Into every life, organizational duties must sometimes fall. Whether it’s a by-product of your primary activity (sales, information dissemination, networking, &tc) or a chosen career path, your planning, choices and attention to detail can lower your carbon footprint, increase your event’s effective flow, and even bring your costs down. An investment of time at the front end makes all of this not just possible, but straightforward.

Why is ‘Green’ event planning sensible?

Green event planning builds a consistent message. Conservation, alternative energy, sustainable living, and holistic treatment paradigms are all natural fits for Green management. So are literary gatherings, scientific consortiums, e-trade fairs, and international summits. Each year, more organizations include resource use awareness and reduction in their mission statements. Help them take concrete steps to make their vision manifest, and grow your business reputation with visible deliverables.

Where will you hold your event?

Hold your event close to your attendees’ point of origin. Less time, money and resources will be spent on getting them there and back again. When your event is well away from your target population center, try using local service providers to reduce travel time on the one side of the carbon-footprint equation. If event staff also have to travel a couple of hours in each direction, not only will fossil fuel use increase but so will labor costs with the travel time rider in effect.

How do people access your event site?

The more limited the access to your site, the longer your service providers (audio-visual, rental, catering, florists, coat-check, registration, vendors) will take to set up and break down. Your costs will rise accordingly. Therefore, skip the breathtaking view across the Potomac to the monuments at night (the single elevator holds six people at time if they know each other REALLY well). Place a priority on ground level, multiple access point sites when you have latitude in booking.

When will you have final counts for everything?

Here’s where the strategies are subtle, but the ROI (Return on Investment) begins to snowball dramatically. If you know how many tablecloths you need besides those for food and beverage service, the fewer rush charges and emergency drop-offs of small loads will be added to your event tab. Do you need a tablecloth for the awards to stand on? What about matching tablecloths for each of the vendors? The name card table? The two panel discussion tables? The registration table? The same holds true for special lighting needs, centerpieces, corsages and garlands, or a second photographer to handle the photo ops with the VIP in one room while the keynote speaker has a photographer and videographer in the auditorium. The more specific you are, and the earlier you communicate your finalized information to your support staff, the better your pricing and flow will be.

Who are your event support staff?

Do you have a florist who works with local, seasonal, IPM (Integrated Pest Management) flowers? Does your caterer serve seasonal menus and have a contract clause regarding appropriate recycling practices? Will the site manager adjust the thermostat up in the warm months and down in the cool months to lower your event’s energy bills? Did you choose rental over disposables, first making use of whatever resources exist on site?

Create a detailed schedule for your event and circulate copies to key support personnel as early as possible. The florist could need an extra hour to set up, since the only sink he can use is in the basement. Or the photographer may remind you the reception line could take an extra hour if everyone has their picture taken with the VIP. Or the caterer will insist you allow fifteen minutes for your attendees to transition from seminars to the dining hall, as you have more than one hundred confirmed. The sooner you have this feedback, the better for the real-time version of your event.

What else can be done to minimize your event’s carbon footprint?

Allow your attendees a paper-free version of the event. Let attendees check an e-form box for paper-free, so’s you have less printed waste at the end of your event. Post the program, PowerPoint handouts, and panel precis on-line. Right now, the cleverest *swag bags* are virtual: coupons for allied vendor products, e-books, and free webinars or networking site access.

Whenever possible, conduct planning via the internet and phone contact. Face-time equals travel time, and often slows efficiencies rather than creating them. Review and confirm expectations with your support vendors at least a week before your event goes live. Changes or adjustments clarified well in advance make for smoother functioning and timeliness in your proposed schedule.

Establish ongoing relationships with your Green-aware service providers. Some firms offer a discount to high-volume customers. Additionally, when vendors have site familiarity, they spend less time scrambling to establish set-up/break-down protocols, and therefore your labor costs will show a decrease as well.

Have I left anything out?

It’s in the news: food costs more today than it did twenty years ago! No really, I read that not half an hour ago. And the information is correct. For a value of correct.

Twenty years ago, Americans spent 11.6% of their income on food. Today, Americans are spending 9.4% of their yearly wages on food. While the food costs more, we have experienced an overall rise in income over the last twenty years. And our real food costs have decreased.

