I served this up as is, but you could serve it over brown rice or quinoa or with a side of crusty bread for a more substantial meal.

Last night I made our first meal from the CSA produce. The kids, who are not fans of chard, were over and a friend’s house, and since rainbow chard looked like it wasn’t going to last long in the fridge anyway, I decided to use it first. It was already looking a wee bit wilted, so using it raw seemed unappetizing. I decided to wilt it the rest of the way and serve it up with lentils. If you like fair, a little goat’s cheese or feta would be great mixed in here, but it’s not necessary.

Wilted Rainbow Chard and Lentils
serves 2-4

• 1/2 cup dried green lentils, cooked in boiling water until soft but not mushy, drained, and rinsed with cold water
• 1 big bunch chard, washed and coarsely chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 cup or so sliced, quartered red onion
• 1 pint grape tomatoes
• 1 tsp coconut oil (or other oil of your choice)
• 1/4 cup white wine
• juice of 1 lemon

1. Heat the oil in a large skillet or wok. Add garlic, and stir fry for a few seconds until fragrant. Add red onion and stir fry for another minute or so.
2. Add tomatoes, and cook, stirring frequently, just until tomatoes start to split.
3. Add wine, and once it starts to boil, add in chard, tossing with hot veggies and wine until just wilted.
4. Stir in lentils and lemon juice, and salt and pepper to taste.

A male rose-breasted grosbeak visits our new bird feeder, bringing a bit of wonder into our small suburban yard.

I just finished reading The Nature Principle by Richard Louv, a follow up to his book, The Last Child in the Woods. Louv writes about our growing disconnect with the natural world and how restoring that connection benefits our health, both physical and mental, our families, and our communities. I find his work inspirational and very, very accurate. We humans forget that we are part of nature to our own detriment.

A few years ago, I accompanied my son on a Cub Scout campout when my husband was too ill to go. I hadn’t been camping in decades, and my own connection with the woods had long ago been discarded. I didn’t really want to do. I went into the weekend anxious, expecting to be uncomfortable, cold, and maybe even a little bit bored. I was uncomfortable (the scouts popped my air bed using it as a trampoline), and I was cold despite sleeping in two layers, gloves, and a ski cap, but I was never even a little bored. Rather, I was more relaxed and more genuinely myself than I had been in a decade. I learned that weekend that I NEED to camp, and it surprised me.

We humans tend to forget that we didn’t evolve in air-conditioned homes, lounging on upholstered furniture and watching tv. We are wired for woodlands and prairies, rivers and lakes, mountains and deserts. Our minds and bodies need to hear birdsong, feel breezes, and smell the rich soil of the forest floor. I experienced this connection on that weekend away, and since then I’ve chased the nature high in a number of ways, including hiking in the mountains of upstate New York, trekking through the dunes of Cape Cod, and bird watching in the jungles of Costa Rica.

The central point of The Nature Principle, though, is that I should not need to travel to the ends of the world to get my fix. I can find nature in my daily life here in suburban New Jersey if I take the time to look. The recent addition of bird feeders to our yard is a good start, and the whole family is working to learn to identify the daily visitors to our home. We even have several species nesting in our landscaping, and I have taken to getting my daily dose of birdsong by doing my morning reading out on my porch, sitting in the hammock beneath the house wrens’ nests.

Beyond my own yard, my community has many opportunities to get in touch with nature. There is a huge park with more than 4 miles of running paths a short walk from my home, and it is home to a growing herd of deer, foxes, and coyotes as well as smaller mammals, frogs, turtles, snakes and birds. I usually run there with my headphones on for my training, but taking them off for some of my runs would allow me to have a deeper experience there. There is a county park nearby as well, where the paths aren’t paved and the woods are just slightly more wild. This might be a good spot to take my children on weekly hikes.

Even further out, there is a network of county, state, and national parks that would offer a variety of places to hike, fish, and explore. Perhaps I can make a point of taking my family on a monthly trip to explore a new place, hike a trail they’ve never seen before, and fish a spot they’ve never seen (yes, we fish, but it’s all catch and release). Maybe I’ll even invite other families in our community to join us, forming a little family nature club much like the ones described in the book. Anyone interested in joining in?

Despite this previous negative experience, I remained hopeful that we would someday find a more professional farm that ran a CSA program with pickups close enough to home to work. Then a few months ago my local health food store, Dean’s, announced that they were partnering with Honey Brook Organic Farm to provide CSA pickup and their store. This was an announcement I had been hoping to hear for years, so I jumped on it, sending in an application that very day.

