Wednesday, January 25^th Office Hours Schedule – Visit www.whitehouse.gov/SOTUfor the most up to date schedule

• All Day: Josh Earnest, Principal Deputy Press Secretary, @jearnest44
• 1:00 p.m.: Office Hours with Mark Zuckerman, Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council
• 3:00 p.m.: Office Hours with Dan Pfeiffer, White House Communications Director, @pfeiffer44 

Thursday, January 26^th Office Hours Schedule – Visit www.whitehouse.gov/SOTU for the most up to date schedule

• 10:00 a.m. Veterans: Matt Flavin, White House Director of Veterans and Wounded Warrior Policy
• 11:00 a.m. LGBT: Miriam Vogel, White House Senior Policy Advisor and Gautam Raghavan, White House Associate Director for Public Engagement
• 12:00 p.m. Women: Racquel Russell, Special Assistant to the President for Mobility and Opportunity and Avra Siegel, White House Deputy Executive Director for the Council on Women and Girls
• 1:00 p.m. Seniors: Jeanne Lambrew, Deputy Assistant to the President for Health Policy and Nick Papas, Assistant Press Secretary
• 2:00 p.m. Latinos: Felicia Escobar, White House Senior Policy Advisor, Julie Rodriguez, White House Associate Director of Public Engagement and Luis Miranda, White House Director of Hispanic Media
• 3:00 p.m. Native American Issues: Kimberly Teehee, Senior Policy Advisor for Native American Affairs
• 4:00 p.m. Small Business Owners: Christine Koronides, Senior Advisor for Economic Policy, National Economic Council
• 5:00 p.m. African Americans: Danielle Gray, Deputy Assistant to the President for Economic Policy
• 6:00 p.m. Asian American Pacific Islanders: Chris Lu, Assistant to the President and Cabinet Secretary

Friday, January 27^th Office Hours Schedule – Visit www.whitehouse.gov/SOTU for the most up to date schedule

• 9:00 a.m. Disability Issues: Kareem Dale, Special Assistant to the President for Disability Policy
• 10:00 a.m. Rural Issues: Doug McKalip, Senior Policy Advisor for Rural Affairs
• 11:00 a.m. Foreign Policy: Ben Rhodes, Deputy National Security Advisor
• 12:00 p.m. Education: Roberto Rodriguez, Special Assistant to the President for Education Policy
• 1:00 p.m. Health: Jeanne Lambrew, Deputy Assistant to the President for Health Policy and Nick Papas, Assistant Press Secretary
• 2:00 p.m. Energy: Heather Zichal, Deputy Assistant to the President for Energy & Climate Change and Dan Utech, Deputy Director for Energy Policy
• 3:00 p.m. Consumer Protections: Brian Deese, Deputy Director National Economic Council
• 4:00 p.m. The Economy: Jason Furman, Principal Deputy Director National Economic Council
• 5:00 p.m. Job Opportunities: Portia Wu, Senior Policy Advisor for Mobility and Opportunity Policy
• 6:00 p.m. Urban Issues: Racquel Russell, Special Assistant to the President for Mobility and Opportunity

Monday, January 30^th

• President Obama participates in a Google+ Hangout from the White House

Eggplant
2 Eggs
2 tablespoons of milk
2 cups of Italian bread crumbs
Favorite spaghetti sauce
2 cups of mozzarella cheese
1 pound of favorite pasta (or less)

Wash the eggplant. You can peel the skin off if you really do not like it but I do not recommend it, there is alot of nutrition in the skin. Cut the eggplant with slices that are pretty thick, maybe 1/2 inch you want to taste the eggplant. Mix the eggs and milk together in a wide mouth bowl and place the breadcrumbs in a separate bowl. dredge the slices into the egg mixture and then into the bread crumbs.

Heat oil in a frying pan and cook each slice of eggplant till it is a golden brown. It does not need to be fully cooked (if you cut the slices really thick). place the cooked slices on a plate with paper towels to absorb the oil.

In a 13×9 pan put a small layer of sauce across the bottom. Place the cooked eggplant in one layer across the bottom. Put a little bit of sauce on top of each piece of eggplant. Then add another layer. I recommend two layers but you can go three layers but no more. After you have placed the last layer cover with cheese and place in a pre-heated 375 degree oven. Bake until bubbling on the sides and the cheese is melted. Serve with salad and pasta.

My fellow fabulous bloggers who have made some awesome gift guides that you must check out Cupcakes and Cutlery, A Fabulous Fete, I Go You Go, Mint Loves Social Club, and Hank and Hunt. Check out their guides too (they blog about other awesome things), these take a lot of time to prepare and you will not be disappointed with the awesome ideas you can get from them!

