Buying Organic

Most of us know we should be eating organically, but aren’t really sure where to start or if it’s really worth it. I slowly waded into the world of organics when our four children were young. I knew some things were more important than others—I knew eating those shiny apples with that layer of wax could not be good for you—organic apples were not shiny and were decidedly smaller than their non-organic counterpart. It made perfect sense to me to feed a baby organic babyfood—but as far as snack foods and other processed foods, organic really wasn’t an option. As with all mothers, I did the best I could, encouraging our children to eating healthy, whole foods when I could. Still, they all ate their fair share of goldfish and pretzels. 

Being a food writer for almost two decades, I am immersed in the food world on a daily basis. The more I learned, the more fearful of the food industry I became. I quietly stopped buying milk and was happy when almond milk became a thing. I bought organic eggs and organic chicken when I could find it. When I realized how many ingredients were in store bought bread and the fact that it NEVER goes bad, I began grinding my own wheat and baking my own bread. But still, eating clean, especially when you are raising children, is not easy. 

That being said, I absolutely feel certain things should definitely be organic. If you are knew to the organic arena, consider starting with the Dirty Dozen List. This is a list compiled by The Environmental Working Group, an health research and advocacy organization. They determine which fruits and vegetables have the most pesticides on them and which 15 ones have the least. 

Dirty Dozen List

Apples

Strawberries

Grapes

Celery

Peaches

Spinach

Sweet Bell Peppers

Nectarines

Cucumbers

Cherry Tomatoes

Snap Peas

Tomatoes

I would add potatoes, all berries, any lettuce or type of greens, green beans, pears, plums, and carrots.

Boosting Your Immune System

Nobody likes getting sick, but for many of us, even catching a cold just doesn’t feel like it’s an option. There are some practical things you can do to boost your immune system and hopefully they will help prevent you from getting sick. 

Drink more filtered water! For added benefits, squeeze half a lemon in your water. Water is essential to your body and it also helps flush out toxins.

Eat clean. The better your diet is, the better chance you have to stay healthy. That means avoid sugar and processed foods and whenever possible eat organic fruits and vegetables and grass fed beef, pastured pork and chicken, and wild caught fish. Choose healthy fats such as avocado, olive oil, coconut oil, flaxseeds and chia seeds. Pastured eggs are also terrific—they also taste so much better than eggs from industrialized farms. 

Go nuts! Nuts are so good for you and make a great snack in between meals. Raw nuts are best, but if you want roasted nuts, make them yourself by tossing raw nuts with olive oil and sprinkling with Himalayan sea salt before roasting them in the oven. 

Sleep. Make sure you are getting enough sleep—shoot for 8 hours or quality sleep. Create the best environment you can in your bedroom. Get an air cleaner. Try using a diffuser with essential oils—I love lavender. If you have any sinus issues or allergies, tea tree oil or eucalyptus oils are both wonderful. 

Feed the good bacteria in your gut. Prebiotics, the bacteria food, are critical for your gut health—which essentially IS your immune system. Strive for 2-3 servings a day. Feast on apples, bananas, berries, citrus fruits, kiwi, asparagus, garlic, leeks, onions, beans, barley, quinoa, potatoes, yams, flaxseeds and chia seeds. Probiotics, the actual bacteria, are also critical. Eat yogurt (with live cultures), cheese (preferably raw), kefir, fermented vegetables such as pickles, sauerkraut, kimchi, fermented soy such as miso and tempeh, and kombucha. 

If you do get sick, there are certain things you can consume that may help lessen the severity and duration of your illness. Chicken soup really does help, but you need the kind that comes from homemade chicken stock, preferably a pastured, organic chicken. Most canned soups do not fit the bill—just read the labels if you don’t believe me. So many additives and preservatives and very little real food. Garlic has long been known to be good for you—when you are sick it has properties that can help you feel better, sooner. Fresh ginger is another natural immune booster and healer that has been used for thousands of years. Try making a tea out of a few peeled knobs of ginger—just boil some water with the ginger and let it steep for five minutes or so. For a real boost, add some fresh lemon juice and honey to the ginger tea. Green tea is another star when it comes to your health. 

Hot Tip: Try mixing up an immunity elixir. Fill up a big pitcher with filtered water, peeled and sliced fresh ginger, freshly squeezed lemon juice, fresh mint leaves and some steeped green tea. Keep the pitcher in the refrigerator and try to drink it in a day or two. Bring a few bottles of it to work or take it with you while you run errands.

What is the Best Salt for Cooking?

