Eco-Friendly Baby Shower

The invitation read,

"We love Stephane, and Stephane loves the Earth! So we’re throwing her an eco-friendly shower, where we’ll have reused, recycled and shopped local in honor of Steph’s desire to reduce her family’s carbon footprint. Steph welcomes gently loved or handmade gifts. [She had registered at a local kids consignment store.] Recycled or reusable wrapping is a plus!"

The party was yummy and fun, and you're free to use any of the following ideas to throw your own eco-conscious shindig.

Decorations, Game Prizes and Favors

Rather than buying new, I hunted through local flea market My Favorite Place (5596 Peachtree Industrial Blvd, Chamblee, GA 3034) for invitations and game prizes. I think the favorite prize was a bright red faux leather Bath & Body Works travel duffel. I filled a pair of ceramic pots with thyme and basil bought at a local community garden during the Wylde Center's Plant Sale. Other finds were pottery cannister, ceramic napkin rings, travel jewelry case and ceramic measuring cups.

For centerpieces, I pulled together the following from around the house: 2 old beer growlers + scrap fabric + 6 safety pins + cereal box and recycling bin cardstock. Neighbor Suzanne Conreaux, owner of local florist shop, Blooms of Dunwoody, donated the lovely flower arrangements that pulled the look together.

The kids helped string up our toilet-paper-rolls-cum-garland (thank you Allison from a Glimpse Inside via Pinterest for her tutorial -- note: I skipped painting the insides of the rolls and stapled rather than hot glued the petals together). Think it came out lovely all the same - see below:

Cloth linens, china, glassware and silverware made for a waste-free table setting. For favors, I made egg candles using local eggs for the shells and beeswax from Georgia's Hidden Springs Farm (available at several outdoor farmers markets throughout Atlanta). The labels were printed on the back of a Trader Joe's grocery bag, and I sectioned the egg cartons to create take-home holders.

Games and Menu

I repurposed an old baby photo cube by filling it on 3 sides with cross-stitched baby animals, leaving the fourth side open for a "Blessings for Baby" sign (to be replaced with a baby pic after baby arrives). Guests were asked to write wishes for baby on cards made from sections of cereal boxes and a baby gift bag, sewn back-to-back to conceal the cereal box design (use a 16 gauge needle and hand-knot the end threads to finish).

As we sipped on Cherry Raspberry Ginger Tea Punch and Mango Swiss Chard Smoothies (mango, banana, dates, ice and swiss chard from our deck garden), guests tested their sustainability awareness at Eco Baby Trivia with questions like,

1. Name the children’s book (recently adapted to film) written by Dr. Seuss that includes the quote:  “UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.” (Email me for a copy of the complete list with answers).

Then it was time to mangia!

 Displayed on the backside of a sectioned pasta box, our menu was:

• Minted Sweet Pea Dip (thank you Pamela Salzman - love the way you cook!) with fresh mint from the guest of honor's garden, and watermelon radishes for dipping, from local Crystal Organic Farm at Morningside Farmers Market
• Baba Ghanouj (awesome made from scratch at local Cafe Sababa)
• Black-Eyed Pea Salad (email me for recipe)
• Pasta Primavera with Chicken (email me for recipe)
• Arugula Brie Sandwiches (made with the most delicious organic kalamata olive bread from Magnolia Bakery at Morningside Farmers Market - email me for recipe)

We played a second game of "Name the Baby Fruits and Veggies" by asking guests to label 12 seeds displayed in egg cartons. When we were done playing, we gave the seeds away to spur some home gardening.

Then we moved into the living room for gifts, several of which were handmade and sported reused wrapping paper. Some of the guests really got into the theme, creating newspaper gift bags, regifting their children's old books, and writing messages as inscriptions in books instead of using cards.

Finally it was time for some tea and Carrot Mango Cake with Cream Cheese Icing (email me for recipe). The cake was a hit -- there wasn't a crumb left. Everyone picked out an egg candle favor and we called it a day!

I really enjoyed dreaming up every aspect of this party. It was fun brainstorming ways to solve the puzzle of how to incorporate local eating, patronizing local businesses, reusing and reducing waste into a classy, pretty and delicious shower. I think it came together wonderfully and I'm so glad, because I love my friend dearly, and I wanted this afternoon to make her a lovely memory.

New Expert Found: Organic Farmer

One objective of Retracing My Steps is to find experts to trust, and learn what they know. Here is the first of its kind, "New Expert Found," in which we will learn something new (or rediscover something lost over time, now news to some of us) by delving into the mind of someone who has proven they know what they're talking about.