American food costs are at an all time low. So is the percentage of every food dollar the farmer receives for the growing, harvesting and packing of the food. In 1981, farmers took home 31 cents of every food dollar spent by the consumer–and food ran at 15.1% of the annual American budget back in the day. Today, farmers get less than 20 cents of every US food dollar.

Where does the money go nowadays? The monies break out to processors, packagers, shippers, warehousers, and advertisers. Retail grocers are doing better than the farmers, in that they still get about 3.5-5% over net costs from year to year. But the ‘profit’ in grocery has remained constant since the first round of chain supermarket wars during the recession in the 1970′s.

Anywhere else in the world, and I do mean anywhere else, food represents a larger proportion of disposable income. In Indonesia, food is about 50% of the cost of living. Russians and people in India still pay close to 40% of their earnings to eat. In Turkey and Mexico, they spend 25% of their annual income on food. In Europe the numbers range from 13% in Germany(bearing in mind this is a nearly 40% increase on what the US spends, and is also still one of  the next lowest percentages on record) to 19% in the Netherlands.

I would like to make a radical proposal. Let’s commit to spending more on our food, and less on ‘stuff’. Go to eatwild.com and find a source of pastured meat, where you can pick up or which has a CSA delivering to your area–if you eat meat. Spend more at the farmers market every week of the year it’s open. Buy pantry items from the farmers as well, pickles and preserves, jams and sausages, plant sets and cheese. This money goes directly back to the farmers and their farms.

When you’re in the grocery store, buy the least processed versions of food you can find. Dry beans see more money returned to the farmer than canned. Fresh produce, especially the locally labeled items, gives more back to the farms than frozen.

Speaking of local, the less far your food travels the smaller its carbon footprint and the less dependent you are on fossil fuels to feed yourself. This is also true for organically raised foods, which don’t carry the collateral stigma of petroleum by-product fertilizers in addition to herbicides, fungicides and insecticides.

How will you ever spend less on stuff, though? Shop less, shop smarter. Get your books from the library–these days they even have e-books to loan. Buy clothes second hand, or at the end of the season. The same applies to appliances, cars, boots and shoes, furniture and linens. Make your own household cleaners. They’re far less expensive as well as being safe enough to eat. Consolidate your debts. Increase your household’s energy efficiency with smarter lightbulbs, a timer on your thermostat, insulated windows and fewer pieces of equipment staying plugged in. Travel on the off-season, or the shoulder season. Oh, and prepare food in the home. It costs so much less, you’ll find yourself splurging happily on berries in season, or a pork shoulder, to bring your food costs back up!

I love roast lamb. And I often cook a leg after appropriate marinating  and garlic-and-rosemary insertions all over the outside. Sometimes, I want lamb another way. Last night, I took one large boneless leg and broke it down into stewing chunks of about 1.5″, 4cm–carefully reducing the fat as I went. Then I made two different lamb stews. I made Herbed Basque Lamb Stew and Persian Lamb Fesenjan.

I started the Basque Lamb Stew first, since it had a marination time of a couple hours. Once I had the marinade in action, I switched over to the Persian Lamb Fesenjan. Both stews had three or more hours in a very slow oven. lamb cooked in this way is spoon tender. Both of these recipes require some prep, so make them when you have the time to enjoy both the process and the result.

I recommend serving the Herbed Basque Lamb Stew with a crusty loaf or plain rice. The Fesenjan goes right up to the next level with a simple pilaf or a side of saffron rice.

