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Today is Earth Day and there are many ways to help the Earth with simple acts, some of which will get you free coffee and trees:
1) CREEDO is planting a tree in your honor if you simply click that you like them on your Facebook page by April 30, the more people click, the more trees get planted, so pass on the information and post it on your wall.
2) M Cafe is offering $1.00 off to all take out customers who bring in their own bag to take home their food, and if you bring in your own reusable mug they will give you a free coffee as well.
3) Lowe’s is giving away one million trees today, stop by a store and pick one up.
4) Starbucks is giving away free coffee today when you bring in your own reusable mug.
5) Do what you can everyday to Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle 
Peace Day is being celebrated worldwide September 21 here in Los Angeles at the Santa Monica Pier. Please go and enjoy the events for adults and kids being organized by my good friends to help our planet live and thrive.
Happy Earth Day!
Oceanhouse Media has a novel way to celebrate if you have an iPhone (it’s also iPad compatible), just download the app Lorax Garden for $2.99 and you can plant (and design) you own plants and trees in a virtual world which you can then send as postcards, keeping it green from inception to reception. You can also download the book for $3.99 and use it either as a reading and teaching tool.
If you prefer your greenery to be actual rather than virtual, the first Zipline in Los Angeles or Orange County is now open on Catalina Island. You will be traveling at speeds of up to 45 miles an hour about 300 feet up in the air over nearly .75 of a mile through five connected platform stations that hover over various areas of Catalina. Each station will teach you something about the areas you are zipping through, so this is not only an exhilarating ride, it will be educational also. It takes about 2 hours and costs $92.50, but the experience will be priceless.
Social Vibe helps feed people, fight cancer, preserve wildlife, educate, and provide clean drinking water, all you need to do is answer some questions that take about 5 minutes of your time for the cause of your choice.
The Extraordinairies allows you to “micro volunteer” to help change the world for the better, whether it is helping log photos from Haiti so people can locate lost loved ones, catalog animal abuse photos for an archive, or inspire children with a message of encouragement. All that is required to be extraordinary is your time.
Free Rice is a game that you play and when you answer correctly, the game sponsors donate rice to feed people, one right answer provides 10 free grains, five right answers is 50 grains. This is one game that you can play to win obsessively that will result in something good for everyone.
It’s not often that you can go to a screening of an Oscar winning film for free, unless of course you are a member of the Academy and get free passes to all nominated films. Today is one of those rare days when the general public gets the privilege of being treated like an Academy member; fitting day for it since getting something free on a day when taxes are due is a nice perk.
Head over to the Custom Hotel‘s Hopscotch Pool Bar & Grill before 7pm to grab some free popcorn, order a drink (cash bar), and grab a seat for “The Cove“, a film about how we humans are affecting the planet with our actions around the globe. After the film there will be a Q&A with a member of the Oceanic Preservation Society, so this promises to be an entertaining and educational evening under the stars.
Don’t forget to file your taxes before you go because Uncle Sam will not take “I was busy watching a great film and I forgot” as a reason for tax return tardiness.
April 22 is Earth Day and if you live in Los Angeles, you can enjoy it at the Wilshire Center located at 3700 Wilshire (at Oxford). Everyone is encourage to ride their bicycles to the event, they even have a bike valet for cyclists. If you don’t have a bike or it’s too far to ride, then please take public transportation, or at the very least car pool and lessen your carbon footprint.
Bring your old electronics to recycle, like old TVs, computer monitors, and small electronics. There will be live music, dancers performing traditional dances of Korea, El Salvador, and Bangladesh, food from the local farmer’s market, gardening demonstrations, drumming lessons for kids, and you can adopt a tree (or two or three). All this will start at 11am and go until 3pm, so plan a play date while doing something good for the earth.
Everyday is a good day to recycle, but if you are in Pacific Palisades today head over to Pacific Palisades Presbyterian Church between 10-2pm and drop off any unwanted electronics FREE. The program is sponsored by California Recycles and Pacific Cares, who have a regular drop off station Monday through Friday in West Los Angeles, but some items require a disposal fee, so take advantage of this opportunity to do some Spring cleaning and start your Saturday off doing something good for the environment.
A better way to buy lipsticks, gloss and nail polish is to shop for them at Peacekeeper, which combines great products with great causes to create the perfect win-win for everyone.This is a company which donates ALL of their after tax distributable profits to women’s health and human rights advocacy groups. Peacekeeper is to “cause-metics” what Newman’s Own is to food; a way to literally put your money where your mouth is (or in Peacekeeper’s case, on your lips). Prices are all under $15 (except for kits/gift packages) and they are all available in a rainbow of shades for every skin type.
Not only are the products pretty, but they are also clean, and they explain the ingredients used as well as the toxicity of each product line (including the usually very toxic nail polish remover) here. With so many harmful chemicals used in cosmetics, it is refreshing to know that efforts have been made to use “no nasty” ingredients in all of their products.
