shopping

NOTE: WORD PRESS IS BEING A BRAT AND WON’T ALLOW ME TO UPLOAD THE PICTURE OF THE FINISHED PRODUCT.  I’LL KEEP TRYING SO CHECK BACK LATER.

On of my favorite blogs is called Farmgirl Fare.  It’s written by a girl who up and sold her bakery in California to buy a rural farm in Missouri.  Now she describes herself as a “cook, gardener, shepherd, farmhand, veg, surrogate mom, wildlife expert, midwife & undertaker.”

Farmgirl makes all sorts of great food and is happy to share her recipes with us.  This weekend I tried her recipe for Banana Bran Muffins.  I’ve never made any healthy-ish muffins but I have to tell you that, compared to the bran muffins I’ve bought at chain bakeries, these things were superb!  Here’s Farmgirl’s Organic Banana Bran Muffin recipe.

• 2 cups (3oz/86g) wheat bran
• 1 cup (oz/141g) oat bran
• 1 cup (6oz/170g) whole wheat flour
• 2 teaspoons (12g) baking soda
• 1 teaspoon (6g) baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon (4g) salt
• 2 large eggs
• 2/3 cup (5oz by weight/156g) milk
• 2/3 cup (5-1/2 oz/156g) yogurt
• 1/3 cup (2-1/4oz/65g) canola oil
• 1/3 cup (3-3/4oz/108g) molasses or cane syrup
• 1/3 cup (3-3/4oz/108g) honey
• 1 teaspoon (6g) vanilla extract (optional)
• 2-3 very ripe bananas mashed
• walnuts (optional)

Place oven rack in the middle of oven and heat oven to 375 degrees.  Grease a standard size muffin pan or line cups with paper liners.

Combine all dry ingredients in large bowl and set aside.  Combine eggs, milk, yogurt, canola oil, molasses and honey in small bowl and mix well.  Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients and mix just until combined.  Add mashed bananas and walnuts.

Generously fill muffin cups with batter.  (I used a stainless steel ice cream scoop).  Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 20-25 minutes.  Cool muffins in pan for 10-15 minutes, then carefully remove from pan and serve warm, or let cool on wire rack.

Enjoy them plain, drizzled with honey, or spread with peanut butter.  (I had one withe peanut butter and honey today)

I purchased all the organic flours at my local Whole Foods grocery in the bulk isle.  This worked great for me because I didn’t need to buy a huge bag that I won’t ever use.  I only purchased what I needed.

This is a great all purpose bran muffin recipe that you can use with any kind of fruit you and your family enjoy.  I’m going to try blueberry next. 

After I wrote the post about whether or not I should do a green bathroom remodel, I thought I should at least look at the products to see if they were affordable.  I was shocked to find a store in my neighborhood that sells green building materials. 

Green Home Experts is a new business in Oak Park Illinois that specializes in, well, green home stuff.  The store is owned by this awesome chick named Maria whose had the idea to open a store where people like me can go to find anything green they need.  I only went there for the recycled glass and ceramic tile and the bamboo counter tops so I was shocked to find that they had a whole section devoted to organic gardening, and a whole section devoted to cleaning supplies.  They also had lots of organic and natural bedding and baby products.  What I loved about the store is that they had such a nice selection of the products they carried.  For example, in my area Whole Foods tends to have the largest selection of green cleaning products like Meyers.  I had always been under the impression that Whole Foods carried the entire Meyers product line until I went to Green Home Experts.  They had way more of this stuff!  I can tell I’ll be spending a lot of time (and money) at this store.  Besides selling good products I love seeing young people who have the guts to start their own business, especially when it’s something more non-traditional like green products.  It’s risky - I love that!

Maria runs the store herself and she is very knowledgeable, and equally important, she’s really nice.  So, if you are in the Chicagoland area, be sure to pay her a visit at Green Home Experts. 

Do you have a store that specializes in green home products like this in your area?  I’d love to hear about it so leave us a comment to tell us where it is. 

courtesy of brighterplanet.com

Brighter Planet is an Environmental Startup Company in Vermont that is working on practical solutions to climate change.  Instead of preaching that we should all recycle our bathroom waste (gross!) they are looking for ways we persnickety Americans can fight climate change, well, without really trying too hard.

Their main product is a Bank of America credit card bearing the Brighter Planet logo.  And instead of earning frequent flyer miles (remind me to tell you how much pollution air planes produce), your purchases earn points towards the purchase of carbon offsets.  By George I think they’ve got it!  That is brilliant!  I love to shop.  I love to earn free stuff by shopping.  And I want to help the environment.  If I can do all that by shopping, I’m so going shopping tomorrow!

Here’s how the credit card works

• Earn 1 EarthSmart point for every $1 spent in net retail purchases.
• Points are automatically redeemed monthly to help fund renewable energy projects.
• Every 1,000 points will fund an estimated 1 ton of carbon offsets.
• Every 1,000 points is roughly equivalent to taking a car off the road for 2,000 miles, or powering and heating/cooling your home for a month.

How’d I learn about Brighter Planet?  Well I read this guy’s blog called No Impact Man who mentioned that we should read and support a site called 350.org (getting the word out that scientists say we need to get our carbon count to around 350 ppm to be safe.  We’re at 387 now) so I did.  After I registered, I got this cool badge for my blog (see right margin) and later the great folks over at Brighter Planet (they sponsor 350.org) sent me a nice certificate saying how much carbon my blog had offset which made me feel something like a rock star.

Later when I contacted Brighter Planet asking if they’d participate in a charity blog-off their CEO promptly wrote and emailed a very cool guest post which you can read here.

So, in summary, I think this company is worth supporting.  I hope you’ll join me in doing so.  And if you are one of those i-only-pay-cash-for-my-crap people, well, pass the company on to somebody else who isn’t as financially astute as you.