For centuries, ghee has been a cornerstone of Ayurvedic medicine, the ancient Hindu art of healing and of prolonging life. Now, it’s poised to become an important ingredient to people who will never cook Indian food.

What’s ghee? It’s similar to clarified butter, but the processes and end products differ somewhat. Clarified butter (or drawn butter) is familiar to anyone who has ordered lobster at a restaurant. The clear melted butter has been rendered (melted by simmering) to separate the milk solids from the butterfat and evaporate the water. It’s a more elegant way to serve melted butter, which otherwise looks sudsy. Chefs also use clarified butter to sauté, because with the milk solids gone, ghee has an extremely high smoke point, 485°F (252°C, higher than canola oil—only rice bran oil, safflower oil and avocado oil are higher).

Ghee requires a longer simmering process, which removes all of the water and milk solids. There’s no lactose left in ghee; the lactose intolerant can slather it over everything and enjoy all the buttery goodness they want. (Well, check with your cardiologist on that latter point.)

Ancient Organics ghee is made from the organic butter of Straus Family Creamery. Photo by Corey Lugg | THE NIBBLE.

Ancient Organics, a company dedicated to the principles of Ayurvedic medicine, makes its ghee from one of the best-known butters in America: the organic-certified butter of the acclaimed Straus Family Creamery. Across the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin County, California, on the shores of beautiful Tomales Bay, happy Straus cows graze on green grass under blue skies. Their milk is churned in small batches in an old-fashioned 1950s-era butter churn. The result is rich, sweet and creamy butter with an 85% butterfat content (the USDA minimum requirement is 80%).

Ancient Organics takes this precious butter and separates it into the golden butterfat known as ghee. Whether or not you want to learn more about the medicinal benefits of ghee (according to Ayurveda), if you sauté, fry or stir-fry, you should get to know ghee.

July 13th is Franks & Beans Day. Thank goodness for Amy’s—we can celebrate with quality baked beans. Amy’s Organic Vegetarian Baked Beans are the best canned beans we’ve had: rich, hearty beans that aren’t drowning in the cloying sweetness that other brands succumb to.

(What is it with manufacturers who sweeten every savory food, so that meat and vegetables smack of sugar? Isn’t that what dessert is for? Do Americans really want everything to taste sweet, or want to ingest all that extra weight-gain and diabetes-inducing sugar?)

Also delicious are Amy’s Organic Traditional Refried Beans (pinto beans), Organic Refried Beans with Green Chiles and Organic Refried Black Beans—all of which go perfectly well with franks and other foods, and should’t be reserved for Mexican dishes. That being said, the quality of Amy’s refried beans is superior to most Mexican restaurants. All of the products are vegan, gluten free and cholesterol free, with a MSRP of $2.79 for a 15.4-ounce can. Just heat and serve! The products are certified kosher by Ner Tamid K.

When we don’t have time to make our own baked beans, we’re happy to eat Amy’s.

So how’s the chocolate? Bittersweet, earthy with dried nuances (see our Flavors & Aromas of Chocolate chart). It’s not a sumptuous chocolate (not flowing with extra cocoa butter), but will please lovers of masculine-style bittersweet chocolate. And, it will please everyone who believes in the dual noble causes of Fair Trade and organic farming.

A 3.5-ounce bar (100g) is $6.50, .71 ounce (20g) bar is $2.75 at TravelChocolate.com. Gift packages are available.

See more of our favorite organic/Fair Trade certified chocolate:

If you’re a vegan or kosher, you can’t have gummy candies—they’re made with gelatin, an animal-derived product. Alas, Annie’s Homegrown products aren’t certified kosher, but vegans can certainly experience the joy of gummies. The company makes “gummy” Organic Bunny Fruit Snacks using tapioca instead of gelatin.

Two new flavors have debuted this summer: Sunny Citrus, a blend of lemon, lime and orange flavors; and Summer Strawberry. They join Tropical Treat and Berry Patch flavors. All are MSRP $4.99 for five .8 ounce pouches.

You can see the entire Annies Homegrown line at www.Annies.com.

Hopping down the bunny trail with vegan-friendly gummy candy from Annie’s Homegrown. Photo by Hannah Kaminsky | THE NIBBLE.

The True Brew crew: organic iced tea.  

