It’s December 10, time for me to start decorating for the holidays, and I find myself flipping through the November/December issue—specifically the article “Dreaming of a Greener Holiday”—which is packed with information about Christmas tree choices, energy-efficient LED colored lights and paper-saving wrapping.

It may strike you as odd that I should need to refer to the very articles I read over and over 10 to 15 times before they were sent to the printer. Short-term memory loss? Well, not exactly.

The real problem is that magazine editors suffer from Seasonal Displacement Disorder (SDD)—we’re always working four to six months ahead. The Natural Home staff was preparing articles about low-emissions fireplace inserts, natural-wool comforters and baking healthy cookies in August. While writing photo captions for snowy December house scenes, I was bent over my laptop wearing shorts and a tank-top in front of the swamp cooler.

As I write this blog, I’m up to my eyeballs in gardening articles.

Ten days before Winter Solstice, I’m in full Spring Equinox mode: checking this or that detail about organic mulch, Earth Day and heat- and drought-tolerant flowers. In January, I’ll start cooking up summer picnics and writing tips for reducing chlorine in the swimming pool.

SDD is not life-threatening; in fact, seasonal disorientation can actually be fun. When it’s 12 degrees outside, it’s a fantasy for me to edit a recipe for fresh-baked strawberry-rhubarb pie. And my toes dance inside two layers of wool socks as I write “37 Ways To Use Organic Zucchini from Your Garden”—a delight I’m sure would not be so sweet in the actual month of July.

Another symptom of editorial SDD is preternatural prophesy. For instance, while strolling the Denver Botanic Gardens’ “Blossoms of Light” display last week, I noticed that most of the twinkling colors were from energy-saving LED bulbs—I recognized them from our magazine pages. And I knowingly informed my friends that LEDs are 90 percent more electricity-efficient than incandescent bulbs. (Hope I didn’t sound like too much of an eco-nerd!)

Back to the real reason I was rechecking our Green Holiday article: A friend just sent an e-mail sharing her Christmas tree shopping discovery. She asked the nursery employees the origin of each tree she was considering buying. The Frasers were from North Carolina; the spruces from Oregon. In the end, she selected a white fir from Colorado because less fossil fuel was required to ship it—and it was fresher.

I wanted to check something else mentioned in our holiday piece: organically grown Christmas trees. They’re an excellent idea for reducing pesticide use at tree farms. Unfortunately for us Westerners, many of those organic farms are in the East. If there’s not an organic tree nursery around, it makes more sense to cut our own or buy a tree grown nearby—even if it’s not pesticide-free.

Another great option is to get a living tree and plant it in spring—perhaps on Earth Day. (More seasonal dislocation!)

Like magazine editors, people who are in touch with nature’s cycles are always thinking ahead to the next season. So here’s to this winter…and spring…and summer….

Laurel Kallenbach

Natural Home senior editor

 

This Thanksgiving week, the more fortunate of us will be thinking a lot about food as we plan and eat feasts that represent the bounty of the harvest.

 

I was reflecting on how the first European colonists on this continent nearly starved because they were unfamiliar with the local foods of North America. Thanks to the generosity of the Wampanoag people, who shared their food knowledge with the pilgrims almost 400 years ago, their corn and squash harvests flourished. The two peoples sat down together for an autumn harvest feast in October of 1621 at Plymouth, Massachusetts. (For more information on the “first Thanksgiving,” visit the Plimoth Plantation website.) http://www.plimoth.org/education/olc/index_js2.html#

 

Today, in our convenience-food society, a lot of Americans are unfamiliar with local foods, but we’re not starving. In fact, the opposite is true—we’re inundated by food, much of which has been shipped across the globe. We can eat strawberries in January; we can have chocolate grown in Africa and processed in Belgium.

 

I admit I love these treats as much as the next person, but I try to make an effort to look for local at the grocery store and when I’m selecting a restaurant.

 

For years, I’ve been a fan of the Chef’s Collaborative, http://ChefsCollaborative.org a national organization that works with chefs and the food-producing community to celebrate local foods and foster a more sustainable food supply.

 

Whenever I’m going to eat out—especially when I’m traveling—I check the roster of Chefs Collaborative members http://Guide.ChefsCollaborative.org to help me select a restaurant that I know will serve me great-tasting food that’s locally sourced and organic whenever possible.

