Scratch Cooking November 4th

Last night I went to the first night of the Second Annual Great Bliss festival featuring the Honorable Lama Marut. It was just what I needed to get some perspective after a mighty stressful day of work. There is nothing like listening to a Buddhist teacher to remind you of what matters and what doesn't.

Through my communications company, I am working on a TV show on Planet Green called Wa$ted, getting all their eco-friendly products for them this season. It's fun but tv production time lines are CRAZY! So yesterday was lots of scrambling around to get stuff for 2 episodes that start filming next week and one that starts on Friday.

I stayed in my pajamas and never left the house until I realized at 6 pm that a) I wanted soup for dinner and b) I really needed to go be around the positivity and peacefulness of a Buddhist gathering.

Let's start with the soup. I made Carmelized Onion with Spinach and Mushroom soup. I chopped an onion and cooked itin a few tablespoons of butter until it was brown. Then I threw in some more butter, about a tablespoon, and about 12 chopped mushrooms. I sauteed that until the mushrooms were starting to brown and then tossed in about 1/2 cup cherry juice (you could use wine), a teaspoon of dry sage (I could have used fresh, but read on to find out why I didn't) and some salt and pepper. I cooked it until the juice was absorbed and then added about 2 cups of spinach leaves. Once those wilted, I added around 6 cups of the broth from the sauce for the Shepherd's pie and cooked for 20 minutes. While it was cooking, I took a shower and got dressed!

It was quite delish and will be enjoyed again tonight before I go to the second night of the Second Annual Great Bliss Festival to find out more about how to find happiness. I will let you in on a little secret. Here's the answer on how to find happiness - make other people happy. That's it, don't worry about a better job, a better car, a better husband, a better body. The only way to happiness is to make other people happy. So why is that so darn challenging?

The big joke is that I SCREAMED at my daughter just before going to the Second Annual Great Bliss Festival because she didn't want to go outside and get me fresh sage leaves. And I am pretty sure that according to the Buddhists, that screaming would result in some pretty negative karma. I did apologize, but still, the goal would be to not scream in the first place.

Thursday night they have their silent auction and Second Annual Great Bliss Festival Party. Guess what I am donating...I will give you a hint - ________ of the month.

In Buddhist tradition, you dedicate the positive karma of going to a teaching to others. So tonight, I dedicate it to all of you. May the positive karma flower for you in this lifetime. And if it does, we can call it the GG bump!

Scratch Cooking November 2nd

It was a relatively quiet Halloween weekend. Friday night I went to a small party dressed as another Hitchcock leading lady; this time Kim Novak a la Vertigo in the black turtle neck and white coat with black gloves. It was interesting. Despite all the make up, I looked very reserved compared to everyone else. The majority of women at this party were dressed as sexy cop, sexy maid and sexy cow girl. And the host was covered in red makeup and had horns glued to his head.

It is true that in my younger days, I did once go to a Halloween party as a biker chick wearing not much more than fake leather shorts and fake leather bra, but still, I was 20. It seems that now most women, regardless of age, are dressed like their most slutty alter ego, including young girls.

We watched a rogue copy of Paranormal Activity. I’m not big on horror movies and this one was just plain stupid and predictable. At one point, it was supposed to be scary, but it was just laughable!

The freakiest thing all weekend was the adult man – the guy looked older than me - dressed in costume that came to the house for candy, sans children. At first I thought it was just odd. Then I wondered if maybe he was developmentally disabled, and then it hit me that it was kind of creepy. Thank goodness for the dog. He’s super friendly but barks a lot and loud. He can sound quite menacing even though his bark really means, ‘please pet me’.

My daughter was a nerd. She wore shorts with suspenders, big glasses, pig tails and a name tag that said “ask me about quantum physics”. She looked adorable. Her best friend was baby spice of the Spice Girls; Union Jack dress and high heeled boots. I love that my daughter opted for silly instead of sex pot. Makes me proud!

Okay, so here is what was cooking today.

I made the girls some French toast for breakfast with the remaining oat bread. (thin slices of bread dipped in a combination of egg, milk, vanilla and cinnamon and fried in butter). I don’t miss that many bready things, but I do miss French toast.

