Organic Girly

Vegan This: Nutella Donut Muffins

Wed, 30 May 2012 22:12:00 -0400

When Nutella, donuts and muffins meet, it’s easy to feed your cravings and forget it’s even vegan.

To many a vegan (and gluten-free) foodie, donuts are the taunting tease of deprivation. Don’t get me wrong. Most vegans I know stand firmly on the fact that they live a deeply fulfilling, nutrient dense life. I am one such proud plant eater. And yet, when cravings kick-in, I start madly scouringthe lists of every vegan café in town. In the end, I know nothing will taste better than taking it to my own kitchen. So, I send the world my own version of a vegan baking prayer and set off to conquer the craving. In this case, it involves two of my greatest vices – donuts and Nutella.

Normally, donuts, muffins and Nutella make the perfect food coma pairing. Not being one for comatose Sunday brunches, I softened the blow with less processed ingredients like coconut oil instead of butter, homemade almond milk in place of dairy and Nutella with real hazelnuts in lieu of artificial flavorings. For vegans like me who, beyond pure choice, are allergic to foods like milk and eggs, hazelnuts are actually the perfect ingredient. Full of phytochemical flavonoids (antioxidants) like quercetin, these little nuts may help to reduce allergic reactions. And, with healthy doses of vitamins E and B to boot—for healthy skin and a healthy metabolism, respectively – I’ll take a spoonful of hazelnuts with my sugar any day.

Denser than a donut, but still light, sugary and perfectly sweet, these quick and easy treats will give your cravings a real farewell. For now, at least.

Jump over to my Vegan This column on Ecosalon for the recipe, and enjoy!

{Photo compliments of Organic Girly}

Vegan This: Vanilla Cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery

Tue, 01 May 2012 12:05:00 -0400

Vegan cupcakes based on Sex and the City’s famous Vanilla Vanilla Cupcake recipe.

From New York City to Dubai, we’re living in a sugar coated world of cupcake mania. Many reports (like this one from the UK Telegraph) put the addiction blame on the famed Magnolia Bakery.

What started 16 years ago as the tiniest of local cupcake spots on Bleeker Street in New York City’s West Village, has now become an over-heated sensation. Sex in City, followed by Saturday Night Live’s “Lazy Sunday” and The Devil Wears Prada, have all been accused of instigating and spreading the cupcakes-gone-wild craze. Flash through old episodes ofSex in the City and you’re sure to find the one where Carrie and Miranda munch on frosted treats outside the original Magnolia Bakery – back in the day before lines circled around the block.

“I have a crush,” Carrie confesses to Miranda, lips lined with pink buttercream frosting. Was it a cupcake crush? Tourists who happily fork over $48 and more than three hours of their time to take the official Sex in the City Hotspots Tour in New York City- including a stop at this very spot – can answer best. Walk inside the flagship Bloomingdale’s, or simply follow the trend from New York to Chicago, LA to Dubai or the 120 new locations in the works, and you’ll see that a bad case of the Magnolia cupcake crush is taking the world by sweet-toothed storm.

My memories of Magnolia Bakery go back to those one-location wonder days, post Sex in the City. As a transplanted New Yorker, I recall once dedicating an afternoon standing in the Magnolia line – for what felt like hours – simply to snag a cupcake for a friend’s birthday. Five years later, I tasted a tiny crumble of the infamous Vanilla Vanilla Magnolia Cupcake.

Fast forward to today where I’ve masterminded a vegan, gluten-free edition – starting with the original Vanilla Vanilla Cupcake recipe, compliments of Magnolia Bakery and the Food Network. While this is no baking adventure for the weary, the results are well worth it.

For my complete article & recipe, please jump over to ecosalon…

{Photos compliments of me, Organic Girly.}

Enjoy!

I’m not into organized religion. I’m into believing in a higher...

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 11:53:28 -0400

I’m not into organized religion. I’m into believing in a higher source of creation, realizing we’re all just part of nature.

-Neil Young

(Photo compliments of Glisglis—thank you!)

Vegan This: The Girl Scout Tagalong Cookie

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 19:23:00 -0400

The Tagalong cookie gets a whole new nutritional label.

