I’ve been invited to spend Thanksgiving with my boyfriend’s family and I want to make a good impression. I’m pretty proud of my apple pie recipe, which I’ve adapted from various cookbooks and I now make using organic flour, butter and sugar. Last year, one of the vendors at the farmers’ market recommended I use a blend of apples I hadn’t tried before and the results were great. So, I’ll make a pie.

But I also want to bring a hostess gift and have decided on a bag full of foodie treats. I’m going to fill a canvas market bag with ingredients from local vendors. For the bag, I like the organic cotton totes from Dogeared, printed with cheeky messages like “Your plastic bag can kiss my canvas,” “Karma, What goes around comes around” and “WWAGD (What Would Al Gore Do?).”


courtesy of junetaylorjams.com and Clarkson Potter

Good ideas for filling the bag: figs and nuts from the farmers’ market, marmalade from Berkeley’s June Taylor (find it at the Ferry Plaza Farmers’ Market or on June’s website), coffee from Blue Bottle Coffee Co. (315 Linden St.), sweet treats from Petite Patisserie (1415 18th St.) and The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution, the new cookbook from Alice Waters of Chez Panisse.

For more on greening your life, go to Greenopia.