For 25 years, Chelsea Green has been the publishing leader for books on the politics and practice of sustainable living. They are a founding member of the Green Press Initiative and have been printing books on recycled paper since 1985. They lead the industry both in terms of content-foundational books on renewable energy, green building, organic agriculture, eco-cuisine, and ethical business. Hanging around Chelsea Green’s website is as much fun as your local bookstore, you could easily spend a half a day perusing their great titles, listening to author interviews and watching videos featuring some of their brilliant writers. Many of their writers blog and tweet – they are on the cutting edge of the sustainability movement and the new media movement!
With well over 400 titles in print, its best-selling titles include:
Books on the politics of sustainability including the National Bestseller Don’t Think of an Elephant. George Lakoff’s definitive handbook for progressives to understand and communicate effectively about key political issues started the national discussion on framing the political debate. Over 200,000 copies printed in 6 months; The Man Who Planted Trees, an ecological fable that has sold over 250,000 copies in 18 years, setting a standard for quality of writing, beauty of design and illustration, creative publishing and inspirational message; The Straw Bale House, a revolutionary building book that has sold over 100,000 copies, launching the company’s natural building and renewable energy list and helping establish our recognized leadership in this field; Eliot Coleman’s The Four Season Harvest and The New Organic Grower, landmark books in sustainable agriculture and organic food – just to name a few.

Back in June the Wall Street Journal is reported on an increasing trend amongst suburban homeowners: growing, instead of buying, food. As the WSJ article reports:

“In Portland, Ore., sales of vegetable plants this season have jumped an unprecedented 43% from a year earlier, and sales of fruit-producing trees and shrubs are up 17%. Sales of flower perennials, on the other hand, are down 16%. It’s much the same story at Williams Nursery, Westfield, N.J., where total sales are down 4.6% even as herb and vegetable-plant sales have risen 16%. And in Austin, Texas, Great Outdoors reports sales of flowers slightly down, while sales of vegetables have risen 20% over last year.

George Ball, chief executive of seed giant W. Atlee Burpee & Co. in Warminster, Pa., says Burpee’s sales of vegetables and herbs are up about 40% this year, twice last year’s growth rate.”

Recently, a NASA-funded study, which used satellite data collected by the Department of Defense, determined that, including golf courses, lawns in the United States cover nearly fifty thousand square miles-an area roughly the size of New York State. The same study concluded that most of this New York State-size lawn was growing in places where turfgrass should never have been planted. In order to keep all the lawns in the country well irrigated, the author of the study calculated, it would take an astonishing two hundred gallons of water per person, per day. According to a separate estimate, by the Environmental Protection Agency, nearly a third of all residential water use in the United States currently goes toward landscaping.

A third of our greenhouse gasses are produced from shipping food. Yet not so very long ago in the 1940’s, Americans managed to produce 40% of the food they consumed from Victory gardens in their own back yards.

Today we’ll be talking to Heather Coburn Flores, author of Food Not Lawns, How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden and Your Neighborhood into a Community. In “Food Not Lawns” (2006), Heather C. Flores argues that the average yard could yield several hundred pounds of fruits and vegetables per year.

Heather is co-founder of the original Food Not Lawns grassroots gardening project in Eugene, OR, she is a certified permaculture designer, holds a BA degree in ecology, education, and the arts from Goddard College

MySpace
http://www.myspace.com/foodnotlawns

Her Amazon Profile
http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A1APFEWFJOGMB2

ChelseaGreen
http://www.chelseagreen.com/bookstore/item/foodnotlawns#

When Susan G. Purdy began traveling across the country to teach baking, she soon discovered that the recipes she perfected at home in Connecticut (altitude 540 feet) wouldn’t fly in high-altitude venues.

The more she asked for advice, the more she realized how little information existed for adapting recipes to suit kitchens in higher elevations. So she packed a suitcase with her favorite recipes, enlisted the help of a few engineers, and began testing variations in home kitchens across the country, from North Carolina to Colorado. We’ll talk with Susan about the chemistry of baking, what goes wrong, and how to adjust for altitude.

Click here to get the book.

She is a featured cooking instructor at the Santa Fe School of Cooking where she teaches about Native American foods of the Southwest. Guest Chef appearances have taken her to many famous restaurants around the country where she, with Native Chef Walter Whitewater (Din) have prepared delicious menus from the foods she has studied. She continues to teach about foods as a guest chef, lecturer, and instructor Nationally.

Books: Foods of the Southwest Indian Nations (Amazon)

Articles: American Indians Bring Southwestern Native Cuisine to New York City

Photography: Lois Ellen Frank Photography