Save Some Green

After a long hiatus, I am back. I have no excuse other than laziness, but I have some tips on saving on natural and organic grocery items that hopefully will put me back in everyone's good graces.

Let's face it. Organic food is expensive. Organic foods are labor intensive to produce and therefore cost more to the consumer. You rarely will find coupons for organic foods in the Sunday paper. You can find coupons at producers websites as well as a couple other sites to save yourself some money. Those I have listed below all have coupons you can print out at home. With the economy in such bad shape it's nice to know that you can save some green on your grocery bill. You may want to sign up for a separate email account specifically for the coupons so you don't bog down your regular email address.

• Organic Valley - Their products are widely available (I've seen them at Kroger and Whole Foods) here in Virginia so you don't have to go to a natural food store to get them.
• Stonyfield Farm - You're most familiar with their organic yogurt. They're the maker of the Yobaby yogurt that's so popular. They also make the yogurt tubes (think Gogurt only organic) that kids love. The Hubby and I are really excited to try their limited edition Pumpkin Pie flavor!
• Pacific Natural - These guys make the boxed soups and stocks that are so easy to use. Costco actually carried their organic chicken broth and organic roasted red pepper soup for a while.
• Seventh Generation - While these Seventh Generation doesn't make food, they seem to make everything else. Seventh Generation has range of eco-friendly products that include everything from cleaners to chlorine free diapers.
• Mambo Sprouts - Offers printable coupons for natural and organic products. They also make the coupon books available at Whole Foods.
• Healthesavers.com - This website will email you links to print the coupons you select. I just picked up a coupon for BioKleen products which are really hard to come by.

I'll pass along more as I find them.

CSA Day!

We forgot to pick up our bag yesterday. Luckily Paradise Fruit keeps them in their cooler so they stay fresh. Here's what we received in our bag this week.

We had some bell peppers.

It is really nice change to have orange peppers after a few weeks of green peppers. The have such a great flavor.

And what CSA bag would be complete without these guys?

That's right folks - It's cucumbers, again.

We also received some yellow squash.

I used to hate squash growing up, but I've been pleasantly surprised that I like it now. We usually saute them in olive oil. It's so simple, but really tasty.

These sweet peppers are new.

I can't tell if they really are different than regular bell peppers or not. They kind of look like a larger version of those tiny peppers that you sometimes get in a crudites platter.

Acorn squash is a new one for me.

I think I've eaten acorn squash before, but I know I've never cooked with it before. I could roast it with a little drizzle of maple syrup or I could try a salad recipe I found on Food Network. There's also a pasta recipe we could try.

Also new this week is soybeans.

Growing up in rural Virginia, I can easily identify this growing in a field, but I had to think a bit to identify it up close.

Surprisingly, I've never eaten edamame by itself. I've heard that it's delicious by steamed with a little salt (a favorite at Japanese restaurants). I'm looking forward to trying these over the long weekend!

My Recent Purchase

While perusing the aisles at Target during lunch today, I happened upon this in the gift wrap section.

So it's not the most gorgeous wrapping paper. In fact it's pretty plain. But if you look closer at the label you'll see why I was excited about it.

Target sells wrapping paper that is made of 100% post consumer recycled content! It's not as pretty as some other wrapping paper, but it's a start. Usually any eco-friendly wrapping paper you buy is ridiculously expensive and sold in sheets, which I hate dealing with. I mean who wants folding creases in their wrapping paper before they even get to use it?

I decided I could invest in some stamps and non-toxic ink and I could make it look pretty cute. I'm not super crafty so I may just see what it looks like with a nice fabric bow on top. The best part is you can actually throw it in the recycle bin when you're done, which you can't do with traditional wrapping paper.

Summer Reading list

Yeah, I know summer is almost over, but I've been reading a book this weekend that has renewed my excitement in my "eco-efforts."

The book is call "Sara Snow's Fresh Living: The Essential Room-by-Room Guide to a Greener, Healthier Family and Home." I checked it out from my local library and I'm really enjoying it. You may have seen Sara Snow's shows on FitTV or Discovery Health. She exudes calm (I'm sure she does a lot of yoga) and is just fun to watch.

