Do you know of anything with LOW levels of ANYTHING??

Hey, I'll try anything.

Mel

in that there are only two 'keeper' veggies on the list. Most are considered 'tender' veggies.
I have to say that where I live things are sort of strict at many area markets. Stuff HAS to be grown within 150 miles from the county I live in. Believe me, farmers and growers of all kinds come from exactly that DISTANCE to get their slots and spaces! Should they claim to be 'organic' they have to provide some sort of certification to sell AS ORGANIC. Don't know the criteria but I could probably find it all. We usually have about a 3-1 ratio of organic types to standard truck farmers. You always have a choice in season. I have to say now, that I'm very fortunate...I've a giant 18 cu.ft. chest freezer came with my house when we bought it. I've learned how to freeze more foodstuffs than I'd ever imagined possible. I can have FRESH frozen Berries rite now IF I want! If I lose power for more than 3 days, well, I'm toast! Do some sort of free for all for the neighborhood, I guess. KNOCK WOOD QUICK! Thing is, I get the freshest stuff when it's fresh, clean it, freeze it, and enjoy it all year!
More importantly, we find dairy folks and home-grown beef, pork, chicken, and even fish folks at these markets! Their stuff is not cheap, but it IS GOOD! Very GOOD! Believe me, the real home raised stuff, not manufactured raised foods are soo good! We do lose some tho, to the local Whole Foods Stores tho...SIGH! It's just this danged winter! Access to greens and other fresh stuff is soo hard...
As for the meat recall? Glad I'm not a school kid? Hugs to all - j

The fruits and veggies which have the least amoint of residual pesticides are:

asparagus
avocados
bananas
brocolli
cauliflower
sweet corm
kiwis
mangos
onions
papaya
pineapples
sweet peas

And thanks for the dirty dozen.

I married my husband in 65,I was 19 and we moved to a little house,
behind my Brother & sister-law's Organic farm down hill from the compost
hill..Well her husband worked as did mine..This was her hobby,I get the
tickles because there farm was one of the Original houses in the area.
Along came very plush houses,well nobody even though it looked very nice
was not thrilled with the farm. I loved it,all kinds of fruit trees, and no matter
what you wanted veggie wise it was there,and some I have never heard
of,it was so good and the beets and such were just huge..Lot's of people
throught Organic food was weird back then...Good free food is what
I throught...But that Compost pile was a bit much when there was bit
of wind in the summer.

Now my family in Mo. thought it was really weird,no beets that big,wasn't
natual and had no taste,what..For Mi. folks this was Livonia,Mi,they owned
10 acre's..They wouldn't sell any land to builder's or to anyone. It
had Deer,well every critter including skunks who would have babies behind
are little house,good thing we put up tomato juice,because the dogs and cats got to close to the baby skunks...That was hard work,but I was young
and boy I wish I felt that good now...Mel the Bocca Chicken is really good,
and we eat Bocca Burgers once in a while. My sister-in-law another one
retired got bored ,went to work for the school lunch program..They
were always recalling that meat,she said she felt sorry for the kids on
vouchers,they had to eat the food,was all the got,not much at home.
She had to quit to many bugs. (sorry about that) Hugs to all Sue
Am I the only one going home bound crazy...

Well, you just made my day.

I LIVE on asparagus. Eat it practically every day.

I also bought some brussel sprouts (fresh) the other day. I have to use BEANO when I eat them because they are a bit gassy, but otherwise I'm happy with the asparagus.

What about spaghetti squash?. I would buy one, clean it thoroughly, then half it, scoop out seeds, turn it over, put in water and steam it until it's fork tender.

Then you take forks and scoop it out as if you are take out strands of spaghetti. Looks like spaghetti too!!! Add some Smart Balance spread, a bit of garlic and you're in squash heaven.

Not only is asparagus good makes you pee..Bob can eat if he agrees
to have a beano.ha Thanks for spaghetti sqush idea Bob will love that,
J I also freeze a lot as well.. Now if my hands would work better,oh
well.. Sue

I can't recommend this book enough, about how we eat and what our choices really are.

