I'd like to buy organic, but... have you bought organic grapes lately?

Yesterday, for almost the first time in years, I bought something at the grocery store without a coupon, without it being on sale (as far as I knew), without even knowing the price per lb. or how many lbs. I was purchasing. I was throwing caution to the wind and buying organic grapes. I wanted some grapes, they looked fresh, they were organic and at my local grocery store. It wasn't a gia-normous bag or anything, but held a couple of bunches of grapes. (My daughter and I, fresh from the pool, were freezing in the produce section, which may also account for our rush through the section).

I like grapes and my kids like grapes, but non-organic grapes (actually, imported non-organic grapes) are on the Dirty Dozen list of non-organic produce to avoid on the Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce Wallet Guide by Environmental Working Group. 

Today I was putting away the bags and pulled out the receipt. It turns out the grapes were on sale but the cost was still $8.65. "CardSav .79" the receipt helpfully noted. That was 2.63 lb. of grapes at $3.29/lb. (normally $3.58/lb.).

I can justify the purchase only because my fridge is still on the fritz and we're desperate for fresh produce. But I don't think I can ever buy organic grapes again. I'll buy non-imported, non-organic grapes and spray them with a produce cleaner and hope for the best. I'm also fantasizing about a grape arbor somewhere in my shady yard.

Mexican lasagna/vegan enchiladas

I took two separate recipes, for enchilada sauce and Mexican lasagna, and adapted them into two dishes--Mexican lasagna (with cow's cheese, for D.) and vegan enchiladas (for M., who can't eat cow's cheese).

Even if I'd had goat's cheese on-hand, I probably wouldn't make Mexican lasagna with it since it takes so much cheese--it would be very costly using goat's cheese, which can run $5-7 for a fist-size chunk.

Enchilada sauce

Adapted from: Mexican Enchilada Sauce

The cool thing about this recipe is that it adds cocoa, to make the sauce brown--didn't really taste the cocoa, so not sure if it added any flavor.

I followed this recipe, except for the following substitutions:

--1 tbsp. chili powder instead of 3, added 1 tsp. cumin

--3 cloves of garlic, chopped (since I had no garlic powder)--could easily use 5-8 cloves

--instead of 3 cups of water, I used 2 cups chicken broth, 3 cups water

--1 28-oz. can crushed tomatoes

Follow the recipe otherwise. Freeze leftover sauce for another batch.

Mexican Lasagna

Adapted from: Honeymoon Mexican Lasagna

I used this recipe as inspiration, and for guidelines for construction, but made it vegetarian and added brown rice since I had no turkey on-hand.

Bean Filling

Combine:

2 cans of pinto beans (better if I had made my own, cooked with garlic and cumin)

1-2 cups cooked brown rice

(optional: small can of chopped black olives)

I threw in chopped chives and a little bit of parsley from my garden, but sauteed onions or scallions with garlic would have been better

Tip:

Use a round casserole dish the size of your tortillas for easier construction.

Construction:

sauce, tortilla, bean filling, a layer of salsa, a layer of shredded cheese

Continue until you reach the top, with cheese the last thing. I wouldn't bother adding parsley to the top.

Vegan enchiladas

Using same bean filling, fill 3-6 tortillas. Put in rectangular glass casserole dish that easily holds them all, with enchilada sauce on the bottom. Put more sauce on the top. Bake with the Mexican lasagna. Serve with sour cream (vegan or otherwise).

What we ate: July 21-25

Our two-year-old GE Profile refrigerator went nuts on Thursday and elevated the interior temperature to 64 degrees top/34 degrees bottom, while making a horrible clicking noise. I salvaged what I could by stuffing anything that would fit (and could be frozen) into the small downstairs freezer, putting stuff that had to be refrigerated into a big cooler in the floor of my kitchen. The repairman can't come until Tuesday. So, since then, we've mostly been eating frozen food from the freezer and anything else we can find, in and out of the house.

Also this week, TA was at away-camp until Thursday night.

