Recipe Finder Home Page

Cooking is one of the most relaxing and fulfilling hobbies that one can have. Even those who do not have much experience in the kitchen can derive all sorts of pleasures from coming up with various creations that everyone can eat. One thing that is necessary – both for the seasoned cook and the newbie – is to have access to different recipes that have been tried and tested. Of course, there is the adventure of coming up with your own recipes, but even the best of cooks will admit to having gotten many of their inspirations from other sources.

If you are looking for your own source of inspiration, your search can very well be over. The newest recipe site in town is here to serve as your constant companion in the kitchen.

Recipe Finder is a new search engine that focuses solely on dishes that anyone can make at home. Recipe Finder has a huge edge over other recipe sites in that it offers a collection of more than a million recipes that you can find online. The site indexes a host of other recipe sites, making sure that you have all your bases covered. With indexation being done continuously, Recipe Finder’s collection of recipes keeps on growing as well.

Getting organized is something that Recipe Finder puts a premium on. That is why you have the option of creating menu by adding dishes that you would like to serve for a meal. You may also add recipes and menus to your own calendar. And of course, if you like the feel of paper in between your fingers, you can print out your favorite recipes.

Searching for recipes on Recipe Finder is a breeze. Much like how you conduct a search on Google, you simply enter recipe names or keywords in the search bar. Alternatively, you can make your search even more specific by identifying parameters such as ingredients (include or exclude them), calorie count, cook time, number of servings, and so on. You may also opt to view search results as text or as images. Trust me, the latter option will make you even more enthused about trying out the recipes!

Ready to start cooking? Visit Recipe Finder now!

Roppongi dogs

Remember that awful pet food poisoning scare a couple of years ago? Luckily, none of our pets (5 dogs, 7 cats) were victims of the poisoning, but many people I knew lost their beloved pets because of it. One good thing to come of the tragedy though, was that organic and natural pet food sales rose as more people decided to switch.

I am one of those people, and though I often wondered what was in the usual brands like Alpo, Pedigree or Whiskas, I never really bothered to really look. Well, according to Newman’s Own Organics, whose organic pet products I love and use (and their people products too!),it’s pretty disturbing, such as poultry “by products”:

“Ground, rendered, cleaned slaughtered poultry carcass parts such as necks, feet, lymph nodes, undeveloped eggs and intestines (and a small amount of feathers). The quality is very inconsistent between batches. Note: By product meals are often derived from 4-D meat sources – defined as food animals that have been rejected for human consumption because they were presented to the meat packing plant as “Dead, Dying, Disabled or Diseased”.

Ugh. Would you honestly feed this stuff to your cat or dog? If your pets are considered part of the family, as ours are, it makes total sense to put as much thought in their food as you do yours. Yes, it can cost much more to buy organic or holistic pet food, but there is an alternative. Make it yourself. Here’s a great book I found, The Natural Pet Cookbook (pictured above), which will help get you started. Not only will you be happy in the knowledge that you are feeding your pets healthy, natural food, but you’ll also notice the change – healthier, happier pets!

Photo via Dog Idea

In changing your ways to greener living, the key thing to remember is:

“little things mean a lot”

Meaning, you don’t have to go out marching in Washington or move your family to a yurt in the wilderness to save the earth.

Take your weekly trips to the grocery store, for instance. Just by being aware of what you buy can make loads of difference. For me, the main thing I’ve done in my home is to switch the cleaning supplies I use from the nose-burning, toxic, chemical-laden stuff to non-toxic, bio degradable brands. It was the smell that actually bothered me the most (especially when I was pregnant), so switching to the lovely natural stuff I use now as a surface cleaner, which uses orange oil, is such a great thing.

A small local company in my area makes most of the stuff I buy now (more points for saving on transport fuel) , but even the bigger guys are starting natural, eco-friendly lines now, like Clorox Green Works, which launched early this year. Did you know they bought Burts Bees too?

Here’s a part of a good article I found which should help you in the grocery. Read and heed.

Buy local. When food doesn’t have to travel far, it requires less packaging materials, fewer preservatives and often fewer pesticides. Not only are these processes bad for the environment but they also take away from the taste of the food. Another benefit to buying locally grown food is the shorter distances the produce needs to travel, which results in less damaging greenhouse gases.

Buy environmentally friendly products. Many companies are trying to be more environmentally conscious so look for brands that offer natural products in recycled packages.

