Tofu Musubi

Adapted from my
Spam Musubi recipe


Picture from Bread without Butter blog
 
INGREDIENTS

Half package of firm tofu
1/4 cup tamari / soy sauce (low sodium is best, if you have)
1/4 cup loosely packed brown sugar
1 1/2 cup cooked sushi rice
2 sheets of roasted seaweed, cut in half


DIRECTIONS

In a small saucepan, begin dissolving sugar into tamari/soy sauce. Remove from heat once sugar is completely integrated.

Slice tofu into 1/4 inch thick pieces and press excess water out using paper towels. Heat up a frying pan on the stove top with one tbsp of vegetable oil. Lightly salt pressed tofu and pan fry over medium heat for 5 minutes each side, or until just starting to brown.

Add generous amount of the sauce to the tofu and cook off for another 2-3 minutes, until the sauce begins to reduce. Remove tofu slices from heat and let marinate in the sauce.

Using a bamboo sushi mat, or any non-stick flexible surface, lay down the halved seaweed sheet. Place a 1/4 inch thick layer of sushi rice, covering about 1/3 of the seaweed sheet. Place a tofu slice on top of the rice.

Wrap the seaweed around the rice and tofu, using water or extra sauce to seal the seaweed. Use the mat to gently press musubi into a rectangle.

Hello Honey!

Honey is amazing, not only for its preservative qualities (3000 year old honey still good to eat!) but also for its abilities in healing. Dab a bit of unpasteurized/raw honey on zits, canker sores, or cold sores. The honey is anti-bacterial, antifungal, and contains enzymes that reduce inflammation. Mix ¼ teaspoon of cinnamon into a teaspoon on honey and take orally to help with colds too!

The Impact of California's Drought Conditions

Drought. A period of dry weather, an extended shortage of water, in other words a huge problem for food production. The western United States, California especially, has been experiencing record low rainfall for the past five years with this year being the worst to date. There isn’t a single aspect of water usage that hasn’t been impacted by the shortage.

10 communities have been put on emergency water rationing; taking five minute showers and squeezing every possible re-use out of the water they’ve been allotted. Even with the rationing, it is predicted that their water reserves will run dry within the next two months. The rest of the state has been under voluntary water restrictions, but there is already talk amongst the government of implementing mandatory regulations until the drought is over.

Farmers will be leaving over 500,000 acres (200,000 hectares) empty this year. Those fields that have already been planted show little to no growth without vital rain water. Ranchers and Dairy farms are already struggling to feed their herds and have begun selling off their livestock to pay for feed for those precious few they can afford to keep.

What does this mean?

For farmers it means they will have to cut back, let workers go, scrimp and save as much as they can to keep their farms afloat until the rain returns. Dairy farmers and ranchers are sending livestock east where there are still green pastures to feed them. Those whose livestock are remaining in California are relying more on hay and feed mixes instead of the meager fare available in the dry fields. Those lucky to have foreseen  the shortage stockpiled hay during the previous year, but how long will those supplies last before they too are forced to pay to bring in feed from out of state?

For you, the consumer, the impact will be to your table and your wallet. The demand for food is only increasing, but with fewer crops are being planted the supplies are going to be low. Row crops especially, like tomatoes, broccoli, lettuce, cantaloupes, garlic, peppers and corn, will suffer a drop in production and cause prices to rise. Long term crops, like almonds, grapes/raisins, walnuts and olives, will also see a sharp decline as farms are forced to prune back trees and vines to cut back on water consumption. Pruning will allow the plants to survive on less water, but that means they won’t be producing anything. For nuts especially, this will impact supplies for years.

Expect to see California wine prices soar as well as wineries fight residents to use water for a “luxury item” or are forced to look for alternative water sources by digging new wells and implementing irrigation systems in areas that used to only rely on rain fall.  Considering that California produces over 90% of wine in the United States, we can expect to see less wine from our southern neighbour and more imports from overseas hit the shelves as retail locations balk at higher prices.