I was recently in the midst of a true food challenge. I’m talking about the kind that covers kitchens in batter. If I were going to share the inner perils and pleasures of veganizing and gluten-freeing a cookie, I thought, why not start with the ultimate? The snack that touts the highest of all cookie claims: “To help girls do great things” – from, you guessed it, the Girl Scouts.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in 2008, more than one-third of children and adolescents were overweight or obese. And, this number is only increasing. Just read a Girl Scout Cookie’s nutrition facts, and the irony is, it’s chock full of heart-clogging ingredients, like partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil, a trans fat. The kind that lead to less healthy children who are at early onset risk of chronic diseases like diabetes.

While the Girl Scouts have touted their cookies as being trans fat free – something they can get away with if a single serving has less than .5 grams of this artery stifling substance – the Chicago Tribune revealed that Girl Scout Tagalongs, Samoas and Thin Mints still contain trans fats. In the case of Tagalongs, eat one sleeve (five cookies) and you’ll most likely be taking in more than one gram of trans fat – a number directly linked to increased levels of harmful cholesterol (LDL) and a rise in risk for heart disease, stroke and type II diabetes. The even greater irony is that the Girl Scouts themselves have published a research review on childhood obesity titled “Weighing in: Helping Girls be Healthy Today, Healthy Tomorrow”.

The idea to transform this classic cookie into a vegan and gluten-free delight, but also to make it healthier was a task I was willing to accept.

To make this occasion less daunting, I started with an already vegan version of the Girl Scout Tagalongs, compliments of vegan bloggers and inspirers Annie and Dan Shannon and VegNews.

For the original recipe + my NEW gluten-free and allergy-friendly take on the Tagalong, please hop over to ecosalon.

(Photo compliments of Annie & Dan Shannon and VegNews. Thank You!)

Talk about organic, eatable beauty… Summer’s...

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 18:35:00 -0400

Talk about organic, eatable beauty… Summer’s delights are coming.

Awesome blog! Please follow mine :D.

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 15:43:47 -0400

Ditto! Thank you! Following you too… And can’t wait to try some of Steve’s ice cream :-)

3 Mmm-worthy Fashionable Foods

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 22:08:00 -0400

From trendy to simply tasty, I’ve rounded a few of my favorite, well, fashionable foods. They pack nutritional punch and good-for-your-figure flavor so you can put the word “diet” to bed and simply call this a re-freshening lifestyle.

1: The Koolest Kind of Kombucha

If you’re a localvore, micro-brewer, artisanal, herbalist kombucha lover, you’ll fall head over heels at first sip (and if you’re anything like me—you’ll just just have to take one look at the charming bottle to fall in love) with Townshend’s Brew Dr. Kombucha. Many call me kombucha obsessed (there’s nothing like some fermented effervescence to start your day), and I’ve never tried one that chocks up to the nuanced taste and invigorating essences of this one.

Townshend’s Tea Shop in Portland, OR, which I gleefully visited on my last trip to the alt-Brooklyn brew scene.

From bottle to brew, it’s simply the best. The only catch—as of now, it’s only available in the Pacific Northwest, so if you’re not in the neighborhood, take a trip out west and load up your bags with this brown bottle magic. Trust me, you’ll be kombucha buzzed with happiness.

2: Cheesy-with-a-kick Kale Chips

Pack in the iron, vitamins and simply delicious antioxidant goodness with these raw, crunchy bits of green wonder. The ones I whip up and dehydrate at home are inspired by Blessings Alive kale chips. I’ve blended their cheesy recipe with their spicy ranch concoction for a cheesy bite of habenaro spiced kale in every green crumble. You won’t believe just how nutritious these are.

3: Cupcakes with Compassion (and deliciousness)

In my sweet tooth world, desserts get a bad rap. Go vegan and gluten-free with heart healthy ingredients like coconut oil and almond flour, and you’ll start to wonder if they can really taste like a true indulgence. Naturally, the resounding answer is “Yes!”. (Does the chocolate covering my face say anything?) The ones I whipped up this weekend are a take on Babycakes NYCs’ Healthy Hostess Cupcakes.

