Great idea for an eco friendly bridal shower (even baby shower?)

I recently checked with an organization I did a story about a few years ago. It's called Village Harvest and it does backyard gleaning. They organize volunteers to pick ripe fruit from backyard trees. And then they donate the fruit to food banks. The group also picks in old orchards that dot the San Francisco Bay Area and donates those crops as well.

The founder told me that next weekend they're doing a bridal shower... someone contacted them saying that they wanted to have a bridal shower that involved giving back. Picking fruit to donate to food banks fit the bill. So a group of women are going to come to an old pear orchard and have a picnic/picking party. They decided on a "pear" orchard for the shower (get the pun?). Photo credit for above:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/suttonhoo22/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Thought I'd pass on what seemed like a nice green shower idea. Now for a visual pun. This photo is titled:

Pear: Shaped

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kaptainkobold/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Great baby finger food: Black Bean pancakes

I got an email the other day from a friend who was looking for iron-rich baby foods. My suggestion was dried apricots (cooked and mushed). She wrote back a few days later with this recipe for black bean pancakes. Thought I'd pass it on:

I put some cooked potatoes, canned black beans, and onion in the cuisinart, then added some whole beans as well for fun texture. Mixed in egg and rice cereal to stick it all together (and for that extra iron). Fried in a little olive oil. Too bland for my taste, but E likes them and I can spice them up when he gets a little older.