My sister never buys toothpaste.  Or shampoo. Or deodorant.  Don’t worry—she doesn’t smell bad, but she is a wickedly talented couponer.  She insists that if you play  your cards right, you can get many of your household goods at absolutely no cost.  Many shoppers refer to the coupon phenomenon as “the grocery game.”

Pulling it off can involve lots of time, newspapers, and trips to the store, but it may save you enough money to buy more organic produce or join a CSA.   Is it a perfectly green solution?  No.  Another detractor is that several coupons are for highly processed food. Still, if you’re desperately searching for space in your budget and you can bike or walk to shopping, it may work for you.

Here are a few blogs devoted to the art of coupon clipping:

Frugal Living NW is based in Portland and has a wide variety of deals including coupon formulas for getting free goods at drug stores, grocery stores, and online.  They’ll post all the coupon combinations for you so that you don’t need to do any complex problem solving before you arrive at the store.  You’ll even get insider tips on occasional organic product specials.

I love that Organic Grocery Deals is a small online community that shares a vision for green living and finding the best prices on organic products.  You can register for free and use the site to access online coupons and receive a regular newsletter.  Readers are from across the country so you’ll find all sorts of offers through a variety of stores.  (Also, check out our vintage post on Organic Deals, which also specializes in eco-friendly  products.)

Fabulessly Frugal is loaded with tips about sales and coupons with careful formulas for getting the best prices  The sales aren’t necessarily on organic food, but the stores she features such as Fred Meyer and Safeway do carry organic produce.  You could load up on a few deals and use the saved money to buy healthy produce for homemade baby food or toddler snacks.

Have you found any sites that feature coupons for healthy products? Are you a scissor carrying coupon clipper?  Is it worth the effort with a baby in tow?  I have to admit that I haven’t yet been able to cut coupons and then have them with me while grocery shopping.  It is a goal I shall aspire to in 2010!…

“I’m hungry!’  We all dread hearing those words while running errands or on an arduous road trip.  If we don’t have food on hand, we’ll have to duck into a grocery store, or worse yet, have to find something healthy on a fast food menu to serve our toddlers.

So how do we stock our pantries with healthy food that travels well?  If I had an unlimited budget I can think of loads of lovely organic snacks, but packaged food can be quite expensive and I hate tossing all those crinkly wrappers in the trash.

Our best discoveries for reasonable, healthy snacks include dried mangos and nuts bought in bulk. What works for your family?  We’re going on a road trip tomorrow so I’ll be paying close attention to your tips!

My days of ruining a perfectly good avocado to create a vegan, raw “pudding” are far behind me. From now on, it’s back to the basics: nice old-fashioned chocolate pudding. Why are we talking about nice old fashioned chocolate pudding here on the Green Baby Guide? Well, kids do like pudding, and it’s a fairly healthful dessert if you’re of the mindset that milk and eggs are good for you (as I am!). Also, when you make pudding from scratch instead of using a mix or buying it from in little plastic tubs, you’re avoiding chemical additives and excess packaging.

So, without further ado, here is my pudding recipe, adapted from the Betty Crocker cookbook:

Homemade Chocolate Pudding

1/3 cup sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 cups milk
2 large egg yolks, slightly beaten
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1. Mix sugar, cornstarch, salt, and cocoa in a saucepan. Stir in milk. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens. Boil and stir one minute.
2. Gradually add half of the hot mixture into the egg yolks, then stir that back into the saucepan. Boil and stir one minute, then remove from heat. Add vanilla.
3. Pour pudding into four dessert dishes and refrigerate.

Joy makes pudding in the microwave, which would use less energy than the stovetop method. Just cook and stir until thickened!

If you have leftovers, or if your pudding turns out runnier than you’d like, you can just freeze it in popsicle molds and you have homemade pudding pops. Enjoy!

My son is intelligent, funny, and has the bladder capacity of a small elephant.  From his first few months on this planet we’ve been unable to layer enough cloth diapers on him to keep him from leaking at night.   We tried doubling, using wool and fleece liners, and using pocket diapers with an extra liner.

The results were mixed—but all bad.  He ended up with wet sheets, yeast infections, and lots less sleep.  Finally, after several dozen attempts, we just surrendered to using disposable diapers at night.

Now with our second child, I was determined to try again with cloth at night.  She doesn’t have the huge bladder of her brother, but even if she did, I think the new hemp liners we’ve been using might be able to handle it.  They wick away the moisture, absorb quite a lot, and are a natural fabric that breathes nicely.  We’ve never had any yeast issues while using the hemp liners and being wet hasn’t woken her up.  (Oh, she’s up regularly!  But it doesn’t seem to correlate to the dampness of her diaper.)

A friend actually made us our  liners using a serger sewing machine and some thick hemp fabric–which seems to be the cheapest solution for talented seamstresses.  If you’d like to order a few, check out hemp inserts from Thirsties, Willow Sprouts, or Green Acre Designs.

So, in review, our fabulous nighttime solution is a diaper cover, a prefold, and a hemp liner closest to baby’s bottom. We hope that yeast doesn’t become a problem once again but we’ll keep you posted if it reappears.  Have you had issues with yeast or leakage at night?