 

Why eat fresh and local? Chefs Collaborative has a whole menu of reasons:

--The taste is great.

--You get acquainted with foods from the area and enjoy them at their freshest.

--Eating locally helps the environment by drastically cutting fossil fuel use. Local food doesn’t have to be shipped thousands of miles.

--It supports your local economy and small farmers.

--You get to celebrate food in relation to the earth. (I just think it’s easier to imagine that apple coming off the tree or that potato being dug from the ground when it’s local.)

--You can visit a farm to see for yourself how the animals are treated and whether their living conditions are humane.

--It’s healthy and nutritious.

--You get to celebrate the differences of food. It’s not all a monoculture out there. A cheese made in your vicinity isn’t going to taste the same as cheese somewhere else.

--Local food isn’t usually mass-produced. Sometimes it’s made on a small scale by people who believe preparing food is an art.

--It may be easier to find out if the farm workers get fair wages and safe working conditions.

 

Months ago I attended a Colorado Chef’s Collaborative event where I rubbed elbows with food growers, producers and restaurateurs. It was thrilling to meet cheesemakers, orchardists, vintners, bison ranchers and herbalists—all from within a couple of hundred miles from my Boulder house—most even closer.

 

This Thanksgiving, I’m going to incorporate a few more of these regionally produced foods into our family feast: a green salad with spinach, carrots, radishes and apples from Cure Organic Farm www.CureOrganicFarm.com, sprinkled with chunks of my favorite feta from Haystack Mountain Goat Dairy www.HaystackGoatCheese.com. 

 

And I was surprised to find out that there’s also organically grown wine made in Colorado. Jack Rabbit Hill winery’s www.JackRabbitHill.com Lone Eagle Estate Riesling should do the trick this year. And we can all finish off with Peak Spirits’ Organic Estate Grappa www.PeakSpirits.com and pumpkin pie (recycled from our Halloween décor) from the local pumpkin patch.

 

Not everything on the table will be completely local, but I’m thankful that I have such a bounty of Colorado-created food for our feast.

 

 

Laurel Kallenbach

Senior editor

 

 

It’s a crisp, cold morning, and my husband just baked a breakfast batch of Toasty Baked Oatmeal, a recipe from a solar- and wind-powered straw bale B&B we visited this spring. (See the recipe below!) It’s amazing how one sense—in this case flavor—can trigger other sensory memories.

 

As I’m munching, I’m remembering the amazing, thick, adobe-covered walls at Las Manos Bed and Breakfast (www.LasManosBandB.com) in the mountains of Buena Vista, Colorado. Over the years I’ve edited many articles about straw bale houses—and I’ve greatly admired the photos of their beauty. However, this was the first time I’d ever been inside a straw bale building.

 

As soon and Ken and I set foot inside, I knew it was love. I loved the textured, earth-colored adobe and the thick walls, which made it possible to create a deep window seat called a banco with breath-taking views of the Rocky Mountains’ Collegiate Range. The circular living room with its wagon-wheel-style beams is inspired by Southwestern Indian kivas.

 

And I was awestruck that the two-bedroom B&B was built entirely by the hands of its two owners, William McQueen and Colleen Finley, who are certified massage therapists (hence the name of the of the place, Las Manos, which means “the hands” in Spanish).

 

The couple used 460 bales of straw and 45 tons of adobe made from earth and clay that they dug up right from their piñon-pine-covered land. They had help, of course; straw bale builders have formed a tight-knit community and often swap information via e-mail from all over the Southwest. They even gather to help each other build, passing along tips and tricks they themselves learned from others.

 

William and Colleen also became self-taught experts in solar-electric, solar hot water and wind power. William gives us a tour of his “babies”—the solar shed and wind turbine—with all the pride of a new dad.

 

There are other sustainable aspects to Las Manos: compact fluorescent lighting and the most energy-efficient appliance of all—nature. (The couple does dishes by hand and dries sheets and towels on a laundry line in the clear mountain breeze.) Wood floors and cabinets are all made of local, pine-beetle-killed wood. It has wonderful bluish stains in the grain from the beetle burrows.

 

Within the walls of Las Manos, Ken and I slept peacefully. A windstorm swept through that night, but we were burrowed into 18-inch-thick straw walls. We couldn’t feel so much as a quiver from the wind blasts.

