The warming of our climate has triggered many consumers to want to do their part to make sustainable changes for our environment. However, it can be tricky to know where to begin, especially when it comes to food.

If you are looking to start making more sustainable food choices, check out these 5 tips below to help get you started.

1. Shop Local

Choosing to purchase foods from local farmers markets and vendors can help reduce pollution from transportation emissions and habitat loss from congested roadways. Local farms often make local purchases which means less transportation.

Additionally, choosing to purchase produce from local farmers can cut down significantly on plastic use as many of these items are not packaged or wrapped whereas many grocery stores wrap pre-cut or pre-portioned produce items in plastic wraps that are single use. 

Reducing plastic wraps by buying local can help to reduce your carbon footprint, especially if you choose to bring your own reusable bags. 

Another advantage of buying local is more options for organic, in-season produce at a better price than at traditional grocery stores. This allows you to make more sustainable choices on a budget.

2. Try Out Meatless Mondays

Choosing to eat more plants and less animal products can help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Traditional farming practices for livestock require a large amount of space, water, and feed and generate nearly 15% of all man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

Choosing to incorporate more plants and less meat can help to reduce these emissions while also helping to bring more variety to your diet with fruits and vegetables. 

An easy way to start incorporating this in is by doing things like Meatless Mondays. Choose a day and get the whole family involved in creating a meatless meal to enjoy together. You’ll feel better about the health of your family as well as the planet.

3. Bring Your Own Bags 

Cut down on plastic items by bringing your own reusable grocery bags to the store. You can also bring reusable produce bags and ziploc bags for storing your food items at home. 

Single-use plastic items such as grocery bags litter our landfills and pollute our oceans, negatively affecting the health and wellbeing of our valuable marine life. In fact, over 400 million tons of plastic are produced yearly and of that nearly 14 million tons end up in the ocean.

Reusable bags aren’t limited to grocery stores either. Consider keeping a reusable bag in your car or in your purse whenever you go out to cut down on plastic waste. 

4. Grow Your Own 

Another great way to reduce your carbon footprint and create a fun and healthy hobby is to grow your own food. Creating a garden with a variety of fruits, vegetables, and herbs can not only fill you with pride but it also helps to reduce carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels, similar to purchasing from a local farmers market. 

Additionally, no plastic packaging is needed and there is no concern for potentially harmful pesticides and herbicides. Not to mention, having home-grown food means less trips to the grocery store and more time outside in the sunshine.

5. Choose Supplements Wisely

Lastly, be sure to choose eco-friendly supplements. This means choosing products with minimal and sustainably grown and sourced ingredients. 

For example, choose the pea protein powder from Naked Nutrition to encourage better farming practices (pea protein is an ideal alternative to whey for those on a plant based diet due to its superior amino acid profile). 

You also want to look for supplements that include clean and pure ingredients that were sourced in the jurisdictions with stringent standards of clean manufacturing practices.

Choosing items that come in larger containers with a longer shelf life can help to avoid frequently purchasing items using single-use packaging. Bonus, buying bulk is typically easier on the budget while being friendlier towards Mother Earth.

6. Bottom Line

There are many easy ways you can incorporate sustainable food choices into your daily routine. If you aren’t sure where to start, consider one of the 5 options listed above. 

While it may take some time to work yourself up to big, eco-friendly changes in your routine, even the smallest steps can make a big difference on the environment.

The post 5 Sustainable Nutrition/Food Tips appeared first on Green Prophet.

In Israel and well all over the western east, avocado season has arrived. Plump, green avocados are grown from the north of Israel down to Jaffa in the center, all the way to agricultural communities in the southern Negev, such as Neot Semadar.

It is both a local favorite and a major national export. In 2010 the pear-shaped green fruit’s sales reached  one-third of all the fruit sold in Europe, according to a Wall Street Journal article dedicated to Israeli produce exporters Agrexco.

Here’s a seasonal recipe for springtime in Israel, a guacamole that tastes like California:

Best guacamole recipe

One ripe avocado

Garlic salt (we like a lot, but you don’t have to overdo it.) Or fresh garlic, even better

Pepper

A dash of salt

Paprika

Some mayo for creaminess

Lemon juice

Chunks of white onion and tomato

A spoon or two of salsa if you want to add a spicy kick

Enjoy your guacamole!

Read more about fresh produce in Israel:

Neot Semadar: An Eco Village in the Southern Negev

March Produce in the Middle East

Do Jaffa Oranges With Carbon Label Make Them Green Oranges from the Garden of Eden?

The post California Guacamole recipe appeared first on Green Prophet.

