In last month’s meal I mentioned that we took a family trip to Mexico to attend a beautiful wedding for my sister-in-law, Abigail, and her amazing new husband, Carlos. (Can you tell that we like him?) While there, we had the privilege of attending a dinner at Carlos’ family’s house the night before the wedding. His family, the Silvas, had spent all day preparing a delicious array of dishes, including enchiladas and chicken in molé sauce. While the entire meal was fabulous, it was the molé that caught my attention.

This recipe isn’t the exact one used by the Silvas, though hopefully someday I’ll be able to find out what they used. The recipe below is the best one I could find on the internet, and everyone knows that the internet is magic. I hope you enjoy it!

MAIN DISH

Chicken in Molé Sauce

INGREDIENTS
-1 whole chicken, cut into 8 serving pieces (no giblets)
-1 yellow onion, quartered
-4 cloves garlic, peeled and halved
-6 sprigs each of fresh thyme, oregano, and parsley
-12 chiles guajillos, cleaned
-3 ripe tomatoes
-1/4 cup sesame seeds
-1 tablespoon dried oregano
-1 whole clove
-1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
-1/4 cup oil
-1 small onion, peeled and quartered
-8 cloves garlic, crushed and peeled
-One 2-inch piece cinnamon stick
-1 plantain, peeled, chopped
-1 ounce Mexican chocolate

DIRECTIONS
Place the chicken in a stew pot and add the quartered onion, garlic, and sprigs of fresh thyme, oregano, and parsley. Cover with water and bring to a boil. Cover and simmer until tender, about 30 minutes. You can leave the chicken in the broth, but if you need the stove space, make sure you reserve 2 cups of the broth for later use.

Meanwhile, heat a large cast iron skillet over medium-high heat. Remove the stems from the chile peppers, cut them in half (lengthwise) and remove the seeds. Toast the chiles in the skillet for a few minutes, until just toasted. Place them in a bowl and cover with hot water; set aside.

In the same skillet, toast the sesame seeds until just browned, which should only take a few minutes. Keep the skillet on the stove, you’ll be using it again in a few minutes.

Place tomatoes in your blender and blend them for a couple of seconds. Add toasted sesame seeds, oregano, cloves, and allspice. Blend until smooth.

Back to the stove: add red palm oil to the skillet and fry the onion pieces for about 5 minutes. Add the garlic cloves and cinnamon stick and fry for 2 to 3 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon and transfer to the blender jar.

Fry the plantain for a few minutes, then transfer to the blender jar, along with the chiles and water you set aside earlier. Blend until smooth. Strain the sauce and return to the skillet. Add the chocolate and season with salt.

Add 2 cups of the chicken broth to the sauce and the stewed chicken pieces. Cook for about 20 to 25 minutes, uncovered. Mole sauce should be fairly thick.

SIDE DISH

Tortillas

Buy the best corn tortillas you can find to accompany this meal. Of course, you can always make your own. If you dare, here’s a good place to find out how to do it.

SIDE DISH

Spanish Rice

INGREDIENTS
-2 tablespoons red palm oil
-1 onion, finely chopped
-1 garlic clove, minced
-2 cups of medium or long-grain white rice
-3 cups* chicken stock
-1 heaping tablespoon tomato paste
-pinch of dried oregano
-1 teaspoon sea salt

*Check the instructions on the rice package for the proportions of liquid to rice. They can range from 1:1 to 2:1. If your rice calls for 2 cups of water for every cup of rice, then for this recipe, use 4 cups of stock for 2 cups of rice.

DIRECTIONS
In a large skillet, brown rice in red palm oil over medium-high heat. Add onion and garlic. Cook onion and rice mixture, stirring frequently, about 4 minutes, or until onions are softened.

In a separate sauce pan, bring stock to a simmer over medium heat. Add tomato sauce, oregano, and salt. Add rice mixture to the broth and bring to a simmer; cover. Lower heat and cook for 15-25 minutes, depending on the type of rice and the instructions on the rice package. Turn off heat and let sit for 5 minutes.

DESSERT

Tres Leches Cake

INGREDIENTS
-1/4 cup cake flour
-1 tsp. baking powder
-1 cup sugar
-1/3 cup shortening (I use Jungle Products’ shortening)
-5 large eggs
-2 tsp. vanilla extract
-1 1/2 cup milk
-1 cup sweetened condensed milk
-1 3/4 cup heavy cream
-1 tsp rum
-pinch of sea salt
-dash of cinnamon

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 325ºF.

