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Welcome to the Ultimate Natural Health and Wellness CD from MOTHER EARTH NEWS.

We've assembled 94 of our most-popular natural health and wellness articles, intended to educate and inspire you to live a more natural lifestyle, practice healthy nutrition, take advantage of natural healing methods and more. Now, we're making them available to you in this easy-to-use CD-ROM format, just like our popular Mother Earth News Archives on CD-ROM.

Selected from nearly 40 years of material, this collection provides all the unique, focused information you need to achieve health and wellness the natural way.

Categories include:

• Allergy Relief
• All-Natural Home Remedies
• Healing with Herbs
• Eating for Your Health
• Healthy Living Tips
• Pests and Your Health

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In the 1970s, Dolly Freed lived off the land dirt cheap and plum easy. Living in her own house on a half-acre lot outside of Philadelphia for almost five years, Dolly and her father produced their own food and drink and spent roughly $700 each per year. Thirty years later, Dolly Freed's Possum Living is as fascinating and pertinent as it was in 1978. This reissue of the survivalist classic has a foreword by David Gates and an afterword by the author.

After discussing reasons why you should or shouldn't give up your job, Possum Living gives you details about the cheapest ways with the best results to buy and maintain your home, dress well, cope with the law, stay healthy and keep up a middle-class facade — whether you live in the city, in the suburbs or in a small town. In a delightful, straightforward style, Dolly Freed explains how to be lazy, proud, miserly and honest, live well and enjoy leisure. She shares her knowledge for what you do need — your own home, for example — and what you don't need — such as doctors, lawyers and insurance. Through her own example, Dolly hopes to inspire you to do some independent thinking about how economics affects the course of your life now and may do so in the coming "age of shortages." If you ever wondered what it would be like to be in greater control of your own life, Possum Living will show you — and help you do it for yourself.

Recommended Product for Wiser Living: Today, more than ever before, our society is seeking ways to live more conscientiously. To help bring you the very best inspiration and information about greener, more sustainable lifestyles, MOTHER EARTH NEWS is recommending books to readers. For 40 years, MOTHER EARTH NEWS has been North America's "Original Guide to Living Wisely," creating books and magazines for people with a passion for self-reliance and a desire to live in harmony with nature.

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Some 40 percent of North Americans live in homes built before 1940, and when it comes time to remodel or restore our older homes, homeowners and contractors can find themselves lost in a morass of wildly divergent information and opinion. With Green Restorations, author Aaron Lubeck brings his expertise as a restoration contractor and preservation consultant to this first-of-its-kind guide, leading the reader through the steps for restoring historic building using sustainable practices and green building techniques.

In a readily accessible room-by-room and system-by-system format, Green Restorations covers rehabilitation and remodelling questions applicable to old homes, focusing on the core techniques and debates often seen in practice. Here you'll find the answers to restoration questions, such as:

• Is sealing my old crawl space a good idea?
• Should I replace or rehabilitate my windows?
• Are there historic aspects of my home I need to preserve, and what can I change?
• What are the cultural, environmental and financial implications of my proposed changes?
• Do residential historic tax credits apply to my home and how can I access them?

Written in such a way as to be accessible for homeowners but technical enough for contractors, this book will appeal to anyone trying to green an older home while preserving its historic and cultural significance.

About the Author

Aaron Lubeck is a partner with Trinity Design/Build, a restoration and preservation consultancy in North Carolina that has won numerous preservation awards. He is a member of the United States Green Building Council who has completed the first historic building to be LEED-certified in North Carolina.

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Today a single family can include staunch vegetarians as well as passionate meat lovers. When company shows up, the situation gets even more complicated. How can you satisfy them all without making two (or three) completely different meals?

In The Flexitarian Table, the award-winning author Peter Berley presents menus that are flexible, exciting, relaxing to prepare — and that make everyone feel welcome. With The Flexitarian Table, you'll no longer treat vegetarians as afterthoughts by offering them a couple of scanty side dishes, and you'll be able to indulge meat eaters at the same time with abundant, satisfying dishes.

