6 medium tomatoes
1 Red Onion
1 Green / Red Chilli
Big Handful Coriander
Lime Juice to taste
Sugar to taste (optional)

This hardly counts as a recipe, but it's something I make all the time and it's really popular. For parties and barbecues etc, it's so nice to have a really fresh homemade dip. This one is really easy to make and costs a fraction of what you would have to spend to get the same quantity of a shop bought salsa. It's really good with tortilla chips or homemade potato wedges.

Quantities above are all approximate and I never measure when making this at home, just adjust to suit your own tastes, but the above should work fine as a starting point.

Wash the tomatoes, chilli and coriander, deseed the chilli, and peel the red onion.
If you have a food processor, just blitz the tomato, onion, chilli and coriander to the desired size then add lime juice and sugar to taste. (Tomatoes can sometimes be a little bitter so a pinch of sugar can help balance things out).
If you don't have a food processor, then chop all the ingredients finely and mix together.
Cover and chill until needed. This will make quite a lot, so if there are only a couple of you then reduce the ingredients to suit.

Are you Green? Eco-friendly? Passionate about the environment? Generally a savvy earth-conscious consumer? And do you practice what you preach?

We're not all perfect (that's a given) and we're still all learning how we can improve our lifestyles with the planet in mind. But there are some who appear to talk the good green talk and fail to walk their talk. When we're talking green business this is called Green Washing. When it comes to individuals it's called useless environmentalism.

Jumping on the bandwagon is all well and good if we're actually contributing to the cause (in whatever small way we're able) but turning green for no other purpose than to change shade is not cool - for the planet or your reputation. The cartoon creatives at Supernews have shed a little comedic light on this message in one of their short animations (see below) called Going Green.

The French contingent of the So Organic team is taking part in a fun run to raise money for Trees for Cities, a charity that works at greening urban spaces all over the world for leafier places to dwell. Their mission is "to advance the education of the public in the appreciation of trees and their amenity value, and in furtherance of this the planting and protection of trees everywhere, and in particular inner city areas".

Tree-Athlon is a 5km run. There are 3 being held across the UK this year - one in London, Leeds and Manchester.

Projects Tree for Cities have initialized include establishing wildlife gardens at schools and protecting woodlands across the country. Other than greening UK cities the charity is planning to go international and help plant fruit trees and indigenous plants in Peru, Addis Ababa and Nairobi.

The London run is scheduled for the 19th of September at beautiful leafy Battersea Park. Participants wear bibs with a personalized Tree Wish to encourage sponsors with their individual tree goal. All those who run in the London Tree-Athlon receive a sapling to take home and plant.

Entry to run is £20.00 which of course goes to towards the charity's activities. But you can also create a Just Giving page like Christelle. If you'd rather sit than run under the trees perhaps you'd like to sponsor Christelle on her leafy quest. She's aiming to raise £500. Her sponsor page is www.justgiving.com/SoOrganicForTrees/ if you'd like to make a donation.

Alternatively if you'd like to become a member of Trees for Cities they offer four membership packs starting at the Sapling Club Membership (‘for growing kids') at £1.50/month which will plant one tree a month to a Family Tree Membership at £6/month which will plant six trees a month.

Iris means 'rainbow' in Greek simply because it comes in hundreds of varieties of colours - pink, yellow, blue, violet, maroon - you name it the Iris comes in it.

Known to be commonly used to perfume cosmetics and other beauty products the Iris also has some healing benefits.

The yellow iris in particular can be used to treat skin conditions such as dandruff and acne. Juice from Iris roots has been used to apparently remove freckles!

Other medicinal purposes this flower is used for include complaints of the lungs such as bronchitis.

Weleda, the biodynamic legends of organic skin care, have used the violet, light scented flower to perfume an entire skin care system including cleanser, toner, night cream, moisturiser, facial masque and soap.

So if you're an Iris fan you can smother yourself with this organic beauty from head to toe!