Blog Posts by OneGreenPlanet.Org

Cupcake Cones

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Spring is finally upon us! Birds are singing, flowers are in bloom and the temperature is climbing past jacket stage and heading into shorts and flip flops territory. As for me, I've got one thing on my mind. Ice cream! Everything is better when you're holding an ice cream cone in your hand. Having a picnic in the park? Sounds nice. Having a picnic in the park while serving cones filled to the brim with sugary goodness? Sounds perfect! The only problem is that ice cream isn't really a picnic-friendly food. It's a pain to transport from one location to another and it begins to melt before you've even cracked open the potato salad. Don't worry, though, I have a solution to this delicious dilemma. Here is a sweet treat that gives you the satisfaction of enjoying something portable, lickable and irresistible without leaving your hands, face and everything else in the vicinity an ooey gooey mess.

These ice cream cones are filled with

sustainable meat not green myth 051111

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Go to any Whole Foods and you will see a variety of terminology describing a "new way" of raising farmed animals: local, organic, sustainable, free-range, etc. While it is certainly optimistic that the environmental and ethical impact of our diet has come into the collective awareness, we must pause to question how "green" this new meat really is.

While supposedly sustainable, free-range beef and dairy cows are not gobbling up as much grain, they are drinking notably more water than a factory farmed animal because they are more active. As byproducts of their metabolism, they are still producing methane and nitrous oxide, a dangerous greenhouse gas almost 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide. And it takes vast amounts of land to graze these cows, land that was once habitat to wildlife and endangered species.

Furthermore, a closer look at the production and distribution mechanisms behind self-proclaimed "local",

Eating Healthy in a Not-So Healthy World

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Often our busy lives and the choices we make do not support us mentally, physically or spiritually. When we rush around, work too much, have to manage a house and kids, and just can't find enough hours in the day to get everything done, our diets and health are the first things to go. We shave time off dinner and give ourselves a few extra minutes by eating convenience packaged foods, stopping at the drive-through on the way home from work, and ordering take-out. But are those extra minutes worth our health and vitality? I think not. It's time to make our food choices a top priority in our life. We are what we eat. The things you put in your mouth will either help or hurt your health. Here are a few tips on how to eat healthy, set up realistic goals for yourself, and nourish your mind, body, and spirit.

Make Healthy Eating a Priority

If you want to dip your toe into plant-based eating and want to feed you and your family

Creamy Chocolate Torte
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I'm not sure why I gave this dessert such an unassuming title. It may be more appropriate to call it an ice cream mousse cake. A thick layer of chocolate cake makes up the base, and the rest is the creamiest, richest and perhaps most intense little slice of pure chocolate sweetness I've ever created.

So why call it a torte? Generally, a torte is a flourless cake that is traditionally made with loads of eggs, butter, sugar and chocolate, resulting in a dense structure that has a soft, almost pudding-like texture. The challenge for a vegan is how to create such flourless and creamy desserts without eggs. The answer-in every vegan recipe I've come across for this kind of cake-is tofu. Generally, it works. It lends an egg-free recipe body, by acting as a binder and creating a creamy texture. For this recipe, I use coconut cream as a delicious and healthy alternative. A generous amount of good-quality dark chocolate also makes this dessert

Recipe: Swedish Vegan Chocolate Balls

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The classic Chocolate Balls is a Swedish no-bake sweet, served at birthdays, special occasions and as an everyday treat. This ball is rolled in something Swedes call Pearl Sugar, a rough cut type of sugar that won't melt, even if baked in the oven. It is used as decoration on cakes, cookies and on our all time favorite, the Swedish Cinnamon Scroll!

Making Vegan Chocolate Balls is as easy as it gets - just measure, mix and roll, making it a fun activity for the whole family. Parents can measure the ingredients and let kids have fun using their hands to mix it all together. This usually results in a big mess, but you won't care when you see how much fun they're having, and the end result is something beautiful and delicious.

Ingredients

• 100 grams of Dairy Free Margarine (room temperature)
• ½ cup White Sugar
• 1 tbs Vanilla Sugar (or vanilla extract)
• 2-3 tbs Dark Cocoa Powder (European style)
• 1 1/4 cup

How

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Spring is an exciting time for food lovers. As the days get warmer and longer, and the world around us shifts from gray and bare to green and lush, we eagerly anticipate the opening day of our neighborhood farmers market or CSA (community supported agriculture). For at least half of the year, many of us do our food shopping at our indoor supermarket whose shelves are lined with more than 48,000 different foods and food products. Some of these foods are organic or local, many are conventionally grown and have traveled thousands of miles from farm to supermarket, and most come in packages with a lengthy list of hard-to-decipher ingredients.

The Joy of Farmers Markets

But the farmers market stands in stark contrast to the supermarket. Farmers markets transport us to an outdoor haven filled with an abundance of fresh, local, seasonal food, and an opportunity to connect with our food on a much more personal level. As we

Who are you eating

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What's a hamburger? To put it bluntly, this iconic ground-beef-patty sandwich that is revered in America and around the world is nothing more than a dead cow on a bun. We can serve it grilled, barbecued, square, round, filled with holes or other ingredients such as flour, vegetable protein, or ammonia treated defatted beef trimmings (really!) or topped with assorted items including ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise or seasonings that enhance or mask its taste rendering the burger palatable. However, we can't change the fact that behind the innocent looking burger (that people don't blink an eye before sinking their teeth into), lies the story of the life and death of a cow who experienced more pain than pleasure during her journey from birth to her grave in a bun. The plate on which this unnecessary meal is sitting is nothing more than a platter of pain, a graveyard.

Ethics

Recipe: Artichoke Paella

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Paella is a fantastic party food. Although the dish itself requires preparation, it's a one dish meal that requires just a few side dishes to make a feast fit for any celebration. And it's festive and fun to make paella at the beginning of a party while your guests are snacking and having a glass of wine, and then set it out and let everyone help themselves. At a recent birthday celebration, I made a huge pan of artichoke paella, a pot of vegetable soup with kale, white beans and potatoes, and a big platter of roasted vegetables with Romesco sauce. The rest of the meal was easily purchased at the grocery store: little bowls of olives and Marcona almonds to munch on, crusty hearth baked bread to enjoy with the soup, and a big bowl of tiny tangerines and sweet olive oil tortas, which are a lovely fennel-scented, sugar-dusted, cracker-like cookie, for dessert.

Baby artichokes require a little work, but the nutritional benefits are