Monday

Leftover quiche, broccoli

What PE ate:

scrambled eggs (suddenly hated quiche)

Tuesday

hamburgers on the grill, corn

Wednesday

Mexican lasagna (for D.), vegan enchiladas (for M.) [recipe in separate posting]

What PE ate:

(PE had a friend over and they ate an hour earlier than D and M)

chicken nuggets, apple slices, toast

Thursday

pesto (using fresh basil from deck garden, frozen pine nuts, frozen pecorino)

What PE ate:

cheesy noodles, carrots

Friday

desperation setting in...still no fridge

M. ate enchiladas, which had been frozen after Thursday night

D. and TA ate some frozen cheesy dinner from the freezer downstairs

PE ate cheese and some other stuff

I'd like to buy organic, but... (Pt. 1)

In a perfect world, I'd buy all-organic food—not so much from paranoia, that everything else is poison, so much as wanting to support non-polluting and (hopefully) more humane agriculture and pasturing practices.

I don't like the idea of farmworkers being sprayed with pesticides, or chickens stuck in cages all day, or pigs packed into barns, their waste products deluging groundwater and local streams.

Of course, it's also nice if the food I eat doesn't contain a potentially lethal combination of chemicals and additives.

Long ago, I worked at the EPA Office of Pesticide Programs and was horrified to discover three things:

• That pesticides are regulated and tested individually; few, if any, studies at the time were being conducted on how combinations of different pesticides would affect humans. (Some crops used more than one pesticide, but you're also getting exposure to more than one pesticide, usually, when you eat more than one food at a time or in a day, and as a cumulative effect, as well). I'm not sure if this has changed—my assumption is that it has not, at least as an EPA effort.
  
  
• That the pesticide companies themselves are responsible for the tests for safety. The government was not conducting independent tests themselves, that I could tell. All the lab reports submitted to the EPA docket on a particular pesticide were submitted by the manufacturer. Tests were conducted on animals—the worst being, I thought, on dogs whose vocal cords had been cut so the researchers wouldn't have to hear their cries of pain. [I hope this has changed since I was there].
  
  
  
• That most pesticides on the market have been grandfathered in. So, the EPA has to prove that individual pesticides that are questionably safe (and which are already on the market and have been used for years), should be recalled—here's the kicker–using safety studies from the manufacturers themselves. Any talk of recalling a pesticide was sure to bring protests from the farmers already using it (as well as intense lobbying from the manufacturers themselves).
  

But I can't afford to buy all-organic, all the time. So I make choices, sometimes based on what's the least bad non-organic vegetable to buy, sometimes based entirely on budget.

A web site that I've found helpful with this process is the Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce produced by the Environmental Working Group, which lists the commercial (non-organic) fruits and vegetables they've found to be the safest and least safe. The full list is at: http://www.foodnews.org/walletguide.php. An abbreviated/wallet-size guide is also available from this page. I've downloaded it and have added it to all my computerized shopping lists. The page also offers refrigerator magnets and shopping bags with the list printed on it.

In a future post (or posts), I'll discuss some of the other factors I weigh in my decision-making processes at the grocery store. I'd like to hear from other people on what affects their grocery-buying habits. Is it all budget-based, or do you also get little nudges of conscience that help you justify spending $4 for a dozen free-range eggs?

What We Ate: July 14-18

It's been hot here all week, so when I've cooked, I've tried to make short-cuts to recipes, to get out of the kitchen faster.

Monday

sauteed scallops tossed in with rice noodle-veggie dish leftover from Sunday night

What PE ate:

Trader Joes chicken pot stickers, noodles, carrot

Tuesday

I made a sort-of version of the Greek dish Pastitsio, but without the cream sauce since I didn't want to add another step and since I was under the impression that TA didn't like cream sauce. TA had a friend over for dinner, who ate 5 servings of it.

• Sort-of Pastitsio (recipe follows)

• frozen spinach sauteed with garlic and pine nuts

• (TA's friend is allergic to nuts, so we also had last-minute frozen French green beans with butter, lemon juice and dill).

RECIPE

Sort-of (Stream-lined) Pastitsio

• Prepare 8 oz. of pasta--like penne, elbows, or the squiggly one. Cook until al dente, rinse, set aside.

•Preheat oven to 350.