This book is great for people like me who are starting to make some green changes in their lives. Snow defines terms that are often misunderstood like "organic," "natural" and what the Fair Trade certification means. While the book doesn't go into specific product recommendations it does tell you what to avoid and arms you with good information. (her website does feature specific brands)

I definitely recommend this to anyone who is beginning their "green" journey.

Resources

Recently I've been on a quest to switch to greener products. I'm paranoid about getting green washed so I'm constantly doing research to find out which products are actually the greenest and figuring out which green products actually work.

I've slowly been switching to greener products ranging from laundry detergent to deodorant. I've found some that I'm really happy with, some I'm not so happy with and some that I'm allergic to. I have very sensitive skin and I've recently discovered I'm allergic to lavender. This is a real shame because I LOVE the smell of lavender. I always have to get the unscented version of the product I'm trying. Of course these never come in the economical bulk sizes (bummer).

Anyway I digress. The whole point of this post was to share some of the resources I use to research some of the products I try. There are three I turn to most.

First there is Green Guide. Green Guide was originally a magazine created by the folks of National Geographic. They offered the typical printed version but they also offered an electronic version that was delivered to your inbox each quarter.

The articles are well researched and I always found useful. (this article for instance) They had buying guides that you could print out that could be folded to the size of business cards that you could put in your wallet and take shopping with you. You'll notice that they refer to the "dirty dozen" a lot when they talk about cosmetic products. That one is folded up in my wallet and one of my co-workers uses it too. The magazine never made it past it's first year, but the site is still up and they update the content frequently.

For product reviews, I turn to Consumer Reports. You have to have a subscription to view the product ratings. Don't fret if you don't want to do an online subscription - their articles are pretty useful. They even launched a separate site devoted to all things green. If you check out their Eco Labels center you can research those labels you see on your green products and what they mean. (and whether they actually mean anything)

The last site I check is Amazon. Frankly, The Hubby and I use this for researching anything - from electronics to shampoo. They have a large selection of products for sale and they allow users to post reviews of every product on their site. People don't hold back on this site. You get good reviews, bad reviews and everything in between.

I hope these sites help you feel more comfortable when purchasing greener products. I've definitely picked up some duds (Seventh Generation dishwasher detergent - I guess they can't do everything well) but for the most part I've been pretty happy with the products I've tried (their laundry detergent works quite well).

CSA Day!

It's CSA day again. This week we had lots of yummy vegetables in our bag.

There were some big ripe tomatoes.

I'm not sure what we're going to do with them yet, but it's not hard to find a use for tomatoes.

These were new this week.

The Hubby asked me to make him an eggplant casserole. My grandmother makes it at most of our holiday gatherings. It's like crack casserole. It's the first thing to go at all the family gatherings. At Easter there was almost a fight over the last helpings. (I've included the recipe at the end of this post)

Green peppers were also part of our bag.

One of these guys will be used in the eggplant casserole.

Once again, cucumbers made an appearance.

I'm seriously running out of ideas for these. We've made pasta salad, tzatziki and cucumber salads galore. I'm all tapped out.

Zucchini and Squash make a repeat performance.

I love these guys. I never get tired of them. I love them roasted, grilled and sauteed.

I promised the recipe for my grandmother's eggplant casserole. This can be frozen before you bake it. It takes some time but it's so worth it.

Eggplant Casserole

1 eggplant peeled, cubed

4 slices of bacon

1 large onion, chopped

1 green bell pepper, chopped

1 quart diced tomatoes

1/4 cup sugar

7 slices of bread

1 cup sharp cheddar cheese, divided

salt and pepper

Boil eggplant in salt water until tender. In a large skillet, fry bacon slices until crisp. Remove bacon from pan and saute onion and pepper until onions are soft and translucent. Add tomatoes and heat through. Add sugar and salt and pepper to taste. Cook for 2-3 minutes and then take off heat. Crumble bread slices into bread crumbs. Add breadcrumbs, crumbled bacon slices, 1/2 cup of cheese, and drained eggplant to tomato mixture and stir to combine. Transfer mixture to a ceramic baking dish and top with remaining cheese. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

CSA Garden Recipes

Sorry I haven't updated the blog in a while. We've been in Florida for the past week for a wedding for one of The Hubby's cousins. We had lots of fun and Lola (our Labrador Retriever) got to go swimming in the in-law's pool!

