Organic Food and Wine Area

GREEN RESTAURANTS
The Green Restaurant Association lists dozens of organic and environmentally friendly restaurants. They rate them according to such things as how much renewable energy they use and how much organic food is served. This site makes it much easier to dine green.

GET THE FRESHEST PRODUCE! Find a FARMER’S MARKET in your neighborhood and support your local farmers.

Better than organic. Capulin Coffee is perhaps one of the most pure products on the market. In the coastal jungles of Nayarit, Mexico, local villagers harvest Capulin coffee beans from naturally growing indigenous coffee trees. Because these trees self-propagate among countless other species in the balanced forest ecosystem, they require no chemical fertilizers or pesticides. Even better, they are sun-dried, hand-sorted, hand-processed and packed into hand-sewn canvas bags, all the while employing the local population at fair wages. These production methods are a huge contrast those of the big coffee brands, which involve forest destruction, monocropping and heavy chemical inputs. Visit the Capulin home page to learn more, or read their fascinating story featured in the Tucson Weekly a few years ago. Order your own bag of Capulin Coffee by calling 1-866-816-0489.

Is the seafood you are eating hurting our oceans?
Find out with this nifty little tool from Environmental Defense! Their new interactive feature gives you instant information on more than 150 kinds of seafood. Get tips on everything from buying the freshest fish to choosing better for the environment alternatives.
So dive in!

Why it is Best to Eat
Local, Seasonal Food?
Joan Gussow is among the first people who advocated eating locally and seasonally for environmental reasons. Now professor emeritus of Teachers College in New York City, she has written several books including the insightful Chicken Little, Tomato Sauce and Agriculture. Gussow first advocated eating locally in the late 1970s as a means of energy conservation. She observed that it takes a lot of gas and oil to transport food thousands of miles, and it takes a lot more to keep it cold for all that distance. So-called fresh food transported long distances can take ten or more days to reach your dinner table from the time it is harvested, and nutrients are lost in the process. Locally produced food would not need to be refrigerated for such long periods of time nor would it need to be shipped. more...

HAVE YOU DECIDED TO EAT HEALTHIER?

Want to serve vegetarian scallops? Are you having a hard time finding products in your grocery store that are vegetarian, healthy and easy to cook?

NoMeat.com is a great resource for online grocery shopping. They have lots of ready to eat vegan and vegetarian foods for order on their website.

MAINSTREAMING ORGANIC

Dole Offers Organic Bananas
Dole Food Company, the world's largest producer of fresh fruits and vegetables, now sells certified organic bananas. The other big player in this market selling organic bananas is Chiquita Brands. Bananas make up a whopping 10 percent of retail store produce sales.

Safeway Features Fair Trade Coffee
Fair Trade certified coffee will now be available in each of Safeway's 1,600 stores in the United States. In an alliance with TransFair USA and the Organic Coffee Company, Safeway plans to offer organic coffee carrying The Fair Trade Certified label that assures consumers that the farmers who grew the coffee received a fair price.

MAKE THE BEST OF WINTER

Seasonal Winter Harvest Calendar for California

Fruit: Grapefruit, lemons, kiwi, navel oranges, persimmons, tangelos, tangerines

Vegetables: Artichokes, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, carrots, cauliflower, celery, lettuce, mushrooms, potatoes, rutabaga, spinach, squash, tomatoes, turnips

Seasonal Winter Harvest Calendar for New York State Fruit Cold storage:

Fruit: Apples, pears

Vegetables: From root cellars and cold storage; beets, cabbage, carrots, leeks, onions, parsnips, potatoes, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, turnips, winter squash

ORGANIC FOOD DELIVERY

Have your organic foods delivered right to your door!

Sun Organic Foods will deliver high quality organically grown fruits, vegetables, coffees, herbs, gifts and more-right to your little ol' door! You can order online, or call them at: 1-888-269-9888.

"Living Without" gives you more!

Living Without is one of our favorite magazines. Sully's Living Without is a lifestyle guide for people with food and chemical sensitivities. Be sure to check them out!

Living Without

Recipes
Check out VegTV movies!

(Follow the links and click on the DSL or Dialup button to see the movie)

Best selling author and Soy expert, Marie Oser, shows how to make delicious tofu right in your own kitchen!

Live from the VegTV studios, Dr. Neal Barnard, President of Physicians Commitee for Responsible Medicine speaks about how to make positive lifestyle changes and the effects of diet and exercise on healthand fitness.

Chef Alaine Shrewsbury, of Alaine's Bakery reveals some of the dairy and sugar-free secrets to her scrumptious low-fat desserts.

Visit VegTV.com for more on great healthy vegetarian lifestyles!

Inspiring Change One Cup at a Time
Can eating yogurt really contribute to a better world? New Hampshire- based yogurt-maker Stonyfield Farm says that when you buy a cup of their organic yogurt, you're helping to save family farms, prevent ecological degradation, and improve human health--and you thought it just tasted good!

