I Dare You to Eat One Serving

I recently learned about Liz Lovely artisan, organic, vegan cookies. They are made in the Green Mountains of Vermont, by a young couple and their small staff. And while the operation appears small, they are available in some 500 retail locations around the country (check on their site).

The article I read said they had just opened up their first hometown storefront when hurricane Irene powered through a few weeks ago and flooded their store. The article's appeal was to order some cookies just to keep their bakery going while they rebuilt their storefront. Never one to turn down a reason to buy good vegan cookies, I placed an order, which arrived promptly and well packed.

These are bad, bad (meaning good, good) cookies—seriously decadent (meaning delicious). The ingredients are fine (except the use of palm fruit oil)—vegan and mostly organic—but they are loaded with sugar and dark chocolate. (Did I mention they are delicious?) The cookies are large, so a serving size is one-half of a cookie. The sample pack I ordered had four different kinds of their cookies, each having a serving-size calorie count of 170-200 calories—for ONE-HALF of a cookie. And I defy you to eat a half of one of these babies. They are sold in packs of two cookies, meaning you could put down around 800 calories if you eat both—which you probably will. So, caveat emptor.

I won't order more (I don't suffer from sugar deficiency), but I'm happy to see a young couple doing principled work with good ingredients. Nobody could eat these on a regular basis, but for a special treat they'd be hard to beat. (You know you want to try them, so go ahead. You'll be helping them get back on their feet after the flood.)

P.S. Read their inspiring story here.

"How to Change a Lightbulb" by the U.S. Government

The U.S. Government Printing Office just released the official federal guidelines on changing a lightbulb. (Not really, but who would be surprised if they did—and if it looked like this?)

So Much for Royal Values

The general opinion of Prince William has been that he seems fairly thoughtful for a rich young man who's had life handed to him on a gilded platter. But the tide of public opinion has taken a hard shift. His plan to celebrate his brother Harry's recent birthday is to purchase 250 ducks, pheasants, and partridges for a shooting party in Harry's honor. As one commenter on the LondonNet site said, "Why not just toss puppies up in the air and shoot them?"

England has a long history of shooting animals for sport—men and women in tweed, tattersall, and Wellies tromping through the moors and heath blowing birds out of the sky, or chasing foxes on horses with dogs, etc. But buying 250 game birds for the express purpose of slaughtering them? Prince William ought to be ashamed.

Welcome to Amerika

Adam Guerrero teaches high school math in Memphis, TN. But currently his front yard is a crime scene because he has a garden planted there. (The yellow Crime Scene tape looks like it was Photoshopped in -- but his yard is, in fact, the scene of an illegal activity.) He was cited for violating two ordinances: failure to maintain "a clean and sanitary condition free from any accumulation of rubbish or garbage," etc. This in spite of the fact that there is no such rubbish or garbage in the front yard. Bottom line, some neighbors complained which makes Mr. Guerrero a nuisance.

Not only has Mr. Guerrero been growing food ON HIS OWN PROPERTY, he's been using the garden as a teaching tool for several of his high school students who are interested in learning about gardening:

You can go HERE on the Kitchen Gardeners web site to read about this situation. He is due in court on Friday, September 23. There is a petition you can sign in his support, a Facebook page in his support you can join, and the email address of the judge hearing the complaint. (I've done all three.) Please speak out in support of this man's right to grow food in his own front yard.

9-23-11 update: Adam gets to keep his garden—and more!

The Kitchen Gardeners International web site reports that the judge was so impressed with the support from all over the world for Adam that he decided Adam can keep his front-yard garden. Plus, the city is going to make a vacant lot nearby available for him to expand his educational gardening activity. The people have been heard! :-)

What You Need to Know About Chia Seeds

I've been eating chia seeds for a couple of years, having had to order them from exotic distributors. But they have hit the mainstream—I noticed they are now available in bulk at a local market (EarthFare). They supposedly contain the highest amounts of Omega-3 fatty acids of any plant food. Fooducate.com has posted a nice little summary of "what you need to know" about chia seeds.

My two cents: Chia seeds are so small (read TINY) and hard that they will not get broken down by your teeth—you'll swallow them whole, which means they might go all the way through your system without ever being broken down to release their inner goodness. Therefore (and this is true of almost all small seeds like flax, un-hulled hemp, etc.), they should be ground in a coffee-type grinder and then sprinkled in/on your food as a meal or powder. I've worked my way through lots of different coffee bean grinders and currently have two of this model which does a good job. There are so many available that it's hard to know what kind to pick, but I've been happy with the Capresso grinders.

Anyway, read the Fooducate article on chia and incorporate "the little buggers" into your diet to get the fiber and the Omega-3's. (And subscribe to Fooducate's RSS feed. They publish great stuff on food and have iPhone and Android apps that you can use at the grocery store to get the facts on foods you're interested in trying.)