On to today's post. The Hubby suggested I show everyone some of the yummy dishes that we made with produce from our garden and the CSA. He actually started taking pictures of them so I thought I'd share.

For the last few weeks we've gotten plenty of cucumbers so I made some tabbouleh.

Tabbouleh is a Mediterranean salad that is typically made with a grain called bulgur. Of course now I can't find the recipe anymore so I can't give anyone. This particular recipe also used some of the mint from our garden.

One week our CSA bag had a lot of zucchini in it so I made some zucchini muffins.

I love zucchini bread. The Hubby and I usually add a schmear of cream cheese to them. This was a Paula Dean recipe from a cook book my mother gave me. As you can imagine, just like anything from Paula Dean this is not a low-fat recipe.

We used some of the tomatoes and zucchini for a pasta dish.

I always forget how much zucchini cooks down. As you can see I underestimated how much we needed for this amount of pasta.

Here are The Hubby's famous mojitos

We love to have these on a Sunday afternoon. We recently discovered a recipe for a shaken simple syrup. No simmering required. Costco carries bulk organic sugar. It's like the Sugar in the Raw stuff you get in packets (it's brownish) which is why these have cloudy tint to them.

These are the turkey burgers we made with the cayenne peppers.

The cucumber salad was supposed to go on top of the burgers, but we used it as a side instead. After making these we realized that neither of us actually like turkey burgers so we won't be making these again. Since we made them into sliders we used regular dinner rolls. The poppy seed rolls were from Trader Joes. If we ever attempt to make sliders again we'll definitely get them again.

Homekeeping

One of my coworkers asked me about the cleaning products I used and mentioned that his wife was now making her own laundry detergent. I've heard that you can do this, but I haven't made any myself. She's hardcore!

In honor of my co-worker's wife, today's post will be about the "recipes" I use for some of my cleaning solutions. Not only are they "greener" but they are a lot cheaper. I started making my own products when I had an allergic reaction to a chlorine bleach based spray a few years ago. It took a little while for The Hubby and I to get used to the vinegar smell, but now we associate this smell with "clean." Most green cleaners require a bit more elbow grease, but I think your health is worth it.

A lot of the "ingredients" for the solutions can be purchased in bulk.

Vinegar for instance

This is a ridiculously large bag of baking soda.

I guess some people use baking soda to control the alkalinity of swimming pools. This must be why they need a 12 lb bag of baking soda. This makes your stainless steel sink in the kitchen shine!

Castile soap

This particular bottle is scented with peppermint. Dr. Bronner's has lots of different scents like Rose and Eucalyptus.

Tea Tree Oil

Tea Tree is known as a mold and mildew killer.

Now for the "recipes."

For an all purpose cleaner:

In a spray bottle mix 1 part vinegag and 1 part water. Add a few squirts of castile soap for some grease cutting power and shake.

This does an excellent job of getting the grime out of the microwave. If you want to sanitize add a few drops of tea tree oil. Don't use a lot because a little goes a long way

For an abrasive cleaner:

Just mix baking soda with a few drops of Castile soap until it forms a paste.

I use this on bathroom sink bowls (toothpaste be gone!) and the tub and shower.

Confessions

So I feel like I have to get some things off my chest. I have a few eco-confessions...

1. I always seem to forget to turn a light off. It might be the hallway light, the closet light or the bathroom light. The Hubby is always there to offer a gentle reminder to turn the light out.
2. I am awful about wasting food. I feel this is like the eco-cardinal sin. I'll buy a piece of produce, stash it in the fridge and forget about it. Well, I forget about it until it starts to rot in the the produce bin. This is the bad habit I try to work on the most.
3. I secretly wish I could throw the container out with the moldy food. I don't, but sometimes I wish I could.
4. I know going green is all about reducing consumption. I've been good about it for the most part, but I just can't stop myself from buying new clothes. I'm not one of those people who can put together a super stylish outfit from a consignment shop. I know people who can and I'm envious.
5. I still hate the smell of compost,

Our First Harvest

So we now have our first organic pepper harvest. Here are the jalapenos and cayenne we harvested this weekend.