One of the great joys of eating seasonal, local food is the unabashed, seam-bursting happiness of eating something you haven’t seen since the last harvest. It’s the kind of excitement which comes from deprivation – food is always tastier when you’re hungry, and strawberries always sweeter, juicier, strawberrier, when you’ve not had them in months.

Another result of eating seasonally – when a fruit or vegetable finally ripens, all of a sudden you are absolutely swimming in it. If you’re anything like me, the embarrassment of riches leads to unbridled enthusiasm, which leads to eyes-bigger-than-tummy syndrome, which leads to, well, just what on earth am I going to do with all this stuff?

And thus we come to strawberry jam. Once upon a time, “putting food by”, preserving a crop at the peak of its season for use throughout the year, was common practice. Cucumbers were pickled, meat was salted, and herbs were dried. We think it’s high time for a resurgence.

Preserving’s air of mystique comes, we suspect, from the very reasonable concerns that most of us have about food safety. It seems entirely magical, and thus suspect, that the strawberries which would get mouldy in your fridge in under a week can, if boiled and put in a jar, stay safely on your shelf for months, or years. It’s the kind of alchemy we tend to feel is best left to the experts. But here’s the thing – preserving is actually incredibly easy, and incredibly safe. So long as you follow a few basic guidelines, you can have, by this time tomorrow, a shiny, glistening row of jam jars of your very own.

Homemade Strawberry Jam recipe

• 9 cups of washed, hulled, and lightly crushed strawberries (usually takes 7-8 quarts of berries)
• 6 cups sugar
• 1/2 cup lemon juice

Equipment

• 8 half-pint preserving jars, with lids and bands*, thoroughly washed with soap and water
• 1 extremely large pot with a fitted lid, for sterilizing the jars; the pot must be at least 3 inches taller than the jam jars you are using
• 1 cake or steamer rack that fits inside the extremely large pot
• 1 stock/soup pot, for cooking the preserves (use a big one – there will be lots of bubbling)
• 1 jar lifter (a plastic set of tongs for getting the jars in and out of the water)*

*available at kitchen and many hardware stores

1. Get the jam going. In the stock pot, combine the berries, sugar and lemon juice. Heat gradually until the sugar dissolves, then raise the heat and bring the berries to a boil. Continue to cook, stirring often to ensure that the bottom doesn’t scorch.

2. Skim off any foam that rises to the top of the pot. Don’t throw the foam out – it’s perfectly edible, and entirely delicious (the bubbles in the foam are caused by the rapid boiling, and contain nothing but strawberry goodness). When you’ve done with the jam-making, whiz the foam up with a bit of milk or cream in a blender, pour into popsicle molds, and freeze. These will be the best strawberry popsicles you have yet encountered.

Also, slip two small plates into the freezer – you’ll use those in a bit to test how “gelled” the jam is.

3. Meanwhile, sterilize your jars. Place the cake or steamer rack inside the extremely large pot. (From now on, we shall refer to this pot by its fancy preserving name: a hot water canner.) The purpose of the rack is to elevate the jam jars off the bottom of the pot, ensuring that water circulates all around them. Fill the pot with water almost to the top, cover, and set on high heat. When the water starts to boil, use the jar lifter to ease the canning jars into the pot. Make sure the jars fill completely, and are submerged. Once the water comes back to the boil, set a timer for 5 minutes.

When the timer goes off, put as many lids and bands into the pot as you have jars (you may need to do this all in batches), and set the timer for another five minutes. When the timer rings again – congratulations! you have successfully sterilized – use the tongs to fish the jars, lids, and bands out of the water, and place them all on clean dishtowels to drain. Keep the heat on under the canner.

4. Test the jam to see if it’s ready. By now it should have thickened a bit – it will drip slowly off a spoon that you dip into it, rather than running off rapidly like juice would. Take one of the plates out of the freezer, and plop on a small bit of jam. Return to the freezer for a minute or two. Take the plate out, and run your finger through the jam. Does it more or less stay put, retaining the trail traced by your finger? If so, you’re done! If the jam is still runny, keep cooking, and test again in a few minutes.

5. Can your jam. Using a ladle, and a wide-mouth funnel if you have one, carefully fill the sterilized jars with your jam. You need the jars to be quite full: fill them to within 1/4″ to 1/2″ of the very top (technical term for this: headspace). Using a dampened paper towel, wipe the rims of all the jars, to ensure that they are clean and not sticky. (Any jam on the rim will prevent the formation of a tight vacuum seal.) Place the lids on the jars, and then lightly tighten the bands around them – stop turning as soon as you feel resistance. (The bands are there to keep the lids in place, and are not actually involved in sealing the jars. If you tighten the bands too much, they will prevent air from escaping the jar, which is the process you want to encourage.)

