My friend Laura over at Crooked Moon Mama is what I’d like to call a real Green Goddess. She has inspired me in more ways than one, but the latest is drinking our greens. She did a post yesterday about her green smoothies that she makes for her family every morning. Now I am not quite that adventurous yet, but I have tried to start working in some green juice in the morning and surprisingly the girls really like it. I was the kid who literally did not eat anything green until I was late into my teens, so I am very proud when my kids are more adventurous and healthful than I was. I made 2 versions today as the girls asked for seconds, first up was an apple/orange/blood red orange/ and kale juice. Second was carrot/swiss chard and orange juice. Both were tasty, but if you like your juice sweet add an apple to pretty much anything to sweeten it up. This is obviously a healthy way to start the day, but also helps us get through some of our veggie CSA box.
Now on to some other green things. With Earth Day coming up next month I thought I would set myself some green goals to start working towards, and if I put them here there is certainly a better chance I’ll do them. Now I am not putting myself up on some green pedestal, we did purchase the XL vehicle last year (although it will hopefully have a specific purpose at some point) and I am certainly not the greenest person I or you know. That being said many of the small changes I’ve made have been at the encouragement of friends, so here is your encouragement from me:
5 green things I’ve done:
1. Compost – it is so easy to save all of the coffee ground, fruit/veggie clippings from the kitchen, layer them in the compost with yard clippings and I am super excited to put the compost to use later this month when I plant some veggies. If you live in Long Beach it is super easy to get one going. Info here Also I have a counter top compost pail from Crate and Barrel
2. Out with the juice box – although you can recycle juice boxes, they don’t really do that in our kids schools, so I have started sending C with a re-useable container for her drinks at school. Just think of all those juice boxes sitting in the dump somewhere!
3. CSA deliveries – Community Supported Agriculture… we get a veggie box from Tanaka Farms, a fruit box from Farmer Steve and meat deliveries from J&J Ranch. It is pretty cool to have met some of the people who are growing and tending to your food. These are farms/ranches that generally do organic practices and going local is the latest trend!
4. Wash and re-use ziploc bags – now I do feel a bit like my Grandmother doing this one, but it really is easy to wash and dry them to re-use. We use a lot to store our above mentioned veggies, so this helps on cost savings too.
5. Organic & Natural cleaners – easy!
My list of 5 goals to become more green:
1. More consistently use cloth napkins.
2. Figure out the front sprinkler system to get it on an every other day or less cycle (this may be more of a Greg goal – I hope he buys in to this one).
3. Put the compost to use in a back yard garden – my attempt last year was not at all successful, hoping for a better crop this year!
4. Use the bike – this needs to be more of a weekend goal, but we can bike to dance class, the market, friends houses etc on Saturdays and Sundays – this should be easy with the dryer weather coming.
5. Figure out ways to make, buy local or handmade gifts. This is one I think will be fun, but takes some preparation, certainly not as easy as running to Target on the way to a party, but more thoughtful.
Yay for the Stratfords going green! I can’t wait to try your green drinks. I, myself, would need to purchase a blender… Here’s another one: nix plastic straws! And get glass tupperware instead of plastic tupperware or plastic ziplocks. I love my glass tupperware! And I can even heat things in it… (i never heat things in plastic)…
I can vouch for the green drinks, they were tasty, no dirt after taste!
Are there any alternative to plastic staws? I think they save about 12 spills a week around our house.
Thanks jordy – unfortunately with a 2 & a 4 year old I think the straws need to stay, the alternative plastic sippy cups which we try to minimize. I’ve seen glass straws but don’t know if this is realistic for a little kid. I am interested in the glass tupperware – does it keep your veggies crisp? I have some ceramic ones I use for leftovers and re-heating, but for veggies I just assumed it wouldn’t keep them as long.
Love it!!! I find it really easy to do the cloth napkin thing when your cloth napkins are super cute!
We’ve been using them for 2+ years now. I don’t iron them though…that’s too much!
Everyone asks me about them, so look for a post on my blog soon.
Greg and Miranda – We use glass straws for our girls from Dharma Glass Company. They are a small investment (only $22 for a set of 4), come with their own easy cleaning brush plus they have a lifetime guarantee. I know glass sounds scary at first, but they’re tempered like pyrex and you’d really have to try to break one.
Oh and thanks for the sweet “green” comments…but this green mama has yet to get a good compost going…we had rabbits to eat everything up!!
Thanks for the tip on the straws, I’m looking at them now, contemplating shorty straw or regular.