MiniMonos Friday Featured Friend: I count for myEARTH

When Lynn Hasselberger -- Mom, environmental advocator and founder of I count for myEarth -- first took her son, Ethan, to school, she was dismayed at the amount of trash and non-reusable water bottles that a school community could generate.  She said it inspired her to "custom design reusable water bottles and develop I count for myEARTH, an environmental awareness campaign geared toward elementary school children",  which Lynn first launched at her son's school.

We think Lynn is a total rock star!  The I count for myEARTH campaign teaches kids in a way which is fun and self-directing, focusing particularly on bottled water  -- we love how the kids become EarthMinders! 

I count for myEARTH also offers fantastic environmentally aware products for schools and kids and a portion of all sales goes back to the National Environmental Education Foundation.  You can also make contact to find out how a portion of your sales could go to your child's school.

Lynn is a keen environmental campaigner on Twitter (IC4ME and myEARTH360), Facebook and her wonderful blog. 

We love her interesting and thought-provoking posts and tweets, we love her campaigns and at MiniMonos, we think Lynn is an inspiring and AWESOME person!

MiniMonos Meatless Meal: Dinner from foxie3000's garden

My daughter, Grace (also known as foxie3000 on MiniMonos) has a garden which provided us with dinner tonight!

Tonight was a perfect evening, sun shining, and no wind.  Here is the view from our outdoor dining area:

The garden is bursting with beans, zucchini, swiss chard, basil and carrots.  Grace has been lovingly looking after the garden for the last couple of months and every night has been out picking purple and red carrots and selecting leaves for the evening’s salad.  Tonight Grace picked spinach, multi-colored chard (red & yellow), cos, red oak lettuce and arugula.  Serve with your favourite dressing!

We have too many zucchini at the moment.  Here is something wonderful to do with them!

Spring Fritters

2 scallions
2 cups cooked peas (ours were out of the freezer)
Mint – approx 30 leaves (optional but we like lots!)
2 zucchini
3 free-range eggs
1 tsp baking powder
2/3 cup flour
200 g haloumi cheese, sliced into thin 1 inch squares

Blend scallions, peas & mint (in a food processor, or use a wand). 
Grate zucchini & squeeze out as much of the liquid content as possible. 

Add to blended mix stir with a wooden spoon.
Mix in eggs. Add baking powder & flour
Salt & pepper to taste. Mix with wooden spoon.

Fry tablespoons of mixture in fry pan.  Before turning fritter, put a piece of haloumi onto each fritter. 

The mixture can be saved in the refrigerator for up to 3 days and made into fritters later – it's actually pretty good for brunch too!.
Serves 6 as an entrée (main) or 12-18 as starter or part of a platter.

Serve with aioli and lemon wedges.

Aioli
5-8 cloves of garlic, blended with 2 egg yolks with wand blender, food processor or whisk. Blend in 1-1¼ cup oil (I used equal parts canola and olive) little by little.  The mixture will thicken suddenly. Add salt, pepper and juice of half a lemon.

Here they are!  Good friends, good food.  We drank a little apple cider with them, and all was well with the world.

Somehow, we were hungry again an hour later so we had dessert! Strawberries, pineapple sliced, with 2 kinds of chocolate sauce (white and dark).  We sat outside and marvelled at the beauty all around us – in the natural world, in our friends, and all creation!

Valentines Day at the coal-face: how flowers fritter our fossil fuels

This post is for the Green Moms Carnival on Coal hosted this month by Retro Housewife Goes Green.

Last year was a typical lead-up to Valentines Day for my uncle, who has a rose farm.  On cooler nights the computer system alerted the coal-fed boiler that the roses needed to be warmed. The boiler automatically fired-up, burned coal and in their greenhouses, the rose bushes were warmed by heated water pipes lying at their feet. 

For the cut-flower industry, Valentines Day is the craziest time of year.  In less than two weeks’ time roses and other cut flowers will be chilled and shipped all around the world, pouring into the airports of developed countries.  There, they will be transported in refrigerated trucks to wholesalers then delivered to over a hundred thousand florists.  By now most of us are aware that the miles associated with imported perishable products like flowers creates a carbon-footprint nightmare.  In the US alone, 9000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions will be produced by the 100 million Valentines roses shipped from the grower to the florist.