I think we're going to make roasted jalapeno poppers from the jalapenos (thank you Pioneer Woman).

It's very hard to find recipes for cayenne that don't involve ground cayenne peppers. After doing some research I found that cayenne peppers also go by the name bird chili and Thai chili. That was a little easier to find. I think we'll make turkey burgers with these. Yum!

Now I just have to figure out a way to combine what we get from our garden with what we get from the CSA like the turkey burgers.

* Update 7-19-09 - We tried both recipes this weekend. The jalapeno poppers were a hit. We took them to some friends' house for dinner and they were a big hit. We'll definitely make them again. The turkey burgers were not as big of a hit. Those we will definitely not make again. The cucumber salad was good as a side though.

The crops are in!

Two posts in one week! I'm trying to make up for last week when I was out of town. Plus yesterday was CSA day so I didn't want to not post.

We've moved away from the greens and into the summer vegetables. We're now getting summer squash and zucchini. The Hubby and I love zucchini on the grill.

We have cool cucumbers.

I'm thinking of eating one of these in a asian salad. Sunset also had a good really simple looking Cucumber Salad recipe that I think I'll try too.

Here's the summer squash.

I took these pictures pretty quickly and looking at them now i think I actually have two different yellow vegetables here. The light yellow ones are the summer squash and the other ones appear to be a yellow zucchini (see the green tops).

Last but not least. We had very two very odd shapped zucchini in our bag this time.

These babies are getting grilled. I'm so excited!

My "Garden"

First, I apologize for not posting last week. I was on vacation in sunny California. The hubby and I were touring wine country in Napa and Sonoma County!

On to today's entry....

So my garden isn't exactly a garden. It's really just a bunch of pots on my deck. We started our "garden" when we moved into our house a few years ago. One of my co-workers told me she grew vegetables on the deck of her apartment and I thought I'd give it a try. (I don't know why I was so surprised that you could grow vegetables in a pot because they aren't any different than ornamental flowers. They're all plants.)

So now you get to meet this year's crop.

First we have our raspberry bush.

We've grown lots of berries on this bush. We haven't been able to eat any of them because the birds eat them first. I actually saw a mocking bird hop up next to it and take one of those delicious looking berries and fly off! Alas, there are no more berries on my raspberry bush so we have nothing to show for our "hard" work. Really all we have to do is water it and fertilize it with an organic fertilizer.

(If you notice it says liquid fish and, yes, it does actually smell fishy)

Here are our peppers. We have cayenne peppers (they're the skinny ones) and jalapeno peppers (they're the plumper ones).

The cayenne peppers are new this year. Last year we tried to grow red peppers without much success. They kept getting blossom end rot. After some research I found that this was a calcium deficiency. After more research I found out the calcium deficiency was caused by inconsistent watering (yep that sounds right). We thought we'd wait until we were more responsible gardeners before trying to grow bell peppers again.

These are our strawberries. The one that's huge and overflowing is an "ever bearing" and the other one is "June bearing."

The June bearing plant had one strawberry. That's right, ONE. June came and went and we only had a single strawberry. Like the raspberries, we didn't get to eat that beautiful organic strawberry. Something mysteriously happen to that berry. We can't imagine that a bird could have carried off that big red berry. We suspect that Lola (our dog) got the berry because she is now very interested in the strawberries we bring home from the market.

Did you notice that a lot of the leaves had lots of holes in them? That's due to a rose gardener's worst nightmare called a June bug. Here's one of the buggers now...

We also found out last year that they like raspberry bushes. They've stayed away from them this year though.

Our last specimen is one that an idiot could grow. It's mint!

Mint is actually pretty invasive so most people grow it in pots even if they put it in their garden. They basically just bury the pot with the very top of the pot above ground so that it doesn't spread. We are particularly happy to have it in our "garden" because my husband makes a fabulous mojito.

Composting Confession

I have a confession. I hate the smell of compost.

