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?
Mambo Sprouts, a magazine dedicated to health and organic food as well as coupons for you, has put out a call for original recipes. They're looking for original recipes in four different categories, each utilizing different sponsored products.
You can enter any and all of the categories: Bake it organic, Asian exotic, chocolate craze, or salt of the earth. If you are interested, you can check out the rules and requirements here.
If you like to cook and create your own recipes, check out this contest. It could be a chance to win some useful prizes and get your creations out into the world.
I've heard of people trying crazy things to get more productive, but I'm not so sure this is one of them. I thought it sounded weird when I first saw the headline, but when I actually read about the practice, I had to admit it made sense.
Apparently some dairy farmers in the UK have started practicing Tai Chi in order to get more out of the cows. And put like that, it does sound a little odd. Really though, the Tai Chi is to relax and de-stress the farmers, so that they don't pass on that stress to the cows that they have to milk. The farmers do think that they get more milk from the cows now, but I personally think that's a pretty hard thing to quantify.
These are small organic dairy farmers, so they need to be in touch (literally) with their cows and be mindful of everything that affects them. I wonder if this could work for a large, machine run farm. Probably not, since I think that mechanical milkers wouldn't really transfer stress. It's a nice thought, though.
According to a trend piece in the Fashion & Styles section of today's New York Times, an increasing number of young people (the word "hipster" is not used, but certainly implied) are ditching Williamsburg for the farming life, raising free range chickens and organic spinach on rural farms.
"Steeped in years of talk around college campuses and in stylish urban enclaves about the evils of factory farms," twenty- and thirty-something urbanites are getting some real dirt on their trendy Carhartts, the article says.
I guess this doesn't seem particularly new to me. Coming from the more rural environs of Chapel Hill, NC, hip young people working on organic farms is nothing new - my 22-year-old brother, for example, used to work part time in a nightclub and part time on a humane, hormone-free hog farm, and delighted in the fact that he sometimes got paid in pork shoulder. Plus, how many Baby Boomers don't have a story about working on an organic farm in the 1960s?
National Geographic, of all places, has put together a helpful glossary of the newest in vineyard standards and and farming practices. We all know about organic wine, but what about wines that, say, pair well with your astrological sign? We've summarized a few for you here:
Biodynamic wine - Is grown using biodynamic agriculture, which means that farmers pay close attention to the holistic properties of the soil, and the relationship that is established between the soil, plants, and animals. Farmers also use astrological signs as a guide to planting and harvesting. Sound hokey? Maybe, but you can bet wine made from a biodynamic grape has been tended to with the utmost in TLC.
Low-sulfite wine - Sulfites occur naturally in wine, but winemakers usually add more to prevent spoilage and oxidation. Some organic wine, as regulated by the USDA, cannot contain added sulfites, to the relief of people who are allergic. These wines tend to contain about 10 and 20 parts per million of sulfite, compared to conventional wines with 80 to 120 ppm or higher.
LIVE/Salmon Safe wine - LIVE stands for Low Input Viticulture and Enology, Oregon's initiative to limit the use of chemical pesticides on its farms. Salmon Safe works with LIVE to ensure that chemical runoff isn't affecting nearby salmon. If you buy wine with either of these labels, it means an independent contractor has inspected the vineyards and assured that they were compliant with rigorous standards.
Maybe you've heard about "eating green," but aren't quite sure what it entails. Or you already try to eat organic, but sometimes wish there was more you could do for the earth. Or maybe you're already aware of eating green but could use a refresher.
Well, our friends at GreenDaily have done the research for you, and come up with a handy little guide to everything you should know about eating green. Each part of the guide features handy, straightforward information about topics like gardening, artificial growth hormones, and fair trade, complete with online resources and opportunities to learn more.
The nice thing about shopping at local farmers' markets is that they rarely mar their product with stickers that are hard to peel off and leave an unappealing, waxy residue.
But during the winter, many of us have no choice but to buy the stickered fruit. So, we should at least know how to identify our fruit by its sticker, right?
Ideal Bite kindly provided this short but effective tutorial:
A four-digit number means it was conventionally grown
A five-digit number beginning in "9" means it is organic
A five-digit number beginning in "8" means it was genetically modified.
You'd think that with increased demand, you just have to increase supply. The increase in demand is one side of the problem. The other side is a very low and slow supply that is nowhere near keeping up with the demand, not only domestically, but in China as well.
Lots of companies are trying to manage this by simply switching their food products away from organic. It doesn't mean that their products are bad, it just means that they aren't certified.
If you're hungry and willing to fork over the cash, there are plenty of companies that will be willing to deliver you a meal. MSNBC recently noted a few companies that are now bringing their goods right to your front door (or, in some cases, your kid's school).
For $100, California-based RAWvolution will send you a box filled with two soups, four entrees, four side dishes and two desserts, all - you guessed it - raw and organic.