So should we only buy locally-grown flowers? Not necessarily. Many people are not aware of the carbon emissions from the production of the flowers themselves which, due to their highly variable nature, are often not calculated.  Many of these emissions come from carbon released from burning fossil fuels like coal.

Because half of US electricity comes from burning coal, the carbon footprint of your roses depends which state they are grown in.  A US cut flower producer in Wyoming, North Dakota, West Virginia or Indiana who has a climate-controlled operation with refrigeration, powered by cheaper coal-burning electricity might as well be shovelling tons of coal into a boiler like my uncle.

In the US, 90% of cut roses are imported from Colombia and Ecuador.  Apart from the fly-miles, the carbon footprint of these roses is not bad. The flowers don’t need to be heated or cooled, the amount of power needed to produce them is low and staff at the rose farms mostly walk or bike to work. Compared to the US or the Netherlands -- the world’s leading flower exporter – South American production is low tech and low-impact.

For much the same reasons, last year the British Government issued a recommendation to the UK public to purchase flowers imported from Kenya for Valentines Day, rather than the Netherlands, after a study showed that Kenyan flowers had a nearly 6 times lower environmental impact than the traditional Dutch flowers.

But what may not have been accounted for in this calculation is that Kenya is heavily reliant on imported fertilizer for growing flowers and if produced in China then it is likely to be made from coal.

There are over 500 coal-based fertilizer plants in China -- the world’s leading manufacturer of fertiliser -- where coal accounts for nearly 70% of the total energy consumption feedstock to produce it.   The resulting fertilizer is generally poor quality and low in nutrient concentration.

The Chinese flower industry itself is an emerging major world player and has ambitious plans to become the biggest flower producer and exporter in Asia in 10 to 15 years and possibly the world’s largest after the Netherlands.  In Los Angeles on Valentines Day 2006, if you searched hard you could find a Chinese-grown rose, packed into a gift box with a bottle of wine. This year, China aims to export more than 200 million roses to the US.   And the main source of power in China, used for production and refrigeration, comes from coal-fired power plants which are projected to satisfy approximately three-fourths of China’s total power generation requirements through to 2030.   The Chinese Government is backing its flower industry growth, investing $20 billion a year in the emerging cut flower area of South West China by building 12-lane highways, bridges and airports.  Growers are receiving interest-free loans to build greenhouses and heavily subsidized, or free refrigerated trucks for transportation.

That’s a lot of money and coal-burning emissions to produce a highly perishable product which, by the time it reaches the other side of the world, may have a vase life of 3 days.

My uncle has decided to ditch the coal and go green.  He aims for his rose farm to become carbon-neutral and is in the process of converting the coal-fired boiler to run on sustainable timber waste.  It hasn’t been painless.  A glitch in the boiler caused a major fire 3 weeks ago which threatened his whole Valentines Day crop.  But it will be wonderful on February 14 when a nervous young account manager about to make his big declaration to the girl in the next office, sends her a bunch of my uncle’s roses which says: “I love you….and the planet”.

MiniMonos Friday Featured Friend: Chan, the cat with opposable thumbs

Meet our new fluffy friend, Chan! 

Kaila has been visiting with Deborah Todd our MiniMonos storywriter this week and made friends with her amazing cat who -- apart from being huge, furry and gorgeous -- has very weird and useful feet! 

Not to be outdone by our MiniMonos monkeys, Chan has his own opposable thumbs -- and his back feet are also like no other cat we know!

(If you can't view the video clip below, click here)

MiniMonos Meatless Meal: Cheater's fajitas

Yes, I cheated with the MiniMonos Meatless Meal this week.  I didn't cook this lovely looking dinner.

Last night instead of our usual vegetarian low carbon-impact Thursday meal, we were invited out to a restaurant for a friend's birthday.  So instead of constructing dinner at our family table, we built fajitas with our friends instead. Our poor friends had to put up with me taking way too many pictures of their rapidly cooling meals, while I apologised and my husband gave them a long-suffering-she-does-this-every-Thursday eye-roll. 

