Enter Edy’s. In the past few years, this ice cream company has introduced special, limited edition flavors around the holidays. I remember one year I got hooked on apple pie. But my all-time fall ice cream favorite has to be pumpkin. I know I could make it myself — I have an ice cream maker — but making the purchase in the supermarket itself just signifies the change in seasons, which is satisfying. I feel the same way when I buy spiced wafers.

Right now, Edy’s is offering several fall/holiday flavors, which on its web site it classifies as “fun flavors.” Apple pie, which is a vanilla ice cream with chunks of apple pie in it, and Peppermint, which is a peppermint ice cream with peppermint candy pieces, are both available September-December. Pumpkin, however, is only available September-October. According to its web site, though, you can find the peppermint and pumpkin flavors in both its grand (regular) and slow churned (light) ice cream varieties, but the difference between the grand and slow churned selections in terms of fat is only about a gram or so.

The pumpkin flavor comes through, complemented nicely by a balance of cinnamon, cloves, ginger and nutmeg. I imagine it would make a great accompaniment to a slice of apple pie, a spiced fall cake, or, of course, all by its lonesome.

Well, both of those things turned out to be true, but there’s a lot more interesting information to impart from the farmer himself. Wilson said he bought the seeds from Burpee and described the Ruby Queen Hybrid as “hybrid sugar enhanced corn,” designed to give a sweetness to red corn. He planted red, white and yellow corn this year and found that the red had the least amount worms as the corn matured. And although the vivid red color dissipated somewhat once it was boiled, when we bit into it, you could still see that it was red. It didn’t matter; it was different and delicious.

The farm’s main crop is hay, which is sold to horse farms and dairies in the area, and they raise chickens along with pastured cows and pigs without hormones or antibiotics. In the past, we have bought asparagus and tomatoes from him. Wilson says they don’t have a farmstand, but they sell what they have, when they have it, after they’ve eaten, jarred, frozen or canned their share.

He’s always looking to try new things, so next year, they’re going to plant artichokes and anticipate a new crop of blackberries and raspberries. I can’t wait. In the meantime, we’re anticipating a few bushels of potatoes. I feel blessed to have such immediate access to quality produce from affable, knowledgeable farmers, and feel as though we’re making a real difference by directly paying the person responsible for the food, with few carbon miles and no supermarket interference.

In her first chapter, she explains how the birth of her sons, Michael and Thomas, contributed to changing her habits. At first, she thought she’d have to throw out everything she owned and overhaul her entire approach to heating and cooling her home, for example — the proposition truly seemed that daunting. But instead, she turned her attention toward the small ways you can improve what you aleady have in place and make good choices when the time is right to, say, replace your water heater or your refrigerator. Your home will become more eco-minded little by little, and the prospect of greening evolves more naturally.

Like the end credits of Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth, Coronato stresses the importance of the seemingly minor choices you can make that do make a difference — buying recycled paper towels, energy-efficient lightbulbs, and reusing containers for craft projects, for example. She also points out that it’s necessary to put things in terms that children can understand. While they might not understand the logic behind going green or the implications of global warming when they are small, children are receptive when you put things in their language. For example, she came up with a clever way of keeping them on track from wasteful practices (such as using too many tissues or napkins) by calling themselves, a la superheroes, “Green Team Coronato!” As someone who is pregnant with twin boys at the moment, I can foresee the wisdom of such thinking.

Elsewhere, the book is chockablock with suggestions for family activities for Earth Day and every day, along with guidance at the grocery store and practical information on what you can do around the house in terms of cleaning, reusing and recycling materials. Ever thought about donating old towels to an animal shelter? (My mom actually used to take them to our dog’s groomer.) Making your own granola bars? (Too much packaging in store-bought ones.) Vacuuming behind your refrigerator? (The coils collect dust, which acts as an insulator, thereby making your appliance work harder.) She’s even got suggestions for broken crayons, orphan socks, Christmas gifts, and so on.

Eco-Friendly Families is thorough, accessible, and useful in both its presentation and its information. Sounds pretty green to me.

But there are tangible, physical costs associated with that paper trail, apart from the risks of identity theft. According to ProQuo, a company that aims to help you manage and eliminate your junk mail and protect your personal information, 250,000 homes could be heated with just one day’s supply of junk mail. And the average American adult receives 40 pounds of junk mail annually. By reducing the amount of paper that comes into your home, you’re naturally helping the environment.

To that end, ProQuo recently launched an educational and humorous contest to educate people about these issues and to generally raise consumers awareness. The top ten videos were recently selected and posted; ProQuo wants viewers to judge the entries, too.

One of the entries, by David Wolfe, highlights the dangers of identity theft. If this has ever happened to you, you know it’s not a laughing matter, but Wolfe’s video, “ID Theft,” puts a funny twist on the event: a couple argues, his identity is stolen, but he’s replaced with a superior version of himself. Another video, the sad but endearing animated “Poor Eddie,” imagines the perspective of the trees who remain after their tree friend Eddie has been cut down. The clever “Sick Mailbox,” likens ProQuo to a drug and therefore cheekily resembles a pharmaceutical ad. The shortest and perhaps most effective is the 20-second “Devil Deal,” which most closely mimics the tone and pacing of a legitimate commercial.