My endo wanted to put me on Lipitor in November, but my cardio said that I'm a prime candidate to get worsening neuropathy. Just cut out processed food and trans fats, he said. So, I've now had 2 months of eating complex carbs, nuts, and lots of fish, and my cholesterol is down, I've lost 5 pounds, and I'm truly enjoying eating this way.

Slow Food is a group that might interest some of us: http://www.slowfood.com/

I have this 'organic' experiment going....and it is hugely labor intensive...You have to find a way around pesticide, herbicide and fertilizer. Fertilizer (compost) is the easiest, but you can only apply it in fall after all crops are off...and it must be 'treated or seasoned.' Herbicides I have never used, and I have a weedy garden...you can use mulch or plastic weed barrier. Pesticides you can companion plant.

I have apple trees, and there is no way you can raise an organic apple....but you can peel them and I am sure that helps.

I have not sprayed the apple trees, but this year I will have to, but at least I choose what to apply and how much.

I have cherries, and those you can do organic...but you have to put these nets over them to not have birds eat them. I do plan on putting in a few pear trees. I raise non-treated raspberries, and have never in my entire life used pesticides on them. I also have rhubarb. Strawberries can also be done without pesticides.

I have a terrible time raising cabbage, brocolli or any cruciferous veggie without some kind of pesticide. They are terribly susceptible to cabbage worms...I would think that perhaps nets may work, I don't know...

I tried this last year,and I tried all kinds of stuff including jalepeno laced water...I understand you can co-plant them with some kinds of plants and flowers that repel cabbage moths. I will try that this year. I have a chart as to what to interplant with what to deter pests.

Green beans, all kinds of peppers, beets, spinach, lettuce do fine...no help.

I have yet to raise nice corn...sunflowers did great.

Squash used to do well, now we have invasions of squash bugs...not squash borers....This hard winter may kill squash bugs, (it is killing me) as they have moved up from the south and do not like hard winters. Squash bugs descend like locusts and if you get them, kiss any viney crop goodbye or spray or powder them...I have heard you can coplant to avoid them and I will try that....I was lucky and got in my crops early...I planted very early and got pumpkins in early August, and in mid August the squash bugs hit with a vengence, by then all my squash, of all types were ready to get stored. My cukes did OK, but the squash bugs also eat cuke vines...if it is a vine, they eat it.

Rutabagas and turnips do fine. I have not done carrots but I think they do fine. Radishes do fine.

I have not tried potatoes, but I do know from living in a potato growing region further north, that they are heavily pesticided and herbicided

Tomatoes are my mainstay and do very well....

To be certain your foods are organic, Oregon Tilth certification is best, and it requries that no artificial fertilizer, or pesticides be on the food for 3 years....you can only apply compost in the fall....you can look up Oregon Tilth and it gives you the criteria. Water sources for your food are tested as are adjoining fields....because I am surrounded by heavily treated typical farmland, my 'garden' would probably not meet Oregon Tilth criteria....I would need a buffer zone and I don't have enough land for that, I don't think...they don't really specify how big the buffer needs to be. I do have over 100 feet from the farmer's lot line, but not from the road, (road chemicals, oil etc).

My water nitrate level is 25ppm. The state cut off level for a mandated reverse osmosis system is 10ppm. There is no safety level for adults but infants exposed to 10ppm, can develop methmyglobimenia, which is blue baby syndrome and if not caught can be fatal....I can't imagine that once you are past infancy that nitrates in your water are harmless. A fish can not live in water over 25ppm. My beta needs to have RO water or bottled water.

Our water is often sold as bottled water....we have a lot of water bottling plants including the areas that are in sand country and have heavy pesticide application. I am sure that bottled water is tested for a lot of chemicals, but it is not pure either. We can't expose ourselves to this nitrate, nor to the atrizine and potentially arsenic on well water systems and any one with a well should have at least nitrates tested for. Nitrate levels and atrazine go together.