I begged the restaurant to share their recipe but they weren't wrapped with that idea, so here is the closest vegetarian fajita recipe I could find to share with you, from Heatherreneehopkins at Group Recipes

Tortillas

For the Fajita Mix:
bell peppers
onions
tofu (optional)
olive oil
hot sauce
lemon juice
cayenne pepper (optional)

Optional Extra Toppings:
Shredded Cheese
Cilantro
Chopped Green Onions
Tomatoes
Salsa
Avocado

In a wok (or some other pan if you don’t have a wok) grill some sliced bell peppers (either ones you slice yourself, or you can buy a bag of sliced bell peppers in the frozen section at the store) and chopped onions, (Optional: tofu cut into small squares or meat, if you want to). Grill in some olive oil (Pam has a new olive oil spray that’s cool) and a dash of hot sauce like cholula or tapatio.
After it is grilled, toss on a dash of lemon juice and some cayenne pepper if you want it a bit spicier.
place mixture in a tortilla.
Top with whatever you want....I like shredded cheese, cilantro, green onions, and chopped tomatoes or salsa and bits of avocado or guacamole, and pour your favorite hot sauce (my fave is cholula) on top.
Wrap the tortilla and enjoy.....and you WILL enjoy it because it’s YUMMY
(For a simple guacamole, mash ripe avocados with cayenne pepper, lemon juice, salsa, and a dash of hot sauce)

The verdict

Quite frankly, if you're enjoying good food with great people you can't go wrong. Fajitas are a great meal to share and we all really enjoyed them.  I hope this recipe is as good as the ones we had -- if you make them before I do, let me know!

 

Stranger Danger: Are we caring or scaring?

Photo by Chance Agrella via Freerange Stock

I’ve previously been of the opinion that teaching kids stranger danger is like a fire drill: you practice your escape, but it’s destructive to spend every waking hour worried that the fire is going to happen. 

Sitting around the dinner table with our 7-year-old son and 23-year old stepson, I brought up the topic of stranger danger and asked them to remember and recreate what they had each been taught, and what their views were about having conversations with strangers. 

23-year old: “Things are so much worse now than when I was a child. When I was young I used to not be worried about something bad happening to me but now I am more worried.  I remember Dad saying to me that if anybody ever says: “Don’t tell your parents, or something really bad will happen” then that’s always the signal to DEFINITELY tell your parents!”

7-year old: Umm.  “Well, I will say hi if I’m passing someone down the street and I can talk to any strangers if you and Dad are there.  If I’m in a shop and you’re in the other aisle and I’m feeling bad about someone talking to me I’ll just come and find you.”

Me: “And if you can’t find me?”

7-year old: “I dunno. Yell out for you, I guess.”

Me: “And if I don’t hear you?”

7-year old: “Umm….Dunno.“

Me (quietly despairing): “Can you remember our discussion about going up to or calling out to anyone who works there who is wearing a uniform?  Or if you can’t find someone who works there, then you should go up to any woman with kids in the store who is not with the person who is bugging you?”

7-year old: “Uh…Nope.”

Me: “What if you’re walking down the street and a man you don’t know comes up to you and says hello?”

7-year old: “Say hello back.”

Me: “And if he asks you where you live?”

7-year old: “I’d say back there, down the street.”

Me: “And what if he asks you where your parents are?”

7-year old: (now seeing the shocked look on his older brother’s face) “Umm…lie and tell him that my parents aren’t here but I’m being looked after a babysitter at home?”  (Brightening as he finally remembers something) “And if he offers me any candy to go with him somewhere, say no because I know you will give me twice as much for not going with him.”

Arrrrgh!  We’ve always been so proud of how charming our young one is with friends, family and people who visit.  He’s a naturally open kid who looks people in the eye, grins at their jokes and hugs them before going to bed.  We absolutely love that.  However I had no idea how much he had forgotten about our stranger danger discussions, usually delivered by me every few months as we’re driving along in the car. I realized that as Community Manager of MiniMonos, I've been super-focussed on kids' online safety in the last few months, but hadn’t checked-in to see that my child remembers what to do in real-world situations.  Big fat Oops.

So the question for us is: how far do we push the ‘don’t talk to strangers’ rule and how often should we remind him about potential dangers?   The last thing we want is for our son to be suspicious and fearful so that his relationships with adults sink to the lowest common denominator but, like a fire drill, if he’s at risk or in trouble then we want to make sure we’ve equipped him with well-rehearsed ways to escape. 

