A former high school teacher, I'm currently a part-time writer/full-time doctoral student at the University of St. Thomas in the Twin Cities, studying leadership in education from a critical pedagogy perspective along with public policy. On the green side, I'm interested in local food and agriculture (Iowa girl, born and raised), sustainability education, DIY projects, and grassroots activism. I'm slowly turning my South City, St Louis home into an urban farmstead. On the hoping-to-be-greener side, I love reading, yoga, soccer, music, backpacking, knitting, pop culture and trivia, my Tuesday Night Dinner Club, traveling, Guitar Hero, dive bars, and sitting on front porches with my husband and a cold beer. I came to Green Options via a post on Sustainablog,working the St Louis angle to get Jeff to let me in. I have a personal blog chronicling (what else?) life in South St. Louis. Follow me on Twitter!
For this week’s Thrifty Thursday, the title is not referring to saving seeds for planting (which is an entirely thrifty activity for those of us that garden). Nope, I’m talking about the seeds that come inside those tasty winter squash, especially butternut squash and pumpkins. They make a tasty, fiber-filled, mineral-rich snack and are infinitely …
Hershey’s, in an attempt to counter rising food costs, has replaced the cocoa butter in many of its candies with vegetable oil, effectively changing their product from “milk chocolate” to “chocolate candy”. Cocoa butter is the ingredient that gives milk chocolate it’s creamy mouthfeel, and it will be noticably absent from Whachamacalits, Mr. Goodbars, Milk …
Forget Hershey’s: Three Tips for Better Chocolate Read More 👉
Sorry, vegetarian and vegan Eat Drink Better readers. This tip is for the omnis! We recently made the move from a vegetarian kitchen to a sometimes-omnivorous kitchen. Without getting into the nuances of both my husband and my’s food preferences, we’re more likely to eat at home if I cook meat sometimes, and I’d rather …
Have you seen those food memes making the rounds of the blogosphere? A meme is kind of a “tag-you’re-it” of the blog world. Someone posts about something, then links to a few other bloggers they know, who are then tagged to do the same thing. It’s usually a list of questions to answer or a …
Word on the street is that as the economy worsens, cookbook sales rise. Isn’t that American? Wouldn’t one think that cookbook check-outs at the library might go up instead? Perhaps it has. Chosen method of procurement aside, I’m not begrudging you the investment in a superior culinary tome–I spent too much time looking at one …
Sometimes when I think about what to cook for dinner, my brain hurts. There are just too many factors to consider, including: what’s in the pantry, what I feel like, what needs to be used up, what my picky husband will actually touch, what I would actually prefer. This is a result of living in …
Stumped for Dinner Ideas? Try These Four Websites Read More 👉
>> Welcome Readers! Did you know that Green Options has 15 sites? If you like this post, please subscribe for our main RSS feed or the Green Options Newsletter! [social_buttons] When the summer heat breaks and the first cool days arrive, I feel melancholy, because it means the end of our local farmers market is …
Five Fall Foods That Will Boost Your Health (And Meal Ideas, Too) Read More 👉
I am totally fascinated and intrigued by lifestyle projects–you know, when someone radically changes their lifestyle for a set amount of time to make a point about something we might take for granted. I loved Morgan Spurlock’s Super-Size Me and 30 Days. I obsessively read No-Impact Man. Now, Kerri and Chris, two social justice teachers …
Eating On $1 A Day: Couple Lives Food Experiment Read More 👉
Thanks to all those who entered our stainless-steel food carrier giveaway. We had many comments detailing delicious lunches you choose to pack to school or work, most of which made my mouth water! To pick the winner, we numbered the comments, starting with the Eat Drink Better comments (Shane Neuerburg being #1), then continuing to …
Whole Foods, following in the footsteps of Taco Bell, Burger King, and McDonalds, agreed this week to become the first grocery chain to improve working conditions and pay for the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), tomato workers from Florida. Whole Foods will pay an extra penny per pound of tomatoes, and will work in conjunction …
Whole Foods Agrees To Increase Pay For Tomato Workers Read More 👉
The other night, I was baking a sheet of puff pastry for a veggie-topped refrigerator pizza. Time got away from me, and I got the puff pastry out of the oven just as the bottom started to burn. Not wanting to throw the base of dinner away, and also not wanting to eat semi-burned food, …
Don’t have time to try new recipes? Want to have homemade value-added products on hand, but don’t have the time to make them all? The next time you and a group of foodie friends get together, make it a food swap. You may be familiar with a recipe swap; I belong to an online recipe …
Host A Food Swap Party: Five Ideas For Themes You’ll Love Read More 👉
I’ve had a few run-ins with boxed wine in my day, mostly in college, and they’re experiences I’d care not to revisit. But when I visited a local wine shop that focuses on budget-friendly wines, and saw French Rabbit’s eco-friendly claims, I had to check it out. My thoughts, after the jump…