Word to the wise baker, the New York City-based bakery’s eponymous book features the same sweet delights as you’ll find in the bakery but with different ingredients and modifications, keeping their trade secrets under wrap. All that explains why I’ve never gotten their frosting just right, so this time I whipped up another vegan buttercream frosting inspired by this recipe on one of my favorite blogs, The Daily Green. These make it easy to enjoy every little guilt-free crumb.

{Photos compliments of—from Top to Bottom—LaJolieLune and Organic Girly (bottom 3 pics) }

Creating Organic Perfume, One Memory at a Time

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 17:50:32 -0400

Scents in Time: the fine history and art behind the essences we wear.

Your first trip to the ocean. A dusty old book. Your mother’s silk scarf. An English rose garden. These are the fragrances you remember, have internalized and equate with a memory. Perfumes are nothing more than the scents that become a part of us, are at once an embodiment of these momentary memories.

Natural fragrances, those straight from nature like frankincense, orange blossom, jasmine and vanilla, reach deep into our core and storied biographies, conjuring to mind poignant memories that comfort us. Long before the Industrial Revolution such scents were all we knew.

“Up until the turn of the last century, perfumes, like Mille fragrances [worn by the ladies of Versailles], were blended in apothecaries for royalty from nothing but natural essences,” says renowned natural perfumer Mandy Aftel of Aftelier Perfumes.

“When synthetic chemicals were created in the 1880s, perfumes became a subconscious art,” says Aftel, referring to brands like Coty, Chanel (beginning with Chanel No° 5) and Guerlain. But, she says, their perfumes and all other synthetics lacked complexity, mystery and emotional depth.

“There is no romance in perfume without its close relationship to nature,” Aftel believes.

For the complete, scent-full piece, please visit my article on ecosalon. Enjoy…

(Photo compliments of Hal1969—Thank you!)

You’re beautiful today & every day… never forget...

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 21:31:00 -0500

You’re beautiful today & every day… never forget that!

Glittering like the Oscar itself, Meryl Streep bedazzled the red...

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 22:30:41 -0500

Glittering like the Oscar itself, Meryl Streep bedazzled the red (turning green) carpet tonight in Lanvin’s first ever custom eco gown… now that’s beautiful! She joins resplendent in red Livia Firth in this year’s Green Carpet Challenge.

(Photo compliments of Getty Images—Thank you!)

Is High Conscious Fashion the New Frontier at NYFW?

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 19:03:00 -0500

Forging a new fashion trail with Suzanne Rae’s Fall/Winter 2012 collection.

There’s a new frontier in fashion – a glamorous harkening back to the simply beautiful and designer Suzanne Rae is the perfect pioneer. She’s personable, a true philosophizer, a family girl and constantly evolving toward what she calls a “higher consciousness.”

It’s this clear consciousness that came through her Fall/Winter 2012 collection showcased at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in collaboration with the W Hotels Fashion Next Showcase. In her fourth season showing here, she’s no stranger to hard and high fashion. And, it shows.

The impeccable detail to pieces like her fur print bias gown with “Suzanimal,” as Rae affectionately calls it, (see below), is silk screened to look like real animal fur yet she assures, it’s entirely fur free. The “Suzanimal,” a wolf pelt stole, follows the same silk screened printing process and is then layered on a bed of wool – all sketched out pre-production by biologist-turned-artist Sam Dakota.

For Rae it’s each little element that makes a piece, which is why we couldn’t stop staring at her cowl backs, fringe backs and cotton tails, nearly more riveting than their front-facing counterparts.

The designer, Suzanne Rae, post-show with her parents. Feel the love…

For the complete article, please visit my post on EcoSalon.

(All photos by Jennifer Barckley of Organic Girly.)

Sending you LOVE & GRATITUDE today and always! Happy...

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 12:18:47 -0500

Sending you LOVE & GRATITUDE today and always! Happy Valentine’s Day!

your truly, Organic Girly

{Thanks to abzchen for this beautiful image!}

Street Smart Fashion @ NYFW: Titania Inglis

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 19:44:00 -0500

Titania Inglis, winner of this year’s Ecco Domani Fashion Foundation Award in Sustainable Design, gets street cred with her first New York Fashion Week show.