Using the tongs, return the filled jars to the hot water canner; if necessary, top up with more water, so that the jars are covered by at least 1″. Put the lid on, and when the water comes up to the boil, set a timer for 10 minutes. When the times goes off, remove the jars from the canner, and lay on clean dishtowels to cool. (You may hear a popping sound coming from the jars – this happens when the lids suddenly depress inwards slightly at the centre, as the air is driven out and a vacuum is formed. Popping sound = good.) Leave jars undisturbed for 24 hours (moving the jars, and especially touching the lids, can disturb or break the seals on the jars while they are cooling).

6. Check for a seal. If you’ve got a good vacuum seal, your jam is shelf-stable, and can be safely stored in the cupboard for at least a year. How do you know if you have a vacuum seal? One test: press down on the centre of the lid. If it has no give, and does not bounce back when you take your finger away, it’s good. Another test: remove the lid band, and try to pick the jar up just by using your fingertips on the lid. If you can successfully lift it, the seal is good. (What do you do with jars that failed to seal? Put them in the fridge – they will last for a month.)

Congratulations! You’ve made jam! Put in on your toast, stir into a bowlful of yogurt, or dollop it over ice cream. Open it in six months, and inhale deeply. Seasonal eating won’t seem so limiting after all.

All images courtesy Arieh Singer

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Is the eco-friendly food movement getting even more complicated, or are ecotarians simplifying matters?

The green movement is riddled with a lot of food ideologies.  When it comes to food, there are a lot of environmental issues to consider: locavores protest the pollution stemming from the transport of food from far away, vegetarians (and vegawarians) are against the high carbon footprint of the meat industry, and all-organic folks prefer their food and their soil to be pesticide, chemical and hormone free.  But just when you thought that you had all these food movements straight, another one emerges – this time, in the form of the ecotarian.

But what exactly is an ecotarian?  The name sounds simple enough – someone who eats based on ecologically sustainable principles.  Yet the definitions are fairly diverse.

The Urban Dictionary defines an ecotarian fairly concisely.  It could be someone who is “similar to a vegetarian with an emphasis on local, organic foods.”  Or it is someone who is more flexible, and “refrains from eating meat that isn’t wild game (eats deer, grouse, duck, goose, javelina, etc., but not beef, farmed pig, industrial raised chickens, etc.).”

The Ecotarian Network on Facebook is a little more informative, being written by ecotarians and for ecotarians.  The network describes itself as a group of people who

“care about where our food comes from, how it gets to us and who is affected along the way.  We like fairly traded, sustainably grown food.  Lots of us are veggies.  We like local and home grown produce too and avoid waste.  We face loads of ethical dilemmas but we love food, and we don’t think all these ethical issues should be compartmentalized.”

Under this definition, many people may be surprised to find that they could easily describe themselves as ecotarians.  It is a growing movement, one that inspires recipes and blogs just like all the other food ideologies.

Amy Martin shares some of her experiences on her blog, Confessions of an Everyday Ecotarian, where she writes about challenges and triumphs and even suggests that toddlers can be ecotarians.  “I really believe, from my own experience with my children and others, that kids are willing to eat good food,” she writes.  “A strawberry in the middle of winter shipped from thousands of miles away doesn’t taste as good as a sun-ripened local summer strawberry.  Any child will know that even if they can’t express it.”

“I really think what makes a toddler suddenly pick through something he’s been eating fine for months is a developing awareness of his food,” Martin continues.  “He wants to know what he is consuming.  Isn’t that what ecotarianism is all about?”

Read more about green food issues::
5 Vegetarian Myths to Counter Die-Hard Carnivores
NY Times Blog: Be a Part-Time Vegetarian
Interview with Locavore Expert Leda Meredith
If It’s Not Organic, It’s Not Halal (4 Ethical Zabiha Principles)

Image via: thebittenword.com

The post Locavore, Shmocavore – Just Call Me an Ecotarian appeared first on Green Prophet.

Robin Mather has over 30 year’s experience working as a journalist with a passion for the truth behind food production. And she lets nothing get in her way.  The head of Michigan’s largest dairy co-op once told her,

“Young lady, if you write about rBST (a GMO hormone given to cows), I will have you killed.”

