I just ate dinner and drank a big glass of clean, cool water.  Such a simple thing, yet for millions of people around the world access to clean water is a daily struggle.  Chris and I recently watched the documentary Flow, which highlights how equitable access to water is one of the critical human rights and environmental issues of our time.  I highly, highly recommend this movie - go add it to your Netflix list now!  

Honestly, watching this film totally changed the way I think about water, and I will never again take it for granted (nor will Pacific Pie Co ever sell bottled water!).  Millions of people die every year due to preventable diseses associated with lack of clean drinking water.  And the crazy thing is that in most parts of the world water could be made available to local communities - but politics and money often get in the way.  Fortunatly, there are some dedicated organizations working to ensure access to water - and you can help.

Portland Roasting Coffee, a fantastic local roaster that just happens to supply Pacific Pie Co with heavenly French Roast, is putting on a series of events to raise funds for Water for All, a South African based group that works with communities to design customized water solutions, including the fun merry-go-round pump, solar pumps, wind powered pumps, and purification systems. 

Click here for all of the info on the Walk for Water event - a fundraising walk, speakers, screenings of Flow, and a concert at the Aladdin theater.

As I am sure you have heard before, every time you make a purchase you are voting for the kind of world you want to live in.  This is so true and important when it comes to food.  Having access to fresh, local, seasonal, sustainably harvested vegetables, meats, and artisan products is one of the true joys of living in the Pacific Northwest.  But the only way we can maintain this local food economy is to continually nurture and support it.

The Oregon Environmental Council has just launched the Vote with Your Fork! campaign to educate folks about how to support and sustain the local food system.  You can take their pledge to make at least one change in your eating habits - if everyone in Oregon did this, we would see some major positive impacts on local economies and ecosystems. 

Here are just a few of their ideas about how you can vote with your fork:

Host a local foods potluck.  With the farmer's markets bursting at the seams with the most dazzling array of seasonal produce, it is a great time to invite your friends and neighbors to share the bounty of summer.

Compost your food scraps.  Even if you don't have a yard to establish a composting system, there are great under the sink or counter top composting options, such as Bokashi.     

Support a local farmer.  Buying directly from farmers, either at the farmer's markets or at a farm stand means that your entire food dollar goes to the hard working farmer and stays in the local economy.

To do my part, I am about to go cook dinner with fish we picked up at the farmer's market yesterday, greens from our friends at Sweet Leaf Farm in Eugene, and shallots and tomatoes from the good folks at Deep Roots Farm in Corvallis.  And I think I will mix up some vodka tonics with vodka from New Deal Distillery, which happens to be right up the road from where we live.  Eating local is sweet! 

We just returned from a fantastic trip to visit some of the farmers who supply our meat. It is really important to us to know where the ingredients for our products come from, so we went to see the animals, check out where and how they are raised, and talk to the farmers about their practices. We even ate some grass from the lovely pastures at one of the ranches!

We travelled through the Columbia River Gorge and across the Oregon border to Idaho, where we met up with Don and Virginia Wilkinson of Pasture Proper.  While in Idaho we visited several farmers who specialize in grass fed beef.  We then continued back to Oregon and through Bend, where we stopped at Pine Mountain Ranch, where Alan Rousseau raises grass fed buffalo, elk, and yak.  Finally we drove through some lovely snow to the Eugene area, where we met up with Reed Anderson of Anderson Ranches and Petrene from Sweet Briar Farms.  A really great trip and we will be posting lots more about each of these special farms in the coming weeks.

The main thing we discussed on this trip was grass.  PPC only purchases 100% grass fed, pasture raised beef, bison, and lamb.  There are tons of reasons why grass fed is the way to go - Chris is working on some posts to tell you more about this.  But if you are excited about grass, this really is a beautiful time of year.  As Don Wilkinson said with obvious glee on a balmy Boise evening, "The grass is growing!"

Trying to be an educated, thoughtful consumer is not always easy. Is it better to purchase certified organic milk, or the milk from a local dairy? What is the environmental impact of replacing your cell phone every time a cool new model is released? What are the potential health impacts of all of those unpronounceable ingredients in a tube of lipstick or a box of supermarket cookies?

Here is a great website that has the answer to all of those questions and loads more: goodguide.com. The creator, Dara O'Rourke, a UC Berkeley professor, got the inspiration for the site when he was putting sunscreen on his young daughter and wondered what was actually in the product. Now goodguide.com has a searchable database of over 90,000 products, with information on ingredients, labor practices, political affiliations, hazardous ingredients and environmental impact. After searching your favorite products, you can create a personalized shopping list with items to buy and items to avoid.

I learned heaps after just ten minutes cruising around the goodguide site - for example, Horizon Organic Milk is owned by mega food company Dean Foods and scored just a 2.7 overall and a pitiful 1.1 for environmental performance. I also discovered, much to my chargin, that my favorite lipstick contains ingredients that could be carcinogens. So from now on my milk is coming from the local dairy - and I guess it is time to shop for a new lipstick...goodguide suggests the lip color made by Burt's Bees!

On one of the last legs of our cross country journey from Philly to Portland we were cruising up Highway 101 from San Francisco to Eureka. We were desperately in need of a pit stop, when out of nowhere we saw the Real Goods Solar Living Center. We are big fans of their Real Goods catalog - tons of great products for eco-friendly living, from home-scale wind turbines to organic sheet sets. So we stopped in, used their great composting toilets stocked with Dr. Bronner's magic soap, and spent a while checking out the store. We could have spent WAY too much money there, but luckily saving up for PPC prevents us from being too reckless with our spending. We left with a grow your own shitake mushroom kit and took a short stroll through the many informative displays on permaculture, renewable energy, biodiesel, and more. If you are ever in the area, definitely check them out.