Blogs : Green
Green Everything sustainable, ecoconscious, organic, and environmentally friendly—from products to restaurants, and kitchen design to responsible food policy and production.
The Perils of Buying Plants at Walmart
Wondering whom to blame for the scarcity of organic tomatoes in the stores? It’s a late-season blight caused by a fungus like the one responsible for the Irish potato famine. But in the New York Times’ weekend opinion section, Dan Barber goes further: The blight was kicked off by the resurgence of home gardening:
“According to plant pathologists, this killer round of blight began with a widespread infiltration of the disease in tomato starter plants. Large retailers like Home Depot, Kmart, Lowe’s and Wal-Mart bought starter plants from industrial breeding operations in the South and distributed them throughout the Northeast. (Fungal spores, which can travel up to 40 miles, may also have been dispersed in transit.) Once those infected starter plants arrived at the stores, they were purchased and planted, transferring their pathogens like tiny Trojan horses into backyard and community gardens. Perhaps this is why the Northeast was hit so viciously: instead of being spread through large farms, the blight sneaked through lots of little gardens, enabling it to escape the attention of the people who track plant diseases.”
Whoa! It’s your fault, backyard gardeners! Barber goes on to suggest that gardens should be sourced locally. Buy local seeds or starter plants from nearby growers. “A tomato plant that travels 2,000 miles is no different from a tomato that has traveled 2,000 miles to your plate,” he writes.
Though Barber perhaps comes down a bit heavy on home gardeners, his point is valid: Once you start growing, you’re part of the country’s agricultural network. What you do can affect other people, in ways good and bad.
Image source: Flickr member visualdensity under Creative Commons
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Food Not Found in Nature
Today Now!, a show on the Onion News Network, reports that Taco Bell is going 100 percent “green,” meaning nothing on its new menu will use anything that came from nature.
“At Taco Bell we have a long tradition of taking as little as possible from the natural world,” says faux Bell spokesperson Paul Lancaster, who says Taco Bell’s “eco-friendly” beef has always contained “85 percent gluten filler, 8 percent petroleum-based grease flavoring,” and “4 percent meat.” However, with the new green menu on board, that 4 percent meat has been replaced by a “simple chemical adhesive.” No wasting food or water on cattle: wow!
Save me an Ultimate Grande Crunchador.
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Make Your Own Pickled Nasturtium Buds
As anyone who tries to eat locally soon finds out, condiments can be a sticking point. Finding locally-made salt is all-but-impossible in most areas, and good luck finding local black pepper or cardamom.
Capers are also nigh-on impossible to source locally. Made from the unripened flower buds of a plant that grows wild all over the Mediterranean, they travel a long way to get to your plate. But, unlike salt, there’s a great substitute that can flourish almost anywhere in North America: pickled nasturtium buds. I had a chance to taste some recently. Pickled in salty brine, they taste almost exactly like capers, but better: piquant, peppery, juicy. And they’re huge, about the size of a malted milk ball instead of a pea.
Summer is the perfect time to pick the buds, according to Sandor Ellix Katz, author of the book Wild Fermentation. Look for a crinkled, brain-like nodule at the base of bloomed-out nasturtium flowers. Pick them, soak them for about a week in a solution of 3/4 tablespoon of table salt for each cup of water, and use them in sandwiches, salads, pastas, and whatever else you’d use capers in.
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WTF Ziploc?
As I was packing my lunch this morning, I went through a common dilemma. I was bringing two food items (in this case, nuts and pickles) that couldn’t co-exist in the same bag. The San Franciscan in me yelled out, “Don’t waste plastic! You should be wrapping your food in leaves.”
Out of guilt, I ended up only bringing the nuts. And, with each bite of my disappointing snack, I swore I would come up with a better solution—and I did.
I call it the Compart-Loc (patent pending). Even though this rudimentary prototype was constructed by burning the plastic with an iron, I’m calling you out Ziploc. Make this product, and make many others’ lives easier.
Obviously the problem with this design from a business perspective is that you’ll sell fewer bags. But can’t we look past numbers for a moment? (Actually it would just be better if Ziploc made a sturdy, well-designed, easy-to-clean, reusable bag. But that wouldn’t have made such a good photo.)
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Every Vegetable Has Its Day
The BBC reports that the Belgian city of Ghent is planning to orchestrate a weekly veggiedag (veggie day), when the entire population will be encouraged to spurn meat and help reduce the city’s environmental footprint. Ironically, this environment-saving move was accompanied by the printing of 90,000 paper maps showing residents where to find the town’s vegetarian restaurants. City of Ghent, the cows say: “Dank u wel.” The trees, on the other hand, are extending what looks very much like a giant wooden middle finger.
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The World's Cheapest, Greenest Oven
The BBC reports on an ingeniously simple oven which has won this year’s Forum for the Future Climate Change Challenge. Designed for use in the Third World, the Kyoto Box is made with cardboard and acrylic, packs flat for transportation, and costs less than $7 to manufacture. It harnesses the power of the sun to sterilize water and cook food without the need for electricity, gas, or—most importantly—firewood.
Granted, it may not be as fast as a microwave, but it can boil an impressive 10 liters of water in around two hours. Eliminating the need for firewood saves money, reduces greenhouse emissions, slows deforestation, and even helps save some of the many lives lost to indoor smoke inhalation each year.
Maybe someone should tell Alice Waters that she can finally get rid of that in-kitchen hearth of hers.
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