I saw this little story on the Today Show Tuesday and thought it was worth finding and highlighting here. Annie Bell Muzaurieta of The Daily Green shared five super-easy ways to "green" your diet -- and they're all beautifully simple:

1. Buy organic as much as you can. For most intelligent cooks - and eaters - these days that's pretty much a given. Or at least I hope it is. After all, it's one of the most responsible things you can do for our food supply, our health and our planet...If the wallet doesn't stretch to all organic, however, Muzaurieta provides some guidelines to help make the right choices.

2. Eat local. As Muzaurieta reminds us, the average food travels 1,500 miles (yes, one thousand five hundred) just to get to your kitchen...and to your plate...put it in those terms (and then think about the price of gas today...almost $4 a gallon around here) and two things become immediately clear - one, the sheer waste of energy that comes with buying an apple produced on the other side of the country (or world) versus buying one grown a few miles from your own doorstep and b) the reason food prices are steadily increasing along with gas prices...

3. Go Brown. Add in whole grains like brown rice (see last week's brown rice salad frenzy!), wheat, barley...check out my new fave cookbook, Super Natural Cooking for a few great ideas to get started.

 4. Opt for an organic wine. This is a fast-growing area of green food - and Muzaurieta does a nice job of explaining that  organic wine is produced from grapes grown without synthetic pesticides (and that some wines can't be labeled organic even though they're produced with organic grapes because the producer adds sulfites to it).

5. BYOB - that's bring your own bag. I've got a nice - and growing - collection of great shopping totes, but still, who knew paper could be just as negative as plastic? 

I was pretty excited to see Rick Bayless as the guest judge on Top Chef last week for the Block Party episode, first because I'm a big fan and secondly because I actually have the good fortune of working with him from time to time. Not only does Rick have a stellar resume...2007 James Beard award-winner (the Oscars of food!), chef and owner of Chicago restaurants Topolobampo and Frontera Grill, author of six cookbooks, host of the hit PBS series Mexico: One Plate at a Time...he's also the celebrity chef and spokesperson for my client, FiveStar Ranges (I do public relations for FiveStar as well as copywriting through the advertising/PR agency I work for - check out the demos we shot in Rick's home kitchen here).

Anyway, as you can imagine I was pretty excited to tune into last week's episode to find Rick front and center judging the quick fire and the Chicago block party. And for once I was pleasantly surprised (and relieved) to find the episode relatively free - for a change - of the usual smug, often self-congratulatory, esotericism (it could be argued the show is definitely in danger of becoming the food-tv equivalent of the Design Within Reach catalogue), especially during the actual challenge.

In fact, part of me thinks it might be hilarious to stage a block party where everyone simply dips into their kitchens and concocts something from "whatever's in the fridge"...

Anyway, Rick's own comment on his Top Chef experience! is pretty interesting - and his comments on what it takes to be a chef - and on the task of judging talent under various kitchen conditions - shed new light and perspective on the show.

Once you've checked that out and you're as big a fan of Rick as I am, check out this taste of the all-new season of One Plate at a Time - it's definitely in keeping with the Block Party theme!