In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt. In a stand mixer bowl, combine shortening, sugar, and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract. Turning the mixer to low, add the eggs to the sugar mixture one at a time until well combined. Stir in the 1/2 cup of milk, then gently fold in the flour mixture a little at a time. Pour batter into a lightly greased cake pan or baking dish.

Bake for 30-40 minutes or until it feels firm and an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Let the cake cool until it reaches room temperature, and turn it over onto a platter with raised edges. Pierce cake with a fork 20-30 times. Let it cool in the refrigerator for an additional 30 minutes.

Whisk together 1 cup milk, 1 cup sweetened condensed milk, 1 cup heavy cream and rum. Slowly pour over cooled cake. Refrigerate for 1 hour. Occasionally, spoon the milk runoff back onto the cake.

In a mixing bowl, add 3/4 cup heavy cream, 1 teaspoon vanilla and 1 Tablespoon sugar. Beat until peaks form. Spread a thin layer over the cake.

Before you serve the cake, top it with a light sprinkling of cinnamon.

MUSIC

Buena Vista Social Club, Buena Vista Social Club

This is one of the best albums, well, EVER. If you haven’t heard anything by this group, do yourself a favor and buy this album. There’s more to hear than this, but it’s a great starting point. If you like BVSC (and you should), be sure to check out Buena Vista Social Club Presents Ibrahim Ferrer, as well as Ferrer’s Buenos Hermanos. And it wouldn’t hurt to give a listen to Omara Portuondo and Ry Cooder, while you’re at it.

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I knew I was behind on Monthly Meals, but I just checked and the last one I wrote was in JUNE. Honestly. So, I owe you guys a bunch of meals, pronto. I’ll be posting the July and August meals tomorrow, with the September and October meals to follow on Friday. I hope you enjoy them!

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Prop 2 passed yesterday, YAY! Congratulations to everyone who committed their time, money, or efforts to the passage of this legislature.

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While I wish I could say that I buy organic candy for the tots who come trotting up to our door each Halloween, alas, I can’t. We live on a really, really busy corner, and we have to buy an insane load of candy each year to provide for all those kids. The running joke is that pre-Halloween we might have to take out a loan to afford all that candy. And I’m always shocked at the kids who grab handfuls of candy, not to mention the parents who stand by without making their kids say “thank you.” I’ve turned into one of those people who asks ungrateful trick-or-treaters, “Now, what do you say?” The amount of curmudgeonry at our house grows each year, I’m afraid.

As a result of our high levels of Halloween traffic, we do tend to buy candy from drugstores or other stores where we can get a deal. But there is something we keep in mind: animal testing apparently extends into the world of America’s most beloved sweets, those products manufactured by the Mars company. Mars makes M&M’s, as well as Starburst, Snickers, Twix, and Skittles. According to PETA, Mars performs cruel and painful tests on animals to see how chocolate affects them in order to make health claims about their chocolate.

While PETA has earned a well-deserved reputation for being outlandishly irrational and inflammatory, in this case Mars has confirmed that they perform animal testing. Mars says it’s required by law because their chocolate contains flavanols, a naturally-occurring substance in chocolate which apparently offer benefits to your brain and bloodflow. I’m all for learning about how various foods affect our health, but why is it necessary to do things like cutting open the legs of baby mice to find out how flavanols affect our systems? Why can’t we just be content with the fact that chocolate is somewhat good for us?

Oh, that’s right, health claims make money.

Here are some health claims pertaining to flavanols. If you look at the bottom of the page, these claims are sponsored by Mars, Incorporated. Hey, good to know how they obtained this information, right? Jerks.

So, if you haven’t already purchased your Halloween candy this year, make sure you buy candy from the Hershey company. I’m not saying that Hershey’s is great, because they use high-fructose corn syrup in about everything they make… which includes Reese’s peanut butter cups, Kit Kat bars, Hershey’s kisses, Almond Joy, Mounds, Twizzlers, and Jolly Ranchers. (By the way, trying to find out what the ingredients of these products are is a pain in the ass.) But, almost all drugstore candy contains corn syrup and poor-quality chocolate, so at least if you buy Hershey’s products you know you won’t be supporting animal testing. On CHOCOLATE. Oh, for the love.

Also, here’s a tip: If you want to enjoy the health benefits of chocolate, eat good-quality super-dark chocolate, which is expensive and bitter. Get your chocolate health the natural way, and screw Mars.