Then I decided to make a gluten-free linzertorte. I followed the recipe in the Gluten-Free Cookbook. Toast 1 cup almond flour for 8 minutes at 350 degrees. Mix with ¾ cup brown rice flour, ¼ cup soy flour, ¼ cup tapioca starch, 1 teaspoon xantham gum, ½ teaspoon baking powder, ½ teaspoon salt, ¼ teaspoon cinnamon and a pinch of cloves. Set aside. Cream 1/3 cup butter with 2/3 cup brown sugar, 1 teaspoon lemon zest and 1 egg. Add dry ingredients and mix. Divide in 3 discs, wrap in plastic wrap and chill for at least 30 minutes. Press 2 discs into bottom and sides of a 9” spring form pan (the kind where the bottom pops out). Spread 1 ¼ cups jam on top (I used the home made strawberry jam). Take last disc and shape into a rectangle. Cut in strips and arrange over top of jam in a lattice pattern. Bake at 350 degrees for 35 – 45 minutes.

I also wanted to make a vegetarian shepherd’s pie and biscuits for dinner so I started some split and black eyed peas soaking and started on a broth to make a sauce. For the broth, I cooked a quartered onion, a few stalks of celery, the green tops of two leeks, thyme, parsley, 3 bay leaves and salt with a cup of tamari and 6 cups of water. I cooked it for about 2 hours and then strained it.

In the afternoon I started the peas cooking in water and cooked them for about 1 ½ hours. I also started on the sauce. I sautéed a chopped onion in 2 tablespoons butter and 1 tablespoon olive oil with some thyme, tarragon, salt and a bay leaf. After the onion started to brown, I added a chopped clove of garlic and ½ cup black cherry juice (you could use wine, but I didn’t feel like opening a bottle). I cooked it until the juice was almost all absorbed and added 3 tablespoons of garfava flour (you can use regular flour). I cooked that for about 2 minutes and then added 3 cups of the broth. I cooked it partially covered for about 30 minutes.

In the meantime, I started on the veggies. I sautéed some cubed onion and carrots in 2 tablespoons of butter and 1 tablespoon olive oil with a little salt for about 5 minutes and then added ½ cup broth, covered and cooked for another 5 minutes. In another pan I sautéed some halved crimini mushrooms in 2 tablespoons of butter and 1 tablespoon olive oil and a little salt for about the same amount of time. I added some cubed, peeled celery root to the carrot and onion mixture, covered it again and cooked for another 5 minutes. I threw some cauliflower, white and romanesco and some Brussels sprouts in boiling water for a couple minutes and then pulled them out and put them in a big glass pan. I added the cooked, drained peas, the mushrooms and the onions, carrots and celery root along with the sauce (minus the bay leaf).

I boiled some cut up red and white potatoes until they were soft and then mashed them with ½ cup light cream and 5 tablespoons of butter. I put the potatoes on top of the veggies and baked at 375 degrees for 40 minutes. It doesn't look so pretty in the picture with the red potatoes, I think next time I would use all white. It tasted good, thought!

It was some work, but I have to say, it was totally worth it. The sauce was rich and delicious and really made the dish.

While the potatoes were boiling, I made some biscuits. Mix 2 cups flour with 1 tablespoon baking powder, 1 teaspoon sugar and ½ teaspoon salt. Cut in 5 tablespoons of butter until it is like fine crumbs and then mix in ¾ cup half and half. Knead it for a minute or so and then pat out to about ¾ inch thick on a floured surface. I cut mine into circles using the top of a glass. Put them on a baking sheet and back for 15 minutes at 450 degrees.

Loads and loads of leftovers. We’ll be eating shepherd’s pie for a month!

Scratch Cooking October 30th

How fun to chat with some of you girls last night as part of Girls Night Out. I was dizzy from the speed of the conversation! And thanks to those of you that gave me the pass for Halloween, I am going to pick up some fair trade candy from the co-op tomorrow!

So after the lovely chatting last night and a day in which I did not take a shower or get dressed until after 3 pm (my first shower in 2 days, yes work IS kicking my ass), and in which I watched the Bonner hearings (remember the guys who sent forged letters to congress saying things like the NAACP doesn't support climate legislation? Now that deserves a You Lie!) my brain was fried. So it seemed only appropriate that I make green fried rice.

