We all can make a difference and stop climate change. Photo: Johnny Johnson/Getty Images

Going through my mail today I had something from the EDF-Environmental Defense Fund and I decided to share it here because it is something all of us can do to make a difference.

10 Things You Can Do to Fight Global Warming-It truly is up to each of us.

1. Recycle and buy minimally packaged goods as much as possible.

2. Wash clothes in cold or warm water, not hot.

3. Install low-flow shower heads to use less water. (I will add, turn off the water when you brush your teeth.)

4. Run the dishwasher only when full and don’t use heat to dry dishes.

5. Replace standard light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs-CFL’s (you can read more about them here).

6. Plug air leaks in windows and doors to increase energy efficiency (I did this where I live and it made a huge difference-heating bills way down and I’m warmer too).

7. Replace old appliances with energy-efficient models.

8. Walk, bike, carpool or use whatever public transportation whenever possible (A nice way to get some exercise, enjoy your environment-wherever you are and maybe meet someone nice).

9. Adjust your thermostat-lower in winter (put on a sweater), higher in summer (take off some clothes).

10. Share these simple steps with friends and family and increase awareness?

This last one really sums up what needs to happen next. More people need to become aware and learn what they can do to make a difference. Big business is already moving in this direction, because it saves them money and creates good p.r. for them. So while the politicians argue, and maneuver, and delay, the rest of us can get busy and then the politicians might wake up, especially when we don’t vote for them if they don’t start taking care of the environment.

I would add one more suggestion that is really important and can make a huge difference. Shop at farmers markets when you can and support your local farmers.

The EDF is making a difference. After the Deepwater Horizon disaster the White House appointed the EDF to a special commission with the mission to improve offshore drilling safety and environmental standards. They are the only environmental organization to serve on the commission. So while the problem at times seems insurmountable, it isn’t. We still can stop global warming in its tracks by taking action now and supporting organizations that are doing the same, but our window of opportunity is getting smaller. 350.org is another place you can go to learn more about climate change.

Imagine everyone around the world starting 2011 with a commitment to do whatever they can to make a difference. Want to join me?

Eating well is up to each of us. photo by Karin Lau from Fotolia

I doubt that there are many of us who do not recognize the increasing influence of big business that has been creeping into the political process over the last decades. The most recent election was a free for all when it came to campaign contributions, and for many of these contributions we the public are unable to even know who they came from. I don’t know about you, but to me something seems very wrong with this development in what is supposed to be a democracy. We the people. are supposed to be where the power comes from, not corporations who have plenty of cash to fund candidates.

I often write about the power that we do have, and that is when it comes to how we spend our money…where we shop and what we buy is a powerful force and one being recognized by the large companies trying to get our shopping dollars. Recently Starbucks has been opening new shops and not even calling them Starbucks to appear to be “local” coffeehouses, not corporate ones.

Shopping local is one way that we can support our local economies, farmers and artisans, and  maintain diversity in our food choices and maybe more importantly really know what is in our food and other products that we use regularly.

Did you know that personal care and cosmetic companies do not have to tell us all of the ingredients that are inside the products that we use? They say they will be disclosing trade secrets. When you read “fragrance” on a label it is often synthetic chemical compounds (you can read more about this at The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics) that may be dangerous to our health. I think that we have a right to know. These secrets should not be allowed but since they are we can buy products that do tell us what we are putting in and on our bodies, and we can chose what we buy with more knowledge. You can learn more about what may be in the products that you use regularly by watching Annie Leonard’s The Story of Cosmetics.

We also can buy our food from local growers and ask them directly what they use as pesticides and if they use GMO seed. Most small farmers would never use GE (genetically engineered) seed since it is expensive, is designed to withstand more pesticides and farmers cannot use the seed that the plants produce at the end of the season. No one benefits except the big companies like Monsanto that produce this seed.

When we buy non-organic products we may be eating genetically modified ingredients and we have no way to know because the corporations that create genetically engineered seed have lobbied to not have to disclose this. Now we only know if the product says Non-GMO on the packaging. That seems strange to me…the companies using GMO’s don’t have to put it on their labels so now the ones that don’t use it are putting it on the label.

