"earth" news and stories

So..what are you doing today to honor the Earth?

Are you baking Earth Day-themed cookies? Making an organic fruit salad? Walking to the grocery store (with your reusable bag, of course)? Finally starting your own compost pile?

Check out this What Shade of Green are You? quiz on sister site Green Daily, and then read more of their green food coverage.

Tell us, we want to know: what are you doing today (or what do you do everyday) in celebration of the earth?

A NY-dwelling vegetarian friend of mine (shameless plug: he blogs for a few of our sister sites and you should go read his stuff here and here) mentioned that he visited a new veggie fast-food joint the other day.

Zenburger, a burgeoning healthy burger restaurant that currently exists in California and New York's Midtown Manhattan (and recently started taking online orders), definitely sounds intriguing. They carry all of your typical fast food fare, but with a twist: it's all vegetarian (though not all vegan). The store is a spin-off of Zen Palate, a NY-based Japanese veggie restaurant.

The only odd-seeming part about the place is that the fact the offerings are all veggie isn't immediately apparent from their menus or the store itself. (Apparently, one is supposed to devise that "zen" actually means "faux," which would make dishes like "ZenBeef Burger" and "ZenChicken Sandwich" more obvious).

Brad ordered the ZenHarvest Burger (a veggie burger with homemade hummus, lettuce and tomato on a whole-grain hoagie) with a side of fries, and said he was pleased, but not overly impressed with the food - it was the clean, uncrowded restaurant with plenty of seating that really appealed to him. The place also offers dairy-free "milk"shakes, and Vegenaise alongside its faux tuna sandwich.

And did it produce a zen-like state? According to Brad, not a bit. "It felt like Burger King, except I could eat everything on the menu," he said.

Duly noted.

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Using fresh herbs in your recipes is a sure way to brighten up your favorite chicken dish or add some dimension to a rice pilaf. The flavors from fresh herbs are more vivid and complex than those from dried herbs. Once way to obtain said herbs is by choosing bunches of fresh at your local market, but growing them at home is going to be more convenient and less expensive than buying them every time you need a few tablespoonfuls. These garden-in-a bag kits are perfect for anyone interested in trying to grow some fresh herbs who doesn't have the space - or gardening abilities - to handle something bigger. The indoor-friendly options include organic chives, mint, basil and lavender, along with a variety of flowers. To get your herbs to grow, all you need to do is stir the included seeds and water into the bag, full of already primed soil, and wait. Germination takes a few days and, depending on what you're growing, you'll have fresh herbs within a couple of weeks.

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... no one would be hungry. Or, there would be two pieces of bread at opposite sides of the planet and, due to the fact that the majority of the Earth is inedible, you would just end up with an interesting experiment. The earth sandwich project was conceived by zefrank on an episode of The Show. Spurred into action by the thought of doing something never done before, viewers around the world set out to plant slices of bread in their neighborhoods and, using the opposite tool, hopefully have someone finish the 'wich.

I don't think it's been done yet and since a fair amount of the surface of the planet is Ocean, it may be difficult to complete some of the existing half-sandwiches. Perhaps a boat would help.

[via Gadling]

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Three crew members of the international space station are scheduled to return to earth today. They have been in space for six months and what did they miss most? Real food, of course! Not that their families aren't important to them - they are - but the freeze dried and prepackaged space station rations are hardly what you might call gourmet. While it may not be the classic definition of comfort food, Astronaut Bill McArthur wants a salad and a good cup of coffee. He misses the crunch of fresh produce and the flavor of strong coffee. Where do you think he'll go - Starbucks or Dunkin' Donuts?

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