I knew there was something I left out for my Fourth of July posts - snacks! Of course, you all served fruit and veggies and healthy things to everyone at your picnics and beach outings, right? If you’re in the market for organic snacks that are not scary to give to your kids on a regular basis, here are two finds that have made permanent space in our pantry!

Snikiddy Snacks are organic, free of hydrogenated oils and high-fructose corn syrup, are low in sugar, kosher, and pesticide-free. We tried the Mac n’ Cheese Puffs and the Chocolate Chipper cookies. Let me just say, they didn’t last very long. The cheese puffs are gluten free (in all flavors), so they’re safe for celiac kids, and the cookies are the only commercially available cookies made without refined sugar. But really, they’re just so yummy, and super kid-friendly! Snikiddy can be found at Whole Foods and now at SuperTarget, so they’re surely easy to find. If you can make it home without devouring them, let me know your secret!

If you’re looking for juice alternatives, Honest Kids (from the makers of Honest Tea) have awesome flavors like Goodness Grapeness, Berry Berry Good Lemonade, and my daughter’s favorite, Tropical Tango Punch. Honest Kids have at least half of the sugar of regular juice boxes (and actually have LESS sugar than the Mott’s for Tots my girls also drink). They do contain organic cane sugar, while the Mott’s for Tots is unsweetened, but all other ingredients are all natural and USDA organic. Honest Kids packs also come in recyclable boxes, instead of plastic wrap. And check out their events blog for pictures of Honest Tea with all their fans!

We all need help to be smart about food. Whether you have kids with allergies, diabetes, obesity, or just need to brush up on the latest food trends, if you’re reading this blog you are part of a community of parents who care about raising kids healthy and happy with food. This is why I love the website Smart Foods Healthy Kids. Started by Kelly Corbet (she calls herself the CEO/Chief of Belief), a environmental policy Harvard-educated mom of two (one with food allergies), the SFHK team is a group of passionate, health-minded people with the littlest eaters in mind.

SFHK covers all aspects of nutrition for kids. For kids with allergies and intolerances, check out their resource page, run by Robin O’Brien of Allergy Kids. There are great video and audio classes with recipes and information about nutrition and food trends. I’ve been using their recipe bank at least once a week, and my girls love the simple recipes that they can even help me prepare. What I really look forward to is their free weekly enewsletter, highlighting a healthy tidbit for you and your kids. Information such as the organic “dirty dozen” and “cleanest 12″ foods to help save your wallet at the organic market - and help you build a healthier kitchen.

I’ve officially hit a meal rut. With a husband who travels often and a busy schedule, not to mention two grandparents who love to feed us, I’ve fallen into the same old foods over and over at home. While my girls don’t seem to complain, I definitely think a little kitchen shake-up is in order. So, I went digging and found some websites and services I hope will inspire you as well.

What’s Cooking Weekly is a newsletter and menu planning service from the San Francisco-based cooking school and education site. Check out their sample menu; the shopping lists and recipes are both practical and manageable - I’ve tried a couple of recipes that my girls actually enjoyed and asked for again! A subscription to What’s Cooking Weekly is $10 a month, $35 for six months, and $66 for the year (with one month free). You can also give a six or yearly gift subscription - great for mom friends, and totally paperless! Even if you don’t pay for a subscription, What’s Cooking offers a tremendous amount of resources about organic food and cooking, as well as a great green kid’s shop for a healthy lunchbox, birthday party ideas, cookbooks, and other occasions. Here’s an excellent article from Michelle Stern, founder of What’s Cooking, about how to incorporate kids into the kitchen for a truly rewarding, and nutritious, food experience for your family.

Spatulatta is an adorable website and cookbook companion, where kid-hosts (and sisters!) Belle and Liv teach kids via short and sweet videos about cooking meals, snacks, and special occasions. A James Beard-award winning webcast for 2006, Spatualatta’s recipes are healthy, simple, and feature a ton of vegetarian and vegan options. Check out their “Back 2 School” page for a good start for lunches! My five year-old especially loved the fact that Mom was behind the camera, and not helping the kids cook - seems she has her own ideas about who runs the kitchen! Note - You need the Quicktime Player to view videos.

Food Allergy Kitchen is also a great recipe resource for families who need to avoid certain ingredients. Search by category or food allergy for accurate substitutions. Food Allergy Kitchen also has an amazing list of allergy-related food links, including gluten-free diets, allergy and asthma, and celiac’s disease, and keeps a running update of food recalls due to allergens.