The Organic Consumers Association-OCA-has a new campaign called Breaking the Chains. ”The campaign is focusing consumers’ attention on how each purchasing decision can lead to a safer, greener, and more equitable society. Millions of green minded consumers around the world have broken the chains of corporate control in their own lives, by supporting organic, Fair Made, and locally produced products and businesses.”

Read their Declaration of Interdependence and join the campaign to break free from corporate control of what we eat and use daily. Their web site explains why it is important to break these chains and how organic and shopping local benefits so many more than supporting big-box buying. This is where we consumers have so much power and it is up to us to use it.

So while the political process may seem to be driven less and less by we the people we can show the big corporations that we do have a voice and we will use it. In the end business is in business to make profits and we can show what kind of business we will be supporting from here on out. It is our choice, our dollars and our future…let’s make more conscious choices in all of these areas.

What is really in your corn?

Just saw this wonderful five minute video of what is wrong, and also what is right about our food system at Civil eats (a great web site).

What makes it even more extraordinary is that it is given by an eleven year old at a TEDx event.

This is all so obvious that a child can recognize why we need to make a change in our agricultural systems and food culture in general… if we can call if a “culture”.  The good news is it really is this simple to change it. It is up to us to demand the kind of food that nourishes us rather than make us sick, and recreate a system that is not dependent on fossil fuels and pollutes the earth and local communities.

Just stop buying food that is genetically engineered and that will make a huge difference. Tell your grocer that you want to know what you are putting in your body.

Check out the article and you may find some great ways to lighten your load without adding to a landfill.

Eating well can be part of college cafeteria food. photo by Karin Lau from Fotolia

I just came across this great blog that was started by a student at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, and now has been taken over by another student, to encourage bringing sustainably raised food to colleges across the country. Many schools are working on this drastic change to what usually had been found on campus, and the blog was a desire to share information on how this was being accomplished.

Food service budgets at Colleges and Universities are substantial and changing the buying habits brings better food to the students, business to local growers and others who are growing sustainably, and ultimately helps to shift away from an industrial agricultural model that uses pesticide & herbicides, GMO seed and is causing so much destruction in so many ways.

There also is a guide on how to go organic on campus. You will find lots of great information, and inspiration, that is relevant to all of us. It could also be a great source of information for any institution that is making the transition to better quality food.

The most recent post is about the best documentaries on eating green. Take a peek, the list is a good one. It includes some films that have been mentioned here before, but there were a few on the list that were new titles to me.

Many of us either know someone in college, or maybe are in college, let’s see what we can do to help in this food revolution. It will create a healthier future for those in school, help support sustainable and local farmers, help the environment and maybe most important create future generations that will demand clean, green, sustainably raised food-and business will respond to demand.

At last years Bioneers Farm Tour-County Line Harvest

This Sunday is the Santa Fe Farmers Market 15th annual Farm Tour. Four farms that are members of the Santa Fe Farmers Market will open their gates for all of us to come for a visit. For most of the day you can drive through beautiful Northern New Mexico, between Santa Fe and Taos, visit these farms, get a tour and taste their delicious produce.  At Romero Farms they will even be roasting chiles. Two orchards are also included in the tour, plus the Khalsa Greenhouses.

As the food that we find at conventional markets comes under more and more scrutiny, and suspicion, anyone who lives near a farmers market can consider themselves lucky. Here you can meet the people who grow your food, get to know them and ask them questions. My experience is that any farmer who is doing this right is more than happy to talk with you about their farm and their growing methods. And when you think about it why would any farmer really want to use pesticides that are harmful to his family and himself, deplete the soil and pollute the water that he and his family are probably also drinking? It just doesn’t make sense to use pesticides, herbicides and GMO’s unless you really don’t care about who is growing the food, the land and who is eating it.

