• March 28^th 8p.m. 7 p.m. Beekeeping workshop. Partnering with Anne Marie Fauvel from GVSU to talk on the topic of urban beekeeping. Participants can learn how to start and maintain an urban hive and also why urban beekeeping is so important to our community. A fun filled fascinating workshop. Cost is $5.00
• April 6^th 3-5p.m. Treehuggers is hosting a Seed Sharing event. We have invited local farmers to come with heirloom and organic seeds they are planting this season to share with the community. Participants can get donated seeds as well as purchase seeds directly from local farmers. This is an important event to get heirloom and organic seeds into the hands of the community. This event is free to attend. Baxter Community center will also be present talking about their seed library.
• April 25^th 7p.m. Luke Malski from Reformation Growers will be at treehuggers talking about urban gardening. He will cover how to start seeds, plant and maintain urban organic gardens. The class will also cover topics ranging from composting to plant rotation. Very hands on and informative. Cost $5.00

So I have never made a cashew cheese or cream sauce. I love adding cashews to smoothies to make them creamier but always thought a cashew sauce would take a long time… Boy was I wrong. This meal took just along as it takes to bowl the pasta and is so creamy and delicious. I added broccoli and kale with whole wheat spaghetti but the possibilities are endless with this sauce.

1/2 cup raw cashews
1 1/2 cups boiling water (best to use starchy pasta-cooking water)
1.5tsp garlic powder or 3 cloves of garlic
1.5 tsp onion powder
1 tablespoon zoye oil
2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
salt and pepper, to taste
sprinkle daiya cheese

What you do:
1. Place raw cashews (not roasted!) in a food processor and pulse until nuts are very fine. Carefully add in the boiling water; process until smooth.
2. Add in other items with the exception of the daiya ; process again until smooth.
3. Adjust seasonings with salt and pepper.
It’s in the blending process that the sauce thickens, which is why using starchy water is your best bet, so it takes a while. If it isn’t thickening enough for you, heat it in a saucepan over a low temperature for a few minutes, and that should do the trick.
Serve over cooked pasta. I like some steamed broccoli and red bell peppers added to mine.’

Monthly Demo Recipes

We have finally typed up all of the recipes from our Bartertown demos with Matthew. Please remember we do these every monday night at 6 and we have free samples for everyone to try. All of these recipes can be easily substituted for other produce or items as many of them were whipped up with ingredients we had in the store on that day.

Chickpizzle Mizzelt

3oz oat flour

Smoothies!

We know shopping at our grocery store is hard at first.

The idea of a package free grocery store is a new one for many… us included. We know it is a pain to come in and not have a container and want some delicious granola or that very reasonably priced organic tofu. The first time is always no fun which is why we have mason jars for sale or encourage you to come back with your own reusable containers. We dislike the idea of selling you a mason jar when so many are recycled everyday but we realize it is a learning process and sometimes you just need one more item than jars you brought. We need to address a growing problem however and that problem is our dislike for plastic ziplock bags or really any plastic bag altogether. We created the store with the idea that a ban on plastic bags would be a no brainer but weekly we find ourselves having to politely tell people ziplock bags have no place in our grocery store… so we thought we would explain why we have banned them from being used in our bulk grocery. We hope you understand and can work with us to cut this wasteful packaging from your life.

Think about the last time you went shopping at a grocery store and now think about what you purchased and how it was packaged. It is safe to say the 80-90% of your purchases had some type of plastic on it and most of the plastic is very very hard to recycle. The sole reason for creating this store is to try to eliminate this plastic from entering your food purchases as much as possible.

We get 20 – 30 55 gallon bags of soft plastic each week which is a blip on the radar when you think of how much soft plastic is thrown away each day. Ziplock bags and most soft plastic are not numbered and because they do not have a number, many recycling companies including our city recycling do not and cannot recycle them. No matter how many times you reuse them at some point you have to throw them away or recycle them with us. For those of you that love them, please stop loving them… we politely beg you to break up with your plastic ziplock bags.

The sad news is that even recycling them with us is not great. this plastic is not high in demand and many times the recycling company we work with says the only thing that can be done with it is to bale (condense in large blocks) and ship it to the highest bidder. Most often however, the highest bidder is China. So now we have this plastic that was used for maybe 10 minutes or was used to seal an already sealed package shipped overseas to either be remade into plastic bags or burned for energy. It is such a waste of oil, resources and energy.

So knowing all of this, we created a store where you as a consumer could opt out of this process all together. So we never thought we would see so many ziplock bags walk through our doors. Some customers have even brought in boxes of ziplock bags. I do not mean to be condescending when I say this but don’t you think that if we wanted you to use plastic bags, we would provide them for you? We hope this post will help explain why we take the ban on plastic bags so seriously. plastic bags are terrible terrible inventions and while we may not be able to ban them entirely, we can certainly try the hardest we can to prevent them from entering our waste or recycling stream.