It’s no surprise how smart the chocolate industry is - we love chocolate, we always love chocolate, and Valentine’s Day is not an excuse to be eating chocolate. Except for tradition, that is. That being said, there is always a big push for our favorite indulgence this time of year. Here’s something chocolaty you can without all the calories (ok, some of the calories). Sustainable Harvest International, a non-profit agency that helps plant trees in Central and South America, as well as provides long-term assistance to communities for sustainable practices, wants to help keep the organic chocolate industry to thrive. They estimate that over 150,000 cacao trees have been planted over the past two years, providing much needed additional income to the families that harvest the trees, as well as providing shelter for wildlife and reforest hard hit areas.

Their latest newsletter, fittingly named ‘For the Love of Chocolate,’ talks about the wonders of the cacao tree and the benefits of planting new cacao forests. For a $40 donation, an acre of cacao trees will be planted in a select community, along with providing the tools and training to help plant and harvest the trees. In return, you get a special Valentine-themed gift card and a sinfully organic jar of Robin’s Chocolate Sauce. Just the name alone and I’m almost up for an ice-cream sundae…

If you (yes YOU) can’t get enough of chocolate, please try to make your chocolate of choice natural, organic, and free trade. Here is a list of chocolate companies that strive to make quality, sustainable chocolaty goodness. You can find most of these brands in local markets, so feel free to test them all out!

Dagoba Organic Chocolate - ‘chocolate alchemy’ at it’s best!
Sweet Earth Organic Chocolates - check out their Valentine gifts, including chocolate hearts!
Green and Black’s - rich, Fair Trade Certified chocolate products.
Rapunzel - the ‘world’s first’ 100% organic chocolate bar.
Newman’s Own Organics - fair labor-practiced from Central and South America.
Endangered Species Chocolate - 10% of profits help support endangered animals. Shop with a ‘green heart’ this V-day!
Divvies - if you have kids with allergies, give them some good, old-fashioned Valentine cupcakes that are dairy, egg, and peanut and treenut free!

This is not a post defending McDonald’s, believe me. As a kosher woman trying-my-hand as a vegetarian AGAIN, the only time we set foot in McDonald’s is for ice cream cone with friends. And if you do frequent there, this is not a post about Mickey D’s artery clogging, waste-creating, plastic-toy peddling ways. It’s about bees. Turns out, Old McDonald had some bees, too…

This all started with a post I wrote this week for ecorazzi about “Bee Movie” being slapped with a trademark infringement suit by BeeCeuticals, an organic body care line made with holistic honey. I didn’t even write the word “McDonald’s” anywhere in the post. The article did, however, prompt a vehement tirade of comments (ok, one) by a woman who made the jump from “Bee Movie” to Jerry Seinfeld to Jessica Seinfeld to hidden vegetable book to hypocritical McDonald’s promos. How could Seinfeld bee be so heartless?

And here’s my point. I actually received an email from the Director of Corporate Communications and Marketing for Conservation International, a US-based non-profit organization which is committed to “conserve the Earth’s living heritage, our global biodiversity, and to demonstrate that human societies are able to live harmoniously with nature.” Bees are having a rough time right now. Over the spring and summer, reports of entire colonies of bees disappearing from farms were baffling bee farmers and scientists. Turns out, a phenomenon called Colony Collapse Disorder was taking place, from stresses to the bees such as viruses, pests, and possibly pesticides. This has become a worldwide problem, one in which CI had been fighting for a while.

Conservation International was psyched when McDonald’s approached them about getting the word out about bee conservation. I mean, more kids can recognize the golden arches than most of the US Presidents, right? From a PR standpoint, Conservation International saw this as an amazing opportunity they couldn’t pass up.

Here’s the deal. There are three major components to the CI/McDonald’s partnership:

-A donation from McDonald’s to support two Conservation International projects in South Africa and Mexico to protect bee habitats;

-Direct environmental education through McDonald’s, including those pesky liners on the trays as well as an on-line presence through the “Bee Move” website;

-Promote the “Bee Good to the Planet” Pledge you can join through Conservation International’s very yellow bee website or through HappyMeal.com (did you know this even existed? Oh, and it’s yellow too).

Kids can go online to read about the plight of the honeybee, play some games, and find out valuable bee-themed information. Yes, there are toys, and yes, there is a movie tie-in. If you don’t feel that it’s appropriate for your kids to see something tied in with McDonald’s, The Daily Green has a wonderful article about what kids can do to help “Save the Bees,” including eating locally made honey, putting out water (bees need to drink too!), and being kind to bees, even if they think bees aren’t so kind to them.

Thanks to Jason for his wealth of information!

Thanksgiving is at hand, and before I go any further - Yes, they do celebrate Thanksgiving in Panama! On that note, no, we will not be able to find an organic turkey this year. But, with the help of Local Harvest, however, anyone in the US will be able to outfit their holidays with organic products from soup to nuts, turkeys to cranberries, and every ingredient in between.

