"12 Days of Christmas"

Starting December 8th we will be celebrating the "12 Days of Christmas" with special offers every day through December 19th. Check our website or "like" us on facebook to get your daily does of partridges, turtle doves, and geese a laying!

We've got green stationary, recycled purses, recycled silver jewelry, and a lot more surprises.

So what did your true love give to you? Or better yet...what are you giving your true love on the first day of Christmas?

Green Pumpkins!

Did you know that green pumpkins are mirlitons? These green vegetables are also called vegetable pears, chayote squash, and in New Orleans they call it a mella-ton. The Bywater neighborhood association in New Orleans has an annual Mirliton Festival on November 7th, 2010. Lots of bands with quirky names and delicious original Cajun cooking. Consider it an eco friendly version of the orange celebration called Halloween.

The mirliton recipe below got the best reviews on the web. Unfortunately, the ingredients don’t include celery.

If you really need some orange check out our Eco Friendly Accessories at Celerystreet.com and get an orange/rust recycled billboard ad bag to show off your Halloween spirit OR fill with candy.

















Photo thanks to Eugenia Photography and is the cover of the Bywater Cookbook

Ma Ma's Mirliton, Shrimp and Crabmeat Casserole
Recipe courtesy Emeril Lagasse, 2003
Serves: 8 to 10 servings

Ingredients
1 teaspoon unsalted butter
7 pounds mirliton, peeled and cut into 1-inch thick slices or 1 (7 pound green pumpkin) *Cooks note:
1/4 cup vegetable oil
11/4 cups finely chopped yellow onions
1/3 cup finely chopped garlic
2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
2 pounds shrimp, peeled and deveined
1/2 pound lump crabmeat, picked over for shells and cartilage
1/4 cup finely chopped green onions
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh parsley
1 pound Gruyere, or mozzarella, finely grated

*Cooks note: any type of bland squash can be substituted for the mirliton or green pumpkin in this recipe (merlitons, yellow squash, or zucchini) Long green Italian squashes would work great too. Regular pumpkins can also be used (not the kind for pie, but the big, bland ones more often used for Jack o'lanterns). Butternut or acorn squash does not work with this recipe. The original recipe uses 1 (7 pound) green pumpkin.

Directions
Place the mirlitons in a large pot and add enough water to come 1-inch up the sides of the pot. Cover and bring to a boil. Continue to cook over medium-high heat until the mirliton is very tender, about 40 to 45 minutes. Strain in a large colander. Using the back of the spoon, press on the pumpkin to release as much liquid as possible. Discard any liquid.

In a large pot, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Add the onion, and cook, stirring, until soft, about 4 minutes. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Add the mirliton, salt, and pepper, and stir to combine. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring frequently, until the mirliton is very thick and most of the liquid has evaporated, about 30 to 40 minutes. (Be careful near the end of the cooking time that the mirliton does not burn on the bottom of the pot.)

Preheat the oven broiler.

Add the shrimp, crabmeat, green onions, and parsley to the pumpkin mixture and gently stir to combine. Taste and adjust seasoning as necessary. Transfer hot pumpkin mixture to the prepared dish and spread the grated cheese evenly over the top. Broil until the cheese is bubbly and lightly browned, about 5 minutes. Serve immediately.

*Cooks note: any type of bland squash can be substituted for the mirliton or green pumpkin in this recipe (merlitons, yellow squash, or zucchini) Long green Italian squashes would work great too. Regular pumpkins can also be used (not the kind for pie, but the big, bland ones more often used for Jack o'lanterns). Butternut or acorn squash does not work with this recipe. The original recipe uses 1 (7 pound) green pumpkin.

© 2010 Television Food Network, G.P

Romanticly Green!

The September Issue of Romantic Homes featured our adorable little nostalgic zippered coin purse! They say “We love, love this” Boss Lady, Mood Swings, and Coffee design have a retro feel. With a price of $3.99 a piece customers are buying them by the dozen and stuff them with gift cards or bobbles to give as gifts.

Perfect for your spare change, receipts, credit cards, or beauty accessories. Romantic Homes says “This is not your granny’s change purse!”

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Netbook on the Range!

Our Women’s Purses/Shoulder Bags by Blue Q, made of recycled plastic, have been selling like ice cream on a hot summer day…sorry, hot cakes weren’t appropriate this time!

Seems the Boss Lady Eco Shoulder Bag that looks like a saddle bag is the perfect size for your Netbook or iPad! The bag measures 13 x 14 and is also available in our stylish shoulder bag for women Flowers and our eco friendly shoulder bag Bird Nest design. Light weight, adjustable wide strap, and an interior cell phone pocket too. Our Eco Totes from Blue Q are made from 95% recycled material that is tough and ready to handle your technology!

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Just Married with Extra Aluminum Cans Behind the Car!

