Archive: Eco-Bites
A Day at Polyface Farm
6:45 a.m. Saturday: The clouds have yet to lift off the mountains, but as I peer out the window of the dining room at the Hampton Inn in Staunton, Va. (pronounced without the "u"), the skies of the Shenandoah Valley, are promising plenty of sun. I'm not the only one awake at this fine hour on a Saturday morning; the hotel's breakfast area is packed with people who, like me, are headed just eight miles down a bunch of narrow country roads to the little town of Swoope (pronounced Swope) about 150 miles from Washington, D.C. A view of the Polyface fields, dotted with portable chicken and turkey shelters. (Kim O'Donnel) By seven, my farmer-friend and I pile into her car and join the caravan of cars snaking their way through the valley until we arrived on a dirt road called Pure Meadows Lane, home to Polyface Farm, where we...
By Kim ODonnel | July 14, 2008; 12:14 PM ET | Comments (7)
'Emeril Green' Comes Out of the Oven
A few months ago in this space, we told you about a casting call for Emeril Green, celeb chef Emeril Lagasse's new show on Planet Green, the 24/7 eco-channel at Discovery. Now the show is ready for prime time, and it's coming out of the oven Monday, July 14, at 8 p.m. Emeril has cooked up a batch of 80 shows, each of which profiles a "cooking-challenged" home cook from the Washington area, including a handful of Mighty Appetite blog readers. Deepening the Washington connection is the Whole Foods in Fair Lakes, Va., where the entire first season has been taped, according to producer Marie Ostrosky. Typically, the show will air Monday through Friday at 8 p.m., but the debut will be a "mini-marathon running six shows back-to-back, " says Ostrosky. "Then it's two shows a night for the first two weeks." Two MA readers are part of Monday's lineup,...
By Kim ODonnel | July 11, 2008; 08:55 AM ET | Comments (11)
Eco-Bite: Mapping Your Produce; SalmonAid
Until recently, both Bon Appetit and its Conde Nast sibling, Gourmet, shared online space via epicurious.com, perhaps the most well-known recipe portal on the Web. Epicurious.com's peak-season map on my Apple laptop. (Kim O'Donnel) Now they are distinctive Web entities (well, sort of) with their own domains, (bonappetit.com and gourmet.com), look and feel, offering up both re-purposed magazine content and online-exclusive multimedia wizardry. This does not mean epicurious.com has disappeared into the Internet sunset; in fact, it seems to be developing a personality of its own. You can find both BA and Gourmet from epicurious, and what I discovered along the way is one of the coolest Web food features I've seen in a long time. Someone rather brilliant at epicurious.com has produced a Peak-Season Map, an amazing interactive tool that provides month-by-month produce updates for all 50 states. Here's how it works: You click on a month, then you...
By Kim ODonnel | May 29, 2008; 07:45 AM ET | Comments (6)
Eco-Vino
I'll be honest: Despite the greening of my pantry, I've been slow to embrace organic wine. After a less than tasty experience a few years ago with a bottle of organic red from a California winery that shall remain nameless, I've been swearing off the stuff because it either hasn't been up to snuff or is just too darned expensive. Mendocino Wine Company's Paul Dolan. A recent run-in with a 2007 bottle of "Sustainable White" by Parducci Winery has me revisiting the eco-vino issue and I'll tell you why: The wine is delicious and under 10 bucks a bottle. A blend of Sauvignon Blanc, Muscat Canelli, Tokai and Viognier, "Sustainable White" and its sibling, "2005 Sustainable Red" are part of a year-long partnership with Whole Foods, where it's sold exclusively between $8 and $9.99 through December. To be clear, the "Sustainable" sibs are not certified organic (95 percent organic grapes...
