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Written by Joanna Hoang   
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Thursday, 10 March 2011

Green Recipes

Green Meals… You don't have to be vegan to eat sustainably! When people think of eating ‘green’ they usually think of eating only vegetables such as broccoli and brussel sprouts, which are not necessarily tasteless, but turn a large majority of the population off from eating healthier and greener. What most people do not realize is that you do not need to become vegan or even vegetarian! There are many different methods that you can use to eat more sustainably.

BENEFITS FOR THE ENVIRONMENT: By eating more healthily and responsibly you are reducing your negative impact on the planet and on your own personal health. Lowering your consumption of prepackaged food that has traveled from far helps you reduce your food miles as well as your contribution to our landfills.

BENEFITS FOR YOUR HEALTH: Imagine all the foods that are eaten on a daily basis. Prepackaged foods with either an ambiguous ingredients list or a list of chemical compounds many have no idea about. All the synthetic compounds genetically engineered to make the food look good and taste good may be bad for you. No one knows the long term consequences of consuming these compounds and ongoing research is still continuing. For the benefit of your health and your environment consider eating more fresh and local foods—and no, you do not have to give up meat or tastiness to do so!

Cost: Variable… Depends on whether or not you have the various ingredients on hand! Generally low.

Time and Effort: Easy to Moderate ☺

Game Plan: Select your food based on freshness. Locally grown vegetables and fruits can be purchased from your farmers market. Even when purchasing from a supermarket you can choose to purchase those with less/no packaging and that has traveled as little as possible. If you cannot buy organic it’s okay. However choose to prepare your food fresh for yourself! If convenience is a factor and you do not have time to cook every day, cook all the dishes you would like to eat over the weekend and freeze it! It will still be much healthier than the prepackaged products.

Here are some delicious recipes to get you started:

For a Main Dish try whole wheat pizza!1

Ingredients:
  • - 1 tsp of locally bought honey (honey can often be found at your local farmers market!)
  • - 1 cup of tap or filtered tap water
  • - 1tbsp of yeast
  • - 1 tbsp olive oil
  • - 1 tsp salt
  • - 2 cups of whole wheat flour
  • - 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • - Your favorite pizza toppings (organically grown, locally bought, can be just veggies, cheese from your local farmers, or sausage from your local meat producers, which can all be found at your local farmers markets!)
Amazing Whole Wheat Pizza Crust Recipe2


Instructions:
  1. In a bowl dissolve the honey in the water. Then add the yeast and allow the mixture to sit for a few minutes until the solution appears a bit foamy.
  2. Add in the salt and olive oil. Mix.
  3. Add the flour in one cup at a time until the mixture starts to overcome the edge of the bowl while mixing.
  4. Sprinkle a bit of flour on a flat surface area then pour out the dough. Continue to knead the dough while adding more flour until it becomes smooth and no longer sticky. This should take about 10 minutes.
  5. Place the dough in an oiled bowl. Cover the bowl and all the dough to rise until its volume doubles which is roughly an hour.
  6. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.
  7. Roll out your dough in your desired shape onto the pan that you will use. You can make two small pizzas or one large pizza with the amount of dough you currently have.
  8. Now for the toppings! Use your favorite sauce such as tomato or pesto. Add various fresh vegetables! Anything such as onions, garlic, mushrooms, broccoli, carrots, olives, cheese, etc.
  9. Bake the pizza for about 20 minutes until your cheese is melted and beginning to brown.
For a yummy drink try a Smoothie!
Smoothies are healthy and delicious. If you are running low on time to prepare a full meal turn to a well balanced smoothie to tide you over! Be creative with your smoothies. You can blend a mixture of a dairy or soy base, nuts/nut butters, fruits, vegetables, extra healthy things like flax seeds… bananas and avocados make for especially creamy and delicious smoothies ☺ Berries and oranges together make a great mix as well. Find whatever is being sold at your farmers market or what’s hiding in your fridge and freezer. Smoothies are a great way to utilize fruit that has become overly ripened and would otherwise be tossed away. Here is the recipe for my favorite blend!

Ingredients:
  • - 1 avocado
  • - 1 cup vanilla soy milk
  • - ¾ cup ice
  • - 1 tbsp sugar
Instructions:
  1. Scoop out the avocado and add to a blender.
  2. Add the milk, ice, and sugar.
  3. Blend until the avocado is thoroughly blended in with the ice and milk.
3


