Menus and One Small Change

At the beginning of this year I joined a campaign that is designed to motivate people to reduce their carbon footprint on this planet.  If you know me, you know how passionate I have always been on this topic.  Honestly, I was born that way.  My mother has always been "green", even before it was popular.  In fact, in elementary school I was made fun of for recycling and not having Oreo's in my lunch.  I am sure the same people who made fun of me, have now joined the "green" bandwagon.  Which is good...the more people who do more green things, the less impact we will have on the planet.  I would like to thank my mom for teaching me such a big lesson at such a young age.  I am glad that I can continue my love for this planet and saving the planet into my adulthood and into my children lives.

The One Small Challenge is designed for everyone who joins to make one environmentally friendly change each month.  The change can be big or small.  The point is to take these small steps, which in turn will make big steps.  When I started this challenge at the beginning of this year, we had already been doing some pretty major things to reduce our carbon footprint but there is always more we can do and room for improvement.  Even though I only blogged about my One Small Change once, we continued to make changes throughout this year.  Now that I am moving my blog in a faster direction, I will be blogging about our changes every month.  My December One Small Change will be posted this evening.

Here are just a few of the changes we have made before this year and during this year:

• Composting ( I grew up doing this and continue with my growing family)
• Doing our best to eat locally, organically, and seasonally
• Growing our own food
• Preserve and freeze the food we grow for the winter months
• Use our own reusable grocery bags...no more plastic grocery bags.  (This we have been doing for a long time now)
• No longer buy or use zip-lock plastic bags.
• No longer use paper towels/napkins.  We only use reusable fabric napkins. 
• We try to carpool or limit our driving.  (This is a HUGE challenge, but we are working on it.)
• We reduce buying & bringing in plastic into our home.  (This is also a HUGE challenge.  It is so hard to avoid plastic.)
• When purchasing something, we choose the purchase with less packaging.  
• We recycle EVERYTHING we can.  I am pretty sure our recycling bin is always fuller than our garbage can.  
• Hang dry our clothes.    
• Many many more changes in our home.

I am excited to continue this challenge and hopefully motivate others to do the same.  Check back later this evening for our December change.

Now...on to our menu for this week:

MON: Roasted Cod w/ Warm Tomato-Olive-Caper Tapernade served over angel hair pasta and steamed broccoli

TUES:  Homemade Tomato Soup with Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

WED:  Homemade Veggie Pizza and a fresh salad

THURS:  My husband's company holiday party

FRI:  Garlic-Dill Salmon, Rosemary Roasted Potatoes, and Crunchy Pear and Celery Salad

SAT:  Potluck Party with some friends.  I am bringing my famous Artichoke Spinach Dip.  (I promise I will post it this week.)

SUN:  Vegetable Dumpling Soup.   (My grandma made me this before.  It was delicious.  This is not her recipe but I am going to try it.  I can bet you my grandma's is better!) 

Extra Cooking & Baking: (Most of these are for gifts)

Puppy Chow
Spiced Almonds (My wonderful friend, Jess, gave me this recipe.  It will be posted this week.)
Cranberry-Almond Granola
Homemade fudge
Christmas Sugar Cookies (My aunt's delicious recipe.  We are having a big cookie making day with my aunt and Ayden)

It is a busy week!  :)

Happy Cooking and Baking,

Alyson

We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.  ~Native American Proverb