The causes range from providing micro loans to women, to helping stop domestic violence and genital mutilation. Knowing that the products you buy all contribute to a solution may lead you to donating more directly to these great causes, so become a Peacekeeper partner in the quest for a cleaner, safer, more peaceful world.
Peacekeeper gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “a beautiful world”.
Dine LA week has me venturing out further than usual in my hunt for great places to eat and when I saw the menu at Tiara, I had to add it to my eating itinerary. The only downside was its’ location downtown, so I made a 1:30 pm reservation figuring that was late enough to avoid the 12-1 pm downtown lunchtime crowd. Parking in the area wasn’t difficult, especially now that the meters have been replaced by pay machines that accept credit cards and change. To use the parking machine, you punch in your space number from the sidewalk and pay, but there are drawbacks; the machines do not like Amex business credit cards and ate some of my change without applying it to my time. You can pay a garage if all this seems too daunting, but it’s hard to beat $3 an hour street parking in that area.
Finding the entrance to Tiara was a bit of a challenge since the front door of the cafe is actually also the door to their market, but it is evident once you walk in the door that this is a fashionable, eclectic place buzzing with energy and fun. The hostess was the only negative part of my dining experience; she seemed annoyed that I had made a reservation, seated me facing a huge column (I switched my seat so my back was to the column), and “forgot” to give me the Dine LA $16 menu until I asked for it (she was also annoyed to find one to give to me). The restaurant was full so it took a good 10 minutes before anyone came by my table, but once my waiter Arturo arrived, everything took a wonderful turn for the better. He was obviously happy to be there, to talk to customers, and he was thoughtful beyond belief (I will explain later).
For my appetizer I chose the Thai Cobb Salette, made with grilled spice marinated chicken (which can be replaced by seitan for the vegetarians), spinach, spicy mixed greens, green papaya, eggs, Nuskes apple smoked bacon served with a spicy Thai dressing. It was as delicious as it looks. Other choices were the house smoked spicy salmon fresh’wich, made with the house smoked & grilled salmon (seitan can be substituted), Persian cucumbers, chiffonade of lettuce, avocado, all wrapped in a thin rice paper and served with an avocado dipping sauce, or for beef eaters, the smoked brisket chili, made with 3 different organic locally grown roasted chillies, all cooked with organic heirloom tomatoes, spices, and served with corn bread muffins.
For my main course I choose the Burrata pizzette because I wanted to taste the dough that they allow to rise for 24 hours. The menu said the pizzette is made with heirloom tomato confit, locally made fresh burrata cheese, greens, and caramelized onions, but mine had mushrooms instead of greens and peppers instead of onions. Other entree options were the grilled chicken and tamale, made with achiote marinated chicken breast grilled, a fresh corn tamale with roasted poblano chilies, grilled zucchini, red beans & dirty rice served with a yellow tomato habanero sauce (they will replace the chicken with grilled vegetables and make it perfect for vegetarians & vegans), or a grilled ahi tuna, made with Japanese togarashi spice marinated sushi grade tuna, scarlet quinoa, grilled fall farmer’s market vegetables with a light curry sauce (they can use seitan to replace the tuna or change the tuna for curry grilled shrimp).
Details aside it was delicious and the dough was fantastic. I could only eat two of the six slices after polishing off the entire salette, so my wonderful waiter Arturo suggested I take my desert home along with my uneaten pizzette slices. I chose the Key Lime with vanilla bean meringue and caramel sea salt ice cream. Other choices were peach cobbler , with a brown butter custard bottom, last of the season fresh peaches, topped with a crumbly cobbler crust & served with a 50/50 peach sorbet & vanilla ice cream, or a chocolate molten cake, a warm chocolate cake filled with an oozing ganache, served with a 50/50 chocolate & vanilla ice cream. Arturo even packed the key lime dessert container saying that it would have ruined it if he had tried to take it out, and sorry no baked vanilla bean meringue & caramel sea salt ice cream, becasue it would melt to a mess as I was taking it to go.
It’s wonderful to find a place that uses organic and local ingredients, offers vegan substitutions, and thoughtful service, even if it is downtown.
My friends Darlene & John Zavalney have been working on Roots and Shoots Day of Peace since its’ inception 7 years ago and this year they are bringing it to the Santa Monica Pier Sunday September 20th from 11am-4pm. This is one way we can all do something if we would like World Peace to be more than a perfunctory answer to a beauty pageant query about our wishes for the future.
Kids and pets are welcome at this free event; everyone is invited to enjoy the entertainment and the education on how to make this a better world both in sustainability and in coexistence between people, plants, and animals on this planet. Bring along non-perishable food for humans or pets, and you will be entered into a raffle to win a cruiser (the type of bike, not car). I also highly recommend bringing along a camera for the 75 Peace Dove parade (like the one pictured above being held up by Jane Goodall and John Zavalney).
With all the energy we spend on defense, why not spend some on peace?
