Vegan Wheat Bread

Yesterday I made a delicious batch of homemade bread. It disappears pretty quick around here, but can be stored in the refrigerator for about a week. Enjoy.


Vegan Wheat Bread

2 1/2 cups warm water
4 cups organic whole wheat flour
2-3 cups organic unbleached white flour
2 tablespoon of yeast or two packages
1/2 cup molasses
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup soy milk
1 teaspoon salt

Mix water, yeast and 1 tablespoon of the molasses together in a large bowl. Pour in 3 cups of wheat flour and mix well. Cover the bowl with a towel and let sit for a 30 minutes.

Pour in the rest of the molasses, oil, soy milk and salt. Mix together. Begin adding flour, a 1 cup at a time. I mix the dough in my Kitchen Aid mixer with the dough hook until it is smooth and elastic, but you can also knead by hand.

Split the dough into two, equal parts. Shape them into loaves and place them into two greased bread pans. Cover pans with a towel in a warm place and let the dough rise until it doubles in size, about an hour to an hour and a half.

Bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes.

A Super Wasteful Promo

During last night's Super Bowl there was a 90-second 3D preview of the upcoming movie "Monsters vs. Aliens". This huge media stunt distributed 150 million 3D glasses at 28,000 locations at the cost of tens of millions dollars.

We watched the commercial with 3D glasses we already had in our house and it was really lame. Now most of those 150 million glasses will end up in landfills. Shame on you Disney this was stupid and wasteful. I don't know if my family would have gone to see this movie or not, but we are definitely not going after this wasteful stunt.

If you picked up a pair of 3D glasses for the Super Bowl, put them to good use at http://3dparks.wr.usgs.gov where you can view 3D photos from National Parks.

Green your Super Bowl Party

This weekend across America people will gather to celebrate the annual tradition of Super Bowl Sunday. Like with all your parties, try to minimize your impact on the planet while enjoying your friends and family. Here's some tips to keep your party Super Green:

1. Huddle up with your family and make a list of everything you'll need for your party to eliminate wasting gas on extra trips.

2. Hit the local farmer's market for super fresh veggies for your guests. Vegetarian dishes will save you money, use less resources to produce, and are healthy.

3. Score big with your guests by choosing organic food whenever possible - scout out your local grocery store for organic chips, dips, beer, wine, and more.

4. Tackle your waste by using real plates & glasses, and cloth napkins while entertaining instead of disposables.

5. Coach your guests in saving the planet by setting up recycling centers for bottles and cans.

5 great reasons to give up bottled water

There are a million reasons why we need to break our country's addiction to bottled water - it's ridicously expensive, bad for the environment, totally unnessary, - the list goes on and on. Here's 5 reasons why you need to kick the bottled water habit:

1. Save $500 a year by breaking a bottle a day water habit.

2. According to earthpolicy.org, you could run 100,000 cars for a year on the amount of oil used to make plastic water bottles.

3. Nine out of 10 single use water bottles are thrown away insead of recycled.

4. If you drank the recommended 8 cups of water per day by drinking single serving Aquafina bottles, you would spend $2,500 a year! Kinda crazy in this current economic crisis to spend money on something you can get for free.

5. In most taste tests, people can't taste the difference between bottled or tap water. In fact the top selling bottled waters - Aquafina and Dasani - come from municipal water supplies.

Make the switch to reusable stainless steel water bottles, your pocketbook and the planet will thank you. Check out the great bottles available at www.earthlust.com