Herbed Basque Lamb Stew

For the marinade:

3-3.5 lbs. , 1350-1500 gm, stewing lamb well cleaned of fat and silver-skin, in 1.5″, 4 cm, chunks

1 bulb garlic, peeled and trimmed

3 TBSP prepared French, German or English mustard

3 inner stalks of celery, mostly leaves

1/3 bunch Italian, flat-leaf, parsley

1/3 bunch fresh mint (optional)

1 TBSP soy sauce or tamari

2 tsp dried, or 2 TBSP fresh, marjoram

2 tsp dried, or 2 TBSP fresh, rosemary

2 tsp dried, or 2 TBSP fresh, tarragon

2 tsp dried, or 2 TBSP fresh, thyme

2 tsp fresh lavender (optional)

2 tsp Herbs de Provence

1 tsp black pepper

1 tsp red pepper flakes

1/4 cup white or red wine

2 TBSP olive oil

In a food processor or blender, place the marinade ingredients through red pepper flakes. Whirl up the seasonings until thoroughly combined. Add the red wine and incorporate completely. Drizzle in the olive oil to create an emulsified  marinade–like a thick, creamy green dressing. Toss your lamb chunks in this marinate, cover and allow to marry for 2 hours on the counter, or up to overnight in the fridge.

For the Lamb Stew

2 large red bell peppers OR 1 large red bell pepper and about 8 cherry bombs, jalapenos or anaheims, roasted, skinned and seeded and cut into 1/4 inch strips

OR

1 10 oz jar of roasted red bell pepper, cut into 1/4 inch strips

3 oz bacon, diced and divided

1 large onion, peeled and cut into 1/4 inch strips

1/2 cup red wine

3 TBSP tomato paste (optional)

3 cups chicken stock

salt and pepper to taste

Heat two thick bottomed frying or saute pans over medium heat. Add the diced bacon–one ounce to one pan, and two ounces to the larger pan. Cover the pans, reduce the heat somewhat and allow the bacon to cook for 6 minutes. Stir and allow to cook for another 6 minutes. Take the lids off the pans, bring the heat back to full medium. Cook the bacon until it is crispy brown, then fish it out with a slotted spoon and set it by. Leave the bacon fat for your sauteing. Preheat the oven to 325°F.

In the smaller pan, cook the onion strips like the bacon: cover the pan, reduce the heat to medium-low and ignore as much as possible, stirring only once in 15 minutes. Bring the heat back to medium, uncover the pan and continue to cook the onions without stirring more than once every five minutes. When the onions are nicely browned, turn the heat off under them.

In the larger pan, set the pieces of lamb, after wiping them free of as much of the marinade as you can. Cook the lamb in batches if necessary, each chunk of lamb needs full contact with the pan. Over medium flame, allow the pieces to cook for 5-6 minutes before turning. Brown two or three sides of each chunk of lamb.

Set the lamb chunks with the finished onions. Add the red wine, and tomato paste if using, to the lamb searing pan. Allow these to bubble for 3-4 minutes over a medium high flame. Scrape the pan thoroughly to get up all the lovely browned bits of lamb. And the chicken stock and heat until bubbling. In a large, oven proof casserole, a 9″ X 13″ pan, or a 12″-14″ cast iron frying pan, combine the lamb, onions, pepper strips, cooked bacon and hot liquid. Cover the dish tightly, with aluminum foil if you don’t have a lid. Bake for 3 hours.

You could put this in a slow-cooker in the morning, having performed all the stove-top operations the night before. If so, start the stew on high first thing, and turn the cooker to low when you head out the door. It will be ready when you get home.

Persian Lamb Fesenjan

3-3.5 lbs. , 1350-1500 gm, stewing lamb well cleaned of fat and silver-skin, in 1.5″, 4 cm, chunks

3 TBSP olive oil or sesame oil (not toasted), divided

1 large onion, peeled and sliced into 1/4″ strips

1 1/2 TBSP ground cardamom

1 1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp freshly ground black pepper

1/2 tsp ground fennel seed

1 fat pinch of good saffron thread in 2 TBSP warm water

3 cups chicken stock

6 TBSP pomegranate molasses

3 cups, 15 oz or 420 gm, toasted pecans OR walnuts, pulsed in the food processor until finely ground, but not an oily precursor to nut butter

Heat two thick bottomed frying or saute pans over medium heat. Put 1 TBSP olive oil in the smaller pan, and 2 TBSP olive oil in the larger pan. Preheat the oven to 325°F.

Put the onion strips in the smaller pan. Cover the pan and reduce the heat to medium low.  Stir only once in 15 minutes. Bring the heat back to medium, uncover the pan and continue to cook the onions without stirring more than once every five minutes. When the onions are nicely browned, and the cardamom, cinnamon, fennel and pepper to the pan to toast for about 30 seconds. Turn off the heat.