Easy peasy, as it were. Make a pot of rice. Sautee a chopped onion in sesame oil, after a few minutes, throw in some chopped broccoli and beans (I used a combo of Romano beans which are like flat green beans and some flat beans from my garden). Sautee for about 15 minutes until veggies are soft. Throw in some rice wine vinegar and soy sauce along the way. When the rice is done, add a little more sesame oil to the pan and toss in the rice. Add more soy and vinegar to taste and sautee for a few minutes. And dinner!

You can throw in an egg too if you want but it's not necessary.

We had ours with some fresh raspberries for dessert. A good end to a busy, and sometimes stressful, day and a great chat with the wonderful women of PNN.

A word about the pan in the picture; it was my maternal grandmothers. She died when I was 2 so I have no recollection of her, but I love using that pan because it has literally seen almost a century of cooking! Using it makes me think of medieval times, when people passed down pots and pans in their will - talk about reduce, reuse, recycle!

I think we should all have at least one every day item that stays in the family and gets used. To me, it's a way to connect with your own ancestry and while future generations may not have memories of those people, it's a kind of thread between the past and the future.

Okay, enough philosophizing, on with the day!

Blogger Action Day; Mission Climate Change

Today is blogger action day. And the topic? Climate change. It's funny, since I write about climate a lot, so I want to make today a little different. So let's move from climate blogger action to climate action, shall we? Starting with 9 days from now, October 24th, being climate action day.

More than 3000 events to choose from in 158 countries, come on sign up! There are actions in Europe, Africa, South America, Asia and North America. So let's pick a place and do it! What do you say we all meet in Senegal? How about Paris? Istanbul? Or we could save the carbon emissions and each represent in the place we live.

The idea is to incorporate the number 350 at an iconic place in your community, and then upload a photo of the event to 350.org website. Why 350? That's the level of global carbon emissions we need to get to in order to prevent more than 2 degrees warming in global temperatures. Right now we are at 387 and climbing.

Here’s another thing you can do. Call your Congress critter and your Senators and tell them to quit listening to corporate lobbyists and start listening to scientists – and real scientists, not the ones bought and paid for by Exxon – and pass climate and energy legislation that will get us to the reductions we need. Oh, and while you’re on the phone, tell them this; no offshore drilling, quit subsidizing coal and let the EPA do its darn job and regulate CO2 under the Clean Air Act.

Talk to your friends, neighbors, family, colleagues about why you support strong climate and energy legislation with aggressive reduction targets. Talk to them about the money to be saved, and incentives, for energy efficiency. Talk to them about the money to be made in innovation and new technologies. Talk to them about the cost, trillions, of doing nothing about climate change. Talk to them about the number of illnesses caused by coal and exhaust pollution, the same pollutants that cause climate change. Or the emissions from an agricultural system that is making us sick. Talk to them about clean, domestic energy sources that improve our national security and create good American jobs.

Pick something you are going to do differently to waste less, use less and lower your carbon footprint. After you pick that thing, pick another. Then encourage a friend to pick one. Pick another. The more you pick, the more your friend has to pick. Oh, and by the way, your friend also needs to encourage their friends to pick and keep picking the behavioral changes we are all going to make to do our part in the battle to stop catastrophic climate change. See where I’m going with this?

And the next time someone denies that climate change is real, or caused by human activity, ask them this; do you REALLY think you’re smarter than a rocket scientist? Then direct them to the NASA site on climate change.  

Now, if you are still in need of more blogger action, I give you for your reading pleasure some super wonky climate stuff, presented in what I think is a humorous manner, (but maybe I’ve been reading this stuff too long!) check out the CROC Blog (it’s a little inside baseball here but essentially Greenpeace issued a report today saying that a project in Bolivia that the Nature Conservancy has held up as an example of how forest offsets can be successful is actually an example of how they don’t work) and How CBO Budget Scoring Devalues Efficiency – With Puppies!

Happy Blogger Action Day ’09. Let’s get this thing done!

Sisters on the Planet

So last week I attended the Governors’ Global Climate Summit. The point of the conference, in its second year, is to create collaborations among state and provincial governments around the world on climate issues. It was also meant to push the likelihood of an international agreement at Copenhagen in December by creating preliminary international agreements between sub-national governments.

It is heartening to know that so much is happening on emissions reductions, deforestation prevention and renewable energy standards at the local and regional level despite the failure of certain national governments, like ours, to pass national climate policy. And there is much to be excited about in terms of the agreements made at the conference between mayors, governors and premiers from China, the U.S., Indonesia, India, Brazil, Canada and elsewhere.

What was frustrating, though, was the lack of representation of women on many of the panels. Yes, there were women, but they were vastly out numbered by men. Is this a function of who ends up in elected position? Certainly. And yet the women who were there are leaders and warriors on climate and environment. One governor from Brazil, who has done incredible things in her state to stop deforestation, said that she didn’t want her future grandchildren to ask her why, when she had the pen in her hand, she didn’t do everything in her power to stop climate change.

In that spirit, Oxfam America's Sisters on the Planet initiative honored outstanding women for their work to affect climate change policy last Friday at the close of the conference. The honorees included California Senator Barbara Boxer, a true warrior on climate issues and the co-author of a senate bill to tackle climate and energy policy. Secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency, Linda Adams, was also honored. She is one of the many women responsible for Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s surprisingly progressive stance on environment and climate change. When they write the story of how a person as unlikely as Arnold Schwarzenegger became a leader on climate issue, that script will have plenty of roles for women!

The woman who was really amazing, though, was Sharon Hanshaw, Executive Director of Coastal Women for Change, in Biloxi, Mississippi. Sharon lost her house, her car and her business – a hair salon – during the devastation of hurricane Katrina. Living in a FEMA trailer, she helped organize local women and gave voice to their concerns over the lack of government support for rebuilding low income communities. Coastal Women for Change trained women, low income residents and people of color to speak out about the recovery process. They also came up with solutions for their communities, like training child care providers and developing disaster preparation. They also became advocates for climate change prevention, recognizing that coastal areas like Biloxi are on the front lines. Sharon may not hold elected office, but what she is doing on climate and environmental justice matters. It matters a lot. And despite her own personal tragedies, she made working on behalf of an entire community her priority.

“Women are the leaders, whether they’re at the head or not,” Sharon has said. And so whether we have the kind of representation in government or on panels that we should, we still have an important, no a critical, role to play in solving the climate crisis. We are often the ones that decide what our families buy, what they eat, and where they live. All of that matters. And so often, women are the conscience of our community, whether it’s a governor recognizing that the decisions she makes today effect future generations or a parent teaching her little one not to waste. And that matters, too.

So here’s to all the sisters on the planet and the sisters on PNN.com. Keep making your voices heard. We are the leaders, whatever our jobs, whatever our titles. And we can lead the world out of this mess!

Clean (and Dirty) Air Cities

There was a question recently about how to find a "clean air" city. With the world's population being over 50% urban, it's an important question. My quick answer is that it's difficult because even if you can afford to live away from coal plants, industry, oil refineries and fast food restaurants (they put out VOCs that cause pollution) and even highways, cars are just about everywhere and they are emitting pollutants into the air.

A study just came out in Environmental Science, however, on greenhouse gas emissions by city. This does and doesn't correlate to clean air, which is also dependent on a host of other factors (non ghg pollutants, air movement, etc.) but it is still enlightening.

The study looked at ten cities; Bangkok, Barcelona, Capetown, Denver, Geneva, London, Los Angeles, New York, Prague and Toronto. The amount of GHG emissions from a city has a lot to do with population density, energy sourcing, industry and transportation, but public and political will is most certainly also a factor.

Denver emitted far more emissions than any other city due in large part to emissions from ground transportation and electricity use. Los Angeles came in second, followed closely by Cape Town and Toronto. Then comes Bangkok and New York followed by Prague and London.

The city with the least GHG emissions? Barcelona by a long shot. The second lowest is Geneva (so Denver can't use cold weather as its excuse).  

So while there are lots of factors in finding a "clean air" city, emissions profiles are certainly one of them.

About Going Green

This site is about how to live a more sustainable, environmentally friendly lifestyle, and how to do it without breaking the bank or suggesting such a drastic change in the way you live that it seems impossible to accomplish. The thing about going green is that it should be a win-win; it should make your life easier, more fulfilling, more pleasurable, healthier and more fun, while taking care of the health and well being of our planet and the millions of folks that share it. It will feature green tips and suggestions, as well as resources for anyone and everyone. I welcome questions, comments and suggestions.

Leslie Berliant