Would you like your little one to be a future gourmand?   Why not whip up some homemade pesto to stir into her sweet peas?  Don’t worry about it being overly spicy, nutty or cheesy.  You can limit or omit ingredients and still create a delicious green paste to mix into your baby’s food and your pasta.

Here’s a simple recipe from The Joy of Cooking.  We’ve tried it and found it to be quite delicious.

Load the following into a food processor or blender:

• 2 cups loosely packed fresh basil leaves
• 1/3 cup pine nuts (skip for babies less than one year old if worried about allergies)
• 2 medium cloves garlic, peeled or 1 Tbsp. minced jarred garlic
• ½ cup grated Parmesan cheese (skip if your baby is younger than eight months old)

Slowly add

• ½ cup extra-virgin olive oil (add more if sauce seems too thick)
• If you’d like, season with salt and black pepper.

You can store this sauce for up to a week in the fridge.  If you’re loaded with basil but don’t know what to do with it all, you can make this recipe to your taste and freeze it in ice cube trays.  Then dump it in zip lock bags and mix in the other ingredients when you’re ready to eat pesto all winter long!  Enjoy!

With the sun shining and temperatures soaring, there’s really no reason to use the dryer.  Sure, it can be somewhat of a hassle to work hanging your wet clothes on the line into your schedule, but think about the advantages!

• You’ll save about $.50 a load when you let the sun and air do the work instead of your dryer. If you wash a load every day (about average for a family of four), you’ll save $182.00 a year!
• Every load you toss in the dryer emits around one to five pounds of carbon into the atmosphere. Hanging dry, on the other hand, doesn’t harm the planet a bit.
• If you set out stained diapers in the sun, stains will disappear–without the use of any toxic chemicals.
• In super-hot weather, clothes will dry faster on the line than in the dryer!

So get out those dryer racks or set up a clothesline. Hanging even one load a week will make a difference!

(Look here for all of our laundry posts.)

I’m pleased to announce that Joy’s baby girl was born today at 12:05!  After a couple weeks of contractions and nine hours of actual labor, little Jovi finally made her grand entrance into the world. She weighs in at 8 pounds, 11 ounces.

When Joy and I started working on our book two and a half years ago, we thought we had the most original idea ever. We searched Amazon.com and couldn’t find any green baby books on the market. We rushed the idea off to publishers, sure we’d have a bidding war on our hands. Imagine our shock when no one seemed to jump at the chance to publish our unwritten masterpiece.

Okay, so we were a little naïve. Eventually we did get a publishing contract, and we’re proud to announce that our creation will hit bookstore shelves next spring.  And we’ll have company! Since we’ve started the project, other eco-minded writers have published some green baby books of their own:

• The Complete Organic Pregnancy by Deirdre Dolan and Alexandra Zissu
• Eco Baby: A Guide to Green Parenting by Sally J. Hall
• Green Babies, Sage Moms: The Ultimate Guide to Raising Your Organic Baby by Lynda Fassa (I reviewed that one here.)

• Green Baby by Susannah Marriott
• The Green Parent: A Kid-Friendly Guide to Environmentally-Friendly Living by Jenn Savedge
• Growing Up Green: Baby and Childcare by Deirdre Imus
• Healthy Child, Healthy World: Creating a Cleaner, Greener, Safer Home by Christopher Gavigan

• Itsabelly’s Guide to Going Green with Baby by Jennifer Lo Prete and Melissa Moog
• Organic Baby: Simple Steps for Healthy Living by Kimberly Rider
• Raising Baby Green: The Earth-friendly Guide to Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Baby Care by Dr. Alan Greene

We’ve read most of these titles and are thrilled to see that there’s just so much to say about raising babies with the environment in mind. Each book has a different slant. Green Babies, Sage Moms, for example, focuses on finding nontoxic alternatives to mainstream lotions and potions used during pregnancy and baby’s first year. Healthy Child, Healthy World contains useful information about avoiding toxins–and shows how some celebrities went green with their babies. Itsabelly’s Guide to Going Green with Baby is packed full of green gear recommendations, from sustainable cribs to organic clothing. Organic Baby is a beautifully photographed book that illustrates how to create a tranquil nursery and make appetizing baby food. Raising Baby Green takes the reader on a tour through the house (and garden), showing how to rid these spaces of harmful environmental toxins.