In the larger pan, set the pieces of lamb, after wiping them as dry as you can. Cook the lamb in batches if necessary, each chunk of lamb needs full contact with the pan. Over medium flame, allow the pieces to cook for 5-6 minutes before turning. Brown two or three sides of each chunk of lamb.

Set the lamb chunks with the finished onions. Deglaze the lamb searing pan with a quarter cup of the chicken stock, scraping the sides and bottom of the pan vigorously with a wooden spoon. Add the rest of the chicken stock  and heat until bubbling. In a large, oven proof casserole, a 9″ X 13″ pan, or a 12″-14″ cast iron frying pan, combine the lamb, onions, and hot liquid. Cover the dish tightly, with aluminum foil if you don’t have a lid. Bake for 2 hours.

Stir together the ground nuts and the pomegranate molasses. Combine these with braising lamb chunks. Cover the stew tightly and cook one more hour at 300°F.

As a locavore, I eat seasonally. I look at where a particular food originates to decide if I want to spend the carbon-footprint: strawberries from Argentina, avocados from Peru, bananas from Guatemala, spinach from the Yucatan. I prefer to eat the foods grown within my watershed, but I still consume a few tropical foods regularly.

If I choose to buy these foods, it behooves me to support those companies whose values reflect mine. American agricultural labor customs still have a ways to go before they’re at an acceptable level. Agricultural practices in emerging economies are exponentially further from human rights, health and safety thresholds.

How do I wade through thickets of certification categories? How do I stay abreast of developing food issues? How do I promote my values with my dollars?

My first level of assessment: is it certified organic? It may say ‘organically grown’ or ‘organically produced’, but without a certifying agency, and the USDA Organics icon, the product is not guaranteed to be organic. Look for the distinctive USDA seal. It’s often no more than half an inch on smaller packages.

My second level of assessment: is it fair trade certified? Fair Trade certification means the farmers who grew the product I choose to buy receive a better-than-subsistence wage for their harvest. My dollars won’t stop at the corporate office, they will support the health and growth of grassroots economies abroad.

My third level of assessment: is it ecologically produced? Organic practices allow for latitude in stewardship of the land and complex eco-systems. Migratory bird friendly, shade grown, wild crafted designations let me know farmers took the sustainability of their cropping practices into consideration. Given the amount of oxygen returned to the atmosphere by tropical flora, I can’t ignore the necessity of maintaining as much of the existing canopies as possible.

I like a variety of resources to assist me in purchasing decisions.

Mother Jones is a lefty publication without the which I cannot do. Their environmental responsibility extends to an excellent website, tumblr account and ongoing twitter commentary. This organization delights in keeping the government’s nose to the ethical grindstone, as well as exposing the chicanery and deviousness of big capitalism. Devote a little time to Mother Jones once a month or so, and you’ll know who’s being boycotted, which of your civil rights are being abrogated in what states, and how the government continues to exploit plausible deniability.

On Facebook, I like Food and Water Watch for staying up to date. They keep the information flowing through their page, and the links are functional. Only about one alert in 25 is on the squirrelly side. Do verify for yourself before re-tweeting, re-posting or pinteresting.

For hard copy, there’s the Better World Shopping guide. Over the years, Ellis Jones regularly updated this pocket print classic. The website’s outdated, and there’s no app yet–but it’s close to comprehensive with over 2000 brands broken out.

Lastly, I keep my eyes open and my ear to ground. If it sounds too good to be true (agave syrup, gmo corn), it probably is. And to me, it’s a flag to start asking questions and initiate research drives.

What’s wrong with Quinoa? What kind of a question is that? Quinoa provides dense values for nutrition, aminos and fiber. Quinoa works for diets ranging from low-carb to gluten free to vegan. Quinoa replaces grains in salads, sides, stews and more. Quinoa cooks in a third the time of brown rice.  What’s not to love about Quinoa?