The brief spots guide viewers to the company’s web site, where for free you can sign up for their services to manage and, within several months, stop your junk mail entirely. It’s an easier and a more efficient way of taking on the task yourself.

In the past, I have made lemon or lime squares, pies and other citrusy treats that are usually comprised of some combination of juice, zest, sugar, eggs and sweetened condensed milk. I confess I have never made lemon curd from scratch, but Stonewall’s iteration was sweet, eggy, and tart. I consulted some cookbooks and Stonewall’s online recipes and came up with a recipe for Lemon-Blueberry Squares. I’d started off with the Meyer Lemon Squares recipe from Essentials of Baking, which called for making your own curd (which I did not) and using an 8-inch square pan (which I did). I referred to it against the Stonewall recipe for Lemon-Raspberry Squares, which itself was adapted from another Williams-Sonoma cookbook, Picnics and Tailgates. I swapped out the Stonewall raspberry jam it called for with Stonewall’s Acadia blueberry jam, which we bought in Bar Harbor. I imagine you can use your own favorite jam; it just needs to be thick enough to hold its shape but easy enough to spread. Here’s the new, adapted recipe I came up with. The end result was a sweet-tart treat mix that made nearly all of my tastebuds stand up.

Ingredients for the crust:
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup confectioner’s sugar
1/8 tsp. salt
6 tablespoons of cold, unsalted butter, cut into 3/4 inch pieces

For the filling:
One jar of Stonewall Kitchen lemon curd
1 cup Stonewall Kitchen Acadia Wild Blueberry Jam

1. Position a rack in the middle of the oven, preheat it to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C) and butter an 8-inch square baking pan.

2. To make the crust by hand, in a large bowl stir together the flour, confectioner’s sugar, and salt until combined. Using a pastry blender or two knives, cut in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs the size of small peas. You can also do this in a food processor by pulsing the dry ingredients together a couple of times, and then by adding the butter and pulsing it until the mixture looks as previously described.

3. Press the crumb mixture into the bottom of and about an inch up the sides of the prepared pan. Bake the crust until golden and the top feels firm when lightly touched, about 15-20 minutes. Set aside and let it cool for half an hour.

4. Spread the jam evenly over the crust. Carefully spoon the lemon curd over the jam, making sure to keep the layers as separate as possible. Bake until the curd topping is set. Check it after 15 minutes, but it could take an additional 5-7 minutes.

5. Remove from the oven and allow it to cool in the pan for 15 minutes. Cover and refrigerate for about three hours. Sprinkle it with confectioner’s sugar and cut into squares with a serrated knife. I cut them rather generously and got about 12 squares, but you can make them as small or as large as you like.

The useful web site just launched its first Guide to Green Living with tips in a number of topics, such as spring cleaning, recycling and reusing, growing green kids (I hope they don’t mean that literally), earth-friendly gardening, and going green on the cheap. Most of the advice is really just common sense, but every little bit helps, especially its formulas for green cleaning.

In the cleaning category, there are instructions on how to make dish soap. The forumla is a simple combination of 2 cups of castille soap (which you can buy at most health food stores and even some progressive supermarkets,) 1/2 cup of warm water, and a couple drops of essential oils for a lovely aroma. Put it all into a bottle that is squeezable; use spent bottles from shampoos or other dish soaps. The site also shows other ways to make your own dish soap from things such as soap flakes or solid soap shavings–the latter is a clever way to use up those (previously) useless little nubs that are invariably left at the end of your bar.

I also like its idea for how to pack an eco-friendly lunch. I don’t mean to sound like Donna Reed here, but sometimes I pack a lunch for my husband and we’re always looking for a substitute for the ubiquitous and destructive plastic sandwich bag. That’s where Reusable Bags comes in. The company sells washable “wrap-n-mat” wrappers that fold up like an envelope and seal with Velcro. Along those lines, the article recommends not buying individually-sized packages of snack foods: they are more expensive and create more waste. This may be obvious to anyone who buys groceries, but it bears repeating. We switched to brown paper bags a while ago, but the site lists links to other snazzy-looking options such as lunch totes, bento box-style containers and more.

The first one I purchased was salsa verde, which is comprised of jalapenos, tomatillos, roasted tomatoes, onions, garlic, cilantro and other spices. It remains my favorite and I immediately thought to use it in my enchilada recipe. The other two I tried were roasted chipotle and roasted tomato. The chipotle one was appropriately smoky but not overly sweet, and the roasted tomato really tasted like its namesake. These three salsas are rated medium, which seemed apt, and the other salsa variety, which I didn’t try, is sweet pepper. All four salsas come in 16 oz. jars.

My only complaint about these otherwise delicious salsas is that with the exception of the salsa verde, the other two seem to be a little bit watery. I don’t mind a bit of that from time to time, but the ingredients seem to be slightly more pureed in the other two flavors I tried; the ingredients in salsa verde seemed more distinct and consistently sized.

Regardless, if you live near a Wegmans (they have stores mostly in mid-Atlantic/Northeast area), I highly recommend them. I imagine that the tomato version would be great in my faux chili, which I make with Boca Crumbles. Indeed, all of them are suitable for use in cooking.