Going Organic

Brad and Meg, I've enjoyed reading your recent cooking adventures! So interesting! For those who don't know me, I'm Brad's cousin... and Meg invited me to participate here on The Persnickety Pantry. Last winter I posted a few of the slow-cooker recipes I was trying from the Fix-It-and-Forget-It cookbook.

This winter I'm on a (semi)organic food kick. My newest cookbook (a Christmas gift) is Nourishing Traditions. It has a lot of really weird recipes... raw meat appetizers, anyone? ...but also some good information about nutrition and health.

What got me started in this direction was watching some documentaries this past year on food processing in America. If you're interested, they are available for instant download at Netflix if you have a Netflix account. (If you don't, I think you can get a 2-week free trial.) We watched:

• Super Size Me
• King Corn
• Food Inc.
  

 We know we don't eat healthy, so my mission is to figure out how I can change that for my family! I started with reading labels. I was amazed at how many foods contact either high fructose corn syrup or hydrogenated vegetable oils. So that was my first baby step-- to eliminate those 2 ingredients from our diets. It has been a challenge, but by careful label-reading I've found acceptable substitutes for most things my family enjoys. We've been doing that for about 6 months or so.

My next step is to start cooking from scratch as much as possible, so that I know that everything that's in our food is what I put in it myself. Ideally that step would include organic meat and vegetables and raw milk, but due to cost and availability I can't go there yet.

Right now I have a pot of what-is-supposed-to-eventually-turn-into-beef stock boiling on the stove. I need to go skim the "scum" off and turn the heat down to let it simmer for 12 to 72(!) hours. More of my cooking adventures later!