By Kim ODonnel | May 13, 2008; 09:24 AM ET | Comments (12)
Eco-Bite: Nibbles From the Green Eating Blogosphere
This week's Green Plate Special is a selection of eco-minded food blogs, which are cropping up like wild mint. Here's what's catching my eye (and whetting my appetite): "Eat your greens" is the mantra of Envirovore, a new addition to the rapidly expanding EcoGeek family. Written by a trio of women in Montana, the blog is a collection of newsy items from around the country, with a politics-policy bent. To wit: yesteday's post is all about the dairy industry's pursuit of a more sustainable image. Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group is the force behind Mulch, a daily report of what's going on in the world of agriculture and food policy and what the media -- and media makers -- are saying, spinning, spewing. A must-read for Farm Bill drama followers. Underwater sustainability is the primary focus of Sea Notes, blog home for Monterey Bay Aquarium, but author...
By Kim ODonnel | May 7, 2008; 09:55 AM ET | Comments (4)
A Month's Worth of Eco-Bites
As promised, I've compiled the daily eco-bites that appeared throughout April for handy viewing and reference. Going forward, my goal is to offer a weekly eco-bite that will be posted seperately so it's available on the "Eco-Bites" archive page. Please offer your own or send me green nibbles via e-mail at kim.odonnel@washingtonpost.com Greenery at Pura Vida Spa in Costa Rica. (Kim O'Donnel) * Wanna know what's fresh and in season in your neck of the woods? Check out the Eat Local tool developed by the National Resources Defense Council, with biweekly updates for all 50 states (sorry, D.C. is excluded). * What's it like to eat a diet of foods grown and raised within 150 miles of your home? Follow the experiences of 15 people from around the country who are eating a diet that is 80 percent local for an entire year on Locavore Nation, a blogging project of...
By Kim ODonnel | May 5, 2008; 03:19 PM ET | Comments (4)
How Green Are You?
Happy Earth Day, folks. No matter what you think about the 38th annual eco-fest, here are some indisputable statistics about the state of our planet: The Earth is getting hotter and hotter The oceans are getting emptier and emptier. The rainforests are getting smaller and smaller. Americans are getting fatter and fatter. (Kim O'Donnel) I'm not suggesting that all of these phenomena are related, but it's dawning on me more and more just how incredibly fragile our ecosystem is, how quickly these changes happened and how much they impact our lives. Whether or not we like it, believe it or can afford it, our daily choices have a measurable environmental impact, which cuts across all geographic, political, religious, racial and socioeconomic lines. It's tied to how we clean our house, our clothes and our bodies, the cars we drive and how we get to work and school, how we travel,...
By Kim ODonnel | April 22, 2008; 09:55 AM ET | Comments (15)
Navigating the Meat Label Maze
Label Confusion: Kim, I love the little links you have been providing lately to shopping guides -- sustainable fish and dirty fruits/vegetables etc. I am trying to find a definitive guide to meat labeling and guidance on when to go organic or when natural will do. I've noticed that finding red meat labeled as organic is increasingly hard even though the chicken is everywhere. I am also concerned about making sure the animals have been treated as well as possible during their upbringing and during slaughter. Any ideas? I agree, it's tricky business trying to navigate your way through the sea of labels. Here's the situation in a nutshell: When you see a certified organic label on meat or poultry, that means that the farm is following the standards of the USDA's National Organic Program, which include the following rules: The livestock is raised without antibiotics or synthetic hormones (although...
By Kim ODonnel | April 9, 2008; 07:53 AM ET | Comments (20)
Milk: A Play in Several Acts
Enter stage left: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration declares in late 1993 that synthetic growth hormones are safe to use on cows for increased milk production. They go by a few names: rBST (recombinant bovine somatotropin), rBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone) and Posilac, the preferred name over at Agro bio-tech giant Monsanto. Moo. (Kim O'Donnel) After the FDA approval, Monsanto introduces Posilac to the food supply in 1994. In the late 1990s, rBGH is banned in Canada and the European Union. Fall 2002: Enter the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which gives the all-clear for national organic standards and a USDA-approved logo on certified organic products. Meanwhile, retail sales of organic milk grow steadily, with sales of organic milk and cream edging over $1 billion in 2005, up 25 percent from 2004 [PDF]. Between 1998 and 2005, the average annual growth rate of retail sales of all organic food...
By Kim ODonnel | April 3, 2008; 10:24 AM ET | Comments (24)