 

Laurel Kallenbach

Natural Home senior editor

 

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Natural Home will be featuring our Top 10 Green B&Bs and Inns in an upcoming 2008 issue, so if you’d like to nominate a sustainable place, let us know! E-mail me at: LKallenbach@NaturalHomeMagazine.com

 

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Toasty Baked Oatmeal from Las Manos B&B, Buena Vista, Colo.

2 cups organic rolled oats

1½ teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/3 cup chopped almonds

1/3 cup chopped dried apricots

1 firm ripe pear, chopped into ¼-inch pieces

1 ½ cups milk

2 large eggs (free-range, vegetarian-fed)

½ cup firmly packed brown sugar

3 tablespoons vegetable oil

 

1. Preheat over to 325˚

2. Combine the oats, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nuts and fruit in a large bowl.

3. In a separate bowl, combine the milk, eggs, sugar and oil.

4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. Stir together well.

5. Pour the mixture into a buttered, 8-inch-square baking pan.

6. Bake 45 minutes, until golden brown on top, and serve in a bowl. You can pour milk over the baked oatmeal if you desire.

Contributor Carol Venolia’s essay “Camping Brings Me Home,” in our current May/June 2007 issue extols the love of living in balance with nature. Her words got me reminiscing about my myriad camping experiences.

A list of my family vacations reads like a guidebook to the National Park system: Acadia, Yellowstone, Cape Hatteras, Mesa Verde, the Everglades, Valley Forge, Grand Canyon, the Redwoods, Isle Royale, Bryce Canyon, Craters of the Moon, Yosemite. We camped everywhere, either in a tent or wedged into our tiny, 8-by-15-foot aluminum trailer.

For spring break when I was a kid, we packed up the tent and headed to destinations closer to our Kentucky home: Daniel Boone National Forest, Mammoth Cave, Cumberland Gap. We’d search for wildflowers—jack-in-the-pulpet, lady’s slipper, Dutchman’s breeches, trillium and ghostly Indian pipe—that popped their heads through the soggy leaves each rainy, chilly spring.

My roots in those lush, mossy forests and rocky hills run deep: I was named for the clusters of pink laurel blossoms that light the forest in early spring—and for a pretty cascade called Laurel Falls in the Smoky Mountains.

Camping isn’t just about taking a vacation—it’s about connecting to nature, and I have to say that all those childhood camping trips taught me more about ecosystems, meteorology, botany, astronomy, geology and wild beauty than book learning.

As an adult, I don’t camp often, but I’m still amazed at how quickly I adapt to getting back to nature. In fact, my favorite trips lately tend to be places in which cell phones, TVs, the internet and even electricity don’t play a role whatsoever.

And, although spending the night on the ground in a sleeping bag has lost a great deal of charm, I’m still a sucker for outdoor beds. My current favorite? A hanging bed in a palapa—an open-sided, thatched-roof shelter in the Mayan tradition.

I’ve been lucky enough to discover Yelapa, a village on Mexico’s Pacific coast where it’s common to stay in a palapa in the jungle or overlooking the beach. I love climbing under the filmy web of mosquito netting that covers the platform equipped with a comfy mattress.

The whole bed is suspended by ropes. Inside this swaying nest I can read by flashlight or just lie and listen to the night sounds of the jungle or strains of salsa music wafting from town.

It’s cozy and snuggly—but I’m constantly aware of nature, especially the scorpions, which are plentiful, poisonous and demand respect. Especially the cries of unknown predators far up the mountains. Or the sound of fruit bats nibbling the local berries.

Despite these somewhat unsettling factors, I sleep well, and all the unnecessary stuff in life peels away until I’m back to the essential me—the same me who at 2 years old discovered a laurel flower.

When I’m sleeping in a bed in a palapa under the stars in the jungle beside the ocean, I feel like I’ve found my own little “natural home.”

Laurel Kallenbach
Natural Home senior editor

In our May/June issue, I wrote a “Conscious Kitchen” feature about sustainable seafood (including yummy recipes from top eco-chefs!) In the process I got to relive last year’s Cooking for Solutions conference, an annual event sponsored by the Monterey Bay Aquarium and its Seafood Watch program.

Lucky me—I got to leave landlocked Colorado for a little pilgrimage to California’s Pacific coast to learn about fishing, seafood, organic agriculture and wine making.

