For a long time, Danny Seo sang the Kermit song. Although it seemed easy for him to be green, the rest of the world didn’t really know what the heck he was talking about. But foresight pays off, and today Danny is the Living Green contributing editor for Better Homes and Gardens and an environmental lifestyle contributor to CBS “The Early Show.” They’re selling Danny Seo mattresses at JC Penney and he just launched his own beauty and bath line, Whole Earth Beauty.
Oh, and he was voted one of People’s “50 Most Beautiful People in the World.” Nice!
So we were thrilled when he agreed to give us some insider tips to an eco-friendly backyard barbeque. Because with Danny around, it really is easy being green.
“We love to eat outside in the summertime, but nothing makes guests run for cover faster than a swarm of mosquitoes,” Danny says. But rather than automatically reaching for the (hopefully non-toxic) bug spray, he recommends planting marigolds, rosemary and catnip around your garden—mosquitoes hate them. And make sure to empty any sources of standing water, where mosquitoes can breed, Danny says. Dump a birdbath, throw in some ice and bottled drinks and you just upped your chic factor by about a thousand percent.
Danny’s partial to an old-fashioned charcoal grill (we like the carbon-neutral Green Hearts Briquettes featured on our home page) and to start it, he recommends lighting a few branches of rosemary wrapped in newspaper rather than using a regular match. “The newspaper starts the fire, but the rosemary continues to burn while you grill, infusing your meal with a little extra flavor.”
We love Danny’s novel take on traditional grilled corn and s’mores: Take small twigs from surrounding trees, sharpen the ends with a pencil-sharpener, and use to create corn handles and marshmallow sticks, which you can warm over the grill and serve with organic, fair trade chocolate.
Finally, for clean up, Danny’s weapons of choice are non-toxic, eco-friendly cleaners from Method Home, and he scored us a 20% off discount through September 30th with “ecostiletto” at check out. Thanks, Danny!