Avocados + chocolate = a wonderfully smooth and delicious pudding kids will love? When I first heard of raw chocolate pudding, I was intrigued. I soon learned that this recipe was all over the vegan and raw food blogs. These health-conscious foodies claim that even avocado-haters and picky children will gobble it right up. What an excellent way to sneak a vegetable into my green-averse child’s diet, I thought. (You may remember my successful attempts at this in the past: Read all about my spinach popsicles and chocolate beet cake.)

Then I tried it. I had two perfectly-ripe, delicious-looking avocados. Some recipes used what looked like alarming amounts of agave syrup, and I was afraid of over-sweetening this dessert. Here’s the recipe I ended up using:

Blend with a hand blender, food processor, or regular blender until smooth and creamy:

2 avocados
2-3 TBS agave syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract
¼ cup cocoa powder

(If you want this to be a truly raw dessert, look for raw cacao powder and omit the vanilla.)

The look and texture was perfectly smooth and creamy. The taste, however . . . was awful. It is easy to describe the taste: just like avocados mixed with chocolate and sugar. My husband refused to try it. My sister was game. She said it was okay at first, but had an extremely “vegetal” aftertaste. The chocolate and agave combine to make an insipid, sweet-chocolatey flavor that needs something smooth and subtly sweet to give it depth—something like, well, milk or cream. The avocado, while providing a nice base that mimics regular pudding, does nothing to enhance the taste of the chocolate.

But is it at least good for you? Most vegans and raw-food enthusiasts argue that dairy—the base of regular pudding—is not healthful. As a dairy consumer, I like to think it is a good source of vitamins, protein, calcium, and other nutrients. Of course, I also love avocados, which come packed with vitamin C and ten grams of fiber per fruit.

I did wonder about the amount of sweetener found in some of the avocado pudding recipes. Terilynn over at the Daily Raw Cafe puts ½ cup of agave nectar in her recipe, which I believe makes 2 servings.  A half cup of nectar contains 128 grams of sugar! Compare that to my regular recipe for chocolate pudding—it calls for just 1/3 cup of sugar (67 grams) for four servings. That’s under 17 grams of sugar per serving, compared to 64 grams for a single serving of avocado pudding.

While I loved the idea of sneaking avocados into a raw, vegan concoction, I’ll never sacrifice another beautiful avocado to this so-called dessert again. It’s back to the basics for me. Yes, it takes a bit longer, requires some cooking over the stovetop and subsequent chilling in the fridge, but it’s worth the effort and the wait.

Still want to try it? Perhaps some of the vegan/raw food bloggers out there have a better recipe. Here are several to choose from:

Green & Crunchy suggests using dates as a sweetener.
Kidshealth.org also adds dates—and provides nutritional information for the dessert.
Democratic Underground has a variation with bananas and yogurt.
Eco Salon recommends using just a few spoonfuls of sweetener, which inspired my own recipe.
The Raw Table calls for coconut cream concentrate—an intriguing addition!

Imagine getting paid to save the planet.  Sound enticing?  Sustainable living, in the ideal, should be about saving money, saving resources, and saving your sanity. The extra cash is like an environmental merit badge!  We’ve selected a few more blogs that focus on simple living this week to provide daily doses of thrifty motivation.  (Look at last Monday’s post for another three frugal blogs.)

For those who are just beginning to cut back, Almost Frugal is a really nice site that emphasizes living with less while improving our quality of life.  The posts offer a friendly, non-judgmental exploration of thrifty life and tips on how to evaluate where our money goes.

Frugal for Life’s focus on wasting less and saving more is a welcome read.  It’s packed with DIY ideas for frugal living and avoiding consumer traps, plus it has a nice homemade quality that we also embrace at Green Baby Guide.

Another great spot for the skinflint crowd is Frugal Village.  Instead of feeling like a cheapskate, you can learn from penny-pinching peers that share your vision for simpler living.

Reading any of these blogs for a few minutes a week helps reinforce my resolve to cut back and create more budgetary freedom.  It still feels as though my ability to save money is closely tied to available time.  Since I’m currently teaching full time, maintaining this blog and gearing up for the book release date in March, it feels like I need to budget my time as well as my money.  Still, the message these blogs keep coming back to is one that actually saves me precious moments–buy less, be resourceful, and skip a trip to the store.  I can handle that!

It’s official.  Our daughter has started solids and consequently has entered the “gross poops” stage of cloth diapering.  We dunk and rinse in the toilet, but as much as we love cloth diapering, this phase isn’t exactly delightful.

Liners are available so that solid waste and the thin layer of paper can simply be dumped into the toilet and flushed away.  Imse Vimse, Biosoft, Real Nappies, and Kushies all offer flushable liners.  Have you used them and had good results?

Believe it or not, when your baby is just wet instead of poopy, the flushable liners can be laundered and reused which means that just one pack can last for quite awhile.  Have you found flushable diaper liners to be worth the expense? Do they prevent toilet dunking?

