Guest Post by George Rollins

A Conscious Green Home - Planning, Preparation and Common Sense

All of us would like to live in a green home, but not all of us have the resources to build a geodesic dome, earth-sheltered home or even a passive solar home. Some of us have to do the best we can as we slowly make improvements and remodel the home we already have. Are there options out there for the rest of us? Absolutely - yes, there are. Here are some changes you can make to the home you already have, without spending an arm and a leg on new technologies:

• While you are sealing ducts, you may want to consider having a heat audit of your home.You can find out where heat is leaking out, and seal the gaps. This, too, will help your furnace and air conditioner to run more efficiently and use less power - which also means that you will save money. Some communities offer free heat audits of homes in the fall - if your community is one of them, be sure that you take advantage of this service.

• When you upgrade your appliances, do your homework and buy the most energy-efficient models you can find. If you are looking for a new furnace, see if you can find one that has an AFUE (Annual Fuel Utilization Efficiency) rating of at least 80, and preferably more than 90, percent. For an air conditioner, try to find one that has a SEER (Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio) of at least 14. If your furnace or air conditioner is not very old, though, don't bother - wait a few years until technology has made even more energy-efficient appliances a reality.

• Conserve water. Check for leaky pipes that can be fixed, use low-flow aerator heads on faucets, and use a low-flow toilet (or modify existing toilets by adding an empty milk jug full of gravel to the toilet's water tank).

• Use recycled or sustainable materials if you are replacing cabinets or countertops in your kitchen. Try to find cabinets that are made out of compressed agricultural plant material, such as wheatboard or strawboard, instead of particleboard or fiberboard. Better yet, don't replace the internal shelves and drawers in your kitchen at all - replace only the fronts.

• If you need to replace flooring, consider using natural flooring. One good option is cork, which is a good choice for allergy sufferers, is easy to install yourself, and also provides you with a floor that is both quiet and beautiful.

• Perhaps you can't afford solar panels for your house - but you might be able to manage outdoor solar lights that charge during the day and go on automatically in the evening when the sun goes down.

• Some people say that composting is the new recycling. Adding a composter to your kitchen can provide you with a way to recycle your kitchen scraps and have a ready source of soil for your gardening projects at any time - it's really a win-win situation, if you have the space for it.

• When you remodel, if you can downsize your home instead of upsizing it, take the opportunity to do so. Find ways to live in less space, or let some rooms do double duty. A Murphy bed (a bed that folds up onto a wall) can be used to convert a home office to a spare bedroom, for example. Or, alternatively, reduce the amount of space in your home that is climate-controlled. Set up your home so that the spare bedroom your college student uses in the summer doesn't have to be heated in the winter, for example.

Remodeling a home can be expensive. Take some time to talk to a contractor who has done green remodels before about options for greening your home without going over budget on your project. Choose the greenest versions you can of the things that you are certain you need to replace - and don't worry about not being able to afford to do everything. You're only human.

George Rollins is a home enthusiast at FurnaceCompare.com, a site that not only has extensive information on furnaces, boilers and air conditioners, but also includes consumer reviews and tips on choosing HVAC contractors. George has a passion for educating consumers on home renovation and improvements, as he feels that the right information helps consumers choose more wisely.

Vegan Recipe - Italian Rice and Black Bean Stuffed Peppers

It is the first Friday of the month and that means it's time to head to the kitchen for another delicious vegan dish. If you've been following this blog for any length of time, then you know that we promote meatless meals as one of the easiest ways to walk a little gentler on the earth. Putting it briefly, it takes less natural resources to produce one pound of plant-based foods as opposed to the same amount of animal-based foods. If you're thinking that a meatless meal is boring and nothing more than "rabbit food" on a plate ... you're in for a pleasant surprise!

This month's recipe comes from another of my favorite sites: Live. Learn. Love. Eat. Tiffany, author and "chef extraordinaire", shares wonderful vegan recipes such as Cinnamon Pumpkin Pancakes and Veggies Love Macaroni and Cheese. Her recipe page is sorted by meal and each recipe includes easy-to-understand instructions, pictures (even some of her adorable children) and stories. On another page, Tiffany shares information about the ingredients she uses in her recipes. Not sure what nutritional yeast is or how to use Chia Seeds? No problem ... she's got it covered. Live. Learn. Love. Eat. is a friendly, warm site ... and a wonderful cooking resource.

Tiffany has graciously agreed to share a recipe with us today. I hope you'll give it a try.

