Mommy Greenest

Healthy Living, Less Judgment

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  • Home
  • Book
  • Categories
    • Healthy Living
    • Mommy Greenest Approved
    • Eco Beauty & Fashion
    • Natural Parenting
    • Latest Buzz
    • Green News & Events
  • Mommy Greenest Guides
    • Guide to Going Green
    • Guide to Eco-Friendly Fashion
    • Guide to Healthy Eating
    • Guide to Natural Parenting & Pregnancy
    • Guide to Green Beauty
    • Guide to Healthy Cleaning
  • About
    • Standards & Disclosure
    • Privacy Policy
  • turmeric root and powder against white backdrop
    Healthy Living

    Turmeric for Health

    April 20, 2016 /

    Everyone seems to be mentioning turmeric for health, these days. And it’s not just about a spice that you put in your curry. A proud member of the ginger family, turmeric is said to be an immune system builder and powerful antioxidant. I got the scoop from Randi Ragan, holistic well-being expert, founder of GreenBliss EcoSpa and author of the brand-new book A Year of Living Mindfully: Seasonal Practices to Nourish Body, Mind and Spirit. This beautifully-illustrated book is chock full of recipes, teas, tonics, exercises and daily practices—including instructions on how to make an easy turmeric for health tonic, which I’ve included below. All are designed to reduce stress, avoid…

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    Rachel Sarnoff 12 Comments

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    Reinventing Detox by Eating Clean

    March 7, 2016 /

    Amie Valpone—best known as The Healthy Apple—healed herself from a decade of chronic illness by resetting her eating habits. Along the way, she became a professional chef, culinary nutritionist, recipe developer and author. I became obsessed with her new book Eating Clean: The 21-Day Plan to Detox, Fight Inflammation, and Reset Your Body, especially after I discovered recipes like this ridiculously delicious Magical Peach Arugula Salad, which is gluten-free, vegan and paleo. Want to try? I scored the recipe!

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    How To Make A Holiday Organic Cocktail

    December 23, 2015 /

    Wondering what to sip this season? Take a minute to mix up this delicious blood orange organic cocktail, courtesy of pro mixologist and author Jordan Catapano, the force behind This Girl Walks Into A Bar and the brand-new Cocktails for Cougars and Cowgirls: Simple and Delicious Recipes for Every Woman book. I visited Jordan in her Los Angeles bar/studio to mix a few organic cocktails–here’s the video (and recipe) to prove it!

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    Healthy Living

    Easy Organic Vegan Chia Pudding Recipe Hack

    June 29, 2015 /

    How did I live this long without ever tasting vegan chia pudding? Seriously, this stuff is amazing! It’s got the mouth-boggling texture of tapioca, but all the ingredients are good for you. You can eat it for breakfast, dessert or a snack, and it’s so delicious, even kids will never guess it’s nutritious. I first tasted a vegan chia pudding made by Mommy & Bean, which delivers pre- and post-natal healthy food to moms at home or in the hospital in Southern California. (If you’re expecting, definitely connect with Mommy & Bean here–this is an amazing mom-powered company!) Then I tracked down the perfect recipe at Whole Foods, which I’m sharing here…

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    Healthy Living

    Organic Chocolate Mousse Easy Recipe Hack

    April 20, 2015 /

    Oh, how I love chocolate (preferably organic and fair trade). But I really do hate making dessert. So when I was recently tasked to bring something sweet to a dinner party, I looked for the easiest possible chocolate recipe I could find. This no-bake, chocolate mousse easy recipe was so easy to make–and amazing to taste–I had to share. My little helper was pretty impressed, too!

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    Recipe Hack: Vegan Sushi

    February 9, 2015 /

    I’m not much for following recipes. I get overwhelmed with too many ingredients and tend to cook by taste, instead. But my husband surprised me with vegan sushi the other day and we loved it so much I had to share the recipe. So without further ado, here’s a recipe hack for Delicious Living’s Carmelized Tofu and Avocado Rolls, otherwise known as vegan sushi.

