On a seasonal if not food-related note, I wanted to share some tips on finding an eco-friendly Christmas tree. I am a firm believer in real trees - they absorb carbon dioxide, produce oxygen, are replanted and biodegradable, and support green spaces that could otherwise be developed into new subdivisions - but I’m embarrassed to admit I hadn’t really thought of going organic with our holiday tree despite having first-hand experience with Christmas tree pesticides as a child. I grew up in the Christmas tree capital of the US, Oregon. On a mountain, in fact, with Christmas tree farms just across the road. We used to sled down the access road whenever it snowed, and there were beaver ponds at the bottom where we would glide around on the ice when they froze over. (Hope my mom isn’t reading this, I’m pretty sure we weren’t supposed to go on the ponds! They rarely froze that solidly…) Anyway, that’s all well and good but a couple times a year they were sprayed by plane, and my mother would chase us down and confine us to the indoors for a couple days while we waited for the spray to settle. So while your Christmas tree may not have a high level of lingering chemical residue, since it does gradually wash off with rain, choosing organic is still beneficial for the health of those who live near Christmas trees! Not to mention the run off into our water and soil.

I started searching after a Twitter friend mentioned ordering a certified organic tree from North Carolina. This terrific guide notes farms that are certified or low-spray; personally, certification doesn’t matter so much to me, I’m just happy to know that we can get an eco-friendly tree without having to drive too much farther than we normally do. I’ll report back on Monday about our experience at our local natural tree farm.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, no we didn’t get free Christmas trees in exchange for the inconvenience of living next door to a farm. I’m not sure the owners of that farm even lived in the area. We did have a family-owned tree farm up the road (which did their spraying by hand and kindly informed the neighboring parents to warn us not to play there), and it kills me now that we thought their $15 dollar trees were expensive. Let’s just say we pay several times that here on the other, less tree-populated coast. My tree-hugging mom (yes, it runs in the family), objected to cutting down trees for pleasure so we had to choose our scraggly trees from under the path of the power lines, where they were destined to be trimmed anyway. We had a high (30 feet) ceiling in our living room and had some of the biggest, ugliest trees you could imagine. At least we always talked my mom out of her lighted dead branch hanging from the ceiling idea. But I’m sharing it with you as another option, in case you also share an affection for trees remaining in the ground and don’t want to expose your family to toxic lead/petroleum-based artificial trees…

Part One of Two on sustainable cranberry sauce for your Thanksgiving dinner… While cranberry-sauce-in-a-can is always on our Thanksgiving table to appease my “traditionalist” husband and in-laws, I make one or two fresh variations as well. I’ve always been intrigued by the notion of cranberry bogs. While my home state Oregon actually boasts a few, I have never seen one in person. In other random cranberry facts, did you know that cranberries are one of the few native North American fruits? And that the cranberry capital of the US is Wisconsin, with Massachusetts in second place? Nutritionally, cranberries provide a boost of antioxidants, vitamin C and fiber.

If you’re like me, one of the first steps you probably took to “go green” was swapping out plastic bottles for a few reusable bottles. (We’re fans of the Sigg (especially for kids) and Klean Kanteen here at the Foodie Tots household.) Then you probably started noticing the news reports about what’s really in that bottled water and just how polluted your tap water really is. (Especially if you’re lucky enough to live in lead pipe-supplied D.C.) Yeah yeah, enough with the science lesson, how does this relate to Thanksgiving dinner? …

Cranberry bogs. I was brushing off my maple cranberry sauce recipe and started wondering just what chemicals might lurk in those mysterious bogs. Then I realized they probably add pesticides on top of whatever groundwater contaminants are already there. Sure enough, cranberries are treated with 22 different types of pesticides (and herbicides, fungicides, etc.), which are then discharged into lakes, rivers and wetlands. And cranberry bogs are exempt from the Clean Water Act (!).

So I pointed my trusty Google towards “organic cranberry bog” and discovered this great little video from Nantucket, Connecticut, where the Nantucket Conservation Fund is slowly converting traditional bogs to all-natural cranberry plots. (Remember that crops have to be grown organically for a number of years before they can obtain organic certification, so there is a significant lag time.)

As retold in the video, their organic cranberries garner three times the price of conventional, but they put about four times as much labor into maintaining the bogs. Organic bogs also produce a lower yield, which is further disincentive in a conventional food system that values quantity over all else. They are making progress, however. The University of Massachusetts-Amherst’s Cranberry Station is also conducting research and outreach to increase the use of integrated pest management (IPM, or less-pesticide) techniques in cranberry bogs.

So check your local grocery and spring for the organic berries if you can find them - Thanksgiving only comes once a year, after all, and now you can enjoy your meal knowing a little less pesticide is entering our water (and your kids - after all, cranberries soaking in toxins for months at a time can’t simply be rinsed clean). And you can wash it down with organic Triple Eight cranberry vodka, straight from Nantucket.

Up next, where to find organic cranberries and a recipe to enjoy them in.

“Behind the label” is a new series by FoodieTots.com that highlights the sustainability issues behind our food, and brings you the facts you won’t find in the glossy food mags who rely on ad revenue from big agribusiness.

Ingredients:

There are many ways to have a green Halloween, from making your own eco-friendly decorations to handing out fair-trade Endangered Species chocolates to your neighborhood trick-or-treaters. Here are three steps to greening your Halloween Jack o’ Lantern.

3 Steps to a Green Jack o’ Lantern

1. Buy a locally-grown pumpkin. Just like with the food we eat, buying locally-grown pumpkins supports the local economy and the environment, especially if you can find an organic pumpkin patch. Many small family farmers depend on their Halloween pumpkin patch festivities to supplement their normal farm income. Some farms have rather over-the-top festivals with rides, bouncy pumpkins, corn mazes and more, which are of course great for entertaining your kids, too. Remember to buy extra, smaller pumpkins for eating (see step 3).

2. Use non-toxic soy or beeswax candles. Parrafin wax, which most candles are now made from, is derived from petroleum and emits carcinogens when burned — producing some of the same toxins as burning diesel fuel (contributing to indoor air pollution), while the artificial fragrances can irritate asthma and allergies. Soy candles are cleaner burning and often use natural fragrances if any, while old-fashioned beeswax candles are the purist choice and are also clean-burning and drip-free. I found beeswax votives and tea lights at a local home goods store, Bungalow. The Big Green Purse has links to a few other places to find soy or beeswax candles.

3. Eat your pumpkins! Many farmers sell smaller sugar pumpkins, or other varieties, which are ideal for cooking. The green pumpkin pictured above is a Cushaw pumpkin, a traditional pie variety. Large carving pumpkins have rather tough meat, but of course you can still roast the seeds. To make your own pumpkin puree, bake the whole pumpkin at 350 degrees for 90 minutes. Allow it to cool, then peel, remove the goop (reserving the seeds for roasting), and mash or blend the pulp until smooth. You can freeze the pulp for later use, and simply use it in your favorite recipes in place of canned pumpkin. (Avoiding that BPA-lining in canned foods.)

For more ideas, visit Green Halloween, Nature Moms‘ Eco-Friendly Halloween, or Green Me’s list of HFCS-free Halloween treats. And if you really want to shock your friends, check out these anti-environment costume ideas.

I recently attended BlogHer’s DC conference, where I was thrilled to meet up with a group of green supermoms whose blogs I frequently turn to to help make sense of the latest environmental and green parenting news. Confused about bottled water having the same cancer-causing contaminants as tap water? Manufacturers voluntarily creating BPA-free bottles yet the FDA says they still can’t tell if any thing’s wrong with it? (What’s a little extra risk for altered brain development, anyway.) And what about lead? These women are devoting their spare time (which means giving up sleep, as my fellow parent readers know!) to uncovering the truth behind green claims and controversies and sharing tips to help other parents make smart choices.

The Green Parent Jenn Savedge wrote the book, literally, on eco-friendly parenting. Diane MacEachern is one of Glamour magazine’s 70 leading women environmentalists and the author of the book and blog The Big Green Purse, showing how to use the power of your checkbook to push corporate America in the right direction. Organic Mania helps you make sense of all things green and organic. The Smart Mama, armed with her trusty XRF toy-testing gun, is a walking encyclopedia on toxins found in the home and in children’s toys. Green & Clean Mom makes green living “sassy, sexy and fun.” And there’s a new group effort from my friend formerly known as Mama Bird, at The Green Phonebooth. If you only click one of these links - though I encourage you to bookmark or subscribe to them all! - make it Jess’s write-up of the Smart Mama’s tests on some of her own kid’s toys and other items you literally carry every day, like car keys. It’s a scary, contaminated world out there, but these women are making the world cleaner for our kids, one blog post at a time.

Want more? Find their books at your local bookseller:

The Green Parent

Big Green Purse