Why black beans are really green

This weekend I rekindled an old love affair. And learned something new at the same time. I found, at the bottom of one of my cupboards, a large bag of dried black beans. I don't know how long they had been there. I soaked them overnight in cold water, and then put them in the slow cooker with some chopped garlic, cumin (you can also use canned beans for our Easy Black Bean recipe). Then I went skiing. When I came home, I had a ginormous slow-cooker full of heady black beans. I put them out as a side along with Poblano and Skirt Steak fajitas for a dinner party for 20   had Saturday, stuffed them in the leftover poblanos to make chile rellenos for Sunday night and now that it is Monday (which I try to make meatless) they are going to go into vegetarian Sweet Potato and Black Bean Chile for tonight's Meatless Monday dinner.

What amazed me is that this one bag of black beans, which cost less than $5 could feed dinner party, and then provide leftovers for three or more meals. These little black beans took no refrigeration and even cooked, they don't go bad easily. They are also rich in protein, fiber and folate and are immensely satisfying and filling (which makes them a good alternative if you are skipping meat) . By using the slow cooker, I saved on energy and time too, and had three meals practically made for me.
I started to understand why dried beans have been the foundation for so many native diets throughout North and South America. And I'd love to know how you use them too!
Lisa

Easier, Cheaper, Cleaner & Greener Parties

This weekend I'm having some of my ski buddies over for an end-of-season BBQ. Now, much as I love to host parties, I am spatially challenged: my entire house is 800 square feet. That means I don't have tons of space to store dishes and glasses and even less space to let people sit down. My other big challenge: I don't have trash pick-up so I take all my own trash to the dump.

In an odd way, both of these things have made me very conscious about both what comes into the house and what goes out. While normally I might buy two dozen paper plates and plastic cups, I know that a) I am not going to have much space to store extras and b) I'm going to have lug all those used paper and plastic items to the dump.

My solution and Green Tip of the Day: Ball jars -- yes the kind of jars you use for canning. I keep a box of them in the basement and when party time comes around, I take those and wrap and glue different colored wide, cloth ribbons around them (which makes it easy to tell who's glass is who's) and use them for drinks. They are solid, don't tip over and can be easily packed back in a box. If there are leftovers, I  wash the Ball jars out, scoop the extras in, put the lid back in and they make for easy, portion-controlled leftovers.  I also invest in inexpensive linen napkins (see yesterday's blog post) and the extra flatware (instead of spending money on plastic, I've invested in some inexpensive but very nice forks/knives and spoon). And I use small china plates, ones you can hold in one hand and are easy to wash.

As for the grilling, I use gas (which is preferable to charcoal in terms of emissions— learn more in EatingWell's Ultimate Grilling Guide) and am planningt o make this amazing recipe below, which uses quick-cooking chicken tenders.  I'd love to hear your tips for a greener dinner party too!

Grilled Chicken Tenders with Cilantro Pesto

 

 

Is it time to change your napkins?

I had a GREAT lunch yesterday with some of my favorite people at this lovely new restaurant, the Vergennes Laundry, in Vergennes Vermont. At the table: web editor Michelle Edelbaum and our "garden coaches" Barbara Ganley and Kate Ridgely, who are (out of the kindness of their hearts) blogging for the EatingWell Gardening Well community group.

I confess: Michelle and I were a little embarrassed at first because we're supposed to be planting the EatingWell garden outside our office and haven't gotten too far along. But that's why we tapped Barbara and Kate, who live down the road, to give us all sorts of great advice and inspiration.
They are both amazing gardeners, (Barbara made a whole dinner for about 30 -- including homemade grappa--last fall entirely from her garden), and cooks, and so so creative. Barbara used to teach in the English department at Middlebury College and Kate is one of the state's top artists (she painted Governor Douglas' portrait) and did the illustrations for Amanda Hesser's The Cooks Garden cookbook. Anyway, I diverge.

But one of the reasons they are blogging is that, as Barbara said "I hope to help people change how they live." Kate added on.. "Gardening is the best way to know where your food comes from and that its healthy and organic." They rattled off about 50 more reasons why gardening is good for us and for the planet and I told them about our Earth Day Challenge -- where we are asking YOU to give us your green tips for a chance to win subscriptions and our EatingWell in Season Cookbook. 

As we polished off a light salad made with tender Boston lettuce and flaky pizza topped with slivers of spring potatoes, I reached for my napkin and realized that it was .... linen. That's right: real, honest, unbleached brown linen. It's been so long since I've seen these at a restaurant -- especially a restaurant that serves lunch for less than $10 a person.  I love the look and feel of linen but even more so, did you know that a linen napkin is the most environmentally smart choice you can make in napkins?

Seriously, check out the research and the story we did on Which Napkins Are The Greenest?
So my Green Tip for Today? Have lunch with your favorite gardener and just start brainstorming different ways you can live a little greener life. You will be amazed by how many simple solutions you come up with. And use a linen napkin.