Therein lies the rub. Unlike false food fads, say the Agave trend, Quinoa lives up to its billing. Quinoa delivers on the goods. Quinoa’s phytonutrient anti-inflammatory properties are just coming on line. The more we know about Quinoa, the more we like it as heart patients, diabetics, arthritics, celiacs, vegans, and the immune compromised.

How much does the industrialized world like Quinoa? Quinoa prices rose 300% or more over the last six years. Oh, and the UN has declared 2013 the International Year of the Quinoa. Still don’t see where this is leading? Let’s get down to business.

 

Who grows Quinoa? Indigenous people living in remote regions of Bolivia and Peru.

Where does Quinoa grow? Quinoa grows in the Andes at elevations of 3000 m.and up. Quinoa grows in saline, nutrient poor soil. Quinoa grows where there’s little  oxygen and less water.

How does the popularity of Quinoa affect these people? High-altitude farming is the new gold rush in the Andes. Andean farmers devote every square foot of cultivatable land to the production of the new cash crops. Often including the vegetable plot for the family. In the high mountains, folkways dictate eating Quinoa every day, often with every meal. Subsistence farmers don’t eat their cash crop. Now these indigenous people incorporate processed industrialized foods into their daily regimen. Experienced farmers used to leave fields fallow for llama pasture, to build up the soil for several years between cropping Quinoa. Now?Commodity prices blind these stewards of the high mountains to their traditional values. New farmers by the thousand started cultivating Quinoa without any idea of the difficulties, limitations and fragility of the environment in which they’re farming.  Oh, and violent boundary disputes are a growing phenomenon.

Why do I care? You care because you have enough depth to your value system to perceive your health shouldn’t come at the expense of the health and sustainability of the lives of others or the eco-system providing your nutrition. You know the carbon-footprint on Quinoa grown in another hemisphere is shameful. You understand the effects of unregulated capitalism on emerging economies and don’t want to fuel the fire.

What can you do? Eat the Quinoa you have in stock. Now, don’t go to the store and buy more. See, the solution is easy. Low- altitude Quinoa is being developed by agricultural researchers right now. In a year or three, North American Quinoa may be cheap and plentiful. Let’s throttle back before another unique environmental niche disappears completely and forever.

Friends help friends cut back on Quinoa consumption. Little by little, supply and demand will equalize. Eat Millet. Eat Teff. Try Sorghum. Experiment with Wild Rice if you need to pay a lot for your non-grain staple. Do your part. Do it for the Andes.

America’s farmers are aging. As a profession, even one with a longer arc of employment than most, farmers are come to the age of retirement. American farmers now average 62 years of age. Who will farm the land in the decades to come? Who will be farming the land one decade from now?

Agriculture departments at the university level have a two track approach to farming. At one end, they train technicians how to operate machinery and apply clean ratios of seed, fertilizer and pesticide to a given tract of land over time They train these same technicians to CAFO principles and operations if the students choose to specialize in livestock processing.

At the other end, the ag departments of America are training research scientists to find an area of specialization useful to the military-agricultural complex in order to make a living by means of tame research and development for multinationals. As when the medical establishment requires of medical doctors only one semester of nutrition in order to become a healer of persons, so the emphasis in formal agricultural education is anywhere but on soil and stewardship.

Funnily enough, most folks don’t picture a guy in a tractor the size of Rhode Island when someone says the word, ‘farmer’. Most people visualize a person who works with the land and the soil and limitations of the weather, or its excesses, to grow and raise food and textiles when they hear the word, ‘farmer’. And this disconnect is telling.

No one really wants to grow up to operate the big tractors with their own heating and cooling systems for the cab. Well, OK. A few people really, really want to operate and maintain the big machines. For them it’s a calling. For everyone else, farming speaks to a connection with the weather, with the cycles of the seasons, with the cycles of the plants, with the cycles of the livestock.

Our future farmers are taking lots of environmental classes as a minor to law prep or sociology or geology or food studies. Our future farmers are diligently learning the skills they know will come in most handy when they go through the Peace Corps induction process. Our future farmers are taking some time off before starting their M.A. in comparative 17th c. Caribbean lit and stretching their dollars by WWOOFing. Our future farmers are volunteering at a vertical, urban, elementary school garden in a transitioning neighborhood on weekends and after work. Our future farmers have started a food justice farmers market in church basements to equalize the food desert problem for urban residents with out cars.

