Starting today Earth’s General Store will be operating with our extended holiday hours:

On a global comparison our society uses a disproportionate amount of energy. Canadians are one of the largest per capita consumers of energy (heating, driving, electrical – and this does not include the second energy costs of our imported food and toys).

There are lots of ways that we can reduce our energy consumption:

As the year winds down we want to help our customers (and hopefully attract some new ones) deal with the stress and financial burden that this upcoming holiday season can impose on them by having a Thank You! and Welcome! (to new customers) sale.

We don’t do this very often and as you can appreciate a 15% store-wide discount is more than any other food store does. So if you are looking at saving even more than usual by buying at our store check out the sale on Tuesday, December 11th fro 10am to 7pm.

Please try and bring a friend that has not been to the store. Please consider letting your friends know about this sale through your social media contacts.

Much appreciated for EVEYTHING you all do for us.

Let the SAVINGS BEGIN!

PS - as a bonus we don't play Seasonal Music (Christmas music) in the store. I am sure everyone is getting enough of it elsewhere. 

- Posted December 7th, 2012

The other day I was contacted and informed that Linda Duncan had selected me to be a recipient of a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal. I was quite surprised to hear this while at the same time other feelings kind of flooded through me – ashamed, humbled, pleased, stunned. 

On Saturday, December 8th Linda Duncan will be presenting the 30 people she has selected to receive this award (each Member of Parliament is responsible for awarding 30 medals) at a hotel in Strathcona. I will be attending with my son and Earth's General Store's manager, Tammy Sluzar.

I am very grateful to Linda Duncan for this recognition of the work that the store does in our a community. The work we do can only be done through the support by the large community of people that support the store, those that share our passion of a just and saner world, and those that share their love with us.

Thank you everyone. You make all things possible. 

The other day the Edmonton Sun had an article about organic food where they had interviewed me several weeks ago. Of course I had done the interview in my usual open manner and when I started to read it I was okay with it until it started to deal with GMO.

The article was as if they had taken two stories and jammed the together. I just now had a chance to write a response to it but the site will no longer accept comments to the article so I am going to post my response below.

The Food Empowerment Project does research on ingredients and they asked Clif Bars (amongst many other companies) where they sourced their chocolate from and Clif Bars refused to tell them where they source their supply from. NGO don’t have much ‘power’ for compliance by large companies except in the public sphere – so they started a petition at the Care2 Petition site.

A lot of chocolate out there is produced with the labour of slaves. That is why Earth’s General Store mostly offers chocolate products that have been certified Fair Trade. I am not happy to find that this company may not be using ethically sourced chocolate ingredients in their products.

Earth’s General Store is pleased to announce that we have started to carry the Back to the Roots mushroom growing kits. With just a little bit of work on your behalf you can generate about 1 1/2 pounds (about 750 grams) of fresh oyster mushrooms right in your own home – pretty cool.

Earth’s General Store was the first store on the prairies to offer the excellent Field Roast products. Since then a couple of our regular suppliers have started to distribute Field Roast products like the sausages, Celebration Roasts and the Frankfurters.

BUT new for this holiday season is the reintroduction of one of their most popular products – the En Croute Roast. I am unsure if this is exactly the same roast that we used to offer from Field Roast (that one had figs in the stuffing) but I am sure that if this one is different it will be just as wonderful to enjoy as the one from a few years ago.

It really does make a wonderful centre piece for the holidays and I am sure that this is what we will have for our holiday meal.

In addition the will be lots of Tofurky Roasts and Feasts (Roast, Amy’s Chocolate Cake, Gravy and soy wish bone – a great little holiday meal kit), and new this year Gardein’s  Holiday Roast.

Today the City of Edmonton started to remove the trees that have degraded over the years due to environmental and planting stress. They are removing over 30 trees in the act of deforestation that will dramatically change the face of east end of Whyte Avenue. This is about 30% of the trees between 96th Street and 99th Street!

In my opinion this is poor planning on behalf of the city. To arrive at a position that due to poor maintenance the trees became overly stressed and susceptible to disease. Certainly this is not a healthy environment for any living entity.

The city is planning on replanting trees on the boulevard but the character will be drastically changed due to the removal of so many trees at one time.

So the three groups that were are recipients have benefited by $259.67 through the green actions of our customers.

This means that “Spread the Net” will be able to supply 9 ore mosquito nets to reduce malaria in Africa and that human trafficking awareness and reduction through UN.Gift and “Walk with Me” will make the world just a little bit better for the victims of this vile practice.

You can check out our earlier post about these three groups and the excellent work they are doing in the world.

The three recipients for November and December 2012 are:

Canadian Engaged Buddhism Association: