Let’s face it, shopping for holiday gifts can be a downright drag. Whether you’re spending hours on the Internet trying to find the perfect gift or whether you are fighting for a parking space in holiday traffic,  shopping sucks.

We are blessed with so many gifts as Americans, as people born in modern times who needs this year’s “hottest, must have gadget, scarf, etc”? It brings at best a momentary thrill. Utlimately it becomes more stuff. These pointless gifts don’t even really mean more than surface level happiness.

It’s time to get off this hamster wheel of consumerism and start thinking outside of the box this holiday season. It’s experiences and activities that we should spend our money on. They’re the things what make the memories, and help us to spend time with the people we care about.

Here are three ideas for gifts you can give your loved ones. Got any other ideas? Please post them in the comments section!

Take a class together. My daughter Melanie and I took a Thai Street Food cooking class at the Natural Gourmet Institute for Food and Health yesterday.  We spent all afternoon making red, green and yellow Thai curry pastes and ended up enjoying a big feast of Thai food along with some mango coconut ice cream for dessert. Beyond cooking classes, you could find a pottery class, painting, yoga, bellydancing, you name it, the sky is the limit!

Theater or show tickets are another great way to create a memory instead of more “stuff”.  While Broadway tickets can be expensive, you can find loads of local theater, comedy and music venues close to home.

Make cookies together. Kids of all ages love to bake. Set up a day to make cookies together. Need some recipe ideas? Click here, here and here. Arrange to have a cookie swap with friends or neighbors.  Or donate some of your yummy home made cookies to someone in need.

Now that October is here,  you’re probably just starting to dig out the Halloween bin where all the costumes and decorations are.  My Halloween bins are bursting with pre-owned costumes that will never be worn again by my kids. They’ve grown older, most don’t fit despite the fact they are in excellent condition…..worn once!

I’ve come up with a grand plan to trim down my Halloween costume collection. A costume swap!

Thanks to the folks at TABLE Market, I’ll be set up to swap costumes at the Chappaqua TABLE Market both this Saturday  October 2nd and next, October 9th from 10am to 1pm.

Hope to see you there!

Yummy Yummy Black Beans

This year, my eldest daughter is cooking her own meals at college. No more school food for her! She and I have made a deal. I’ll send her recipes if she’ll do some fancy food styling and take some photos. Between the two of us, we should have a pretty decent cookbook within a few months.

Today, she was craving some Tex-Mex and went and bought some black beans.  Since she’s on a limited budget, she quickly realized that dried beans are way cheaper than the canned version. Hopefully she’ll remember to rinse them well after soaking so she and her fellow eaters don’t get too gassy.  Here’s the simple, easy and delicious recipe she’ll be cooking tonight. I hope to have photos and more details of her bean adventure soon!

Black Bean Burritos

1 cup of cooked rice (white or brown)
2 cups of cooked black beans
fresh greens

1 onion
1 clove chopped garlic

1/2 teaspoon cumin

1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1 cup of chipotle salsa (any salsa will do)

1 cup guacamole
Tortillas

1.  Sauté the onion and garlic in small amount of olive oil.

2.  Add the spices and beans and cook for 5-10 minutes.

3.  Place bean onion mixture in a bowl, alongside the rice, salsa and guacamole.

4.  Wrap up in a tortilla and enjoy.

Note: you can also add left over chicken, vegetables or whatever else you may have on hand to the bean mixture.

Black beans are a type of kidney bean.  They are an excellent protein source. According to Chinese medicine, they help to strengthen the kidneys and adrenals. Beans actually help to lower cholesterol levels; they are also an excellent for anyone with blood sugar imbalances or diabetes.

My master composting course also includes recycling in the curriculum. I’m not that up to speed on the recycling end of things. All I really know about recycling is what I put out on the curb every Tuesday. In class, we’ll be learning how my county recycles glass, plastic and even motor oil.  This got me thinking about other types of recycling.

Recycling is the last of the three R’s
REDUCE
RE-USE
RE-CYCLE

We often feel really good about ourselves when we recycle our bottles and newspapers, but the really important R’s are the first two.
Reduce our consumption of “stuff”
and
Re-use what we’ve consumed.

How can we get more of those two R’s into the equation?
As I noticed the huge displays of Halloween candy, decorations and goodies flood my local stores, I got an idea.

Halloween is one of my most favorite holidays of the year. For me, its not about the candy, I love to decorate the yard with tombstones and see all the trick or treaters in their great costumes.