The USDA needs to find a way to reach out to these people and tell them about the Beginning Farmers programs, and assign new farmers bureaucratic mentors to walk them through the best of all possible grant and loan application cycles to start their farming experience on the right foot. New farmers need to know what steps they can make to prepare themselves for the kind of farming they might like to do. New farmers need to have the range of possible niches explained to them. New farmers need to understand how to budget and bridge production gaps while they get their operations up to size. If the USDA can reach out in this fashion, the department will secure to itself a segment of the American populace which it may continue to serve.

Otherwise, the USDA may be Balkanized as a branch of the Department of Commerce. About 45% of America’s agricultural output comes from just 200,000 farms. The number of farms continues to shrink as the agricultural multinationals consume individual operations.

Can we teach ourselves to see agriculture as something  beyond commerce? Can we bring stewardship back to land management and livestock development? Can we do so in time?

 

Chard in the winter is a glorious green. The flavor of chard is outstanding in the winter as none of the leaves is heat scorched. Instead, the chard leaf in winter is fat and succulent. Full of flavor, in fact.

So don’t be shy about making the most of the cool season’s bounty. Change up your routine and bring home a couple bunches of chard.

Chard, like its cousin spinach, cooks more quickly than the cruciferous leafy greens: kale, mustard, arugula, tat soi, collards and the like. Chard makes itself agreeable with nearly anything else you may have lying around in the kitchen. Be experimental with chard.

Though the recipe for chard below is a good jumping off point.

Winter Chard Sauté

1-2 tablespoons olive oil or drippings

1/2 lb. mushrooms, trimmed, wiped and sliced

3 fat shallots, or six smaller ones, peeled and minced

1 medium hot pepper, like cherry bomb or jalapeno (optional), seeded and diced small

2 bunches rainbow, golden or swiss chard, floated with a capful of vinegar to get the grit loose, then floated a second time, drained and stripped from their stems–chop the stems into 1/2 inch lengths

1/2 teaspoon grains of paradise

1 Tablespoon Red Wine Vinegar, or Apple Cider Vinegar

1/2 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper

1 teaspoon (or to taste) salt

In a large, heavy skillet, heat the fat over a medium flame. Add the mushrooms to the pan, and sprinkle some of the salt from the measured teaspoon onto the mushrooms. Stir them around a few times Let them cook for four more minutes.

Add the shallots to the pan, and the chili pepper if using. Stir once or twice and let the veggies cook together for five minutes. Add the chard stems and the grains of paradise. Let these cook for eight minutes. Slice the damp chard leaves into large squares. Add them to the skillet, along with the vinegar. Put a lid on the skillet, lower the heat and let everything cook for another six to ten minutes. Stir the chard once or twice as it cooks.

Take the lid from the pot and let the chard cook for another one or two minutes. Serve this hot from the stove, or at room temperature. It’s tasty both ways.

I feel like the Grinch. I don’t want to take natural, breathable, washable cotton away from anyone. I don’t.

I like cotton. I like cotton a lot. But cotton carries collateral baggage. Cotton is paying all kinds of overage fees on its baggage.

The problem with cotton starts where it grows.

Cotton represents 2.5% of the world’s cultivated land. Cotton uses 16% of the world’s insecticides. Cotton grows in nations with emerging economies. Many cotton farmers in developing nations store pesticides in the same room where they prepare food and/or sleep. Some of these farmers reuse the pesticide containers for family drinking water. Are you looking guiltily at your Chucks yet? What about your bath towels? Your favorite t-shirts? Your prize hoodie? Your best three pairs of jeans?

With every piece of non-organic cotton you buy retail, you’re signaling your approval of this disproportionate, under-regulated use of pesticides in developing nations. Check the numbers on the link above.

The problem with cotton has its roots in the seed-stock.

