With Valentine’s Day approaching, you’re probably thinking about what to get your True Love (or yourself.)
Today, Recycla is here to talk about CHOCOLATE.
Chocolate is a big part of Valentine’s Day and for good reason. This product of the cocoa bean has been revered for centuries for its aphrodisiac qualities. And isn’t love what Valentine’s Day is all about?
Posted in eco holidays, food
Life is hectic but we all have to eat. Some of us just don’t have time to cook. So, when you need to eat out, don’t give up on health just to get your food fast. If you think ahead, you’ll be prepared. A little thinking time now, will mean that you’ll be able to get your meal in a hurry from a company that uses sustainable practices and offers a quality meal in a hurry.
Posted in food, Uncategorized
Tagged Burgerville USA, Eat Locally grown produce and products
With winter here, Recycla and her family are starting their days off with one of their favorite breakfasts: Oatmeal.
Ahhhhhh…
A bowl of oatmeal is a warm, nutritious breakfast that tastes good and gives any Eco Warrior enough energy to battle even the most dastardly Hummer owner.
Posted in food
Like many folks, Enviro Girl begins each new year with a resolve to eat healthier–and get her family to eat healthier, too. Given the choice between a bag of chips and a bag of carrots, her family will always reach for the chips. The men in her household are huge carb junkies, leaving almost no room for the other food groups. But over the years, here are a few ways she’s encouraged their fruit and veggie consumption:
Even though winter does not technically start for another day it has been cold for a few weeks in Recycla’s home state of Virginia. Since Recycla can occasionally be a fun mother, she has been letting her daughters drink hot cocoa with breakfast and again after school while they’re working on homework.
Posted in food
Eco Lassie sees you’ve been scratching your head to find something neat for those last few people on your list. She’s searched for these unusual gifts for you:
Posted in eco holidays, food, gardening
Maybe you’re hosting a holiday soiree. Perhaps you’ve been invited and asked to bring a dish to pass. Whatever the festive occasion, group caroling, tree trimming or gift exchange, here are some easy and tasty foods to nibble on. Enviro Girl challenges you to eschew the meat and cheese tray (salty, fatty and high in cholesterol) for some lighter fare that’s just as easy to prepare.
Thanksgiving is The Green Mommy’s favorite holiday. It takes place during her favorite time of year and she loves that it’s a day when most Americans celebrate together. Even though it’s been 18 years since she’s dined on the main course of turkey, it hasn’t diminished her love for the holiday’s cuisine.
Posted in eco holidays, food
Tagged meatless dishes, vegetarian dishes, Vegetarian Thanksgiving
Friday night is Movie Night at Recycla’s house. Her children put on their pajamas and pick out a good DVD. Recycla’s husband pops popcorn, because who can watch a movie without popcorn? This has been an important tradition for years in Recycla’s household, but a few years ago, it went through a significant change.
What changed and why?
Recycla found out that popcorn makes the Top 10 list of foods most often contaminated with pesticides and other chemicals.
Gulp.
After years of serving her children organic apples, strawberries, grapes, and other produce, it turns out Recycla had actually been serving up bowls of toxic treats.
Luckily, there are plenty of organic popcorn options out there.
For the microwave popcorn fans, Recycla highly recommends Newman’s Own Organics popcorn. This is the best microwave popcorn available, period. Instead of the usual greasy, salty microwave popcorn, NOO microwave popcorn is light, not greasy, and not too salty. NOO does not use partially hydrogenated oils or any trans fatty acids. Available in unsalted, lightly salted, and butter flavors.
For popcorn purists, microwave popcorn is not acceptable. They either pop their popcorn on the stove top or in a popper like the Stir Crazy. Per Enviro Girl’s suggestion, Recycla bought one for her family several years ago and they’ve never gone back to the microwave stuff. The flavor is just so much better than microwave options. Or, pop the corn on your stove.
Tell the Eco Women: Are you a popcorn fan? Do you like yours salty and buttery or some other way?
Posted in food
Coming Soon: October 16 is Blog Action Day, and this year’s topic is FOOD! What a great topic! On that day, bloggers will cover topics including sustainable food production, the availability of food, the cost of food, creative ways to serve food, malnutrition, hunger, becoming vegetarian and favorite foods. As an omnivore, Enviro Girl can’t wait for October 16th!
Speaking of food, Enviro Girl read an interesting piece the other day: How That Food You Throw Out Is Linked to Global Warming. Wasting food resources has significant environmental impact, but people often don’t think about it. The energy spent on food production and transportation could be reduced if we reduced the 55 million tons of food we throw away. Enviro Girl has read other staggering statistics on food waste–and she’s been guilty of throwing away food at her house too. It’s a common thing to find gross stuff in refrigerators, but tossing out a bag of food each month is a waste of money and many other resources as the article explains.
Waste aside, Enviro Girl began really examining her family’s shopping and food consumption habits about two years ago. It bugged her to literally throw out money from her fridge every month. How could she fix this problem? Here are three of the things she did to reduce her family’s food waste:
1. Meal planning. Instead of randomly shopping for food each week, Enviro Girl started writing a list of what she planned to make for meals ahead of her weekly trip to the grocery store. AFTER taking inventory of the necessary ingredients, Enviro Girl would shop for what she needed. By planning meals a week in advance, Enviro Girl saved time, money and threw out less wasted food. This also resulted in less stress–instead of asking “what’s for dinner?” at 5:00 each evening, her family knew chicken casserole was on the menu and every part of the meal was assembled beforehand for fast preparation without any missing ingredients causing delays.
2. Eating down the pantry. Once every few months Enviro Girl skips her weekly shopping trip and makes meals out of what she finds in her pantry, fridge and freezer. This forces her family to eat the frozen half of a lasagna they’ve saved before it succumbs to freezer burn. This keeps Enviro Girl from stockpiling ingredients for meals she didn’t get around to making. By managing her family’s resources by hoarding almost no food, Enviro Girl never throws out bottles of ketchup that expired in 1998 or cans of soup that should’ve been sold in 2002.*
3. Buying less. Sure, there are 5 people in Enviro Girl’s family, but that doesn’t mean she needs to buy 5 pears or 5 oranges. (She’s not sure why she kept doing this for so long, but one way she figured out her family’s consumption habits was by buying less to see what they actually ran short of and what they never really ate.) Enviro Girl began buying less perishable food more often. This meant the food she bought actually got eaten before it became rotten and turned to mush in her produce drawer. Buying less perishable food means throwing out less rotten food.
* Bonus tip: Every time there’s a food drive, Enviro Girl donates every unopened can/box/jar of food she can find in her pantry. This insures that nothing remains beyond its expiration date and when there’s less clutter, Enviro Girl can take better inventory of what her family really needs.