You'll learn how to prepare vegetarian and meat versions simultaneously without going to any extra trouble. Roast a succulent, crisp chicken with lemon and thyme — and make a tofu version in just minutes. Put some meaty portobello mushroom caps on the grill and, for the carnivore contingent, throw on a steak, then pair them both with a zesty bread crumb salsa. Simmer white beans with carrot and celery and saute some shrimp, drizzling each with the same rich brown butter sauce with fresh herbs.

You'll find many sumptuous vegetarian dishes as well, including cannelloni with ricotta, Parmesan and mint or a hearty lasagna with roasted fall vegetables in a sage-scented cheese sauce. Or serve up a selection of easy little dishes and let your guests choose.

You'll get plenty of ideas for get-dinner-quick meals, such as winter tomato soup with goat cheese crostini and Spanish-style fried eggs, and for luxurious weekend fare try cumin-spiced lamb croquettes and falafel, served with two traditional Middle Eastern sauces and whole-wheat pita bread.

The Flexitarian Table also shows you how to cook with the seasons, so you get the most flavor from your ingredients while you enjoy varied, sustainable meals year-round.

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Whether you want to grow a few vegetables or you're ready to go whole hog and relocate to the countryside, this invaluable handbook will guide you through every aspect of a self-sufficient lifestyle. Packed with practical information, expert advice and real-life experiences, this is the ultimate reference book for anyone who wants to make the move toward natural living.

• Make your home self-sufficient: Find out all you need to know about eco-building, recycling and traditional crafts such as spinning, weaving, dyeing, making candles and tanning hides.
• Grow your own fruit and vegetables: Detailed instructions and tips on how to cultivate more than 100 vegetables, fruits and herbs.
• From crop to kitchen: Learn how to prepare and preserve your food, including information on drying, freezing, canning, bottling, brewing, basic butchery and making your own bread, butter, yogurt and cheese.
• Food from the wild: Discover how to forage for food with a practical wild food calendar and identification guide.
• Raise your own livestock: Expert advice on choosing and keeping chickens, ducks, geese, pigs, goats, sheep, cows, bees and more.

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There’s never been a better time to “be prepared.” Matthew Stein’s comprehensive primer on sustainable living skills — from food and water to shelter and energy to first-aid and crisis-management skills — prepares you to embark on the path toward sustainability. But, unlike any other book, Stein not only shows you how to live “green” in seemingly stable times, but to live in the face of potential disasters, lasting days or years, coming in the form of social upheaval, economic meltdown or environmental catastrophe.

When Technology Fails covers the gamut. You’ll learn how to start a fire and keep warm if you’ve been left temporarily homeless, as well as the basics of installing a renewable energy system for your home or business. You’ll learn how to find and sterilize water in the face of utility failure, as well as practical information for dealing with water-quality issues even when the public tap water is still flowing. You’ll learn alternative techniques for healing equally suited to an era of profit-driven malpractice as to situations of social calamity. Each chapter offers the same approach, describing skills for self-reliance in good times and bad. Chapter subjects include: a survey of the risks to the status quo; supplies and preparation for short- and long-term emergencies; emergency measures for survival; water; food; shelter; clothing; first aid, low-tech medicine and healing; energy, heat and power; metalworking; utensils and storage; low-tech chemistry; and engineering, machines and materials.

Fully revised and expanded — the first edition was written pre-9/11 and pre-Katrina, when few Americans took the risk of social disruption seriously — When Technology Fails ends on a positive, proactive note with a new chapter on "Making the Shift to Sustainability," which offers practical suggestions for changing our world on personal, community and global levels.

About the author

Matthew Stein holds a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from MIT. He is an engineer, author and building contractor. He has also worked as a schoolteacher, carpenter, and rock-climbing and ski instructor. As the owner of Aloha Aina Builders, Stein has built hurricane-resistant, energy-efficient and environmentally friendly homes. As a mechanical engineer and president of Stein Design, he has designed consumer water-filtration devices, commercial water-filtration systems, photovoltaic roofing panels, medical bacteriological filters, drinking fountains, emergency chemical drench systems, computer disk drives, portable fiberglass buildings, and automated assembly machinery for Applied Solar, Hewlett-Packard, Seagate, Plantronics, Duraflame, Haws and IGT. He currently resides with his wife, Josie, in the High Sierra Mountains near Lake Tahoe, Calif. For many years, Stein has pursued avid interests in renewable energy, alternative healing, sustainable growth and preventative medicine.

