After chatting with staff about the spa’s commitment to the environment, I took the opportunity to check out what the facility had to offer first hand. Sorry, I’ve got no pictures for you as (I should have known, of course) the spa has strict rules against phones and cameras on site.

I was quite impressed! While the spa lost a few points for handing out bottled water to guests and two clean towels each, I was very impressed by their floor to ceiling windows for all natural lighting during the day and their dim indoor lighting and bright outdoor solar lighting at night.

Their brochures were all packed to the brim with informatiton on recycled paper, the toilets were all low flush and used greywater, and all of the steam rooms and saunas were run on timers as to not unnecessarily waste energy and electricity.

Everywhere you looked their were bins seperated into waste, paper, plastic, and food (for composting) — all done in very tasteful ways to incorporate it into the theme of the spa.

A lot of the spa was outdoors using nature instead of building facilites — like the hammocks and chair swings — all of which were tethered to trees instead of having a separate building for those who wish to lounge.

An outdoor fireplace stood in the middle of the outdoor pool area instead of a wasteful electric fireplace like I’ve seen in so many other public buildings.

And to top off everything, there were rainwater collection barrels scattered throughout the lot — a great use of all that space! They use the rainwater that’s collected to water the plants. Perfect.

Before this experiment I would have never noticed any of these things, I’m sure — but I’m glad I did. I’m definitely becoming more eco-concious and am certainly aware now that in a facility like that, if there’s no attempt at sustainable development and operation, it could easily be a hugely wasteful place! I was glad to see Le Nordik make such a great effort to not only be as eco-friendly as possible, but to make sure that their clients aware of these efforts, too.

Kudos, Le Nordik!

On a personal note, I highly recommend spending a day at this place — it’s beautiful! And there’s nothing like a steam bath and then a jump in a 4 degree (celcius) water fall to make you feel… alive (and so, socold)!

Alright, here’s something I feel silly for having known nothing about until now…

Did you know that deep in the Arctic Circle there’s a secure vault which holds copies of every seed in the world?

Whoa!

It’s, of course, called the Seed Vault and its head – Cary Fowler – spoke in depth about it at TED. I watch TED all the time on my Zune and am forever in awe of the things that I learn from that vodcast.

Amazing!

Well, I’m glad someone’s keeping track of the seeds. With the way the seasons and weather are changing, it’s good to know someone’s got that front under control, anyway.

[via]

I was really surprised to find out that they really are all the rage.

When I think of Miami, I think of 5-star resorts, yachts, beaches with scantily clad men and women, and fake tans. I definitely don’t think of Miami as a hugely environmentally concious place, but maybe that’s me believing in stereotypes.

Apparently zen lifestyles are all the rage – and that includes being kind to each other, 100% natural products, organic foods and materials, and cruelty-free products. Spas like Uhma Spa, Emena, or Mandarin Oriental Miami are all eco-chic urban santuaries.

Mandarin Oriental Miami’s spa plant a tree in the nearby Everglades National Park for every single time that they perform an “Herbal Thai Compress Ritual” on a client. What a great idea!

Now that’s a fad I can get behind.

Up in Northern Ontario here, it’s quite cold today so I’m going to make one of my most grandparent-impressing soups. I don’t know about your grandparents, but mine are all about root vegetables.

This warming and tangy soup has a really pretty muted-orange glow, and has just a touch of spice. I’m a big fan of lively soup! Be sure to try this recipe with organic carrots, potatoes, onions and celery, as their flavor is so much better than those grown on industrial farms.

Organic root vegetables like these are considered seasonal no matter where you live, and are found easily in health food stores and plenty of grocery stores, too. Choosing organic oranges is especially important when you make an orange zest, so as not to ingest the surface pesticides found on industrially-grown orange skin. Nothing good about pesticide soup, folks!

Read the rest of this entry

My better half comes from Russian ancestry and on occasion I have to make foods that I would certainly not make if I were only cooking for myself.

Now, having said that of course, I will say that I love this dish. My experience with beets before learning of this particular recipe was with my family dinners as a child when my grandmother used to try and make me eat beets. Like every child, I complained constantly that all the foods that were good for me were also terrible tasting. I felt like it was some sort of punishment!

But now? I love beets! They taste delicious, they’re good for you, AND I can touch-up my hair colour with the left over red beet juices! Not many of you can say that, I bet.

Ingredients:

• 1 or 2 good sized beets, peeled and then shredded
• 1/4 cup minced red onion
• 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar1/2 lemon squeezed
• 4 tbsps olive oil
• 1 tbsp maple syrup (homemade is best, but I don’t expect all my readers to be pioneers)
• salt and pepper to taste

Method:

Wisk together the vinegar, olive oil, lemon juice and maple syrup. Pour over beets and onions and toss. Taste and add salt and pepper as desired.

Makes about 4 to 6 servings, depending on how delicious it ends up being.

So why eat organic foods anyway? Why are they better than your average grocery store fare? Well, for one, organic foods are foods that aren’t covered in chemicals such as insecticides, herbicides, fungicides and fertilizers. I, for example, am violently allergic to a lot of preservatives and a lot of these spray chemicals trigger the same reaction: sore stomach, headache, nausea, blurred vision, cold sweat… I could go on. And it can be a bad scene for those who aren’t even allergic to any chemicals, too!