Sometimes these experts (like in this case) will have to remain nameless due to the perhaps unpopular nature of their truth, but that doesn't mean you can't ask them questions! Please put any questions to our new expert in the comments below and I will do my best to have them answered.

WHO? Hear from a first-generation farmer from Georgia who grows more than 80 varieties of certified organic fruits and vegetables for local farmers markets and restaurants, as well as a CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture).

1. Can you describe why it costs more to grow organic food? Do organic farms require more manual labor and maintenance? If our farm subsidies were paid to organic farmers, how much more competitive would organic food pricing be?

"It costs more partly due to lower yields, and partly due to higher labor requirements especially for weed control. Definitely requires more manual labor especially for weed control. It is hard to quantify a good answer to the subsidy question, my best attempt follows. It should be more about reducing subsidies to grains and increasing subsidies to fresh fruits and vegetables including infrastructure to shelf stabilize fresh foods such as small scale canneries and freezing operations. As an organic farmer I would love to see organics get their fair share of the subsidy pie regardless of crop type, but USDA's food goal for 70 years has been "An abundant, affordable, safe, food supply". Unless USDA begins to rank nutritional content of food as important as the cheapness and abundance we will see little change with subsidies IMO. And I think those who seek the real truth about food realize how dubious "food safety" is in our nation!"

2. Do conventional crops better withstand the things that endanger an organic crop? How do you increase and protect your yield without using the petrochemicals that conventional farmers use?

"I do not believe this to be true, they just have more gee-wiz petrochemical silver bullets in their gun to stave off pest disasters. We succeed by growing a huge diversity of crops on our farm, over 80 currently, so that any failure is largely isolated to one or a few crops not our entire harvest. And also by investing in unheated greenhouse structures (called high tunnels or hoop houses) that allow us extend seasons and protect crops from extreme shifts in weather."

3. Do organic farmers use alternative approaches to watering their crops? For example, do you filter out chlorine and other contaminants from local tap water?

"We use water from a deep well, 400 ft., to irrigate our crops and we filter for particles to keep drip systems from plugging. Our water policy here has been focused on conservation which means a lot of drip irrigation is in use. We are proud of the fact that we have reduced our water consumption by 75% by switching to drip and mulch sytem from an early point in our farm's growth!"

4. Do companies that patent genetically modified seeds encroach upon your ability to farm organically?

"Indirectly very much so yes. The genes they have released on the globe are slowly destroying 'foundation' species from which all current crops were selected. Many times in human history these species were relied upon to rejuvenate agriculture when new diseases popped up. We could start from scratch so to speak and develop new hybrids with resistance to whatever the newest problem was. It is basically extinction, they [foundation species] can't be brought back."

5. In his keynote speech at Georgia Organics' 2009 conference, Michael Pollan said, "Can we feed the world organically? Can we feed the world sustainably? Well, the honest answer is:  we don't know because we haven't tried. We have reason to believe we can do it. But, we need to keep in mind we’re not feeding the world the way we’re growing food now. There are a billion hungry people in the world, even with this system that is spewing grain. Half the food we’re [growing] is being fed to animals or to our cars. Twenty-five percent of food grown in this country is wasted. So there’s plenty of slack. And if we reorganized our diet, there’s no question that we could feed the world sustainably. As I said, if we can get enough people on the land."

As an organic farmer, what do you say to the proponents of our current agribusiness model who claim that conventional farming methods-- which rely on genetically modified seeds, paired with petrochemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides -- are keeping our nation well fed? Would we be more susceptible to famine if the majority of our food came from organic farms, or do organic farmers have modern methods of ensuring their crop's success?

"What I say is that our nation is not well fed! We have more calories than we need but that is a far cry from well fed. Again I must say that as long as USDA food policy is:  'An abundant, affordable, safe, food supply' with no mention of adequate nutrition we are doomed to get fatter and less healthy as a nation.
     As to famine I would argue that we are driving that bus off the cliff now. Our current industrialized food system is only sustainable with cheap fossil fuels powering it. Every day more people are added to the globe, partially due to the availability of cheap calories thanks to our current food system. What happens to all these people when fossil fuel really starts running out? How affordable and abundant will that food supply be at $8 per gallon gasoline and diesel? $12 per gallon? There is a finite supply of fossil fuel to use, we should be able to see this disaster coming from a mile away!
    I have no doubt that organics can feed the world, just not as it is fed now. It would require many more small farms and farmers to operate them, and way less mega farms. In a lot of ways it would eliminate our unemployment issues! It would also require nations to grow more of their own food, which is as it should be, how did it ever become our responsibility to feed the world by destroying the future of our own soils in the first place?! As Michael said if we can get enough people on the land it would work."

