Stop.

This morning, as I watered the blooming paperwhites on my windowsill, I took a moment to bend down and give them a sniff. The warmth of the sun beaming through the glass onto my face, combined with the powerful perfume of the flowers and the noises in the street below, pushed an incredible feeling of peace over me. 

With the constant internet searching, social media-checking, texting, lives we lead today, it is so hard to pause for a second, feel your breath, hear the sounds around you, and just be. 

I urge you all to stop and smell the roses this week. 

New beginnings

Paperwhites sprout up on my windowsill

The new year is a great excuse to take a look at your day-to-day habits and really think about the longterm lifestyle changes you wish to achieve -- as tacky as new year's resolutions sometimes seem.

This year I am giving myself a list of goals and I resolve to make a real effort to stick to them.

1. Compost -- I resolve to save my food scrapes and bring them to my local greenmarket each week to be recycled. 
2. mEAT local -- I resolve to only eat meat, fish, and dairy products from producers that pasture-raise their animals without all the icky hormones, chemicals, etc. This means no ordering from restaurants unless I know the source!
3. DIY -- I resolve to take on a DIY project once a week. 
4. Cook with friends -- now that I have gotten pretty good at making most of my own meals at home, I resolve to cook more with friends. It's easy to get lazy when we're all together but the few times we have cooked food instead of ordering, it has always been fun, rewarding, and less expensive.  
5.  Go glass -- slowly but surely I resolve to switch almost entirely from plastic to glass, ceramic, or metal. 

Most recently, I acquired a glass water pitcher (with kishu charcoal filter) and a set of glass straws. 

Let's do this 2014!

What are some of your goals?

Everything else: produce bags

Want a simple way to reduce your plastic use?

Eliminate plastic produce bags!

There are several ways this can be done - costing you nothing at all or emptying your pockets of a couple of bucks:

• stop cold turkey - avoid produce bags completely and just put your fruits and veggies right into your bag

• not one for grocery bag chaos? Use bags you already have... whether it be small canvas bags, saved plastic bags, or the sack that your fancy shoes came in

• make a little investment - purchase a set of reusable and washable produce bags that will last you a long time. I like these cotton ones from Green Depot: 

Hello

Girl gets green.

What does that even mean?

No, this won't be a poem, but seriously, how cliche can I sound? "Go green" is basically  a blank expression these days, on par with the likes of "sustainable", "local", "natural" and "farm fresh" but there is no better phrase I can think of to describe my mission, except perhaps "go back".

This isn't the start of said mission, I have been trying to make changes little by little over the years, but January is a time for resolutions and this year I resolve to actively be better at being green.

How did I get here?

Tradition. Family meals for 23 years - always at the table, always cooked together.

Farm time. I spent a summer running children's activities and soaking up all the knowledge I could at
Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture 

Awakening. 8 months as an intern at Slow Food USA  opened my eyes to the fight for food justice. 

History. A family tree that passed down a passion for environmental protection and a concern for human rights.  

Let's get this started!