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    Eco Beauty & Fashion

    DIY Natural Bug Repellant Perfume

    July 28, 2014 /

    Tis the season for bugs. And although I happen to love the scent of citronella, others—I’m not naming names, but we could be married—hate it. So I whipped up a new recipe for DIY natural bug repellant perfume that employs three of my favorite scents, with no citronella in sight. Want to try? I’ll show you how!

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    Five Minutes to Natural Skin Lightening

    August 26, 2013 /

    Ah, August. Back to work. Back to school. And looking back in the mirror is the evidence of how much fun I had in the sun this summer: Freckles, wrinkles and dark spots, especially on the sides of my face where my hat didn’t cover. Once upon a time, I might have reached for a prescription or over-the-counter skin lightening cream to combat this kind of sun damage. But I know now that hydroquinone, their most common ingredient, has been linked to cancer and, ironically, ochronosis, also known as skin darkening. Yikes! That’s why this DIY is such a relief: With two kitchen cabinet ingredients and five minutes, you can…

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 Older Posts

Welcome! I created this blog in 2008 as a resource for healthier living with less judgment. I'm a mother of three, former journalist, and co-founder of the (shuttered, sniff) sustainable beauty and fashion site EcoStiletto. I was Executive Director of the nonprofits The 5 Gyres Institute and Healthy Child Healthy World and appeared as a sustainable lifestyle expert on "The "TODAY Show" and "CNN Headline News," among others. Oh, and have you checked out my TEDx talks: Trash is Ruining Recycling and Can One Straw Change The World? Today, you can find me here. Let's keep in touch! xoRachel

