You’ve seen Ames Farm honey products in bottles, in honeycombs and  pollen.  Ames Farm is centrally located in Watertown, MN, but not all the honey is made there. There are bee hives all over central Minnesota. Want to know where your honey comes from?

Check out the label on the side of the jar. It shows you the hive number, vintage year and the city where the honey bees gathered and created that honey.  Log onto Ames Farm Web site to locate the hive on a map!

Go to http://www.amesfarm.com/location.php and click on Bee Yards to locate the source of your honey.

Check our latest issue of This is Living Naturally to read more about what makes Ames Farm a unique local and sustainable business. Download a PDF online or pick  up a copy in the store.  Also watch a mini-documentary about Ames Farm on our homepage. Don’t forget to check back every once in a while through the end of January.

Need a great gift idea? We have some great honey gift packages in our general merchandise department with sample-sized Ames Farm assorted single-source honeys.

Climate change negotiations with world leaders continues this week and our friends at the School of Environment Studies are giving us a first-hand inside scoop through their daily blog www.ses-climate.blogspot.com.

The SES students are staying busy sharing what they’re learning throughout this experience. If it’s not an impromptu conversation with Ministers of the Environment from the Congo during a train commute from the students’ host homes in Landskrona, Sweden it might be a demonstration be it a flash dance or a bed-in.

They’re learning from and connecting with youth in other countries, learning what they are doing for their countries climate issues as well as for the world. The youth voice is strong and present in Copenhagen. There is an area of the conference targeted specifically at youth, which is called the Youth Arcade and is made up of a collection of booths and speakers.

We are continuing to learn from and follow the experiences of the high school students on their blog and we’re also watching the Climate Change Conference Web site.

Serving up something gourmet comes easy when Daniel from our meat department tells you how! Here’s an easy way to cook up Arctic Char (a nice alternative to salmon) which presents beautifully when you are ready to serve.

For each serving you will need:

• 1 fillet  Arctic Char
• Handful of Fresh Baby Spinach
• Vegetable Stock
• Thumb-size piece of ginger
• 3 fresh shitake mushrooms, sliced
• Fresh lemon juice
• Sea salt and white pepper
• Olive oil

For the broth:

Heat vegetable stock, add roughly chopped ginger and simmer for 5 minutes; strain out ginger pieces. Set strained broth aside and season with a little salt to taste.

For the fish:

Season fillet with salt and white pepper. Heat a pan with a little olive oil until very hot. Add fillet, skin side down and cook until there is only a small area of rawness left on top of fish. Flip fillet over and sear for 20 seconds. At this point, you can carefully peel and discard the skin from the fillet (optional.) Carefully remove fillet from pan and set aside. In the same pan, add a little butter and then add spinach. Season, and cook until just wilted. Place spinach in a mound in center of a clean plate, place cooked fillet (skin side down if you kept the skin) on top of spinach. Add the sliced mushrooms to the broth, and then spoon mushrooms and broth around plate as shown. Squeeze lemon over the fish and serve.

Looking for an affordable gift that keeps on giving? Pick up a copy of the Twin Cities 2010 Blue Sky Guide loaded with community coupons! You can browse through a sample copy located at the registers. The Blue Sky Guide is on sale for $15.00 through December 2009. That’s a $5 savings off the regular price!

Valley Natural Foods, along with other Twin City Food Co-ops is featuring a save $5 on your purchase of $40 or more coupon in the grocery section of the Blue Sky Guide.

 Click here to learn more about Blue Sky Guide

Blue Sky has created an online green gift guide which you can view by clicking here. 

St. Paul, Minn. — Tired of phone books piling up on your front doorstep, especially if you don’t use them anymore? Visit www.yellowpagesoptout.com to opt out. This Web site is the only online opt out service recognized by publishers.

Simply enter your ZIP code to find the participating phone book publishers in your area that are making it possible for you to opt out of receiving phone books. You will need to inform each phone book publisher that you would like delivery stopped.

Opting out is even better than recycling. While recycling saves many resources, reducing or not creating waste in the first place saves even more.  Currently, Minnesotans recycle about 20 percent of the 5,000 tons of phone books that are delivered in the state each year. The opt-out takes 60 days to process. You may miss the deadline for a few of the phone books this year, but opting out today will ensure you won’t receive them next year.

