For Thanksgiving, get the kids in the kitchen too!
I’ve included a recipe below from Baking Kids Love, a new book just out this fall. To make the Rustic Apple Pie more eco-friendly, choose organic apples, sugar, flour and butter.
Baking Kids Love by Sur La Table with Cindy Mushet features 30 recipes designed for 8 to 12 year-old kids. Do you have any favorite holiday items that the kids help you make?

Rustic Apple Pie
—From Baking Kids Love by Sur La Table with Cindy Mushet/Andrews McMeel Publishing
(Enough for 6 to 8 pie peeps)
Ingredients:

Food to Live By: The Earthbound Farm Organic Cookbook by Earthbound Farm founder Myra Goodman and co-authors offers pleasing style with good-quality, wholesome ingredients. You can make all of the recipes organic if you choose organic ingredients.
Some sample recipes are included below for your holiday cooking fun, but in the cookbook, you’ll also find recipes for Sweet Corn Chowder, Farm Stand Carrot Cake and more. I’m getting hungry!

Myra’s cookbook contains more than 250 recipes, plus full-color photos — and even some shopping tips and serving ideas. She also includes “field guides” to produce and “Farm Fresh” information boxes, as well …read more

For all the hesitant tofu consumers out there, consider some cool benefits to using tofu in your recipes. It’s low in fat and sodium with no cholesterol.
Also, tofu is a more affordable source of protein than meat, especially if you’re cooking for a large group. Cubes of tofu can be added to soup to turn it into a main dish. Soft or silken tofu can even be used as a protein-rich base for dips or smoothies.
The eco side of tofu is that it doesn’t have as much impact on the environment as meat production. Even though rain forests are being …read more

There aren’t very many disadvantages of using cast iron. You can’t put it in the dishwasher, and it has to be seasoned before the first use. Plus, the handles get hot. Other than that, I don’t see where you can go wrong with this ultra-green cookware.
Cast iron is healthier and much more green than those chemical-laden nonstick pans. And cooking with cast iron makes the best cornbread!

Advantages of Using Eco-friendly Cast Iron to Cook

Evenly distributes heat
Withstands high heat without warping
Can last many lifetimes
Features a chemical-free nonstick surface
Is 100% recyclable (if you ever managed the unlikely feat of destroying one)
Soap-free cleaning …read more

Even if you’re not a vegetarian, you’ll still enjoy livening up your holiday table with the interesting dishes below. Gary Null, health and nutrition expert, has shared his own personal recipes for Holiday Stuffed Mushrooms and Sweet Loaf.
Gary Null holds a Ph.D. in human nutrition and public health science. He’s also a best-selling author and founder of Progressive Radio Network (PRN), a grassroots talk-radio network with a variety of hosts who cover issues like the environment, autism, health and natural living.
PRN features a show that covers a wide range of vegetarian issues: “It’s All About Food,” airing each Wednesday at 3:00 pm …read more

Thanksgiving may not not be the ideal time to try out a new product for the very first time, but you have a couple of weeks to do a trial run of these vegetarian recipes featuring Veggie by Galaxy Nutritional Foods. If you’ve tried Veggie in the past, you may want to give it another round. They just reformulated it with an organic ingredient base. Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s certified organic, but it’s still a step forward.
Veggie is the most popular cheese alternative on the market. This soy-based product is a good source of calcium without the fat …read more

Eating more meatless meals helps out the environment more than you might think. After all, it takes a lot of water and grain feed (which also requires water to grow) to bring meat to the market. We won’t talk about all those livestock farts, but they’re actually a greenhouse gas problem!
That said, start Thanksgiving off on a green foot by enjoying a nice meat-free breakfast — Pumpkin Ginger Waffles. You can make this recipe even more green by choosing organic ingredients like eggs, milk and flour.

This recipe is courtesy of Casa Laguna Inn & Spa in Laguna Beach, California and …read more

The weather is getting more and more chilly which makes it the perfect time for hot chocolate! However, you do want to green it up and try to make it a little more healthy right? Here are some ideas…

THE HOT CHOCOLATE:
Harvesting cocoa beans for chocolate poses large threats to communities and children. Global Exchange notes that at least 284,000 children are involved in abusive labor conditions in West Africa’s cocoa fields and that conventional cocoa companies pay prices so low that many cocoa farmers cannot meet their families’ basic needs. Fair Trade certified chocolate ends this. Ends forced child labor, …read more

Today a snack you can pop into reusable lunch sacks or take on the go to the park or playgroup that offers crunch without the salt and calories of chips.

PRODUCT: Yogachips by Yogavive – Organic 100% apple chips in 5 different varieties including Original, Apple Cinnamon, Caramel, Peach and Strawberry. Yogachips are made using a two part drying process where the apples are oven baked and then popped to a light airy chip-like snack.
INGREDIENTS:

Apple: Organic …read more

Eating sustainably isn’t all that tricky, but saving money while doing so may seem complicated at first. Luckily, there’s not too large a learning curve.
Learn to do it yourself: Growing a garden is one way you can learn something that results in healthy sustainable food. Learning to cook whole foods from scratch is another. You can learn to make foods organically that cost a lot more to purchase. From organic yogurt to whole grain breads to sauces to soups and more. Almost everything you buy premade can be made by scratch, but cheaper, especially if you’re going organic. I like …read more