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?