Take fewer trips. Car emissions continue to be a major contributor to greenhouse gasses in Canada making carpooling and fewer trips to the grocery store a must. Making a grocery list in advance can help cut down on trips to the store for one-off forgotten items. Organizing a grocery store carpool with friends or neighbours is also a fun way to spend time with people while reducing the number of cars on the road.

Cut down on plastic bags. Canadians use approximately 10 billion plastic bags each year. Reducing that number means bringing reusable grocery bags with you to the store. If you don’t already have some, most stores have their own brand of reusable bags you can purchase while you are there. Another alternative is to use cardboard boxes to carry your groceries or paper bags that can be recycled.

To start off, hopefully you would have used the pumpkin “pulp” to make a pumpkin pie, curry, fry, soup or whatever you fancy. And now that Jack has done his job adding a festive spooky atmosphere in our homes, he can still do more good in our garden.

According to our friends at Earth 911, there are more than enough reasons:

” Every year, one billion pounds of pumpkins are produced in the United States alone, including at least 100 million pounds in every state. Unlike many other aspects of your Halloween experience, pumpkins don’t come in difficult to recycle packaging, which should make proper disposal a no-brainer.

….Pumpkin seeds themselves are a strong source of nutrients, including zinc, iron and phosphorus. These are all great additions to a compost pile, assuming you don’t want to absorb these nutrients yourself in a pumpkin soup or pumpkin pie. So now that you know why to compost, let’s discuss how you do it.

Compost piles rely on a mix of nitrogen-rich greens (which will include pumpkin components) and browns (leaves, paper and other carbon-rich materials). So, Halloween is the perfect time to compost because you’ll have a bunch of leaves falling before winter that need to be raked anyway.

What you’ll be left with after the bacteria take over is a nutrient-rich fertilizer substitute for your garden. You’ll also get two stages of pumpkin compost, first when you gut it to create a jack-o-lantern and again when you smash up the shell in November.

The last benefit to composting pumpkins is that the product you’re creating is ideal for growing your own pumpkins. Lots of communities have pumpkin growing contests in October, so you might as well have an advantage based on what you’re growing with.”

If you’re somewhat intimidated by composting and have never tried it before, the 911 people have you covered, with the best resources on composting on the net. Click here and start composting today!

Perhaps the first and easiest step you can take in going green at home is to eat organic food. Depending on where you live, finding organic produce is not that difficult, and in major cities around the world, the choices for organic food are astounding!

But first, lets get our facts straight.  What exactly is organic food?

“Organic means that it’s grown without the use of herbicides, pesticides. It’s not genetically modified; it’s not irradiated….Organic farming protects the planet, so it’s a win-win. It’s healthier for us, and it’s healthier for the planet.”

Says Sophie Ulanio, green guru and writer of Gorgeously Green.  So how to start? Sophie says that you should start with what you use the most, or who in the family needs it most.  In our case, we have an 8 month-old-baby, and since he started eating solids at 6 months, its been organic vegetables and cereal all the way.  Since I already buy all our vegetables at our local organic market, getting organic baby food ready was easy, almost as easy as buying the jars from Earth’s Best, which I also do.

My two other kids also enjoy Earth Best’s other products, namely the Sesame Street line (no surprise here), which includes biscuits, juice and even frozen waffles. There’s a whole slew of products out there for the kids.  Organic milk and yogurt should be at the top of your list, then the vegetables and fruit (although you can use a natural fruit and veggie wash for non-organic produce), then eggs, meat and poultry. My kids, who are pasta snobs, have even found an organic brand which they love – Garofalo, which is made in Italy.

It may cost a little more, but if you take the time to read the packaging and compare them to the other packaged kids products at the supermarket (with all the rubbish they add in), you’ll be convinced.

Welcome to Yurto, the blog about eco-friendly living in the home. Inspired by the yurt, an ancient circular dwelling place built in tune with nature, we hope to explore the ways we can all make a change for the better in the world that we live in – beginning from our homes.

Why is it so important to go green? Al Gore, who woke up the world with his now-famous documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, puts it succinctly:

“…Some of the leading scientists are now saying we may have as little as 10 years before we cross a kind of point of no return, beyond which it’s much more difficult to save the habitability of the planet in the future…”

10 years??? Now that’s a scary thought.  If you have children like me, that’s enough reason to stop procrastinating and do something about NOW.

So from plastic to canvas, wasting to conserving,  lets find ways to care for the earth while we can and live healthier, happier lives.