Out of the office!

A quickie with the Greenhabilitator who can hardly contain her excitement...

Mr. Greenhab and I have been whining talking about how much we could use a vacation away from, well, everything - work, stress, kids, you name it. Alas, we've tightened the purse strings and there is no vaca in sight for a long time to come.

Enter my job (big smooches to iVillage) who needed green-minded folks to sit on a panel at the Natural Products Expo West in LA this weekend.

Oh, oh pick me!!! {Dances around with her hand in the air.}

"...Natural Products Expo West is the premier trade show for the healthy products industry. Co-located with SupplyExpo, the Nutracon conference, the Healthy Baking Seminar and the Fresh Ideas Organic Marketplace..."

As a panel member, I'll be able to give my input on so many things. And, let's face it, I have a lot to say for us eco-conscious consumers! Some of my main concerns today are plastic packaging, labeling, genetically engineered ingredients (and how that relates to labeling), manufacturing process, costs...I could go on and on. Of course, I'm sure there will be many "Would you buy this product, or this one? What if this one was a dollar cheaper?" type questions, but a girl can dream.

So, dear readers, tell me: What would you say if you had the chance to sit down with representatives from the natural products industry? What are your concerns? Desires? What would you like to see more / less of?

Can't wait to fill you in when I get back!

So You're Making Your Own Compost...Now What?

Composting with The Conscious Shopper

Has this ever happened to you? Trying to live a simpler, greener life, you pick up a new skill, only to find yourself asking, "Now what do I do with this?"

For example, I learned how to make my own yogurt, but to make sure I have a fresh starter every time, I have to make a lot of yogurt - more than my family wants to eat on a regular basis. Now what do I do with all this yogurt?

I gradually discovered that there are lots of ways to incorporate yogurt into our regular meals without making us sick of yogurt - but still have fresh homemade yogurt on hand for those times when we do want a bowl of yogurt and fruit.

Someday I'd like to right a guide called So You're Growing Your Own (fill in the blank)...Now What?, answering all the questions that run through my head when I encounter a new vegetable: What is this? How do I cook it? Can I eat the greens? Do I eat the stem? etc.

But today's subject is compost. So you've started composting your food and gardening scraps...now what do you do with it?



Find the statement that best describes you for some tips on how to use your black gold:

I have a large plot of land set aside for gardening...

• Mix four to six inches of compost into your soil before planting.

• Add a one to two inch layer of compost around fruits and vegetables as a mulch.
  

• Use compost as a seed-starting medium.
  

I have a very tiny yard...

All of the ideas above, plus:

• Mel's Mix for Square Foot Gardens includes 8 cubic feet of vermiculite, 8 cubic feet of peat moss, and 8 cubic feet of compost.
  

I have no interest in converting my lawn into a vegetable garden.

• Spread a one inch layer of compost around trees, shrubs, and flowers. Keep compost six inches away from the trunk of trees.

• Sprinkle some compost on the soil of your houseplants.
  

I live in an apartment with a balcony...

• Use on houseplants as mentioned above.

• Use as potting soil in a container garden.
  

I live in an apartment with no balcony...

• Use on houseplants as mentioned above.
  

• Donate your compost to a friend, farmer, or community garden.
  

I have no interest in having worms in my house or a smelly, decaying pile in my yard...

After battling fruit flies and a leaky bin all winter, I can definitely understand this perspective. (Talk to me again in ten years when I've become an expert vermicomposter, and I might have a different opinion.)

Home composting may not be for everyone, and that's why we need city compost collection along with our trash and recycling. Write a letter to your city leaders expressing your opinion or get involved with a group advocating for city composting.

What other ideas do you have for using compost?

Book Review and Giveaway: Conscious Kids

A book review from The Conscious Shopper

A few weeks ago, I stumbled on a review of Jessica Purdy's new book, Conscious Kids, at Progressive Pioneer. I have to admit that the main reason I was drawn to the book was the title. After blogging as The Conscious Shopper for almost a year and a half, I feel an irrational ownership of the word conscious, so when I see someone else use it - especially in the title of their book - my first thought is, "Are they doing justice to my word?"

