Happy Valentine’s everyone! I did my Valentine’s date last weekend with my sweetheart and it was spectacular. In fact I had so much fun that I didn’t feel like blogging much this week. Just wanted to sit on the couch with my honey and snuggle. Oh well!

We went out for an early dinner and ate one of our favorites… sushi! We had a sushi place in Phoenix that we considered “our place” and had not had much luck finding a place like that in Columbus but I think we finally did. We got a sushi boat for two, salad, miso soup (which I picked the tofu out of), and mochi ice cream. All was delicious! After dinner we went exploring in Polaris mall and ended up getting a couples massage at an Acupressure place. Then we went to a theater and saw Chronicle. My husband got to pick but luckily we have the same taste in movies. It was really good and action packed. After the movie we both noticed how close we were to Powell and there is a Jeni’s Ice Cream in Powell so well, yeah we had to go out for ice cream… again. It was so nice to spend so much time together, just the two of us!!

This week I got my annual delivery of heritage seeds from Seed Saver’s Exchange. W got a lettuce mixture, Dragon carrots, Tennis Ball lettuce, Scarlet Globe radishes, Five Color Silverbeet swiss chard, Kale, and Red Butterhead Lettuce. This year we plan to grow our own salad bar and not grow any tomatoes, like last year. We had way too many!

I have been pinning up a storm on my Pinterest Gardening Board. I also have some good gardening posts from the past if you are interested: Getting Kids Excited About Gardening, Urban Gardening for City Farmgirls, Garden Tool Sets and Gear for Children. I am excited for spring and for gardening!

Other cool links from the blogosphere:

Think Twice Before You Buy Hershey’s Kisses for Your Valentine by Diane at Big Green Purse. She shows how being selective with what chocolate we buy can help stop forced child labor. Amen!

Since I have been cooking with cast iron so much I needed this article about how to properly season your pots and pans. Great info!

I also liked this article from a fitness blogger who took on the subject of bladder challenges after childbirth. I had my own issues after birthing three, 9-10 pound babies and then I ran across a doctor who told me that Kegels were the worst exercise you could do to tighten this region and that they actually made the issue worse! This article and interview with a biomechanical scientist says the exact same thing. Instead of kegels we should be doing squats and trying to firm up our bums and thereby our pelvic floor. All I have to say is that after almost a year of squats in the gym, I am a big time believer.

Along those same lines a good book I have been hearing about is Lose Your Mummy Tummy. It discusses the fact that the abdominal muscles separate to allow for a growing uterus when we get pregnant. For some 98% of women that split never closes up totally and you get a bulging tummy long after you have your baby/babies. The author advises that sit ups and crunches make it worse  and she highlights some exercises that will actually help. After 3 babies and 2 abdominal surgeries (not c-sections) I am wary it could help me but I will give it a shot. ;)

Chobani Champions Yogurt Giveaway!!

Lastly I have a giveaway. Chobani yogurt recently sent me some of their Chobani Champions flavors for kids to try and they were big hit here. I have mentioned before that I am something of a Chobani addict. They are my favorite brand of Greek yogurt, or any yogurt for that matter. I sometimes feel guilty that I don’t buy the organic Greek yogurt that is out there but the flavor is just not as good so I hesitate to spend $2.00 a cup on something I don’t absolutely love. Chobani is pricey enough at $1.29 a cup and often times I am stingy with it for this reason. My kids loved having their own Chobani.

The only thing I didn’t like was the fact that the yogurt they sent is non-fat. I refuse to buy the non-fat Chobani varieties because I don’t believe our food should be non-fat. I refuse to jump on the low-fat bandwagon. If the folks at Chobani read this please provide full fat and organic options in the future please!

So… I have a case of the new flavors (3 packs Orange Vanilla/ 3 packs Vanilla Choc Chunk)  to give away to two readers. To enter just leave a comment and tell me if you eat yogurt in your house and what your favorites are. For an extra entry “Like” the Chobani Champions Facebook page and leave a second comment telling me you did so. Good luck and have an awesome weekend and Valentine’s Day!!

This month the Green Moms Carnival is tackling love for the month of February but not in the usual sense. Participants were asked to share the green books and authors they love. At first I was rather anxious because I thought it was just what books we love in general and that would be, for me, like picking which grains of sand I like best. I go to the library 2-3 times a week. I have 20-30 books checked out at any given time. I always have my nose in book and have since I was a teen. Books are like oxygen to me and I love quite a few of them. But green books is a much more manageable a task to identify. Or is it?