By far the most important ingredient in cooking is salt. If your food is well seasoned, it shouldn’t need any more salt once it is plated. So, do you reach for regular table salt, or do you act more “chefy” and get a box of Kosher salt. Or, do you fork over a few more dollars and get the trendy pink Himalayan Sea Salt? Isn’t salt, well, just salt? 

First, a little salt primer. Salt has been around pretty much since the beginning of time, and it is essential for life for humans and animals. Always an important part of civilization, in the ancient Roman times, salt was used as currency to pay the Roman soldiers—and we can all imagine how important they were to society. 

Salt is a crystalline mineral made of two elements, Sodium (Na) and Chlorine (Cl). Don’t get anxiety like you had in high school chemistry class, I just wanted you to know what salt is and why it’s so critical for our well being—after all, for so many years all you ever hear out there is how bad salt is for you and how it causes high blood pressure and all sorts of other ailments. 

Guess where the main source of salt comes from in the Western diet and why most people are getting too much of it? Can you say processed food? Yep—those frozen dinners, canned soups, and anything in a box, is loaded with sodium. Even things labeled “low sodium” still pack a ton of sodium—and for the most part, they have no flavor so you want to add—wait for it, SALT. 

So let’s get to it. What are the main salts out there and what is the difference.

Regular Table Salt

Not surprisingly, table salt is heavily refined. Because of that, anti-caking agents are often added, as is Iodine. I am against additives that are unnecessary, and prefer to get my intake of iodine from real food—dairy, fish, eggs and seaweed are all good choices. All in all, I am not a fan of regular table salt. 

Sea Salt

Sea salt is made by evaporating sea water. As you can imagine, the origin of the sea water is of paramount importance. Were the waters clean or polluted? Most of the time, it’s hard to tell from the labels what sea is the sea of origin, unless you choose a gourmet or high-end sea salt. 

Kosher Salt

Why is it called Kosher? Jewish law requires the blood to be removed from animals before they are consumed—the Kosher butchers found Kosher salt works best for the job. Chefs and home cooks like Kosher salt because it is easy to grab with your fingers to add to food while you are cooking. It usually doesn’t have any anti-caking agents or Iodine added to it. 

Himalayan Sea Salt

By far my salt of preference, Himalayan sea salt is harvested and hand mined in Pakistan. Rich in Iodine and beneficial minerals, this beautiful pink salt helps create an electrolyte balance, helps strengthen bones improves circulation and may even help lower blood pressure. I love the clean flavor of the pink salt and that it dissolves quicker than Kosher salt. 

The bottom line is salt is critical for your health and in making your food taste delicious. I have two bamboo salt pigs on my counter. One holds Kosher salt and the other has a place for two things—one half holds Himalayan Sea Salt and the other coarsely ground black pepper. I got the salt pigs at Bed, Bath and Beyond and I love them. Happy salting! 

Hot Tip: In specialty shops and some grocery stores, Himalayan sea salt is often way overpriced. Your best bet is to seek out an Indian grocery store or market—you can get a big bag of it for just a few dollars. I also often find great deals at TJ Maxx Homegoods. Of course, you can also find it online. 

Juicing Verses Blending

Juicing and blending (i.e. smoothies) are all the rage—even many grocery stores have juice bars inside where you can plunk down $7 and enjoy a refreshing juice drink while you shop. So, which is better for you—juicing or blending? 

The answer is both are terrific for you for different reasons. Juicing extracts nutrients and water from the vegetables and fruits and discards the fiber. That might sound like a bad thing, but this means your digestive system doesn’t have to work hard to break down that fiber, so the nutritious juice is immediately digested and goes directly into your blood stream. Many health experts say the nutrients go immediately where they are needed most in your body, promoting healing where it is needed. Many cancer patients swear by juicing—some claim it was a big factor in healing them of their cancer. Think about the amount of vegetables you can injest in just one drink—not many of us could sit down and eat an entire bunch of kale, a few stalks of celery, a couple of carrots, a lemon and a green apple—but guess what? That is the perfect glass of green juice. 

Blending uses all of the fiber from the fruits and vegetables and slowly releases the nutrients into your blood stream. The fiber also tends to help fill you up. Another added benefit to blending is that you can add other things—healthy fats such as avocados, chia seeds or almond butter. You can add healthy things you might not normally eat, but you know are good for you—think ginger, matcha, cacao powder, mint, cinnamon and turmeric to name a few. 

Hot Tip: Whenever possible, try to use organic produce. The use of pesticides on fruits and vegetables is disturbing—especially when you are consuming the entire fruit or vegetable.