If you are in the area don’t miss this special day. For those of you who don’t live nearby, see if your local farmers market sponsors such a day, and if not maybe suggest it. The more that all of us get to know the people who grow our food, and I must add appreciate them, the better off we all will be and the planet too. Local farms and markets are an important step in our food security as well. Just think about this, most stores only stock three days worth of food and we all have witnessed the panic shopping that usually happens when there is some sort of emergency – whether man made or brought by nature.

There are always surprises when getting to know who grows your food. I recently found out that Matt Romero had been a chef for many years, no wonder he is always doing cooking demos at the farmers market. Here are some recipes from him that were featured in Real Simple magazine.

Matt Romero's amazing eggplants

Hope to meet up with some of you on the tour-I will be taking photos with my orange camera to share with the rest of you, so if you happen to see me come over and say hi…..

No Impact Man and Family

If you have not seen the film No Impact Man and have channel Planet Green you are in luck. Saturday, August 28, at 10/9c pm No Impact Man will have its television premier.

This is a great film and you can read about in another post.

What I liked so much about the film is that we were able to see so many of the possible ways that we can reduce our impact on the earth. Some may be more important than others, but the idea is that we all do something and do it now. Together we will make a difference. As the film shows we may even find some beautiful benefits to living a cleaner, greener life, that we never even imagined.

Eating eggs shouldn't be like playing Russian Roulette

The egg recall of a half billion eggs (that is a lot of eggs to collect) that is just winding down will hopefully be a wake-up call to the realities of industrialized, factory produced food and the dangers of large, concentrated food producers who supply the entire country…not to mention companies that have repeatedly violated food safety standards yet are still in business.

Over the last year there have been so many food scares involving food recalls it is becoming common place. Does this remind you of some science fiction movie? It does me.

The good news is that over the weekend sales of eggs at farmers markets were a farmers dream come true. This MSNBC article talks about farmers markets from coast to coast that had record days with their eggs. Many egg sellers sold out before noon and had new customers, as well as many buying more than just one dozen.

This NY Times article from yesterday points out how this salmonella outbreak brings to light the flaws in our commercial, industrialized food system and the governments food safety system. We can see how the system broke down and much of that was due to lax regulations and a strange division of responsibilities between the Dept. of Agriculture and the FDA. It is a system that has not been modified to protect the public given today’s industrialized food model.

Hopefully many will realize that even with better regulation, which surely is needed, the system as it functions just doesn’t make sense. Industrialized factory food creates more pollution than smaller scale production of chickens, cows and even produce. When animals are allowed to exist as they do in nature with room to roam, cow or chicken, what creates a toxic pond at a factory farm can now fertilize the land and improve it. With smaller production more jobs are created and more humane ones. The film and book Fast Food Nation is a journey into the world of industrial farms and our food system.

Smaller but more numerous farms and ranches also means shorter drives to market. Just two factories distributed all of these tainted eggs from coast to coast. Imagine how much fuel it takes to transport a half billion eggs. When you buy local you are helping to conserve oil and reduce the pollution from all of those “food miles”.

Another problem with this system is that so much of our crops need to go to feeding livestock. Over 75% of all corn grown in America is used to feed livestock not people. On the open range cows graze, and supplementing their diet with hay is much better for the land and especially for the animals. Cows were not even meant to eat corn, it actually makes them sick, so then they need to be given antibiotics…it goes on and on and a cycle is created from this crazy food system that takes a bad situation, so many animals crammed into awful conditions and makes it worse.

And imagine the life that chickens have living in confined cages where they cannot even sit compared to animals that are outside and leading relatively normal lives. The question of even eating meat is one that many people grapple with, but whether you chose a vegetarian lifestyle or not the bottom line is our system of factory farms is really awful for everyone involved, except the top management and stockholders of these companies. So if you do eat meat support local, sustainable, humane producers-they are out there and they need our support to survive.

The current laws and regulations have been created amidst an environment of lobbyists who have had the government’s ear, and politician’s pockets, more than we the people, but this scare could be an important part of changing this. We need to speak out louder and let our elected officials know that we demand something different. It is important to show that we mean this by shopping at farmers markets, local coops, buying pesticide and antibiotic free, non-GMO food and humanely raised, grazing animals. Here is a link to Local Harvest, an organization that lists farmers markets across the country in case you don’t know where one is nearby.

