Book Review: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

Picture of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

Noted fiction author Barbara Kingsolver takes a non-fiction tact in her most recent book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and documents her family move to a farm in rural Appalachia and attempt to grow all their own food for an entire year.  The book touches on issues ranging from food sustainability, food networks, and how the food [...]

Portion Control-3 Easy Ways to Cut Down Your Calories

Nutrition Label

We are a society being weighed down (literally) by the bigger is better motto. It’s pretty hard to miss the enormous portions you are served at restaurants and even harder to say no to a “great value”. So when the powers that be use mass marketing to convince us that it’s a better value to [...]

Global Diets: Russians Too Fat, Americans Too Worldly

healthy dinner

There are contrasting approaches to population health in the news this week. Russian officials have more or less ordered Russians to change their diets – the Federal Consumer Protection Service claims Russian adults now weigh two kilos more than they did a decade ago, while children are a kilo heavier. Now that the recession is [...]

Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez Seizes Cargill, Minnesota-Based Rice Producer

Seize Venezuela Food / Rice

Want to sell your rice for a cost higher than the government thinks you should? Or slow production to a pace lower than the government’s ideal? Try that in Venezuela, and you’ll have Hugo Chavez’ troops at your company’s doorstep. On Saturday, Venezuela’s dictator gave orders to the military to “take control” of all rice-processing [...]

10 Animal-Free Meal Ideas from Your Pantry

Meganpru at Flickr under Creative Commons License

In the face of a late winter storm here in the Northeast, my friend Stephanie blogged about using what you already have to make snow day meals, as opposed to making a mad dash to the store to pick up the usual staples out of the fear of being snowed in for days.  Now, the [...]

Earth Day Prelude – Earth Hour 2009

Planet Earth

Earth Day is coming up next month on April 22nd, what better way to get warmed up for Earth Day, then by participating in Earth Hour?  Earth Hour 2009 is scheduled for March 28, 2009 from 8:30 pm to 9:30 pm local time, and participants are encouraged to turn off all their lights for one [...]

Green Diva’s Guide to Delicious Living: Justifiable Chocolate!

There are a few ‘nutritious’ chocolate bars and candies appearing on the health food store shelves touting the benefits of calcium and various vitamins and minerals combined with lovely dark chocolate. I’ve tried a few of them with mixed results. When GD (that’s Green Diva folks) Jen brought me a goody bag for my birthday, among the [...]