If we make ‘don’t talk to stranger’ rules, which in many situations can be weird (I’m sure the elderly woman 3 doors down wouldn’t have the least desire to abscond our son when she chats to him over the fence) could that detract from his ability to learn and trust his own judgment of people as he gets older?  And the statistics suggest that 90% of abuse cases are from someone the child knows, not a stranger. It’s vitally important that our son is aware of any warning signs --  but what really constitutes a warning sign?

I found these excellent ‘10 rules for kids’ from Safety 4 Kids, which we’ll be talking about over the dinner table tonight:

The Super-Ten Safe-Smarts Rules For Kids and Grownups!

1.    I am special and I have the right to be SAFE!
2.    I know my name, address and phone number...and my parents' cell phone number, too.
3.    Safe Grownups Don't Ask Kids for Help. (They go to other adults for assistance.)
4.    I don't keep SECRETS from my parents. (No one should tell a child to keep a secret from their parents, especially another adult.)
5.    I never go ANYWHERE or take ANYTHING from someone I don’t know...no matter what they say.
6.    I always ASK FIRST and get permission before: I go anywhere, change my plans, or accept something...even if it's from someone I know.
7.    Everybody's bathing suit areas are private. No bathing suit area games allowed.
8.    I don't have to be POLITE to anyone who makes me feel scared or uncomfortable. It's okay to say NO! even to a grownup if I have to.
9.    If I ever get lost in a public place, I can FREEZE AND YELL or go to a MOM WITH KIDS and ask for help.
10.    It's not my fault if someone tries to touch me in a "weird" or uncomfortable way. I will always tell a safe grownup if I feel scared or confused about any touches. And I will keep telling until I get help.

How do you handle stranger danger with your kids?

MiniMonos Friday Featured Friend - EcoPlum

 

Hooray!  It's Friday and today I get to talk about lovely Twitter friend Gia from EcoPlum!

Following Gia on Twitter and reading her blog, we never cease to be amazed at her kindness and comittment for the environment  -- she really walks her green talk.

Gia says of her business EcoPlum: "The highest good this business can achieve is for millions of new people to be knowledgeable about environmental issues and to buy environmentally sound products instead of the less eco-friendly products they used to buy". 

At EcoPlum you can get exactly that -- Their eco-shop categories cover all things green, from green cleaning products to travel and cars and check out Gia's latest post about her top 10 Personal Sustainability Practises (by the way, I've commited to working on PSP #4!).

Keep up your wonderful green work, EcoPlum!  We're lovin' it!

MiniMonos Meatless Meal – Rainy night soup

Every Thursday night I cook a meal without meat for my family, so we can take a step toward reducing our household carbon footprint .  We haven’t gone the whole hog to move into a completely meatless life but I read that if every American simply skipped one meal of chicken per week and substituted vegetables and grains, the carbon dioxide savings would be the same as taking more than half a million cars off U.S. roads.

So vegetables and grains it is then.  It’s a cold rainy night so I’m keen to make them into a warm and hearty country soup.  I will be providing yummy extras to throw in as per our MiniMonos Meatless Meal tradition for our family to have fun at the dinner table by creating their own construction masterpieces.

The building materials

Soup:

•    I packet of natural barley and lentil soup mix
•    3 stalks of celery, sliced
•    1 onion, sliced in rings
•    ¼ medium-sized pumpkin, chopped into 1-inch cubes
•    1 yam, chopped into 1-inch cubes
•    1 leek, sliced
•    3 carrots, sliced

Yummy stuff to throw in:

•    Croutons – cut dark grainy bread into cubes and put into a fry pan with 4 tbsp olive oil and lemon pepper, if you have some.
•    Cheese – There was some left-over cheese in the fridge so I mixed parmesan with mozzarella and Colby
•    Fresh herbs – I chopped up basil and chives
•    Crispy noodles  - I was a bit dubious about these but my husband really wanted them for his construction project
•    Pesto

The construction

Cook soup according to the soup mix instructions, adding 4 extra cups of water and the vegetables.  As long as the soup mix has enough salt, don’t worry about adding any extra seasoning to the soup. There are plenty of extra flavors to come.
Once the soup has come to the boil, reduce the heat and simmer for an hour.  Bring to the table with bowls and start adding your extras!