I'm happy to report that Jessica's use of conscious was just right. She begins the book by defining a "conscious kid" as one who is aware, compassionate, kind, generous, and proactive. From there, she has tons of ideas for fostering those traits in your kids, from holiday and birthday celebrations to community and environmental involvement.

For example, here are Jessica's ideas for making Easter less focused on candy and Easter eggs and more focused on compassion and generosity:

Save the Whales:
I make the connection to animals for two reasons: one, spring is all about baby animals, and two, the Easter Bunny. You can sponsor an animal through the World Wildlife Fund and give that as an Easter present or have your child choose an animal that he or she would like to sponsor.

Easter Change:
You can have the Easter Bunny bring more than chocolate and gifts. What if the Easter Bunny brought a big, beautifully decorated jar of change, one that you had secretly been collecting and saving up over the course of the year? Have your children decide what charity or cause that jar of change should go to. It may be the same each year or something current that has touched the family in some way. Santa and the Easter Bunny are wonderful characters that can be whatever your family wants them to be, so why not have the Easter Bunny bring change?

It's obvious that Jessica has a background in education. Many of her ideas include the purpose of each activity along with step by step instructions for carrying it out. For all of you educators, you could easily translate many of Jessica's ideas into lesson plans to use in your classroom, such as the following activity from the chapter on media:

Guess Who?

Purpose: To highlight important people in the world and learn more about them.

Step 1: Write the names of people with some positive historical or social importance on cards, as well as some key information about that person. Some suggestions: Dr. Martin Luther King, Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, Rosa Parks, Susan B. Anthony, Nelson Mandela, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Terry Fox, and Stephen Lewis.

Step 2: Give everyone a card and some time to read about their person. You can include some time to do a quick search on the person online if you'd like. Next, have each person take on the identity of the person on their card. They must either act out who that person is or give away important clues until someone is able to guess the identity of the person.

My only criticism of this book is its length - only 118 pages. Luckily, Jessica has caught the blogging bug: you can find more of her ideas at Conscious Kids.

This is usually the point in my book reviews where I say, "Now I'm ready to pass my gently used copy of this book on to another reader." But this time, I don't want to! I plan to keep this book in my collection and reference it often for ideas on how to help my Conscious Shopper kids become conscious kids.

Luckily for you, Jessica is offering two copies of her books to two readers of The Green Phone Booth. To enter, simply leave a comment on this post by next Tuesday at midnight. I'll randomly pick the winners and announce the results next Wednesday.

APLS Carnival: Green musings from a mere Padawan

This month's APLS Carnival posting from Jenn the Greenmom, who is not a Jedi yet

APLS stands for Affluent Persons Living Sustainably--but what exactly does "affluent" mean? I sort of grew up thinking that "we" were ordinary and "those people in the big houses" were affluent. But when I come right down to it, considering how many people in the world do not know where their next meal is coming from, the fact that I have time and opportunity to sit at a computer and write blog entries probably qualifies me as "affluent" to some way of thinking. I get to make choices. It's all too tempting to say, "Sigh, I really wish we had a 40" tv and could afford to just go out and buy the new iPads the day they come out, too bad we're not affluent or anything," or be woebegone because we live in the "poor" side of town and frequently take our kids to playdates at friends' houses that are probably worth easily three times what ours would go for even in a good market. But that would be sort of disingenuous, know what I mean? Sort of like when Some People put up their noses at families with two working parents and go, "well, we chose to tighten our belts and give up some of the luxuries so that Our Children Could Have One Parent At Home" with the tacit--or not so tacit--assumption that those families with two working parents are doing it because they would rather have the luxuries than put the children first, not because without the two incomes some of us, not to mention our children, Wouldn't Have A Roof Or Food, and stuff like that...(sorry, personal sore spot! Opinions expressed here not necessarily representative of the Booth collective and all...) The point being that everyone's situation is different, and any assumptions any of us make about the choices and priorities of someone else, especially when we assume the next person's life/priorities/choices necessarily resemble our own. "Affluent" is a word that can have a lot of meanings to a lot of different people...but it honestly doesn't keep me up nights.