June is the beginning of the big wedding season! Pete and Andrea in Spokane, Washington, know the value of aluminum recycling. It’s not just about being green. It’s about making your dreams come true in a very green way…

To pay for their wedding they needed to recycle 400,000 aluminum cans. It’s not a big fancy wedding. It’s a celebration of family, friends, home-brewed beer and cake. They started on December 7th, 2009 and are getting married on July 31st this year. (Check out their web site at www.weddingcans.com) If you wanted to donate your cans and you lived in the Spokane area, they would even come pick them up for you. Others who wanted to give to their cause and lived farther away were encouraged to bring cans to a local recycling center and send the cash, or donate via the pay pal link on their website.

Being environmentally responsible is a big part of Pete and Andrea’s lives. They planned this crazy scheme to make their dream wedding come true and educate people about aluminum recycling. And boy did they do that! Aluminum recycling is one of the most sustainable and useful forms of recycling.

So, with their cash donations and donated cans, they've met their goals and are getting married! To date, they've collected 280,806 cans, with cash donations equivalent to 119,194 cans...and they are still getting donations.

Congrats and best wishes to you both!

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Bake It Forward with Fair Trade Chocolate!

I’m sure many of you have heard about the child slave labor at the cocoa farms in West Africa. The corporate chocolate giants are not doing much about it as they continue to fill our insatiable need for chocolate and make billions of dollars doing it. I won’t give up chocolate, but I can start buying fair trade and ethical chocolate. What else can you do about it? Emily at Bake it Forward has a yummy educational idea that I am going to try tonight.

How to Bake it Forward

1. Buy some fair trade chocolate in a store near you, or purchase it directly from a company online. If you’re not sure where to shop, check out the links to the left.
2. Bake something to share with 5-10 friends, family, and co-workers. Click here for recipe ideas.
3. Download the 8-per-sheet bake it forward tags or the 4×6 photo-sized postcards to print out and attach to your baked goods.
4. Give them away!

Share the story of slave labor and BUY fair trade chocolate. Divine Chocolate is not only fair trade, the West African farmers own 45% of the business! In addition, Endangered Species Chocolate (left), a local Indianapolis chocolate company, makes ethical chocolate that is non-GMO verified. Plus, 10% of their proceeds go to save endangered species! Endangered Species Chocolate partners with the Rainforest Alliance, the African Wildlife Foundation, and the Ocean Conservancy, to name a few.

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A Nostalgic Earth Day!

Earth Day Indiana presented itself as a cloudy, rainy day and we came prepared with our eco friendly umbrellas to help keep our green friends covered, but the rain held off and we saw a different trend. Nostalgia!

The big hits for the day were our Dick and Jane drinking water bottles from Blue Q and our Dick and Jane recycled plastic zipper pouches. Not everyone knows who Dick and Jane are anymore…it shows our age!

The other adorable blast from the past were our Fun Eco Diaper Bags with pastel Winnie the Pooh made from actual recycled old Winnie the Pooh books. I still like the softer side of Winnie, with the original sketches mixed with watercolor. Somehow those drawings fit the quirky characters that live in the 100-acre woods.

All three of these vintage gifts would make perfect gifts for your eco mom, grandma or even great-grandma. The stories they can tell! You could always slip a gift certificate for a spa treatment inside the Dick and Jane Zippered Pouch to let mom know you understand her modern needs!

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Fox 59 Morning Green...

Last week it was WTHR Channel 13 with Tim "Tree Boy" Bush and then this morning JD was checking out our new eco friendly products with Ray Cortopassi on Fox Morning News (video below). Celery Street eco friendly finds are popular these days! Ray really liked our men’s super thin wallet made of vintage ties. Did you see our new fashionable lunch bags for adults? And of course, our Maggie Bag Seatbelt purses are always a hit.

Of course these days everything leads into the many wonderful Earth Day activities around the country. Don’t forget to visit us at Earth Day Indiana at the White River State Park on Saturday the 24th from 11:00am to 4:00pm AND 5% of sales go to the Jane Goodall Institute. Our booth will be under a tent in case it rains and we sell those classic eco friendly umbrellas to keep you dry all day!

If you can’t make it out to Earth Day, you can order on line to give Jane Goodall her 5%, plus you can use the code EARTH15 at check out in the promotion code field and get your 15% off your order (valid until April 25th)!

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A GREEN Musical Cincy Day!

We had great weather and a wonderful crowd at the Cincinnati Earth Day celebration on Saturday. Celery Street had a booth filled with a lot of our regular products and some of our great new finds.

We also loved the live music! Who was that singing group? Wild Carrot? We have just become fans! This is not just a “local” band. Kentucky Music Weekend says it's "one of the top folk groups around today."

We also enjoyed the young composers who wrote and performed their music about Mother Earth. It’s nice to know the next generations are concerned about taking good care of the Earth.

The Cincinnati crowd really liked our women’s purses….and we have lots of new ones to choose from! They also snapped up our zippered coin purse selection made of eco friendly materials. The kids gravitated toward our Shaineswear, eco friendly kids wristbands. People like to make a statement and wear it!