Citrus Peppered Salmon with Roasted Root Vegetables

Adapted from Better Homes & Gardens


INGREDIENTS

4 medium carrots, chopped
2 small yams, peeled and chopped
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon sea salt or salt
4 skinless salmon fillets
1 teaspoon coarsely ground pepper blend or black pepper
1 cup orange juice

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

In a baking pan combine carrots, yams, half of the oil, and half of the salt. Roast, uncovered, for 20 minutes, stirring halfway through roasting time. Transfer vegetables to a platter; cover to keep warm.

Meanwhile, sprinkle salmon with the remaining salt and the pepper. In a skillet heat the remaining oil over medium-high heat. Add salmon; cook for 3 minutes. Turn; cook for 3 minutes more or until fish flakes easily when tested with a fork. Transfer to platter with vegetables.

Add orange juice to skillet. Simmer, uncovered, about 2-3 minutes or until thickened; spoon over salmon.

Go Bananas!

When baking, replace the fat called for in a recipe with mashed ripe bananas, fruit or squash puree, plain, fat free yogurt, or low-fat cottage cheese. Use a substitute that will compliment the baked item you are making; bananas are great for pancakes and applesauce works well for most quick breads.

For the measurements, 3 mashed bananas can replace 1/2 to 3/4 cup; the other substitutes can be measured 1 for 1. If you don't like how it turns out, only replace 1/2 or 3/4 of the fat and see if that is any better.

“Ocean Wise” - Sustainable Seafood

Vancouver Aquarium states on their website that “90 percent of all large fishes have been caught. Due to unsustainable fishing practices, we’re now fishing the world’s last 10 percent of shark, swordfish and tuna.” They also mention a scientific study that estimates a world-wide fisheries collapse by 2048. That’s a pretty dire prediction for something that is only 34 years away and well within most of our lifetimes.

In order to promote change in fishing practices, the Aquarium launched the Ocean Wise conservation program in 2005 to “educate and empower consumers about the issues surrounding sustainable seafood.” They have created a comprehensive list of seafood species with their current status (Ocean Wise, Under Review, or Not Recommended), Variety, Wild/Farmed, Harvest Method, and Region.  Interested in seeing if where your menu favourites fall on the list?
Different seafood species are allowed to carry the Ocean Wise label if the following parameters are met:

1. Abundant and resilient to fishing pressures.
2. Well managed with a comprehensive management plan based on current research.
3. Harvested in a method that ensures limited bycatch on non-target and endangered species.
4. Harvested in ways that limit damage to marine or aquatic habitats and negative interactions with other species.

Seeing this symbol at market and on their menus allows people to make informed choices about the food they are eating and by word of mouth and pushing from the consumer level, Ocean Wise has spread.

Since its inception over 1000 restaurants, suppliers, and retail locations across Canada and the United States have pledged to serve or carry Ocean Wise seafood. In fact, in order to carry the Ocean Wise symbol on their menus, restaurants are required to stop serving at least one unsustainable item. Many of these restaurants have removed unsustainable items from their menus entirely.

The biggest problems Ocean Wise attempts to address are:

Overfishing – Some seafood populations have depleted to unacceptable levels based on the current rates of consumption. Species at very high risk include Chilean Sea Bass, Imported King Crab, Japanese Eel, Atlantic wild-caught Flat Fish (including flounder and sole), and all species of Shark.

Bycatch – 25% of what is caught by commercial fishing boats never makes it to the dinner table. Most of these get tossed right back into the ocean and die due to trauma from being caught. Certain types of fishing practices yield even higher bycatch than others; these include surface longlining and bottom trawling. The methods of fishing with the least likelihood of bycatch use Seines, Longline, Pots/Traps, Pelagic Fish Trawl, or High Sea Driftnet.

Habitat Damage – The loss of coral reefs, kelp forests, mangroves, and wet lands also have a huge impact on species reproduction and survival.

For information on how to support Ocean Wise at local businesses, check out their website or their free iPhone app. They give up-to-date information on local businesses, markets, and suppliers who sell Ocean Wise seafood, offer information on different seafood species and the phone app has a fun little picture gallery as well.

Healthy Tuna Burgers

Adapted from @sashafitness

Ingredients 

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix all the ingredients in a bowl.