In July 2008, we ran a post called “gDiapers: What Do You Think?” It’s an old post, but it continues to be one of our most popular. Readers still stop in to offer their thoughts on this “hybrid” diaper—a soft, cloth diaper cover that is washed and reused along with a flushable insert made from wood pulp and SAP (superabsorbent polymer).

From an environmental standpoint, gDiapers seem like a good idea. The inserts use less material than a standard disposable diaper, and nothing goes into a landfill. Wet inserts can even go into the home compost bin! However, many of our readers pointed out the issue of flushing several inserts a day on top of washing the covers. Wouldn’t it be better to just use cloth?

The new gCloth inserts

The strange thing is, gDiapers must have been thinking the same thing. In fact, gDiapers now offer cloth inserts for those adorable gPants. Hm. Those sound a lot like . . . regular old pocket diapers. Perhaps the idea is flexibility: with a set of gPants, gDiaper flushable refills, and gCloth inserts, you could have a truly hybrid diaper. Perhaps you could pair the cloth with a flushable insert for overnights.

What do you think about gDiapers? Have any of you given the new cloth inserts a try?

FOOD, Inc. arrived at my house in its bright red Netflix enevelope and then sat on our phone table for two full weeks before we ever attempted to watch it.

Why?  We knew the popular documentary would be providing us with disturbing facts and honest images of what really happens to our groceries before they reach our kitchen table.  We imagined ourselves utterly disgusted sitting in a heap of depression at the end of the film.

In fact, our experience was just the opposite.  FOOD, Inc. did illuminate tough truths, but offset them with stories of how organic food is making a mainstream comeback.  Interviews with farmers who are longing to regain some autonomy and those who have struck out on their own offered hope and inspiration.  The movie reminded us that we consumers are voting for products every time we place them in our grocery carts.  Major corporations like Wal-Mart are taking notice of our shopping choices and the market is beginning to shift—however slightly—to meet our needs.

After the information about E. Coli and the security of our country’s beef supply, we as a family made the easy decision to skip beef unless it’s from grass-fed local cows.  We’ve also researched our chicken sources more carefully to buy from local farmers and are working on incorporating more vegetables into our meals as we come to depend less and less on meat.

I could write endlessly on all that we learned in just two hours, but watching the movie is far more powerful than anything I could list in this post.  If it’s sitting on your table in it’s red envelope, crack it open and prepare to be informed as well as inspired.

HappyBaby: The Organic Guide to Baby’s First 24 Months is the latest offering from Dr. Robert W. Sears, co-written with Amy Marlow, the dietician for HappyBaby organic baby food. Dr. Sears co-wrote The Baby Book, that classic tome on Attachment Parenting you’ll either embrace or—overcome by a creeping sensation of guilt and inadequacy—throw across the room. HappyBaby is a kinder, gentler introduction to the world of the Drs. Sears. In fact, the mantra in this new book may very well be “Relax! Don’t worry too much. Just take it one small thing at a time.” This attitude makes it easy to digest the information inside without worrying about doing something wrong—either for your baby or the planet.

This “organic guide” devotes almost half of its pages to feeding, with forty pages on breastfeeding alone. Some of the nutrition tips are very basic (instead of French fries, eat roasted potatoes!), but there is a wealth of information on avoiding pesticides, understanding labels, choosing the type of milk to feed your youngster, and selecting and preparing foods to maximize the nutritional content. You’ll also find some baby food recipes that go beyond the typical purees; babies will love the oatmeal pancakes, eggless banana muffins, and the “hidden veggie burgers.”

The book provides very comprehensive guidelines on toxins without managing to freak you out.  The suggestions for making changes come in “pale green,” “a little greener,” and “deepest shade of green” levels, so you don’t feel pressured to raise a baby and save the planet all at once. The authors guide readers through the process of picking out a safe mattress, carpet, paint, and nursery furniture—and offer tips for reducing toxin exposure when you’ve already purchased your conventional gear and aren’t in the position to replace it all.

Two chapters on the “Green and Happy Home” discuss reducing the amount of stuff we acquire and the energy we consume when a new baby enters the household. This section suffers a bit by being too general and too—well, “pale green.” “Dr. Bob” assures us that we don’t need to keep our houses warmer in the winter or cooler in the summer with a new baby—but never throws out any actual numbers. The diaper-washing tips in chapter eight are unnecessarily energy extensive–but you will find a great discussion of the whole cloth vs. disposable debate.

This “organic guide” offers a grab-bag of information. It’s part breastfeeding manual, part baby food cookbook, part green living handbook—with a sprinkling of product placements and coupons for eco-friendly goods. HappyBaby is more than The Baby Book’s green companion—it’s a stand-alone guide to  raising a healthy baby, naturally.

We have two copies of this excellent resource to giveaway! Each book comes with more than $100 dollars’ worth of coupons for green baby goodies. Just post a comment before Tuesday the 17^th and you’ll be entered to win! (If you don’t win our giveaway, don’t despair—it appears to be 32% off on Amazon right now, so you can get it for just over eleven bucks.)

And congratulations to Shauna, who won our Grandparents Handbook giveaway a few weeks ago!