The show started early for Titania Inglis. Bedecked in black – lots of stylized black – guests waited upbeat, mingling behind black curtains. It was Inglis’ inaugural New York Fashion Week show, made possible by her recently announced 2012 win of the Ecco Domani Fashion Foundation Award in Sustainable Design. It was clear that something award winning was about to take place. And, it felt as if we were part of Inglis’ cheerfully somber production. So, like good cast members we waited in the entryway of the Eyebeam Art & Technology Center, a non-profit enterprise and one of the country’s leading media art centers.

The stage was set for Inglis’ own shade of black, uplifted and far from bleak – a seamless blend of preppy plaid and gothic darkness. It was as if two, vastly separate, high school cliques instantly merged into one, very cool and non-cliquey band of fashion mavens. So, it came as no surprise when I overhead Inglis characterize her collection as “My So Called Life all grown up.”

Street-tough models bedecked in vegetable tanned leather from a farm in France, (where they guarantee the entire cow has been used, from food to fashion), in herringbone, recycled cotton plaids, asymmetrical skirts and soft fabrics like raw Japanese silk and Cupro glided by effortlessly.

For the complete article and snapshots from the show, please visit my post on Ecosalon…

(Photos by Jennifer Barckley of Organic Girly.)

Green & Fashionable at New York Fashion Week?

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 20:31:18 -0500

Sustainable Fashion has come so far. Case in point, today’ presentation of The Green Shows at New York’s Mercedes Benz fashion week. A line reminiscent of last year’s Alexander McQueen exhibit at the MET snaked around the corridor—camera crews and curious fashion mavens awaiting the show, all aglow with the green buzz.

And buzz-worthy it was, not just for it’s “greenness” but equally for its fashion. Julia Ragolia, Ready to Wear stylist for the show, told me, “To me it was about showing that eco fashion is fashionable. It’s like mainstream fashion.” Just what our fashion hungry and eco-needing world has been craving.

Here are a few of my favorite looks, from some of my favorite eco fashion designers:

(In future posts, we’ll share the stories behind the pieces and the designers themselves—exploring their approach to sustainable design and the craft they call their own).

Study New York: Cream combo sweater tee made of Fair Trade, artisanal Peruvian alpaca and 100% dead stock wool pants

H. Fredriksson: 100% organic alpaca cable knit sweater and digitally printed cupro lava print dress

Ajna: organic wool hand knit turtleneck and organic wool draped skirt

Luis Valenzuela: Hand woven, hand dyed organic silk dress

(All photos by Organic Girly.)

Unbroken Beauty: The Story of Castaways Turned to Life

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 08:05:00 -0500

Soccer-style kicks. Little hops on sidewalks. The resounding sound of “Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.” For many of us, this is our experience with the broken fragments of glass that oft line our curbs, our parks and our natural homes. And for most of us, these pieces of green, brown, blue, amber and more, are castaways—swept up by a street cleaner or slowly buried under a pile of leaves.

Connecting the Past to the Future

Yet, it’s the little things that can go far—in sharing beauty, in being of use, in telling a story of something larger than itself. For Laura Bergman, a reclaim artist and Founder of Bottled Up Designs, these abandoned remnants are gems for the rescue. Earrings. Necklaces. Artifacts of beauty. As much of a historian as she is a designer, Bergman crafts her eco friendly jewelry with a deep love and appreciation for the story behind it. “It’s a truly unique way to preserve the past while helping the future,” says Bergman.

For the complete article, please visit my column on EcoPlum…

(Photos courtesy of Sybren A. Stüvel—thank you!)

From Vinyl to Apples: Spinning our organic world

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 20:40:22 -0500

It’s all how you spin it. As someone who’s worked in marketing and PR for a decade, it’s the blush in the face industry joke. And, there’s truth to it. Of course, some things are simple, authentic, truly beautiful. No spinning required. For other things, it gets a little dicer. Take vinyl.