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Holidays (even the Hallmark-manufactured ones) are a time to celebrate the nuances and rituals of being a modern American. While Thanksgiving and Christmas are arguably my favorite holidays, I’ve always enjoyed Halloween, if only for the pumpkin carving (and dressing up like Where’s Waldo, of course). When I was a kid, my sister and I always carved pumpkins at my parents’ kitchen table, using those little orange-handled pumpkin knives they sell at drugstores. Amy always made some time-intensive design, like a cat on a witch’s broom, and I typically carved your basic run-of-the-mill pumpkin face. Over the years, my carving skills have grown along with my love for the ritual of pumpkin carving.

So, you can imagine my excitement when yesterday Ted, who usually hates Halloween (Communist, maybe?), proposed that we buy pumpkins and carve them yesterday evening. We decided it was only natural for two organic-philes to buy organic pumpkins, since my suspicion is that the pumpkin-farming industry probably uses a crapload of chemicals to produce all of those orange orbs each fall. I’m not sure where to find statistics on that, but you can be sure that the rows and rows of ripe pumpkins ready for plucking across America are probably the result of fertilizer and herbicide sprays. (Because we all know that Americans don’t tolerate any weeds in our pumpkin patches, now THAT would be Communist.)

So, Ted and I headed out last night and purchased two glorious pumpkins at our local Whole Foods, doing our part to support the organic Halloween pumpkin industry. My hopes for next year are that we can grow our own pumpkins in our garden, which would be even more sustainable, but this year it wasn’t meant to be. Here’s what we did with our pumpkins this year:

In case you haven’t guessed which one is mine, it’s the “Jack”-o-lantern:

I LOVE me some Nightmare Before Christmas, and it only felt appropriate to pay homage to one of my favorite movies. Now I just hope some raving idiot doesn’t decide to smash my pumpkin in the street, that would seriously hurt my feelings. I think I’m gonna rent Nightmare tonight, just to get in the spirit of things.

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I just updated all of the blog buttons to match the new design, so if you’re displaying one of these buttons on your site, please update the code!

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As I mentioned in my post about Prop 2, big meat producers are spending tons of money trying to convince Californians that the initiative will do horrible things. These ads are full of misinformation, and some of them even contain outright lies. They also use scare tactics to scare us into voting no on Prop 2, invoking the fear of price increases that won’t really happen. Basically, they suck. You can watch one here, which is chock-full of these ridiculous lies.

To counter these misleading attack ads, the folks over at Yes on Prop 2 made an ad featuring Wayne Pacelle, CEO of The Humane Society of the US, talking about why Prop 2 is be good for California’s animals. This ad is facing direct competition from the attack ads I mentioned above in several CA markets. Big Ag has access to millions of dollars to promote its campaign of lies, but Yes on Prop 2 is encountering funding shortages to keep its ad on the air. How is that fair?

I hate that in US politics it’s the side with the most money that often wins. (In this case, Big Ag has made those millions of dollars off of the backs of animals in cramped, disgusting crates.) So Yes on Prop 2 and The Humane Society have put out a call to citizens for donations to help keep their ad on the air. I encourage you to give a donation, even a small one, to support this cause. I have personally donated as well, giving this month’s entire ad revenue for this site to help keep this important ad on the air. It’s important for me to stand up for what I believe in, and in this case, I’ve put my money where my mouth is, so to speak.

Here’s the ad in question. It contains some images of animals in various conditions, comparing what life is like for millions of animals in this state to what they could be like if Prop 2 passes. The images are real, which stands in stark contrast to the emotionally-charged and misleading images used in the Big Ag ad I linked to above. Please give it thirty seconds of your time.

Click here to keep this ad on the air.

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As I’ve mentioned several times before, we have five adopted animals, two cats and three dogs. Lucky, the youngest of the bunch, is a four-foot long mutt who spends his days lounging in the sun and saying what’s up to all of his friends in the neighborhood during our walks. Now, imagine Lucky as I have been imagining him all day: locked in a five-foot long crate, too small to even turn around in; or crammed into cages with several other dogs, covered in his own urine and feces, with scars on his body from fights with other dogs due to the cramped conditions.

If you’re wondering why I’ve been thinking about one of our wonderful dogs in such awful situations, it’s because there are millions of animals in California who are living under those conditions, and worse. Veal calves, egg-laying hens, and mama pigs did not ask to live their lives without being able to turn around. And I’ve been thinking about what Lucky would be like if he had to live like that, because pigs are more intelligent than dogs, so I think it’s a fair comparison. Just as dogs need to sniff and mark their territory in order to be happy, pigs need to root with their snouts and wallow in mud. If Lucky was denied his basic needs as a dog from a young age, I can’t imagine how unhappy and damaged he would be.