What I don’t love about halloween is shopping the party stores for costumes. Everything in the store is wrapped in plastic and made in China. It scares me when I consider the environmental impact of these purchases.  There’s gotta be a better way to get decked out for Halloween that doesn’t hurt my planet and my pocketbook.

Unlike other days of the year, when it comes to Halloween, you can’t be an outfit repeater.  So why not set up a swap for Halloween costumes?  This way, you can shop, free of charge for your outfit and someone else can benefit from what you wore last year. What a great way to kick off the Halloween season!

It can be as simple as this:
1. Gather your previously used halloween costumes. Dust ‘em off, hang ‘em nicely on a coat hanger. Find a friend or two who might have one of those metal garmet hangers.
2. Find a location, set up a date, or two.
3. Get the word out. Email all your friends, get the word out to local papers and online community message boards. Contact the school’s PTA environmental committee. Ask them to help you get the word out.
4. Show up at the location, with your costumes on a garmet hanger. Hang out. Have fun as people from all over the community bring their costumes to swap with.

I’m hoping to put this plan into action the next couple of weeks at my local farmer’s market. Feel free to “steal” this idea and set up a recycled halloween costume swap in your community.

As with every garden, there is always lots of weeding to do. The Ballibay garden is no exception. My father always told me a weed is nothing but a plant growing in the wrong place. They are not inherently bad, they are merely in need of re-location. Today we moved some mint that had sprouted all over the beds into one location in the “George” garden where most of our herbs are located. One weed that is thriving in the garden beds of Ballibay is lambs quarters.

Lambs quarter can frequently be found growing  on disturbed soil, and along the fringes of fields and banks. Left undisturbed, they can grow  four feet in height with multiple branches. I know lambs quarters well, I spent my childhood pulling this pesky weed out of my mom’s garden never knowing that it had other qualities.

Nowadays, farmer’s markets across the country sell lambs quarters. The foodies will tell you that lambs quarters are absolutely delicious, with a flavor that can be compared to spinach or chard with an earthy, mineral rich taste. If you enjoy leafy greens such as kale, collards, and spinach you’ll love lambs quarters.

Today in the Balli-garden as Erica harvested some fresh spinach for salad, I realized that lambs quarters could easily find a good use in the kitchen. Chef Holly added them into a veggie soup, it was delicious. Truly a win win situation: we cleared part of a bed for more spinach, carrots and radishes, the kitchen got some yummy greens for lunch.

Weeds become much less of a nuisance when you can eat them.

I spent some time this morning pulling up weeds in my lawn and my flower beds. Weeds never cease to amaze and inspire me. I can learn loads from their persistence and resilience.  Even better than that, I can supplement my lunch! My lawn hasn’t been sprayed with anything for the past 12 years, so I’m not hesitant to harvest some tender baby dandelion greens.

Want to learn more about what’s edible on your estate? Slow Food Westchester is excited to host a weed walk on May 1st. Join Herbalist Bonnie Rogers as she takes us on an informative tour of edible “weeds” and herbs.  Learn about how to harvest and prepare  common plants that are likely growing as “weeds” in your own yards. Nettles, dandelion, chickweed and much much more.

When: May 1, 2010 1pm-3pm
Where: 743 Bedford Road, Sleepy Hollow NY
Route 448 across the street from Stone Barns
Time: 1pm-3pm
Fee: $20
RSVP: slowfoodwestchester@gmail.com

OK, so if your town and county is like mine, they are hurting for money right now. So here’s a way that municipalities can save money and create better health for their employees at the same time. It’s time to think outside the bottle.

You may have attended town meetings or county events in which bottled water is offered as a beverage. Towns spend our hard earned money to purchase cases of that bottled water. Why not encourage our public officials to cut  spending on bottled water, raise awareness about its environmental and social impacts, and better protect and invest in strong public water systems instead?

On average, the cost to treat, filter, and deliver water  is 0.2 cents per gallon – roughly 750-2,700 times cheaper than bottled water on a per gallon basis. Not to mention the cost of carting away those empty bottles, and the environmental impact of all that garbage.

The Center for a New American Dream and Corporate Accountability International are partnering to reduce bottled water consumption and promote responsible alternatives for institutions and individuals.  Check out their overview here.

photo credit: mike warren

My twice a month winter CSA share from Bialas Farms contains lots of onions, root vegetables, hearty greens like dinosaur kale and a head of cabbage. Not feeling inspired to make stuffed cabbage or cole slaw, the heads of cabbages have started to collect in the bottom drawer of my fridge.