I am so grateful that farmers like this one exist. THANK YOU newfound expert - for answering these questions, and for what you do!

Eating Well, Part Two: Cheap Food Nation

"I pay more for my chickens than I would for store bought, mass-produced ones, but I don't pay too much. The farmer charges me only what it costs him to raise and dress my chickens plus a reasonable profit. He is a farmer who endeavors to operate in an environmentally sound, ethical way. Buying from this farmer, I support a food system that embodies my values---one that provides wholesome food, cares for creation, and provides a living wage to family farmers."
--
Marta Cleaveland, “You Should Pay More for Your Food,” Salt Magazine

At first glance, it seems like quite an achievement that Americans today spend less than 10% of our disposable incomes on food, especially compared to 1933, when spending was at 25%.
During the depression era, U.S. government hatched a relief program to encourage farmers to produce food as cheaply and abundantly as possible. Oil was cheap then, as were the pesticides derived from it, and as the chart above shows, we began to feed our families for less.

Perhaps that system fed our hunger sufficiently to allow us to focus on the specifics of how we have been feeding ourselves, and at what real cost to our long-term health and environment.

For generations, Americans have been offered food -- and consumer goods -- at artificially low prices. A fast food value meal may feed you for less than $5, but it didn’t cost $5. Your tax dollars already paid subsidies to the agricultural conglomerate who produced it, allowing them to remain profitable while selling you that meal at a dirt cheap price.

Even though our receipt totals don’t tally the real cost of our food, which also includes climate change…

“the way we grow, process and transport food uses more fossil fuel and contributes more greenhouse gas to the atmosphere than any other industry (17-34%)…”

and rising healthcare costs…

“Spending on healthcare as a percentage of GDP has risen from 5% in 1960 to 18% today. Of 2 trillion we spend on healthcare, 1.5 trillion is going to treat preventable chronic disease linked to diet.”

- Author Michael Pollan, keynote speaker, Georgia Organics’ 2009 Annual Conference

…we get what we pay for, whether it’s obvious to us or not. In Americans’ case, we pay with our tax money via farm bill subsidies to make processed food cheaper than real, whole foods.

“The real price of fruits and vegetables between 1985 and 2000 increased by nearly 40 percent while the real price of soft drinks (aka liquid corn – [made with high fructose corn syrup]) declined by 23 percent. The reason the least healthful calories in the supermarket are the cheapest is that those are the ones the farm bill encourages farmers to grow.”

“Compared with a bunch of carrots, a package of Twinkies, to take one iconic processed foodlike substance as an example, is a highly complicated, high-tech piece of manufacture, involving no fewer than 39 ingredients, many themselves elaborately manufactured, as well as the packaging and a hefty marketing budget. So how can the supermarket possibly sell a pair of these synthetic cream-filled pseudocakes for less than a bunch of roots?”

- Michael Pollan , “You Are What You Grow,” April 2007, New York Times Magazine

“Nearly 90% of all federal farm payments go to only five favored crops that include corn, wheat, cotton, soybeans, and rice, while fresh fruits, vegetables and organic agriculture receive little.” -- Environmental Working Group (EWG)

Then, many of us gravitate towards these heavily marketed products of industrialized agriculture, perhaps for “great value” or “great taste.”

“Energy-dense foods, many of them nutrient poor, are good tasting, readily available, and cheap...Simply put, as incomes drop and food budgets shrink, food choices shift toward energy-dense refined grains, added sugars and fats.”

– Adam Drewnowski, Director of Center for Obesity Research, University of Washington professor of Epidemiology and Medicine, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Nov. 18, 2008

Sometimes we pay again, to treat the health problems we develop (i.e., obesity/heart disease, type II diabetes, polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), etc., etc.) from our refined-grain, added-sugar, partially-hydrogenated-fat-filled diets .

“Americans are becoming more obese while spending a lower share of disposable income on food.” – Adam Drewnowski, “Fat and Sugar: An Economic Analysis”, American Society for Nutritional Sciences Journal of Nutrition, 2003

Good Intentions…

“While initially meant to protect farmers from the vagaries of weather and the fickleness of the free market system, the subsidy system now often rewards big growers over small- and mid-sized producers. Moreover, in recent decades it has tended to consolidate government payments in the hands of a few. Between 2003 and 2005, for example, American taxpayers paid $34.75 billion in crop subsidy benefits to farmers, but only the top one percent of farmers received nearly one-fifth of that amount.”

WATCH: “King Corn” http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/kingcorn/

“EWG data shows that the largest 10% of farms receive almost 70% of total farm payments. Often, the large plantation scale operations use the increased capitol to outbid smaller family farmers for land.”

