EWG's guide to safer cell phone use

With the World Health Organization announcing this week that there is a  possible link between cell phone use and cancer you might want to check out Environmental Working Group's guide to safer cell phone use. EWG also lists the best and worst cell phones and has a database that lets you check you own phone to see how it rates.

Another bread recipe for busy people

This is a great bread recipe for busy people because you can let the dough sit in the fridge for a few days, punching it down every 12 hours or so. Try mixing it up at bedtime and baking it the next evening. Also, you can fiddle with the types of flour...try half whole white and half whole grain (or whole wheat)

Everyday bread:

1 t yeast

1 t sugar

1 1/3 c warm water

2 t oil

1 t salt

3 3/4 c flour (divided)

In a large bowl combine the sugar and water, stir, then sprinkle over the yeast (let bubble away for about 10 min). In a separate bowl combine the salt and 3 cups of the flour. When the yeast is ready add the flour to the yeast mixture along with the oil and mix.

Add more of the flour until you can't mix anymore and then turn onto a lightly floured surface and knead in the rest of the flour. Place in a lightly greased bowl, cover with a plate or in a grocery bag and put it in the fridge until you have time to deal with it (8-12 hours).

When you’re ready to bake:

Remove dough fridge, punch it down and shape into a loaf (think Italian loaf shape). Place on a parchment-lined baking sheet and let rise for about 1-1 ½ hours. Bake at 500 for 9 minutes and then turn the heat down to 350 for another 25-30 minutes.

Five-minute bread

This simple bread recipe comes from the book "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day" by Jeff Hertzberg & Zoe Francois. The book is a great guide to fitting homemade bread into busy lives.

Basic bread
(these quantities can be cut in half for a half batch)

3 cups lukewarm water
1 ½ tablespoons regular yeast
1 to 1 ½ tablespoons coarse salt (the recipe calls for 1 ½ but I have cut it back
6 ½ cups whole white or white flour (one cup can be whole wheat or multigrain)


• Warm the water slightly (to a little warmer than body temperature). Add the yeast and salt to the water. Give it a stir and add the flour, mixing until it is completely incorporated. You’ll end up with a wet, shaggy dough.

• Scrape it into a plastic, food grade container with a lid and let it sit on the counter for a couple of hours. By this time it’s ready to use but the dough will be easier to work with once it has been refrigerated for a while.

• You can either bake the bread on a pizza stone (recommended for best results) or on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet.

• Sprinkle an un-sided cookie sheet with cornmeal (so it will slide easily onto the pizza stone).

• To make your bread, sprinkle the surface of the dough with flour, and pull up and cut off a grapefruit-sized clump of dough. Shape it into to a ball by gently stretching the surface of the dough around to the bottom on all four sides, rotating the ball a quarter turn as you go. (You can add a little more flour as needed during this, so the dough doesn’t stick to your hands). It should take less than a minute to shape.

• Set the ball on the cornmeal-covered cookie sheet and let it sit for 40 minutes (You can cover it at this point, but it isn’t necessary).

• Twenty minutes before baking preheat the oven to 450 with the pizza stone placed on the middle rack.

• When you’re ready to bake the dough, dust the top lightly with flour and slash it with a serrated knife (only a surface cut).

• Slide the dough onto the pizza stone (if using) or place the cookie sheet in the oven. On a lower rack place a baking pan filled with a cup of hot water. (This creates steam that helps a nice crust form).

• Bake for 30 minutes and cool on a rack.

A loaf of bread shouldn't be immortal

I have always thought that making your own bread is the kitchen equivalent of living off-grid. Not only does it feel like the ultimate in self sufficiency, there is great satisfaction in creating something so fundamental with our own hands. And few things are more delicious or comforting than a slice of still-warm bread spread with a bit of butter. If you need convincing to give it a try there are other reasons to consider making your own bread, especially if you eat it a lot.

You may have noticed that much regular grocery store bread can sit on the counter a very long time without a hint of mould. You might also have noticed that the ingredient list for bought bread is a lot longer than the traditional water, flour, yeast and salt. A variety of engineered sugars and preservatives have turned your average loaf of bread into an immortal foodstuff. Even the wholesome-looking loaves at in-store bakeries can be packed full of a dozen or more additives.

Bread should be a very nutritional food. After all, stone ground flour has a substantial protein content, B vitamins and lots of fibre. But unless your bread says 100% whole grain chances are it’s made from refined white flour that nutritionally isn’t much different, or better, than white sugar.