Italian Rice and Black Bean Stuffed Peppers
Makes 4 stuffed peppers

* 4 large bell peppers
* 1 cup cooked brown rice
* 1 cup canned black beans, drained and rinsed
* 1 tablespoon olive oil
* 3 cloves garlic, minced
* 1 small yellow onion, diced
* 1 small zucchini, diced
* 1 bell pepper of your choice, diced
* 2 teaspoons Italian seasoning
* 1 1/2 cups pasta sauce
* 1/2 cup grated soy mozzarella cheese (optional)

Directions

In a skillet heat the olive oil on medium heat and add the garlic. Saute the garlic until it becomes fragrant. Add the onion to the skillet and cook until translucent. Add the chopped zucchini and pepper to the onion and garlic along with the Italian seasoning, sauteing a few minutes more, until the vegetables become soft. Add the pasta sauce, cooked brown rice and black beans. Cook until mixture is hot, reduce heat to low and prepare the peppers. Bring a large pot of water to boil. Cut the tops off of the 4 large bell peppers, rinse and take out the seeds. Blanch the peppers in the boiling water for a few minutes, watching them carefully. You do not want them to get too soft or they will not stand. Preheat the oven to 350F. Stand the blanched peppers up in a baking dish and stuff them with the Italian bean/rice mixture.Top with grated soy mozzarella cheese if desired and bake for 10 minutes. Broil the peppers for the last few minutes of the baking time if using cheese, until the cheese is melted.

Doesn't that sound great? I'd to thank Tiffany for that wonderful recipe and I encourage all of you to visit her site and browse around. One warning, however ... her site will definitely make you hungry!

If you have a vegan recipe which you'd like to share, please send it to me HERE. All of our featured recipes can be found by clicking the "Vegan Recipe" tab at the top of this blog or by clicking HERE.

Also posted at Real Food Fridays and Healthy Vegan Friday

Finding Tongues in Trees: Poetry as the Voice of Nature

Those of you who have followed Reduce Footprints for some time might remember Elizabeth Barrette who was a regular participant in the Change The World Wednesday challenges. We haven't seen Elizabeth in awhile because she's been busy writing. She's recently published two wonderful books: From Nature's Patient Hands: A Collection of Poetry and Prismatica: Science Fiction Poetry Spanning the Spectrum. I have had the pleasure of reading both books and I can tell you that they are beautiful. Elizabeth has the ability to paint pictures with her words. She has graciously agreed to talk to us today about our connection to nature and how she chooses to share nature's voice.


Finding Tongues in Trees:
Poetry as the Voice of Nature


And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
-- William Shakespeare, As You Like It, 1599


Whenever I go outside, the world speaks to me. Its voice is there in the rattle of wind through autumn cornfields, in the crackle of flames crawling over logs, in the bright trill of birdsong. Nostalgia is the lazy drone of a cicada on a summer afternoon; humor is the gurgling chuckle of a stream. Patience is the sound of silence: Be still. Wait. There is more to come.

I have spent my life learning to listen to nature. I know the sound of toads calling for their mates, of coyotes singing to mark their territory. I know how the alarm-call of birds when a predator moves by differs from the calls they make when I go to refill the bird feeders. The sounds tell me what's going on around me, in what they say and do not say.

Beneath the sounds there lies a deeper voice. This planet is alive and alert, although it does not think the same way we do. In a sense, humans are the part of the Earth that thinks consciously, that reasons, that plans ahead. Yet the living planet has a mind of its own, and it speaks; and because we belong to it, we can hear it, if we learn to listen. The messages are there for anyone who attends to the tongues of trees, the brook-written books, and the slow sermons of stone.

These are the voices in my nature poetry. I give you the sounds of the wilderness, the same way I describe the sights and the smells and the other details, to anchor you in a particular place. I give you the clues to reveal what happens, so that you can put it together just as you would if you stood in the place I described. The joy of language is there -- simile and metaphor, rhythm and rhyme -- drawn out of the human brain's gift for linguistics. The last voice lies between the lines, rarely overt, the deep meaning of what nature really is and why it's important. Because of that, it is flexible; it can shift to say something new to each reader, just as each hiker in a forest may discover something different. My nature poems are not just about nature but of nature. Within them lie the patterns that science and life have made over millennia.

I write these poems to put the voices into language, to give words to the wordless world. I create them because I am a part of the Earth that can speak with lips and write with fingers. I send them out into the world to show people the beauty, fragility, power, and wonder of the world around us. It is my talent, my profession, and my vocation.

As a scholar, I deal in facts. As an activist, I deal in issues. As a poet, I deal in feelings. And I can attest that feelings move people far more than facts or issues. Many more people make their decisions based on emotions than on logic. So if you want to convince them of something, you need to make them feel it, not just think it. If you want them to save something, make them love it, not just value it.

Poetry is the language of the heart. It fills us with words that soar and fly like dragonflies above a pond in spring. It spins emotions like spider silk, sticky and shimmering. Even after a poem has been read and put away, something of it slumbers within the reader, snug as a bear in its winter cave.

Every poem I write is a message of hope, of possibility, of potential. Even the dark ones are warnings of disasters that we could avoid if we choose with care. I take what the world shows me and I frame it in a way that others can easily enjoy. I send out poems like pollen on the wind, or coconuts on the ocean waves. Some of them will always find fertile ground and sprout. And the ideas that grow from them, however diverse because of the minds that bear them, will always be rooted in nature.


Elizabeth Barrette lives in Illinois. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Rhetoric and works as a writer and editor. For more information, including how to purchase Elizabeth's books, please visit PenUltimate Productions.