Cooking for Solutions is an extension of the Seafood Watch program, which works to help chefs and retailers—and the general seafood-loving public, like me—make wise seafood choices. An impressive roster of chefs and sustainable agriculture gurus discuss how our eating habits impact the environment and our health.

The news was both good and bad. The mercury content of seafood is a disturbing health problem, although fortunately some fish contain less mercury than others. (Swordfish, tilefish, shark, and king mackerel are especially high in mercury.)

The other big issue that struck me was overfishing and destructive ways of fishing, including dredging, gillnetting and trawling.

On the other hand, the folks at Seafood Watch are optimistic—they believe that if people are vigilant about the types of fish they choose, they can reap the heart-health benefits of eating seafood while still leaving healthy populations of fish in the ocean.

Fun (and education) at the Aquarium

In addition to all the great information at the Cooking For Solutions event—and superb food cooked by chefs committed to sustainability—was the joy of spending 10 to 12 hours a day in the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

I sipped coffee and watched the sea otters cavort while they got their breakfast. I learned the true meaning of “feeding frenzy” while witnessing lunchtime for the tunas and barracudas.

And I swear I formed a personal connection with a giant octopus. Every day I checked in on her (or him?) and was fascinated by suckers and tentacles far more graceful and fluid than ballerinas. (Octopuses can express their emotions by changing the color!)

I got to catch the last act of the blackfooted penguins rescued from the New Orleans aquarium after Hurricane Katrina—it was their final weekend in California before returning to their refurbished home.

During the Cooking for Solutions Gala, I took a timeout from sampling gourmet dishes and organic wines to watch the jellyfish pulse and drift in the current.

Am I waxing too poetic? It’s just that the message behind the environmental and food supply discussions really hit home. Between lectures I could stroll over to the Touching Pools and brush my fingertips over the silky wings of stingrays gliding around the tank.

These incredible ocean ecosystems and marine life forms are so diverse, exquisite and enthralling that it breaks my heart to think of them disappearing. So it’s encouraging that the Aquarium uses every opportunity to teach about ocean conservation.

Every year, 80,000 school children visit and learn about why they shouldn’t eat swordfish (the fishing lines entangle endangered sea turtles) or Atlantic cod (it’s dangerously overfished). The kids take home a handy Seafood Watch Pocket Guide, which lists the best and least sustainable choices of seafood at supermarkets and restaurants. (Download the Guide here.)

Registration is now open for 2007’s Cooking For Solutions, May 18 and 19.

P.S. While you’re on the Monterey Bay Aquarium website, check out its live Underwater Kelp Cam, Sea Otter Cam and Penguin Cam.

Swimmily,

Laurel Kallenbach
Natural Home senior editor

I had the best of intentions; it was the worst of timing.

In the laundry room, concentrated around the tank of my old water heater, I had water spreading over the linoleum and toward the carpet in the den.

I took one look and diagnosed: water heater meltdown.

I’ve experienced it before, 10 years ago. Once you’ve survived 65 gallons of water gushing from your water heater, you don’t ask questions.

I closed off the heater’s in-valve and scrambled into the crawl space to turn off the water to the whole house. Then I started mopping. Luckily, the water I cleaned up wasn’t replaced by a continual stream; I’d caught the crisis at the slow leak phase!

As I worked, I rejoiced. Just months before I’d assigned and edited an article for Natural Home’s Nuts & Bolts section about tankless, or “on-demand,” water heaters (see “Get into Hot Water, September/October, 2006) Author Dan Chiras had utterly convinced me of the benefits of going tankless, and I’d shown the article to my husband before it was even published.

“When our water heater wears out, this is what I want to get!” I’d announced. I reminded him of the cute little on-demand water heater we’d seen at 17th century French farmhouse that his German cousins were renovating.

“How much do they cost?” Ken asked.

I explained that they’re more expensive, but they save tons of fossil fuels by not heating 65 gallons of water that just sits in storage, waiting for us to take a shower or run the dishwasher.

He agreed it sounded like a great idea—when the old one wore out. “It’ll be soon,” I predicted. “That unit is getting old.”

Just months after that conversation, my wish was granted, and I eagerly called plumbers for quotes.

When the prices trickled in, however, my bubble burst. The Rinnai unit was about $1,000 (about what I’d expected). We could live with that, especially with the $300 federal tax credit that’s applicable through the end of 2007.