Today I picked up my first box, and it is beautiful:

In there we have rainbow chard, spinach, kale, red leaf lettuce, garlic scapes, leeks, and Hakurei turnips. I’m not sure what those last ones are about yet, but the rest I’ve worked with before and look forward to playing with this week. As I cook these goodies up this week, I’ll share the results here! So far I’m thinking about a lentil soup with the turnips and leeks, a raw salad with the chard, and a pesto with the scapes.

To find a CSA near you, visit Local Harvest.

I have been a very bad blogger in the last several months. I hope you will forgive me. I should have been sharing what I’ve been up to since my last post in March, but I didn’t. I have no excuse. I’m sorry.

In March, my cousin invited me to run another half marathon in May. That left me just 2 months to take my injured knee and get it fit for a grueling 13.1 miles. Most of my free time went to training. I have not brewed a single batch of beer. I have eaten too much take out. My home is a mess. But last Sunday, I ran the Long Branch Half Marathon with a finish time of 2:05:21, which is not too bad considering that I am still dealing with lingering knee issues. Here I am just a quarter-mile from the finish line, waving to my family through the pain:

Boy, did I hurt at this point. But a little knee pain wasn’t going to stop me from going that last .25 miles.

My next project here will be to chronicle training for my next half-marathon. I have registered to run the Rock N Roll Philadelphia Half Marathon on September 16—–with Thing 1. She had asked me last year after I finished the race if she could run it this year with me. In my post-race delirium I may have said not only yes, but also agreed to run it in tutus. I don’t remember this, but tutus it shall be.

Thing 1 will be turning 12 shortly, which is the minimum age to participate in that event. She has been running, with a maximum distance of 3 miles, but there is a long way between 3 and 13. I don’t know if she fully understands what she has asked to do. We will be training together over the summer and eating a vegan diet for athletes. Training started this week, with a trip to the running store for new kicks and a two 1-mile runs. This weekend, we’ll start the long-runs at 3 miles and just build them up gradually from there.

I am considering having her write her thoughts on the process as we go along and post them here, turning this from a one-woman barely updated blog into a mother-daughter deal. Does that sound good to you guys and gals?

They had it. The price was only $8.50, which sent up a red flag rather than making me whip out my wallet. How can a store produce a quality product and pay its workers a fair wage for a garment that is priced so low? The answer is simple–they can’t, so they don’t. They produce practically disposable trendy garments at rock bottom prices by stealing designs and treating their workers poorly, as summed up nicely here:

SHEI Magazine » Ethical or Cheap? The Problem with Forever 21 and Modern Shopping.

But here is where my problem lies.  Anthropologie and Diane von Furstenberg are way over my budget, as they are for many college students.  And even if I had endless money, I wouldn’t necessarily abandon cheap knockoffs for high-end designers, as many of the companies suing Forever 21 have themselves violated numerous labor standards and intellectual property rights.  Furthermore, while buying from green and fair trade companies is certainly the ideal, it’s often not the most convenient option, price or location-wise (many times these companies are solely online, adding in shipping costs, sizing uncertainties, etc.).  And although I am a diehard vintage fan myself, I understand that thrift stores are hit-or-miss for many people (only one item of everything means it either fits or it doesn’t).

So what is an ethical consumer to do? I find myself wondering if buying a cheap knock off made by workers who are virtually slaves any worse than buying a department store brand manufactured by workers who are virtually slaves. It’s not like there is a clear good option, where good design meets sweatshop-free manufacture at a price a mere mortal can afford. Fair Trade is not a concept that has been adopted by the fashion industry. The best I can do is make mindful purchases of items that will at least last, avoiding swiftly ending trends, and trying to do with quality over quantity.

That is a hard for an 11-year old girl to absorb, when what she really wants is to wear the same trendy skirt that many of her friends are wearing this month. We talked about it a little and left the store without the skirt, but her desire to dress like her friends, most of whom aren’t bothered by the ethical impact of their wardrobes, is still strong. I remember being that age and having the desire to fit in through fashion–when I was in sixth grade I begged and pleaded with my parents for a stupidly expensive pair of Guess jeans that looked like they had been attacked by piranha just so that I would fit in. I feel guilty for not letting her get her $8.50 skirt, and I know that I would feel a different guilty if I had let her get it. I guess that the best I can do is ask her to look into it and make her own decision consciously and carefully, because in the current fashion market that is the best any of us can do.

Dad was still working with the town decades later when another developer came in to tear down the dead retail hulk that the mall had become and replace it with shiny new Target, Costco, Work Out World and other associated retail uses. Our mall had died slowly over the course of several years due to a variety of things including mismanagement and the failure to find and keep a third anchor as one department store after another filed for bankruptcy, but mainly what killed it was the decline in mall usage in general. Our mall was not the only one in our region to die.