The verdict

My husband was politely reluctant to take a big bowlful, as he was expecting a lighter broth and this ended up being really thick and chunky.  However when he added crispy noodles (they were good!), fresh herbs and croutons, he really enjoyed it.  Our son skipped the pesto but was enthusiastic about everything else.  We gave him heaps of praise for his positive approach to vegetables this time -- it’s not a given, believe me!  I added the whole lot.  I’m greedy like that. It was delicious.

Tourists take note: 6 Sydney sustainability observations

In Sydney for a family holiday, as tourists we noticed a few environmental changes since living there 8 years ago -- some good, some not!

Thumbs up:

1.   Manly drinking station

At Manly Beach there is now a filtered water dispenser which encourages you to ditch the one-time-use bottled water and fill up your own.  They even use the phrase "combat climate change"!  Between swims we filled ours frequently and gratefully -- a wonderful initiative by Manly Council.

2.   Eco-taxis

You can now travel around Sydney’s central city in these very cool man-powered pedapods. Apart from feeling sorry for the taxi-rider on the slight uphill climb from Circular Quay to the CBD, this has definitely got to be the way to travel in Sydney’s beautiful summer weather.

3.   More bike lanes

Image via Bicycle Victoria

When we lived in Sydney my husband despaired about the lack of cycle access and how dangerous it was to bike around the city. This led him to take part in bike protests, one of them shutting down Sydney Harbour Bridge.  With the implementation of Sydney’s Cycle Strategy and Action Plan , we were delighted to see how many cycle lanes and bridges have already sprouted up around the centre and outskirts of Sydney, with many more planned.

4.   Green hotel housekeeping

Although our hotel was not an advertised environmental hotel we had the choice of a full houseclean, semi-green (the usual: ‘You hang your towels up and we won’t take them’) or a fully green service, without electricity or chemicals.  We chose to do this most days and it still looked and felt like a normal hotel service.  Awesome!

Thumbs down:

   

5.   Even more clogged-up freeways

There were more freeways, more tolls to pay and we got stuck in a gridlock on a new stretch of freeway which disrupted our day and caused us to abandon our trip out of town. When built, this new section of the M5 was controversial due to its environmental effects on local Wolli Creek and since opening, experiences frequent accidents, gridlocks and pollution problems.  It was our worst day there.

6.   No sanctuary from trash

The popular Australian Reptile Park and Wildlife Sanctuary, north of Sydney, was established by Australia’s first naturalist, Eric Worrell and is committed to conservation and saving human lives. I wonder if Worrell is turning in his grave to see his wonderful wildlife attraction (we loved it) pumping out fast food on plastic plates with throw-away cups and napkins and no way to recycle them!  I refused to chuck our plastic in their massive ‘throw everything in here’ bins and carried it around with me the whole day until we found a responsible place to dispose of them back in the city.  This was the last place I thought would have omitted to provide a simple recycling program.

As a tourist, though, it felt like Sydney is making a big public effort to be greener compared to 8 years ago. Their train system is awesome and it's second nature for people to be mindful of water conservation.  In 2008, the City of Sydney became the first carbon neutral local government in Australia and their target includes a 20 per cent reduction of emissions through energy efficiency by 2012.  

All in all, a big thumbs up for Sydney.

MiniMonos Friday Featured Friend – Non-Toxic Kids

A couple of weeks ago we were privileged to write a blog for the Green Moms Carnival, hosted this month by Non-Toxic Kids.  We were so impressed by what Non-Toxic Kids do that we just had to make them this week’s MiniMonos Friday Featured Friend!

Non-Toxic Kids was started by Katy Farber, who is a teacher, freelance writer, and mama from the mountains of Vermont.  Her commitment is to help parents in their quest to find quality information and safe products for their kids.

We love that Non-Toxic Kids not only provides great product research reports, news and information to help us make healthier consumer choices for our kids, families, and our environment, but they give practical information and suggestions for what to buy or avoid.  For example, Katy’s article on BPA Questions Answered is an excellent go-to guide and her Plastic Safety Guide is a must-have for the fridge (I’m printing it out now!).

Non-Toxic Kids recently was awarded a top 100 health blogs and the best children's health blog in the People's Health Blogger Awards Competition by Wellsphere.

We’re looking forward to continue passing on tips and articles for your families from this really great website!

You can also connect with Non-Toxic kids on Facebook and Twitter