Cincinnati hosted a great event and we thank you!

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Spring/Summer Eco Purses & Totes: Celery Street on WTHR!

When the Lights Go Out Everything Will Be Green!

Earth Hour is March 27th, 2010 from 8:30 to 9:30 pm. This internationally observed event aims to reduce energy consumption (CO2 emissions) simply by switching off lights for ONE hour. Sounds very basic and effortless…but it’s very powerful!

Last year one billion people turned off their lights for one hour. City governments, the Empire State Building, Golden Gate Bridge, Las Vegas Strip, and Eiffel Tower all went dark.

Watch the video and see everything go dark! Sign up and make your pledge on the official Earth Hour web site.

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Dresses That Transform People and Fashion

This eco friendly world I am part of never ceases to amaze me! In searching for the perfect dress for the Indiana Green Business Awards dinner, I checked out my favorite haunt, Leslie Jane’s, and found not only the perfect dress but discovered another green spirited designer with so much talent.

Liz Alig creates fashion forward dresses that are eco-friendly and give back to the community…in the case of Liz, a much larger community.

She studied clothing and textiles at Lipscomb University in Nashville Tennessee, but her wandering nature brought her to thrift stores, Africa, Asia and Honduras. This combination of travels and Liz’s need to give back has inspired her 2010 Spring Vintage Collection. For this collection she partnered with Mi Esperanza, a nonprofit who provide skills training and assistance to the women of Honduras. The Village Collection was sewn by women who have graduated from this program and 10% of the sales from my dress will go back to Mi Esperanza which furthers opportunities for these women.

The dress I purchased is one-of-a-kind made from thrift store dresses repurposed by women in Honduras. I love my dress for more reasons than it just looks good….it does good.

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Receiving a Green Trophy in March?

It looks like Celerystreet.com is getting noticed again…or at least half of the founders have been noticed. That would be me, “e”.

I am a finalist in the Indiana Green Business Awards in the category of “Enterprising Woman of the Year”. This would be someone who juggles a home, family, community involvement, and has started a successful green, sustainable, and eco-friendly business.

I get to meet Sara Snow, the author and TV host of Discovery Network’s "Get Fresh with Sara Snow”! And if I win or am the runner-up, will I get a recycled trophy? Picture a previously championed baseball league trophy with someone else’s name on it…like Jimmy Jones, 1985 Centerfield Regional Championship. That trophy will have a beautiful sash of recycled fabric that says "IGBA, Enterprising Woman of the Year, 2010." I think that would be pretty green and comical too! Actually, I have no idea what the winner receives - the title alone is plenty and I just know it is going to be a great evening.

I am really looking forward to meeting all these amazing finalists and hearing about their “green projects” in categories like sustainable transport, natural habitats and wildlife, sustainable water…14 all together. It will be a very enlightening awards ceremony gala dinner on March 24th.

Oh, and if you haven’t noticed we have been featured on quite a few blogs lately. I discovered a new website/blog, http://www.alternativeconsumer.com/2010/02/27/eco-deal-of-the-day-celery-street/, that has loads of green info...I really like all the green fashion videos! Visit the site and read the Celery Street review they featured some of our great eco friendly products.

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The Green Police!

Super Bowl Commercials this year were inspired, funny, and some a little annoying but my favorite of all were those Green Police! Audi A3 TDI Clean diesel with the help of Cheap Trick did a hilarious job of reminding us that it is all about eco choices and lending a hand to Mother Nature. And buying an Audi A3 TDI clean diesel. Betty White with a Snickers bar in hand, driving off in an Audi A3 TDI after her football with the boys would have been really inspired. She washes off the Snickers wrapper and puts it into the recycle bin. Is that even possible??

Cheap Trick actually went back to the studio to rescore the famous “Dream Police” song.



Another Green Police PSA came out, thanks to this Green Police song by Cheap Trick. These Green Police are about protecting and conserving the earth, one napkin at a time. More than one billion pounds of napkins could be kept out of our landfills if we use the correct amount of napkins for our food. Follow this simple formula. 1 = 1. 1 piece of pizza = 1 napkin. 1 hamburger = 1 napkin. See for yourself!



You heard him. These Green Police will be hitting the streets after February 7th. They are out there…Napkin Abuse. It’s no Joke.

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As Lovely as a Tree!

Have you ever thought about how a tree must feel knowing that in our culture a “tree hugger” is a joke, a negative connotation, or a non conformist in society? Don’t dare hug a tree…you could get cooties! Or you might get that liberal disease. So, let me ask....what did trees ever do to you? Trees have no political agenda. Trees provide us air to breath, shade to rest, shelter and homes for animals, beauty to this earth…I’m not a big science fiction or fantasy fan but the scene in Lord of the Rings where those giant old trees (below) rise up from their roots to save and revenge their own - gives me goose bumps. Okay, enough about trees today. But, think about it. Go hug a tree today…for real. And tell that tree how important he (or she!) is to your world.

Make some tree friends….

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