What's In Your Glass?

I woke up this morning to TORRENTIAL rain --the kind that makes you want to pull the covers up and hide until it clears again. I could also hear the river across the street rushing with snowmelt and rain. But part of me was happy: you see, this is the water that will fill my well and natural spring. It's the water I will drink all summer. Truth is, one of the reasons I bought my house is that the water in my valley is cool, clear and delicious. Even if it were not though, I would drink tap over bottled pretty water pretty much all of the time. Why?


1. 40% of bottled water—including top-brands Aquafina and Dasani—is simply filtered tap water, not water from natural springs or other “pure” sources.

2. In the United States, more than 10 million barrels of oil are used to bottle water annually—and that’s just production. Consider the oil consumption (and emissions) required to bring water to the U.S. from Fiji, for example.

3. Americans throw away 22 billion water bottles each year, over 60 million each day. It can take as long as 1,000 years for the average plastic bottle to biodegrade.


Green Tip of the Day: Get some of the nifty glass water bottles that are featured in the Fresh section of the April issue of EatingWell Magazine. Why? Glass bottles avoid BPA and plastic: to learn more about these bottles and BPA, click here.

Speak up! And I'd love to know (and I'm talking to you guys in this growing Green Living group), what water do you drink and what are your thoughts on this?

Do You Compost (and other not-so-great pickup lines)

Do You Compost?
"Do you compost?" may not be exactly the best pick-up line, but it can tell you worlds about a person. On our first date, the man I  love told me all about his gorgeous roses, terraced gardens, and fragrant peonies. He did not, he confessed, have a vegetable garden (something I knew I would change).

It took a few weeks of cautious dating before I popped the question. We were making dinner together and tried to make it sound casual. Hands full of asparagus ends, I turned to him and said "So, do you compost?"

He gave me a blank stare. I went on to explain how composting is a great way to cut down on waste, build up good nutrients for your soil, keep your kitchen cleaner (I keep my little container right near my cutting board). I explained how the ENTIRE city of San Francisco now composts (it's mandatory) and how no self respecting gardener could really live without a compost bin one.

A year later, we toiled all spring over building a vegetable garden, lugging bags of manure and soil down his steep hill, terracing a side of the lawn. One late spring evening we stood in awe above the dark soil marveling over the first little leaves of arugula like proud parents. I brought up the compost bin again. No interest. Finally, on his birthday, I went out and bought him a little pail for the kitchen and a plastic bin ($45 at my town dump) for the yard. I showed him how to use it.

It's nearly a year later now. We're getting the garden ready again. And the compost bin is nearly full. And I love him all the more for it.

Speak up!  do you compost? Do you have challenges getting your partner to compost? What are your tips?

Green Tip of the Day: Even if you don't have a yard, many cities have composting programs. And if you do, your recycling center will often sell composters for significantly less than garden stores.

A Sweet Solution to Sugar

Driving up my valley last night I could see plumes of smoke rising from the sugar houses. April is sugaring season, a time when the sap runs fast across the thawing land and Vermonters continue the ancient Native American  tradition of gathering the sap and boiling it down to make maple syrup and maple sugar.

It’s not a hard or elaborate process: Alesia Depot, EatingWell's Assistant Managing Editor, tapped a few trees at her house this weekend and boiled it down with her kids on a little fire. It takes 40 gallons of sap to make a gallon of syrup so it’s a time consuming process and one reason the final product sells for upwards of $35 a gallon, in Vermont, the largest maple producer in the country. 

Compare that with the cheap sugars and sweeteners that have flooded our food supply: high fructose corn syrup and white table sugar are practically chemistry experiments compared with my neighbor’s maple sugar that sits in jars in my cabinets. Genetically modified sugar beets now account for nearly half our US sugar supply and about 40 percent world-wide. And the cane sugar industry has had a checkered environmental history. According to a 2004 report by the World Wildlife Fund, Sugar and the Environment, “The production of sugar cane has probably caused a greater loss of biodiversity on the planet than any other single crop.”

By the time I got to the end of my dirt road, passed the last buckets nailed to trees, I realized what I love about maple. It is the unadulterated taste of the land – the woods, the streams, the ferns – with nothing added: no chemicals, pesticides, herbicides. No habitat destroyed (tapping does not harm the trees). Nothing but rain, sun and soil;  wood, cut and burned a hot fire, sap heated to boiling point, then collected.

And as I sat at my kitchen counter, looking at the melting snow outside, I thought: What if we were to consider sugars the way our ancestors in Vermont did, not a staple that we consume every day, but a sweet luxury, the product of a long spring’s work, that must last us a season? What if I were to only rely on one $35 gallon of syrup and two small $8 jars of maple sugar to sweeten my food all year? Would that be such a bad thing?

