Organic Bug February Featured Artist: Chef Caren Weaver of Truly Wize Organic Bakery

Each month, it is my pleasure to spotlight an Organic Bug artist who exemplifies our commitment to bringing healthier and more sustainable options to the marketplace.  Peggy and I  felt like February would be the perfect month to spotlight Chef Caren Weaver of Truly Wize Organic Bakery.

A former New York chef, she trained at the Culinary Institute of America where she mastered the practice of utilizing pure, fresh ingredients. Add Caren’s years of organic food research and her commitment to creating healthier baked good options for her children to the mix: you have a recipe for a true eco-success story that is getting some national attention……

What distinguishes Truly Wize Organic Bakery?  We love that Caren insists on using 100% premium organic ingredients in her exquisite creations handbaked in her Pennsylvania kitchen. Premium organic ingredients offer superior quality, taste, nutrition and freshness, while sustainable agriculture promotes the healthy cultivation of soil, crop rotation and irrigation plus it is free of harmful pesticides, chemical fertilizers, steroids and hormones. It’s a win-win situation! On top of all that, Truly Wize Organic Bakery partners with local organic farmers as much as possible in order to keep things truly fresh and truly eco-wise and uses sustainable packaging for her baked goods.

The gourmet eco-friendly gifts are always made from scratch and baked to order. (Not to mention these goodies are ideal Valentines Day treats for friends, family and your sweetheart).

To learn more about this Organic Bug featured artist, check out a recent video from The Pittsburgh Channel: Go Green With ‘Truly Wize’ Cookies

Be sure to check our blog each month for a new Organic Bug featured artist and let us know who your favorite Organic Bug artist is!

Turning Your Dinner Party Green!

With the Holiday season just right around the corner, your busy schedules probably just got slammed with a number of dinner parties to attend. Attending dinner parties are fun but hosting dinner parties can be fun too! Whether you are having a small get together or many people over for a green celebration, planning does not have to be stressful and hopefully this article will ease your list of things to do.

So you’ve decided you’re going to have a dinner party. Next step is figuring out how you’re going to send your invitations. To go green and ease the carbon footprint on getting your attendees attention to save the date, may we suggest using social media? What a quick and easy way to contact your network of friends. Remember, just because its online doesn’t mean you can’t get creative. Send your invites a jazzed up email, they will be excited to open it making them even more excited to attend, we like to use Evite.com.

Another idea is to suggest a prize for those who arrive by alternative forms of transportation other than by car, but whatever the prize is, make it green and make it goodJ. When you decorate for your party create displays of fresh flowers and soy candles and get creative with the seasons offerings. Pinecones, lemons, leaves, and oranges are all things found in or around your house that can add to the fall season and add to the mood of a comfortable environment.

Don’t forget to invest in some ‘green wine’; no, the color of the wine is not green but you can compliment any dish by supporting an ecologically sensitive winery.  Or, you can have green drinks by supporting a local micro brewery, as more and more breweries are using organic ingredients. When shopping for your dinner party, don’t forget about the after dinner coffee which you can go green by supporting fair trade. If there are leftovers, send everyone home with whatever is left, or compost your scraps for your garden. When you’re cleaning up, make sure to skip the prewash, however if you don’t have a dishwasher, use some eco friendly soap to hand wash your dishes like Seven Generations or Shaklee. You should always seek out green household cleaning products because they are good for your health and good for the environment too.

As you can see these are quick and easy steps to use when you’re plan for your green celebration. We aren’t asking you to make drastic changes in the way you plan but as you can see by changing a little, you can and will reduce your holiday dinner party carbon footprint. All of these things are easy on your wallet; health and the environment too. Have fun and stay green this holiday season!

Become an Earth Friendly Drinker

You should not be too surprised when you hear about how people everywhere are going through extreme measures to become more conscious wine drinkers. Biodynamic farming is becoming more and more respected and known. Basically, the farm is respected as a self contained organism with unique qualities, for example, livestock rather than chemical fertilizer is used to enhance soil fertilization.

