Green Holiday Entertaining -- and a Recipe for Vegan Latkes

When you throw a dinner or party for the holidays -- whether for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or New Year's -- you use a lot more of the earth's resources than you do in day-to-day life. How can you reduce the ecological footprint of your feast without compromising on hospitality? Follow the game plan in Holiday Entertaining for a Small Planet, the December issue of This Green Life.

One of many recommendations is reducing the amount of animal products you serve -- not just meat, but dairy and eggs. If you celebrate Hanukkah, try this recipe for vegan latkes (potato pancakes):



Here's a printable version of the whole article:



Please share your own green holiday tips and recipes.

12 most important foods to buy organic

If you can't afford to get all your food organic (how many people can?), you will be interested in the latest edition of the "Shopper's Guide to Pesticides" from the Environmental Working Group, which lists the fruits and vegetables with the highest and lowest pesticide loads. EWG says its research shows that "people who eat the 12 most contaminated fruits and vegetables consume an average of 10 pesticides a day." So these are the ones to spend the extra dollar on to buy organic.

Most important foods to buy organic

Peaches
Apples
Bell Peppers
Celery
Nectarines
Strawberries
Cherries
Kale
Lettuce
Grapes (imported)
Carrots
Pears

The 15 least contaminated fruits and vegetables, according to EWG, include broccoli, tomatoes, cabbage, watermelon and mango.

Go to EWG's Food News site to learn more and get a wallet-sized guide.

Organic Thanksgiving: what you get for your money

I just came across a less-than-shocking exposé on the "true" cost of an organic Thanksgiving dinner in Smart Money, revealing that you could pay 75% more for your organic feast. The slant of the piece (in a column called "Rip-offs") is that conventional and organic food are essentially the same -- just different lifestyle choices. Therefore, they can be compared on the basis of price alone.

But conventional and organic products are not equivalent.

Read more on
why organic food is worth it.

Take turkeys -- the item where there is the biggest price difference in absolute dollars. Nowadays, most turkeys, whether conventional or organic, tend to carry the microbe Campylobacter, which causes campylobacteriosis and can lead to serious medical problems in people with weakened immune systems. (The organic turkey is even slightly more likely to carry it.) So, if you eat a turkey of either kind, you are probably going to be exposed -- not necessarily at a level that will lead to the disease, but maybe. Campylobacteriosis is very common in the U.S. though usually undiagnosed -- except in those serious cases.

So far, the conventional and organic turkey look pretty similar (and none too good).

But here's where things get interesting. The microbe in the conventional turkey is far more likely to be antibiotic-resistant than the one in the organic turkey. Why? Well, probably because the conventional turkey is fed a regular diet of antibiotics, while the organic turkey gets none. When bacteria are overexposed to antibiotics, they develop defenses against them.

So, if you need antibiotics for campylobacteriosis that you get from eating a conventional turkey, you just may find they don't work.

And that's one reason why conventional and organic turkeys are actually different beasts. My bet is that further research will turn up more.