GIFTS FOR THE COOK IN YOUR LIFE

Eco-friendly cookware from Cuisinart Their new GreenGourmet line they created “Cuisinart Ceramica” which is a nonstick technology that is ceramic based instead of petroleum and it’s completely free of PTFE and PFOA. Even the packaging is made out of recycled materials.

Bamboo Cutting Boards Everyone can use new cutting board and utensils, they get old and dirty and the bacteria can grow in the cracks so since using plastic cutting board (which are easier to keep clean) is not a good idea replace their old wooden ones with renewable bamboo.

Cookbooks: I made a whole list of great cookbooks on my post here so go check it out (leave a comment for a chance to win the whole list)

Apron: get an upcycled apron from on of the crafty wizard at Etsy like the one above from Scarlett’s Plunder

Experience: Send them to a cooking class. There are millions around the country go to Google to find one near their home (I found like 90 websites for cooking classes, it really depends on where you live).

GIFTS FOR THE OUTDOOR ENTHUSIAST

Solar backpack I am completed fascinated by these and think there is a level of safety that this can bring to anyone who likes to explore the outdoors. The solar panel can charge a gps or a cell phone, which can help ensure safety when out in the elements.

Outdoor clothing Head over to nau.com to check out outdoor wear made from recycled materials, made in factories that adhere to their code of conduct and they give 2% of every sale to partners of change.

Experience At Adventure.travel you can browse by destination or by what you want to do so send your friend on a trip of a lifetime (great group gift for the family to chip in on). If you know of a particular location you want to send your family member to you can always find great travel agents who can help create a great experience for them.

FOR THE KIDS

Doll House: Plan Toys The Green Dollhouse Last years list had a doll house on the list but this years doll house is even better. It is from Plan, they make their toys out of recycled rubber tree wood. This house has solar panels, wind turbine, rain barrels, and recycling bins. As soon as my daughter is old enough to enjoy this I am buying it for her. I love it.

Craft Supplies: Get some Crazy Crayons Eco Stars everyone loves these I have not put my hands on them but I am have read they great. Get the kids recycled roll paper because kids go through a ton of paper creating their master pieces use recycled paper to cut down on the impact (and recycle it again when they have made a new master piece!)

Experience: Take your kids to local natural history museum or zoo and get a guided tour from one of the experts or create a fun scavenger hunt helping them learn about the things that they are really interested in. Make it a real experience by traveling to a place they have not been to or make sure the experience at the place they have been to is special and different than before. Think of a what an awesome experience it would be for your son who loves dinosaurs to get a tour by a paleontologist, no amount of plastic Legos can make up for that!

FOR THE GUYS

Beer: Lots of guys love beer. Go to the local BIG liquor store and make a sampling box of local or organic beers for your man to enjoy. Here are some links to some posts about good organic beers The Daily Green and GreenAmerica.org. Head over to Uncommon Goods to get a creative upcycled bottle opener. Finish off the basket by going to Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods or other health food stores to get snacks to go with it (this is also a great last minute gift).

Sporting Equipment: Go to The Fair Corp website to get fair traded ethically made sporting equipment (they have a cool pair of Ethletic shoes that look like Converse but are organic) LostGolfBalls.com to get the golfer in your life reclaimed golf balls.

Experience: Music lessons or rock camp, lots of guys dream of the rock star lifestyle and that usually includes playing the guitar or drums so let them live the dream for a little bit. Tickets to a sporting event or concert pick a venue that is close to public transportation or even close enough to walk to. While there is nothing inherently ecofriendly about this idea it is not an actual thing but is something every man will enjoy.

FOR HER

For the new mom: Motherlove makes the best products for the new mom, I love their Green Salve (you do not even need to be a Mom to love this just have some dry skin). Their products are available widely at Whole Foods but also other health food stores or on their website. Every Mom needs a robe… really they do Gaiam has great organic cotton and soy robes and they are incredibly soft.

For an avid reader: Amazon gift card if they have a Kindle or an Ipad, Barnes and Noble card if they have Nook. Personalize it by making a list of your favorite books, books you would like to read, or a list of books you found online that you think they would like. You can always personalize a gift card rather than making it basically money by showing why you thought about giving them that gift. If they are really green and go to the library make a donation in their name and make them a special canvas bag to carry their library books home in (here is a tutorial)

Experience: Get a personal shopper to help vintage shop, lots of cities have walking tours of vintage shops with tips google it for your area or go on Craigslist (make sure you check reference for any Craigslist options, I could say I am good at vintage shopping there and it would not be true).

Tune in tomorrow for my personal green wish list and though out the next few weeks for more ideas. There are a ton of ideas in my head that I need to get the details on to post them!

Here is a link to my board on Thanksgiving Eco Friendly Thanksgiving Decorations.

This recipe is a favorite in our house and is SUPER easy. I read in Real Simple a few years ago and lost the printed recipe so I always go to the website to get it. Very few ingredients…. here is the link to the full recipe.

