By Barbara Kessler

Food, it’s the perfect, practical holiday gift — and you can support the causes you care about with a gift of food that’s either Fair Trade, organic or comes from a shop designed to help workers gain job experience.

Here are some of our picks for the season.

1 - Urban Raw Honey from Beeline

Beeline Honey

Made locally by Beeline, a social enterprise in Chicago’s North Lawndale neighborhood, this is nature’s nectar at its best. The project employs formerly incarcerated people, training them in beekeeping, marketing and other job placement skills. Our cities need bees and bee gardens to pollinate flowers and veggies. People can benefit from eating honey rather than refined sugar, and the workers learn a serious trade that is likely to help them toward higher employment. Looks like, win, win, win. Oh yeah, your gift recipient will surely find this a sweet treat. Beeline honey is sold at the Green Heart Shop in downtown Chicago or online.

2 — Women’s Bean Project Soup and Cookie Mixes

The Green Heart Shop again comes through with a socially responsible way to treat yourself or those on the holiday list. These soup and cookie mixes are made by the Women’s Bean Project in Denver, which is a non-profit organization that teaches job readiness and life skills by employing those in need in the gourmet food business. Program participants come from backgrounds of chronic unemployment and poverty, and the program helps them develop the work and interpersonal skills needed to function independently in the workplace and community.

We’ll vouch for the chocolate chip cookies, which are truly delectable, not just some Tollhouse knock off. Green Heart recommends the Snickerdoodles. Just mix with eggs and butter and bake.

3 – Robin’s Chocolate Sauce

Robin's Chocolate Sauce

High fructose corn syrup and other cheap preservatives have invaded many grocery store chocolate syrups. But this chocolate syrup from a small maker in New England comes with full organic and conservation-supporting credentials. Made by a small business in Fort Fairfield, Maine, Robin’s is hand crafted from cacao that’s been grown under the rainforest canopy, which provides a refuse for migratory birds. A portion of the proceeds support the National Wildlife Federation. That’s one argument in its favor. The other is, duh, it’s chocolate.

4 – Organic Fruit Baskets by the Manhattan Fruitier

Manhattan Fruitier's organic hamper

Have you noticed how this list is trending toward the old-fashioned stuff? Throw out the chemicals and what have you got: less-processed food with no added pesticides. The Manhattan Fruitier, designed to be a “pre-industrial style shop,” is all about the old ways. They deliver by hand, using bikes if you’re local in Manhattan, which you have to love if you worry about carbon emissions. And what they deliver is healthful and pretty. Order a #6 “hamper” of organic fruit with chocolates, dried apricots and glazed nuts for $65. There are other organic choices, all available online.

5 –Green Tea for Traveling Tea Drinkers

Artisan bag from Nepal filled with tea

Here’s a unique Fair Trade item from Uncommon Goods for the Common Good: a petite handmade bag made in Nepal and filled with organic ginger-flavored green tea.

The 7 x 6-inch bag has two zippered sections and comes with 50 tea bags. It sells for $10.99. A nice stocking stuffer for the tea lover, this gift helps support education and workers in Nepal.

6 — Organic Wine and Chocolates

So you’re not so interested in the “old ways”? Keep up with the latest wine trends, and even push the envelope with this wine and chocolate gift set. Both the California wines and the chocolate truffles are organic.

Organic wine and chocolate

Unfortunately, you can’t find this sort of thing at your local chain stores, so you’ll have to order it. You can choose your bottles, and red/white combinations from the selected Pinot Noir, Chardonnay or Petit Sirah wines. The set comes from Uncommon Goods for the Common Good. There are other wine and chocolate sets available, as well as microbrewed beer. (You must be 21 to order this.)

See us also on The Find shopping search engine, where you can search for these items online and also find them at your local stores.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Tags: eco-friendly gifts, Fair Trade, Gifts, organic

Monday, December 14th, 2009 | Products, Shop, Work & Play |