Then there's the other half of the title: "living sustainably." That's the one that keeps catching me.

This month's carnival topic is about the things that we choose as our green priorities, the "must do's" and the "let this one go's," the things we go to the wall for and the things we let slide. And as I thought about it, I realized there are a LOT of things I let slide, and I honestly feel hardly worthy to wear the cape of a Boother most of the time. Last week in a fit of hungry exhaustion I pulled into a drivethrough and ate an ammoniaburger. (Fortunately for my future, it was kind of gross, so I don't think I'll do that again.) Our composting efforts pretty much went to hell in a handbasket when our kitchen became infested with fruit flies that seemed to never go away. We're trying to get rid of paper towels, and we're making progress, but it's slow going, and I live for my ziploc bags. We pretty much never use public transit.

Okay, compared to some women in my circles who drive Escalades and go shopping every other week for the latest and most fashionable clothes they will probably never wear and shop at Those Stores and order takeout every other day and go through a twelve-pack or two of bottled water every week and have never heard the words "fair trade," I'm probably comparatively sustainable. (See? I'm judging other people's choices too. It's a slippery slope. Must stop.) I buy clothes on ebay, I cook from scratch, I turn thermostats down and lights off. I buy organic, especially dairy products. But I have such, such a long way to go.

Which got me to thinking. APLS. With the lovely image of that sweetest and most wonderful of Whole Natural Foods, the thing that has been a symbol of health and goodness since long before the green movement woke up to what we're eating. The apple. And especially in late winter like this, when most of the springtime greeningness is out of reach and the only sustainable choices are the ones that feel way too hard core (no pun intended) for me to manage right now, I don't really feel like I qualify to claim that symbol. So I thought about it...

And thus I am now, completely unofficially and without any sanction from the original APLS creators, probably in violation of some copyright but meaning it only in good humor and admiring homage, claiming title to an APLS splinter group, one for those who try but can't manage to stay quite as unprocessed as the apple itself but who are trying their best. Our name and logo:

Applesauce. Processed and preserved, yes, but with such a continuum of levels that just knowing it's applesauce doesn't really tell you that much about it. Did you make it yourself in your crockpot and use a hot water canner for it? (The jar above can answer yes and yes.) Did it come from the store, but is it made out of organic apples and with no added sugars? Did it come in a big glass recyclable or reusable jar, or in little individual plastic cups? And do you have any clever thoughts for how to use those cups after the applesauce is gone from it? (Seed-starting, maybe?) And most important, perhaps, do we know the answers to those questions?

As my seven-year-old would intone in as deep a voice as he can manage, "The Force is strong with me, but I am not a Jedi yet." Am I living sustainably? Really? I don't know...and I'm not sure I want to know, because at the moment I'm doing my best. But I'm doing better than I was last year at this time, by a long shot, and hopefully next year I'll be doing better still. I guess that's the best I can hope for, right?

--Jenn the Greenmom

Trippin' into agritourism

Going Green Mama is giving serious consideration to dragging her kids to the National Maple Syrup Festival this weekend ...

Growing up, our trips were largely relegated to two locations: my grandparents in Wisconsin and to the Rocky Mountains for camping. The idea of field trips on a weekend wasn't largely entertained, that I remember.

With two kids under the age of 5, spending dollars on amusement parks, water parks, skiing (yes, we do that in Indiana) and other high-ticket activities seems to be a waste of money. Instead, we've centered our activities - when naptimes and attitudes allow - on taking in the local (or regional faire).

We're regulars at many farmers markets. We check out the newborn cows at a dairy. We indulge in ice cream from cows noshing yards away. We hit festivals and even drag our poor kids to wineries.

