small water bottles for all types of drinks around the house. We wash out our bottles after each use and use for everything from more water to juice for the kids and as travel mugs for the car. Keeps our cups in the cupboard and our dishwasher off since cups seems to be what we go through most with two active kids.
• In the office, I’ve been looking for ways to be more green. One area that I’ve particularly focused on is paper waste. As I audited my daily routine, I noticed that I tended to print out a lot information from emails, websites, etc. that I needed to distribute to colleagues. I’ve started utilizing the simple screen shot capabilities of Windows (Mac has it too) to send out the info via email rather than print. It’s easy; Alt+Print Screen will copy your screen to the clipboard and you can paste into any email message. If you’re using Outlook, you can use Word’s editing tools to crop the image as needed or even make notes on it. Most of the time, the receiver of the printed piece will throw it out anyways, only to print it again later. So this method allows them to forward the message and save paper as well. Try it and save some trees!

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I love shopping at my local health and organic food markets. There is always something to learn there on top of shopping for great tasting food! Some are even starting to really provide a lot of that information on their websites. One of my favorite local stores is Henry’s Farmers Market. Here’s a list from their site that is worth reading –> Five Easy Ways to Change the World.

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For you readers out there, here’s a link to a –> coupon for the new James Patterson book, The 6th Target, that you can use at Border’s or Waldenbooks for 40% off the list price. Good 5/8 – 5/14 and I believe you must join Borders Rewards Club which is free.

For Tolkien fans (I’ve been a fan for 25 years!), the new book –>The Children of Hurin is a must! It’s always to see new Tolkien material and this one does not disappoint, I highly recommend it!

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Green Meme

 

I saw this mention of Danish blogger Henriette Weber Andersen’s Green Meme on several blogs including Stet here on WordPress. She’s asked that people freely distribute this on their blogs to spark conversation, so here goes:

What do you do in your everyday life that you would consider green ?

I look for ways to reuse and recycle. I purchase organic wherever possible. I ride my bike – a lot! I try to educate family and friends about it. I attempt to conserve. I’m beginning a green effort at work. I turn off the lights

How are your surroundings supporting your green ways?

Well, I mention in my previous post how –> San Diego, CA is ranked #12 in one survey of the greenest cities to live. While the mass transit system could be better, getting around on a bike is relatively easy (if you’re in shape and the roads are generally biker friendly. There are many health food and organic food store options in the city. Most cities in San Diego have a neighborhood recycling collection program. At home, we’re setting up our living space to be conducive to green living and making a conscious effort to do so. My work environment is not quite as conducive to being green, but I’m working with some others to change that.

How are your surroundings standing in your way of green choices ?

Funny, I was just having this conversation the other day. I feel like society in general, and our economy in particular, is a barrier to green living. My experience has been that recycled and organic products are less accessible than there less green counterparts; they’re more expensive, harder to find, located farther, etc. Also, until very recently, media and culture focused little on green alternatives. I guess now that it’s hip and A-listers are driving hybrids, it’s all the rage.

Are there any actions you want to take to create a more green environment around you?

I’d like to spread the word. This blog is one way. Talking to family and friends. Effecting change at work. Basically talking the talk and walking the walk.What is the biggest threat to the earth’s wellbeing these days?

People. Plain and simple, it’s up to us. You and me.

Whom are you going to tag in the green meme?

I’m rather new at this, so I’ll start with some green bloggers here on Word Press: One Green Thing, The Greener Side, That’s Swell, & Green Advice to start with.

Green Cities – How does yours rank?

Today’s The Greener Side –>post has a link to a great little article from Country Home ranking the –>greenest places to live. I was pleasantly surprised that my city (San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, CA) ranked #12 on the list. The list is based on air quality, miles of mass transit, access to health and organic food stores, farmer’s markets, and bike friendliness among other things. I hadn’t thought of San Diego as particularly green, but I guess we are. What is really surprising is that it’s the #1 California city on this list.

Catching up!

Whew! What a weekend – lots of good things happening. It’s been a while since I posted, so I’m going to cover quite a few things today. Here goes:

First a follow up to my –>previous post about Arbor Day – we planted our tree! It wasn’t as easy or quick as I thought it would be. There was a lot of pre-planning involved. From deciding where to plant to what kind of tree to buy, everything required some careful consideration. We decided to plant on the northeast corner of our backyard, so the tree will be getting sun pretty much all day. Then we needed to decide if we wanted an evergreen (stay green all year) or a deciduous (shed leaves in fall) type of tree – picked evergreen. Next choice is how fast you want the tree to grow – slow, moderate, or fast – we opted for a fast tree as we’re not sure how much longer we’ll be at this house. Finally, we needed to pick the type of tree. We went with a –>Brazillian Pepper Tree – grows quickly and has that classic shade tree look. The guys at the nursery told us this hardy tree will grow quickly and thrive in our Southern California climate. Will post pictures of our tree as soon as I get a chance, but here is one that is mature. Look at the vibrant green, can’t wait until ours is that big!

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This post from –>The Way We Live caught my eye; hadn’t really thought about ‘green’ housing before. Prefab houses, if done right, combine attractive design with sustainable materials and systems. This particular prefab is located in Venice, CA (love that city by the way – spent much of my college years there!) and was designed by Jennifer Siegal. You can see more excellent prefabs at her site –>Office of Mobile Design.

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Did some spring cleaning in the garage this weekend. Recycled what we could, sold what we could, gave away what we could, but we still have lots of stuff left. What to do? Here’s a –>great link from the Green Advice blog for –>Freecycle.org, a grass roots online community of folks who are giving things away for free. One more way to recycle rather than throw away. You know what they say about one man’s trash…

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Although Walmart has its share of problems, they are doing some good things on a couple of fronts. One, they are starting to carry some organic food products in their stores. Go organic wherever possible. The other is that they carrying compact fluorescent light bulbs that are subsidized by the local utility and a bargain at 94 cents for a 24W bulb (replaces 100W) and 74 cents for a 20W bulb (replaces 75W). Your store may or may not have these – I’m in San Diego and have seen a couple of stores with these subsidized offers. Here’s a –>great page on Walmart’s site that discusses the advantages and savings to switching from standard incandescent light bulbs. Also check out –>18seconds.org to see how the US is doing in switching to CFL bulbs.

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One –>fellow blogger has got a great eco-wishlist going. They are –>tracking their progress point by point. Great list of things for all of us to attempt.

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Got my hands on some crucial music as well. –>Stephen Marley just released his –>first solo album Mind Control and it is very Ital! –>Stephen was part of the original Melody Makers with his brother Ziggy and two sisters. His voice is, of all the Marley clan, probably the closest to his famous father’s. He’s sung lead on numerous tracks over the years on MM albums (I’m partial to the work he did on Joy and Blues) and often produces and collaborates on albums with the younger Marleys. I highly recommend his album – especially the more rootsy tunes on it. –>Listen to sample cuts here.

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Well that’s it for now.