Plenty of EPA-approved pesticides were approved a long time ago –before research linked these chemicals to cancer and other debilitating diseases. Currently the EPA considers 60% of all herbicides, a whopping 90% of all fungicides and 30% of all insecticides to be potentially carcinogenic.

Taste is an individual matter, but many gourmet chefs are choosing to use organic foods in the recipes, due to the superior flavour and quality of these products. A growing number of consumers — including yours truly as part of my attempt to go green — are also claiming that organic food tastes better.

I mean, doesn’t it make sense to you that foods grown naturally in well-balanced soils and ripened by the big, happy summer sun will be healthier and tastier than products raised on a diet of smelly, wildlife and bug-killing chemicals? Then they’re sprayed with preservatives that allow them to sit for months in storage (I could make a really easy movie star joke here, but I’ll leave that one along). What are these chemicals and preservatives doing to your insides? Do you think it’s possible that they’re strong enough to kill pests, make plants grow faster/bigger, and last for weeks on a shelf without having a negative affect on your insides? I don’t know first hand, but I’m sceptical at best.

Try organic food for yourself and see what you think — is it tastier? Does it smell better? Check out the ‘Organic Recipe Friday’ section and try out some of the recipes. I guarantee you’ll find some that you love!

Drop me a line and let me know!

In case you haven’t been following the news, there is significant worry behind declines in the bee population, which spawned other problems like bee theft.

Now, as if that weren’t scary enough, we have to worry about new reports from Reuters that huge colonies of bee-eating Asian Hornets are spreading like wildfire through southwestern France!

These hornets are said to be able to wipe out an entire beehive in 48 hours — eep! And since the bee population is already under significant stress right now, that’s a much greater threat.

Let’s get together, folks. There are plenty of calls to action in the Twittersphere and we all know that social networking can be great for working together to get things done. Häagen-Dazs has been working to save bees for a long time now as they recognize that a whopping 1/3 of the world’s food supply is dependant on bees.

They currently have a 7-Day Go Natural Challenge going on that is not only delicious, but extremely helpful — and you could win a year supply of Häagen-Dazs! (I don’t think they know what they’re getting into, I can eat a lot of HD in a YEAR, heh).

Spread the word!

Mold. At the first sign of it I tend to throw food out… unless I convince myself that I feel bad for letting it mold (beause it was either expensive or delicious), in which case I put it back in the fridge and hope that magic food fairies will come and fix it so that I can eat it and get my money’s worth.

On fridge clean out day, I always cringe at the sight of the half-full garbage bag filled with spoiled and unwanted food. Am I wasting food items that don’t necessarily need to be wasted?

This article on Boing Boing caught my eye: When is it OK to eat moldy food?

The USDA (that’s the United States Department of Agriculture, not the United Square Dancers of America, of course) recently did a study on moldy foods and released the Safe Food Handling fact sheet.

Surprise, surprise — in the end they do recommend throwing out most moldy foods. But the advice within the chart for how to salvage other foods is great!

Generally I live by the “if it smells bad or feels slimey, I won’t eat it” rule but after reading the chart I’ll never eat a moldy dollop of sour cream again. (Bleh!)

Be sure to check it out for yourself, you scrape-it-off-the-top types.

You know, I’m seeing this news story all over the place today and I’m thinking long and hard about it. Should Drive-Thru restaurants consider bicycles a worthy mode of transportation?

The conclusion I’ve come to is this: it’s being said often in these type of news stories that letting bicycles through increases the likeliness of accidents. But I wonder — how fast are you driving through a drive-thru? I should think that you wouldn’t be driving fast enough to run over a cyclist, are you? And don’t the people who take your order tell you when you can drive up to the window? I don’t drive myself, but I’m pretty sure that’s how the routine goes, right?

And like a lot of these news stories have suggested, there are many drive-thru restaurants that have refused to serve cyclists recently that also claim to be making an effort to be more lifestyle and eco-friendly — including Burgerville (a Pacific Northwest fast food place that composts, uses wind power, recycles its fresh fry oil into biodiesel, and has signs up that say “Drive Less, Save More” — hrmmm.

Now I’d like to know what you think! Do you think it’s too dangerous to let cyclists use drive-thru windows or do you think it’s a bunch of hooey?

Leave me a comment!

Now, I don’t want to offend any readers with this opinion piece — this is just me ranting a bit on a topic that fuels me. If you have something to add or something you’d like to say, I absolutely welcome it! Leave me a comment!

Alright, PETA, I leave you alone for the most part. Sometimes you do things that I consider to be a bit… silly — but I don’t usually criticize. We all have our own opinions, right? And you do some good work too. I’ve definitely found myself to be in awe of your power of persuasion and want to educate people, but lately you’ve been doing some things that I just don’t understand for the life of me.

On top of dressing up like the KKK to prove some kind of point, this also offends me:

I don’t know what you were thinking, but… you know, I’m just speechless. PETA, an animal rights organization — for those who don’t know, is promoting vegetarian diets to overweight Americans (Eep! That’s an estimated 64% of the population of the US, by the way) by insulting them. Unfortunately, there are people out there facing obesity everyday — including myself — and not just because of our diet, either!

Disgruntled over the billboard as I am is Deceiver.com, who answered by compiling a list of vegan/vegetarian foods that will certainly not keep you thin or slim down your whale-ish figure. Kudos, Deceiver.

Now, as a disclaimer, just because I criticize PETA, doesn’t mean I’m an animal hater… I love whales… *sneer*