1 cup store-bought fresh tomato salsa, plus more for serving
2 15-ounce cans black beans, drained and rinsed
2 cups chicken broth
1 to 2 tablespoons dry sherry (optional)
1/4 cup sour cream
1 lime, quartered (optional)

Image from Real Simple

The Facts… Why you have to recycle

*Just over 48% of office paper is recovered for recycling. This becomes raw material for paperboard, tissue, and printing and writing papers. (Keep America Beautiful, 2006)

*Over 73% of all newspapers are recovered for recycling. Almost a third goes back into making more newsprint. The remainder is used to make paperboard, tissue, and insulation, or exported. (Keep America Beautiful, 2006)

*Approximately 1.5 million tons of construction products are made each year from paper, including insulation, gypsum wallboard, roofing paper, flooring, padding and sound-absorbing materials. (American Forest and Paper Association, 2002)

*Recycled paper can also be made into paper towels, notebook paper, envelopes, copy paper and other paper products, as well as boxes, hydro-mulch, molded packaging, compost, and even kitty litter. (EPA, 2008)

*Recycling aluminum saves 95% of the energy needed to produce new aluminum from raw materials. Energy saved from recycling one ton of aluminum is equal to the amount of electricity the average home uses over 10 years. (Keep America Beautiful, 2006)

*Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a 100-watt bulb for 20 hours, a computer for 3 hours, or a TV for 2 hours. (EPA, 2008)

*Recycling aluminum saves 95% of the energy used to make the material from scratch. That means you can make 20 cans out of recycled material with the same amount of energy it takes to make one can out of new material. Energy savings in 1993 alone were enough to light a city the size of Pittsburgh for six years.

*Americans throw away enough aluminum every month to rebuild our entire commercial air fleet.

*Recycling steel and tin cans saves 74% of the energy used to produce them.

* Americans use 100 million tin and steel cans every day.

*Americans throw out enough iron and steel to supply all the nation’s automakers on a continuous basis.

*A steel mill using recycled scrap reduces related water pollution, air pollution and mining wastes by about 70%.

News and Links

Mario Batali write about St. Philip’s Academy (the charity I chose in my Haulidays Giveaway Contest see the list here) in his Huffington Post article about healthy eating with kids (see article here)

Did you know that you cannot recycle pizza boxes? Green And Clean Mom breaks it down for you.

Forget Recycling Day… Zero Waste Day. A compelling post from Treehugger on how we need to go further

Opps, yesterday was National Recycling Day and somehow this got by me. So here it is a day late a guide on how to successfully recycle at home. 

How to Recycle

STEP ONE

The very first thing you have to do in order to recycle is find out what your local rules and regulations are. Every municipality has different rules regarding how and when they will collect various recyclables.

Go to your towns website or call them and ask them about their regulations. Here is what you want to ask about:

• What days are the pick ups? For example: Plastic may be every other Monday but newspapers are ever week on Tuesday.
• How do the items need to be separated? For example: Can plastic and glass be in the same container? I lived in a town where you had separate your glass by color (one can for clear, green…etc.)
• How does it need to be packaged? For example: Does newspaper have to be tied with string or can it be in a grocery bag? Can leaves be in plastic bags or do they need to be in paper bags, maybe they should not even be in bags at all just in a pile on the street?

Put a calendar of all these days up in your kitchen or by the back/side door. Wherever you are going to see it and it reminds you of what you need to do. Set a reminder in your calendar on your phone for 15 mins before you leave for work every day so it will remind you to make sure you get your recycling to the curb.

STEP TWO

Get what you need to start collecting the items you can recycle in your town.

Here are some of the items you might need:

• Paper lawn bags for your lawn waste
• Twine to tie up your magazines and newspapers
• Different containers for both indoors and out.

Be realistic when you are shopping for your items. If you tend to read your magazines in bed put a roll of twine in your nightstand so that when the pile gets big enough you will wrap it up.

Measure your spaces. If you are going to get containers for the kitchen, mudroom…etc. make sure you know what size will fit behind the door or in a cabinet. All the containers will start to look the same when you go to the store.

Organize and think about where everything should go and what is most convenient. If it is not easy you will not do it so make purchases that will help you reduce your likely-hood of not doing this.

Be willing to make the investment… do not go crazy and go buy super expensive items but be sensible about what you are doing and how important it is. Get what you need to make this something your whole family can do.

STEP THREE

Get your house ready for the change!!!

1. Do a clean sweep of your house and get all the magazines, catalogs, and newspapers and wrap them up
2. Any plastic food containers to throw out? Rinse them off and put it in the new recycling bin.
3. Empty plastic water bottles in your house, car, bags…etc. (use the water that might be left in them to water your plants) and put the containers in the new recycling bin.