Recommended Product for Wiser Living: Today, more than ever before, our society is seeking ways to live more conscientiously. To help bring you the very best inspiration and information about greener, more sustainable lifestyles, MOTHER EARTH NEWS is recommending books to readers. For 40 years, MOTHER EARTH NEWS has been North America’s “Original Guide to Living Wisely,” creating books and magazines for people with a passion for self-reliance and a desire to live in harmony with nature.

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The latest addition to the best-selling Wisdom and Know-How series is a complete home reference for everything you need to know about gardening — from soil and fertilizers to growing flowers and vegetables.

Garden Wisdom and Know-How is a large-scale practical guide to planting and maintaining a garden, indoors or out. The chapters are organized by topic — garden techniques and tricks, the flower garden, the edible garden, container gardening, garden design and landscaping, attracting wildlife, and so on — and packed with information. Readers will discover tips and techniques for maintaining a garden year-round; harvesting herbs; designing by bloom season; turning garden refuse into garden rewards; building teepees, trellises and other plant supports; and much more.

Featuring handpicked selections from dozens of publications from Rodale Books, this massive collection is full of indispensable and trusted advice from some of the most respected gardening authors in the world. And with hundreds of black-and-white illustrations and photographs as well as step-by-step projects, key gardening resources, and essential information on countless plant species, Garden Wisdom and Know-How is a must-have volume for both the aspiring and the experienced gardener.

About the author

Judy Pray is a freelance book editor. She lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

About Rodale Books

Rodale Books publishes award-winning, best-selling titles on gardening, health, wellness, fitness, food, nutrition, inspiration/spirituality and the environment. Some of their best-known gardening books include Rodale's Ultimate Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening, Your Backyard Herb Garden, The Complete Compost Gardening Guide and Garden Primer.

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A "zero energy" home — a home that produces as much energy as it consumes — is an idea whose time has come. By reducing or eliminating utility bills, zero energy homes offer a new direction for housing in America. It is a win-win for the homeowner, for the planet and for a new generation of builders who are building houses that better meet the energy challenges ahead of us all.

With unequaled knowledge and a passion for the subject, authors David Johnston and Scott Gibson explore the design and construction of energy self-sufficient houses from start to finish and feature 12 houses that were built for zero energy living.

About the authors:

A leader in the green building movement, David Johnston is the author of Green From the Ground Up and founder of Green Building and What's Working. His approach to green building has been embraced by building professionals, municipalities, homeowners and sustainability advocates nationwide. Co-author Scott Gibson is a freelance writer and longtime contributing editor to Fine Homebuilding magazine.

Recommended Product for Wiser Living: Today, more than ever before, our society is seeking ways to live more conscientiously. To help bring you the very best inspiration and information about greener, more sustainable lifestyles, MOTHER EARTH NEWS is recommending books to readers. For 40 years, MOTHER EARTH NEWS has been North America’s “Original Guide to Living Wisely,” creating books and magazines for people with a passion for self-reliance and a desire to live in harmony with nature.

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Alice Waters has been a champion of the sustainable, local cooking movement for decades. To Alice, good food should be a right, not a privilege. In the Green Kitchen presents her essential cooking techniques to be learned by heart, plus more than 50 recipes — for delicious, fresh, local and seasonal meals — from Alice and her friends. Alice demystifies the basics, including steaming a vegetable, dressing a salad, simmering stock, filleting a fish, roasting a chicken and making bread. In the Green Kitchen is an accessible guide that helps you find the best-tasting ingredients wherever you live and teaches you how to cook them simply.

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This book gives you all the information you need to start your own local foods business. You'll get plain-English advice from a self-proclaimed farm-girl-turned-entrepreneur on:

• Trends in niche agriculture and local foods
• Creating a business plan for a small-scale or hobby venture
• Assessing your home marketplace and uncovering niches not yet served
• Financing options, especially grants and cost-sharing programs
• Free or low-cost marketing ideas
• Basic strategies for surviving the first year in business
• And more

About the author

Sarah Beth Aubrey was born into a family of farmers and was raised to believe, like Scarlett O'Hara, that it is land that sustains after all else. In addition to operating her company, Aubrey's Natural Meats, Aubrey writes and speaks extensively on agriculture, the rural lifestyle and small farm development.