Independent bakeries usually have healthier bread, especially if they bake from scratch with stone ground flour (look for the Speerville Flour Mill sign or ask if they use Speerville flour, or another stone ground product).

I dislike processed foods loaded with additives and rarely get to independent bakeries so make a lot of bread. It’s one of those things that, once you’re in the habit doesn’t seem like a big deal. But I know for most the idea of making your own bread can be as daunting as it is appealing.

Making bread the traditional way, that is. Happily I recently came across a method for making homemade bread that is as simple as baking cookies. It’s from the book titled “Artisan bread in five minutes a day”, a practical, easy-to-follow guide to making traditional loaves in a non-traditional way: no proofing the yeast, no kneading, no punching down. While some if the tasks of traditional bread making are gratifying in their own way, you need time to take pleasure in the process.

This five-minute method is simple: Mix up the dough (yeast, salt, flour and water), leave it in the fridge for up to 10 days. To make your bread, clip off a grapefruit-sized clump of dough, shape it into to a ball, sit it on a parchment-lined baking sheet for 40 minutes then bake it for about half an hour. There are many variations but the principle of simplicity is always the same.

If making homemade bread is on your bucket list, or if you’d simply like to be more self sufficient, search out this book, or visit my blog for the basic recipe and method. (www.bridgetsgreenliving.blogspot.com)

Treat water like a precious resource (because it is!)

When I was in grade six my teacher asked who in the class left the water running while brushing their teeth. I can’t recall my answer but I do remember that the idea of wasting water was quite a revelation. That was in the late 1970’s. Thirty some years later a considerable number of Canadians continue to view clean water as a bottomless resource (and leave the tap running while they brush their teeth).

Canadians in general take our abundance of clean water for granted and it’s that laissez-faire attitude that puts this precious resource most at risk. Although we hold seven percent off the world’s renewable freshwater (and some 20 percent of fresh water overall) this resource is threatened every day. Climate change is impacting our fresh water stores as glaciers melt and weather patterns change. Industry uses vast amounts of fresh water and often pollutes rivers and groundwater. Many scientists, those who understand best the real threat of water scarcity, believe the government is doing little to protect our fresh water from pollution, overuse and bulk exporting.

Then there is your average Canadian who uses the resource with abandon. The average Canadian's water usage is 125,000 litres of water per person per year and New Brunswickers on average use 152,000 litres. (The average European uses 73,000 litres.)

Are you curious where you net out for water use? There are a couple of online tools that help you calculate your water footprint, highlight the real water hogs in your household and provide tips on how to reduce your usage.

Environment Canada has an online calculator that takes about three minutes to complete. You click through questions ranging from how many washes you do a week to whether or not you water your lawn. The final tally shows your usage alongside your provincial average and the national average. www.on.ec.gc.ca/reseau/watercalculator

If you want to see real-time where you use the most water and how changes to your daily habits can impact your overall score visit http://goblue.zerofootprint.net/. This simple tool helps measure your water use in the yard, the kitchen, laundry, and in the bathroom, and recalculates on the fly so you can see what a difference changing to low flow toilets or shortening your showers can make to your annual consumption.

We can all cut our household water use, simply by making small changes in our everyday life:

• Take shorter showers (5 min or less).

• Don’t leave the tap running while you brush your teeth.

• Install low flow shower heads and faucet aerators, which can cut your sink and shower water usage nearly in half.

• Choose water efficient appliances like front-loading washing machines and low flow toilets.

• Keep a jug of drinking water in the fridge rather than letting your tap run to get cold water.

• Let Mother Nature wash your car and water your lawn. Or, to water your gardens or lawn set up a rain barrel to collect rainwater. (Hardware stores carry the necessary supplies.) If you do water with a sprinkler, remember that oscillating sprinklers lose as much as 50% of what they disperse through evaporation.

Make sure water conservation crosses your mind when you shower, flush and turn on the garden hose this summer.

LUSH henna hair dye...today I test

A good friend with the most gorgeous hair has been telling me about LUSH, an earthy company that makes natural henna hair dye. I bought a couple of bocks when I was last in Montreal (you can buy it online too) and have set aside the morning to give it a try.

This is what it looks like:

I have a lot of grey and after reading up on some of the possible effects of henna on grey ("...the grey bits will sparkle bright red amongst the darker hairs.") I decided to be a little less caviler and do a strand test on a lock of hair than can be hidden away if there is too much sparkle.