Once I got to thinking about all the memoirs, local food books, homesteading guides, green energy/green living books, eco crafts, nature enjoyment books, etc. that I have read, I started thinking maybe it wasn’t so easy to pick just a few to highlight here. With some heavy sighs I will try to isolate some of those grains of sand…

I must start off with some of the very first green books I ever read.

The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It by John Seymour – This was one of the first books I ever read about self sufficiency and sustainability. I had grand dreams of having a farm and growing/raising my own food. At the time my husband was so not interested in any of it. Now… 7ish years later he is the one devouring this book and others like it and insisting we take steps to become more self sufficient and responsible for our own food. This book is a true classic.

This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader - It was this book that made me see that having a big farm was not necessarily the only route to go. The author, Joan Dye Gussow, is an inspiration and she lives on a suburban lot where she grows lots of her own food. As a big city lover I found this book very inspirational.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life - This book by Barbara Kingsolver was another important book in my own journey. Like me, she moved from the Southwest to the East in search of greener pastures, literally. It was her family’s mission to buy food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it.

EcoVillage at Ithaca: Pioneering a Sustainable Culture  – A wonderful look inside an eco village, and planning for sustainable futures as a group and community.

Some Newer Books I Love…

Girl Hunter by Georgia Pellegrini – A book that made me change my mind about something I never thought I would change my mind about. A book that most likely will have inspired me to buy my first hunting license very soon. I almost hesitate to classify it as a green book but it is very much about local food!

The Dirty Life - It follows along on the real life adventure of Kristin Kimball who was a writer working in NYC. She met a farmer while on assignment, married him, and they started an ambitious “whole diet” CSA.

Frugal Luxuries by Tracey McBride - Choosing simplicity is green and that is what this book is about. The idea behind the book is to show us how being frugal and simple in our taste is really an art form. It has nothing to do with being miserly or being a cheapskate and everything to do with living well, even luxuriously, on less. LOVE this book!

Big Green Purse by Diane MacEachern – I think this is such an important book because it shows how we can create world change by being mindful about how we shop and what we buy. It doesn’t encourage senseless spending or rampant consumerism but it does address the fact that everyone is still going to spend money on the products that matter to them. If money talks then we need to be aware of what our money is saying. It is all about using the power of our purses to affect change. Read my review here: Shopping for World Change. Diane is also one of the most amazing, intelligent, and inspiring ladies you could ever meet. I feel honored to have met her last month.

A Mile in Her Boots – Women Who Work in the Wild (multiple authors) - It has essays and stories from park rangers, smokejumpers, field scientists, and other female outdoorswomen.

Fave Authors 

I could really only think of two non-fiction authors that are on my must-buy list… as in it doesn’t matter what the book is about, I must have it. I would of course buy other books by the authors mentioned above but the two below have multiple books on the market and I have them all.

Amanda Soule of Handmade Home, The Creative Family, and The Rhythm of Family. All her books are beautiful and inspirational. The projects inside them are green and resourceful usually and the whole concept behind them is to live in simplicity and with greater mindfulness.

Any book by MaryJane Butters. She is the Martha Stewart of homesteading and farming. My fave’s are MaryJane’s Ideabook, Cookbook, Lifebook : For the Farmgirl in All of Us and MaryJane’s Outpost. I get them out and re-read at least once a year.

What you think? What are your favorite green books/authors?

Studies show that water containing chlorine is hazardous to your health. When chlorine is added to water supplies it mixes with other chemicals in the water and and forms compounds that can trigger free radicals and cause a number of health problems. Many people are concerned about drinking chlorinated water due to these health concerns and they filter their drinking water accordingly or they buy bottled, thinking it is “cleaner”. Yet they overlook one important area of chlorine exposure. The simple truth is that showering/bathing with chlorinated water may be an even bigger concern.

When you shower or wash in chlorinated water the heat from that water opens your pores allowing those chemical compounds to sink into your skin. In addition, breathing in the steaming chlorinated air can affect your lungs and bronchial tubes. Here are just some of the problems that chlorine in your water can cause.

• A higher risk of cancer
• problems with circulation
• lung and breathing problems
• increased asthma attacks
• thyroid problems due to blocked iodine receptors

In addition, to these life threatening problems chlorinated water in your shower or bath can also cause your hair to become rough and brittle and lose color, cause your skin to dry out and flake, and dry out the fluid in your eyes and cause eye irritations. Is it any wonder that our skin is prone to dryness and irritation in the winter, when we are more likely to turn our bathrooms into mini chlorine saunas? No.

While you can avoid drinking chlorinated water by filtering your water via your Brita pitcher, you are probably thinking that there is no way you can avoid that chlorinated water in your bath or shower. However, you couldn’t be more wrong. There are a variety of bath and shower filters on market today that you can use to reduce your risks from chlorinated water.

