My first full day in Mallorca housed a delightful surprise when I tasted the 4 course meal at Bon Lloc in Palma de Mallorca. History Juanjo Ramírez started Bon Lloc, Palma de Mallorca's first vegetarian restaurant in 1986. It offers a healthy and delicious cuisine including organics with a mission of respecting the environment. Description There is a set menu based on fresh, seasonal market products, and the blackboard displays the four course, two-option menu for €13.50 per person. The always full restaurant decorated in a modern style with chartreuse walls, wooden beamed ceilings, modern lamps, and recycled and recyclable placemats is on the main floor of an old 16th century palace and is open Monday through Saturday from 1pm to 4pm only. They accept Visa, Mastercard, and American Express, Directions The address is Sant Feliu 7, Palma, Mallorca, Balearic Islands, Spain. Park your car in the underground garage near the lake by the Cathedral, walk North up Paseo Born, and turn left on Sant Feliu. Menu The October 31, 2009 menu consisted of: 1. Ensalada o Zumo Clementina (Salad or Clementine Juice) 2. Sopa de Verduras o Crema de Hortalizas (Vegetable Soup or Creamed Vegetable Soup which I think was pumpkin) 3. Falafel o Pastel de Otoño Con Salsa de Setas Shitake (Falafel or Autumn Pastry with Shitake Sauce) 4. Yogurt de Maracuya o Bizocho de Chocolate (Passion Fruit Yogurt or Chocolate Cake with Fruit The Salad consisted of swirl pasta, sprouts, tomatoes, olives, lettuce, and red pepper. Olive oil and balsamic vinegar were available at the table to add to the salad. The Clementine Juice tasted freshly squeezed and was slightly cool. The Vegetable Soup had an array of vegetables including onions, greens, and carrots. The Creamed Pumpkin Soup was savory and delicious. A perfect, seasonal soup! The tasty Falafel was served with pickled vegetables and bulgar wheat. The Autumn Pastry with Shitake Sauce was flavorful, filling, and savory. This was a hit with us! The Passion Fruit Yogurt was cool and refreshing. The Chocolate Cake with Fruit was ...CHOCOLATE so it had to be good, and it was! All the pictures are below: each line is one course with the two options. I highly recommend this restaurant. The food was delicious, fresh, and the four course meal with two options enhanced the experience! Did you know that Mary Shelly's Frankenstein character was a Vegetarian? Mary was a teenager when she wrote the book. Mary and her future husband, Percy were also vegetarian and strong advocates for "animal rights". The question of how to feed cities may be one of the biggest contemporary questions, yet it's never asked: we take for granted that if we walk into a store or a restaurant, food will be there, magically coming from somewhere. You must see this TED Talk from Carolyn Steel on How food shapes our cities. Peter Singer, Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and the author, with Jim Masion, of “The Ethics of What We Eat", recently wrote an Opinion Piece for the NY Daily News. What are your thoughts?
There are many Carbon Calculators out there. Jared Blumenfeld, Director of the San Francisco Department of the Environment, wrote an opinion piece for the San Francisco Chronicle titled 'Crafting a Copenhagen Deal With Teeth', and I asked him if he could recommend a good Per Capita Carbon Calculator, and this Nature.Org Calculator is his recommendation. Check it out; it's pretty comprehensive!
The Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment hosted a 5 Year Anniversary Symposium October 21, 2009. Stanford President John Hennessy and the Speakers highlighted the major accomplishments of the Woods Institute during its first five years, along with a discussion on where environmental research should be headed in the future. The Projects include: 1. Environmental Venture Projects (EVP) where participants receive two years of seed funding. Thus far, there have been thirty-three EVP's around the world where one example included a reintroduction of endangered species. There has been participation in over ten countries, eighty-eight faculty from twenty-five departments working to develop solutions and influence policy, and fifty public and private partnerships around the world. Hopefully after two years, the projects would be stable enough to get other funding to continue their work. 2. Strategic Initiatives addresses large environmental challenges, i.e. Natural Capital – value in ecosystem services, Program on Food Security and Environment, and Center for Ocean Solutions (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)-Like with over 44 scientists who have signed onto a scientific consensus statement and a virtual library with visitors from 95 nations) 3. Uncommon Dialogues brings researchers together with policy-makers, ie farm bill workshops in 2006 at Stanford and Washington DC to show how the farm bill could be organized around Ecosystem Services. The Bush Administration eventually published a paper and started a new center promoting Ecosystems Markets. 4. Affiliates Program is a partnership among member corporations and Stanford University. The program supports advanced research, policy study, outreach, and education across a broad range of issues at the intersection of energy and environmental science, technology, and policy. A major challenge of the 21st century is the well being of people today and in the future, with respect to water, food, energy, shelter and other resources. 