Local Harvest is probably the most comprehensive site for ‘real food, real farmers, real community’. Local Harvest serves many purposes. You can find farms, farmer’s markets, and organic co-ops in your area; catch up on all the latest sustainable farming news around the globe; and the best part - shop for locally grown, organic food. The range of what’s available is amazing. Of course, there are the turkeys (and from what I’ve read, they’re going fast so you’d better order!); cranberries (fresh from the bogs!); and they top it off with desserts that look like they were all made by hand (which they probably were!). I could go on and on, linking to every category. Check out the shop for yourself and try not to do it hungry, ok? Don’t say I didn’t warn you…

Local Harvest is a true testament to the belief that you should not only buy local foods because it supports local farmers, but to support oil and energy conservation. The less distance food has to travel, after all, the safer the food probably is, and the less we have to rely on airplanes or large ships. More important, it’s time to change our kids’ beliefs that everything on their plate and in their lunchboxes comes from a supermarket. Find a farm near you and see if they allow visitors - many of them have stores right on the premises, and it’s a good outing to show kids a hard-working, sustainable farm that needs local support. I think the more you can make your holiday table (or your table any time of year) organic and local is beneficial for your family and your community. Think about how amazed your kids will be when you tell your kids the Thanksgiving turkey came from a farm less than 100 miles away, rather than from the freezer!

Yes, yes, we’re all talking about how to green up Halloween, but seriously - avoid the candy? You know it’s not happening. You know you want to dig into that Halloween bag too. The least you could do is find an organic, more natural alternative hiding in candy form. YummyEarth organic lollipops and candy drops to the rescue!

YummyEarth lollipops were invented by two dads who were college buddies first, then concerned dads when their kids started to become of treat age. But mainly, they were lollipop fans. The decided to ditch the fructose and create their own favorite candy, and YummyEarth was born! YummyEarth come in flavors like Mango Tango, Cheeky Lemon, and Pomegranate Punch, and are made without processed sugars, artificial flavors, pesticides, or chemical colors; they’re also peanut and tree nut free, as well as wheat, gluten, dairy, egg, soy, and casein free as well. They are certified kosher parve and totally vegan. They use fruit and vegetable dyes such as carrots and red cabbage for colorants, and fruit oils and extracts for the punchy flavor that make them so edible.

Find YummyEarth near you, or send some to your favorite lolli fan from teensygreen’s EcoShop! And remember to shaaaaaaare…

And, don’t forget to sign up at Divvies allergen-free cupcakes and goodies shop for this week’s giveaway! It ends TONIGHT at midnight, PST!

I miss organic yogurt - it’s impossible to find in Central America. So when I saw Stonyfield Farm’s, “Bid With Your Lid” program, I really really wanted some. Instead, I’ll let you all do the eating and sending. Each year, Stonyfield Farm gives away “10 percent of its profits to organizations and projects that work to protect and restore the earth”. This year, each of three nonprofit organizations will receive $20,000…you help to decide where a portion of the $40,000 balance goes - Sustainable Harvest International, National Park Foundation, or New American Dream. You can cast one vote on line and get a free coupon for yogurt. Or, send in more lids for more coupons and prizes!  And send in a extra one for me!

I’m always on the lookout for allergen free fun-foods for my daughter’s friends who have allergies, even if they’re not organic. Cookies are cookies sometimes, am I right? Divvies is like a virtual gourmet aisle of “safe sweets” - homemade cookies, cupcakes, popcorn, candy, and baking products, shipped to you fresh and ready to tear into. All of Divvies products are made without peanuts, tree nuts, eggs, or dairy (but with wheat and soy ingredients), and are certified vegan and kosher parve. Have cupcakes shipped to you by the dozen for your next party, complete with frosting! Sponsor a preteen movie night with chocolate caramel popcorn. And, if you’re really brave, have cookies sent by way of “Automatic Divvies,” two dozen sent once a month to brighten up your kid’s lunchboxes. Or your afternoon coffee.

Divvies cookies and popcorn are now available at Walt Disney World in Orlando! Good to know Mickey is looking out for his most sensitive visitors…

via ThisNext

If your baby is cute and Green (and I don’t mean covered in veggies), you may want to enter them in the YoBaby Cover Baby Contest, going on now through September 30th! YoBaby will be choosing two winners - one in a 6-12 month category, and a 13-24 month category. You can even go to a local Picture People photo for a FREE (yes, people, free) photo shoot and automatic entry. Winners will receive oodles of fun stuff (what could be more than seeing your cutie on a yogurt cup?), including a $5,000 savings bond and a trip to San Francisco. Fill out the entry form and upload your YoBaby today!

Update: Entries are closed, but you can vote on the finalists now through October 21st!