Your greenwashing guide

In this season of spring cleaning a posting on green washing is timely. Although green washing isn’t an eco-friendly sort of cleaning. It's a wool-over-your-eyes sort of marketing intended to dupe consumers with eco-friendly intentions into buying green-sounding products and services.

Green washing is when companies deliberately mislead consumers about their environmental practices or the environmental benefits of a product or service. These claims make companies and products more appealing to consumers who are trying to make better choices. The term was coined by Terra Choice, an environmental marketing company that for the past few years has published a report about the state of “green” product marketing in Canada.

According to Terra Choice there were 73% more “green” products on the market in 2010 than there were in 2009. This is great news since companies are responding to increased consumer demand for more eco-friendly products and services. But it also means that it is more challenging than ever to separate the good from the not so good. To help consumers find their way among the “green” sounding products available today Terra Choice publishes “The sins of green washing”, a guide of sorts that points out what to beware of when you’re scouting eco-friendly products.

Below are two of the more common of the seven “sins” of green washing identified by Terra Choice:

The Sin of no proof - This is when products make claims that are not substantiated or supported by credible third-party certification. Product labels aren’t regulated so companies can pretty much claim what they want. Credible certification programs are the only way to back up these claims.

The Sin of Vagueness - The best example of this is when a product (usually a personal care product) claims to be all natural. Many toxic compounds are natural but certainly not “green” including the examples given by Terra Choice like arsenic, uranium, mercury, and formaldehyde. In this case consumers and companies have very different definitions of “all natural”.

Here are some tips to help you make more informed decisions when you’re looking to buy eco-friendly products and services:

Rely on legitimate eco certification labels. The EcoLogo symbol is a trusted and recognized certification program for everything from cleaning products to paint. Green Seal is another. If a product doesn’t back up its claim of being eco-friendly, environmentally-friendly, green, or earth-friendly then there is a good chance they’re simply riding the green wave of popularity. You’re better off choosing a product that’s certified.

For food, the packaging must state “Certified organic” to be truly organic. Any other use of the word organic is meaningless. The term “organic” is also meaningless outside of the food and botanicals spheres.

Certified organic botanicals in personal care products are great but don’t lose sight of how safe the other ingredients are (or aren’t).

For more information on green washing and credible certification standards and labels visit http://www.sinsofgreenwashing.org/

Recipes that help you eat well and waste less

Mixed fruit smoothie

Smoothies are great for brown bananas and other fruit about to go over the edge...

Peel bananas, peel and slice apples, pears and other fruit that you don't think you'll get to in time and pop them in the freezer. Instead of going to waste the frozen fruit will make a great addition to a morning smoothie.

4 parts fruit (frozen and/or fresh)
One part yogurt
Juice of 1/2 a lemon or  4 T of any other fruit juice

Whirr in a food processor for 30 seconds to one minute. Enjoy.

Minestrone soup
One of the best ways to use up leftover bits of fresh and frozen veggies is to toss them all in a soup. You can adjust the consistency to your liking by using more or less broth.

2 T olive oil
2 onions, diced
1 stalk celery, minced
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 carrot, diced
2-4 cups of other chopped veggies (zucchini, peppers, anything left in the fridge)
6-8 cups good broth (veg or chicken, can use water in a pinch)
1 can whole or diced tomatoes (large or small)
handful or two of greens (spinach, kale, swiss chard)
1 1/2 cups cooked beans (white or chick peas)
1/2 cup dry pasta
1 t each of oregano and thyme
sea salt and pepper to taste

Over medium heat saute onion and garlic for a few minutes then add celery & carrot. Cover and cook for another 10 minutes, stirring frequently.
Add other veg along with the broth, tomatoes, beans, herbs and firmer greens if using (kale). Simmer for 10-15 minutes, until the veggies seem soft.

Bring soup to a gentle boil and add 1/2 cup dry pasta. Stir and cook until the pasta is tender.

Add softer greens if using (chopped spinach or chard). Add fresh parsley and/or basil if you have them on hand.

Season with salt and pepper.

Serve wtih fresh parmesan grated over.

You can use a diced potato in lieu of the pasta if you prefer. Just toss it in with your carrot. Add more herbs if you preefer a stronger flavour. This tastes much better the next day.

Are you throwing out good food?

Have you ever stopped to tally the amount of food that gets wasted in your household? I think it’s time to take notice. A study released last fall by the Value Chain Management Centre found that about 40 percent of all food produced in Canada goes to waste.