For parents who are way too busy to throw an apple and a pb&j in a paper bag for their kid, they can schedule to have Freshlunches deliver Junior a healthy, organic lunch (about $4-$7 per day), just like mom would make. Except...she didn't. Some company did. Oh, well - guess it's better than Lunchables, right?
Three Potato Four will send you a week's worth of food (or so they say), which includes four organic vegetarian entrees, two side dishes, soup, salad, dessert, and bread. Heck, they even throw in some flowers for ambiance!
Now, these options are all well and good, but if you want healthy food delivered to your family, why not join a CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture) program, and support your local farms while going easy on transportation emissions in the process? And if you need some company to make your kid's lunch every day, maybe you should re-assess your super-busy schedule, no?
It feels like everywhere you turn these days, the word 'organic' pops up. I think that the tipping point for me was when the Batter Blaster turned up this fall as an organic product (I guess to convince consumers that it's slightly redemptive despite the fact that it ejects pancake batter out of a spray can).
I guess I'm not the only one who feels like it's getting a little bit abused these days, because it is one of 19 words or phrases on Lake Superior State University's annual List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness.
Back when I was in high school, I discovered that you could get maple sweetened candy canes in the health food section of Fred Meyer (a west coast chain of stores that sell groceries, clothes, homewares and just about everything else. I've lived on the east coast for six years and I still miss it). I bought them instead of the traditional ones because I liked the old-fashioned color the maple gave the candy. I also liked the idea of eating something that wasn't filled with lots of artificial colors.
Now there's another way to get candy canes that make you feel incrementally better about eating them. According to our friends over at Green Daily, you can now get organic, vegan, fair trade, GMO-free candy canes. They are made by a company called Pure Fun. They use all natural, kosher, vegan, gluten-free and Fair Trade ingredients and they source their cane sugar from companies that "green cut" it by hand. You can find Pure Fun candy at Whole Foods or online.
There's no doubt that parents are more and more feeding their babies organic foods. The question now isn't whether or not the food should be organic, but how that organic food is packaged -- glass jars, directly from the vegetable bin, or frozen. With no kids of my own, and basically no knowledge of this part of the kitchen, I'm looking at Cookie Magazine for advice. Cookie Magazine writers Deirdre Dolan and Alexandra Zissou say that while jarred foods are probably the most convenient, they're not the most nutritious because the foods are heavily cooked and many have preservatives to prolong shelf life. They taste tested organic baby foods on their own kids and highlighted these seven, most frozen:
When I was nine years old, my mom didn't give away candy for Halloween. Instead, she passed out travel-sized tubes of sparkly, bubble gum flavored Crest. Some kids thought this was a very cool thing and others picked up a tube, looked at it and flung it back at her yelling, "Hey lady, that's not candy!" We had tubes of that stuff leftover for years. Every time a friend came over to spend the night, they'd have to take some home with them.
She's still not much of a fan of giving out candy, this year she's distributing Halloween pencils. In past years she's had little fingertip puppets and magic markers. For next year I'm campaigning for candy, albeit special candy. The Natural Candy Store sells packs of organic candy, bagged in compostable cellophane. The kids are happy because they are getting candy and she's happy because she's passing out a treat that isn't quite as bad as some of the other options.
Have you ever stashed a Coke in the freezer, hoping to chill it quickly, then forgotten all about it, only to have it explode all over your frozen peas?
Mambo Sprouts, a magazine dedicated to health and organic food as well as coupons for you, has put out a call for original recipes. They're looking for original recipes in four different categories, each utilizing different sponsored products.
I've heard of people trying crazy things to get more productive, but I'm not so sure this is one of them. I thought it sounded weird when I first saw the headline, but when I actually read about the practice, I had to admit it made sense.
Time to check in with our sister site GreenDaily for some environmental/food news:
Maybe you've heard about "eating green," but aren't quite sure what it entails. Or you already try to eat organic, but sometimes wish there was more you could do for the earth. Or maybe you're already aware of eating green but could use a refresher.
People dedicated to eating an organic lifestyle don't mind paying that dollar or two, or even ten, extra for organic foods. 
If you're hungry and willing to fork over the cash, there are plenty of companies that will be willing to deliver you a meal. MSNBC recently noted a few companies that are now bringing their goods right to your front door (or, in some cases, your kid's school).
The world of organic meat. 
Back when I was in high school, I discovered that you could get maple sweetened candy canes in the health food section of Fred Meyer (a west coast chain of stores that sell groceries, clothes, homewares and just about everything else. I've lived on the east coast for six years and I still miss it). I bought them instead of the traditional ones because I liked the old-fashioned color the maple gave the candy. I also liked the idea of eating something that wasn't filled with lots of artificial colors. 
A fraking amazing Battlestar Galactica cake
Iced Tea 101
Pierogies + cheese + onions + kraut = Parmageddon!