Commercial cotton is also in thrall to Monsanto. Like all other GMO crops, the Bt Cotton (resistant to bacillus thuringiensis) yields are low.  The kindest estimates, those pulled from Monsanto’s own site, are 17 percent lower than non-Bt  Cotton. Unkinder estimates, often provided by the farmers themselves, demonstrate the GMO cotton creates debt to seed and pesticide providers in addition to bale counts 30 to 70 percent lower than those recorded before its introduction. Yields from this Monsanto product are so consistently low that cotton farmer suicides are now tracked as a discrete mortality category in some states of India. Aggregate estimates vary from 20,000 to 125,000 such suicides to present.

Because of the way cotton crops are cooperatively shipped, if your cotton isn’t organic, you’re spending money in support of Monsanto’s neutered GMO seed programs in India, Brazil and 53 other countries, including the US. Follow the link above to check the necessary references.

The problem with cotton spreads as it’s processed.

Cotton goes through many stages between the field and the consumer. Cotton is cleaned using heavy detergents and plenty of BTUs. Then the cotton is bleached. Sometimes the cotton is dyed before it’s spun, sometimes after. Either way, those dyes contain azos and other classes of dye not sanctioned for use in the developed world. Warmed water and appalling effluents are the by-products of cotton ginning, milling and garment production. Worse even than the environmental impact of cotton production are the conditions, wages and ages of the laborers in the cotton processing industries.

What would you pay for a pair of jeans not sewn by a six year old? What would you pay for a bath towel with a carbon footprint smaller than your Prius? What would you pay for a tee shirt which doesn’t expose you as  a dupe for Monsanto?

You can help create a market for organic cotton. You can buy most of your cotton used at local thrift shops, yard sales and on-line resale sites. Put the money you would otherwise have spent aside. Once a year, purchase yourself organic cotton sheets–which are worth every. single. penny.–or organic towels, or limited edition organic cotton Chucks. You can decide that convenience and cheapness are not substitutes for stewardship and creating a healthy future for all the inhabitants of the earth. You can make a difference. Every dollar you spend is a vote.

Who doesn’t like good chili? Though defining that chili’s ingredients is likelier than not to start a range war in some parts of the country. Is chili cooked pork with a pepper sauce? Is chili beans and tomatoes? Is chili beef and jingoistic regionalism? Settle your chili disputes outside, please.

I make chili this way because I like it. And you don’t have to use bison in this chili either. It works well with any of the leaner ground meat on the market: emu, turkey, 92% lean beef. If you must use a super-lean ground for your chili, then do yourself a solid and cook it as low and as slow as you can to tenderize the flesh and impart depth to your finished flavor. Add the bacon crisps back to the pot to cook for the last hour.

Yes, you can let this one simmer in a slow-cooker all day, on low with the lid ajar to release some of the condensation and thicken up your lovely Buffalo-Bacon Chili. It’s what’s for dinner.

Buffalo-Bacon Chili

6 slices bacon (for a veggie version, you’ll want 2 TBSP unrefined peanut oil, or canola, 1 tsp hot sesame oil, a few drops of liquid smoke)

1 large onion, 2 medium, 4-5 small, peeled and coarsely chopped

1 large red bell pepper, seeded and chopped

2 Anaheims, 5 cherry bombs, 3 Hungarian was peppers, or 1 green bell, seeded and chopped

3 jalapeno peppers, carelessly seeded and chopped

6 cloves of garlic, peeled and minced

1 teaspoon oregano

1 teaspoon cumin, ground

1 teaspoon chili powder

1 teaspoon smoked paprika

1/2 teaspoon coriander, ground

1/2 teaspoon black pepper, ground

1 Tablespoon Asian chili-garlic sauce

1 1/2 teaspoons Sriracha sauce, or other hot sauce

1 lb ground bison, or other lean meat, or an extra can of beans

1 12 oz bottle of beer

2 cups chicken stock, or vegetable, or beef

3 14 oz cans of beans, cannelini or kidney or pinto or great northern or black…. or combos

1 28 oz can tomatoes, crushed

soy sauce or salt to taste

Heat a dutch oven on the stove top. Chop the bacon coarsely and add it to the dutch oven. Turn the heat down and stir only occasionally as the bacon renders out its fat. This takes about 20 minutes. Pull the bacon out with a slotted spoon and set it aside. Pour off all but 2 tablespoons of the fat. Bring the heat up to medium. Add the onion to the pan. Let the onion sweat about five minutes. Add the peppers. Cook another five to seven minutes. Add the garlic and the seasonings through the hot sauce. Let this cook together another five minutes. Now add the ground bison in pieces about the size of the top joint of your thumb–smaller if you’re a big guy. Cook the bison, stirring only occasionally, for about five minutes.