While you are doing this take note of the things you are not done using but might good for recycling in the future.

Use this as an opportunity to organize part of your life. For example, you might want to start putting all magazines and catalogs in the same place in the house so they are centrally located to read and recycle.

STEP FOUR

Now you are ready to go. You know the rules and you have organized yourself to be successful in recycling.

Here is a list of many things you might not have thought about being able to recycle:

• Plastic inside cookie packages
• Egg containers
• take out food containers
• plastic bags for veggies
• any mail that does not have personal information on it
• plastic bags from potato’s
• plastic bags from chips, pasta, rice, or other dry food
• jars from sauce or salsa
• plastic bags from your bread
• wine, water, soda, juice bottles
• food oil containers (like the olive oil bottle)

This is the final step and now you are ready to successfully recycle.

Please post more ideas of things you can recycle.

One of the ways we can help the environment is to eat less meat. As I have said here before I am not a vegetarian but I do try to do my part. In my house we actually do not follow meatless Monday it is usually meatless Wednesday or Thursday. Due to my grocery shopping schedule it is easiest for me to serve meat early in the week and go meatless later in the week. So whatever works for you will work of the environment. This recipe is a huge favorite in our house. I have adapted it a bit to fit our style but I will give you some variations

1 lb of pasta (penne or rigatoni is best)

1 or 2 cloves of garlic

1/4 cup of vodka

1 can of diced tomato’s (we prefer the petite diced here)

2 tablespoons of olive oil

1/4 of heavy cream

salt and pepper

Red Pepper (optional)

Boil the water for the pasta and prepare as directed. Start the recipe at the same time you start the water to boil by the time the water boils and cooks the sauce will be prepared.

Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan. Grate the garlic into the hot oil and saute but do not burn it. Add the vodka and allow it to burn off. Open the can of tomato’s and drain the liquid and add to the pan. Add salt and pepper (and red pepper if you want it to be hot, we omit here so I am not sure how much you would like but I have seen this as an ingredient for most recipes). Keep on medium heat and stir occasionally. Heat until liquid is gone. Turn the heat to low and pour in heavy cream stir together, leave the burner on for one or two minutes and then shut off and continue to stir if needed. You do not want the cream to cook or curdle.

Strain pasta and put in a large bowl. pour sauce over the pasta and mix together. Let stand for a few minutes so that the sauce sticks to pasta.

This recipe reheats well. If you want to add more nutrients to this add your families favorite veggies like peas or carrots (everything goes well with a cream sauce right).

Enjoy!

Image by: www.alwaysorderdessert.com

What is Holistic Parenting? There are lots of different answers check out Holistic Moms Networks digital magazine The Wise Mom.

Green and Clean Mom wrote a great post about pizza and pizza box recycling.

Article from the LA Times about the Keystone XL pipeline delayed until after he 2012 election.

Finally, to close the week on the topic of Fracking here are some useful links if you want to take action against Fracking.

Check out the movie Gasland here is the website for the movie

Here is a list of National Organizations who work to stop fracking:

Clean Water Action
202-895-0420
1010 Vermont Avenue NW, Suite 1100
Washington, District of Columbia 20005
Twitter: @cleanh2oaction
Mission: “Clean Water Action is an organization of 1.2 million members working to empower people to take action to protect America’s waters, build healthy communities and to make democracy work for all of us. For 36 years Clean Water Action has succeeded in winning some of the nation’s most important environmental protections through grassroots organizing, expert policy research and political advocacy focused on holding elected officials accountable to the public.”

Environmental Working Group
202-667-6982
1436 U. Street NW, Suite 100
Washington, District of Columbia 20009
Twitter: @ewgtoxics
“The mission of the Environmental Working Group (EWG) is to use the power of public information to protect public health and the environment. EWG is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, founded in 1993 by Ken Cook and Richard Wiles.”

Food and Water Watch
202-683-2500
1616 P Street NW, Suite 300
Washington, District of Columbia 20036
Twitter: @foodandwater
Mission: “Food and Water Watch works to ensure the food, water and fish we consume is safe, accessible and sustainable. So we can all enjoy and trust in what we eat and drink, we help people take charge of where their food comes from, keep clean, affordable, public tap water flowing freely to our homes, protect the environmental quality of oceans, force government to do its job protecting citizens, and educate about the importance of keeping shared resources under public control.”

Natural Resources Defense Council
(212) 727-2700
40 West 20th Street
New York, New York 10011
Twitter: @nrdc
Mission: The Natural Resources Defense Council’s purpose is to safeguard the Earth: its people, its plants and animals and the natural systems on which all life depends.We seek to establish sustainability and good stewardship of the Earth as central ethical imperatives of human society. NRDC affirms the integral place of human beings in the environment.

Click here to see the previous post this week What the F is Fracking, Fracking Facts, and great video that explains Fracking.