Please help us fight the good fight by bringing in reusable containers. Here are a list of items we would love to fill

* mason Jars
* Tupperware
* old plastic tubs with lids
* Cloth sacks
*clearly reused unavoidable plastic bags… ie bread bags or the like.

We look forward to continuing our movement to fight wasteful packaging and provide you with wholesome food at affordable prices. We are so thankful for your support.

Our smoothie station is now open. While we cannot blend them for you, the store vitamix is on hand for you to use to create a green smoothie all your own. We have two smoothie recipes that will change as our produce changes or feel free to make your own by weighing out your items and blending till your heart is happy.

One of our current smoothies is my meal of the day. I think it is the best one I have ever made and I hope you will come in and make it for yourself sometime… yum

The Treehugger Smoothie

2 leaves Kale
Spinach
Salad mix
1/3 cup cup cashews
small Mollies delicious apple
small Pear
1/2 red cup flaxseed
1/2 red cup sunflower  seeds

add ingredients into vitamix.
fill loosely with greens
blend to puree
add ice and blend again

4.99 for a pint size smoothie we will help you with portioning and such

So thankfully, I was never a bacon eater. I have heard that of all the slip ups a vegan or vegetarian can make, bacon cravings are the most common. Maybe it is the fat or the smokey crispiness but it has defeated even the most devote vegans. Luckily bacon does nothing for me and I have never been one to crave any form of pork products which makes me very happy. Ice cream on the other hand is a completely different Story. I have yet to make a vegan turtle sundae that even kind of compares to the real thing… But maybe someday.

I also have never been a huge fan of fake meat products. It was not until recently that I started eating tofu without a scowled look on my face. I had my first tempeh bacon sandwich however at a vegan potluck a couple on months back and have been hooked ever since.

Maple Garlic TBLT

4 strips of tempeh bacon. I cut my tempeh down the middle to make it thinner and then into bacon sized strips.
Sauce – 1 oz maple syrup, .5 oz braggs, .5 oz zoye oil
Pinch of garlic powder, nutritional yeast, onion powder, salt and pepper, paprika
Spring mix
heirloom tomato
Multi grain little rooster bread
Maple garlic aioli

So the math on this on is a bit tricky because we have to buy a whole loaf of bread and a whole block of tempeh. The recipe above is for one sandwich bu I am going to calculate it for 6 sandwiches which will have us with some leftover bread but gets us close on everything else.

So each sandwich costs roughly around 3.20… Not to bad and very tasty.

So I never would have thought that owning a grocery store would mean so much food would be given to me on a regular basis. Farmers are some of the nicest people you will ever meet and so are cooks and bakers in general. Part of the reason I have been delayed with posting is because of the amount of food that simply shows up. Also I have been sooo busy that on the days no food is brought my way, I may have only been eating little rooster buns dipped in almond butter and earth balance ( don’t judge! )

Today however I have been fighting this cold that everyone seems to be struggling with and took some extra time to make some steel cut oats. When it comes to oatmeal, there are so many options available to you and this one is my favorite.

TreeHugger’s Michigan Steel Cut Oatmeal 

2 oz steel cut oatmeal
.5 ounce koeze peanut butter
.5 ounce michigan dried cherries
.5 ounce michigan maple syrup
dash of cinnamon

So our blog Sunday night had over 300 people look at it in just a couple of hours so I guess it is safe to say you would like to see more. Monday night we had a cooking demo (we do them every Monday at 6). The cooking demos are always free and include samples of whatever we are making. This Monday, we talked about cooking beans and grains with a pressure cookers. I purchased my pressure cooker a few months ago and have only used it once, so I was looking forward to this class. Pressure cooking is not necessary but it can speed up the time of cooking these items and it also can help preserve them similarly to canning. Mathew from Bartertown does a great job with these classes and knows sooo much about food! We love having him on our team. You can see the video of the class here

I wanted to share this recipe with you because it was soo good and it made a ton of food and cost less then $6 to make. I ate this twice on Monday. It was a great after yoga class meal.

 Instructions to make the meal on included

on our vimeo channel https://vimeo.com/treehuggers/channels.

If you do not have a pressure cooker. you can      cook the barley in a crock pot or by boiling it. you can also substitute the barley for really any other grain or rice and even combine different grains.

What made this meal for me was the sauce he whipped up. it was sweet but savory and I would never of thought to combine the ingredients he did.

Last but not least is the cost breakdown. Everyone  in the class was surprised on just how in expensive this meal was to make. It easily could have served 4 people maybe with the addition of tofu or tempeh but really was enough just on its own.