June is National Iced Tea Month, and there’s a new bottled tea in town: True Brew. Made in Texas, where people like their iced tea sweet, the line offers sweetened varieties, with unsweetened black, green and white teas for purists.

The unsweetened teas have zero calories; the sweetened teas, which employ organic cane sugar, have between 64 and 72 calories per 8-ounce serving.

While we normally drink our tea unsweetened—iced or hot—to enjoy the flavor of the quality tea we buy, our favorite of the line was the Sweet Tea. It tasted exactly like what one would brew at home and drink with two teaspoons of sugar (in fact, it tasted exactly like the iced tea we made through our teens and college years, before we started to drink our tea and coffee black).

The Unsweetened Green Tea was the third place winner in the Iced Tea Class at the recent 2009 World Tea Championships (first place went to ITO EN’s Oi Ocha Dark [a NIBBLE Top Pick Of The Week], second place to Wegman’s Just Tea—Green, a private label brand that is brewed for them by someone—we’ll have to track down who). Green tea connoisseurs will like it—it has the vegetal flavors of a complex green tea.

The flavor profiles are very different from Honest Tea, the first organic bottled tea line. Unlike Honest Tea, the entire True Brew line is packaged in a PET bottle (the only resin [plastic] approved by the FDA to have post-consumer recycled content). Organic tea drinkers seeking an alternative should give it a try.

There’s another reason everyone who drinks bottled tea should take a look at True Brew: the higher antioxidant content. The company claims a polyphenol count that is higher than some competitors. Based on a Men’s Health article that compared green tea varieties from Harney and Sons, Lipton, Tazo and Snapple, True Brew has more polyphenols per bottle. True Brew actually lists the polyphenol count on the bottle, although somewhat strangely, the number stated is the amount per liter instead of how much is in the 16-ounce bottle.

The price is right: True Brew has been retailing at $1.00 per bottle! Find store locations at TrueBrew.com.

Oikos Greek Yogurt is thicker than regular yogurt, but not as thick as FAGE Total Greek yogurt or another relative newcomer, Chobani probiotic Greek yogurt, both of which can pass for thick sour cream. There’s a big difference in the texture—with Oikos being more like “normal” yogurt—as well as in the flavor. Whereas FAGE Total and Chobani can sometimes pass for sour cream (wishful thinking), Oikos is definitely yogurt.

Read the full review and find out what makes a yogurt “Greek.”

Oikos Organic Greek Yogurt is fat free, organic and kosher. Photo by Hannah Kaminsky | THE NIBBLE.

A comprehensive set of science-based recommendations for environmentally friendly foodservice, the practices have been tested for 90 days by two Restaurant Associates clients, Random House and Hearst Corporation, which have large corporate cafeterias in New York City. Early results show annual benefits of more than $85,000 in cost savings, a reduction of 275 tons of carbon pollution and a reduction of landfill waste by 60 tons, among other environmental benefits. You can get them free of charge at www.edf.org/greendining.
Organic cabbage. Photo by Herman Hooyschuur | SXC.

The pilot program revealed some interesting answers:

Lunch served from Random House’s new green kitchen was so delicious. We ate two plates of everything and only regret we didn’t bring Tupperware to take more home. We share it with you for recipe ideas—which just happen to be largely vegan:

With gorgeous food like this, it’s easy to be a vegetarian. But the two executive chefs involved with the pilot had more in store for us.

We were thrilled to have enjoyed this sustainable lunch—and more thrilled that within two years, the 110 foodservice facilities managed by Restaurant Associates will be green (and audited by the Green Restaurant Association!). Now, everyone else: Get into the act! If your company has a cafeteria, if you know people who own restaurants, download and forward the Green Dining Best Practices from www.edf.org/greendining.

While their natural mate is hummos or baba ganoush, these chips pair perfectly with yogurt or sour cream based dips. Try them with Greek tzatziki, Indian raita or an Indian layered dip.

- See more of our favorite chips in our Snacks Section.

- Then, find some great dips to pair them with—product reviews plus recipes for everything from hummos to salsa to guacamole.

- Finally, a nice microbrew or an all-natural soft drink.

The taste of falafel, in crispy chip form.

Learn more about Fair Trade and how it benefits farmers.