Cooking

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Environmental Working Group has some good information. Choosing organic foods is important to me, but sometimes they are not available, the quality is poor or they are too expensive. They’ve compiled two lists: the dirty dozen plus (only buy organic) and the clean 15 (lowest in pesticides). If you want to read more details, following this list are some Key Findings by EWG that might interest you.

Here is a link to download a free pdf guide of EWG’s shopper’s guide to pesticides in produce.

Donate to EWG for all the hard work that they do to keep us informed and get a wallet card with the Dirty 12 and the Clean 15!

Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides

Dirty Dozen Clean 15
Buy these organic Lowest in Pesticides
1. Strawberries 1. Avocado
2. Spinach 2. Sweet Corn*
3. Kale 3. Pineapples
4. Nectarines 4. Sweet Peas – frozen
5. Apples 5. Onions
6. Grapes 6. Papayas*
7. Peaches 7. Eggplant
8. Cherries 8. Asparagus
9. Pears 9. Kiwis
10. Tomatoes 10. Cabbages
11. Celery 11. Cauliflower
12.Potatoes 12. Cantaloupes
+ Dirty Dozen PLUS 13. Broccoli
14. Mushrooms
15. Honeydew Melons

+ Dirty Dozen PLUS includes: Sweet Bell Peppers, Cherry Tomatoes, Lettuce, Cucumbers, Blueberries, Hot Peppers, Plums, Green Beans, Tangerines, Raspberries, Grapefruit, Winter Squash, Snap Peas, Carrots, Oranges, Summer Squash*, Mangoes, Bananas, Sweet Potatoes, Watermelons, Honeydew Melons, Mushrooms, Broccoli, Cantaloupes, Cauliflower, Cabbages, Kiwis, Asparagus, Eggplants, Papayas*, Onions, Sweet Peas Frozen, Pineapples, Sweet Corn*, Avocados  More Details.

+ May contain pesticide residues of special concern

* A small amount of sweet corn, papaya and summer squash sold in the United States is produced from genetically modified seeds. Buy organic varieties of these crops if you want to avoid genetically modified produce.

Read the Report on the details of study of their tests on samples of fruits and vegetables. There is also lots of good information on health benefits, genetically engineered crops (GMOS), pesticide avoidance and regulation.

Delicious lemon steamed pudding from the book The Craft of Baking by Karen DeMasco & Mindy Fox.

Delicious lemon steamed pudding from the book The Craft of Baking by Karen DeMasco & Mindy Fox.

Fish Stew.

This is Real Simple smokey fish stew from the January 2010 magazine of the same name. It was delicious. Served with crusty parmesan baguette and a crisp 2007 Albariño (Torre Fornelos).

fish stew

fish stew

Applesauce.

14 pints, 3 cups and 8 little lunch sizes

14 pints, 3 cups and 8 little lunch sizes

This kind of work takes time and in the end you have to be an applesauce eater. In the middle of the apple cooking, Ken walks in and says “Whoa”. I know – every window was fogged up and we have a lot of windows. I used 12 pounds of honey crisp and 12 pounds of jonagold apples for my sauce. Organic. The hardest part is peeling and quartering the apples. Ken helped. In the first of two batches I cooked the different types of apples together. That was a mistake. Jonagolds cook WAY faster than honey crisp, they are actually pretty mushy. The honey crisp took more than twice as long – some of them were still somewhat “crisp”. HA! Cooking them in separate pots works best. I used about 1/2 inch of organic apple juice to cook/steam them. Stirred them frequently. One of the recipes said to puree the apples in a food processor. Yeah well, the first batch reminded me of baby food and I could not see any of my family powering down this stuff – including me. The pulse option worked better and by the very last batch I was using the potato masher. I like chunkier sauce. Before processing, I mixed all of the sauce together and added 1/4 cup organic lemon juice (per batch). No sugar. Yep it is a bit tart but the mixture of the two apples have a nice flavor. I’m wondering about all of the other varieties now. Processing the pints took 20 minutes and since my canner only holds 7 jars, no matter their size, I had to repeat this step four times.
I know that on a cold winter day, a jar of homemade applesauce will hit the spot! This kind of work feels good – now to wash the windows.

peeling apples

peeling apples

apples cooking

apples cooking

Home Preserving by Judi Kingry & Lauren Devine

recipe: Home Preserving by Judi Kingry and Lauren Devine