Add the beer and the chicken stock. Bring them to the simmer and let them cook for about twenty minutes. Add the beans and let the chili come back up to a simmer. Now add the tomatoes. Bring the chili to a very low simmer (with a gas stove, you may need a flame tamer) and let it cook for about three hours–or in the slow cooker all day on low.

Tasty with sour cream on top, just as good over baked sweet potatoes, or with a garnish of chopped cilantro, or grated cheese, or slivered pickled jalapenos. It’s chili. You’ll like it.

What is there to do in a vegetable garden in January? What do plants want or need in January? Why think about the garden in the midst of winter?

January is planning season for vegetable gardeners. January is the time of year, in the Northern Hemisphere temperate zones, for thinking about the next ten or eleven months in deep detail.

A vegetable garden begins with a plan. Gardeners need to know in which areas they will tend plants, how big those areas are, and what growing conditions will prevail through the growing season. Is the ground low and damp? Is it exposed with compacted soil? Is it in partial shade?

If you don’t have your own land upon which to garden, January is when you scout someone willing to let you put a garden in or extend an already existing garden.

Plot the garden. If it’s been planted with veggies before, the gardener plots which vegetables grew where. You want to be able to rotate plant families through the garden by blocks, in order to discourage certain pests and diseases which pass from season to season via the soil.

The Rotational Families of Garden Vegetables

Plant Family A : Brassicas–kale, collards, tat soi, cabbage, broccoli, mustard greens, turnips, radishes, cauliflower, and so forth.

Plant Family B: Chenopods, Apiaceae, Alliums, Legumes and Asteraceae—beets, chard, spinach, carrots celery, parsnips, parsley and many herbs, onions and chives, peas and beans, and lettuces, basil

Plant Family C: Solanaceae–potatoes, eggplant, tomatoes, peppers and okra

Plant Family E: Perennials–asparagus, herbs, biennial strawberries, brambles, rhubarb

When you decide where you’ll be planting, keep in mind the differing needs of your plant families. Some take rich soil, like the Solanaceae. Some prefer partial shade, like lettuces, peas and a number of the perennials. Some require soft, stone free soil, like the Apiaceae. And some plants have short enough growing cycles you will be planting them more than once across the course of your growing season: lettuces, beets, basil, radishes and carrots as well as peas.

If the ground isn’t frozen solid, and you didn’t do this in November or December, find some rich compost or hot manure and apply it to your growing beds about 1/2 thick, assuming your beds are clear of turf or matted weeds have been turned under to form a green manure. This is top dressing your beds, and through the winter, rain and snow melt will leach the enzymes and minerals the garden cultivars want for growth into those garden beds.

Now you can sit down with your Rodale’s Garden Answers and the on-line seed catalogs to decide which specific cultivars you will plant through the season. Do you want peas which are easy to grow and tend (ie the short bushes), or do you want climbers to provide shade and more abundant yield per plant (ie they want tying up)? If space is your primary limitation, the climbing peas are your best bet. If time is your delimiting factor, then you want the dwarf peas. Do you want carrots in fun colors, or those which are resistant to powdery mildew? Will you start your solanaceae, alliums and brassicas indoors, or will you buy transplants from a nearby shop or farmers market?

Rodale’s will tell you how closely you can plant each vegetable, and how long they take to grow. Use that information plus your bed plotting to work out how many seeds of any cultivar you want. Some of the heirloom vegetable seed sites give you very few seeds, like Cherry Gal. Many seeds lose their potency from year to year, so this may be a practical choice if your gardening space is limited. Some of the sites offer astounding variety, like Johnny’s Seeds. Some offer only organic seeds, like High Mowing Seeds. Poke around. Make lists. Assess your chosen beds and time limitations.

January is a busy time in the vegetable gardener’s diary.