I'm Dreaming of a Green Christmas: Gifts, Decorations, and Recipes That Use Less and Mean More

by Ron Hamad, Zem Joaquin, Anna Getty

Book Overview

This holiday season, Anna Gettyenvironmental advocate, writer, television personality, chef, mother, and organic living experthelps families reduce their carbon footprint and save money without sacrificing style or tradition. Anna advises how to best choose a tree (real or fake?), mitigate the negative effects of necessary travel, recycle post-holiday, and more. She shares favorite holiday recipes for organic appetizers and homemade craft ideas such...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0811867676
• ISBN13: 9780811867672
• Release Date: September 2009
• Publisher: Chronicle Books
• Length: 180 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 8.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Even Christmas is Going Green...

I liked this book. I grew up in the country where simple and natural was considered pretty, opposed to glitz glamor and the caked-on make-up of the city life. I like a sparkle or two, but Christmas has become so vain and wasteful these days. I'm not an environmentalist in the sense that "green" things are in style, and therefore I have to be "green"; rather, I like the thought, time and effort that homemade gifts and decor communicate. When you cook for someone, make them a gift that is unique or decorate with natural beauty it is almost always a better gift. This book has great decor ideas, as well as recipes. Try it out! Anyone can buy tie for someone, but here are some great ideas for gifts and food! Truffled goat cheese mac and cheese! Yummo!

Crafty, Tasty Book

This is a good book for people interested in making environmentally friendly Christmas ornaments. One I particularly liked is the pine cone and nut wreath. To be honest I'm not a guy who really makes crafts and I appreciate the book's recipes more. I like her ideas and advise on helping to keep the planet clean. Suggesting readers stop buying plastic bottled beverages and chose aluminum or glass instead. He page on choosing the healthiest candles was also very interesting. The recipes are different and I'll enjoy trying them. This is a good book, more people need to get interested in the planet and I highly recommend it.

My Go-To Guide for the holidays!

This book is a very thorough guide to greening your holidays. From entertaining, decorations, recipes, and shopping choices, it delivers quite a packed punch of beautiful and sustainable information. My husband and I are both foodies and love to cook. We are very discriminating about recipes, and I can assure you that Anna's Sweet Potato Christmas Enchiladas are delicious and the Truffled Goat Macaroni and Cheese is now a regular staple in our weekly dinners. The apple, brie, and cranberry quesadillas are perfection as well as the pumpkin gnocchi. I made the salt-dough ornaments with my kids and it was gleefully nostalgic and is now a new tradition in our household. This book has re-birthed the handmade goodness that our culture has lost in all its plastic consumerism. My most favorite decor item I did this year was the Bell Jar Mini-Scenes. So cute and fun, and people rave about them when they come over. Such a simple, but unique idea that anyone can make. What I love most about the book is how stocked with information it is. There are so many great projects, ideas, tips, and recipes that I keep thumbing through for something new. A lot of entertaining books I own are very sparse in their content, but this book has an abundance. I'm giving one to all my girlfriends and my mom for Christmas and it will be a permanent fixture on my entertaining/cookbook/holiday guide bookshelf forevermore.

Good Ideas & Useful Information

Over the past few years I have taken steps to to make my home and life greener. I'm Dreaming of a Green Christmas contains useful information and some very good ideas on how to make your holiday's more enviromentally friendly using less resources. Some of the information is common sense and a few of the craft ideas can be found via online searches. The patterns are easy to follow and most of the supplies are things you already have or can locate easily at little cost. The most helpful part of the book is the list of resources and sites to help reduce waste, where to recycle the hard to recycle items although at least one of the links has changed since the book published but a quick online search located the new site easily. I didn't find the recipes to be appealing but everyone's tastes are different. I did enjoy the reminiscent accounts of the Authors childhood Christmas/holiday memories. Overall the book is informative and helpful and accomplishes the Authors goal of helping you use less and still have a meaningful Christmas with your family. I recommend to anyone who is trying to become more enviromentally friendly.

A Green Christmas

This is a beautiful, beautiful book. The photography are rich. The fonts are a pleasure to the eye. "Sumptuous" is not an exaggeration. How extraordinary, then, that this book is about inspiring people to simplify and green up their holidays! Some of my favorite ideas new to me contained in this book are: painting spent lightbulbs and using them as tree ornaments; making ornaments from salt dough; pillows made from recycled sweaters. Other ideas are already family traditions, such as making gift tags from Christmas cards from the year before, as well as keeping the thermostat set at a lower temperature. Although I am writing this review before having tried any of the recipes, they look and sound delicious. Sumptuous. Tops on my list to try (as soon as it gets cold enough outside to make it a real event) is the Chai Hot Cocoa with Whipped Cream, but I could imagine that whether you were to use just one recipe from the book or all of them, your Christmas or holiday feast would be enriched. Also included in the book are tips and stats and facts on the environment, living greener, and reducing, reusing, and recycling. There's a handy Table of Equivalents in the back, as well as a good index. The advice contained in the book is mostly inspirational, not preachy, and never once did I feel like I'm singlehandedly killing Mother Earth if I don't follow all the advice to the letter. I absolutely love the message of this book, that we should get back to the basics and focus on the traditions of the holiday seasons, and simplify. The holidays are too commercialized and the meaning is often lost. In this case, the simplification is packaged as "Green," and it may be just the thing a lot of us need to make the idea of simplifying the holidays (and doing our parts to preserve the planet) a reachable goal. I highly recommend this book, both as a springboard for ideas on how to make your holidays greener, more simple, more meaningful, and also as a gift for your friends and family, so they can do the same!