summer theme

I decided to pick a theme for this summer.

FOOD

Could there really BE a better theme?

But let me qualify... it's about improving the food that we eat. And where it comes from. And what's in it.

Last month, I was invited to a luncheon that really opened my eyes to some things I had chosen to ignore for a long time. It was sponsored by Stonyfield Farms. It was held at Restaurant Nora, which was the FIRST certified organic restaurant in the country. And the speaker was Robyn O'Brien, who wrote the book, The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It. I wrote about her talk in more detail in another post that is soon-to-be published elsewhere, so I'll link to that when it's posted.

But let me just say that Robyn is a fellow mom-of-four. She didn't know anything about organic food or agricultural practices until one of her kids had a severe allergic reaction to eggs. That night, she got on the internet to read everything she could about it. (Sounds familiar.) And what she found about how our food supply today is completely different from the food that WE ate as kids, because of pesticides, agribusiness and bio-engineered foods to name a few things, scared her.

The more Robyn talked (and the more amazing organic food I ate that was cooked especially for us by Nora Pouillon with Stonyfield Yogurt incorporated in each delicious dish), the more I realized that it was long past time for me to look at these issues in my family as well.

We're pretty much past the picky, little-kid, "I'll only eat chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese" diets. They're a little more adventurous and because they're more independent, I can now experiment in the kitchen when I'm cooking and make things with more than 3 ingredients.

I'll be writing more about this over the summer, but here are the changes I've decided to implement so far.

Buy organic milk. I've balked at the price many times over the years. I did try to buy hormone-free, antibiotic-free milk when I could get it (thank you Trader Joes and Costco) but I couldn't get past the price of organic milk. But when I added up some changes recently, I realized it's only $10-12 a week more. I can afford that. If you are thinking of going organic, do it in baby steps. Don't change your whole grocery list overnight. $10 is doable.

Buy organic eggs. Again, these are a lot more expensive, but we only use a dozen eggs a week. So it's $3 more.

Buy organic yogurt. The dairy product we consume the most after milk is yogurt. (Thank you, Stonyfield for being in my regular grocery store!)

Seek out organic produce and gradually transition over to all-organic. This will take awhile. Do you know about The Dirty Dozen? The fruits and vegetables with the most pesticide residue? Start with the ones on that list that you eat the most. I've switched to organic strawberries, apples, celery and lettuce because those are available at the store where I normally shop. This is going to mean expanding my shopping trips to include our local organic grocery store, Trader Joes and farmers markets. At some point, we may join a CSA again... but baby steps.

Grow our own. Perhaps the only thing I do worse than keep up with the laundry is grow vegetables. I've tried for years to grow tomatoes in various parts of my yard and I've never had any success. I've always lamented that the sunniest part of my yard is on the patio. And then I read a blog post about growing vegetables in containers, and voila! Problem solved. I don't know why I never thought of that before! I've got 4 different kinds of tomatoes, cucumbers, 3 different kinds of peppers and herbs. I even have actual tomatoes already! (See above!) My virgin harvest. It won't fulfill all of our produce needs, but again, baby steps.

So tell me about you. Do you eat organic? Grow your own veggies? What keeps you from making changes? Let's share our baby steps.

disclaimer: I was a guest of Stonyfield at the luncheon and received Robyn O'Brien's book (which is eye-opening) and a goody-bag of Stonyfield products and information. All opinions expressed in this post are my own.