When you get the munchies, try Banana Chips for a healthy snack!4

Ingredients:
  • - Bananas—make sure they still have some green to their color
  • - Food dehydrator
  • - Salt, sugar syrup, or honey for flavoring (optional)
  • - Egg Slicer (or just a knife!)
  • - Bowl
  • - Water
  • - A bottle of Fruit Fresh, which you can buy at your grocery store; it provides Vitamin C to keep your banana chips yellow in color, so if you don’t care about your chips being darker you can leave this off your list…
Instructions:
  1. Peel the bananas and use the egg slicer (or your fancy knife skills) to slice the bananas into uniform pieces, aiming for about 1/8 of an inch a slice.
  2. Pour a quart of water with 2 tsp of Fruit Fresh (optional) into your bowl. Dip the banana slices in the bowl and then lay them on the dehydrator tray without overlapping any of the slices.
  3. Set the dehydrator machine based on the device’s instructions.
  4. After 3-4 hours the chips should be leathery and slightly darkened.
  5. Wait until the chips cool and they will be crisp and crunchy… A perfect snack!
Make Banana Chips With a Food Dehydrator 5


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_______________________________________________________________________________

1 http://girlonbikewrites.blogspot.com/2010/01/handlebars-homemade-pizza.html
2 http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/amazing-whole-wheat-pizza-crust/Detail.aspx
3 http://whatscookingamerica.net/Foto3/AvocadoPhoto.jpg
4 http://www.ehow.com/how_4786077_banana-chips-food-dehydrator.html
5 Id.



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Green Facts

  • Every week about 20 species of plants and animals become extinct.

  • Americans throw away more than 120 million cell phones each year, which contribute 60,000 tons of waste to landfills annually.

  • If every U.S. household turned the thermostat down by 10 degrees for seven hours each night during the cold months, and seven hours each weekday, it would prevent nearly gas emissions.

  • You will save 100 pounds of carbon for each incandescent bulb that you replace with a compact fluorescent bulb (CFL), over the life of the bulb.

  • A steel mill using recycled scrap reduces related water pollution, air pollution, and mining wastes by about 70%.

  • Washing your clothes in cold or warm instead of hot water saves 500 pounds of carbon dioxide a year, and drying your clothes on a clothesline six months out of the year would save another 700 pounds.

  • A laptop consumes five times less electricity than a desktop computer.

  • A tree that provides a home with shade from the sun can reduce the energy required to run the air conditioner and save an additional 200 to 2,000 pounds of carbon over its lifetime.

  • In the United States, automobiles produce over 20 percent of total carbon emissions. Walk or bike and you'll save one pound of carbon for every mile you travel.

  • Turning off the tap when brushing your teeth can save as much as 10 gallons a day per person.

  • Recycling 100 million cell phones can save enough energy to power 18,500 homes in the U.S. for a year.

  • Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures every year.

  • Americans use 100 million tin and steel cans every day.

  • In California homes, about 10% of energy usage is related to TVs, DVRs, cable and satellite boxes, and DVD players.

  • Less than 1% of electricity in the United States is generated from solar power.

  • You’ll save two pounds of carbon for every 20 glass bottles that you recycle.

  • 77% of people who commute to work by car drive alone.

  • Bamboo absorbs 35% more carbon dioxide than equivalent stands of trees.

  • Current sea ice levels are at least 47% lower than they were in 1979.

  • Americans throw away enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial fleet of airplanes every 3 months

  • Recycling 1 million laptop computers can save the amount of energy used by 3,657 homes in the U.S. over the course of a year.

  • A single quart of motor oil, if disposed of improperly, can contaminate up to 2,000,000 gallons of fresh water.

  • Refrigerators built in 1975 used 4 times more energy than current models.

  • Shaving 10 miles off of your weekly driving pattern can eliminate about 500 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions a year.

  • Recycling for one year at Stanford University saved the equivalent of 33,913 trees and the need for 636 tons of iron ore, coal, and limestone.

  • Recycling aluminum saves 95% of the energy used to make the material from scratch.

  • One recycled aluminum can will save enough energy to run a 100-watt bulb for 20 hours, a computer for 3 hours, or a TV for 2 hours.

  • For every 38,000 bills consumers pay online instead of by mail, 5,058 pounds of greenhouse gases are avoided and two tons of trees are preserved.

  • American workers spend an average of 47 hours per year commuting through rush hour traffic. This adds up to 23 billion gallons of gas wasted in traffic each year.

  • Glass can be recycled over and over again without ever wearing down.

  • The World Health Organization estimates that 2 million people die prematurely worldwide every year due to air pollution.

  • It takes 6,000,000 trees to make 1 year's worth of tissues for the world.

  • Nudge your thermostat up two degrees in the summer and down two degrees in the winter to prevent 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.

  • An aluminum can that is thrown away instead of recycled will still be a can 500 years from now!

  • States with bottle deposit laws have 35-40% less litter by volume.

  • Rainforests are being cut down at the rate of 100 acres per minute.

  • You will save 300 pounds of carbon dioxide for every 10,000 miles you drive if you always keep your car’s tires fully inflated.

  • Due to tiger poaching, habitat destruction, and other human-tiger conflicts, tigers now number around 3,200—a decrease in population by about 70% from 100 years ago.

  • 82 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. come from burning fossil fuels.