My husband and I recently bought one of those compost bins you can rotate that turns the compost. We thought this would be a good option for a two person house and would contain most of the smell that we've been told about. This also prevents our dog from romping in a compost pile.

My husband and father-in-law (thank you Howard!) started putting it together on a Saturday afternoon and a few hours later we had a compost bin!

So, back to my comment about the smell. I guess I should clarify - I hate the smell of my compost. According to some of the books and websites I've been reading, compost should have a "pleasant earthy smell." Mine smells nothing like that! The smell is hard to explain. It doesn't have the ammonia smell that "Let it Rot" mentions. It just smells like rotting food. I did turn it yesterday to try to introduce more oxygen so maybe that will make it smell more "earthy."

Of course I haven't finished reading any of the books I got from the library on the subject. Apparently, composting is not an exact science and more of an art. This does not bode well for me because I'm a very process oriented person and don't have a creative bone in my body. I suspect composting will be one of those things I'll just have to learn about through trial and error...

It's CSA day!

I'd been saying that I was going to join a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). Well this was the year we finally did it! We joined the Growing Community CSA. They provide organic and naturally grown produce. We chose this one in particular because they have a pick-up site near where we live. Most of the ones we found had pick ups at the farmer's market Downtown.

One of the main reasons we wanted to sign up for a CSA, besides supporting local farmers, was to force culinary exploration. We really don't mind trying new things, but rarely ever do. We believed that getting a new batch of produce each week would force us to eat what was in season. We were worried. Neither one of us had really eaten that many greens, which we understood to be a staple in the shares you get from these things. Being from a southern family in a rural area, my experience with greens was limited to collards swimming in "pot liquor." This was the food that my parents served each New Year's Day and swore that I would have bad luck all year if I didn't eat them. (just so you know, I didn't and my luck was just fine) My husband's family was from Pennsylvania and didn't like many vegetables so his exposure was even less than mine.

Well that's all changed. In the 4 or so odd weeks that we've gotten shares we experienced lots of different things, mainly greens. We've had to do a little detective work - you see they don't really tell you what you have in your bag. I'm not sure if most are like this, but the emails we get from Growing Community aren't very specific. Usually the emails will say we're getting greens, but no specifics. The Internet has been very helpful with identification.

Here's what we received in our bag this week.

You can see the turnips front and center. I haven't had any turnips before (I told you I was going for a culinary adventure here). I plan on pairing them with some potatoes in a turnip potato mash. I saw Ina Garten do this once on The Barefoot Contessa on Food Network so I think that should be good.

These guys are new. We haven't seen them in our bag before. The bag says Braising Mix. Apparently they are a mix of dandelion, mustard, chard chicories and Asian greens. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with these yet.

The email actually did let us know we would be getting them and suggested we saute' them in a little olive oil and salt and pepper.

This bag is full of pea shoots. When we first got these, I thought they were watercress. We used them in an Orange Salad with Blue Cheese. Yum!

I have no idea what these are. Bok Choy maybe?

This is a familiar site. It's kale. What we've found is that most kale recipes are soups. We made a particularly yummy kale and chorizo soup with our last few shares.

Well that's what we got this week. I'll update later on the unidentified vegetable.

The Beginning

I started what I call my "green journey" a few years ago. It started with recyling. We moved into our new house and with curbside pick up there was really no excuse not to. Well... except forgetting to take it to the curb.

My next big step (and what is probably my journey's real beginning) began with a New Years resolution. Not a New Years resolution to go green, but a new years resolution to get off my butt and keep a clean house. I was tired of scrambling around the house trying to clean up before company came over so I made a resolution to clean the house every week so that I would be ready for anyone who came by.

I did pretty good with my resolution, but I started to get an alergic reaction to the cleaning products so I decided to do what I'd been saying I was going to do for a year or so - I went to natural cleaning products. I was unnaturally afraid of being "greenwashed" so I started making my own cleaning products using vinegar and baking soda.

That step snowballed into other "greener" practices. The thought that the chemicals in those product caused my allergic reaction got me thinking about other chemicals - in my food and in the plastics I stored my food in. So I decided to make some changes. In this blog I am going to talk about some of the changes I've made and some of the challenges I've had going "green."