The Dirty and The Clean

If I were a millionaire, we'd only be eating organic foods.  I'm not... so we don't.  Every trip to the grocery store is an inner battle.  Do I buy regular GMO (genetically-modified organisms)  and pesticide laden foods or go for the expensive organics?

A few months ago, I was introduced to the concept of the Dirty Dozen.  This list has helped me out greatly in the produce department.  No questions asked, if they are on the list, organics are bought.

So here is the list:

Fruits

Apples

Cherries

Grapes

Nectarines

Peaches

Pears

Raspberries

Strawberries

Veggies

Bell Peppers

Celery

Potatoes

Spinach

Did you know there is an opposite of the Dirty Dozen?  It's commonly referred to as the Clean 15!  You can skip the organic varieties of these.

I'll be sweet and list them for you:

Fruits

Banana

Blueberries

Kiwi

Mango

Papaya

Pineapple

Watermelon

Veggies

Asparagus

Avocado (is this a fruit or veg?)

Broccoli

Cabbage

Garlic

Onion

Shelling Peas

Sweet Corn

These two lists have helped me a ton during my grocery shopping outings.  If I could memorize them, it would be super awesome! 

If you'd like to watch a really awesome movie about Pesticides and GMOs, I highly recommend watching The Future of Food.  I believe you can watch it for free via Hulu.com.  It's some scary stuff.

Adventures in Vermicomposting

In the backyard of our former house lived two blue bins. What lived inside those bins was gold-ok it was black, but worth more than gold to me. It was my compost! I obsessed over what I could add to it, turned it regularly, and grew to love my ugly boxes of decay. Of course, in our adventure known as "moving" I had to dump out my precious compost and yes, I cried.

I've been sitting in our current house, a rental, missing the process of adding to my bins and knowing that after a few years I could feed all my beautiful flowers. This past Monday I decided this was just plain silly. I should be able to compost no matter where I live! With a little bit of research, a power drill, and some worms; I built a vermicomposting bin.

Being in the dead of winter, I didn't want my wormies to become wormcicles, so of course I stored them in our 1/2 bath downstairs! I knew we wouldn't be expecting any guests in the near future and The Father and I could use some exercise walking up the stairs to the throne. This was so much fun already! I fed them a few baby carrots and an apple core and made sure their newspaper bedding stayed dry.

Everything was going well until this morning! CAUTION: Worms on the lam! I woke up to find 15 worms shriveled up into sticks on my laundry room floor. There were 5 more that we rescued just in time. This time we secured the lid to the bin using the attached latches. There were air holes so surely they wouldn't suffocate.

4 hours go by... we return home from an outing to the library and hardware store.
I SHIT YOU NOT- 25 worms all over the bathroom floor, 3 two feet up the wall, 1 on the toilet seat and 1 had made his way into our kitchen!!!!

[insert the quiet sound of Taps being played on a tiny worm-sized bugle]

Where oh where did I go wrong? and better yet, what do I do now?

Did I mention how much worms gross me out? No? Well they do and I use a toothpick to move them from the from one area to another. No, I don't stab them like an appetizer; I just scoop them up and relocate their precious, squirmy selves.

For the moment, they are living in the garage as I try to find a better place for them to live.

I tried... and I failed. I accept my defeat.

Stop! Put down that tomato!

Recently it has been brought to my attention that there are some shady practices behind commercially grown tomatoes. I'm not a big tomato eater but I do use them in some recipes. This summer, we will be canning our own tomatoes for use in chili and stew during the winter. I don't want our dollars funding slavery practices. Please buy your tomatoes locally. Not only will you be supporting a local farmer, but you will also ensure your dollars aren't going towards bad farming practices.

Here is an excerpt from the article, you can read the whole thing here.

"The beige stucco house at 209 South Seventh Street is remarkable only because it is in better repair than most Immokalee dwellings. For two and a half years, beginning in April 2005, Mariano Lucas Domingo, along with several other men, was held as a slave at that address. At first, the deal must have seemed reasonable. Lucas, a Guatemalan in his thirties, had slipped across the border to make money to send home for the care of an ailing parent. He expected to earn about $200 a week in the fields. Cesar Navarrete, then a 23-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico, agreed to provide room and board at his family’s home on South Seventh Street and extend credit to cover the periods when there were no tomatoes to pick.

Lucas’s “room” turned out to be the back of a box truck in the junk-strewn yard, shared with two or three other workers. It lacked running water and a toilet, so occupants urinated and defecated in a corner. For that, Navarrete docked Lucas’s pay by $20 a week. According to court papers, he also charged Lucas for two meager meals a day: eggs, beans, rice, tortillas, and, occasionally, some sort of meat. Cold showers from a garden hose in the backyard were $5 each. Everything had a price. Lucas was soon $300 in debt. After a month of ten-hour workdays, he figured he should have paid that debt off.

But when Lucas—slightly built and standing less than five and a half feet tall—inquired about the balance, Navarrete threatened to beat him should he ever try to leave. Instead of providing an accounting, Navarrete took Lucas’s paychecks, cashed them, and randomly doled out pocket money, $20 some weeks, other weeks $50. Over the years, Navarrete and members of his extended family deprived Lucas of $55,000."