https://youtu.be/sOol1MIgois

rachellincolnsarnoff

Things I learned recently. 1. Ritual works. A r Things I learned recently.
 1. Ritual works. A room, a desk, a coffee shop. Paper and pen or antique typewriter. Someone changes his shoes like Mr. Rogers before he sits down at his desk, another does visualizations. For months, I switched into writing brain by exiting my office, where my work desktop lives, and sitting with my laptop (wifi off) in a chair next to the window in my bedroom. I now recognize this as a ritual.
 2. Quality, not quantity. Maya Angelou rented a hotel room and wrote in it for six hours a day. (She asked the staff to take all the art off the walls, so she wouldn’t be distracted. And she drank sherry.) But many of us are working writers - by this I mean working at something else while maintaining a writing practice. We squeeze it in where we can. Currently, I get up at five so I can write for an hour before starting work at seven, a luxury made possible by remote work. I rarely have a concentrated stretch of time, and yet I keep chipping away at my novel, one paragraph or page (on a good day) at a time. 
 3. It’s a practice. Until recently, I didn’t believe that writing every day was that important. I would sit down and write for eight hours and then not for weeks at a time. (I was also a working co-parent of three children. So there’s that.) Now I’m trying to write every day, even just for 30 minutes. And what that means is when I’m doing something else — working or driving carpool or yoga or walking the dog or cooking or watching television — a part of my brain is still with those characters and re-entering the scenes is easier. 
 4. Writing is a tap you can’t shut off. Waking up in the middle of the night to scribble in the dark. Dictating a note to Siri in the car. Pinching your arm in a dark movie theater so you’ll remember a word when the lights turn on. Today I realized that one of my main characters has freckles and another needs to find a credit card and a third is smelling vanilla. All of these realizations happened while I was doing other things (see above). That’s writing, too. 
Right? 
#AmWriting
Exiting the @pacificmfa womb and headed into the w Exiting the @pacificmfa womb and headed into the world, proud of brilliant graduates including @allisuuunshines and @krazykenzer14 and honored to be on this path with @kburmz_ and @katiesumers and @rwrowe21 and too many others to name “jumping and dancing and skipping” and writing and reading and listening and thinking. I am profoundly grateful for this community and fellowship that is truly life-changing, and I read this poem TODAY which is further proof the universe is listening.
THE DAYS (abridged)
If only I could live my life, not write it,
I’d have double the experience
and be better at nothingness, at being present.
The page, I once believed, offers permanence,
sanctifying time, making it longer,
but now I see my words as susceptible,
even if digital, to fire, flood, misplacement.
To misinterpretation. To accidental
download by enemy. I don’t yet want them 
to be lost, but I dread the possibility
that they won’t self-destruct at the end
of my life, or the end of my lucidity.
Maybe I’ve been using paper all wrong,
committing to ink what should live in my head,
which is part of my body, which will not last…
Each night, I had written Here is what happened
like a kid whose pen makes her small life exciting,
then gone on mistaking the plot for the story,
as if the point of writing were writing.
-Adrienne Su “The Days” published in the New Yorker January 2/9 2023 (abridged)
#AmWriting #Memoir #Essay #Nonfiction #Fiction #WomensFiction #Stories #Story #WritersOfInstagram #Writer #Writing #WritingCommunity #PacificUniversity #PacificMFA #MFA
Searching for the sleeper wave. #amwriting #amread Searching for the sleeper wave. #amwriting #amreading #fiction #writer #writersofinstagram #writingcommunity #mfa
After the recent announcement of the fusion breakt After the recent announcement of the fusion breakthrough at Livermore — where my grandfather once worked as a chemist, that’s him on the right — many messaged me that the “climate crisis was over.” At the lab, lasers fused two forms of hydrogen into helium, which released more energy than it took to make it. And yes, this is amazing: Nuclear fusion releases no greenhouse gases and the waste is less problematic than what’s produced by nuclear fission, which is what my grandfather worked on. But the Livermore experiment — among many others — was able to produce just a small amount of energy and scaling its ability will take a lot of time, which we don’t have. Here’s what we do have: Wind and solar and regenerative agriculture, which are all eminently scalable now. As my grandfather might have said, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” Photo: Bonestamp
#Climate #ClimateJustice #KeepItInTheGround #CleanEnergy #Motivation #MommyGreenest
I’m not big on resolutions, but I do believe in I’m not big on resolutions, but I do believe in ritual. Every New Year’s Day — and my birthday — I try to do the things that I want to be doing for the rest of the year. I spent the morning writing and then did some yoga and went for a walk with my family. I made posole for my son’s birthday party and ate said posole and it was delicious. I prepped a bit for work and played my guitar. All in all, an excellent start to another year. How about you? #happynewyear #newyear #resolutions #ritual
