If you have access to fresh food and freezer/refrigeration, making fresh, homemade baby food is a green, economical, DELICIOUS, and incredibly satisfying way to ensure that your child is receiving the highest quality food that you can provide. I decided to make homemade baby food after I opened a jar of organic peas and began gagging because of the horrid smell! I did not want to feed my children anything that I was not willing to taste (or sniff) myself. Read more…

Goat meat from a vendor at the Gateway Market and veggies from our CSA. Pickle I made from my garden last year

Wolf and I celebrate our anniversary and get away to the ocean each year in York, Maine. Since we’ve been vacationing there as a couple for 8 years (I’ve been vacationing there with my family for 38 years) we are well acquainted with many of the local wares available to the the traveler. Local food availability is one of the things we’re taking the time to learn about.

The CSA we purchase from allows shareholders to double up on their order if the shareholder is unavailable for whatever reason. This is what we chose to do. It required a small amount of pre-planning by calling the organizer of the CSA and letting her know we’d be away and wanted to double up. This allowed us to create a meal plan based on what we already had on hand. The cottage we rent has a kitchen which allows us to save on food costs because we didn’t have to eat out every meal like we would if we stayed in motels or hotels. Read more…

Please welcome today’s guest poster, Dana Livingston.

You can look anywhere these days and see and feel the world depreciating. The climate is gradually changing and the survival rates of our world’s plants and animals are steadily declining. Now more than ever there is a strong push to transition into a more eco-friendly and sustainable way of living. These days, it’s go green or nothing; people are renovating their homes with more eco-friendly materials, finding renewable sources of energy to power their homes and businesses, and companies are manufacturing vehicles that leave less of a carbon footprint on the atmosphere. The list of ways in which we are overhauling our daily lifestyles is endless. Even the political and economic agendas of several different countries are being adjusted to include ways of saving the natural world from ourselves. These changes include everything, even what kind of coffee you drink. But what does it even mean, eco-friendly coffee? And can switching to “green” coffee really make a difference to the well-being of our planet? Read more…

Please welcome today’s guest poster, Jacob, who blogs at Jacob’s Land of Bliss and Blisters.

Image credit: thebeernut.blogspot.com

I should warn you, my being new to the Greenists and all, that I am a beer geek. I see a Guinness and think “light beer.” (It’s actually lower in alcohol and calories than Budweiser.) I’ve taken notes on every single new beer I’ve ever tasted.  I once spent a week working in the brew house of a brewpub for free just so I could see what it was like.

That being said, I’m not a jerk, so I’m not going to belittle your beer choices. Heck, I even accept my uncle’s offers of Miller High Life on occasion. Just because I like the finer ales in life doesn’t mean I have to be an antisocial blowhard about it. I’m also going to refrain from beer geek speak in this review. Honestly, a lot of beer geek jargon, like the phrasing you see in wine reviews, comes across sounding like gibberish to almost everyone outside of a small subculture of people.

Okay, enough of the warnings and explanations. The beer is Fuller’s Organic Honey Dew. The brewery describes this as being 100 percent organic, meaning every ingredient and all of every ingredient was organic. From what I’ve gleaned from some of the brewers I’ve talked to, this is actually a big deal as a beer is actually allowed to be labeled “organic” even when not all of the ingredients are organic. This originally was intended to make allowances for the fact that organic ingredients for beer were not always easy to come by, although according to several brewers I’ve talked to, the selection is quickly increasing and the quality is rather good. Read more…

Please welcome back our guest poster for today, Deborah Adams.

Now that the food industry has caught on to the profitability of healthy foods, they’ve adjusted their marketing strategies to catch the attention of consumers interested in eating nutritious foods. The word “organic” is popping up everywhere, from the produce department to the candy aisle. But not all organic food is created equal.

Take eggs, for example. You’ll often find them for sale in cardboard containers, with earthy-colored labels that claim the contents are organic and free-range. It’s important to know exactly what those terms mean before you buy. Read more…

During the summer I love to make desserts that are centered around fruit. You can even add fruit to salads. You can go really easy and simply enjoy the fruit on its own or perhaps with a little whipped cream. Or how about a little ice cream? There are so many things you can do with fresh fruit this time of year!

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All right . . . weak joke . . . but this baby bottle is so green that it could’ve grown in my garden!

Pura generously sent me a Pura Kiki stainless steel baby bottle in this beautiful shade of aqua blue to try out on Owen, my new little boy. I cannot comment on its function as a baby bottle, as my little Owen is exclusively breastfed. However, this toxin free, environmentally friendly baby bottle is also able to function as a sippy cup simply by changing the attachment on top. Read more…

I firmly believe that not buying things we don’t need is one of the best ways to make greener choices in our lives.

I also firmly believe that there are so many appliances out there that are not necessary.  A toaster that also heats hotdogs?  Fine, if you need a new toaster and prefer to have one with hot dog slots, but not fine when it inspires casting off a perfectly good toaster for the wiener upgrade.  I already have a quesadilla maker – it’s called a cast iron pan.  And I have a smoothie/margarita/frappe maker – it’s called a blender, and it’s okay that it doesn’t have a little spout at the bottom, I can pour from the top just fine.  But two months ago, I broke down and bought an iced tea maker, something I’d always considered to be an unnecessary appliance.  And I’m so glad that I did. Read more…

I have a confession to make…I have a very bad habit of letting my pantry get out of control and then end up buying things that I already had in my pantry that I couldn’t find. Recently I came to realize how green this wasn’t and decided to change the way my pantry works.

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Our own Allie Larkin’s debut novel, STAY, hits bookshelves TODAY! In celebration, this week’s posts on The Greenists are inspired by the book.

In Stay, a heartbroken Savannah (“Van”) Leone finds herself home alone, drowning her sorrows in grape Kool-Aid and vodka. Seven drinks in, lonely, blurry-eyed, and engrossed in an old Rin Tin Tin rerun, Van realizes that what she needs more than anything else at that particular moment is a puppy. Specifically, a German Shepard puppy, from anyplace on the Internet that will sell her one.

And really, who can question such rock solid, vodka-fueled logic? I mean, haven’t we all been there? Some people drunk dial; other people punch their credit card number into a Slovakian pet adoption site. Me, I’m more apt to get drunk and eat seven or more things I am not even hungry for. Or perhaps to get drunk and feel a little looser with the Facebook comments. Or maybe dance around my living room, arms and legs flailing in a manner not appropriate for public viewing. (OK, so that last one I might have just done a few minutes ago, completely sober. What can I say? Some nights, Gogol Bordello unavoidably demands such a response.)

I digress. My point is, I can’t fault Van her drunken Internet activity. I can, however, fault her drink of choice. Come on. I haven’t mixed grape Kool-Aid and vodka since the days my dorm-mates and I semi-seriously planned our class schedules around Days of Our Lives and the Jenny Jones show! Van. Honey. You can do better! Please, let me help.

Read more…