She did write about the dairy industry’s use of rBST. The newspaper she worked for took the threat so seriously that they hired her a bodyguard for two months after publishing the article. *

Bookstores are full of memoirs with recipes these days, but The Feast Nearby is much more than a good read with some recipes to earmark. It’s the story of the author’s triumphant emergence from  personal hardship – burying a marriage and losing a job in the same week – to a fulfilled new life.  The amazing thing is that this new life is based on a locavore existence with a budget of $40 a week. (See another book review on the topic of locavore living.)

With  disciplined resourcefulness, a sensitive imagination, and willingness to work hard, Mather made of disaster a life of good eating and good friends. Her rich descriptions of locavore life move through the seasons of one year, providing almost 100 mouth-watering recipes to take into the kitchen and start working with. Some of those recipes, by the way, are Middle Eastern and quite authentic.

Along the way, we meet her community. Neighbors  help her set up a chicken coop. Another plans and builds her a wood-burning stove to survive the freezing Michigan winters. Raising chickens for eggs (like Green Prophet’s editor Karin), growing herbs, and wildcrafting, she stretches the dollars she must spend at the local butcher and at the  farmer’s market. She has an admirable capacity for flexibility, planning, and carrying through. She writes of sitting down to calculate a budget to fit her new circumstances.

“It took me a little while to retrain my mind,” she writes, ” – longer to do that than to put all the food by for winter, actually.”

I found her personal example as inspiring as the dozens of good recipes and fine essays on the art of living well on little money.

Mather authored the first  book on  the perils of GMO for the general public: A Garden of Unearthly Delights: Bioengineering and the Future of Food. (1995). The book is now out of print, but available on the popular e-bookstores.

The Feast Nearby by Robin Mather

266 pages

Ten-Speed Press ISBN 978-1-58008-558-8

Robin Mather’s blog :: www.thefeastnearby.com

* From a personal conversation with the author.

More on eating locally at Green Prophet:

• Eating Real Food Can Save the Environment
• 5 Supermarket Vegetables You Can “Upcycle” and Grow At Home
• Local Eggs, Industrial Eggs, and Salmonella

The post Book Review: The Feast Nearby by Robin Mather appeared first on Green Prophet.

Protect the environment by eating the (animal or plant) species trying to invade it.  What does a Middle Eastern invasivore look like?

Environmentalists have a lot of crazy eating habits.  You’ve got the hardcore vegans who avoid all meat and animal byproducts, the vegetarians who will not eat meat (but eat dairy and eggs), the vegawarians who eat meat but try to consume it sparingly, the strictly organic crowd, and the locavores who will not eat anything that came from outside a particular geographic radius.  Just when you thought you had all of your eco-friendly culinary terminology down, there’s a new environmental eating trend out there: invasivores.

As described in the New York Times last week, invasivores choose to eat invasive animal and/or plant species in order to protect the local environment (and eat local at the same time).  In the Florida Keys this has meant eating lionfish, and in San Francisco vegetarian invasivore Rachel Kesel has started eating an edible invasive weed – field mustard.  But what would a Middle Eastern invasivore diet look like?

Thanks to fellow Green Prophet Karin who foraged in her garden for edible weeds last year, we have some hints.

Middle Eastern invasivores can start by eating the following leafy green “weeds”:

• Hubeisa (pictured above and called mallow in English)
• Ellet (chicory in English)
• Stinging nettle
• Chickweed

Once you’ve foraged for these wild edibles and prevented their invasion, what next?  Stinging nettle (if collected carefully) can be used in soups, and chickweed can be used in salads (check out the delicious looking chickweed salad above).

What are other invasivores and foragers eating out there?  Please share in the comments section below.

Read more about eating edible weeds in the Middle East::
Edible Weeds in Your Middle East Garden
The Weeds We Eat – Karin Forages in her Backyard
Foraging the Wild Weeds on Your Windowsill: Grow Chickweed

The post How to Become a Middle Eastern Invasivore appeared first on Green Prophet.

Which is a bigger environmental sin – imported produce or imported farmers?

For the past few days Israeli farmers have been protesting a governmental decision to cut the amount of foreign workers legally permitted to come work in the agricultural sector, with the demonstration planned to continue tomorrow as well. 

The growers have been demonstrating in several junctions across the country, and their most significant act of protest has been to cut off the supply of vegetables, fruits, milk, eggs, fresh fish and poultry to markets and supermarkets all over the country throughout the duration of the three-day strike.  Essentially, the farmers are asking that more imported farmers hands be allowed to work so that they can continue to supply the Israeli public with fresh, local produce.

They are asking the government to reverse a decision that would make it extremely difficult for Israelis to be locavores.