Until yesterday. That’s when I found a recipe for a hearty but frugal cabbage soup.  I made some changes to the recipe, added some beans and presto, cabbage soup! I brought a pot to my Ethical Eating group last night, they gave it a two thumbs up. Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients

2 large onions

1/2 head of garlic

3 stalks celery

2 large carrots

1/4 cup coconut oil

1 tablespoon of sea salt

lots of black pepper

1 small can tomato paste (I used a half jar of tomato sauce I found in the fridge)

5 bay leaves

3/4 cup apple cider vinegar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 large head of cabbage

1 cup  fresh parsley

1-2 cups cooked beans ( I used black eyed peas, you could use any type you like)

Directions

1. Boil two quarts of water in a kettle
2. Dice the onions and the garlic
3. Slice the celery and carrots
4. Cover the bottom of a soup pot with oil and stir fry the garlic, onions, celery and carrots. Add  the salt and ground pepper. When the veggies are tender, pour in the boiling water and boil another kettle of water.
5. Add tomato past, bay leaves,  beans, apple cider vinegar and sugar and bring to a boil.
6. Slice the cabbage thinly and add  it to the pot. Add the second kettle of water after it’s boiling.
7. Cover the pot and boil the heck out of it. Its done when the celery is no longer hard and the cabbage is translucent.
8. Add chopped parsley and serve.

I’m not talking about the kind of cheap oil that goes into Girl Scout Cookies and other forms of industrialized junk food. Its the oil that comes out of the ground that I’m thinking about! Created tens of thousands of years ago from prehistoric animals, not cottonseeds or soybeans.

After spending the day meeting with Transition Westchester and talking about creating a positive response to crazy scary things  like peak oil, climate change and economic instability, I spent the evening at home watching There Will be Blood.

Oil was first discovered in western Pennsylvania in the mid 1850′s. Once found, oil was pretty easy to get. Dig a hole, watch the stuff fly on out! Oil was easy, cheap and plentiful. For many decades, our country was basically the “Saudi Arabia” of oil. It fueled our economic expansion.  The US reached “peak oil” back in 1970 as was predicted by  Dr. M. King Hubbert a geophysicist back in 1956. After our domestic oil production peaked, we started to import oil from other countries. Now, decades later, it looks like oil production world wide may be at its peak. This peak moment has real economic and every day impact for all of us.

Let me be clear on one thing, we’re not talking about running completely out of oil, that is still many years away. Transition groups like the one now forming in Westchester is considering what life will be like when fossil fuels become significantly more expensive. We’ll be re-thinking what we eat, what we do for fun, how we’ll live. Right now, our food, our livelihoods and our fun are directly a result of cheap oil. How will that change when gas hits $50 or $100 a gallon? It could happen as we deplete the world’s remaining oil. At $100 a gallon, there is no question that 99% of us would have to make some serious changes. Food from far away would become super-expensive. Local food will be more than just a “foodie” trend, it will become a necessary way of life.

“Dig the well before you are thirsty” Chinese Proverb

The time is now to re-think what we eat and how we live in the face of more expensive energy sources. There is no better time than right now to get involved in a community garden or to transform your lawn into an edible garden. Check out this great site on how to become a hyperlocavore and get your hands dirty!

Veggie Lasagna, all set for the freezer

My family loves this lasagna, its easy to make and delicious to eat. There is no need to cook the noodles beforehand! Moisture from spinach and other ingredients does it for you.

This is a great recipe to prepare ahead and freeze. When you’ve got one of those crazy busy days, pop it into the oven and dinner is on it’s way.

Ingredients:

1 (16 ounce) package lasagna noodles
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 lb. mushrooms, sliced
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1 zucchini, finely chopped

i jar tomato sauce

1 (10 ounce) package frozen chopped spinach, organic if possible
1 (16 ounce) container organic ricotta cheese
¾  cup shredded mozzarella cheese

Procedure:

• Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Cook the chopped onions, mushrooms, garlic, and zucchini in the oil until soft.
• Meanwhile, mix frozen spinach with cottage cheese
  Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
• Spread 1   cup sauce in the bottom of a 9×13 inch baking dish.
• Layer 1/3 of the noodles, the zucchini onion mixture, 1/3 of remaining sauce, and 1/3 cheese/ spinach mixture.
• Repeat layers with remaining ingredients.
• Sprinkle top with shredded mozzarella
  Bake in preheated oven for 60 minutes. Let stand for 10 minutes before serving.