City water drinkers have their water tested by the municipality. Well water drinkers have no option but to take care of their own water quality....only upon selling property is your water tested....public health nurses do come out to new moms, and inform them of nitrate water testing. If you sell a home on a private well system, you must test your water for coliform bacteria and it must be zero, and for nitrates, which must be below 10ppm. My well is pretty deep for the area. Wells are recommended to be tested yearly for coliform and chlorinated as needed.

Natural means nothing....even organic can mean nothing.

We have no input into foreign foods or even an idea of what regulations they apply. We don't even know what is foreign or contains foreign ingredients. European food is likely to exceed our standards, with the exception of British beef or lamb.

You can shop at organic food stores, which, I would think would have to be responsible in terms of their reputation.

There is one commonly available wheat flour company that is American....they are not organic tho. You can buy a lot of specialty flours at the regular grocery stores, and any one going gluten free has used these...I have a pantry full.

Cooking oils are another issue....I suppose Olive Oil is best.

You can get premixed gluten free stuff, but I don't know how much of it is organic....I imagine they make it and it isnt' cheap.

We have organic milk, cheese and eggs readily available in regular stores here. You can buy organic yogurt, but I often make mine....WHEN I feel energetic, which is not right now.

Coffee is an issue and you can buy organic coffee. I don't know how organic orange juice is, but I try to buy at least Florida orange juice....the bigger organic food chains carry all kinds of organic fruit juice. But expect to pay.

You can buy 'transitional' which is what I would call my garden produce....everything washes down eventually....so I have no real hope of achieving real organic food....they use too much stuff on adjacent fields. I still get the bugs tho, so, it must be less poisoned than the corn or soybeans around me. At least, my food is not directly sprayed or dusted.

I am surprised any fish are in the river, with the nitrates in my aquifer...but they are. I have heard mixed reviews on wild versus farm raised fish.

It is either very labor intensive to do your own organic, or very expensive to buy premade....even fresh organic is pricey.

I know you can buy 'organic' meat, including ground beef and ground round....but the butcher admits, you really can't rule out mad cow. Our meat, unlike Japan's is not tested. They test very few cattle and most meat is so mixed up....every thing is so mixed up....stuff can be grown here and sent to China for processing and visa versa. I have nagged and nagged about the idea of processing meat in any place that does deer. I don't see the issue of chronic wasting disease as all that different from mad cow, as they are both spongiform encephalopathies, and bovine to human transmission as well as elk to human transmission of the disese to me, negates all claims that there is no bovine to deer transmission or visa versa....and you can not remove prions from contaminated equipment. You can't 'kill' or 'sanitize' a prion off of something. I can not understand for the life of me, why they insist on mixing huge batches of meat from all over the country or world in the same equipment. The less your meat is cut up the better. Some cuts are better. More muscled cuts are the best. I used to love prime rib...still like it, but gave it up...now the choice is filet mignon.

Then I have my weeks or months when I am too sick or fatigued and I simply have to resort to yogurt or pudding and at times, no it isnt organic...I have had my times that I owe my life to Ensure....organic or not!

I think our bodies have the ability to adjust to toxins and germs to a great extent, it is just we are so blasted with toxins these days and we have no idea where they are coming from or what they even are.

Can you imagine 'downed cows' in hot lunch meat??? Come on, where are these people's morals?

I know this may sound like a stupid question but I have to ask it anyway. I'm a city gal. Born and raised. Now my grandpa had a farm in Northport Long Island. We used to go when I was 5. I have no idea what he did on this farm because I can't remember anything from that time.

So what happens if you want to grow your own vegetables, like lettuce, tomatoes, zucchini, squash, etc..

How come there is pesticide on everything that is NOT ORGANIC??

Where the hell do the bugs come from, that farmers have to spray everything?

I have seen movies where crop dusters are spraying pesticides over fields.

Isn't this stuff poison?? why the heck are cropdusters allowed to spray this?

See, I know this sounds stupid, but I have absolutely no knowledge of farming and I just thought that if someday, I have a planter in front of the house, that I might be able to grow basil, or rosemary, or SOMETHING.

