Green Cleaning & A Few Good Recipes

Green cleaning - my latest "kick." And not just going to the grocery store and buying eco friendly products (although I totally support that, too). I'm talking about making my own stuff using very basic ingredients. It's easy, cheap, fun and I'm cutting down on the chemicals inside my home. Yahoo!! I'm still trying out various recipes and deciding what I like best but I got started by attending a demo at Whole Foods. The demo was led by Leslie Reichert, The Cleaning Coach. She has a great book of green cleaning recipes, "The Joy of Green Cleaning." You can also visit her website to get tips, contact her and order products that she recommends. Click here for a link to her site.

Another great recipe book for green cleaning is called, "The Naturally Clean Home" by Karyn Siegal-Maier. I like this book because she provides a bit of information on using essential oils in the cleaning products.

My dear friends from California visited us this weekend and I decided to try out a new lasagna recipe, Artichoke & Spinach Lasagna. It was delicious! It's a nice vegetarian dish that pleased everyone's palates.

I also served an interesting Pepita & Yellow Pea Salad. It was my first time cooking beans from dry (I usually buy canned) and despite the peas being slightly undercooked, the salad was very tasty. I got the recipe from www.101cookbooks.com - a great site for healthy, vegetarian recipes. The blogger often puts together interesting and unique combinations of food (i.e. Black Bean Brownies!?!?). She is also a wonderful photographer and I find that looking at the photos of her food is inspiring.

I also found a Lentil Burger recipe off 101 Cookbooks. Sounds bizarre but man, these are GOOOOOOD!!! The recipe calls for black lentils which I found at Whole Foods. I did have to buy them dry so there was a soaking and cooking process before actually making the burgers. Though it wasn't too much extra work, I think next time I'm at Trader Joe's I'll see if they have they're cooked lentils in stock. I suppose you could use brown or green lentils but the black ones are a little heartier and may hold up better as a "burger." I also added diced carrots to the burger mixture.

So that's it for now. I'm hoping to blog more often - my goal is at least once a week. So check back soon!

Ciao for now.