If you have phone books that you need to recycle, contact your county for information on your recycling options or visit www.recyclemoreminnesota.org, which has a list of all of the county recycling programs in the state.  Most curbside programs take phone books year around. 

You can also call these companies to opt out:

Dex (Qwest) — Phone 866-606-9339.

Idearc Inc. (Verizon) — Call 800-888-8448; then select option 2.

Yellow Books USA Inc. — Call 800-929-3556, then press 2.

The last of the Sustainable Christmas Trees have arrived here at Valley Natural Foods and the new price is $30.oo each!

NEW THIS YEAR: You can Special Order a Cathedral Tree for Delivery at Valley Natural Foods. Check www.oneotaslopes.org for Cathedral Tree pricing. Looking for a super-fresh, chemical-free tree for your vaulted ceiling, or your church, something taller than you usually find on the lot? How about a gift for family or friends that have “given up” on a real Christmas tree? A tree picked out to your specifications and delivered to Valley Natural Foods?

Oneota Slopes Christmas Trees is offering taller trees on a direct sales basis to customers of our retail partner stores. Order one of our super-fresh, sustainably-grown, chemical-free Christmas trees, choose between spruce and pine, and any height up to 12 feet!

Oneota Slopes Christmas Trees is a  small family operation is located in the beautiful Upper Iowa River valley near Decorah, Iowa. They have supplied small quantities of trees to co-ops in the Upper Midwest for years. This holiday season marks the kickoff of their large-tree direct-sale option, and they guarantee super-fresh (cut the day before), chemical-free (no paint, no pesticides), and sustainably grown (good for air, water, wildlife) pine and spruce.

 For more information, go to their web site, at  www.oneotaslopes.org, or call Andy Johnson at 563-380-6648. Quantities are limited–sign up online before Thanksgiving.

(Left to Right) Katie Paulson-Smith, David Garcia, Tara Allen, Luke Nagel, Alex Sheker, Beth Schulz, Jessica Vankempen, Ashley Burdge, Deon Haider, Beth Peterson

The countdown clock on ses-climate.blogspot.com reads 2:16 and counting. Ten high school students from the School of Environmental Studies (SES) are on their way to Denmark to attend the 15^th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15) in Copenhagen.

“Sending students to Copenhagen is a perfect fit for the sort of teaching and learning we work to do at SES. Having students engaged in authentic learning experience in ‘extended campuses’ all around the world is central to the vision of SES,” says Craig Johnson, an SES science teacher.

“We believe students learn best through experience and active involvement, attending the biggest international climate conference in history certainly fits that bill.”

Upon return from COP15, the SES students will be required to share their new knowledge with the community through a community project or presentation. Be it a sustainable food banquet or a partnered project with one of the Swedish students they will meet in Copenhagen, Valley Natural Foods has partnered with the school to help complete the project.

“Valley Natural Foods has been a tremendous, long-term partner and support of SES programs for several years. Our collaboration on COP15 project is a logical fit,” says Craig Johnson.

We are excited to partner with the school as we have with other projects of theirs including the Will Steger Global Warming Expedition to Baffin Island or their first sustainable banquet.

“Last year we assisted a number of graduating seniors with their senior projects and it was a very rewarding experience for the co-op,” says Charli Mills, Marketing Communications Manager at Valley Natural Foods. “Two of the students gave us food for thought on how to get different cultures involved in the sustainable food movement.”

Being a community cooperative, it really enhances our work here at Valley Natural Foods to have a relationship and partnership with the students and school because we can learn a lot about the world around us from the real-life application projects that come from SES students.

What we find most exciting is that these youth from our community are amongst the youngest attending the conference in Copenhagen, which really reflects the quality of work that comes from the students and faculty at SES.

“Our co-op has an invested interest in the sustainable food system,” Charli says. “Certainly the kind of information the students will be exposed to in Copenhagen will expand our understanding of the future impact on sustainable food systems.”

We look forward to working with these students, following their journey, their experiences and learning about how the changes occurring around the world affect our health and ultimately our community.

Follow SES students with us on their blog!  http://ses-climate.blogspot.com/