It could be a sweet solution.

Green Tip of the Day: Think about the sweeteners you use and consider swapping processed sugars (table sugar, corn syrups, etc.) for natural sweeteners such as maple, honey, agave or fruit. Try these recipes for  Mustard Maple Pork Tenderloin or Spinach Salad with Warm Maple Dressing or Maple-Maple Walnut Cake.

 But don’t forget:  All sugars act the same way in your body  so limit your consumption of any added sweeteners and try to stick to consuming fewer than 2000 calories a day.  

Speak Up: How do you cut back on processed sugars? What sweeteners do you prefer? 

How Green Is Your Lunch?

I saw my first daffodil in my yard yesterday and after six months of snow, all I could do is smile at the sky and scream YAYYYY! But then I saw a plastic bag, caught in a branch in a roadside bush: A sad reminder it’s time to clean up.

April is a time of new beginnings. I think of it like a New Year’s for nature and as I look around at the strewn debris of winter in my yard, I resolve each year to be a better caretaker for this planet. If I can pick up my yard, what can I do to green up the rest of the globe? It doesn’t take much, just a few small changes that can have a big impact. Earth Day is only three weeks away but to get a head start, I’m posting a green tip a day.

Green Tip of the Day: Green Up Your Lunch Sundays and Mondays are when I like to plan my meals for the week ahead. One of the things I like to do is browse eatingwell.com for recipes that I can pack into a healthy meal to take to work. There are so, so many good reasons to do this:

1) It’s healthier than what I might grab at a nearby deli. 2) It’s will be portion controlled so I won’t be tempted to go for a larger serving size or  to reach for the chips and candy at the checkout counter 3) It  will help me use up leftovers 4) It will save me time, versus running out and then waiting in a lunch line 5) It will save me money

But an even better reason? I’m going to save on gas and plastic by packing what I like to call an “eco friendly” lunch. Did you know that lunches packed with disposable items, such as plastic baggies and yogurt containers, create an average of 67 pounds of waste per year, per person, according to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. That’s why eco-conscious California moms Amy Hemmert and Tammy Pelstring created a line of reusable bento-style containers called Laptop Lunches that make packing a lunch fashionable and launched a website of useful resources, Waste-Free Lunches (wastefreelunches.org) Read EatingWell Web Editor Michelle Edelbaum’s story about them and get more great ideas for pack-your-own lunches.

 What You Can Do: Try making your own waste-free lunches by using a “bento” box, a container popular in Japan that has portions for various foods. EatingWell has some amazing recipes such as Salmon Bento Salad or Pizza Roll-ups that kids will love and advice on where to find the bento boxes and how to put together lunches. Or try doing what many of us do at EatingWell and portion out yogurt into a ball jar and mixing in fresh, seasonal fruit.  Instead of buying water or a soft drink, use one of the new glass water bottles Associate Nutriiton Editor Kerri-Ann Jennings writes about in the April issue of EatingWell from Bamboo Bottle, Takeya or Life Factor and learn about 9 must-have products to green up your kitchen from Web Writer Penelope Wall.  

Speak Up! What are your best tips for greening up your lunch and your favorite EatingWell recipes for lunch on the go?

Welcome to the LivingGreen Journal

I hope this will become a forum where people can exchange ideas on how to live more lightly on the planet and share ideas, recipes and food suggestions.

I'm the editor of EatingWell Magazine, former editor of Audubon, and passionate about this topic. So I'lll be regularly posting and asking for suggestions on how we can all do a better job of greening up our diets and our kitchens, our homes and our lives.

I'll post links to some of our EatingWell stories that offer great advice and tips (during the work week) on what you can do to green up your diet.

Green Tip of the Day:  Don't Be Fooled. It's April Fools but don't be fooled by "all natural" "made with organic ingredients" or "local"  labels. More and more, marketers are trying to "greenwash" their products, to make them sound more environmentally friendly than they are. For instance, "Natural" is not a regulated term and may not mean much, unless it's associated with naturally-raised meats.
To learn to sort the truth from the hype, read my blog post "Food Labels That Lie."

What You Can Do: Instead, spend this weekend finding one new local food producer, farmer or locally-made food that you can incorporate into your diet. For instance, just yesterday I  ran into  Nick Cowles owner of  Shelburne Orchards (EatingWell did a great harvest story there, with amazing  recipes such as Apple Squares), which is just down the road from our office here in Vermont and found out he's making a limited amount of Calvados — an apple brandy — this year. Mmmmm...
Localharvest.org is a great resource as are farmers markets if they are up and running near you. Supporting truly local foods means you are cutting down on the environmental impacts of transportation and supporting small farms. Plus, it's just plain fun to meet the people who are growing your food.

And Speak Up!: What are some of the worst examples of "greenwashing" you have seen? And the best new local products you have found?

Sante! (to your health)
Lisa