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If you’re like me, you’ve been watching the skyrocketing costs of both fuel and food and wondering where you’ll be cutting back. For many people, it’s food. Sometimes, eating well can mean eating expensively. They don’t call it “Whole Paycheck” for nothing.

I’m here to tell you there are a few tips and tricks to keeping that grocery bill down while still keeping ethics and the environment in mind. It takes a little more planning, some flexibility and creativity, but you can shave big bucks off your bill if you keep them in mind.
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Lovin’ Fresh is a series of recipes designed to showcase produce gathered from local farms or grown in my own garden.

Quiche is something I covet, particularly for brunch.  I personally enjoy it more when chilled, but any and all quiche is welcome to apply within (my mouth).   When my partner and I met, he was trying to go from vegetarian to vegan (a mission since abandoned due to our mutual “interest” in ice cream).  Being especially eager to prove my culinary prowess in those first few months of dating, I gave my first tofu quiche a whirl.   While I didn’t miss the eggs in the least, I did lament the absence of cheese.  So we compromised and now I have a “standard” tofu quiche recipe that I typically make with spinach.

Now, if you’re scrunching up your nose at the idea of an eggless quiche, don’t despair.  I’m sure if you have a standard quiche recipe of your own (or care to do a quick search for one), you can easily use the flavor components of this recipe with an egg base instead.

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When the World Food Program (WFP) introduced free breakfasts to public schools in impoverished communities around the world, teachers immediately noticed a difference in their classrooms. Not only were students more alert and focused, they attended more regularly and were never late so as not to miss breakfast time. The quality of the students changed, but so did the quantity. The percentage of female students - most likely to be forced to stay behind to help earn income - sky-rocketed and the age of attendance fell. Four year olds began to attend school with their older siblings, sitting obediently in classes just for a free bowl of rice in the morning. In many impoverished families, children are forced to earn their keep in place of going to school. In addition to eradicating hunger, WFP made school attendance a central part of their goal for the breakfast program.

The WFP school feeding program has become a touchstone aspect of both the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the G8 action pact of 2002. Between the program’s inception in 1999 and its last data recorded in 2005, the number of children served has grown by 82%, which amounts to 21.7 million schoolchildren in 74 countries.

Now, despite its success and widespread acclaim, the International Herald is reporting that the WFP program will not continue in Cambodia - the first of many predicted shut-downs as rising food costs threaten the profoundly poor. Read the rest of this entry »

My day never begins with a leisurely breakfast in bed. Likely because my spouse is not a morning person, and the only other morning person around is under four, and she wakes me up daily before seven. However, the Kiddo makes some tasty scrambled eggs as long as I do the stove part and raw egg part. And, I have my hopes up for the years to come.

In the meantime, I will share a few favorite breakfast dishes that you moms could, say, print out, circle in great big red ink, and leave out on the counter just before hanging the “Do Not Disturb Until 9:30, or My Breakfast is Ready” sign on the bedroom door. I will live vicariously through you.

Best French Toast Ever, Shirred Eggs, and Breakfast Panini recipes after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

Flipping through recipes looking for a Mother’s Day dinner dessert, I lingered on “Cherry Berry on a Cloud,” one of my mom’s classic recipes. Mom’s the matriarch of meringues, amassing a collection of dessert recipes that blend crisp yet fluffy meringues with flavorful fillings and toppings.

But today I wasn’t drawn to this recipe for my menu plan. With all things maternal on all our radars this week, I realized if my mom and I had a theme dish showcasing the heart of our relationship, it would have to be the meringue.

Let me first confess that my mom is still a dash dazed and confused over the fact that my livelihood today roots in food. I farm and grow organic food, write about food and sustainable agriculture, cook our B&B breakfasts, lust over cookbooks like romance novels. She’s perplexed not because of my love for food, but over the fact that I never showed one iota of interest in cooking growing up. Read the rest of this entry »

While browsing the St. Lawrence Market last weekend, I was elated to spot the paisley-shaped heads of fiddlehead ferns. I won’t get into my love for the regional delicacy too much, as Jennie already posted a great recipe, but I felt that - despite their season of only a few weeks - the wild, gamey greens deserved more than one ode to their deliciousness.

Before I’d left the market, I’d snapped up two bunches of ramps and a bag full of stinging nettles among my regular staples. In fact, the stinging nettles purveyor was kind enough to write out a recipe for tea (pictured below). It was my first ever stinging nettle experience.

More on that and other recipes inspired by my wild green windfall after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

An early spring produce cult-fave with the foodies, ramps have been popping up all over the food blogosphere. The wild leek, a member of the allium family, tastes like a cross between garlic and onion and is snatched up at farmers markets by cooks craving fresh veggies after a long winter.

I combed food blogs for the best ramp recipes so you didn’t have to. Check them out after the jump…

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Having just taken a new job which requires me to be on-site about 10 hours per day, I’ve had to make some serious adjustments as I have been working from a home-office primarily for the past 8 years.

I’ve been very spoiled in terms of my ability to stroll into my kitchen, open the refrigerator, and prepare any type of lunch from the bounty of leftovers or whatever I happen to have stocked at that time.

Now I have to be more strategic about the whole thing. Because I’m used to preparing most of my meals and don’t eat too much take-out or processed foods, I am a bit more high-maintenance when it comes to what many folks consider a simple lunch break.

In addition to my relatively high health & nutritional standards for my meals, I also want to maintain as much of my sustainable kitchen concepts as possible whether I’m home or not.

My co-workers think I’m a little nutty (earthy-crunchy I think), but that’s okay.

Here are some of the things that help me feel better about re-usable bagging it for lunch:

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When it comes to the commercialization of holidays, people tend to point most of their angst towards Christmas. And who can blame them, when it’s not just a day, but a whole season of consumption? I have a similar knee-jerk reaction when it comes to Cinco de Mayo.

A day that’s supposed to celebrate Mexican patriotism, instead conjures up images of frat boys in factory-made sombreros, red, white, and green beads, drinking out of plastic margarita cups. All of this festive decor will find itself in the dumpster tomorrow. (And we had just finished getting rid of all the plastic Easter eggs and St. Patrick’s Day streamers.)

This year instead of wallowing in holiday cynicism, I decided to let it inspire me to create a great meal. Luckily, my neighborhood has dozens of small Mexican shops and produce stands, where the veggies are a steal. (I bought my supplies for this entire meal for under $10!)

I decided, rather than serving up some seitan, or veggie crumbles, which are taco staples in my vegan household, to go with something a bit more authentic and light: black bean tacos with mango salsa. Here’s my recipe: Read the rest of this entry »

Now, you would think on the first weekend of May, we would not be shivering from cold while we gathered fresh produce at the market, but its been a different season here, and weeks in, we are still lagging in temperatures and abundance. I keep hoping for a beautiful spring day to enjoy outside at the market, and well, I am still hoping.

In the meantime, we dress warm and console ourselves with purple and green asparagus, arugula, spring onions, herbs, lettuces and spinach.

Around the country, other markets are filled with spring’s freshest. Entries for this week’s Farmers Market Fare after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »