Give your cooking a makeover!

I was talking with my husband one day while browsing Amazon for titles of organic baking cookbooks. I commented on what I found to be a surprising lack of books on the topic, adding that maybe this was a niche that needed filling (perhaps by me?) "The reason there aren't any organic baking books is because there's no need for them," my husband explained patiently. "You don't need a recipe to make organic food--you just need organic ingredients. Any recipe can be organic." I sulked for a moment, not wanting to give up so soon on my newly discovered road to authorship, but I knew what he said made perfect sense. I had been preparing my favorite recipes organically (mostly) for a few months now, without the aid of any special cookbooks. There is virtually no recipe that can't be made "organic" simply by substituting organic ingredients for the conventional ones. Okay, I suppose that the recipes found in The Twinkies Cookbook: an Inventive and Unexpected Recipe Collection from Hostess can not be made organic no matter how hard one tries (I do not even want to know what is in a "Twinkie Burrito"), but any other recipe calling for normal ingredients can be converted easily. In fact, recipes for baked goods--cookies, bread, brownies, cakes--are great candidates for organic makeovers because organic butter, flour, sugar, eggs, chocolate, oats, dried fruit, and other common baking ingredients are readily available. For example, I recently made the infamous Neiman-Marcus cookies using organic ingredients with the exception of the vanilla and the pecans (a word of caution here: if you make these cookies, you probably only want to make half of the recipe, unless you are not like me and you have the will power not to eat all of the 144 cookies the full recipe makes. As it was, I got 90 cookies out of the half recipe and yes, I ate most of them). Substituting organic ingredients for their conventional counterparts guarantees a healthier dish; not so much from a fat-and-calorie standpoint, although there is some debate about whether the fats in organic foods are better for you than those in non-organic foods, but more from a what-I'm-eating-will-not-harm-my-body standpoint. And as I've mentioned before, they usually taste better, especially when it comes to organic produce.

Eating organic does not have to be difficult; in fact, it can be as easy as making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or your grandmother's macaroni and cheese. Give your favorite recipe an organic makeover, and I'm sure your family (and your body) will thank you.

GO PATS! (Sorry, I couldn't help myself--we're all a little Patriots-crazed here in New England these days.)

Kate
The Ordinary Organic

Living Like a King(solver)

I'm not usually one of those people who believes that "everything happens for a reason"--at least, not in the guidance-from-above sense. Yet on the very same day I wrote about localvores and how the idea of self-enforced food restriction wasn't something I was ever likely to try, I began reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle thinking it was a book about eating organic foods. As it turns out, the book chronicles the cross-country relocation of the author and her family from Arizona to Virginia and their decision to eat only locally grown and produced foods for at least one year. Within twenty-four hours, I was devising plans in my head to convert my entire back yard into vegetable beds and contemplating which breed of heritage chickens would be the best type to raise as egg layers. However, I still have that nagging problem of not having access to locally grown and milled flour, not to mention two of my other necessities for life: sugar and coffee. And while I could probably get by for a few months without fresh berries, cantaloupe, and cucumbers, my four- and six-year-old children would not be quite as content to wait for the appropriate seasons for the afore-mentioned to arrive (are you kidding? They can't even wait the fifteen seconds it takes to walk from the toy store to the car before they demand to open it NOW). From what I've read thus far, I've already deduced that I do not possess even one tenth of the patience or self-control that the author and her family seem to exert almost effortlessly when it comes to eating only foods that are in season locally--not in Florida or California or Mexico. I know those blueberries in the grocery store were picked weeks ago and then sat in boxes in trucks or on trains for days, and that blueberries really are not meant to withstand all that travel and still look as fresh as the day they were picked. In the case of conventionally grown berries, the fact that they do look freshly picked should signal to us that these blueberries are packing more than antioxidants. And even the organically grown berries (which are not usually quite as pretty nor do they last as long), although they may be physically chemical-free, are still using up a lot of precious fossil fuels to get from point A to our refrigerators. But my kids really love them, and I hate to deny them the pleasure of eating something as enjoyable (not to mention healthy) as blueberries, especially when I know the reason "they're not really in season right now" would be falling on youthfully deaf ears. Suddenly, eating organic is not as simple as going to Hannaford's and loading my grocery cart with organically grown produce (like I did last week--and I was so proud of myself, too.)

One item I have decided against eating out of season from now on, though, is the tomato. For years, I have been simultaneously disappointed and outraged each time I've ordered a caprese salad in a restaurant, even in a really fantastic restaurant, and the tomatoes have been pale, mealy, and bitter--disappointed because the tomato tastes terrible, and outraged that the restaurant had been so foolish as to have purchased such poor quality produce. Now I understand who the true fool in the scenario is: the same fool who, on a trip to Maine just this past weekend, ordered a pizza with pesto and tomatoes. As soon as the pizza was set down in front of me and I looked at the chunks of barely pink fruits with crystallized flesh sitting in watery puddles on top of the cheese, I thought "Why did I order this? Tomatoes don't grow in Maine in the middle of January." Then and there, I decided I would not eat another fresh tomato until I could pick it myself out of my garden, purchase it from a local farmer, or take it out of my farm box this coming summer. It's not much, but it's a start.

Whether it be the result of divine intervention or pure coincidence, it seems obvious that Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is the perfect book for me to be reading at this point in my quest for information and guidance on organic living. Although I have read barely a hundred pages of the Kingsolvers' story, I have already begun to understand what is likely to be the most important lesson I will learn from their localvore experience: in order to live like kings, we should strive to eat like the Kingsolvers.

Kate
The Ordinary Organic

Organic: it's not just for earthy-crunchy tree huggers anymore

Last week I was talking with a friend about Jessica Seinfeld’s cookbook for children, Deceptively Delicious, which I had received as a Christmas present. We were discussing how the premise of the book—making fruit and vegetable purées and adding them to your kids’ meals without telling them as a means of sneaking more fruits and vegetables into their diet—negates the fun of cooking with your kids since said kids can’t be in the kitchen while the “deceptively” healthy food is being prepared or they won’t touch it with a ten-foot fork. “At first, I thought it sounded interesting,” said my friend, who had seen the Seinfelds touting the cookbook on a talk show. “But when they started talking about cooking and puréeing and freezing the vegetables, I said ‘This is way too earthy-crunchy for me.’”

I was momentarily rendered speechless by her comment. I hadn’t realized that some people still regard healthy or organic food as “earthy-crunchy”. Since that conversation, I have been paying closer attention to the attitudes of my friends and family towards all-natural and organic foods. I ran into another friend in the grocery store recently, and while we were chatting I noticed her surreptitiously glancing at the contents of my shopping cart—which were, for the most part, organic—with a slightly raised eyebrow. She didn’t say anything, but it was obvious from her expression that she wasn’t on board with the whole organic idea. And just by observing some of the snacks and beverages that a surprising number of my acquaintances allow their kids to consume (we’re talking freeze pops, donuts, Twinkies, soda and Teenie Weenie drinks—I didn’t even know they still made those) I’m guessing they’re not terribly concerned about what might be in the foods that their kids eat. A similar attitude is shared by the majority of my immediate family. My father, brother, and sister think it’s hogwash, to put it delicately (I can guarantee my father would have voiced his opinion on the matter in quite another way), and while my mother is a little more open to the subject, she’s not about to change the way she does her grocery shopping at this stage in her life (she does have to live with my father, after all). In comparison, my husband’s family shows a good deal more promise, especially my sister-in-law Jocelyn and her husband, Sal. Jocelyn is very conscientious about her health and often purchases organic products. I am unsure of Sal’s stance on organic versus conventional products, but I do know he is passionate about good food and he loves to cook, so I am willing to bet he chooses organic when possible. My mother-in-law is slowly realizing that maybe her sister out in California has had the right idea all along about eating only organic and all-natural foods (the vegetarian diet, though, not so much). As for my father-in-law, well, he’s a hard one to judge. Suffice it to say that if my mother-in-law wants to eat certain foods and not others, for whatever reason, then he’ll do the same, regardless of his thoughts on the matter, and I suspect the gist of those thoughts to be that he really couldn’t care less if his food is organic or not.

Overall, I think it’s quite plain to see that I’m not exactly surrounded by like-minded people when it comes to organics. So the obvious question is: why am I so gung-ho about organics? The short answer is that to me, it just makes sense. If there is an organic, or at least all-natural, version of a conventional product—which there is for virtually any product you can imagine—why wouldn’t I buy the organic/natural one? Take Oreos, for example. Oreos are full of things you really shouldn’t eat, such as partially hydrogenated soybean oil and high fructose corn syrup (more on these evils in a future blog). Luckily, the Newman’s Own Organics company makes Newman-O’s, which contains organic sugar instead of corn syrup and organic palm oil; in fact, there is even a description of what palm oil is on the back of the package. In a blind taste test, it would be a challenge to say which cookie is which, although I happen to think the Newman-O’s taste far better than Oreos. And similar comparisons can be made between hundreds of conventional products and their organic counterparts. Admittedly, the cost of an organic product is often higher than that of the same conventional product. But as more grocery chains introduce their own organic brands and as more consumers make the switch to buying organic, the price gap between conventional and organic products will lessen steadily. Besides, when one weighs the cost of eating healthy foods against the cost of medical care stemming from eating unhealthy foods, there really is no doubt which is the more expensive scenario.

Going back to the beginning of this blog for a moment, I am amazed that many people still think organic food is only for earthy-crunchy tree-hugging hippies. Not so, people. Hence my moniker “the Ordinary Organic.” Yes, I prefer to purchase organic and all-natural foods and products. I also take showers on a regular basis, shave all the parts of my body that American women are expected to keep smooth, and wear a bra; I do not burn incense or smoke marijuana or practice free love. I am not a hippie. I do like to grow vegetables, herbs, and flowers, so maybe I am somewhat earthy. I prefer crunchy cookies to chewy ones, so I guess you could call me crunchy. And although I don’t usually make a practice of hugging trees, I can’t imagine a world without them…you get the point. I am an ordinary girl who happens to think that eating organic and natural food is the right choice for me and my family. If nothing else, my goal in writing this blog is to liberate the organic industry of its “earthy-crunchy” reputation once and for all.

I’ve never been one to force my beliefs upon others. The intent of this blog is not to bully readers into throwing away everything in their refrigerators and cupboards and restocking their kitchens with only organic products (I can assure you that that certainly has not happened in my house). I simply wish to share my thoughts and experiences with others who are curious about “going organic” as well as to receive feedback and advice from readers who feel the same way—and even those who don’t; I’m always game for a lively debate! And maybe, just maybe, some of my friends and family will come to understand that organics don’t have to be “earthy-crunchy” anymore.

Thanks for stopping by!

Kate Strassel
The Ordinary Organic