Although the waste occurs all along the farm-to-table route, more than half of the food waste occurs in the home. This is the food that goes bad in the fridge before eaten, the leftovers that sit in the fridge until they go bad and the uneaten food on your plate that gets scraped into the trash or compost. It’s estimated that half of all salad, a third of all bread, a quarter of all fruit and a fifth of all vegetables are thrown away uneaten.

You can build a stark picture of the economic waste at the household level. What may not be so clear is that there is also a significant environmental impact to all of this waste.

More food than is actually required is grown and shipped to be processed. (Think of the fertilizer, water and machinery required to grow food that goes in the trash.) There is the energy used to cook food that doesn’t get eaten, plus transportation and packaging. And finally, when food is put in a landfill rather than composted it produces methane, the most toxic of all greenhouse gasses.

About one-fifth of the food that gets thrown away in homes is food scraps like cores, peels and bones, but the rest is perfectly edible food. According to Statistics Canada, in 2007 more than six million tones of solid food went to waste between retail stores and homes. That’s about 600 pounds per family. (Another 2.8 billion litres of liquids went to waste, like milk, juice, pop, coffee, tea).

Meanwhile we’re all aware of the severe food shortages people in other parts of the world are enduring. Globally we actually produce enough food to feed the world, but food waste is a complicated problem.

While you can’t do much to reduce food waste that occurs between farms and retail stores, you can make an impact in your own home. With grocery chains announcing that prices will rise five to seven percent by the end of the year, you might have more incentive too. Here are some tips.

Don’t buy more than you need. 2- for-1 deals and bulk sizes of perishable foods are only a deal if it all gets eaten.

Don’t cook more than you need for a given meal, unless you plan to use the leftovers quickly. And when you do have leftovers use them up.

Watch your portion sizes so good food doesn’t get left on the plate.

Remember you can freeze fruit that’s about to spoil and use it for smoothies. Yogurt can be frozen then used for baking.

Compost uneaten food. Don’t put it in the trash.

Use Earth Day to kick-off some greener, healthier habits



 Spring is a busy time of year for anyone who is eco-minded. That’s when all of the “green” celebrations occur. World Water Day was March 22, Earth Hour was March 26 and now Earth Day is coming up on April 22.

Although it’s technically one day I prefer to stretch Earth Day into a week-long celebration full of fun ways to live better. It’s like Lent for the eco-minded.

If you’d like to mark the day, or the week, and are in search of suggestions the list below should be enough to get you started.

You can approach it like a meal plan (plastic-free Monday, litter-less lunch on Tuesday…), try to do it all, or pick something from the list to do all week long.

Pack a litter-less lunch that includes nothing that will end up in the trash. Avoid all packaged food and instead make your lunch from scratch and pack it in reusable containers or bags.

Go a day without buying, acquiring or using plastic. A plastic-free February challenge was started in the U.S. this year but it’s never too late to give it a try, even for a day. It’ll remind you of how much plastic you have in your life, and how many plastic items are just an unnecessary waste of fossil fuel.

Celebrate Earth Hour again. Choose an evening to turn out the lights for an hour, either between 8:30 and 9:30, or start earlier if you have young children. Chat, play a board game or read by candlelight.

Plan a 100 mile meal. Remember eggs, meat, fish and dairy are all produced locally, and some root vegetables at grocery stores were grown in Atlantic Canada. Speerville Flour Mill whole white flour is made from wheat that is grown and milled in New Brunswick. Honey and maple syrup are produced locally too. From that list of options you should be able to plan a meal with food that is, at the very least, grown or produced in Atlantic Canada.


Enjoy a meatless meal. The environmental impact of meat production (we’re talking mostly the large factory farms) is so extensive that the Union of Concerned Scientists suggests that the best thing you can do for the environment is to eat less meat.

Go without bottled water (or any sort of packaged beverage) and drink tap water instead.

Substitute a homemade version of something that you always buy. For Earth Hour this year I made homemade graham crackers to use for s’mores. Try making your own salad dressing or tortillas.

Unplug the dryer and hang your clothes to dry. It’s spring, use the clothesline. Drape newly-washed bedding over the railing of your deck if you don’t have a line.

Plan a screen-free day meaning no TV, no computer, no handheld electronic games. Play outside instead and visit http://www.takemeoutside.ca/ to learn more about why getting outside more often is important to our health and happiness.

However you choose to celebrate, consider Earth Day a spring kick-off to some greener, healthier habits.