Photo by Steve Bailey, under a Creative Commons license

I love this quote from Susan Rubin, co-producer of the film Two Angry Moms and founder of the advocacy group Better School Food, from an article excerpted by CalorieLab:

You get angry when your boundary has been violated, and the food industry has violated our boundaries with what they are offering out kids. I’m just trying to protect my cubs.

I think every penny is worth it. To me, food is health care. You can pay the farmer or the doctor.

(Emphasis is mine.)

I can really attest to that—since I started cutting back on processed junk for mostly local, organic food two years ago, I haven’t been sick once. (Well, other than my regular migraines, for which no earthly balm can abate.) My friend Felicia trumps me with THREE.

This post is part of One Local Summer: Week 7

I’m madly trying to keep up with my CSA’s vegetable bounty. This scrumptious carrot, ginger, and beet soup, adapted from a recipe in Vegetarian Planet by Didi Emmons, can be savored hot or chilled—and is perfect for helping pare down beet and carrot inventories in fridges everywhere.

Local: Organic beets, organic onions, organic carrots, organic garlic, organic parsley
Non-local: salt, vegetable bouillon cube, canola oil
Unknown: Organic ginger

Carrot, Ginger, and Beet Soup
Serves 4

• 4 medium-size beets, cut into chunks
• 1 tbs canola oil
• 1 medium-size onion, chopped
• 1 pound carrots, coarsely chopped
• 1 tbs minced fresh ginger
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 6 cups water or basic vegetable stock

1. Heat oil, saute onions.
2. Add carrots, ginger, and garlic—cook for 5 mins.
3. Add beets, then water or stock.
4. Simmer covered for 50 mins.
5. Puree soup in batches in food processor or blender.
6. Salt and pepper to taste.

This post is part of One Local Summer: Week 6

Potato-and-pesto croquettes with yogurt-cucumber sauce; a side of roasted wax beans and caramelized onions

Local: organic potatoes, organic basil, organic yogurt, organic cucumber, organic wax beans, organic onions, organic garlic
Non-local: breadcrumbs, organic olive oil, organic cumin, salt, pepper

The recipes were adapted from Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, a massive tome I borrowed from the library but am considering purchasing. I can’t recommend this cookbook enough, even though it skimps on accompanying photographs. The best part is the section on commonly used vegetables, which Madison lists alphabetically, along with information about differentiating among varieties, storage, and preparation—terribly useful when you find yourself faced with bag of greens from your CSA (kohlrabi, anyone?), with no clue what to do with them.

The yogurt-cucumber sauce, which you keep refrigerated, is wonderfully cooling and the perfect companion for fritters and croquettes. Here’s my modified recipe:

Yogurt Sauce with Cucumber and Cumin
Makes about 1 1/2 cups

• 2 cups yogurt
• 1 small cucumber, peeled if waxed, and cubed
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tbs extra virgin olive oil
• salt to taste
• freshly milled white pepper to taste

Stir all ingredients in a bowl and let stand at least 15 mins for the flavors to develop.

This post is part of One Local Summer: Week 4

A dutch baby filled with an apple-and-peach compote. Is there a joy greater than having the juices of a perfectly ripened peach run down the sides of your mouth as you scrape the pit clean?

Local ingredients: apples, peaches, spelt flour, organic free-range eggs
Non-local ingredients: organic butter, organic soy milk, organic/fair-trade sugar, organic cinnamon powder

Photo by MaryJanesFarm

You might as well have handed me a bag of writhing snakes—so alien and fraught with nervous concern was my first encounter with garlic scapes during a CSA¹ pickup last year.

But once this lifelong city girl got over the foreignness … and, well, springiness … of it all—boy, were they tasty!

Scapes are the flower stalks you’ll find on members of the Allium family, which includes onions, leeks, chives, and, hardneck garlic. Garlic scapes twist and curl upwards, making supple arcs as they grow, but will straighten and stiffen with time, before growing little seed-like bulbs. Young and tender garlic tops still in full curl can be snapped off easily with your fingers, providing a mild garlic flavor and crunchiness, whether in salads, soups, or stir-fries. You can even puree scapes with some olive oil (adding lemon juice and Parmesan cheese for taste) for fresh homemade pesto.

More about garlic scapes (plus some recipes) at MaryJanesFarm.

¹Community-Supported Agriculture. Locate a CSA in your area by entering your zip code at LocalHarvest.org

The North Carolina coffee mavericks of Larry’s Beans sent over a couple of bags of its organic, fair-trade java. After grinding up the beans in our hand-cranked coffee mill, I consulted our resident coffee expert (read: the hub).