5. Leadership Training includes: a. Leopold Leadership Program brings together twenty leading academic scientists and trains them how to be more effective leaders. They are brought to Washington DC and are taught how to work more effectively with government, i.e. testifying etc. As a result, eight-five Fellows say they now engage more actively with policymakers and 100% engage more effectively with media. b. First Nations Futures Program (New Zealand and Hawaii) employs strategies to better manage water and food systems and also informs Stanford's work on own research c. Fisheries Leadership and Sustainability Forum provides fisheries training in science and economics and how might they better conserve ocean resources. Three fourths of participants have come back for other fisheries forums and are asking Stanford to do additional trainings for their councils and asking advice on how to solve problems. New areas of focus include: a. Freshwater initiatives b. Sustainable Built Environment c. Climate Vulnerability & Adaptation The first session focused on research and leadership at the Woods Institute Moderator: Lynn Orr, Director of the Precourt Institute for Energy Panel of Woods Fellows: Craig Criddle, Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering Gretchen Daily, Professor, Environmental Science and Director, Natural Capital Project Jenna Davis, Assistant Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering Roz Naylor, Professor, Environmental Earth System Science and Director, Program on Food Security and the Environment Gretchen Daily discussed Natural Capital and bridging the massive gap between what goes on in world academia and the kinds of issues that confront people taking decisions in natural capital in lands. The goal is to mainstream natural capital into decisions via 1. Capturing new knowledge in very useful and practical tools 2. Inspiring models of success for implementation 3. Engaging leaders and replicating and scaling approaches. The Tool is InVEST, i.e. How would river restoration affect agricultural revenues, flood risk etc. There is potential for this to be replicated on wider scale i.e. China. Due to flooding in 1998, millions of lives were lost. An overnight result was that the government banned logging in the upper Yangtze river basin. A future strategy is to implement policy via three major efforts: National, County, Household (water retention, soil retention, carbon storage, biodiversity) Craig Criddle is an environmental engineer looking at ways to short-circuit the water cycle. The components of waste water include Water (99.9%) and Biodegradable organics and Nutrients. There is a value of wastewater called “scalping” with distributed treatment to utilize 99.9% water. There is an option for a Stanford campus Recovery of water at $1/1000 gallons which would be a good goal (right now the cost is $4). The challenge is to think of centralized water recovery facilities in a different way and recover energy and nutrients (Methane). Also, Nitrogen can be converted to N2 that generates energy. Roz Naylor stated the challenge: how can we feed the world 6 billion now and 10 billion in the near future. She stated: In 2009, aquaculture now supplies one-half of the food for food globally, and within the past 20 yrs, aquaculture has grown 5 fold due to depleted natural marine systems and population growth. Environmental challenges include fishing down the food web from Tuna to Sardines and Anchovies and fishing up from Catfish to Salmon, farmed fish escapes, diseases, parasites, and pollution. Three approaches she's doing is: 1. Convening groups of experts to address problems, papers, press, and policy 2. Survey research: China, Chile 3. Modeling work (farmed fish feces and ocean pollution) The Strategy is to focus on major environmental and equity in intensive food production, be interdisciplinary and draw from outside Stanford as needed, use field-based knowledge, sound analytics, policy relevance (US – CA and Federal and International via Chile and China) Jenna Davis is working in Tanzania matching infrastructure and behavior and working with 1,200 households. She stated Diarrhea kills more children each year than aids, measles, and malaria combined and ninety percent of child diarrhea can be traced to bad hygiene, water, and bad sanitation. Almost 1 billion people are without an improved water supply; 2.5 billion do not have basic sanitation. Panel Two's topic was Emerging Environmental Challenges Moderator: Pam Matson, Dean of the Stanford School of Earth Sciences Panelists: Steve McCormick, President, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Julie Packard, Executive Director, Monterey Bay Aquarium Steve Sanderson, President and CEO, Wildlife Conservation Society Steve Sanderson mentioned the link with academic research to policy and practice trends; knowledge drives them. Need university to generate knowledge based on urgency (rather than curiosity) to conserve wildlife. Stanford can do heuristic modeling under dynamic circumstances addressing global climate change and emerging infectious diseases. What happens to animals and humans? We need to understand and frame demographics in strategies to protect them now and in the future. The International community isn't working hard enough to stop deforestation and needs to go to high latitudes, address ecosystem risk, habitat risk, total system services. Look at tight interaction of wildebeast's vegetation they depend on and carbon lockup. Listen to people and be on the ground for the long term, i.e. gorillas. The challenge to civil society is to rise up and demand a better environment; don't wait for government to do something. Julie Packard - We have so much data, but we have such a long way to go to get humans to do something