So I am no chef. Hell I am not even a cook or a blogger for the record. I am a chubby vegan girl working in a store 90 hours a week and I have a little secret for you. That little secret is that I often go out to eat… sad but true. Many of you have run into me at Bartertown, Erb Thai, Brickroad, Stellas and while they are all great in their own way, I should not eat out this much when I own the most amazing grocery store in the WORLD. Frankly after feeding all of you and working the long hours, I have little energy to cook when I get home at 10p.m. at night…

So here is what I did. I went to Meijer and bought an electric burner with the intent of cooking in the store for myself once everyday. I have plenty of time between customers to cook myself a simple meal and as you all know, I am surrounded by the most amazing produce, grains, nuts and seasonings any chef would kill for. I literally can steal an ounce of this and a teaspoon of that…right from the bulk bins and create some pretty amazing food. So that is what I am going to do… everyday! I will look at what is in the store and cook for myself and maybe not everyday (unless you dig it) I will share my meal with you and how much it would cost you if you were to make it yourself.
Sounds pretty cool I think. So here is day one.

This is actually a meal I do make at home quite often because it can be ready in 10 minutes and I can eat it late at night and not feel guilty or overly full in the morning. What  I love about it is that you can

a.) substitute any greens or nuts and really any pasta

b.)add any other veggies you want

c.) Add a sauce or tofu/tempeh to make it super tasty

d.) it looks like you would pay 18.00 for it at any fancy restaurant… but here is the real reason

e.) it only costs 2.01 to make… maybe a couple of pennys more for the spices. And I have proof

Orzo & Greens

2 oz. (1/3 cup) of orzo will turn into approximetly twice the amount.

1 oz of any green. Feel free to do 2 but that is alot of greens. Today I did rainbow Chard given to me by Earthkeeper Farm.

1 oz of any raw nut. today I did pecans but walnuts would be amazing too

1 oz of zoye oil. I did not use one whole ounce but want to encourage you to buy in whole ounces

Seasoning – I seasoned with a blend of onion powder, nutritional yeast, chili powder and salt. We have a jar premade we used from last months kickstarter meal. super tasty in stir frys and just about anything.

And that is it. Cook orzo in a pan for about 10 minutes. drain water and add in everything else until greens are wilted. Day 1.. check!

Dear Holland Friends,

Now that the dust has settled and the reality of our closing has sank in. I wanted to send a message to explain why we made the decision we made and more importantly, why we made it so quickly.

But first, I want to tell you just how excited I was at the chance to move the business to 8th street. It was my goal from the very beginning. Even though our time on 8th street was brief it is proof that if you set your mind to something, you can accomplish anything and the fact we tried, is something I will always be proud of.

As many of you know. Treehuggers was formed by just Dan and I two years back. No financial backers, just the money we saved when we refinanced our house. In the two years we have been in business, we have turned it into something I think is truly special. 

Unfortunately,the high costs of being downtown and the high expense of labor (because I cannot be two places at once) kept digging the store further and further into debt and while we thought things would turn around, more and more money from the Grand Rapids store had to pay for Holland just to keep it open. After we looked at the summer sales, we realized things were just not how we hoped. 

 We met with a consultant last Thursday and he shook me into the reality I did not want to face. He said “Either shut down the Holland store or risk losing them both…. and shut it down this weekend.” At first it sounded crazy and harsh but the more we started to think about it, the more I felt he was right and the more relieved I felt. The crazy thing is that everything lined up to help us close it down. My only employee I was worried about got another job, my schedule was cleared for five days in Holland and Dan was given the opportunity to have the week off of work. It seemed it was sadly meant to happen. 

I hate that it comes down to money because I never wanted to make money at this. I do not dream of owning a yacht or having a huge house. Quite the opposite! I simply wanted to help people go green but the sad reality is that sales were not meeting expenses and I much as I wanted to continue, it was not possible. 

Maybe it was ahead of its time, maybe it was not the right fit for Holland… maybe both are true. While the recycling was popular, we do not profit off of that in any way, in fact it is another expense for us. Once I took my heart out of the mix, the choice was clear. 

We are trying to work on a solution for the recycling. The Holland Rescue mission located at the corner of river and 7th will take many of the same items we do, lowes will take the cfl lighbulbs, and office max will take your print cartridges. Soon chef container will be accepting all forms of styrofoam if they have not started already. So there are other options. We are also only a half hour drive here in GR, so stop on by and see us and check out the package free grocery. Who knows what the future holds and since I live in Holland I would love to have the opportunity again if it makes sense. 

Please do not give up on making the Earth a Better Place. This is not a roadblock, it is just a bit of a detour. I was thankful for the time we spent in Holland and hope we made a difference while we were there. We will continue to make a difference where we can. Get involved and keep challenging yourself to take it one step further. Thank you for giving us a chance. 

With Love,

Angela