There’s something happening in California right now that’s very important for the quality of life of this state’s millions of cage-dwelling animals. Proposition 2 is an initiative that will require all food producers with animal operations to stop using these tiny crates. Actually, this idea isn’t so radical, and as a piece of legislature, Prop 2 is pretty moderate. It doesn’t require anything extreme from producers, just a modicum of decency and respect that these animals deserve. If their ultimate end is on our plates, they shouldn’t have to live a life of squalor and misery as well.

And please don’t believe any of the hype funded by the conventional meat production industry. These corporations are spending obscene amounts of money to convince CA voters that Prop 2 will and ultimately put producers out of business. PLEASE. First of all, Prop 2 will help to support family farmers. Talk about family values! And no, Prop 2 will not make the cost of cheap supermarket meat skyrocket. There are several examples of these types of initiatives passing in the past, and they did not result in significant price increases. At most, Prop 2 will cost consumers a few extra cents per dozen eggs, or per pound of pork. (Yes on Prop 2. You can read more about it here, so prepare yourself for November 4. Let’s hold our meat producers to a higher standard of decency.

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”
-Mahatma Gandhi

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As you’ve probably noticed, The Sustainable Scoop has a new design. There was nothing inherently wrong with the old design, exactly, though as I mentioned before I just couldn’t seem to get away from the feeling that it was “formulated” somehow. In short, my personal blog had become much less personal, and I could feel myself beginning to lose interest.

I chose this new design for several reasons, not the least of which are the features of this new theme. Thesis is by far the most comprehensive theme I’ve found, in both SEO and in design. I’m a designer by trade, but lately I’ve had a lot of work come my way, and I just don’t have the time to make a million tiny little design changes here and there. Chris Pearson, the designer behind Thesis, has done an amazing job of allowing users to make myriad design and function tweaks without having to edit any code. This has already saved me a lot of time.

I like that the sidebars in the new design are both on the right. I always found the old design, with the main content in the center, to be distracting. This way, all of the “extras” will be on the right side of the page, allowing readers to focus on the content much more easily. This does lend itself to the problem of an unbalanced page, particularly once you scroll down past the end of the sidebars; but I decided that this issue wasn’t enough to keep me from loving the new design.

I’ve also simplified some things here at the Scoop. For one, all of the archives will be organized in an “Archives” tab at the top of the page. I’m also going to simplify some of the content, but I’m not sure how yet. I’ve decided that I can’t really eliminate any categories, since the stuff I write here has such a broad scope. I’m just going to reduce some of the time it used to take me to write, manage, and update the site. I used to have to manually update the Pages for several types of posts, and this effort became a deterrent to posting anything. So, anything that wastes time will be removed or redistributed.

I’m going to be focusing more of my posts around gardening (biointensive, in particular), since this has become a major passion of mine. The image currently in use in the site’s header is a photo of the garden at Ecology Action in Willits, California. As my own garden grows and changes, I’ll be updating the header with photos from my own garden. That’s the idea, anyway, and I hope that in this way I can share some of my gardening with you guys.

Another feature of the new site that I’m particularly proud of are the six colorful squares in the top of the sidebars. These are resources that I’ve deemed worthy of occupying that space, I receive no money whatsoever in exchange for featuring those resources. I just really believe in what each one of those organizations are doing. What I’ve chosen to feature also resonates with my own sustainability practices, so I really wanted to share them with you.

If you guys have any thoughts on the new site, please let me know. I’m not aiming to please everyone, but I do want to make reading the Scoop as pleasant for as many of you as possible. If you have thoughts, please share them in the comments. Thanks!

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Yesterday on Buzzfeed there was a round-up of articles about a baffling group of individuals, the “Never-Greens.” Apparently, about ten percent of Americans don’t give a rat’s ass about the environment, and they aren’t afraid to say so. These are the people who continue to buy Hummers and RVs, who refuse to recycle, and who don’t believe in (or don’t care about) global warming. Hey, Dad, you’re not alone!

Yeah, I know I should be upset about these “Never-Greens,” and I truly don’t understand how anyone could just choose to not care about conserving resources. But the Buzzfeed feature got me thinking: how many people would categorize themselves as “Greens” who also don’t really care that much about the environment? Hear me out: I’m thinking about people who get all hot-and-bothered about global warming, and then hop in their SUV to drive a quarter of a mile. I’m thinking about people who travel thousands of miles a year for their jobs, and then bitch about the food miles of the produce at Whole Foods. I’m thinking about people who are, for lack of a softer word, hypocrites.