A year and a half ago the government agreed that they would increase the quota of foreign farm hands from 22,000 to 26,000 – a promise that has yet to be kept.  Avshalom Vilan, the Secretary-General of the Israeli Farmers Federation, said that “the government promised us the workers a year and a half ago and never delivered.  Why should we believe them now?”

Fresh, local produce is what’s better for the environment by a long shot.  All the energy and fossil fuels that go into packaging and transporting food from foreign countries is extremely polluting, and totally unnecessary for a country like Israel that is able to grow most of its own produce.

It is a little ironic, though, that the farm hands can’t seem to be local as well.  Most immigrant farm workers come from Thailand, since Israelis apparently lack a desire to work in agriculture.

:: Jerusalem Post

Image via: David Shankbone

Read more about some of the farms supplying local (and organic) goods to Israel::
Rom Farm Brings Organic Goat Cheese to a Table Near You, With Some Help from the Handicapped
Israel’s Organic “Goats with the Wind” Farm is Delicious Eco-Tourism
Tel Aviv Has a Farm, E-I-E-I-O

The post Israeli Farmers Protest Lack of Imported Farm Help by Withholding Local Produce appeared first on Green Prophet.

Tel Aviv is home to all types of trendsetters – including the green ones.

This past week the Miami Herald reported on what we’ve known for years: that Tel Aviv, while hot in general, is also one of the hottest green destinations of late.  Their article reported on Tel Aviv’s urban farming, vegan/organic/local food options, green drinks, farmer’s markets, eco-friendly forms of transportation, sustainable design, and more.  And so in light of the Miami Herald stepping up and noticing, we decided to put together our own mini-green guide to Tel Aviv.

Food

Whether your food cause of choice is vegan, organic, or local (or all three), Tel Aviv has options for you.  If you’re shopping for yourself, organic and local farmer’s markets can currently be found in two spots in Tel Aviv.  Orbanic (an urban/organic farmer’s market) takes place every Friday at Hatachana, the newly renovated Turkish train station between Neve Tsedek and Jaffa.  And if you’re in the northern part of the city?  Tel Aviv’s Port hosts another organic farmer’s market every Tuesday and Friday.

Vegan and/or vegetarian diets more your thing?  You can check out a Meatless Monday at Tel Aviv University, in the northern part of the city.  In the southern part of the city, at the corner of Yehuda Halevi and Herzl (or at their alternate branch on Ibn Gvirol) you can bite into a juicy vegan burger or shwarma at Buddha Burger, a completely vegan restaurant with an extensive menu.

Architecture

Tel Aviv is known for its Bauhaus architecture, which is kind of green in and of itself since one of its characteristics includes cross ventilation (reducing the need for energy-guzzling air conditioning).  But beyond that, Tel Aviv has been developing greener architecture.  The Azouri Brothers are currently building Tel Aviv’s first eco-high rise (which will be 20 stories tall, check out the image on the right).  There are many other green spaces in the White City, however, which are celebrated in Tel Aviv’s annual architectural weekend (usually takes place in May).

Transportation

Sure, walking is eco-friendly, but in a city as hot and humid as Tel Aviv you might want to get where you’re going a little faster.  Which is why cycling is a great option.  If you’d like more of a leisurely, sightseeing ride then EcoBike offers Bike & Beer tours (a 3 hour bike ride through many of Tel Aviv’s sites followed by a cold beer on the beach).  Or wanna pick up some extra cash while in Tel Aviv?  Become a Greenie Bicycle Courier for a day or so.

Fashion

The residents of Tel Aviv have, historically, always been fashion conscious but now they are becoming more eco-conscious as well.  Some local designers are integrating more sustainable materials into their lines, such as organic cotton.  Cotton boutique, on the northern part of Dizengoff, offers a completely organic cotton fashion line (check out one of their dresses above).  PopLove Designs, a team of two Tel Aviv-based designers, brings a different approach to sustainable fashion with their upcycled fabric clothing.  Zendegi, in Neve Tsedek, offers organic and fair trade clothes from a range of designers.

Adults aren’t the only ones who stand to benefit from Tel Aviv’s sustainable clothing trend, though.  Katanchic, in Dizengoff Center, offers organic clothes for oh-so-trendy green babies.

Shopping

If shopping for green clothes isn’t your thing, there are plenty of other green products.  There are plenty of sustainable designers working out of Tel Aviv, finding creative ways to reuse our junk.  One of these is Hasadna (or, the “workshop”), appropriately located in the Jaffa flea market, and among their products is a chandelier made out of plastic ice cream spoons (check out the photo on the left).

Other Tel Aviv-based upcycling design studios include Studio Mesila, Studio Ubico, and Junktion.

[image at top of post: Meir Jacob]

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