Photo Credit: Nicole Milne

Finding the best local produce in Hawai’i

With the recent push in Hawai’i to move away from our dependence on imported food and return to the smart and self-sufficient model of local food production, farmers’ markets are popping up in parking lots across the state in support of this goal. But not all farmers’ markets operate with local farmers in mind as some vendors buy from bulk-item grocery stores and try to pass off imported produce to island residents at inflated prices. GREEN has sifted through the open-air market hodgepodge and found the real farmers’ markets, the collectives that promote local farmers and the freshest, locally grown produce, bridging the gap between farmer, consumer and table.

Kauai Farmers Markets …

Source: Kevin Whitton, Green Magazine Hawaii

This smoothie was pretty much an accident, but a good one if you ask me. Sunday afternoon I was making some Kale Chips, and as I was tearing off the leaves I kept having small pieces that were to small to make chips out of, so I would just toss them in my blender which was right in front of me, after all was said and done I had a small hand full of kale greens in the bottom of my blender.

After that I decided to make my salad for the next day and had a fuji apple I sliced up to put in the salad, but an entire apple was going to be too much for the salad, so I tossed about a 1/2 – 3/4 of the apple into the blender as well. In addition to the apple I tossed in 1/2 an avocado as well. At this point I thought I had something pretty good going, so I continued adding ingredients to the blender. When all was said and done I had added 4 TBSP of honey, 2 bananas and a cup of almond milk.

The finished smoothie originally only had one banana but the taste of the kale was still very strong, so I added one more to smooth things out a bit, for those of you that like a strong “greens” taste to your smoothie you may consider not adding the extra banana, but even with two bananas the smoothie still had a bit of a “green” taste to it, but not overwhelmingly so. Just perfect in my book.

View the final recipe

Source: Organic Climber / G Living

A high school chemistry teacher has an interesting (and cheesy) open letter to his students in Energy Bulletin. He takes stock of a changing world, and makes some interesting predictions:

“Some of you will grow food. — Probably a lot of you, actually. Even those of you who do other things as your main job. So you should probably start to learn how it’s done. Right now. Because it’s not something you can learn in a year – how to add fertility and prepare the soil, when to plant and harvest, how to store the harvest and save seeds, etc. There’s more to it than you think. And it’s gonna get even trickier when the climate starts its carbonic seizures – droughts, floods, heat, cold, and storms. In no particular pattern. So you better be good.”

People still regard home farming as an elective “green” activity, but might it be a survival skill by the time current teenagers are adults. Should we start retooling home ec classes to start covering agricultural education?

Read this and other GOOD stories …

Source: Siobhan O’Connor, GOOD

(Photo: marilynnm63/Flickr

New review on carnivorous flora suggests that a number of plants previously thought innocent may actually be murderous.

“We may be surrounded by many more murderous plants than we think,” said botanist Mark Chase, Keeper of the Jodrell Laboratory at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in England.

That’s according to a new review on carnivorous plants which suggests that a number of commonplace, garden-variety plants like petunias and potatoes deserve to be classified as meat-eaters just like the Venus flytrap and pitcher plants.

Read more …

Source: Bryan Nelson, MNN – Mother Nature Network

Stop caring about your virtual farm and start caring about real ones.

The sun always shines. Pink cows produce strawberry milk. Soybeans take two days to grow and ripen. Something is not right. It’s too clean. Nothing smells. Coffee bean grows next to squash. Millions of first-time farmers plant new crops every week. And—finally!—people pull out their wallets to support local agriculture. Welcome to Farmville.

Farmville has become a viral internet trend since its launch as a Facebook application this summer. It has now grown to 70 million users, making it the number one application on the social networking site. Players sign up and get fields, infrastructure, and cash. They’re tasked with creating bigger, better, and richer farms. The game is a rehash of the addictive Tamagotchi pet toy of the early 1990s, but instead of feeding a little “animal,” you’re caring for a digital homestead with insatiable livestock and crops that need regular clicking and attention.

Read more …

Source: Peter Smith, GOOD Magazine

photo: J. Novak

By Sara Novak, TreeHugger

Slow Food is the organization that first brought me to sustainable eating. It showed me how to enjoy the experience of eating the best in local foods. I learned that often times local foods are easier on the planet than organic if they are grown sustainably and that my diet was one of the best tools in my plight to reduce my carbon footprint. December 10 marks the first annual Terra Madre Day celebration.

Read more …

Source: TreeHugger.com