Many of these malls are being be torn down and replaced with a newer retail model, something I call the drive-only village, with a cluster of large box stores placed so far apart that you have to get in your car to go from one to the next. Many others are being given superficial face lifts and interior renovations in the hopes of breathing new life into them. However, as Mother Nature Network points out, these building also present an opportunity for adaptation to newer, perhaps greener, uses:

Well, if a mall hasn’t already closed, it can consider one of the new iterations of the contemporary mall. Communities and city planners have gotten creative, using abandoned mall spaces for schools, government offices, medical clinics, casinos, wedding venues, call centers and churches. And while some malls are being torn down and housing or completely new retail buildings are being built, it is much more economically savvy and green to reuse the existing infrastructures.
via A green revolution at our nations malls | MNN – Mother Nature Network.

One of my recent clients did something like this. He found a dead strip mall which has withered from a vibrant retail center to a mostly empty hulk housing only two small restaurants, a dry cleaners, and the occasional short-term furniture liquidator tenant. He cleaned the whole place up, reworking the parking fields, refacing the entire building, and then rather than finding a bunch of chain stores to lease his space to, he creating a new business to occupy the bulk of it–an indoor amusement center and entertainment/banquet venue. He took this huge indoor space and made it home to carnival rides, laser tag, a go-cart speedway, several restaurants, and a classic seaside arcade. What was once an homage to consumerism is now a place where families can spend an afternoon or evening actively playing together and having fun.

While this is not necessarily a “green” use, the clever reuse of the existing building shows that there is truly hope that all these huge buildings littering our communities can be successfully adapted to non-retail uses. I would love to see the indoor park idea brought to life–in fact I suspect that doing so in a mall on life-support might even boost its viability. If the mall had comfortable and landscaped indoor running paths for me to use, they would be luring me in several times a week rather than several times a year! And who’s to say that I wouldn’t wind up stopping by the Starbucks for a post-run drink or check out the newest in running shoes while I was there?

So when I saw this on Grist, it was a much-needed reminder that even the meanest, greenest new gadget is not nearly as green as using up the stuff I already have:

• Use Up, Wear Out, Make Do: Buy Less in 2012 – Lifestyle – GOOD.

Things which you already own have much less of an environmental impact than new things which are made to replace them, even if the new things have a shiny green pedigree. Buying a green replacement for something you already own that you don’t need to replace isn’t green; it’s wasteful.

Giving my life an occasional makeover by buying lots of new things is therefore not in line with my goals of living with a smaller footprint, but I can still have fun creatively reusing what I already own. For example, last weekend I was inspired to reinvent our living room. Rather that buying new furniture and repainting, we rearranged what we had before making any purchases. The space looks completely different, and the costs, both in terms of cash and environmental impact, were limited to a few house plants.

I don’t plan to forsake ever buying anything new (God forbid!), but taking some time to think about whether something I already own will serve my needs is a good habit to develop. And if I do need or want something new, I will still aim to make better decisions, such as looking for something used, especially for things which do not wear out easily, or buying something made with sustainability and/or longevity in mind. My new watch, for example, is only new to me–when my old watch showed signs that it was wearing out and winding down for good, I purchased an heirloom quality watch from the estate (used) case of a trusted jeweler rather than buying a brand new one. In this case I needed a watch, and I met that need with a used piece that is so well made that I can expect it to outlive me.

Now if only someone would start making heirloom quality shoes!

My Omega J8006 with most of the ingredients for my favorite juice.

Back in November at Dr. Furhman’s Weekend Immersion, I picked up an Omega J8006 masticating juicer. I had wanted to take my juicing to the next level, and replacing my old entry-level Juiceman with a more powerful machine was the step I needed to take, though I was afraid that I would be dropping a rather sizable amount of cash on a fancy dust collector if my enthusiasm for juicing waned. So far, it has not, and I owe it in large part to this magnificent machine.

The Omega J8006 doesn’t just make excellent juice. I have also used it to grind flax seeds and coffee (though not together!), make almond butter, and extrude pasta. This multi-tasker has earned a permanent place on my counter, which encourages me to use it almost daily. My favorite juice at the moment is a mixture of kale (5-6 leaves), ginger (a small hunk), cucumber (4-5″ piece of English cucumber), 1 apple, celery (3-4 stalks), carrots (2), and the juice of half a lemon. I credit this juice in combination with topical coconut oil for clearing up my skin.

