Super Eco

Photo credit: Rex Roof, flickr

Ready to whip up something green and healthy for dinner? Heh—neither am I. One of the biggest hurdles new cooks (and cooks with a new, green resolve) face is keeping a basic selection of healthy, eco-friendly ingredients on hand.

If you've lived for years on pre-packaged foods dressed with ketchup and mayo, stocking your pantry can be an intimidating process. All too often, green cookbooks and web sites propose an exotic range and sheer number of ingredients that sail completely beyond the scope of a tired, hungry chef-to-be at the end of a long day.

So how about some realistic pantry basics? Super Eco gathers you a solid selection of suggestions, from simple lists aimed at healthy eating to a pantry designed for a newly vegan chef.

• The healthy pantry Wellsphere (featuring advice from almost 1,500 of the leading medical minds from Stanford, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Yale and other top medical schools) shows you how to build a healthy, basic pantry.
• The green pantry Ready to go a little more eco-friendly, a little more organic, a little more whole and natural? Try these ideas.
• The vegetarian pantry Nava Atlas guides novice vegetarians toward a basic vegetarian pantry, including packaged, refrigerated and frozen basics.
• Stocking a vegan pantry New vegans need specific nutrition to stay healthy.