I have always been a writer. Published? Not so muc I have always been a writer. Published? Not so much. I published myself, obviously — MommyGreenest since 2008 woot! — but with other projects I tended to give up after a pass and internalize the rejection. But late last year, I read an essay by @elizabeth_gilbert_writer in which she described her process as tennis: Every time a story was lobbed back to her she sent it back over the net to another potential publisher. One in, one out. I took that to heart and each time I received a no, I swung harder. I still haven’t placed a story, but this year I published three nonfiction pieces — in the @washingtonpost, @nwreview, and @hippocampusmag. With encouragement from Kate McKean’s @agents_and_books newsletter, I submitted to over 50 agents who passed on my novel, but 11 requested the full manuscript and responded with notes (this will mean nothing to most people, but after enough time in the slush pile, querying writers gauge success by the detail of the rejection). No, this work is not lucrative and yes, it is a privilege to carve out the time and attention that it demands. Last spring, I was inspired by @jamiattenberg’s #1000wordsofsummer to schedule hour-long writing sessions, often at 5 a.m. before work, in order to chip away at a new novel that just topped the 50,000-word mark huzzah! Next week, I’ll join @pacificmfa peers in Oregon for my first in-person residency on the slowest train ever to an MFA. Cheers to all the creative people who can’t stop won’t stop trying to make sense of this reality through art. I am inspired by all of you.
#AmWriting #Memoir #Essay #Nonfiction #Fiction #WomensFiction #WritersOfInstagram #Writer #Writing #WritingCommunity #PacificUniversity #MFA
Finally c-positive, which is a negative, but the p Finally c-positive, which is a negative, but the plus side is a cozy blanket, knitted with love by a friend, and this amazing book, sent to me by my mother, which includes this wisdom: “…it strikes me as a particularly dangerous fantasy…that someone might be able to live without…heartbreak or sorrow. Which I’m pretty sure you only get to do if you have no relationships, love nothing, are a sociopath, and maybe, if you’re enlightened. I don’t know about you, but I check none of these boxes.” Love love LOVE. Who else is reading/has read? Let’s discuss! #amreading #rossgay #essay #nonfiction #inspiration
Los Angeles is full of magical places, especially Los Angeles is full of magical places, especially this time of year. We got dressed up and went to one of them. Highly recommended. Happy holidays, everyone!
When your daughter is doing the crossword puzzle a When your daughter is doing the crossword puzzle and you know both the answer and the person in the clue.
#JennaJambeck #Plastic #CircularEconomy #BreakFreeFromPlastic #Motivation #Health #Wellness #MommyGreenest
Obsessed. #Natural #NaturalBeauty #CleanBeauty #Be Obsessed. #Natural #NaturalBeauty #CleanBeauty #Beauty #Perfume #NaturalPerfume #HenryRose #NotSponsored
Slow and steady wins the race. #SlowAndSteady #Ha Slow and steady wins the race.
#SlowAndSteady #HappyHolidays #HappyHolidays2022 #AmWriting #WomensFiction #WritersOfInstagram #Writer #Writing #WritingCommunity
It’s inevitable — in December, we take stock. It’s inevitable — in December, we take stock. 2022 was full of surprises, but one constant was me on top of a mountain, wearing some weird assortment of sun protection and smiling. What happy place did you return to over and over this year?
#Health #Wellness #Hiking #Hike #Motivation #HealthyLifestyle #MommyGreenest
Tighter than a ____’s ass in fly time. You fill Tighter than a ____’s ass in fly time. You fill in the blank. #hemingway #amreading #amwriting #writer #writersofinstagram
All parents are proud of their kids. That’s just All parents are proud of their kids. That’s just what we do. I’m no exception. For the last three days, I’ve been listening on repeat to my son’s first album, proud as a peacock. But I’m also a music lover and a musician and I would love this album even if Gabriel — known on Spotify as Garb — hadn’t made it. This is a concept album: The songs follow the trajectory of a relationship and connect viscerally to all the raw and unfiltered emotions of first love. He is accompanied by incredible jazz musicians — known here as the Rags — from the Berkeley music program, creating this really interesting folk jazz fusion. I am proud of what he has created and also of how brave he is to put it out into the world. Please take a minute to click through, listen and — most important — please share. Link in bio. Thank you!
#Music #Singer #Songwriter #Songs #Garb #garbandtherags
Have you heard about the movement to #RebrandThank Have you heard about the movement to #RebrandThanksgiving? It’s a reminder to disrupt historical myths and honor the heritage of the #Indigenous land on which we live. Check out resources @IllumiNative and the map at native-land(dot)ca. Today and every day I am grateful to be living here, on native Chumash and Tongva land.
#IllumiNative #Thanksgiving #HappyThanksgiving
So proud to know @maryhelenstefaniak who has not o So proud to know @maryhelenstefaniak who has not one but TWO books out this year! I can’t wait to read this collection of essays, which @valerielaken calls a “treasure trove of marvels.” Both of these fantastic humans and writers are faculty at @pacificmfa. I am so inspired by this community!
#AmWriting #Memoir #Essay #Nonfiction #Fiction #WomensFiction #WritersOfInstagram #Writer #Writing #WritingCommunity
Opened Rilke to this. Who needs the I Ching? #rilk Opened Rilke to this. Who needs the I Ching? #rilke #writing #writer #writersofinstagram #reader #readersofinstagram #reading
My essay is in the Northwest Review!! This is a li My essay is in the Northwest Review!! This is a literary journal that I truly respect and admire. It’s one of the oldest in the country — they ran Ken Kesey’s first story in 1957! NWR has published Pushcart nominees, Best American Short Story winners, Stegner Fellows, and now me. I’m so proud that my compact little essay, “Morning-After Pill “Freebies” Highlight Abortion Divide” made the cut. Plus, that cover — amiright? Link in bio!
#AmWriting #Memoir #Essay #Nonfiction #Fiction #WomensFiction #WritersOfInstagram #Writer #Writing #WritingCommunity
You? #vote #voteblue #votelikeyourlifedependsonit You? #vote #voteblue #votelikeyourlifedependsonit
If you’re in Los Angeles, go see the extraordina If you’re in Los Angeles, go see the extraordinary #JoanDidion exhibit, curated by #HiltonAls at the #HammerMuseum. #Inspiration #AmWriting #WritersOfInstagram
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