So Winter Bike to Work Day was in fact, a great success. You see, people like to bike. They also like free food.

Michael White, 15, bikes to school each day with his dad, Mark. But the free food offered throughout Boulder on the city’s third annual Winter Bike to Work Day today added an extra incentive to commute on two wheels.

“Why can’t you guys do this every day?” Michael, a New Vista High School student, said as he ate a tamale from a food stall outside the Pedal to Properties real estate firm on Boulder’s Pearl Street. “Then I can stop having cold cereal in the morning.”

Check out “the rest of the story,” (that was supposed to be your attempt at Paul Harvey) at Hundreds participate in Boulder’s third Winter Bike to Work Day.

Green Drinks November at Jill's

As if we haven’t had enough to eat and drink this month, Green Drinks capped November off with another enjoyable round of sustainable gluttony. It was a blast.

I arrived at Jill’s early for my first Green Drinks, grabbed a seat at the bar, and immediately a loud voice behind me said, “You can’t sit there, that’s my seat!”  Luckily Stu, who’s extremely tall, was joking. Later, when I asked how many solar panels there are in Boulder County, and Stu jokingly came up with 975,674, I realized he must often think on his feet, a skill that’s handy for selling things, which he does as a real estate agent, in lieu of his childhood dream to be an outdoor photographer and writer, which he also could have been joking about.

Megan, Stu and Adrian at Green Drinks November.

Next, I talked to Megan, who works for the City of Boulder’s newly dubbed Local Environmental Action Division, a mouthful, says Smartregs, a new ordinance requiring rental houses to lower energy consumption by 2018, is the most exciting green thing to hit Boulder. Let’s get through 2012 first…

After chatting wind-power with Ben from the Rocky Mountain Institute, I asked the guy next to me what he did. When he said, “I own this place,” I thought he meant the City of Boulder. Turns out he meant the St. Julien, which is basically the same thing. Besides the St. Julien, Richard also owns Benny, a german short-hair named for Jack Benny, who has a lot of energy.

Richard and Amanda at Green Drinks November.

That pretty much wraps up Green Drinks November. Lots of interesting, entrepreneurial folks gabbing and having a grand old time at Jill’s. If you missed it, you missed out!

Ben, Jason, Dom, Richard anad Amanda at Green Drinks November.

So far, the county hasn’t decided what to do. In the meantime, staffers are working hard to even figure out what sustainable agriculture means. This weekend, in an effort to try and figure out just what the definition of “sustainable agriculture” is, the county hosted a community meeting, where a married couple from California took the stage.

An odd couple: she is a crop geneticist, and he’s an organic farmer. And rather than the either-or conversation that normally goes on about GMOs and organic farming, this couple — Pamela Ronald and Raoul Admanchak — say the two can go hand-in-hand.

True, the idea of growing genetically-modified sugar beets organically doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, because sugar beets are genetically modified to resist certain herbicides. So, if you’re not using a weed killer, you can hardly care if your crops are resistant to it.

But in the bigger picture, the couple argue that the two things are not mutually exclusive. That’s because some GMO crops can be made to be resistant to drought — or flooding — and create higher yields, which could be key as the globe continues to warm and population continues to grow.

Read more about the local presentation by Adamchak and Ronald at www.dailycamera.com. Read about the couple’s book, “Tomorrow’s Table,” at Ronald’s blog, or check out a video of a presentation given by the two after the jump.

Obligatory giant check photo. Where do you recycle a giant check?

I don’t usually take much notice of the various donations and so on given in town — we’re fortunate enough to live in a place where that’s pretty common.

But in this case, I guess I was just a little surprised because it’s Ted’s Montana Grill, which has just arrived in town, donating to a name we have here on BGB pretty frequently: the Center for ReSource Conservation. The money was raised from beverage sales at the restaurant’s preview — so maybe Boulder’s livers should be co-signers on the check.

I’m not eating much meat right now, for environmental reasons, but if you’re a carnivore, it sounds like you could do worse than eating at Ted’s.

File photo: Mark Guttridge, of Ollin Farms, at right, passes on a bag of fresh spinach to Steve Toon on the first Wednesday night of the Boulder Farmers' Market in 2010. Toon from Golden, works in Boulder and considers going to the market his hobby. | Paul Aiken / Camera

This via Top 10 farmers markets in U.S. | Gadling.com:

4. Boulder Farmers Market, Colorado

Regional farmers prove that a short growing season can still be spectacular in the form of red sunchokes, fingerling potatoes, maroon heirloom carrots, and peaches to die for from Morton's Orchards. A kaleidoscope of cut flowers and an adjoining prepared food section make this bustling market a colorful-and delicious- community hot spot.

What do you think — is #4 good enough?

Bill Campbell, of the Billy Goat Dairy of Longmont, prepares to milk his goats on Thursday | Daily Camera

Raw Milk — you know the kind that’s fresh from the cow (or goat), not pasteurized, and according to proponents super rich and nutritious — may have made 24 people sick in Boulder County.