Portion out evenly into burger shapes.

Place burgers in an ovenproof pan and bake until burgers are golden.

Organic Household Tip

Love the smell of clothes straight out of the dryer?
Give your entire home that fresh sent!  Before you vacuum, remove the canister or bag. Insert two dryer sheets into the canister or bag. Replace them and then vacuum your carpets like normal. An awesome, easy and green way to have a fresh scented home!

Seedy Saturdays!

Winter is halfway done and it’s time to start thinking about spring planting. Whether you have a whole garden to play in, a plot at the local community garden, or just a small balcony herb garden – you can take advantage of one of many local “Seed Swap” events. 

Originating in 1989 in British Columbia, these grass-roots-organized events are designed to allow gardeners of every type to save seeds from their previous year’s plantings to exchange with each other. This promotes open pollination and the spread of heritage crops within the community.

Look out for your local chapter’s Seedy Saturday or Seedy Sunday to start planning your garden!

Vancouver & Sea to Sky:

• Saturday February 22^nd from 10am-4pm at VanDusen Botanical Garden 
•  Saturday March 1^st from 1pm-3pm at North Shore Neighbourhood House – Inman Rm
•  Saturday April 5^th from 12pm-3pm at Stewart Farm in Surrey

Calgary:

• Saturday March 15^th from 10am-3pm at Hillhurst-Sunnyside Community Centre

Fraser Valley:

• Saturday March 29^th from 10am-2pm at Heritage Park Secondary School

Victoria:

•  Saturday February 15^th from 10am-4pm at the Victoria Confrence Centre
• Saturday March 1^st from 10am-2pm at Haliburton Farm

Tomato Seeds make Bitter Sauce

 
Many recipes call for removing the seeds from a tomato before cooking it, but few actually tell you the reason. 

Tomato seeds are quite bitter, just try biting into one. 

So when you cook a tomato seed, especially in a sauce which will be cooking for a long time, that bitterness goes right into your sauce!

Easy Sushi at Home

A number of years ago now, a couple of friends of mine went "WWOOFing" (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms – an organization that connects volunteers with farms all over the world in need of assistance, often in exchange for room and board) in Japan. One of the farms they stayed with introduced them to a way of preparing sushi for a large, busy family without someone having to spend hours assembling all the rolls or cones. When they came home, they introduced this technique to our group of friends:

First, get your sushi rice cooking. For how to make the sushi rice, see this recipe.

Sushi ready for assembly: Steam broccolini stems, avocado, baked sweet potato sticks, cucumber sticks, and homemade tamago.

Second, prepare all the ingredients you like to have in sushi rolls. We like veggie rolls of various kinds, so we cut tofu, avocado, and cucumber into sticks and grate a bit of carrot and/or radish. We also lightly steam asparagus or broccolini/broccolette stems and bake yam sticks. You may also want to get more adventurous and add raw or cooked mushrooms, spinach, bell peppers, mango, green onions, baked squash, homemade tamago, tofu (plain or marinated), or, of course, shrimp, crab, and sushi-grade fish. For condiments, in addition to soy sauce or tamari, you may want wasabi, pickled ginger, mayonnaise, cream cheese, toasted sesame seeds or gomasio. Check out the online menus of sushi restaurants for inspiration.

Third, cut your sheets of sushi nori into square quarters.

Finally, when your rice and other ingredients are cooled, lay out all the ingredients on the table. Just like having a taco night, everyone grabs some nori squares, add some rice and their favourite ingredients and condiments, roll it in their hands into a rough cone shape or just hold it like a taco, and eat!

Add in bowls of miso soup to complete the meal.

Sushi Rice

Chef Luis Lavieri

INGREDIENTS

1 cup sushi rice
1 cup of water
2 tbsp rice vinegar
1 generous tbsp of sugar
1 generous tsp of salt

Optional:
1 tbsp of mirin (rice wine)

If not using mirin, add 1 more tbsp rice vinegar

DIRECTIONS

Place the rice in a colander.

Rinse the rice under running water for about a minute.

