How do you Eat, Drink, and Be Merry?

What is your favorite way to Eat, Drink, and Be Merry?

It’s a simple question, but not quite a simple answer. We asked people from the world of Green Living what is their favorite way to eat, drink, and be merry during the holiday season. Here are their responses:

This year was particularly fruitful (no pun intended) in our garden. Fresh watermelon margarita, tomato and cucumber salad, corn on the cob and roasted eggplant, peppers and carrots made many a perfect meal. Eating and drinking is all I need to be merry!

Provender Journal is published by Provender Alliance a non-profit educational and outreach organization for the Northwest Natural Products community. "Spirited pioneers educating and inspiring the natural foods community."

What do you do with kale? Or kohlrabi? Or celeriac? A new staff-CSA at Shelburne Farms this year prompted questions as members picked up shares including less familiar vegetables from the Market Garden. The solution: a recipe or two inserted in the share box every week. The result: a whole new selection of delicious meals on our family dinner tables.

Start the evening with some caroling with friends. After this merry caroling, everyone retreats to a warm, cozy home, with a nice fire in the woodstove, sharing some hot buttered rum and wonderful finger foods made with organic local ingredients like Vermont chevre and baguette. Or better yet, do the hot buttered rum and apps first, then go out caroling. It makes for better caroling!

Julie Sandberg Sales Associate Upper Valley edition of Green Living Journal

Once I spent the December holidays in the English countryside with the family of an old friend. It was a grey, cold, windy day and there was a roaring fire in the old stone fireplace. As dinner simmered on the stove, family members exchanged gifts – used hard cover editions of poetry- Neruda, Alexandra Akhmatova, TS Eliot , and others. Then came the delicious dinner - all the ingredients had come from a neighboring farm. Afterwards we drank brandy by the fire, read and mused about poetry and went for a long walk on a country road.

I love to give gifts that make people laugh, and often these come from the thrift store, a yard sale, or simply my junk drawer. My kids accuse me of being cheap (well, I am ... to me there’s not much difference between "cheap" and "green"), but they’re still talking about the red felt Shriner’s fez (everyone needs one of those!), the mounted, bronzed bass (who can live without one?), and the black and white criminal suit (no comment). They will be talking about these long after the memory of electronic doo-dahs has faded.

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My favorite is slow roasting a (grass-fed, of course) venison roast with Dark & Dry Woodchuck Cider. I buy Woodchuck at a local store, walk home, carrying it in reusable shopping bags, sit on a reusable couch, enjoy a fall evening with music and friends. And then we recycle the bottles!

I like to enjoy the seasons with beers and edibles that are also seasonally aligned. The rotation of the seasons brings with it a revolving roster of quarterly quaffs more closely attuned to the thirsts of each. In the summer I enjoy lighter fare with a crisp, refreshing ale or lager. In the winter I am looking forward to enjoying darker beers that shout with the rich, full flavor for which the season calls.

Alan Newman Conductor of Cosmic Symphonies Magic Hat Brewing Company Burlington, Vermont

I love taking my wonderful Allie Dog to our favorite hillside and chasing her, and have her chase me. Then we sit, have some water and break out the dog biscuits for both of us! Yummy!

Chip Sammons Owner & Janitor Holistic Pet Center Clackamas, Oregon

In December, Instead of having our regular monthly meeting, our local Green Party holds a holiday party. It usually involves pot luck food and drink. Emphasis is put on doing it the green way: that means home prepared, local foods, organic wine and cider, and please, no styrofoam containers.

Steve Baker President, Greenline Paper York, Pennsylvania

Soda Peaks Lake

Our favorite way to eat drink and be merry is to spend a day on a slow hike into Lake Wapiki or Soda Peaks Lake in late spring or late fall, when there are no other people, no bugs, carrying a camera, some beef jerky, a bag of M & M s and a bottle of water.

another view of Soda Peaks Lake

In Vermont we really CAN be green! We can eat, drink and be extremely merry in a low-carbon-footprint kinda way! We are so lucky to live in an area that is blessed with land to grow things on and fantastically inventive farmers who farm the land. This week I spent time at the Jericho Settler’s Farm with Mark Fasching who with his wife Krista Alexander farm land in Jericho and Richmond. These people are truly walking the green talk! They are growing pigs, beef, chickens, lambs, and a huge variety of vegetables in the most sustainable, green, synergistic, brilliant way imaginable! At Healthy Living we are proudly and happily selling products from Jericho Settlers so that more and more of us can eat, drink and be merry in the greenest sense of the word.

On the way home from work I stop by Misty Knoll's chicken ranch for a fresh chick, pick up my CSA of fresh veggies from Lewis Creek Farm and whip together roasted chicken with veggies to enjoy with the six pack of Wolaver's Organic Brown Ale packaged that day with my beautiful wife Melissa. Cheers!

Morgan Wolaver Otter Creek Brewing Middlebury, Vermont

We celebrate Thanksgiving in a greener, kinder, healthier way by not buying a turkey and by sticking with organic, locally grown seasonal veggies, like root vegetables (carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams). Having a complete vegan meal is great especially because of the environmental impact of eating meat, but also because of the ethic of how turkeys are raised (overcrowded factory farms). There are several delicious vegan alternatives, we have come a long way from the "rubber tasting vegan turkey!" We order our vegan turkey at The Nature's Grocer on Union street in Peterborough, New Hampshire.

Josee Dupont Le FP Green Body Care Peterborough, New Hampshire

Each year, around the November Full Moon, my partner, Valerie, and I host a "GivingThanks" Gathering at their home. This is their time to appreciate family, friends and life in the Emerson Brook Forest. The day is filled with homemade music, plenty of wholesome potluck foods, a fire circle and a wood-fired hot tub to nurture the spirit.

Pablo Fleishman Green Energy Options Keene, New Hampshire

We had a wonderful staff and family potluck dinner at the Vineyard several weeks ago. Each of us brought a home-made dish from our gardens or farmers' market with our own napkins and dinnerware (to avoid paper waste). We topped it all with bottles of our own Shelburne Vineyard wines. It was a time for great camaraderie as we celebrated our work together and enjoyed the delectable fruits of our labor.