A note: You won’t find the little fair-trade dude on the packaging; Larry’s Beans, along with Just Coffee, Dean’s Beans, and Cafe Campesino, split from Transfair USA in 2004, because it felt that the fair-trade movement was being “watered down” under the “increasingly corporate-friendly” Transfair system. Now part of a co-op of fair-trade, green roasters known as Cooperative Coffee, Larry’s Beans is audited by the international Fair Trade Labeling Organization, which ensures that payments are fairly distributed to each individual farmer—you can even track the origin of each bag of coffee, as well as how much each farmers’ coop was paid, by checking the bag’s lot number against the Larry’s Beans Web site. (How about those transparency cojones, Starbucks?)

All of Larry’s Beans coffee is shade-grown and certified organic (or transitional organic); 97 percent is fair trade, while the remaining 3 percent is the company’s Kauai Blend from Hawaii, where it says there is no need for fair trade.

Costa Lil Ricky
($9.95 per lb)

A mug of Larry’s Beans Costa Lil Ricky has a full taste that’s neither sharp nor overly bitter. Its nice aroma makes for a comforting blend—the perfect partner for an afternoon’s lounging—and its light, smooth feel makes repeated cups welcome in each sitting.

The Grand Turk
($10.85 per lb)

This dark blend by Larry’s Beans carries an enticing aroma in both bean and ground form that permeates a small apartment to make an effective lure to start your morning. The end result after brewing is a tasty mug that makes for a strong wakeup call for the senses. A little goes a long way for this blend, however, as I find repeated cups in a sitting can yield a caffeine overkill.

We also dug the fact that the bags (with designs that rocked my illustration-loving socks off) were resealable—a minor, oft-overlooked detail, but one that enables the packaging to be reused, even long after the last cup of coffee has been drained.

Related articles:
1. Gorilla Coffee
2. Hub’s Guest Review: Black Gold
3. Starbucks Keeps Ethiopian Growers Humble

WW@TH: Green Mountain Coffee + Jane Goodall = Happy Chimps

Graphic by Zhena’s Gypsy Tea

Although purchased primarily for my then-visiting (and English Breakfast-loving) father-in-law, Zhena’s Gypsy Tea’s Breakfast Bliss, a black tea from India and Sri Lanka, had me at first sip with its robust and full-bodied flavor.

Not only is Zhena’s a woman-owned business—she started out pedaling from a cart—but its teas are also organic- and fair-trade certified. The Ojai, Calif.-based company buys wind power through the purchase of green tags to offset its carbon footprint. And the reusable, refillable, and recyclable tins, which are made in a fair-trade facility in China, are absolutely luscious to behold. I want to hoard them like dragon treasure and secrets. Available in loose leaf and unbleached sachets. (From $5.99, Zhena’s Gypsy Tea and most natural-food stores)

The fabulous Felicia Sullivan reviews The Omnivore’s Dilemma

Screenshot from Cavemen’sCrib.com

Have you scoped out the Geico cavemen’s pad at Cavemen’sCrib.com? I’m not one to shill for corporate America but the site is very thoughtfully and impressively put together—especially from my vantage point as an interactive-marketing refugee—and far more entertaining than I’d care to admit. I took a screenshot of a cookbook I stumbled open during an exploration of their kitchen; it specifies locally grown and organic ingredients (antibiotic-free seems redundant, however.)

Cavemen, they’re just like us!

(Although, considering that the Geico cavemen are portrayed as testy, bourgeois poseurs, maybe it shouldn’t be construed as a compliment.)

Photo by Andrea Chu/Getty Images

From BBC News: “New parents who choose eco-friendly or ethical goods for their babies can pay as much as £700 a year extra, according to new research.”

John Reeve, Chief Executive of Family Investments [which commissioned the study] said: “The cost of being a parent is growing and the added pressure now of choosing ethical or organic products can overwhelm parents living on stretched budgets, especially as families learn to cope with the cost of a new baby.”

What this story doesn’t add is that it’s possible to live frugally and consciously—buying gently used, for instance, won’t wallop your wallet. You can also make your own green cleaning supplies, and even skincare products. Fresh organic produce can also be affordable if you try growing your own, or by joining a co-op or a community-supported agriculture (CSA) group. (You can also just avoid the conventional produce that have the highest pesticide loads if money is truly tight.)

Live simply, but also live richly.

My new guilty indulgence: Stonyfield Farm’s certified-organic vanilla chai ice cream, made with certified-fair-trade and -organic Kashmiri chai from Honest Tea. See that diffuse glow surrounding my tub of ice cream? That’s because it was made by angels.