Yep. We've become supporters of an up-and-coming trend in tourism: agritourism. It's hot, because of the economy, our growing awareness of keeping our communities sustainable, and a desire to eat more locally. There are Web sites entire guidebooks devoted to the subject - including one for Indiana - and you can take in everything from a brief stop to scheduled activities to a stay on a working farm.

Strangely, it was something that evolved over time. Have a nine-hour drive to Kansas? Where can we take a break that's more interesting than a fast-food restaraunt or dingy rest stop?

Going someplace new? What's the random thing we can do that will detour the kids' desire to rip off the car seat straps?

And somehow, we found activities that help the local economy and make memories. Each year, we make plans to visit an apple orchard in the region, to stomp the grounds, have carmel apples and visit the petting zoo. My daughter still talks about the time we stopped for ice cream at a "cow place" (a seriously large dairy off the highway) south of Chicago. My toddler son couldn't stop talking for weeks about his first brush with "cows" - a term that quickly included everything from those that moo to those that cluck!

If you're forcing off that cabin fever this spring and are looking for a change of pace some weekend, forget the mall. Put off that trip to the indoor water park. Instead, get a little dirty and frequent a farm, orchard or other agritourist spot. A little slowing down never hurts!

Sumer is Icumen In...someday?

Longings for warmth and growingtimes from a snowbound suburban Greenmom...

Perhaps an overstatement. Summer isn't a'comin'in quite yet*; in fact, spring is still a dream on the horizon. Basically, the arrival of March in the Chicago area tells us only that we can be pretty sure we'll see our last snowstorm within the next 6 weeks.

On the other hand, the arrival of March also usually coincides with more frequent birdsongs on the air, shrinking snow piles, and increasing piles of goose poo on the sidewalks that one's children tend to step in on the way to the bus stop. And whether the outdoor growing season is actually at all close or not, it's time to start at least thinking about starting seeds indoors, planning where things will go, and having all these hopeful thoughts about the fabulous things we want to do in the garden this year. As I said in a previous post on the happy and hopeful day when I saw the first pussywillows in bloom, this is the time of year when the realities of life haven't set in yet, and the possibilities for what I would like to accomplish are still endless and unbounded.

So I'm going to just throw them out there--and I'd love to hear what others are planning for your gardens, from those who have a giant backyard veggie garden to those who maybe throw a couple of tomato plants into patio planters and herbs on the windowsill. We all have different lives and different environments, different climate limitations, different schedules, different cooking likes and habits...but a lot of us grow stuff.

So: the Greenmom's garden(s):
This will be our second growing season in our "new" house. It has a nice backyard with a lot of full sun, which is wonderful. Unfortunately, it was also the victim of some really unfortunate landscaping at some point in the past. (I ranted about this stuff last spring when I began to discover it.) Long story short, the soil doesn't drain well at all; it is pure clay back there and someone put plastic down under the grass to theoretically aid in draining the wet. That was the theory; the reality is that we have a big nasty puddle back there from April to June, at which point it all dries and cracks till September. Lovely. But the previous owners installed a raised bed at some point which had gone fairly unused for many years by the time we moved in. Last year we rototilled a buttload of compost and manure into it; we will probably have to do that again this spring too, although eventually we'd like to go to the system of "weedless gardening," which takes a lot less heavy maintenance but on the other hand a lot more preparation. (Which we needed to do in the fall. And didn't.)

My main garden goals:

1. to grow lots and lots of roma-type tomatoes. I want to have enough to can and eat over the winter; canned tomatoes, with their BPA linings and hit-or-miss flavors, are increasingly losing their charm for me. Last year, with 2 plants, I had all the tomatoes we could eat over the summer. So I will probably increase to 4 this year and see what happens.
   
