Mark Bittman

New York Times food columnist and author Mark Bittman is interviewed in this NPR radio show. In it he discusses his move to a healthier diet and how it impacts not only his health but also the planet.

Mark Bittman found himself at a cross roads, his health was suffering from extra weight and after consulting with his doctor he was told to shift to a more vegetable based diet. At the same time he also became more aware that our meat and process food centric diet was not only unhealthy but that we needed to change our views of food. After reading the UN report “Livestock’s Long Shadow” Mark discovered that 18% of all greenhouse gases are produced by industrial livestock production, therefore almost a fifth of all greenhouse gases are produced by eating meat, Second only to energy production.

With this knowledge he made positive changes that not only helped him loose weight and become healthier but also help reduce his carbon footprint.

Listen to the interview here
Amazon page for Mark’s Cookbook: Food Matters a Guide to Conscious Eating

Credit: Daniel Morrison via Flickr

The Assiniboine Park Conservatory will be holding their “Seedy Saturday” event coming up on March 7th. The event is free to attend, there will be workshops, a speaker series, tool swap and more. A friend who attended last year was able to take part in their seed exchange. Here’s a direct quote on how it works:

You just have to bring couple packets of seeds and drop them on a communal table.  This gives you the right to pick up packets of seeds that others have brought, many of which are quite interesting and new.

Might be a good way to get some rare or hard to find vegetables for your garden! Below is the press release from the Friends of the Assiniboine Park Conservatory:

The majority of Winnipeg residents may not consider March the beginning of
gardening season, but the Assiniboine Park Conservatory is working to change
that through their Seedy Saturday event.  This year the Assiniboine Park
Conservatory is hosting their annual Seedy Saturday on March 7 from 10-3.  Free to the public, this event includes a speaker series, a seed and tool swap,
hands-on workshops and over 15 vendors representing various garden and food based organizations.  Gardeners will not be the only ones interested in this event, assures Bonnie Tulloch from the Assiniboine Park Conservatory, “We try and include all aspects of gardening, incorporating everything from birdwatching to local food.  People can come here for more than just seeds; they can get locally made soaps, dried herbs, teas, honey, botanically inspired clothing, as well as information and resources on various sustainability
issues.”

Seedy Saturdays have been popping up all over the country since the late
1980’s. The Assiniboine Park Conservatory started participating in the Seedy
Saturday movement back in 2001.  Many of the early Seedy Saturdays were
designed to create a space where seed savers could exchange heritage seeds with one another at no cost.  The purpose was to encourage more people to grow and save heritage seed varieties, so as to prevent them from going extinct.  Today, Seedy Saturdays often include a wider agenda that includes related sustainability issues.

The organizers of this year’s Seedy Saturday recommend getting there early if
you are planning on swapping seeds because gardeners are always eager to access new and exciting varieties.   The speaker series begins at 11 am with certified Horticultural Therapist Millie Richard, who will share her experience in this new and exciting field.  Julie Fine from Growing up Organics will discuss how her organization is increasing children’s access to organic food at 12 pm. At 1 pm David Hanson from Sage Garden Herbs and Karen Pearce from Assiniboine Park Conservatory will present on designing small scale ornamental and edible gardens.   The day will end with a hands-on seed starting workshop with the education staff at Assiniboine Park Conservatory.

www.friendsconservatory.com

Farewell My Subaru

Farewell my Subaru: An Epic Adventure in Local Living, is a book that gives the reader the sense that change is possible, no matter the obstacle. And the reader could not have picked a better guide for this journey. Doug Fine is the kind of person that naturally finds the positive in the most difficult circumstances. You can feel his enthusiasm for his low impact lifestyle jump off the page. This energy empowers the reader, after a while you start thinking that installing a solar panel is something you could do too.

It’s a green living tale for those of us that aren’t Al Gore. Doug Fine strikes the reader as down to earth as they come, in his own words:

I started in Long Island, New York, growing up on concrete and Domino’s pizza. I didn’t see a real tomato probably until I was 18. I thought supermarket orange baseballs were what tomatoes were. I didn’t understand why anyone would eat solid pieces of wax. But I always wanted to camp out in the backyard, and knew that there was such a thing as an ecosystem.

Here’s the publisher’s summary:

In Farewell, My Subaru, Doug Fine vows to grow as much of his own food as he can, use only the sun to power his ‘Net surfing and sub-woofer, and consume little to no fossil fuel for an entire year — never mind that he’d never raised so much as a chicken or a bean. Or that he had no mechanical or electrician skills. Or that coyotes and mountain lions would like to treat his Funky Butte Ranch like a buffet line.

Beginning with a near-Biblical flood that makes Doug’s ranch in New Mexico resemble Noah’s Arc, and ending with a hilarious farewell to his beloved Subaru, Fine struggles at every turn with the contradictions and challenges of going green as his shopping list changes overnight from things like, “wasabi” and “pineapple juice” to “shotgun shells” and “goat syringes” (for the mischievous Pans he found on Craigslist).

Including practical resources for regular Americans who want to live greener and funny sidebars with facts you never imagined about the clean, local life, Farewell, My Surbaru is both a hilarious romp and an inspiring call to action; it’s a book for the reluctant environmentalist, the armchair traveler, and anyone who has ever wondered: do I really need that four dollar frappuccino from Kenya?

Farewell My Subaru is available Amazon, or if you prefer to lower your cabon footprint order from Eco-Libris, a portion of the book sale goes towards planting new trees.

Official webpage page for the book
Video promoting the book (Doug is great in this)
Eco-Libris link for purchase
Treehugger.com interviews Doug Fine