• Meanwhile, saute 1/2 lb. (or up to a lb.) of ground beef. (If you're using one chopped-up onion, add with beef, and forget the green onions, etc., later. Drain most of the fat; add 4-5 chopped cloves of garlic, saute for 2 minutes; (add chives, green onions); then add small can of diced tomatoes.

• In a large casserole dish, add pasta, then stir in still-warm sauce from pan. You may add shredded cheese or feta (I didn't, and it still tasted fine). Sprinkle top with pecarino or parmesan.

• Put in oven until top cheese looks melted.

What PE ate:

she was at sleepover

Wednesday

With 1/2 lb. of gr. beef leftover, we made tacos, with shredded cheese, tomato and lettuce. TA put it in tortilla and made a burrito. No alternatives, everyone ate it. Vegetables: leftover spinach or beans.

Thursday

I thought I was thawing out a whole, cut-up chicken until too late--and saw that it was just 4 scrawny chicken backs, purchased to make chicken broth. Since I recently over-bought cans of garbanzo beans (and no other), I decided to make this Mediterranean night. I searched on Internet and found a Mediterranean soup at www.realsimple.com, which called for a whole chicken, but I just used chicken backs.

• hummus (1 can of garbanzo beans, tahini, lemon juice)

• falafel (1 can of garbanzo beans, flour, baking soda, garlic, chives, parsley) with pita bread, tomatoes and tahini sauce (tahini, yogurt, lemon juice).

• Mediterranean chicken soup (I thought this was a little bland... it really needs more garlic and/or spices like cumin, but the couscous was a nice touch).

• green salad

Friday

sauteed boneless chicken breasts and thighs (basic recipe in New Joy of Cooking, p. 587, my edition) with Tomatoes and basil (recipe on next page of same cookbook), pasta. Vegies: leftovers or salad.

Reactions: Again, I thought this recipe was too bland. It only called for 1 tbsp. of garlic. Maybe it would have been better with the capers, but my family doesn't like them. It was better with hot sauce and powdered cheese added.

What PE ate:

plain sauteed chicken (set aside) with plum sauce and peanuts she crushed at the table (she didn't like it that much, though)

What We Ate: July 7-11

Monday

M. sick (with PE's virus from last week). D and TA ate leftovers from Sunday's barbecue (smoked pork loin, sausage, cole slaw. M ate pretzel crackers. 

What PE ate: 

I don't know what PE ate since I couldn't stomach the smell of dinner and stayed in my room... She survived.

Tuesday

Everyone still ate leftovers (M had chicken broth and toasted bread).

Wednesday

pesto (from small basil plants thinned out), linguine, green beans

What PE ate:

linguine with shredded cheese, carrot sticks

Thursday

• leftover pesto on store-bought polenta (sliced and heated in casserole dish with olive oil and dried basil); 

• [made-up dish] cannelli beans cooked in a pot with paprika, chives, garlic and sour cream, covered with whole-wheat bread crumbs and put in pan under broiler until bread crumbs toasted

• garlic bread

• green salad

• (later) fruit salad with yogurt dressing

What PE ate:

Neither TA or PE will eat polenta. TA ate pesto on leftover noodles and everything else; PE ate small omelet with cheese and ham, fruit salad later. 

Friday

(I thought there was enough leftover polenta to make another dish with it, but after preparing stuff to put on it, I pulled out of fridge and discovered only 5 small slices left--so I had to improvise)

• polenta, white rice, leftover beans in a casserole dish with leftover/frozen pizza sauce, pecorino cheese and sliced sausage

• baked acorn squash

What TA ate:

baked potato, sausage, bread, squash

What PE ate:

rice, sausage, squash

A cook's (deck) garden

The sun in our yard is limited mostly to our deck, due to the towering oak trees in our south-side neighbor's yard. We also have seven deer who visit our front and back yards at least once a day, eating hosta leaves (though not hosta blooms, for some reason), any other blooms they can find, even the pachysandra which they aren't even supposed to like.

So, my garden is limited to however many pots I can put on the sunny-side of the deck. The deer can't walk up the steps to my deck or I'm sure they would have eaten almost everything I plant there.

Since the sunniest part of the deck happens to face the kitchen window where I stand and wash dishes, I've added more and more flowers to my deck garden over the years so that now I have pink Asian lilies, marigolds, pansies, a large pot of pink hibiscus (yet to bloom in mid-July), and one Black-eyed Susan rescued from the deer.