It is up to us to act. So let this most recent salmonella outbreak be the straw that breaks the camels back and start shopping local if you don’t already. Not only will you protect yourself and your loved ones from future outbreaks, you will make a big step in protecting the environment and your health and you will be eating much better quality food.

The film follows chef John Bishop, who owns the five star restaurant Bishop’s in Vancouver, Canada, as he explores how food is grown and what is really in it. HIs journey begins when more and more customers begin to ask questions about the food being served and he realizes that he does not know the answers. When a customer asks if the food is genetically modified he even confesses that he does not even know what that means. You can watch the beginning of the film on YouTube.

The film is from 2002 and perhaps it is even more relevant today as more and more attempts are made to bring additional GMO crops into the food chain, both in the US and abroad. We are also seeing the real cost for oil beyond what we pay at the pump. Most food is trucked an average of 1500 miles, large scale commercial agriculture uses huge amounts of oil and those chemicals used on crops are usually petroleum based. The chef’s travels take him from Canada to England and on to India to discover the new and the old ways when it comes to growing food.

One thing that stands out to me is that when people get involved and say no, change happens. So this can be an inspiration for all of us to ask questions and make real choices about what we put in our bodies, and our loved ones too.

If we all “deconstructed” our meals what would we find, and would we still want to eat them? Shopping local is an easy way to do this in order to know what you are eating. When you eat out ask questions so restaurant owners know that this is important to their customers, after all they need us. It was because of customers asking questions that led John Bishop to investigate the state of food and make a change in his restaurant to serving primarily organic or locally produced products.

So keep in mind that we have the power to change how businesses operate by our demands…all those big companies and small ones too, need our business. It is time to stop following the dictates of these companies and tell them what we want and what we will buy.

If you haven’t cooked with quinoa before you are in for a surprise. It cooks really fast, nice in the hotter summer months, it packs more protein than any other grain and it tastes really good. I liked the coolness of the avocados with fresh herbs and a touch of cayenne and curry for a bit of a kick.

To cook quinoa-rinse and strain (using a fine strainer) 2-3 times. In a saucepan put the strained quinoa, a little bit of water is ok, and turn on the heat to medium and cook for a few minutes till all of the water is evaporated and you begin to smell the quinoa-give it a stir or two while it is cooking. Then add water. I use 1 cup of quinoa to 1 1/2 cups water. Add a pinch or two of salt bring to a boil and then cover and simmer. It should be cooked in about 12-18 minutes. Look for small holes to appear on the surface, and no water should be visible.

While the quinoa cooks you can slice or cube a few avocados, depending on how much you are making-but be generous. I had found bacon avocados on special at the farmers market when I made this the first time, but any variety will work.

Chop a large tomato, heirloom if possible or maybe you are lucky enough to be growing your own, or two or three smaller ones. Cherry tomatoes could also be good, but slice them in half so that the juice from them flavors the quinoa.

Combine the avocado and tomato in a bowl, add a handful of roughly chopped fresh herbs (I used basil, cilantro, parsley, dill, thyme and a bit of mint), salt, pepper and olive oil. Mix this well.

When the quinoa is cooked, stir it into another large bowl to cool it, toss it a bit to remove some of the heat. Once relatively cool add the avocado and tomato mixture. Taste and adjust salt, pepper and olive oil as needed.

This is the basic recipe. Here are some additions that you could incorporate depending on your taste:

Flax seeds, your favorite nuts or sunflower seeds, raisins, currants, chopped apple, papaya or mango.

When I made it I also added a small amount of cayenne and Whole Foods Pondicherry curry powder-it was nice to have a bit of a bite against the cool avocado and tomato.

You can serve this as a side dish, or put a scoop on top of fresh salad greens. It also is great wrapped in a tortilla, or you could wrap it in a large chard or lettuce leaf. Be sure to make enough so that you have leftovers.

Who says eating well isn’t healthy and good for the planet.

Enjoy