By Kelly Rondeau
Green Right Now
It’s the holiday season, and along with the many joys that are associated with this fun time of year - cooking, baking, parties with friends and family - comes a lurking environmental problem: Toxic chemicals in everyday plastics. Plastics that seem to be everywhere in our holiday midst — in [...]

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By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

The Thanksgiving feast. It evokes such fond food memories. Even vegetarians and vegans are often pleased with the variety of veggie sides that cover their plate on this commemoration. (Not to mention the pumpkin or pecan pie that precedes the well-deserved, holiday nap.)

Still, this is a meal firmly and conspicuously arranged around a meat. Vegetarians aren’t necessarily getting a well-rounded dinner. Not to carb about it. Chances are they like whipped potatoes as much as the next person. But there’s a lot more a home chef can do to accommodate non-meat diners at the holidays by simply putting a veggie dish on the table that packs more heft, and a little more protein (not that we want to resurrect any debates over protein at this time).

So to accommodate the vegetarians and/or vegans at your holiday buffet, here are five hearty, seasonal dishes that rely on locally grown veggies gathered from real chefs around the country. (The first four are vegan.)

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By Barbara Kessler
If you’re planning a traditional Thanksgiving, you’ll be needing a bird. This year, organic and pastured turkeys are more available than ever. Check your local grocery now, and get on a list if need be.

Here are some places to look for a turkey that’s been raised on organic feed, and allowed a more humane existence.

• Local Harvest — If you’re into local heirloom turkeys or other pedigree varieties you may already be too late! But don’t beat yourself up over it, local farmers in Texas have told us that many connoisseurs place their orders months ahead of time. Still, there’s a flock of healthier birds waiting.

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By Barbara Kessler

BPA or Bisphenol A, the plastic additive that has been found to leach from hard plastic water and baby bottles when they are heated, also is released when certain disposable containers labeled as “microwave safe” are heated, according to an analysis by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

The newspaper tested 10 disposable food containers, heating them and then testing the contents for BPA. It found that BPA leached from all of the containers, including some labeled as plastics numbers 1, 2 and 5, and not just those labeled as number 7, the identifier for polycarbonate plastic known to contain BPA.
The tests included frozen dinners, microwavable soups, baby and toddler foods - all packed in plastics that could presumably be heated.

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By Barbara Kessler
Bisphenol A, the controversial component found in plastic baby bottles, took another image hit last week when the Canadian government announced it would be drafting regulations to ban the sale or importing of bottles containing the chemical.
Canadian Minister of Health Tony Clement called the step a milestone for Canada, which he said [...]

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By Michelle Chan Santos

When Jeanne Wallace’s two daughters woke up from their nap the other day - the oldest girl is 3 ½, and the younger one 23 months - they ate radishes for their afternoon snack. Each girl happily ate ten radishes - washed, raw and fresh from their mother’s garden. It was a typical of their tastes - both the children love vegetables, and their favorites are broccoli and cauliflower. They didn’t even want any salad dressing.

Wallace, who lives in Austin, Texas, credits her young daughters’ healthy eating habits to the fact that she made her own baby food for them. Wallace ate many nutritious foods during her pregnancy and while breastfeeding, and making her own baby food for the girls when they were infants seemed to be the natural next step, she said.

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By John DeFore

Just witnessed on the outskirts of Austin: A multi-course gourmet meal, impeccably cooked from local produce and elegantly served, smack dab in the middle of a farm.

And it’s not just happening in Austin, or even just in the South. Outstanding in the Field is the name of a roving crew of foodies (one of whom is a dirt-digging artist) who travel the country (and sometimes the globe) organizing massive dinners for customers who want to see exactly where what they’re eating was grown.

Call it an extreme (and, at $180-$220 per person including wine, extremely fancy) take on the locavore ideal, one designed to use the group’s culinary cred to promote awareness of small-scale farmers.

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By Barbara Kessler

Hazardous chemicals are on hiatus, bottled water is out and bikes are in at the Democratic Convention in Denver, where organizers are seizing the opportunity to green the festivities this week.

As some 10,000 delegates, volunteers, politicos and media people converge on the Mile High city, they’ll be quenching their thirst at “hydration stations” or water fountains serving Denver tap water (inside and outside the Pepsi Center) instead of grabbing the once ubiquitous and landfill-clogging plastic water bottles that have been the norm at big gatherings.

Yes, what’s old is new again, and conventioneers have already been drinking from the well, so to speak, at weekend events where the non-profit water utility Denver Water provided a truck of chilled agua to refill water bottles. The new approach has been “incredibly well received” by those attending the pre-Convention activities, said Donna Pacetti, the local government conservation coordinator with Denver Water. “They love it. It’s cold water. We keep it chilled so it comes out at about 38-40 degrees.”

Convention goers also will find themselves with another back-to-basics choice, with 1,000 bicycles available free-of-charge for short carbon-free hops around top, courtesy of Humana and the Bikes Belong Coalition.

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By Julie Bonnin

Aging baby-boomers who love fruits and vegetables may like the results of a recent study that found fruits and vegetables can help preserve muscle mass in older men and women.

Researchers from Tufts University analyzed data from 400 participants 65 years and older who completed a three-year osteoporosis trial. They found a link between higher measures of lean body mass and diets relatively high in potassium-rich fruits and vegetables. Such diets could help mediate the muscle-wasting response that occurs with aging.

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By Harriet Blake

The future is green, judging by products endorsed by some 2008 college grads.

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By Michele Chan Santos

At Lighthouse Community Charter School in Oakland, California, students are not permitted to have gum, soda or candy. Nor are they eating the notorious “mystery casseroles” filled with the USDA surplus-of-the-day and derided by school children throughout time. Instead, they eat fresh fruits and vegetables with every lunch, and fresh fruit with breakfast too.

The 550 students, grades K through 12, at this public charter school are from predominantly low-income families; 75 percent are learning English as a second language. Their school breakfast and lunch, and their after school snacks, come from Revolution Foods, a company which specializes in organic, hormone-free meals with whole grains and an emphasis on fresh produce.

“We really believe that the school has to serve the whole child. We want to ensure that students are learning and that they’re physically healthy, and an important part of that is nutrition,” said Jenna Stauffer, the director of strategic development at Lighthouse.

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By Lynette Holloway
Eastman Chemical may have come out ahead in the recent move by the Canadian government to label bisphenol-A, a chemical found in some forms of plastic, as toxic.
That is because the company already manufactures plastic without the noxious chemical, which could put its product in great demand. Last fall, the company rolled out [...]

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