Of course, we’re all hypocritical in many ways. I, for one, am nowhere close to perfect. Just check out the Conventional Confessions for a running list of my lapses, if you choose. Most of us are trying to reduce our consumption and maker smarter choices with our dollars, so I’m not talking about you. I am talking about those of us who don’t practice what we preach, those of us for whom comfort and ease are far greater decision-making factors than what’s best for our planet.

It’s easy to talk about being green. It’s far less easy to practice environmental awareness. I won’t lie, rinsing out containers that are bound for the recycling bin isn’t fun. Carrying our kitchen scraps out to our compost bin, which is in a yard that isn’t easily accessible from our house, is a bitch. And don’t even get me started on the effort involved in canning your own food for the winter. These things are green, for sure, but they’re not easy.

Being “green” takes more effort than being “Never-Green.” That’s why so many of us are “Sometimes-Green.” When we’re dealing with a really busy time in our lives, it’s harder to adhere to a greener lifestyle than when we have a little more breathing room in our schedules. Still, I can’t help but appreciate those who try to do what’s right, even if it’s just some of the time. There are plenty of people who talk the green talk, but hardly even make an effort towards those ideals. They happily drive their gas-guzzling trucks and sports cars, and they’ve never given a second thought to swapping out the products in their bathrooms or laundry rooms. Sure, they probably shop at Whole Foods and dine at restaurants touting their use of local produce, but beyond those highly visible efforts, there is a lot left to be desired.

And about those “Never-Greens?” Well, at least they’re honest. The reality is that if it really is only ten percent of people who don’t care about the environment, that means that ninety percent of Americans do care. Yeah, I wish that lots of those people would make more changes in their lives, but at least we’re on the right track. Everything begins with awareness, and ninety percent isn’t too bad, right?

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I have been working my proverbial ass off getting my new garden ready for fall, and it’s finally almost complete. First I had to deal with a giant cherry stump, and then rake away a few inches’ worth of debris and yuckiness, and THEN I learned that the whole garden was just one big weed bed that would have to be dug up by hand. Fun! But it’s almost done, and it has been so worth it.

The garden runs along the length of our house, which is long and narrow, and so is the garden. So, there are the veggie and flower beds at the front (near the gate), then there is the area where we’ll put garden furniture eventually, then there’s my elderberry and red clover bed, and at the back there are two compost stalls and extra space for my tools. Here are some photos of all of my hard work.

This is a baby elderberry shrub, which will eventually grow to be six feet in diameter and at least that tall, providing a screen so garden visitors don’t see the compost stalls from the gate. To keep the weeds down in this bed, and to fix some much-needed nitrogen, I planted some red clover seeds that are now happily sprouting.

Here’s my “potting bench,” which is really just some seedling flats on top of a sheet of wood that’s on top of two sawhorses. Ted made the flats for me, by the way!

Here are the two compost stalls. The one on the left is full of spring compost, and the one on the right is for fall compost.

This is the digging-up process I just finished, it was quite a project. I’d have to soak the ground overnight (or two days out, if it was really hard), use a digging spade to dig out about a foot of dirt, use my digging fork to loosen the soil below, and yank out the weeds. Yes, blackberries are weeds. Do you see those cute, little blackberry tops sticking out of the ground?

Well, below is one of those blackberries, root and all, lying next to my gloves for size comparison. Not so cute now, huh?

I now have a garden that’s almost completely blackberry-free, and today I’m plotting out the rest of my beds. If I have time, I’m even going to plant my perennials. What a dork I’ve become!

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I’ve noticed something amiss lately with our toilet paper. Yes, I’m going there. We buy Seventh Generation toilet paper, the kind that comes individually wrapped in paper (not in the big plastic multi-packs: those suck). This TP is two-ply, it has been that way for years, and lately we’ve noticed that it has been downgraded to one-ply. What? Bitches, do NOT mess with my toilet paper without asking my permission. I know, times are tough and all, but I’d honestly rather pay a little more for that extra ply of paper, you know what I mean?

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Today the BBC wrote an article about a study published by Edinburgh University involving cosmetic products and pregnant women. The study was performed on pregnant rats, which makes me sad, because animal testing sucks. But the team did show that various chemicals deemed “safe” for use in cosmetics caused future reproductive health problems in the baby mice, such as decreased sperm production. The leader of the team, Professor Richard Sharpe, said that in humans these chemicals could cause fertility problems such as testicular cancer later in life.