Officials think the sickness is related to goat milk from Billy Goat Dairy in Longmont. In all, there are a couple of raw milk dairies in Longmont, a couple in Boulder and one in Erie.

Some food safety experts say that raw milk is dangerous (and that pasteurization was one of the great health breakthroughs). But raw milk lovers say it’s no more dangerous (if the dairy is clean) than other foods. (After all, didn’t hamburgers and spinach give people e-coli?)

Read more about the problem at DailyCamera.com, and tell us what you think below.

The tomato soup and an accompanying lemonade.

There’s really no better way to save money on food than a slow cooker, and I’m a firm believer that crock pots can result in food with a lot of flavor and heft. Combine that with a desire to cut way, way back on meat consumption for environmental reasons (boy, I’ve come a long way) and you’ve got yourself an easy urban challenge: What’s the tastiest thing I can make in the magic money-saving machine?

In the winter, I make a vegetarian taco chili (maybe not as fancy as the Breadworks vegetarian chili with chocolate, but it does the trick). This is a thick, beany, Super-Bowl-watchin’ number. Very tasty and filling (and works great on baked potatoes and Smart Dogs, too!), but not too appetizing when it’s 95 degrees outside.

So in addition to shopping for ingredients for one of the very summery, very healthy and tasty-looking potato salads in this month’s ReadyMade mag, I set out to pick up stuff for a modified tomato taco soup, adding soy chorizo to the mix.

I’ve used SoyRizo before and found it to be pretty excellent — most of the value of real chorizo is in the spices that make it what it is. SoyRizo pretty well nails those flavors in the same way that Morning Star’s veggie sausages do the trick for breakfast sausage (FYI, you can get that veggie sausage with any meal at Dot’s Diner!).

The soup ended up being plenty spicy (we like our food hot — the base recipe would be quite mild, so we chose a hotter taco seasoning and could have put in some chilies), and tempered with the recommended sour cream (actually, Tofutti sour supreme) and avocado, it was delicious. If we’d had tortilla chips around to crumble into it, I think that would have been worth it, too.

So, go ahead, take this recipe and make it yours. Easy on the pocketbook and the stomach.

Solar cooker baking zucchini bread | flickr user davidsilver

A solar cooker is a  simple way to use and understand a resource Boulder has in abundance: sunlight.  Simple cookers require such basic household items as Elmer’s glue, cardboard, aluminum foil and a glass jar, and can be assembled in as little as two to three hours.

The Boulder company Willow Way, run by Zia Parker, offers a solar oven construction class taught by Jeff Graef.

“One thing that’s good about it is it’s a slow cooker,” Graef said. “You basically don’t have to watch it. You can throw in the food, go out and do some errands, come back and it will be cooked.”

“You can cook a pretty good variety of things, but things that take a long time to cook are more challenging,” he said. “The easiest things to cook are fruits and vegetables.

While a solar cooker might not be able to produce enough heat to cook everything on the dinner table, it could be a fun and energy efficient way to gain more understanding of the power of the sun.

Read more about how to make a solar cooker at the Camera.

-Mikaila Altenbern

Bert Nett (front), John Spencer (back left) and Jane Spencer (right) plant squash seeds at an Earth's Table garden in Boulder | CAMERA/Mark Leffingwell

If there’s one thing the United States isn’t known for, it’s eating well. We’ve got a heck of a reputation for junk food out there.

For some people, it’s because there are six-packs of tiny powdered donuts in the vending machine down the hall (damn you) and they have a problem/are weak-willed*. For others, it’s simply because they can’t afford to eat fresh vegetables day in and day out.

Community Food Share, Sister Carmen Center and others in our community want to help with that second reason so, for one, they’ve set up a plot they call Earth’s Table, where veggies are grown for those in need.

Earth’s Table’s effort is one of several across the county among farmers, service agencies and individual citizens to make it easier to make fresh produce available to those with lower incomes.

It’s a tall order. A state-by-state study last year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that no state had met its goal for individual fruit and vegetable consumption. And that didnt even take into account income barriers.

“The nutritional value of fresh fruits and vegetables is so much higher,” says Lonna Lindsay, vice president of policy for LiveWell Colorado. “There are the antioxidants, minerals, nutrients, and the preventative aspect for cancer and obesity.”

via Earth’s Table and others grow food for those who can’t afford it – Boulder Daily Camera.

*Is it just me, or are vending machines satisfying like slot machines you can’t lose?

The Smith Renaissance School of the Arts, located in northeast Denver, got plant-burgled recently, but is rising above it.

Two weeks ago, on a Friday, the students planted the seedlings and others that were donated. The following Monday, the plants were gone.

“One student wondered if it was a clever rabbit,” said Lindsay McNicholas, the school’s resource advocate. “It was deflating. We had just planted them. We didnt even make it 72 hours.”

Read the rest of the story at The Denver Post. Or check out photos of the students replanting the Smith Renaissance School of the Arts vegetable garden.