Our book won’t contain eco-tips from Julia Roberts–but we will have down-to-earth ideas for bringing up baby. You just have to wait until next spring to read all about it!

Green baby books work for us! For more Works for Me Wednesday ideas, head on over to We are THAT Family. (This week’s WFMW is a themed edition: “Mom, I’m Bored!” Needless to say, I was not aware of that theme until too late.)

As we mentioned in this post, our publisher wanted us to think of a new name for our book, which was previously titled the Green Baby Guide: Down-to-Earth Ways to Save Money and the Planet. The reason? Green fatigue. In just a few years, “green” got played out. What does this mean for the “green movement” in general? Are people sick of the entire concept–not just the word? Will we stop recycling and start driving our Hummers again? Will we run around flipping ON the light switches?

I don’t think so.  Sure, there are always going to be people who won’t care about the planet. And then there will be those who jumped on the green bandwagon a little too enthusiastically and got burnt out. But global warming isn’t a trend–it’s here to stay, and it’s getting worse. So we might as well do something about it, whether we call it “green” or just “common sense.”

Are you suffering from green fatigue–or do you have any words of wisdom for those with severe cases of eco-burnout?

 Help!  We need a new title for our book!  After two years of working on The Green Baby Guide; Down-To-Earth Ways to Save Time, Money, and the Planet our publisher’s sales team has informed us that our title has to change—and we have less than two weeks to come up with another one.  Apparently “green fatigue” is in full swing, and they want to keep the word “green” out of the title.

The unique aspect of our eco-friendly guide is that it’s focused on frugal, eco-friendly baby rearing—which seems to be just what parents need in this economic recession.  Most green baby guides focus on buying high end organic products, which isn’t really accessible for all families.  How can we express that in a catchy title?  So far we’ve come up with the following:

The Down to Earth Baby Guide (This seems rather vague.  We’re not sure people would know what to expect)

The Budget Friendly, Earth Friendly Baby Guide (Sadly, Walmart has just started to use our little catch phrase but maybe this would work?)

What are your ideas?  We would love to hear them so that we can get this book titled and off to the presses soon!  Also, we hope you all have a wonderful Mother’s Day and get the time to put your feet up, enjoy your children, and maybe even eat a little chocolate.  Thanks for joining us!

As you may already know, I’m currently pregnant with our second baby and contemplating our cloth diapering options once again.  With Roscoe we used prefolds and covers exclusively until he was a year old and then experimented with a few types of pocket diapers.  Although we didn’t plan on it, my husband and I immediately found that we far preferred pocket diapers to prefolds.  For more rantings on why I love them so much, check here.

It seems a shame to buy a whole batch of pocket diapers when we have prefolds on hand in all sizes, but it’s been interesting to talk with other cloth diapering parents.  One mother I met used prefolds with her first, pocket diapers with her second and ended up buying all-in-ones for her third child.  This seems far too expensive to me, but I can see how with each child a parent would crave a more convenient cloth diapering system.   Of course pocket diapers and all-in-ones require more laundering but they are easier to put on, whereas at least with prefolds you can pay a bit extra for a diaper service. 

So, those of you who are cloth diapering your second or third child, what have you found to be the best system for you?  Did you switch with your second or continue using your original cloth diapering system?  I’d love to hear your stories!  

In the March issue of ShopSmart, put out by the publisher of Consumer Reports, experts analyzed used baby gear to determine “when you can gratefully say yes and when you should gracefully say no thanks.”  I am devoting several posts to discussing their findings.  (I’ve already written about baby bath tubs, car seats, cribs, and high chairs.)

I was surprised to read ShopSmart’s views on used strollers:

Safe: Strollers made after 2007 when new safety standard were published are safe.

Unsafe: Any stroller made prior to that date, or has missing, loose, or broken pieces is not.