about it. What goes on to human psyche to promote action? Talk to your government representative. The awareness level of regular Americans about environmental issues is abysmal. Americans have more working knowledge of video games and sports than the environment. We all have a big job to do. Understand economic, environmental, and social aspect. Doing multi-discplinary work is important, but who is going to make this happen? We have climate data and solutions but no climate bill yet. There's a need to mobilize the public. I'd like to see more social science research...what is UP with us? We need to take a long term view instead of a short term view so farmers can stay in business for multiple generations. The single biggest missing element for us is Conservation Psychology. Steve McCormick spent 30 years of his career to preserve biological diversity. He's a big supporter of Gretchen Daily and her Natural Capital project. How do you mobilize the world? More information on the Woods Institute work is here. I'm not a soft-drink person, however, when I tried these Natural Brew drinks, I was pleasantly surprised because they taste great! I also found out that the non-alcoholic, glass-bottled Natural Brew is brewed in small batches to allow the ingredients to blend together to form a full, rich flavor, without artificial additives and preservatives. They would be a unique offering for casual parties or that soy icecream root beer float! The FruitGuys, a San Francisco based green and sustainability-focused company delivers farm-fresh, organic and conventional fruit to offices across the country. They recently launched their home delivery service, and I got the chance to try one. The fruit crate included an abundant amount of fruit including bananas, oranges, apples, pomegranate, grapes, and pears. Seventy to ninety percent of the fruit mixes offered are locally grown within the regions they serve (East Coast, Midwest, West Coast) and go from the farm to home or office within three to four days and all fruit is packed in earth-friendly crates, constructed with recycled cardboard and printed with soy based inks. The Fruit Guys also offers individual TakeHome Cases full of organic vegetables and fruit for employees to take home when they don’t have time or access to a Farmer’s Market. These crates are currently only available in San Francisco, but will soon be available nationwide. Recent analysis by Goodland and Anhang finds that livestock and their byproducts actually account for at least 32.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year, or 51 percent of annual worldwide GHG emissions. Read the Worldwatch Institute article here. Are you looking for a sustainable Sonoma and Napa wine tour? Then, you must check out a sustainable wine transportation company called Holme Grown Brand. I talked with Dorsey Holme Kindler, Founder and descendant of the Holme Grown agriculture label. He moved to Napa from New York City to write for the St. Helena Star. Dorsey saw that there was a growing demand for organic wines and sustainable agriculture, however, there was a lack of sustainable transportation thus he purchased a Mercedes GL320 BlueTEC touring vehicle that Mercedes estimates uses 24 miles a gallon. Dorsey also uses a biodiesel blend (2010-11 2nd generation biofuel will be derived from algae) and drivers are trained in hypermiling, driving techniques to maximize fuel economy. He offers a variety of tours to sustainable wineries where he will pick you up at your hotel or B&B. Some tours include a lunch with a vegetarian option which is picked up from Napa's Whole Foods Market on the day of your tour. If you're looking for a vegan option, just make your request ahead of time. If all of this wasn't impressive enough, he will ensure one acre of trees is planted for each transportation vehicle (200 saplings per acre) in Belmont County, Ohio, his native hometown, to reforest spend farmland to help offset his vehicle's carbon emissions. Check out Holme Grown Brand; he's a great person doing great work! Cheers to you, Dorsey! The 12th United Nations Association Film Festival is showing What's On Your Plate in Palo Alto, CA Sunday, October 18 free of charge @2:45pm. Per the website: "What’s On Your Plate? is a witty, provocative documentary about kids and food politics. Over the course of one year, the film follows two 11-year-old African-American city kids as they explore their place in the food chain. Sadie and Safiyah talk to food activists, farmers and storekeepers, as they address questions regarding the origin of the food they eat, how it’s cultivated, and how many miles it travels from farm to fork. Sadie and Safiyah visit supermarkets, fast food chains, and school lunchrooms. But they also check out innovative sustainable food system practices by going to farms, greenmarkets, and community supported agriculture (CSA) programs. The film culminates with a delicious local meal cooked by the girls and friends they have made along the way. Sadie and Safiyah formulate sophisticated and compassionate opinions about urban sustainability, and by doing so inspire hope and active engagement in others." More information on the film festival is here. If you see the movie, let me know what you thought about it by leaving a comment on this blog post. Thanks! by Lorraine LoBianco (Guest Writer)