Otherwise, everything I grow is to eat. Given the limited space, I don't bother growing most vegetables but concentrate instead on herbs. I usually have two pots of basil, each with several plants, one pot each of coriander/cilantro, parsley, spearmint and chives (which have lovely purple blossom heads in early summer). This year I've added a pot of tarragon and one of marjoram, but I've never had much luck in either of these as perennials.

I also have a small herb garden on the south side that doesn't get more than 3 hours of sun a day, where I'm able to grow sage, lavender, two kinds of thyme, rosemary and oregano. These are the only herbs I've found that the deer (or slugs) won't touch.

Since the rosemary in the ground probably won't winter-over in Maryland, I am also propagating/trying to propagate herb cuttings on the deck in smaller pots to ensure their perpetuity, including rosemary and tarragon. Last year the rosemary plant wintered over just fine on the deck, shielded by one side of the house, and I planted it in the ground in the spring. There's something satisfying in trying to keep the same plant growing, like nurturing the same yogurt culture in your fridge for months at a time.

Quick Uses for Herbs

Chives

I use chives in cooking almost everything since I am somewhat allergic to white onions. PE likes to go and harvest it for me with small scissors and bring me strands which I cut in smaller pieces with kitchen shears. Good fresh on top of soups, potatoes, etc., but also added to sauces and recipes calling for onions.

Basil

I love having fresh basil in the summer. I start making pesto with it as soon as I need to thin my plantings, then make pesto every week or so using cuttings off bigger plants (basil will often grow back, so I try not to take the whole plant for cooking purposes until it's nearing winter and ready to die back anyway). I also throw fresh basil leaves on foccacia, both before and after cooking, and cut it fresh into any Italian sauce.

Cilantro/coriander

We use coriander in Thai cooking (not so much these days since kids won't eat it) and in making fresh salsa and guacamole.

Thyme

I tend to use thyme more in cold-weather cooking, which doesn't always jive with its growing season. Good with herb-roasted chicken, in soups and stews.

For more information on growing and using herbs, I strongly recommend Rodales Illustrated Encyclopedia of Herbs (listed in my Amazon widget on the web page for this blog).

What we ate: June 30-July 4

I got busy this week, with D out of town and PE getting a stomach virus mid-week, so I didn't write down what we ate every day. I vaguely remember leftovers on Monday and turkey meatloaf in the middle of the week (not a hit), then on to D. grilling chicken on Friday. So, I'll use this space to talk about the only memorable thing I made:

3 Things From the Same Dough

(This was on the same night as the turkey meatloaf; PE will not eat meatloaf, even when disguised as a hamburger in a bun; creativity ensued...)

Since I was making bread in the bread machine anyway, I put it on the dough cycle. When done, I took out and divided into 3 balls on a wooden board dusted with flour.

• The first ball was pushed into a small greased loaf pan, left to rise in the oven, set to "breadproofing" (100 degrees).

• The second ball was rolled out into a rectangle, then spread with butter and sprinkled with a little sugar and cinnamon, with a small handful of raisins pushed into dough. It was then rolled back up into a log and put in a small, greased loaf pan into the oven to rise.

• The third ball was rolled into a mini pizza, very thin crust, and set aside to rise a little while the the others were rising, until I could make the sauce for it.

After I rolled out the mini pizza, I made some quick tomato sauce in the microwave (see Recipe in previous posts). I took the two loaves out of the oven to rise some more and set the oven to 375. I added the sauce and shredded cheese to the pizza dough and put it in when oven was hot enough. I then added the 2 bread loaves when they had risen enough.

Lessons learned:

• Bread dough is not the same as pizza dough--it's less moist and thus less flexible. So, it was not a perfect pizza, but PE didn't seem to mind. She liked having her own little pizza. An adult might notice the difference.

• I've never figured out how to get raisins to stick to raisin bread. Once sliced, a few of the raisins always manage to fall out. Maybe I should add the raisins to the dough cycle in the machine, so they'll be more integrated, then add cinnamon and sugar as an afterthought? I don't know how Pepperidge Farm gets their raisins to stick...