Did you know that New York City has a whole system for recycling household food waste? Jill talks to Erycka de Jesus from The NYC Compost Project hosted by Big Reuse about how to compost in a city and why composting is important.

Then we join Jill in the kitchen with Ann Ogden from the charity Cook for Your Life. Ann teaches cancer patients how to cook and on today’s show she shares a simple recipe for a nourishing tomato and bean soup. Finally Jill asks exercise physiologist Sarah Lehman for her tips for exercising during the winter. Sarah explains how to exercise indoors when we’re on the move as we visit friends and relatives for the holidays.

We’re joined by the infectiously enthusiastic Erycka de Jesus on this week’s grow segment. Erycka is the outreach coordinator for the NYC Compost Project hosted by Big Reuse and part of their Astoria (Queens) team. The project is part of a community-scale composting network that works to rebuild the city’s soils by providing New Yorkers with the knowledge, skills, and opportunities they need to produce and use compost locally. They host weekly food scrap drop-off locations, train New Yorkers in urban composting best practices, and produce high-quality compost. To top it off, the finished compost is used in community gardens, on street trees, and in public beautification projects. In summary, the NYC Compost Project (which, incidentally, is a part of the New York Sanitation Department) makes it really really easy for you to dispose of your food in a way that would make mother nature very happy! Jill and Erycka talk about how to get started in the compost game, how it will change your life and benefit your community, and where you can find more information on your local compost center on this week’s episode of GCH.
We’ve been saying in for the past five years and we’re not about to stop now – winter is coming. To help you get through those short and dreary days we’ve got Ann Ogden from not for profit Cook for Your Life back on the show to cook up a nourishing tomato and cannellini bean soup. Ann has been on the show many times before and for good reason. She spends her time teaching cancer patients how to cook food that’s nourishing and tasty. Warrior Ann was diagnosed with cancer on two separate occasions and knows how it feels when your favorite foods start to taste like sawdust. The recipes on her wonderful website are designed for patients who are going through treatment and, as if that wasn’t good enough, they’re super quick so that patients and carers can rustle them up in a matter of minutes. She also has a book called Cook for Your Life which is so fantastic that it was nominated for a James Beard award. This week’s soup is not only fast and delicious but its base can be used as a tomato sauce for a future GCH recipe.
We don’t want to dwell on the pitfalls of winter too much. Yes it’s cold and yes it’s rainy. But there’s one thing that we all absolutely love about winter – holidays. And what’s the best thing about holidays? Food (family can be sort of fun sometimes too). Winter is a time for us to loosen our belts, get into our onesies and eat literally as much as we possibly can before we make those coveted New Year’s resolutions to get back in shape. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to get a head start on the waist line though? You guessed it.. there is! Physiotherapist and The Yinova Center employee Sarah Lehmann comes back on the show to give us her tips on how we can stay in shape over the holiday months. The great thing about Sarah’s advice is that she’s not asking us to really over exert ourselves. What she recommends is a few home based exercises that will keep us in check before we can get back to our regular workout routines. Find out what she has to say on this week’s episode!
Yinova’s founder, Jill Blakeway, hosts a weekly radio show for CBS Radio called Grow Cook Heal. You can subscribe and listen to the whole series as a podcast on iTunes.

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