Continuing our cold weather = tea weather theme, I wanted to spotlight the Choice Organic Teas. Recently Whole Foods Market launched four new tea items from Choice, a new line of full leaf teas, which, if you recall my last post, is one of the hottest trends in the tea category. The tea experts at Choice use hand-picked whole leaf teas, flavorful herbs, and delicate flowers in a biodegradable tea pyramid pouch. The pouch and the pungent tea leaves are the precise combination to create the prefect brew. The new products are a mix of traditional methods and flavors combined with high quality tea.
Pick up a newspaper, open a magazine or log on to the internet and everywhere people are talking about ways to “go green in 2009.” Yeah! The more the merrier.
A simple way to get all of your friends and family involved in saving our planet is by reusing shopping bags. If you are like me, you visited a relative (who will remain unnamed) over the holidays who doesn’t recycle or reuse anything. Felt like the dark ages!
It’s time to introduce them to A Better Bag! Made from a special fabric woven from recycled PET pellets (from #1 plastic bottles) and coated through a new, innovative process, A Better Bag is 10 times stronger and will last longer than any reusable non-cotton bag previously available — estimated to replace about 1,000 single-use plastic bags over its lifetime.
At only 99 cents for the large bags and 79 cents for the lunch-size, A Better Bag makes keeping a resolution to love your environment almost too easy!
Little known fact: The lunch-size bags were specifically designed to fit a prepared food container flat in the bottom. Awesome!!
These bags bring new meaning to the phrase “Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.” A Better Bag reduces future plastic consumption by creating a unique reusable shopping bag made from post consumer recycled plastic water bottles.
Don’t forget to reuse bags for all of your shopping – not just at the grocery store!
On my previous blog “What Makes a Company Green,” a reader asked for more on our composting efforts, and I’m happy to be able to provide information about this green mission commitment. Composting has several definitions and our programs vary across the country, but here is a general overview of how it works.
After selling his financial business to Wall Street, Brian Schiner set out to pursue his true passion for farming. He began reading books from the 1800’s about raising sheep and decided that he would raise his herd according to these old techniques crafted to mimic an animal’s livelihood in the wilderness. Today Brian keeps watch over the largest sheep farm in Maryland. All of the animals at Wagon Wheel Ranch are grass-fed, raised without the use of antibiotics, and allowed to roam freely over acres of pasture.
Note: Our Farm to Market slide shows currently feature farmers and producers from our South and MidAtlantic Regions. We hope to expand to others in the future.
If eating healthier within a budget tops your New Year’s resolutions, then this week’s Secret Ingredient episode is must see. The star of this week’s encore episode is Whole Foods Market’s farm-raised salmon. It’s an affordable alternative to wild-caught salmon, while still providing heart-smart omega-3s and rich salmon flavor. It’s also raised according to our strict standards with no antibiotics, added hormones or animal by-products. Join Scott Simons as he learns how to add a delicate smoky flavor to this prized catch without leaving the kitchen as guest chef Heather Ramsdell shares her easy weeknight recipe for Stovetop-Smoked Salmon with Coriander-Mustard Rub.
So we’re nine days into the new year – how are you doing with your resolutions?
Still going strong? Excellent.
Not doing so well? Well, it’s all right. Many of us set lofty goals for ourselves at the beginning of this year and are at a loss as to where to start. Oftentimes the biggest changes we want to set into motion in our lives require small pushes. Whether you want to be healthier, more environmentally minded or happier – all of these goals are attainable with a bit of a nudge. Check out what we’re reading this week to inspire us into taking those first steps toward achieving our goals. What are you doing?
Mark Bittman strips the cupboards bare and then stocks them back up in his NY Times column.
While you’re stocking up, you might clear out a bit of the detritus that’s cluttering your shelves. Some of these things take up more space than they’re worth, while others are so much better in their real forms that the difference is laughable. Sadly, some remain in common usage even among good cooks. My point here is not to criminalize their use, but to point out how easily and successfully we can substitute for them, in every case with better results.
In developing the newly enhanced Seafood Quality Standards for farmed seafood at Whole Foods Market, I had the amazing opportunity to visit farms in remote locations around the world to learn about the wide range of aquaculture practices used to raise farmed seafood. I’m often asked, “What’s the most amazing place that you’ve visited?” While every country and the people that I’ve met have been incredibly different and interesting, I often answer, “Iceland.”
Hello 2009! I still can’t believe how quickly the holiday season passed and now, as we recover from weeks of decadent eating, it seems like healthy, budget-conscious eating tops most everyone’s New Year’s Resolutions list. Treating both our bodies and our environment with more respect is something we should keep in mind year-round, but it’s nice to have a moment to step back and reflect.
Just in time, we have our latest edition of The Whole Deal™ quarterly value guide in stores now — loaded with money-saving tips, sure deals, coupons, recipes and budget-friendly meal solutions. Along with the great customer tips below, you’ll have lots of help in keeping your recently made promises to yourself.
Remember, each week, we choose customer tips to be featured in our weekly The Whole Deal™ blog post. Every chosen tip gets a $25 gift card, so submit your tips and recipes here.
From Grace:
Eating healthy can be difficult when you are a poor college student but my boyfriend and I make a weekly meal plan and go grocery shopping once for the week. We make a big list and use the sale flyers as well as the Whole Deal newsletter to plan meals that include sale items. It is important for us to use seasonal, organic fruits and veggies and we have recently tried to make at least one or two vegetarian meals to cut back on the cost of meat. We LOVE the salad bar, if we don’t feel like cooking, we bike over to our local Whole Foods and create our own salads at about $4.00 per person and grab a piece of fruit for dessert. We have also found that buying bulk meat packages and separating them into 1 lb portions is a great way to ration the meat and save money! I am constantly online checking the sale flyers and finding recipes that go with the products that are on sale.
Some people make very specific New Year’s resolutions. Not me. I’m more the type who knows that I want to improve things about my life but I leave it kind of open and general – who knows what could come up! Yet, after indulging in too many wonderful treats over the holidays, I definitely feel a need to focus on getting back to eating sane, healthy foods. So, I was thrilled when I heard about a tasty fish we are featuring in January: Arctic Char.
Our super field guy Chuck in an avocado orchard in the Mexican state of Michoacán
There is something I’ve observed about guacamole and the people who make it — everyone has the “best ever” recipe and each is as individual as the person who makes it. Mike, the berry buyer here at our national produce office in Watsonville, has a simple, five ingredient recipe he got when he worked at a Whole Foods Market in Santa Rosa, California. Amy, a research and information administrator in Austin, has a “secret” recipe from her grandmother who insisted the spices be fresh — “not the 10 year old stuff in your cupboard.” My personal recipe — which, by the way, is the best ever — has sour cream to improve the texture. This, according to the Southwest purist, is not “real” guacamole but some fancy-pants California dip that only looks like guacamole. The truth is great guacamole is a matter of taste and like wine, is largely determined by what the person consuming it likes or dislikes. But all the recipes have one thing in common – they all start with avocados.
Welcome to Whole Story, the official blog of Whole Foods Market.
Don’t know us? In a nutshell, we are the world's leading natural and organic grocer and we’re passionate about healthy food and a healthy planet. Learn more about us.
We’re lucky to have a whole bunch of smart, passionate people doing incredible things in areas like organics, supporting local growers, green practices, fair trade, micro-lending and all kinds of food related stuff. We’ll use this blog to share some of the cool things going on around here.
Of course, what makes this blog really exciting is YOU — so join the conversation!
Subscribe via RSS