However, the installation estimates were skyrocketing—$1,500…$2,000… probably more. Still hopeful, I made an appointment for a plumber to evaluate our situation. Retrofitting our 1960s tri-level house for the new water heater would be more complicated than I’d thought. First, we needed to install a high-volume gas line and extra piping.

The major impediment, though, was that our laundry/utility room wouldn't accommodate the Rinnai heater. We’d envisioned replacing our clunky water tank with the petite on-demand unit, clearing space for a laundry table. However, this brand requires through-the-wall venting (instead of through the roof), and our laundry room has a large window. You can’t safely ventilate natural gas near a window.

The plumber explained we’d have to relocate the whole kit-and-caboodle into our crawl space (we don’t have a finished basement). It would have to be placed on the only wall without windows—and that meant water would have to run through an additional 50 feet of pipes from the water heater to our upstairs bathroom. What we’d save on energy, we’d waste in water—waiting for it to arrive hot in the far-away shower.

All this work for an eco-friendly water heater carried a $5,000 to $6,000 price tag. I regret that I have but so many dollars to give to my planet.

How does the tale of two water heaters conclude? Ironically, I’m afraid. We bought a new, traditional water heater with tank ($400) which my handy dad installed for free. A day later, when I ran the dishwasher, more water showed up in the laundry room—only now we knew it wasn’t the water heater’s fault.

After all that, it turned out our problem was water backed up from the mainline drain, which was starting to clog with tree roots. We didn’t need a new water heater…we needed RotoRooter!

The moral of the story: I’m still convinced a tankless water heater is the right thing to do—especially if we ever build a new house. But I learned that what’s great in a magazine doesn’t always work for every house in every situation. It would have been better to do my research in advance.

Because when you’re standing in water, you don’t have time to debate water heater pros and cons—you just need it fixed.

Laurel Kallenbach
Natural Home senior editor

Yesterday I called a company to fact-check some details about a fair trade item for an upcoming issue of Natural Home. The company owner confirmed that we did indeed have all the correct information, and then she said, “I’ve always wondered how someone gets a job as a fact-checker.”

I laughed. “Fact-checking is just part of my job; I don’t devote full time to it. I’m actually just an editor making sure the “i”s are dotted and the t’s are crossed before we go to press.”

“Just an editor!” she exclaimed.

Yes, just an editor. In the heat of deadlines and proofreading and juggling a number of articles from at least two—more often three—issues at a time, I forget that some people envision an editor’s glamorous life. Well, fact-checking seems more tedious than glamorous to me, yet it arms me with myriad obscure bits of info—and it’s nice to pass them along to readers.

Over the years, I’ve ferreted out details such as what distinguishes cruelty-free silk from conventional (the cruelty-free version waits to harvest cocoon fibers until the silkworms have hatched; thus the fibers are shorter in length because the insect had to tear through the cocoon).

I know the difference between tropical hardwoods ipe and machiche (hmmm…come to think of it, I’d have to look that up again, but I do know that to protect rainforests we should buy wood that’s been third-party-certified as sustainably forested).

And the byproduct of being a fact-checker is that terms such as polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs, chemicals used as flame retardants, used in furniture foam and mattress stuffing) roll off my tongue. Ooooh…juicy cocktail chat!

I also know that organic fruits and vegetables at the grocery store are labeled with a number sticker that always begins with “9”. Sometimes we Fact Nerds talk amongst ourselves. Kimberly Lord Stewart, author of Eating Between the Lines: The Supermarket Shopper’s Guide to the Truth Behind Food Labels (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2007) told me those little fruit labels evolved from concern over health epidemics and bioterrorism. If people are stricken by food-borne illness, the government has a way to track every apple or pear to its origin.

These are but a few of the factoids orbiting my brain pan. However, the real reason for fact-checking hit home a few weeks ago when I was casually checking a phone number for the Poison Control Center. Usually I dial, listen to the salutation and hang up, satisfied at our accuracy. This time, though, a sultry voice answered with promises of all-night fun. I slammed down the receiver, my heart pounding. A porn line advertisement? Surely I had dialed wrong. I redialed, and there she was again. A quick search of the Internet found the right number, but I had new appreciation for the importance of details.

Now, if you’ll pardon me, I need to get back to my fact-checking.

Laurel Kallenbach
Senior editor