Also, there are particular agriculture homeopathy preparations that are used to wake up the plants; they work to stimulate their natural abilities in order to meet environmental challenges. Biodynamic farms are based on the farmer’s knowledge around respecting the natural rhythm to irrigate, prune, harvest on the most effective days. Although organic wine is here, it may not taste the same as the conventional wines you may be used to, but over time you should be able to appreciate the subtle qualities and you may even find that it is hard to consume conventional wines after becoming used to biodynamic wines.

Next time you are wine shopping, look for wines produced from biodynamical organic grown grapes because now you know that this is a clear indication that the wine will not contain any pesticide residues and is in fact produced wholesome. You can look forward to reading more about how to select eco friendly packaged wines another time but for the time being, stay away from heavy bottles!

Go Green on Hallo-Ween!

Ghosts, goblins, vampires OH MY! It’s that time of year again to invest in Halloween supplies. However, this year there are many ways to make it eeeko-fashionable by making Halloween code green for the environment.

Get creative and try DIY costumes. You will be surprised at how many ideas can spring from things lying around the house whether it be objects for props or items of clothes that can be transformed. We suggest you rummage through thrift stores to get the biggest bang for your buck or ask a friend to swap costumes from last year. If you want to take it to the next level, host a Halloween costume exchange with all your friends.

If you are hosting parties try to avoid disposables- cups, napkins, plates, tablecloths.

Recycle your broken LED string lights by contacting LED.com (you’ll even receive 15% discount coupon, woot!).

Choose 100% beeswax or soy candles because candled made of paraffin wax emit over 11 toxins when lit!

Buy your pumpkin from a farmers market.

Don’t waste your pumpkin skin when you are done carving your jack-o-lantens. Turn the mush into a fabulous pumpkin soup. After using as much as the pumpkin as possible, we recommend that you compost carved pumpkins and any other leftover Halloween candy.

Hopefully these tips help you host a green Halloween for you and your friends and family to enjoy. Don’t forget to Tweet about your Halloween eeeko friendly ideas so others can enjoy a green Halloween J

Organic Bug Product Spotlight: Piggy Paint™ Nail Polish

Organic Bug recently added a unique new product that we simply adore.   Piggy Paint™ Nail Polish is an environmentally friendly,  non toxic nail polish we featured last week when we announced that we are offering Piggy Paint’s Fight Breast Cancer Gift Set to honor Breast Cancer Awareness Month.  Piggy Paint donates a portion of every purchase directly to Susan G. Komen for the Cure PLUS Melanie (Piggy Paint’s fabulous founder) donates a bottle of nail polish and nail polish remover to a woman currently undergoing treatment for breast cancer!   In addition, Organic Bug will be donating 10 percent of its sales of Piggy Paint’s Fight Breast Cancer Gift Set to the local Relay for Life event that will happen in April of 2010 in New Smyrna Beach, Florida.

We love this product because it is safe and ideal to use on children (and adults too) because it is water-based and made from natural ingredients.  The product was invented by Melanie Hurley- whose 2 young girls love to dress up and have Mommy paint their finger nails & toes. As she applied the coats of polish to her girls’ nails, she realized the awful fumes were just too overwhelming-even on polishes that claimed to be safe for children.

At one point, she accidentally spilled some polish onto a disposable plate and realized to her horror that the same polish she was putting on her daughters’ nails had eaten right through that plate.  At that moment, she set out to create a nail polish that was nonflammable and made from natural ingredients- thus Piggy Paint was born.   Piggy Paint is a water-based polish completely free of formaldehyde, toluene, phthalates, biphenyl A, ethyl acetate and acetone.  The product is even getting some Hollywood attention! Celebrities such as Tori Spelling had the gals from Piggy Paint on hand to paint nails during her daughter’s 1st birthday party, and the product been featured on numerous blogs and magazines including  Celebrity Baby’s Blog, and Celebrity Baby Scoop.

As Melanie says about her product- “It’s as natural as mud in the sense that every ingredient is biodegradable with no residues left behind to harm the environment.”  Hope you enjoy!