Drain the water from the colander by placing it over an empty pot.

Allow the rice to drain for 30 minutes (summer) to one hour (winter).

If using a rice cooker: Put rice and water into cooker and set to cook.

If using a pot: Bring the water to boil, then place the rice in the water, cover it with a towel, then place the lid onto the pot, over top of the towel.

In a separate bowl mix together the rice vinegar, sugar, salt, and mirin. If not using mirin, add one extra tbsp of rice vinegar.

When the rice is cooked, remove it from the cooker/pot and place it into a bowl.

Pour the vinegar mixture overtop and mix gently, careful not to break the rice grains.

Allow to cool to body temperature, then make your sushi.

Inside Level Ground Trading

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with one of the co-founders of Level Ground Trading, Stacey Towes, a cheerful and enthusiastic man who has dedicated his life to making a difference. A leading advocate for Fair Trade practices, he explains his company’s goal as “A desire for a sustainable response to hard working, small –scale farmers who are marginalized from the global economy. We wanted to alleviate poverty without doing charity.”

Level Ground works to create jobs, provide education, and instill hope into more and more impoverished communities. His company carries products from all over the globe including coffee, sugar and dried fruit from South America and Africa, tea from India, and recently vanilla from Uganda and coconut oil from the Philippines.

The company began in 1997 with four families who wanted to work together and make a difference in the lives of small-scale farmers. They had little experience with coffee or fair trade, but their business partner and now company CEO, Hugo, had spent his summers growing up among the coffee farmers of Colombia. By bringing steady and reliable jobs to the table, along with health care and the promise of education for the children of the farmers they work with, Level Ground set a high standard for companies seeking to bring products into the North American market.

This continues to be the norm today, with over 5000 small-scale farming families being paid for their harvests each year. The impact of the company “…has surpassed my expectations and provided me a greater sense of fulfillment than I would have imagined.”

Level Ground’s impact isn’t just overseas; they’ve also travelled extensively throughout North America, spreading the message of sustainable farming and fair trade. “We’ve stuck with our mission since inception– trading fairly and directly with small-scale farmers in developing countries. I believe that despite the growth of Fair Trade we’ve seen over recent years, the essence of what we do neither popular nor well understood.”

Fair Trade has been around as a concept since World War II, but only really started to take root in the thoughts of North Americans in the 1960’s. Only the past two decades have people truly started making an effort to change how we do business.

“So in this way [we] still see ourselves as pioneers. Now, with the steady addition of food products beyond coffee, I believe that we are accomplishing something else unique to stretch peoples’ notion of what we’re all about.”

Level Ground has also dedicated itself to supporting their local community and the environment. Each of their employees is paid extra to allow for environmentally friendly methods of commuting each day.

“In the course of a year there are more than 100 non-profit groups which we partner with in some way. It may be something as simple as a $30 donation of product to a micro-credit or supplying all 3,000+ servings of coffee and supplies to 18 food vendors at the Saanich Fair.”

Our interview closed with a request for advice for any future entrepreneurs seeking to make their own impact on the world.

"Do what you love and stick with it. If you are passionate there is potential. Take time to build relationships and to strategize so that you have both the people resources and the system to grow and realize your dream."

Buy Level Ground products now from our Victoria location!

Spice Sanctuary

Founder of Spice Sanctuary Trusha Patel, just back from a trip to India to meet with some of her suppliers, has graciously granted me an interview to chat about cooking, the environment, travel to exotic lands, and of course Spices.

When Trusha moved to Canada from the United Kingdom four years ago, she encountered a challenge that she never expected. She was having difficulty finding spices that measured up to the quality and potency she had found back home. Cooking is one of her great passions, so that was clearly not going to cut it and in June of 2012 she launched her own line of Spices with Spice Sanctuary. Her reasoning, “if you’re spending the money to get organic [spices], you should get the best.”

The mission of Spice Sanctuary is to provide high quality organic spices from the farm to your pantry in 6 steps or less. Quite a lofty goal considering very few spices can be successfully grown in Canada. Trusha has traveled all over, from Greece to Sri Lanka and India, to find the best grades of each spice possible.  She calls it one of her personal benefits, not only being able to meet the farmers who are growing her spices, but explore the beautiful countries they live in.

