Ingredients:

1. Preheat oven to 400 F
2. Prep your muffin tins (I used my silicon baking cups)
3. In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg. (I just whisk it together).
4. In another bowl or mixer beat together the whole egg with the egg white.
5. then stir in the soy milk, oil, brown sugar, and applesauce.

6. Fold the wet ingredients into the flour mixtur until just combines

7. Fold in cranberries.

8. Fill muffin tins. The entire recipe makes 12 muffins.

9. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean and dry.
10. Cool in the tin for 5 minutes before removing them.
11. I brushed on some melted butter and sprinkled a cinnamon sugar mixture on top because they were not as flavorful as I had hoped.

I feel like I just need to get this out so we can move on — I’m not a big fan of chocolate.

With that said, I really like these cupcakes. They are incredibly chocolaty, moist, and light (I find really dense cupcakes disappointing, so the airiness of these is one of the reasons why I like them.)

Ingredients (cupcakes):
2 cups sugar (preferably organic and fair trade)
1 and 3/4 cups all purpose flour
3/4 cup fair trade, organic cocoa
1 and 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 and 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 cup milk (I used soy)
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup boiling water

Recipe:
1. Heat oven to 350 F. Prepare cupcake pans.

2. Stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl (or with your mixer).

3. Add eggs, milk, oil, and vanilla. Beat on medium speed of mixer for 2 minutes.

4. Stir in boiling water. (Word of caution, the batter is incredibly runny. By runny I mean it seems as thin as water. I used a measuring cup to pour the batter into the cups. Not to fear, however, they will turn out.)

I filled the measuring cup to the top and tried to fill the silicon cups about 1/2 – 2/3 of the way full.

1. Melt butter.

2. Stir in cocoa.
3. Alternately add powdered sugar and milk, beating to spreading consistency.
4. Frost!

Sorry about the poor picture quality. I don’t know if I was on a sugar high or what, but this picture is horrible. Cupcakes were yummy though.

Recipe courtesy of Hershey’s.

After looking over the dirty dozen, this list should help make it easier to shop for foods that are safer for your health and the environment, especially if you cannot afford to eat only organic fruits and vegetables. The clean 15 are the 15 fruits and vegetables that are the most likely to have the least amount of pesticide residue.

1. Onions
2. Sweet corn
3. Pineapples
4. Avocado
5. Asparagus
6. Sweet peas
7. Mangoes
8. Eggplant
9. Cantaloupe
10. Kiwi
11. Cabbage
12. Watermelon
13. Sweet potatoes
14. Grapefruit
15. Mushrooms

3. Sauté (on medium heat) the onion in olive oil for 5-8 minutes, until translucent

4. Add in swiss chard or spinach, cook until they begin to turn a darker green and have shrunk down (about 3-5 minutes depending).

5. Add in tomatoes, corn, lime juice, black beans, salt and pepper. Continue to sauté for 5-10 minutes (until all of your ingredients are heated through)

6. Put the sauté vegetables onto the tortilla chip layer

7. Cover the veggies with half of the salsa. Add about 2/3 of the cheese.8. Put the rest of the tortilla chips on. Cover with the rest of the salsa and cheese.

9. Bake 35-40 minutes, until the cheese is bubbling and beginning to brown

I have a tea obsession. I usually keep it well hidden, but anyone who visits me knows the truth. This past year in my dorm room I had an entire drawer devoted to tea… and that was not even all of the teas I own. I love all teas — black, red, white, and herbal alike. The tea I drink depends on the day and my mood. The problem is that as the weather warms up, drinking warm tea can be slightly irritating. At school and other places I have bought iced tea, but it seems to always come with excess packaging and it’s either too sweet or not sweet enough. Now that I have learned how to make iced tea I can have the exact flavor and sweetness that I want when I want it… It’s a beautiful thing.

Ingredients:
6 (or as many as you want to make) cups of water
6 tea bags (1 bag for each cup of water if you are making more than 6 cups)
sugar to taste (for me it was about 7-8 tea spoons (6 of the “teaspoon” we have in our sugar bowl. I like one per cup of tea))

1. Measure out your water with a little extra to allow some to boil off

3. Turn off the heat and add your teabags (1 per cup of water)

My friend Lauren and I also made these cookies because they are easy to customize to your taste. I love filling them with jam, but you can also add a simple icing or chocolate drizzle or coat. A real bonus of this recipe is how easy it is. It only takes four ingredients to make the dough, and yet you can create multiple types of cookies with it. During the holidays my mom chops up dried fruit and puts it into half of the dough. She finishes those cookies with a simple icing. You can also make them out of whole wheat flour and they taste just as good.