If you are trying to lose a few pounds or are just looking to boost your health, both juicing and blending should definitely be on your menu plan. Try having a green smoothie in place of breakfast, and a glass of freshly pressed green juice as a late afternoon snack. Just try to consume your smoothies and juices as soon as possible after making them. Oxidation begins immediately and the nutrients dissipate the longer they sit. 

The Magic of Vinegar

Vinegar has been around since the beginning of time and once people began writing things down, we saw evidence of its far ranging uses and benefits. Did you know Hippocrates used vinegar as an antibiotic? Asian Samaurai warriors ingested vinegar, believing it helped their fighting performance. During the Civil War, doctors used vinegar to clean wounds and fight off infections. 

Apple Cider Vinegar is made by the fermentation of apple cider. Sugar is broken down by bacteria and yeast first into alcohol and then vinegar. At health food stores and some grocery stores, you can find organic, unfiltered and unpasteurized ACV and you will notice a dark, cloudy sediment at the bottom of the bottle. This is called the “mother” and consists of acetic acid bacteria. 

Many studies have shown ACV stimulates the body’s metabolic rate, causing the body to burn more fat. Other health experts say drinking ACV can help lower your blood pressure and your cholesterol, and can also stop acid reflux. 

ACV is quite strong, but if you dilute it in a big glass of water, it’s not too bad. Try mixing a teaspoon of ACV with a big glass of ice water—you can also add honey to sweeten things up. Try using it to make salad dressing. Add a splash or two in a bowl of soup—the acid really brightens up the flavors. 

So now you know some of the health benefits of ACV, but what can you use plain old distilled white vinegar for? Besides canning pickles, I use white vinegar as my main household cleaning product. Just buy some plastic spray bottles and fill them ¾ of the way full with white vinegar. Add water to fill the bottle and use to spray on countertops, to clean the bathroom, even to mop tile floors with. When you first make the switch from nice smelling cleaning products, you might not like the strong smell of vinegar. Trust me you will get used to it and pretty soon won’t even notice it. Also, as soon as you wipe the vinegar solution away, no smell lingers. 

When it comes to laundry, white vinegar is great to use instead of fabric softener—just add it in that last rinse cycle. Don’t worry, your clothes will just smell clean, not at all like vinegar. 

Do you use vinegar in other ways? Please share if you do!

Decoding Eggs

Natural? Cage free? Free range? Organic? When it comes to eggs, it has become increasingly difficult to know which dozen to choose. Welcome to the crazy and often misleading world of labeling when it comes to our food. 

For many years I bought only organic eggs and I thought I was doing the right thing. I pictured the happy chickens roaming the farm, leisurely pecking insects and worms, laying their eggs with no stress at all. If that is what you also thought, sorry to bring you some disturbing news. 

Just because a chicken is raised as an “organic” chicken doesn’t mean it is roaming freely. As with “free range” chickens, these chickens are mostly housed in windowless warehouses and are given “access” to the outdoors. This could be a small opening—and chances are, the chickens are not going to go outside at all. The conditions are crowded and these “big organic” farms are just a little better than the industrial chicken farms most of us know to be terrible for chickens—and for the quality and nutritional makeup of their eggs. 

Cage free is the same situation—the chickens are crowded, even if they are not in tiny cages. Believe it or not, this can actually be dangerous for the chickens since they often hurt each other or even kill each other. 

So what are you to do? The best thing is to find a local farmer who raises his/her chickens by pasturing them. The next best thing is to look for pastured eggs in the grocery store—our stores carry two different brands. Chickens get their protein from the insects and worms and they get their natural vitamin D from the sunshine. Real pastured eggs have much more of the wonderful vitamins and nutrients than factory farmed eggs. Eggs are chock full of vitamins A, D, E, Omega 3 fatty acids, beta carotene, good cholesterol, and good saturated fat. In addition to the nutritional boon of pastured eggs, they taste better! 

So what about the cost? Sure factory eggs are cheap—but is it worth sacrificing all of that nutrition, not to mention the humane nature of how pastured chickens are treated? Let’s do the math: In our grocery store, pastured eggs are about 6$ for a dozen. That works out to be 50 cents per egg. When you consider an egg or two is a substantial breakfast, that is not too expensive at all. You can make a frittata with 6 to 8 eggs and some vegetables and a bit of cheese, pair with a salad and feed a family of six for a hearty dinner or brunch—that meal would cost you less than ten dollars—that is a real bargain and it’s healthy. 

A great way to find a source for pastured eggs is to head out to local farmer’s markets. Talk to the farmer about how they raise their chickens, what the birds eat, and where and how often you can purchase their eggs. It might take a bit more of an effort, but pastured eggs are definitely worth seeking out.