Last week, I literally laughed out loud on an airplane, when my lovely friend Mia left me a voicemail asking if I’d ever heard of “organic vinyl”. Organic vinyl? Sounds like an oxymoron to me. True to self, I dug deeper. And, you won’t believe it. Organic vinyl DOES exist. That’s right. Certified by the United States Department of Agriculture and denoted with a little green and white label, just like you’ll find on your apple of your box of cereal.

Vinyl will be the first non-agricultural product to earn the coveted designation, taking advantage of a little known loophole in the law that apparently does not restrict the label to agricultural products, but makes it available to all “products” made from at least 95% organic “ingredients.”

Vinyl Association President Don B. Fulde welcomed the decision: “Our member companies have long maintained that ours is essentially a natural product – common salt combined with natural gas, which is essentially a series of carbon and hydrogen atoms, in other words, decomposed plant matter. Now we have a label that confirms this.”

If salt and natural gas make our world certifiably organic, then the future ahead may be more interesting than we thought. As for me, I’m sticking to the roots. From the ground. Organic. Good. And, tasty too.

(Photo compliments of Blunder. Thank you!)

Please Return Me

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 22:08:51 -0500

I’m often accused of being peppy, positive and even worst, optimistic. And, I wouldn’t have it any other way. But today, I’m sorry to say, I fell into a place of deep sadness. I literally screamed something like, “Are we crazy?! Are we desperately trying to kill all species, including our own?” All that after opening my box of eco cleaning products. Who would have thought that a delivery that should have been met with a saving-the-planet-one-squirt-of-dish-soap at a time squeal of enthusiasm would be met with utter dismay.

Living a busy life in New York City often leads to last minute, almost-out-of-toilet-paper like crises. When all else fails (and since I’m not willing to sacrifice my don’t-destroy-mother-nature standards for an impulse buy) I shop online for such essentials. I couldn’t have been happier last night when I logged on to soap.com to buy my favorite Seventh Generation toilet paper, Ecos laundry detergent and Ecover dish soap.

However, when the boxes greeted me at home this evening, I was immediately suspicious. I could barely wrap my arms around one of them, and by the time I wrestled it up the stairs and tore it open, all I found was a package of Seventh Generation recycled paper towels surrounded by twice its volume of inflatable plastic protectant. Now what, I must ask, is going to bludgeon my paper towels to oblivion that so much plastic protectant is needed? But what really hit my heart was a note on the edge of the blow up packaging that told me to visit a website, fillair.com, for information on how to recycle. Curious and die hard in my quest to recycle, I did. I was welcomed with this:

To recycle Fill-Air®, Fill-Air® RF and Rapid Fill® material, please do the following:

Deflate (by poking a hole in the bag) and flatten the bags.

Fold the flattened material and place it inside an appropriate sized envelope or small carton.

Affix the appropriate postage to the shipping envelope or carton.

Address the envelope or carton to:

Ameri-Pak, In

Sealed Air Recycle Center 477 South Woods Dr. Fountain Inn, South Carolina 29644 Tel: +1-800-982-6197

Upon receipt of the material, it will be ground up and re-pelletized, so it can be used to make a variety of products from trash bags to automotive parts, which can also be recycled.

I’m truly happy this company has put recycling on its radar. Yet, I’m still befuddled as to why a company serious about recycling wouldn’t make it just a little bit easier. No one I know would seriously deflate the packaging, buy a large envelope, pay the postage and ship some plastic bags off to a company in Fountain Inn, South Carolina.

Instead, dear soap.com, biodegradable peanuts abound. Old packaging material from vendors can be reused once again. And easiest of all, you can simply use less packaging. I didn’t order packaging, so I’d like to return it. Landfill- and hassle- free.

(Photos, compliments of SeaOtter22 (top and bottom) and Journ (center).

There’s nothing left to say. It’s true!

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 20:21:46 -0500

There’s nothing left to say. It’s true!

For your happiness today & in the New Year…

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 15:55:39 -0500

For your happiness today & in the New Year…

Inspiring wisdom to carry within ourselves from this year to the...

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 16:43:31 -0500

Inspiring wisdom to carry within ourselves from this year to the next…