My daughter is still riding around in her 2005 Maclaren Triumph–which was new at the time of purchase, just a few years ago.  I was hoping to sell it once Audrey no longer needs it, and I’d heard Maclarens have a great resale value.  I may have to look into the more recent safety standards, but I hate the idea of every pre-2007 stroller cluttering up our nation’s landfills.

Would you feel all right about accepting a hand-me-down stroller, even if you knew it was made before 2007?  (Also, if you know anything about the safety issues with these “old” strollers, please chime in!)

People are often shocked by cloth diapers, but as we’ve learned firsthand, it’s really no big whoop to wash diapers yourself.  We are impressed, however, by the families who cart their diaper laundry to coin operated machines a few times a week.  If you are just such a family, we’d like to know how you do it.  Rebecca wrote a post on washing diapers in public machines here, but we’d appreciate even more input.  Did you spend a lot of money on laundry?  Are there machines in your building or do you have to travel to a Laundromat?  Have you gotten any negative or positive responses from other Laundromat customers or building tenants?  Would you recommend it to someone else?  Thanks for sharing your experiences and wisdom with our readers!

For almost a year now, I’ve been personally testing eco-friendly dish soaps in search of one that is just as concentrated as conventional brands.  Then a conversation in the comments section of Eileen’s Eco-Pet Peeves post made me wonder if eco-friendly soap was any better than conventional soap.  Was my whole mission in vain?

During this conversation, Gina made the intriguing point that all dish soaps are bad for the environment, whether they’re advertised as “eco-friendly” or not.  Soap biodegrades in rivers and streams, algae feasts on it, and algae bloom results.  This lowers the oxygen levels in the water, which is detrimental to fish and wildlife.  Gina concludes, “The only way that soap can be slightly less bad for the environment is to come in more recyclable packaging and to be more highly concentrated so the bottles are smaller.”

Gina linked to this article, which claims that there’s no environmental advantage to either plant-based or petroleum-based soaps.  The article is written by the Soap and Detergent Association, “Home of the U.S. Cleaning Product and Oleochemical Industries^SM.”  As oleochemicals are derived from biological oils or fats (as opposed to petrochemicals, derived from petroleum), this appears to be a reputable source.

So what, exactly, is so “eco-friendly” about eco-friendly dish soap?  They usually advertise that they are plant-based rather than petroleum based, and they also claim to be phosphate free.  In addition, eco-friendly soaps contain natural fragrances.  Here are the issues we need to look at when seeking out soap:

Phosphates.  Here’s an article talking about the “phosphate problem.”  Phosphates are mainly to blame for the algae bloom mentioned above.  The article also contains a handy chart for figuring out which dish soap ingredients are desirable and undesirable.  I noticed that most brands of dish soap on store shelves advertised that they used no phosphates.

Plant-based vs. petroleum-based soaps.  I thought plant-based soaps must be better for the environment than oil-based ones–and I figured they’d be safer on aquatic life once they went down the drain.  However, my sister pointed out that coconut-based soaps come from . . . well, coconuts.  They do not grow those locally in Portland, Oregon, so where are they coming from?  Who knows how many coconuts have to be harvested and if they’re harvested in a sustainable manner.  Then they have to travel thousands of miles to be turned into soap.  Is this really eco-friendlier than using oil?

Biodegradability. Here’s another article that made me question the eco-friendliness of “biodegradable” soap: Even Biodegradable Soap Can Pollute Water Sources.

Plastic Bottles! The one thing that’s indisputably greener about conventional dish soap is the packaging.  If I used the generic $1.50 bottle of dish soap from Safeway, I’d go through just 2.7 bottles of the stuff in a year.  Plus, they often make refill bottles of the cheap conventional soap, so even fewer plastic bottles would head off to the recycling bin.  Compare that to eco-friendly soaps.  The most concentrated one I found did not last nearly as long as the conventional kind–so I’d go through at least five bottles of “eco-friendly” soap a year.

On Tuesday evening, I will finally post my much-awaited review of the eco-friendly soaps I tried.  I figured out how long they last, how much they cost, and how many plastic bottles they’d waste.  I’ll also reveal my solutions to the dish soap dilemma, so stay tuned!  In the meantime, please add to our conversation about soap and the environment by posting a comment.