A Sustainable Clothing Network is Haute!

As many of my readers know, I've been referring to the Revolving Closet Project for years, based on my rewarding experience in college with sharing clothing among 8 or so young women who wore roughly the same size and had a common interest in off-beat fashion, as well as in handmade accessories and shoes reflecting our diverse, multinational backgrounds, home regions, and travels.

Our shared closet nurtered our friendships, as well as our growing, collective awareness. We learned that our relationships extended to women's collectives, local artisans, vendors in out-of-the-way markets, and thrift-stores in various Metropoles, and that we were constructing our own "organic" approach to fashion. We felt cool, and we were often haute!

Now as so many people wake up to the ways that uncritical consumption of so-called "Fast Fashion," ignores the Full Circle of Life, including everything from the environmental impacts to the hijacking, commercialization of women's body images to the real repercussions for workers everywhere, perhaps we get another chance to be on the cutting edge of chic!

Check out this article in the NYT!

And don't forget to check the related comments. I'd love to see your answers to the question, Would you lease your clothes? (Leave a comment for me here!)

Reasons and Ways to Eat the Things We Least Prefer

Just the other day, I received an email requesting recipe-suggestions to make quinoa more palatable. This was a challenge, precisely because I LOVE QUINOA more than almost anything. One important point of awareness that this friend, who is so boldly challenging her own palate, has raised for me, is that food allergies often assail those of us who neglect to vary the foodstuffs we love. Of course, this wasn't the reason in her case, but as I reflected on my sense that I will eat anything that is vegetal and good for me, I had to admit that there are foods that I find difficult to use when I see them in my box (and so guiltily watch as they languish at the bottom of my fridge. What a missed opportunity to do as my sage friend and change things up a bit. (Hay que variar!)

The obvious squandered opportunities includes carrot tops--and here I vow to post a singular, proprietary (just kidding) recipe utilizing carrot tops, very soon--but radishes also come to mind, so I began to look and here (click) I have a found a few recipes for radishes and even radish-top soup on the web, and below are some ideas for quinoa and a link or two.

Cheers!

On Coaxing Quinoa to Express Its Tastier Virtues

1. Spice this lovely "fruit" up by cooking it in vegetable stock, or sauteing an onion/shallots to throw into the water. . .I like to add vegetables (carrot, corn, edamame are fine frozen). There are suggestions for toasting it, too. Also try using less water when cooking it, boil it fast and add more water as you go if it needs it.

2. And then there is also eating it cold. Made like tabouleh sweet or savory with vinegar/oil/lemon dressing overnight, one might add cucumbers/tomatoes/lots of parsley/avocado/pinenuts/dried cranberries.

3. Or consume it for breakfast as a hot cereal with fruit/raisins/nuts.

4. Usually I make something with flavor to go with it. My all time favorite is sauted onion/tofu/kale with bragg's on quinoa. I didn't used to like it, but somehow my taste changed--so much better than soy souce (much less salt, not fermented, full of amino acids).

5. I also like to treat it like pasta/polenta, with something saucy or curried. There's a recipe for ratatouille here on this very blog!

Commencing a Relationship with Quinoa

Useful Tips on Preparing Various Bulk Grains

Watch the Nobel Lectures December 10

The nobel lectures, held in Oslo, will be shown on the Peace Prize website on December 10, and available "on demand" thereafter.

(Prepare your media player.)

Let's Ask Mainstream Companies to Make Healthier Products!

At our favorite intersection of food and politics, the Times published an article today on how charities such as the American Diabetes Association are rethinking what they expect of the food companies that help raise funds and awareness, while selling products work against healthful aims and "core matters of conscience." For instance, in exchange for using charity logos, some companies achieve endorsing high-calorie foods that may be low in sugar, but high in calories; clearly these products may raise monies for the cause and simultaneously undermine efforts to expose the correlative relationship between diabetes and obesity.

As an increasing number of companies use awareness products to support charity fundraising campaigns, we hope that this will result in education for the companies, too. Perhaps we should be emboldened by these developments and raise our expectations for mainstream corporations: We want genuinely healthier foods, sweets, and consumer products that do no harm to consumers, workers, community economies, and the environment!
Click here to check out the rest of the article.

Giving: Green, Awareness & Thanks

As I read my favorite blogs this morning, I observed a prevailing desire to emphasize the positive aspects of the holiday. Today most people in the USA will gather and eat, celebrating family and togetherness, with perhaps a nod to the "discovery" of a gracious Grandmother Earth offering plenty, enough for all. If contemporary wisdom holds, tomorrow most USAmericans with means will shop. Whether one regards this day as the beginning of the Winter Season of Lights or more simply as the celebration of the autumnal harvest, the easy slide from one holiday season to another, literally, pivots on giving.

My meditation on the positive side of this holiday nexus notes that the culture of giving seems to be on the rise. Charities, foundations, even businesses returning profits to causes, everyone wants to harness the spirit of giving. As we become increasingly aware of our global interconnectedness, we have myriad opportunities, then, to consider how what we produce and consume, I mean give, impacts other communities, the environment, and our collective psyche. The general feeling that giving is a social good challenges us to recuperate the relationships implied in the act, by truly giving Thanks, and consciously giving gifts that reflect the Native North American principles of harmony and balance.

The Periodically Popular "Lemon-Aid Cleanse"

8 oz water
2 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp maple syrup (Grade B is best!)
pinch of cayenne
----------------------
As we shopped this weekend for the ingredients, everyone here in San Diego ascertained what we were up to, which led to various commentaries and inquiries. I thought perhaps blogging about it, would encourage me to make a record of how it really feels.

Preparation. This week we got the box and proceeded to devour everything within it, in two days. We were very hungry and felt slightly underprepared. (Avocadoes provided the most calorific comfort!)

The worst thing about yesterday was the lack of coffee. I've drunk white tea since Sunday, and today we're on solely the mixture. We made three gallons of the stuff last night. We were up late, squeezin'. (We had our minds made up, so when we found out organic lemons were out of season, we decided to go ahead with conventional. . .bummer.)

Tastes pretty good. They say you should be full sail by the second day. (If so I'll add it to my PMS remedies, since very little seems to brighten the second day of my dark moon, which happens to coincide.)

At noon, I received a chat from my counterpart, who seemed to be pretty perky, especially when compared to me, but he mentioned being 'a little tired'. . .He reported having consumed half of the gallon in the last three and one-half hours.

Good, looks like he'll be sure to leave work on time!

Setting Your "Sites" on Organic

With Indian Summer on us full force in San Diego and all of the fruits at their peak, we've been craving mostly simple fare these days. When salad takes center stage with perfect tomatoes and scrummy avocado, we like to add a grain, like soba noodles, cracked bulgar wheat, or quinoa. We also enjoy a simple stirfry with tofu and onion, celebrating the sprig of kale that made it's fall debut in this week's box.

If, however, there's cooking weather brewing in your kitchen, here are two sites that wax organic and might just inspire a culinary storm:

A Slow Food Journey via "101 Cookbooks"

Power to the Conscious Cook: "Mighty Foods"