READ THE TRANSCRIPT: Farming Out Billions of Dollars, CBS Miami I-Team http://miami.cbslocal.com/2008/07/14/i-team-farming-out-billions-of-dollars/

“The [farm subsidy] payments are very concentrated in the hands of a narrow slice of agriculture. And it's important to remember that two-thirds of the farmers in this country are not on the programs at all.” - Ken Cook, President, Environmental Working Group (EWG), July 2007 NPR Interview

LISTEN: Groups Push for End to Crop Subsidies, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12309276&ps=rs

Real Food Revolution
Baby, who loves you? The owner of a huge industrialized farming operation, or a fourth-generation farmer who appreciates your patronage in helping sustain his family business? The system needs changing, and I’ll write a future post about political involvement, but in the meantime, we can vote with our dollar, and support food systems that are good for our families and our future. How about…

1. We choose to pay more for real, whole foods, grown sustainably without synthetic chemicals. We frequent local farmer’s markets, co-ops and CSAs for affordable alternatives to supermarket natural food chains.
2. Whenever possible, we buy from a local provider to keep responsible family farms in business, to reduce cross-country transport emissions and to ensure that our produce, meats and dairy are truly organic, free-range, and grass-fed.
3. We make sure we know what is in our food. We read ingredients or ask about them (“What kind of sweetener is in your sweet tea?”).
4. We make home-cooked meals a priority. We learn how to make quick fix meals from scratch, as well as stretch one cooking stint into several meals (check out Food Network’s Robin Miller’s Quick Fix Meals). We substitute real ingredients for the processed ones in a favorite recipe.
5. When we eat out, we pay a little more at locally-based eateries that make their food from scratch with fresh, whole ingredients. Look for a future post on local scrumptious meals for less than $10-$15.

Take inspiration from Georgia Organics’ 2010 conference keynote speaker, Slow Food non-profit organization founder Carlo Petrini of Piedmont, Italy. Petrini founded Slow Food in 1989 to “counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat. We consider ourselves co-producers, because by being informed about our food production and making choices in support of good, clean and fair food, we become a part of the process.”

The time, energy and money we spend to eat well is worth our families’ health and future.

Eating Well, Part One: Local and Organic Rules

“You pay now or you pay later.” Mary Ann Salas said this, years before the organic debate reached the national stage. Not as renowned as some of the experts below, Mary Ann was nonetheless a luminary amongst all who knew her. She was my mother’s sister and best friend, my Godmother, and my husband’s boss and mentor; and she was dying of breast cancer. I write these “Eating Well” segments in her honor.

Mary Ann was saying what is now more widely acknowledged: the true price of conventionally farmed food is our health and well-being. If you don’t need convincing, skip to the “To Market, To Market” portion below to get hooked into your local, organic community, and start eating well!

What is Organic?

What exactly is the difference between “organic” and “conventional”? Check out this sidebar from Go Organic! for Earth Day. and this one-page rundown from the Center for American Progress: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/09/organic_green.html

Need a selfish reason to eat locally-grown organic? Here are 5:

1. Pesticides are designed to kill living organisms. You are a living organism. The nonprofit Environmental Working Group (EWG) warns, “every year, new research is published demonstrating the toxicity [to our nervous and hormone systems; as well as carcinogenic effects] of pesticides…often at doses previously declared ‘safe’ by the pesticide industry and our government.”
2. You want healthy children. Your unborn child, your newborn infant, your tiny toddler, with rapidly developing and immature systems, cannot metabolize and filter out toxic chemicals like an adult can, making our young the most vulnerable to pesticides’ physical damages. Note: the placenta does not protect the baby from toxins.
3. Antibiotic-resistant bugs (like MRSA) scare you. Animals raised in “factory farm” operations where they are packed together, fed unnatural grain-heavy diets and given synthetic growth hormones to increase their milk production, are uniformly given antibiotics to prevent the disease these conditions encourage. As the World Health Organization (WHO) has decried for more than a decade, this widespread use of antibiotics causes the rise of new antibiotic-resistant microbes that can infect humans. http://www.who.int/whr/1996/media_centre/press_release/en/index4.html
4. You want the nutrients you think you’re getting when you bite into something. Whether we’re talking antioxidants and vitamins in our vegetables and fruits, or Omega-3’s and minerals in our dairy and meat (http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=100755362&m=100754237), though trade organizations on both sides are still paying for research to argue the issue, the U.S. government ultimately concedes that organic food is more nutrient-rich than conventionally farmed alternatives (see the next point for why). (http://www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/pubs/faq/BuyOrganicFoodsB.shtml#BuyB7).
5. Organic tastes better for scientifically-proven reasons. As recently published in the Journal of HortScience, U.S. conventional produce tastes worse and contains up to 40% less minerals than in our grandparents’ day. Why? Veggies bred to increase crop yield and vegetable size have high carbohydrate content, rather than increased phytochemicals (which give the plant its taste and nutrition). Also, chemically altered and non-rotated crops are produced and harvested faster than ever, which results in veggies that have had less time to absorb nutrients from photosynthesis or the mineral-depleted soil. http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1880145,00.html?imw=Y

