Jamie Oliver's Speech at the TED Awards

I'm sure that you've see or heard about Jamie's mission to get children to not only eat better but know more about their food and where it comes from.

I really liked Jamie's idea of having food ambassadors in grocery stores to show people what they can make from local ingredients in their store. I'm sure that we've all been to the grocery store or farmers market and seen something and had no idea what it is let alone what it tastes like. It was a little scary see all those kids trying to identify the foods that he brought in.

The video is about 20 minutes long. So sit back, relax, and enjoy.

Garden Links

Well I've been finishing around the internet these days to find out some good gardening tip and get some info around school gardens.
Here is just a few links that I thought you might be interested in:

Toronto Balconies Bloom - Toronto has acres of untapped growing space on its balconies, and an opportunity for creating a peaceful and pleasurable living environment while at the same time improving the air we breathe. Just because you don't have a backyard doesn't mean you can't be a gardener.

The Locavore's Garden - Here you'll find some great tips on starting and maintaining a food garden.

Growing for Green - A Ward 21 garden blog group that offers various workshops and volunteer opportunities.

Green Neighbours 21 - A grass-roots, action-oriented group of people who live in ward 21 (and beyond) who are working together on solutions to climate change and other environmental problems.

Green Garage - This private company specializes is green roofing, keeps your house cool in the summer and warm in the winter.

Dandelions 101

Today we started the solarization of the school garden. I hope that no one steals or messes with the tarps. The tarps will have to stay on for four weeks and then the planting will begin! But this isn't what I wanted to talk about.

As you may have noticed over the last few weeks the dandelions have started to flower and are likely taking over your yard. I have to be honest and say that I think dandelions (Taraxacum) a quite pretty and when they're done flowering there is nothing more fun than blowing all the white seed pods into the wind, making for some good pictures and a great way to make wishes.

But aside from all of that dandelions are really good for you and a lot of insects too! The yellow flower is an important source of nectar and pollen for early honey production. Dandelion pollen is also great for making bee pollen. If you find that you have allergies in early spring you may want to consider taking local bee pollen to help alleviate some of the symptoms (itchy eyes, runny nose, asthma, etc.). Butterfly larvae use dandelions as a food source and without food for the larvae there would be no butterflies! The numbers of both these insects are decreasing rapidly because of the way we effect their environments.

Okay, so they look pretty and they're good for insects, but I know that you're asking yourself "what do I get out of them?". I'm glad you asked this question. There are many ways you can use dandelion and it has quite a few medicinal properties too. Many naturopaths use dandelion to purify the liver and gallbladder of toxins. The leaves have large amounts of vitamins: A, C, D, and B-complexes. It also contains the following minerals: iron, magnesium, zinc potassium, manganese, copper, choline, calcium, boron, and silicon. I also find the leaves to be quite tasty. The leaves can be juiced or put into a salad and if you are able to pick them before they flower the leaves will have a less bitter taste. The root of the dandelion can be used to make teas and I've recently learned how to make dandelion jelly from the flowers, some people even make dandelion wine. I never knew that there were so many ways that one could prepare this plant for eating!

If you're living somewhere and don't have access to dandelions you should be able to find them at your local health foods store and your local grocer may carry them too. Since you're eating the leaf I would highly recommend that you buy organic to avoid all the unwanted toxins from pesticides. If you're living in Toronto I'll remind you that the city and the TDSB do not spray any chemicals to control weeds or pests, so take a walk to your local park or school field with big reusable bag and start foraging some organically grown delights!

Meatless Mondays

I chose to become vegetarian because I wanted to eat lower on the food chain and reduce my environmental foot-print. Now the Toronto Vegetarian Association is promoting Meatless Mondays. The goal of this campaign is to get all the omnivores out there give up meat for one day a week. It was also featured in The Toronto Star.

Now you may be asking yourself how not eating meat can reduce your impact on the planet. Well it's easy. It takes around 6-9lbs of corn to grow 1lbs on beef, you can take this the next step and think about how much water would be needed too. The commercial farming industry has grown so big that fecal matter from farms is starting to pollute ground water and neighbouring farm crops... ever wonder how spinach can get E Coli?
Here are some interesting facts and figures about meat consumption and the environment:

1)
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) calls the meat industry “one of the most significant contributors to the world’s environmental problems,” including acid rain, deforestation, water and land pollution. According to the FAO, animal agriculture is responsible for 18% of global climate change, more than all forms of transportation.

2)
In 2000 alone, 40 billion chickens – more than six times the human population – were transported using massive amounts of fuel and generating tonnes of pollutants in the process. Going vegetarian would eliminate 1.5 tons of CO2 equivalent gas emissions per person, per year — an even bigger difference than switching from a SUV to a hybrid.

3)
In Canada, it takes seven times more land to feed a non-vegetarian than a vegetarian. With one-third of the world’s cereal harvest and 90 percent of the world’s soy harvest being raised for animal feed, the energy required to grow those crops is a major factor in toxic gas emissions. In the United States and Canada, half of all synthetic fertilizer is used for feed crops.