Take a cup of Stonyfield Farm Organic Peach Yogurt for instance. The milk used to make the yogurt is purchased from a cooperative of organic dairy farmers. Organic dairy prohibits the use of persistent toxic pesticides, hormones and antibiotics. This means farmers and their families are not put at risk from handling dangerous chemicals. They're also paid a stable price at a substantial premium to conventional milk, allowing small family farms to flourish, and not get squeezed off the land.

The organic sugar used by Stonyfield Farm demonstrates the ecological potential of organic agriculture when applied to a large scale. One younger generation family member from the Brazilian family-run sugar operation had studied entomology and became intrigued with the idea of organic--allowing the multitude of life in the soil to thrive and create rich soil, rather than annihilating it with chemicals. In the early nineties his family let him experiment on a fraction of their 40,000 plus acres.

Increasing organic matter in the soil improves water retention. Under organic management the soil organic matter increased from 1% to 3%, close to the 4% of the tropical forests in the region. In the recent severe drought, while their neighbors lost their crops, the organically grown sugar thrived. Over 50 species of birds and mammals have returned to the area, some not seen in five decades. Yields have increased more than 10%, proving that integrated organic soil management can exceed conventional farming. Due to the enormous success of going organic, the family has begun the three-year process of converting all of their land to organic, even though it's expected that they'll sell only a fraction of it as organic. They just think it's a better way to grow.

The peaches in the organic yogurt are also grown organically. According to the Environmental Working Group, in a study conducted by the FDA, 71% percent of the conventionally grown peach crop sampled tested positive for pesticides, fifth among the 42 fruits and vegetables analyzed. In total, 26 different pesticides were found on peaches. Almost 1/4 of the times a young child eats a peach, that child is consuming an unsafe level of organophosphate pesticides. Organic standards prohibit the use of these pesticides, making the orchards safer for the workers and eliminating their residues from the peaches we consume.

So, the next time you eat a cup of Stonyfield Farm Organic Peach Yogurt, you can feel good that you are doing yourself some good, and helping to make a difference in the world, one cup at a time.

If you care to learn more about organic, see Stonyfield Farm's Practical Guide to Understanding Organic at www.stonyfield.com. You can also get E-Coupons and "Moosletters" focusing on recipes, nutritionist advice, profiles of folks who are making a difference and ways you can make a difference too!

Stonyfield Farm. Yogurt on a mission.

Thank goodness for Thanksgiving coffee!

Thanksgiving Coffee doesn't shrink from an environmental challenge. After finding it was adding 553 tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere annually, the company pledged to plant almost 70,000 trees in Ethiopia.

As part of its on-going efforts to reduce the environmental impact that it has on the planet, the gourmet coffee company recently asked a non-profit group to measure greenhouse gases caused by the northern California company.

After considering the fuel that goes into the trucks and ships that transport the coffee, the propane that heats the roasters, and even the electricity used to run lights and computers, Maryland-based Trees for the Future determined that Thanksgiving Coffee was adding 553 tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere annually.

In addition, they even calculated the amount of carbon dioxide that is released when Thanksgiving's customers brew their coffee -- a whopping 1,000 tons. To offset that impact, the coffee company is partnering with Trees for the Future to plant an estimated 69,000 trees in the East African nation of Ethiopia, where some of the world's best coffee is produced.

"The partnership with Trees for the Future is just one in a series of initiatives we have embarked upon to make our company more sustainable," says Thanksgiving CEO Paul Katzeff. "We recognize that true sustainability means not causing any harm, so we are continually taking steps to reduce our waste emissions at the source.

"We know that we cannot make up for the full environmental impacts of our operations but we believe that this project will help offset our carbon emissions and have a beneficial effect on the lives of thousands of Ethiopian families."

At a cost of $90 per acre, Thanksgiving Coffee will fund the planting of 21,000 trees the first year. The project will work with a local organization called Beam of Hope, in an area about 80 miles southwest of Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa. The majority of the money will go to train local leaders in agro-forestry techniques.

--Andy Summa

DINE BY DESIGN!

By Andy Summa

There aren't a whole lot of quick organic food options for the busy vegetarian. After all, fast food places aren't exactly bastions of vegetarianism, and most eateries' idea of a veggie meal is a hamburger minus the burger.

But that doesn't mean you can't have good food, and in a hurry. Dining By Design sends ready-made gourmet meals right to your door. All you have to do is heat them up.

This ain't microwave TV dinner fare, either. Though frozen, the all-vegan meals are hearty, healthy and scrumptious on the palette.

Whether its Veggie Steake, Southern Fried Chikken or German Carob Cake, Dining By Design has something for even the pickiest eaters. For a taste of everything, try their wonderful samplers. They have a bit of everything, and will last you for up to two weeks.

Prices don't seem cheap (about $10 per two-person meal), until you taste their Tiramisu Cheezecake. Then, it was the best $10 you ever spent.

www.diningbydesign.com

Andy Summa is a freelance writer in Sugar Land, Texas.