Of course, these findings are deemed “not yet conclusive” because there’s no way they can ethically test these chemicals on pregnant human women. Of course, women are already using these chemicals, but to purposefully create conditions in the lab involving pregnant women is considered to be decidedly unethical by the scientific community. So they can’t conclusively, positively say that using cosmetics containing chemicals such as _ are bad for pregnant women and their babies’ future health, but why would women even take a risk when there are such wonderful alternatives on the market? And, going further, if there are chemicals in cosmetics and perfumes that are questionable in terms of safety, then why would even non-pregnant women (or men, for that matter) use these products?

I guess that decision depends on your perspective. After all, many of these same chemicals are in the fabrics and materials in our homes, and they’re even in the air. While that’s a damn shame, it does raise the question of whether or not those chemicals are avoidable in today’s world. Ted and I will eventually have children, and while I’m pregnant I’ll know that modern babies are born with synthetic chemicals already in their little bodies. So, does the use of chemical-laden cosmetic products like perfume become a moot point?

I don’t believe so. My thinking is, if babies already have so many unnatural chemicals for their immune systems to process, why add to that load? What’s surprising to me is how many women react to being told not to use these products while pregnant. In this post on Jezebel, the comments section is teeming with comments from women who are sick of what they call the “pregnancy police” telling what they can and can’t do. I think their ire has less to do with the restrictions placed on pregnant women, and more to do with the judgments passed by those both within and outside of the medical community on women who make choices they don’t agree with. I’ve had friends and family who, both while pregnant and then once they have children, are approached by random strangers who make judgey comments about what they’re eating, what their kids are eating, what they put in their shopping cart, and so forth. I agree that these passing (and unsolicited) judgments are frustrating and hurtful, and I know that if anyone ever does that to me I’ll be the first to stand up for my choices. And by “stand up for,” I mean that I’ll whip out by bitchface before the offending party has tie to blink.

Still, I think that when it comes to avoidable, unnecessary things like perfume and unsafe cosmetics, why take a risk? And, while we’re at it, why is the medical field stopping short of saying that ALL women shouldn’t use these products? As I like to say, if something’s good enough for a pregnant woman, then it’s good enough for me. As Prof. Sharpe says in the BBC article, “If women planning on becoming pregnant [are] anxious about such issues they [can] avoid putting any cosmetic products on their skin which could then be absorbed into their bodies.” If pregnant women may choose not to use potentially harmful products, then that’s a choice I’m going to make, too.

To provide a starting point for those of you who may not know which products to use instead of chemically ones, here’s a list of products from companies I’ve written about before. I know there are lots of other good companies out there too, so consider this a starting point. You can also refer to the previous Roll Call posts about skin care and cosmetics, which asked readers to share what they like to use. If you can think of any other good products, leave your recommendations in the comments!

MAKEUP
Suki Color
Aubrey Organics
Dr. Hauschka
Jane Iredale

FRAGRANCE
Aubrey Organics

HAIRCARE
Aubrey Organics
Hugo Naturals
J.R. Liggett
Uncle Harry’s

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I’ve been doing some thinking about this site, and I think I’m getting an idea of what I’d like to do with it. Frankly, it’s become too predictable for me, and too formulated. I’ve found that there have been lots of times I’ve wanted to post a quick story about an experience I may have had, but because it didn’t fit into any of the prescribed categories, I didn’t post it. That has made it feel like I’m writing a magazine, not a blog, and I’d like to get back to a place where I can just write about my experiences in addition to product reviews and recipes. I’m thinking of ways to make the Scoop more personal, because that’s why I loved doing it in the first place. I used to tell stories in my own voice, and I miss that.

Also, I’m going to be focusing a lot more on gardening and cooking. I do like doing the product reviews, I think they’re important and integral to why I started this site; but my concept of sustainability has changed a lot in two years. Growing and preparing your own food is a big part of what’s really sustainable, so you guys will probably notice my posts shift a bit towards those topics. Like I said, I’ll still do product reviews and other features of the site will stay, but I will be simplifying some.

I’m excited about where the site will go, though it will definitely take me a while to get around to doing it all. I’m thinking October, probably… I’d love to get it done sooner than that, but I guess the good news is that my design work is keeping my really busy. Yay for work! And now that I have a clearer idea of what to do with this site, I’m feeling more capable of posting. Hopefully there will be more here for you all to read, I know it’s been slow ’round these parts lately. So, yay for posting! I’ll keep you all in the loop as everything goes forward.

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