Ingredients:
3/4 pound butter (salted or unsalted) at room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3 and 1/2 cups all purpose flour
optional: fruit jam or preserve, chocolate, powdered sugar (depending on how you wish to finish them once they are baked)

Recipe from The Barefoot Contessa, by Ina Garten- “Linzer Cookies”

1. Preheat the oven
2. In an electric mixer with a paddle attachment, mix together butter and sugar
3. Add the vanilla
4. Add flour and salt
5. Mix the dough until it just begins to hold together. Pull it out of the mixer and shape it into a flat disk.
6. Put it in a container (or do whatever you wish to keep it air tight) and chill for at least 30 minutes. (If you do not chill the dough it will be next to impossible to cut it out.)
7. Roll out the dough about 1/4 inch thick and use cookie cutters for desired shapes
8. Place the cookies on the baking sheet into the fridge for at least 15 minutes. This stops the cookies from spreading out as much.
9. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until the edges are golden brown.

Sorry about the really terrible pictures with these. I had smudged the lens and the lightening was weird when we finally finished all of our cookies. We baked for more than 3 hours. I don’t know about Lauren, but I think it was worth it.

Sometimes I feel like my largest tests of will (other than when I am making a dessert and I would rather keep eating it than finish baking it) is when I am grocery shopping. It’s not because I only want to buy items that are terrible for me or I am counting calories, but rather that every item I want (because most of our fruits and vegetables comes from a local delivery service or the farmers market) comes in endless amounts of packaging.

Normally I hate naming the places I am talking about, but this time for clarity I will. Stores like Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods irk me with their packaging. I love trail mix, crackers, and other snacks, and yet they all come in at least a plastic bag and sometimes even a box. The frozen food is in a plastic container, wrapped in plastic, in a cardboard box. Are they serious? There is no point to this piles and piles of packaging. As soon as the item is gone, or moved into a reusable container, the entire thing is meant to just be thrown out. We even put fresh fruits and vegetables in Styrofoam and then wrap it in plastic. Why are we paying to full our garbage cans and our already over flowing landfills?

When I am walking down the isles and I see something I would like to eat I always ask myself how much packaging it has, how much is recyclable, could I do without it? More often than not I walk away from some food item that I would enjoy because of the packaging. I am not willing to take home healthy food (or otherwise : ) ) that is going to send plastic to the landfill. However, it makes shopping for food so frustrating.

When I shop at Whole Foods I can get things in bulk with my canvas bags, but I worry about cleanliness, and sometimes the selection is not that great. I just wish packaging were better sourced, or not used at all. What if we all used reusable containers and brought in what we wanted? What if we didn’t double or triple package things? What if our food was not sealed in plastic? What if all stores didn’t package food?

Today GOOD highlighted a grocery store, In.gredients in Austin Texas that promises to be the nation’s first “package-free, zero waste grocery store.” According to the article:

“The idea is so simple, it’s surprising that no one in the United States has implemented it yet. (The United Kingdom, on the other hand, got the bulk food-only Unpackaged in London last year). Just like many people bring tote bags to the grocery store, shoppers at In.gredients will be encouraged to bring their own containers to pack up items like grains, oils, and dairy. If a shopper doesn’t have his own containers, the store will provide compostable ones. It’s as if the specialty bulk food section rebelled and took over the rest of a traditional grocery store. In.gredients will replace unhealthy, over-packaged junk with local, organic, and natural foods, and moonlight as a community center with cooking classes, gardening workshops, and art shows on the side.

“Truth be told, what’s normal in the grocery business isn’t healthy for consumers or the  environment,” In.gredients co-founder Christian Lane said in a press release. Americans add 570 million pounds of food packaging to their landfills each day, while pre-packaged foods force consumers to buy more than they need, stuffing their bellies and their trash bins: 27 percent of food brought into U.S. kitchens ends up getting tossed out.

I hope they get the funding they need to open and the support to stay open. I also hope we can get one close to my home in the Bay Area. While we wait there are some easy things you can do to cut down on the packaging you send to the landfill:

1. Avoid all of the isles that do not have fresh food. Focus on your fruits, vegetables, and freshly baked goods.

2. Shop at farmers markets and bring your own containers and totes. Give back any baskets or bags after putting your food into your own containers.

Once the chocolate melts, remove the pan from the heat and stir in the eggs, sugar, oil, baking powder, and vanilla. (You have to remove it and let it cool down a bit so it will not cook your eggs).