I'm trying to keep this strictly a green eco-blog, but I want to take this time to mention that even if you are an omnivore there isn't anything wrong with that. I just think that you should take the time to find out as much information as you can about the factory farming system. Chances are the meat on your plate didn't come from a place even remotely resembling what you think of when you think of a farm. If you're going to eat meat you should really be buying from local organic farmer and buy beef that has been grass fed, not grain.


If you're interested on finding out more facts and interesting information on vegetarianism, factory farming, organic farming, GMOs, and the environmental impact they have check out John Robbins book "The Food Revolution".

I guess this big long post makes up for my absence.

Please feel free to leave comments, lets get a dialogue going.

The Story of Food

This will have to be a quick one before I shut everything down for Earth Hour tonight.

This video was sent to me recently and I thought that you might be interested in checking it out.
USC is a Canadian seed/organic/sustainable small scale farming advocacy group with a global focus. Check out their website for more information about who they are and what they do. They have an awesome seed map that I saw at Seed Sunday and am totally ordering.

Okay, I've got to get ready for my electricity free evening. I hope everyone has a family fun filled Earth Hour, I'm playing Catan with friends.

The Numbers

Prices from www.grocerygateway.com

A 12 pack of 330ml water bottles is $3.99. A reusable container can cost anywhere between $1.00-$15.00 depending one the type you buy. Considering that you pay for the water that comes out of your tap the reusable bottle pays for itself after 1-4 cases of water. After that it's nothing but savings!

A 8 x 200ml tetra pack (juice box) of Allen's apple juice costs $2.99 ($0.19/100ml).
The Del Monte "Grab N Go pouch" costs $3.49 for 10 x 200ml ($0.17/100ml).
The 1.2L can of Allen's apple juice costs $1.29 ($0.11/100ml).

Not a huge savings between these options, but the savings will add up over time. You should also consider the waste from each of these options. The 1.2L can is 100% recyclable, where as the only the paper part of the juice box is recyclable (the straw and inner lining go to waste). The Grab N Go pouch is 100% waste, not a single part of it can be put in your recycling bin.

Bottled Water Free Day

Bottle Water Free Day will be March 11th, 2010. I encourage everyone look at the website and read the information they have. Lets see how many people can make the pledge to be free of bottled water on March 11th.
On Monday I will make the challenge to all students at our school to go without bottled water for the whole week. I will also extend this challenge to include juice boxes, terra packs (Kool Aid Jammers), and other on non-reusable drink containers. Not only are non-reusable containers wasteful in the long run they will end up costing you more money!!!

Here is a fun video about Bottled Water Free Day.


Why are you paying for water when it is already hardwired into your house?

Food Imports

These days eating locally has becoming more and more popular. So much so that now Hellmann's (the mayonnaise) has put together a video about Canadian food imports, the economics of eating locally grown food, and how that affects our environment. I know that no one wants to eat root vegetable sandwiches all winter, but we should be making an effort to buy locally grown organic produce whenever possible.
I've included the video and a link to their website, but I'm always weary of big companies jumping on board with the latest trends. I wonder how many of the ingredients Hellmann's uses are locally sourced for each factory?

Kool-Aid Jammers

I was sent this link the other day about a fundraising program for schools. In a nut shell, the school collects Kool-Aid Jammers and Del Monte terra packs to receive 2cents for each one collected. That equals 20 dollars for every thousand collected. TerraCycle then uses the drink pouches to make tote bags, pencil case, etc.

Maybe this is something that our school should do?
I thought about it and realized that this recycling program doesn't really deal with the root of the problem. Our students should be bringing drinks to school in reusable containers. Also, there is little to no nutritional value in any of these drinks. 1 pouch (200ml) contains 24 grams of sugar, that's a little less than 6 teaspoons of sugar mixed with a little water. That's 90 empty calories of sugar water, how do think that would affect your ability to learn? Once all of these drink pouches have been collect they have to be driven to a UPS pick-up location where, I can only assume, they take another drive to a factory... seems like a lot of energy to recycle something that isn't good for so many reasons.

It would be nice to be part of this fundraising campaign, but I don't want to encourage students to consume a product and think that they're doing something good. How about people don't buy them and then we don't have to worry about how to recycle them or worry about taking up space in land fills?

The Food Terminal

I caught wind of this CBC interview playing Sunday morning. Thankfully the CBC posts a lot of their content online so you can listen to it later or share it with other people.

Anita At The Food Terminal
Sunday, Jan. 31, 2010 | 06:00 AM AT
Anita Stewart
For Anita Stewart, LOCAL is where it's at. Local FOOD, that is. But finding FRESH local food at this time of the year can be a challenge. Unless you know where to look. And our culinary columnist DOES know. Anita joined guest host Karen Gordon to lift the lid on something called the Ontario Food Terminal.
Listen (runs 13:33) to their conversation.
And visit Anita's website to get up to date on all manner of food-related topics.