Blame it on the greens!

Remember the food ole days of E. coli outbreaks where the culprit was poorly cooked hamburger meat? Nowadays, it's factory farmed vegetables that are blamed for the fast food E.coli epidemics. The latest in a growing list of factory vegetable recalls is green onions. Taco Bell in the US has pulled all green onions from their mise en place after initial test showed that they may have been the carrier of the E. coli that made dozens of people sick last week. They not completely sure it's the green onions. It could be the lettuce or the grey-brown factory pablum they're passing off as ground beef in those tacos.

I say fast food needs to be recalled. All of it.

(Update: The green onions were linked to a farm in California and a distribution facility where the tainted spinach in September also went through. Is anyone surprised?)
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Onto a more festive topic, Nanaimo has launched a Holiday Zero Waste campaign through it's website. There are tips for greener alternatives for gift giving and decorating. I

I am part of that growing population that is disgusted and concerned about the growing consumer orgy that Christmas has become. For kids, there's a really cool website to teach you how to be a Consumer Hero and resist the ongoing trend of BUY, BUY, BUY. It was started by a group of elementary school kids in Ottawa. Very cool.

Adbusters is running a Buy Nothing Christmas campaign. We are getting pretty close to that. We're doing more of a Buy Less, Buy Local Christmas. DH and I have made a pact to not buy any Christmas decorations. Not a hard sell in this house since we plan to be scaling up a mountain or frozen waterfall over the X'mas holidays. We're probably only buying gifts for our niece and nephews and those may end up being gifts that we make for them. Everyone else gets a small little gift of homemade goodies made from locally grown foods. Some of that canning and preserving in the end of summer is going towards gifts.

For my holiday baking, I'm going as 100 mile diet as possible. Right now I'm dehydrating a bunch of locally grown fruit for Christmas cake. I also have local hazelnuts from Chemainus. Most of my baking is using organic spelt flour from Armstrong, BC. I know, it's not quite within the 100 miles radius but it was milled down in Cowichan Bay. I'm also reveling in the local veggies, especially carrots and parsnips that are going into spiced cakes. Local honey, eggs and dairy will also be used. Quite franky, since I've been buying and cooking with mostly locally grown foods, it's only natural to do it this way.

Happy Eating!

Jen