Environmental Enlightenment #8 (Fair Trade Tea)

Food has always been the hardest thing for me to change when it comes to being the most environmentally friendly as possible. Since I love to cook it is personally very hard for me to go without avocados, butternut squash, mangoes and other food items that come from outside of the United States. The indoor garden will be (I hope) a small step towards alleviating my reliance on non-local produce. My trips to the grocery store are becoming more and more time consuming because I have been spending more time reading labels and scanning for organically made products. I normally get my fresh produce from a store called Fresh Farms, but for other food purchases I head on over to Jewel. I've noticed that recently they've been stocking their shelves with a brand called Wild Harvest Organic. So I bought some of their organic tea which is certified fair trade.

Butternut Squash Ravioli with Basil-Brown Butter Sauce

It turns out that I had some leftover squash after making the Apricot Squash Soup. I decided to try out a new recipe with it. I found this recipe at allrecipes.com which I use quite often. The original recipe called for sage, but I substituted with basil because I have a plant growing and I love to use it! This recipe is fairly easy, but time consuming. Since I only had half a butternut squash leftover I halved the original recipe. The original recipe served 8 and my list of ingredients below will serve 4.

Apricot Squash Soup

Time for another culinary related post. This recipe was give to me by my mother and it's one of my favorite soups to make during the winter.

Ingredients:
1 medium onion, chopped
1 tbsp olive oil
2 cups peeled and cubed butternut squash
1 can (15 oz) apricot halves in extra light syrup, drained
1 can (14.5 oz) chicken broth
1/8 tsp pepper
1 green onion, thinly sliced