Seeing the interconnection amongst all life and ecosystems on the planet? Motivated to create a better future for the next generation? Then you may appreciate these ideological reasons to buy organic, local food:

1. You support fair and reasonable compensation for the farmer who grows your food, and can interview him directly to assure yourself that his farming practices are safe and conscientious.
2. You eat whatever is locally growing to reduce the fossil fuel typically consumed when farmers: a. heat greenhouses to grow veggies out of season and b. ship food to you from another part of the world where it is in season. The Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture (www.cuesa.org) in San Francisco reports that the average American meal travels about 1500 miles to get from farm to plate, putting almost 10 kcal fossil fuel energy into our food system for every 1 kcal of energy we derive as food.
3. You vote with your dollar against, and eliminate the demand for cloned, genetically-modified, gassed or irradiated food designed to withstand long-distance transport well.
4. You protect the long-term health of worldwide climate, air, water, soil and wildlife that are hurt by pesticides, and by CO2 emissions from shipping.
5. You uphold the community that preserves the animal breeds, heirloom fruits and vegetables, handcrafted wine and beer, and other artisanal products, which generations of Americans have cultivated.
6. You require humane animal management of livestock that promotes animals’ well-being and allows them to engage in their natural behaviors.

To Market, To Market

If not for the pesticide factor, purely eating locally is the way to go for the reasons outlined above. Also, we will happily welcome the day when our tax dollars subsidize our local, organic farms rather than industrialized conglomerates of farms – thus making local, organic produce as affordable as conventional. (Part Two of Eating Well will delve into the U.S.’s “Cheap Food Policy”).

In the meanwhile, what to buy, and where to buy it?
Here are two great resources for understanding the USDA’s labeling of organic/natural foods. It gets a little tricky (‘gotta love those marketers), but these sites help you decipher the labels:
a. Navigating Food Labels (see inset by scrolling down): http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90914182#90910901
b. Consumer Reports' GreenerChoices Eco-labels: http://www.greenerchoices.org/eco-labels/

If you’re not ready to switch to all organic, at least avoid what EWG defines as “The Dirty Dozen” – the 12 fruits and vegetables you should always buy organic due to their high pesticide content. http://foodnews.org/methodology.php. The most recent dirty dozen lists peaches, apples, bell peppers, celery, nectarines, strawberries, cherries, kale, lettuce, imported grapes, carrots and pears.

When my father buys conventional, he uses citrus-based Veggie Wash to scrub away pesticide residue. A good protective measure, and vinegar will do the trick too.

Wanting to dive into the local, organic food movement?

1. Become a member of a local organic or slow food organization. For example, for us Atlanta folks, Georgia Organics (http://www.georgiaorganics.org/) produces an annual local food guide, online directory to farms and restaurants, periodic newsletters, and now, best of all, I can follow them on Twitter where their postings help connect me to the day-to-day local organic food scene in Georgia. Also, check out Slow Food USA for a chapter near you: http://www.slowfoodusa.org/.
2. Join a CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture). You pay for a share in a local farm, sometimes also helping work the farm, and you usually go to a designated pick-up spot weekly to get a box of whatever is in season. Find one here: http://www.localharvest.org/csa/
3. Shop or join a Co-op: http://www.coopdirectory.org/index.htm.
4. Go to Farmer’s Markets. These are always fun to explore because more than fruits and vegetables, you may also find organic, locally grown flowers, eggs, milk, honey, baby food, and personal care products. Go here for full farmer's market listings:

http://www.localharvest.org/farmers-markets/

http://www.georgiaorganics.org/OrganicDirectory.aspx.

Throughout the year, we supplement our CSA boxes with trips to Your Dekalb Farmers Market, which is a standing indoor warehouse-esque international market, with a very complete organic selection (though not all local). http://www.dekalbfarmersmarket.com/

As we walk through the front doors, we pass their mission statement etched into the front of the building: “We declare the world is designed to work. We are responsible for what does not work. We make the difference. No matter how technologically advanced we become, we cannot escape our fundamental relationships with food and each other.” Yes, I agree. That is why to be well, we must eat well.