6 Steps or LESS:

1. Farm – the herbs are grown by small scale farmers don’t often have the resources or ability to sell their products internationally.
2. Processor – a local processing company takes the farmers’ harvests to test quality and prep the spices for international transport.
3. Packaging in Canada – all the spices arrive directly from the processor and are individually packaged in Alberta, supporting the local economy.
4. Delivered to Retailer/Restaurant – The spices are sent out to retail locations (like Green Earth Organics) and directly to restaurants.
5. You – You purchase the spices, all that’s left is for you to use them. So, get cooking!

Response to her products has been fantastic. In just eighteen months her spices are now carried in 55 retail locations across Canada, as well as served directly to your plates at top restaurants. The spices are picked to have the highest amounts of volatile-oil possible so that they retain their flavor longer. This allows the cook to use less of the spice in order to achieve the flavor they want in their dish.

Trusha “want[s] to spread the word to encourage [cooks] to use the spices when they’re potent and add them to every meal no matter what the cuisine.” She occasionally teaches classes in Calgary on using spice in cooking and is currently writing a cookbook with simple every day recipes that are designed to expand the average person’s use of spices. Some of these recipes can already be found on her blog and we have featured one in our newsletter as well.

She is also giving back to the environment and helping to restore biodiversity by supporting Afforestation in Northern Alberta on behalf of her customers. Spice Sanctuary, in partnership with The Carbon Farmer are planting trees from profits of purchases of their spices. As the forest expands and matures, the carbon capture in the region will increase and improve the biodiversity of the natural habitat.

Trusha is a big believer that businesses should be responsible for their own carbon foot print and is seeking every day to minimize her own impact on the environment. Green Earth Organics is thrilled to know that our purchases from Spice Sanctuary are helping to support our mutual goal of a "Green Earth".

Buy Spice Sanctuary products from our Calgary location and our Vancouver location.

Jules Fuel "No Added Weirdness"

Just in time for the start of the 2014 Winter Olympics, we are extremely excited to add a brand new line of Olympian created breakfast food to our ever growing selection. Born and raised underneath the slopes of Whistler, 2010 Ski Cross Olympian and World Champion medalist Julia Murray has long been perfecting a true “breakfast of champions” and is currently studying to become a Registered Holistic Nutritionist.

While training for the Olympics, Julia found that the traditional options for the morning meal just weren’t cutting it. She needed something that would make her feel full and give her the energy needed to make run after run down the icy slopes, but wouldn’t make her feel heavy and weighed down. What developed was an innovative cereal that is “100% organic, vegan, low-glycemic, nutrient-dense, high fibre, antioxidant-rich, and, in her own words, 'Purely Vitalicious’.”

Each bag contains six servings of cereal, with a superfood ingredient list that will impress even the most picky of healthy eaters.

• Quinoa, the “mother grain,” is a low-glycemic source of protein.
• Goji berries for a metabolism and vitamin C boost.
• Chia seeds with tons of antioxidants, omega3 and 6 fatty acids.
• Sunflower seeds, whose folic acid prevent bad cholesterol from sticking around.
• Pumpkin seeds with iron and magnesium to balance blood sugar.
• Flax seeds, high in fiber and antioxidants and helps reduce the risk of colon cancer.
• Rolled Oats to lower cholesterol and boost your energy and your immune system.
• Thompson Raisins with potassium for your heart and anti-inflammatory qualities to keep your body moving.

Those of us lucky enough to frequent the Whistler Farmers Market this past year have even had a chance to see “Jules Fuel” for ourselves as she sought feedback from her customers and tested marketability. With resounding success amongst the eager slope-goers and health conscientious residents, Julia has thrown her entrepreneurial spirit into the next step.

Sharing it with the rest of the world!

Green Earth Organics is thrilled to support our own local Olympian, Julia in her quest to bring “Jules Fuel” into the Vancouver market.

Buy Juels Fuel now from our Sea to Sky location or our Vancouver location.