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Going to the 2011 Natural Living Conference!

I’m branching out and attending the Holistic Moms Network Natural Living Conference this Saturday. I say branching out because I don’t have kids, so this will be an interesting experience.  My friend and holistic parent, Mayim Bialik, is a very active HMN member and she is speaking at the conference. I’m tagging along with her to learn what I can.  I plan on taking it all in and reporting back to you.  I can’t wait for the workshops, the exhibit hall, the keynote speakers and my vegan lunch!  You’ll get the full scoop next week.

New Ideas for Cow Poop!

I know, you’re asking yourself right now, “how many ideas can I come up with for cow poop?”  Let me introduce you to a new product – ECOR – a line of wall boards and panels that can be used for a variety of things.  Your next table or chair even!

ECOR is made from a blend of cellulose sources, one being bovine processed fibers, BPFs.  BPFs are “fibers left over from the anaerobic digestion tanks used to harvest methane from cow manure.  Otherwise a waste product, these and other animal-processed fibers contain lignin and proteins that make them well suited for a variety of bio-based applications.  And, with 2 trillion pounds of manure generated on American farms each year, being creative about what to do with it is a good thing.”  Agreed!

ECOR has a large product catalogue with strong and lightweight options for almost any project.  Here’s a list of some of the great things they can do.

  • - Furniture and furnishings
  • - Kiosks – Lecterns – Partitions (View Animation)
  • - Tradeshow and Point-of-Purchase (POP) displays (View Animation)
  • - Stage sets
  • - Instrument cases: Musical instruments, sound equipment, scientific equipment, etc.
  • - Flight cases & luggage
  • - Packaging & shipping containers
  • - Construction products and building systems
  • - Formwork for concrete and other materials
  • - Wall and roof systems for quick deployment, temporary and permanent buildings
  • - Aerospace applications
  • - Department of Defense container applications
  • - Panelized reusable roadbeds
  • - Miscellaneous industrial applications

This product sounds incredibly innovative.  Just don’t think about the poop part. :)

Avocado Salad with Potato Gallettes

This looks soooooooo good!

A refreshing salad of avocados, tomato and scallions is dressed with a spicy cilantro lime vinaigrette. The potato gallette encloses the avocado salad with a crisp, salty contrast. This recipe comes to us from Donna of Apron Strings.

Serves 6

To make the lime cilantro vinaigrette:

  • 1/4 cup lime juice
  • 1 teaspoon lime zest
  • 2 teaspoons spicy brown mustard
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper sauce
  • 1/2 teaspoon low sodium soy sauce
  • salt and pepper, to taste

To make the chopped avocado salad:

  • 2 Haas avocados, chopped
  • 2 ripe tomatoes, chopped
  • 2 green onions, thinly sliced
  • 1/4 cup cilantro, diced

To make the potato gallettes:

  • 2 russet potatoes, peeled
  • 1 tablespoon butter, melted
  • salt and pepper, to taste

To make the cilantro lime vinaigrette:

Whisk the lime juice, lime zest, mustard, olive oil, cayenne sauce and soy sauce together in a small bowl. Season with salt and pepper to taste and set aside for at least 10 minutes, to allow time for the vinaigrette’s flavors to blend.

Strain the vinaigrette to remove the lime zest.

To make the chopped avocado salad:

Place the chopped avocado, tomato and green onions together in a medium sized bowl. Add the cilantro to the vinaigrette and toss the vinaigrette to thoroughly coat the avocado salad. Taste and adjust seasoning if desired.

To make the potato gallettes:

Slice the potato into paper thin slices, using a mandolin if you have one. Use a 2.5 inch cookie cotter to cut the thin potato slices into even rounds. On a piece of parchment paper, arrange 6 potato slices into a circle. Season with salt and pepper and brush with a little melted butter. Repeat with remaining potato rounds. Wait 5 minutes to allow the butter to bond each circle of potato slices to bond together.

Place a heavy skillet over medium heat. Transfer the potatoes to the skillet by quickly flipping the parchment paper upside down, taking care to ensure the potatoes end up in their circles. Brush the former bottom of the potato stack, which now faces upwards, with a little more melted butter.

Place a small pan on top of the potato gallettes to keep the circles flat during cooking. Cook for about 3-5 minutes, or until the bottom potato slice begins to brown on its edges. Using a spatula, carefully flip each potato gallette and cook another 3-5 minutes more, or until the other side turns golden brown.

Transfer each potato gallette to a bed of paper towels and blot with additional towels. Let cool completely before finishing the dish.

To complete the Avocado Salad with Potato Gallette:

Place 1 potato gallette onto a plate. Place about 1 cup of the chopped salad and top with another potato gallette. Repeat until you are out of gallettes and salad. Enjoy!

Source – Meatless Monday

Pickin’ for Green Home Renovations

Lifetime’s ‘Picker Sisters’ series demonstrates how reusing old junk is an economical and green way to spruce up any home.

Would you ever use a urinal as a planter or a street sign as a headboard? Well, the “Picker Sisters” do just that and more with odds and ends that many people discard or abandon as trash.

This new show on Lifetime features best friends Tanya McQueen and Tracy Hutson as they travel across the U.S. in search of anything and everything they can get their hands to build inventory for their new store. Along the way, they provide tips and tricks for picking items ripe for reuse in your own city.


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Method Debuts New Wave Bottle Made from Plastic Ocean Trash

Method, the company that used green chemistry to turn age-old concepts for making and marketing soap on their head, has come up with another innovation that explodes a long-held idea — that the trash trapped in the North Pacific Gyre is unredeemable.

Working with Envision Plastics in Southern California, Method came up with a model for collecting and upcycling some of the debris that’s swirling in the currents of the gyre, a swath of ocean covering 20 million square kilometers.

By some estimates, the amount of plastic awash in the ocean is twice the size of Texas and in some areas the ratio of plastic to plankton is now 10 parts of plastic to 1 part of plankton, according to Jared Blumenfeld, the head of the EPA in the Pacific Southwest.

“We asked ourselves, ‘What if we could take some of the plastic that’s floating in the North Pacific Gyre and make bottles out of it?,’ ” said Adam Lowry, who founded Method 10 years ago with business partner Eric Ryan. “Well, we did it.”

Read entire story here…

Source: GreenBiz.com
By Leslie Guevarra

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