Ingredients, a new film that is making the rounds of the festival circuit these days, is not about angst-ridden twenty-somethings, or conspiracy theories, or getting revenge on terrorists. But it is about a very real danger and the heroes who fight against it. To quote the filmmakers, “American food is in a state of crisis. Obesity and diabetes are on the rise, food costs are skyrocketing, family farms are in decline and our agricultural environment is in jeopardy. A feature-length documentary film, Ingredients explores a thriving local food movement as our world becomes a more flavorless, disconnected and dangerous place to eat. […] With questions of food safety, accessibility, cost, and health at the forefront, we learn that seasonal food grown close to home provides consumers with a sense of security as they develop relationships with the people who grow and prepare their food. Ingredients empowers and sparks the joy of discovery for living and eating well in a world in need of balance.” Ingredients was filmed and produced by Brian Kimmel and written, edited and directed by documentarian Robert Bates. Bates, the creator/director of The Kitchen Sessions with Charlie Trotter (for which he won the James Beard Award for Best National Television Program), made the Ingredients because “While much has been filmed regarding serious problems in our American industrial food system, little has been done to recognize the substantial efforts of those dedicated to an alternative food supply. With Ingredients I have attempted to witness and reflect the work of individuals who are tirelessly devoted to producing food with the intention of feeding people, and not just turning the wheel of commerce. I have done this work in the interest of improving the health of our children and our environment, which are both at critical junctures. My aim is that the pleasures of eating local are echoed in the experience of watching the film, and that it inspires a greater desire to know the people who produce our food.” The film, which is narrated by actress Emmy and Tony Award-winning actress Bebe Neuwirth, takes the audience on a trip across the United States “from the urban food deserts of Harlem to the diversified farms of the Hudson River and Willamette Valleys and to the kitchens of celebrated chefs Alice Waters, Peter Hoffman and Greg Higgins. Ingredients is a journey that reveals the people behind the movement to bring good food back to the table and health back to our communities.” The reaction to the film has been overwhelmingly positive. Waters, of Chez Panisse fame has said “Through beautiful imagery and thoughtful interviews, Ingredients reminds us that the most delicious food is prepared with seasonal, ripe, fresh ingredients and raised by people who care for the land.” Sam Kass, chef to President and Mrs. Obama, thanked the filmmakers for tackling “some of the most critical issues we face. Ingredients could not have come at a better time.” Ingredients is currently airing at film festivals and special screenings across the country including: October 11: The Anthology Film Archives, 32, Second Avenue, New York, NY (at 1:15pm) October 15-25 (screening date to be determined) The Hawaii International Film Festival, Honolulu, Hawaii (www.hiff.org). October 24: The Yosemite Film Festival, Yosemite National Park, California, whose mission is to “bring all genres of progressive, eye-opening, independent cinema to Yosemite and to foster an appreciation and understanding toward the preservation and majesty of our natural world.” The film will receive the Silver Sierra Award for Documentary Filmmaking that night. November 5-8: The Ojai-Ventura Film Festival, Ojai, California. For those wishing to air the film as part of a fund-raiser or community event, Ingredients can be licensed from the filmmakers for a sliding scale fee tailored to the nature of the event. It is also available for purchase on DVD through the official website: www.ingredientsfilm.com , which includes future exhibition and broadcast dates, discussion guides, and information about the upcoming release of the Ingredients cookbook; a companion piece to the documentary. Filled with lush photography, the book will feature seasonal recipes whose every ingredient is traced “from seed to table to demonstrate the power of knowing where our food comes from.” (Note: the documentary is co-sponsored by a meat company, however, the themes of a vegetable-based diet and human and community health are essential themes in this film) Lorraine LoBianco Lorraine LoBianco has spent most of her life in Southern California where she has worked in the television industry as Director of Programming at Fox Movie Channel and more recently in Florida as Director of Program Planning and Acquisitions at ION Television. Currently, she is a monthly contributing writer to Turner Classic Movies Interactive and is interested in moving to Northern California for writing, editing and/or television jobs. http://www.linkedin.com/in/lml2008 I'll be moderating an organic food and economics session at the upcoming Net Impact Conference at Cornell University. If you have great organic food and economics case studies you may like to share, please leave a comment on this post. I'll make sure to put together a consolidated writeup of all pertinent responses together along with contributing authors! Thanks so much! I was lucky to try homemade Chaa (Chai) last weekend at a friend's housewarming party. Her mother is from Gujarat, India and prepared the most deliciousl Chaa (Chai) I've ever tasted. Thank you Kokila Shah for sharing your recipe below! Perfect timing for these cool, Autumn days! Chaa (Chai) by Kokila Shah Ingredients: - 2 tbsp ginger ground - 1 tbsp black pepper - 1 tbsp cardamom powder - 2 tbsp cinnamon - 2 tbsp clove Mix them in a coffee grinder and add to 1 cup water and 1 3/4 cup milk. Put in tea bag and bring to a boil. |