Like all machines, this one has its good and bad points, so for those of you shopping for a juicer here’s a breakdown of each:

Pros

• Produces a high volume of juice. Seriously, the ejected pulp is practically dry, so I know I am getting the maximum juice for my produce.
• Easily cleaned. I keep the machine right next to the sink, which makes it easy to dump the dirty parts in a sink of hot suds at the end of my juicing session. The included brush is the perfect size for ensuring that any little bits of food leftover are removed from the screen. I find cleaning this machine to be much easier than cleaning my old Juiceman.
• Fairly quite. Since the machine slowly pulverizes the produce, it lacks that horribly loud grinding sound of other types of juicer.
• Multi-tasks. I love that it makes perfect ground flax-seed in addition to excellent juice.
• Looks good. Just look at it! Isn’t it a sexy thing?
• Telling people you have a masticating machine is always good for a few giggles.

Cons

• Produce must be cut before juicing. There’s no shoving whole apples and carrots into this puppy. To deal with the extra work, I set up a cutting board on the counter right in front of the machine, making the work slightly more streamlined.
• Making pasta is hard because it sticks together as it extrudes. A friend (Hi Chris!) recently suggested that I set up the juicer over a pot of boiling water to prevent this, but I have yet to try it.
• Making almonds into butter takes many passes. First you get almond meal. Then you put the almond meal through again and again and again. Eventually it turns into butter, but it takes a while.
• It can get stuck if overfed, especially with seeds. The machine has a reverse gear to help it get unstuck, and over time I have learned where its tolerances are for various substances, but initially I found it annoying.
• One last thing–it doesn’t do citrus. I don’t really see this as a “con”,  but if all you want is fresh OJ, the Omega J8006 is not your machine.

I would definitely recommend this to anyone who is serious about juicing. The Omega J8006 is worth the expense and can make juicing a simple part of your daily routine for a fraction of what it costs to have someone else juice for you.

I have given up a lot in pursuit of good health. Meat went first, more than 15 years ago. More recently I gave up eggs and dairy (and blue cheese, heaven help me) as I transitioned to an almost completely vegan diet (I cheat with marshmallows and the rare egg and dairy when traveling). I drew the line at gluten, however.

I did try. So many health gurus have been spouting off the benefits of gluten free living that I decided to see what it does for me. Perhaps I was one of those unfortunate souls with a hidden gluten sensitivity! Perhaps it would came me to miraculously drop those last 10 pounds!

I found instead that it made me miserable with no benefit to my health. I did not feel better, but I did feel deprived. It’s not that you can’t have wonderful vegan, gluten-free food, but it takes soooooooooooooo much work for so little reward for someone who doesn’t have a gluten allergy.

It would seem that Doctor Furhman agrees that while gluten is a problem for some, avoiding gluten is not worth the effort for most of us:

Does Going Gluten-Free Equal Fabulously Healthy or Fabulously Foolish? : Disease Proof.

So if you’ve been thinking about giving up gluten, there’s two things you should know:

1. It’s going to be really tough. Gluten hides everywhere. It’s not just in bread and cookies, but also in beer, soups, spices mixtures, and even in envelope glue.

2. If you buy gluten free substitutes for traditional wheat products, it won’t help you lose weight. Often the gluten free version has more calories, as the manufacturer ups the fat and sugar to compensate for the tougher texture.

Despite this, I do include some gluten-free items in my pantry, in part because I came to like them, and in part because I have a friend who cannot eat gluten for genuine medical reasons. I love brown rice pasta. I will make “oatmeal” with quinoa instead of oats. My gluten free-chocolate cupcakes are as good as the wheat version.

But my seitan is all gluten, and my pizza crusts are whole wheat. That’s fine for my system, because I am in the 90% that has no problem with gluten.

As is my usual habit, I am not so much making Resolutions and Setting Goals. There are a few things I want to work on and accomplish in the coming year. They are:

• Learn Spanish. I plan to spend at least one hour a week studying Spanish through Rosetta Stone.
• Improve my photography skills. To do this, I will choose a theme each month to focus on, and then post the best results here.
• Get back to my green schemes. I have drifted away from my ideals the past few months, and it’s time to course correct.
• Train to run my first marathon. This one will take some dedication, as right now I cannot run even 2 miles pain-free. My plan is to spend January and February healing my knee problem, which may be due to IT Band syndrome, and then start training in earnest in March.
• Set up a keg system. I haven’t brewed a batch of beer in months, mainly because I have been too busy for bottling, which can take several hours. Kegging would spare me the need to rinse and sterilize all those bottles, saving tons of time. My plan is to replace the win fridge in the kitchen with an undercounted kegerator to hold two kegs, with taps up on the counter.
• Blog more regularly. I should be able to do one post a week. I’ll aim for Fridays.

What are your goals for the new year?