2. I also want a cherry or grape tomato plant, at least one. I've found that if there is a bowl of fresh veggies of that type sitting on the counter, I'll mindlessly and happily grab and munch on them for ages. Beats chips, or cheese.
3. I'll continue my perennial herbs--I have sage, oregano, thyme, and tarragon growing near the patio so I don't have to go all the way to the backyard to harvest them. The tarragon didn't do so well last year and may not have made it, so I may need to replace it.
   
4. I also need to find out if the chamomile I bought cheap at a local nursery actually was a perennial. (English chamomiles are annual; Roman chamomiles are perennial. We shall see. It looked more like Roman, with its sort of spready habit, but it's hard to tell.) I also have a second small raised bed (I think the original owners put it in as a sandbox) in back with lavender, orange mint, and lemon balm; these are the three most pushy and invasive herbs I have, so I tossed them in there and let them duke it out together. Mother Nature Deathmatch, sort of. So far each seems to be holding its own. Those I use for summer teas and tinctures and stuff. I'm considering getting a bunch of Roman chamomile plug plants to put in the front yard as ground cover; it spreads and makes this cool tangled mat that apparently you can mow like grass, but it gives these lovely-scented flowers that you can make chamomile tea or tincture out of.
5. Basil! I planted a bunch of basil plants outside, also near the patio, and got some nice pesto out of it and even have some still frozen from last fall's final harvest.
   
6. Calendula is another good tincture/oil herb, and planted around other veggies is said to repel insects. Fennel does the same thing. We had fennel in the garden last year and hopefully it will come back, and this year I'll add calendula to the mix.
7. We tried growing peppers last year, and it was not a success. We may give it one more try and then give up. We like peppers, and I'd love to dry my own chiles, but we gave a lot of garden space last year to things that produced basically nothing.
   
8. Cucumbers! These too are among my favorite munchies, although I found myself overloaded with them last year. I'll still probably do two plants, though.
   
9. Snap peas: one of the few veggies my kids will eat. It's like Jack Sprat and his wife; my daughter picks out the peas and my son eats the pods. But I need to cage or net them this year, because the bunnies chomped the heck out of them last year and I think we got maybe 14 peas during the whole growing season. I want lots of these.
   
10. Zucchini. If I can stay on top of them, we'll have lovely baby squash all summer. If I can't, at least last year I figured out stuff to do with the giant bigger-than-my-wiener-dog things that grew while we were on vacation in late summer.
11. Lettuce: I put a few romaine plants under my peonies by the patio, where they were fairly nicely shaded until the first big heat wave, which unfortunately was early last year. That was pretty much it for the lettuce. But while it was there, it meant I could just grab a salad or sandwich fixings in three barefoot steps out the door. Worth it.
    

Then there are the "wouldn't this be cool ifs":

1. Garlic: I am still not sure about this one. It's also supposed to repel bugs when planted among the other veggies, but I've never grown it before and don't really know anything about it. Anyone grown garlic who can offer any advice here?
2. New this year: winter squash of some kind. Maybe butternut squash, maybe pumpkins; I haven't decided. But I'd like to give it a shot.
   
3. Carrots: also something I've never grown before. I don't know why they seem to be such a big mystery, I just haven't done it. And I think there's something in me that rebels at the idea of planting something I only get to harvest once...but again, I'd like to try it.
   
4. Broccoli: the other night while making stirfry I rediscovered something I'd forgotten, which is how much I love raw broccoli. Once cooked, I'm like, meh...but the raw crispy stuff is just fabulous.
5. Italian fennel: this is different from the seed-bearing fennels that you use to season sausages and stuff; it's an actual veggie with a bulbous base that's crispy and sort of anise-flavored. Never grown it. Would like to try.
6. I've just begun a love affair with potatoes. Sweet, white, baking, boiling, roasting, whatever. I love them. And since they always do tend to sprout on my counter anyhow, I find myself wondering how hard it would really be to grow my own...anyone do this?
7. Onions...same thing, they are always sprouting into onion plants on me, so I wonder if I could make it happen on purpose?
   