Benefits Of Chlorine Filters For Showers And Baths

Chlorine filters for showers and baths remove chlorine and other toxins from the water in your shower and bath. The benefits of these filters should be obvious. By filtering the chlorine out, the steam you are inhaling won’t cause irritation and damage to your bronchial tubes or to your lungs. It also means that there won’t be chlorine compounds coming out of your showerhead massager and pounding into your skin and your pores. You are better protected from all the hazards associated with continued chlorine exposure.

In addition, you will be reducing the drying effects of these chemicals on your hair and skin and in the long run end up saving money on all the beauty products you buy to try and mitigate the damage.

You may not be able to prevent the city from adding chlorine to the water supply, but you can help to protect your self from the damage that chlorine causes with a chlorine water filter. Save the chlorine for special occasions like the pool, it has no place in our every day lives.

It’s a wrap! Time for some weekly updates and awesome links. I chose the photo above for this post because I have been channeling my innermost Groovy Green Goddess lately. I have been feeling nothing less than amazing and ethereal lately. My general happiness with every moment of life and my gratitude has skyrocketed. I have no “special” circumstances in my life that make this nirvana easier to understand so I think I am just doing something really right with my diet and health of late. The winter blues that sucked me into a black hole of depression every year for the past 3-4 years… nada. There is not a black cloud in sight. I walk around with a goofy smile all day just so happy to be me and to live the life I do. I cannot say for sure which lifestyle/dietary change has brought this on, there have been many, but here are some of the recent changes I made:

• Paleo Foods – I have gone primal. I eat like a caveman… or uh, a cavewoman rather. No grains, no beans/legumes, no added sugar, and almost no dairy either. I do allow some dairy like my Passion Fruit Chobani, Jeni’s Ice Cream, and shredded Parmesan. All foods (with a few exceptions) are as high quality (organic/grass fed/local/pastured) as I can get my hands on. I went from a high carb, low fat, low to moderate protein diet to a high fat, moderate to high protein, low carb diet. I have more energy than my kids!
• I am eating lots more coconut oil and coconut products. Just today I got a delivery of Coconut Cream Concentrate to make some grain free brownies this weekend. Booyah!
• Eating more naturally sweetened dark chocolate.
• I am supplementing. This is pretty new really since the only kind of supplementing I did before was greens powder in my smoothies. I am taking Vitamin D and making it a mission to eat more eggs from pastured, local chickens. When the local organic delivery service we were using closed we were left without good eggs so I stopped eating them. Recently we found a place really close to our home that sells pastured eggs though. Woot! I am also taking fermented cod liver oil, spirulina, and bile acids (because I have no gall bladder).

As I mentioned in my Valentine’s post I am declaring Buddha Chocolate a new fave around here. I have always adored raw chocolate but since going Paleo late last year I am craving chocolate more than ever. Not the milk chocolate you find at most grocery stores either. I only want super dark chocolate, which is harder to find unless I drive to a health foods store. Not sure why I am experiencing these cravings but I feel comfortable just going with it. Buddha Chocolate sent me some of their offerings to review and I shared them with the husband this week. We both curled up on the couch for a good movie while the kiddies were at school and we noshed on chocolate. Does it get better than that? Nay.

Okay so what makes this chocolate better than what you can get at the grocery checkout? Well, it is raw & organic artisan chocolate made with pure Ecuadorian cacao beans. They sweeten it with raw, humane honey and the total ingredient list is very short with REAL food ingredients. Since the chocolate is not heated over 108 degrees all the enzymes and nutrients are in tact, which makes it a healthy, living food. They are dairy free, soy free, gluten free, and have no added sugar.

I was also blown away by the taste. The two almond butter cups they sent were my fave. A healthy version of the infamous peanut butter cup! The almond butter was creamy and delicious and the chocolate was rich and amazing. One of them (the red) has strawberries and full Goji berries in it. It was my #1 pick. All three chocolates have mesquite in them which gives them a lovely smoky flavor and they all have Pink Himalayan Crystal salt in them too. The salt factor gave them a real wow factor. The chocolate bar was generously sprinkled in the stuff. Insanely delicious!

The packaging is gorgeous and each piece has a Buddha quote on it for a bit of fun. I still have the little quotes on my desk. One was about quality of life and the other was about love. Both timely for Valentine’s Day I think. The owners of Buddha Chocolate are two adorable yoga teachers in New York City so this is a small business worth supporting too. As with most raw chocolate the price is up there but these are luxurious chocolates that are very rich and worth the price as long as they are an occasional luxury. If you love raw chocolate as I do, Buddha Chocolate is a must try. Enjoy!