I fully realize that there's no way I'll be able to pull all this off. Not a chance. But hey, in the first week in March, anything seems possible, right?
Jenn the Greenmom

*the blog post title is taken from a really old English partsong, the earliest extant "round" (think "row row row your boat") in existence. Lots of high school madrigal groups sing it. I'm a music geek, what can I say?

Cancer, the new "C word"

Some unscientific thoughts on cancer from the Greenhabilitator...

Cancer sucks.

That's pretty much my first reaction when the topic comes up. I'm no doctor, nutritionist, cancer survivor - heck, I was never even good at science in school. So when "environmental links to cancer" came up as the topic of this month's Green Moms Carnival I was hesitant to step up to the plate and write about it.

I watched my father-in-law die from lung cancer just a few years ago and a disgusting number of my friends have been impacted by the disease as well, so I'm no stranger to the subject. I just don't feel like I have a great answer...but I guess no one does quite yet.

It seems like everything these days has a link to cancer. Before we started living a more healthy and sustainable lifestyle, I would wake up and pour a cup of coffee which may give me pancreatic cancer, but could reduce my risk of breast cancer. Or not. Of course I wouldn't want to switch to juice which we found out this week is linked to cancer due to the plastic bottles it's stored in. I'd suggest tap water, but some think that's just as dangerous.

After my morning coffee, I would jump in the shower, complete with cancer-causing vinyl shower curtain liner, where I'd rub chemicals into my skin in the form of facial cleanser, soap, and shaving cream. I know now how much these chemicals are absorbed through the skin. After my shower, I'd put on deodorant (which may or may not cause breast cancer), rub lotion all over my body and put moisturizer and make up on my face.

The more I learned about the environment, chemicals, processed food, BPA, pesticides, plastic, e-waste...the list goes on and on and on...the more my head spun. Every single thing seemed to be linked to some form or another of cancer. But there came a point where I could worry about all of the things that I was doing wrong, or I could just keep working on doing things right. So here are a few cancer-fighting tips I've learned over the past few years~

You are what you eat.

According to the American Cancer Society, there is a direct link between dietary choices and 30 - 40% of cancers. Let's stop living on boxed food and start eating real, whole foods. Instead of bleaching, stripping and processing out all nutrients, eat the things that are whole, natural and good for you. Eat lots of good, organic fruits and vegetables and limit red meat. They say you should only eat things that your great grandmother would recognize and I wholeheartedly agree.

Watch your weight.

According to a review by the American Institute for Cancer Research of almost a thousand clinical studies, it is believed that healthier lifestyle choices can reduce the rate of breast cancer rate by 40%. That doesn't mean you need to be a size 4, but those with a healthy BMI are less likely to develop certain kinds of cancer.

Exercise!

Cancers of the colon, breast, prostate, lung and uterus have all been linked to exercise-related prevention. The University of Iowa explains that, "Exercise can help reduce obesity, which is related to the cause of several cancers. It can also change the body's hormone levels, which might also have a favorable effect. Exercise, by speeding up metabolism, is generally believed to speed up the passage of ingested foods through the colon--thus reducing the time the colon mucosal lining is in contact with possible carcinogens."

Get your rest.

A study in Cancer Prevention Research suggests that regular physical activity can lower a woman's overall risk of cancer – but only if she gets a good night's sleep. Otherwise, lack of sleep can undermine exercise's cancer prevention benefits. Your body does a lot of healing while you're asleep. Let it work its magic!

Everything in moderation.

Some studies show that alcohol is linked to cancer, while others show that a glass of wine helps to fight it. Coffee may be good or bad. Sugar is bad, but we love it so much. I don't think there's a reason to deprive yourself of any of life's little joys, but enjoy everything in moderation.

These ideas are certainly are not guaranteed to keep you healthy and cancer-free, but they're all proven ways to at least reduce your risk.

May you all enjoy long, healthy and happy lives!

This post is my submittal to the Green Moms Carnival on environmental links to cancer hosted this month by Nature Moms.