My landlord grows grapes right underneath my back window. You should see the vines in the back yard, a big trellis (I think it's called a trellis?)

Hundreds of bunches of grapes grow all summer and then he cuts them down and gives us platters of the stuff. I have to be careful with grapes but I tasted them. OH MY GOD, sweeter than anything in the grocery store.

He also has big pots of stuff in the garden in the backyard. He grows everything. And he grows these 7 foot long zuchini things and he used to give me the squash flowers (except when he handed me them, they were full of bugs inside) and I screamed and ran away and he thought I was nuts but he laughed his head off.

Where the heck do all the bugs come from. Can't we just eradicate bugs??

Don't all gang up on me for asking this stupid question, but you guys are farmers, you know about nitrate in water, ,.....and I don't have a clue.

I just go to the produce stand and buy what's there. I would love to be able to grow stuff, but not if there are going to be bugs inside them. Yuck.

I am sorry for going on a never ending rant about this...however, we lost 50,000 farmers in our state alone since 1970. You used to buy a lot more stuff that was grown, processed and sold locally. I don't know what was wrong with that system. It kept people on small farms, it kept a way of life that is totally gone now. We had a lot less poo per square mile.

Website on this issue---I can not vouch for the facts, but they sound pretty realistic in my experience.

Then some one got the idea to centralize production of stuff.

http://www.familyfarmdefenders.org/p...ureInWisconsin

Milk used to be picked up and taken to local dairies and cheese factories....to a great extent a lot of that still goes on, for us, but California has taken over a lot of milk production. Milk gets 'made' in one place, mixed and processed with milk from other places, poured in tanks some where else and shipped and bottled elsewhere. The milk from hundreds if not thousands of farms can be in one gallon.

We are not talking about IVIG here....where that IS the concept you are going for.

Meat used to be picked up and killed and processed and sold locally...not so much any more. Now thousands of cows can make up a pound of ground beef. One nasty cow and it is all contaminated in a dozen states or more.

We have a lot of big veggie operations, big canneries with names you know.

But we have lost a quarter of our farmland.

It is all monopolies now....very few companies own everything.

If you live in the city, there is still a lot you can do. You don't need to worry about nitrates. Nitrates are essentially the breakdown of cow manure, or any manure...we get a lot of chicken manure here too. One chicken containment building can contain several hundred thousand chickens in cages stacked one on top of the other with the poor birds pooing on each other and subjected to light 24/7 so they lay more eggs.

Then that poo has to be put somewhere, so they put in on the fields and grow corn in that poo and the poo from the 500-1,000 cows that are milked down the road. That is a lot of poo. Then on top of that they add ammonium nitrate that they spray on and you can smell it...don't go outside on that day....Yes they do crop dust, but not around here anymore----we haven't had much that needs dusting since the veggie operation around here stopped. Hundreds of deer graze on the pooed land. Prions are absorbed more readily and cause disease faster if ingested with dirt, or soil. (which is mostly poo)

That poo ends up in the groundwater, the aquifer.


My old farmer neighbors used to call me and tell me they were spraying and to keep the kids in the house and the windows shut. They had a family farm and it went under....very sad.

There is little that can be done as we all derive our water from aquifers. City water is monitored. Well water is not. If you live in a city, you hope your municipality watches this stuff. You have other stuff like lead you can simply filter out.

Prions are also making their way into ground water.

I would just filter for lead and chlorine if I were on city water.

We didn't get rain for 8 weeks and had 10 foot tall corn...it is genetically modified not to need as much water. This corn is going to the ethanol plant or being fed to the cows down the road....we don't eat feed corn.

You can buy non-genetically altered food.

You can shop at organic food stores, if you can not buy from local farmers who grow transitional or organic food.

If you want organic food fresh all year round you have to buy from foreign countries. We eat more fresh in summer and more of our own canned stuff in winter....

You can if you want do a container garden. Those can be really quite productive. But they only last for good weather....that said, you can plant a lot of stuff right after the first freeze and still plant cold weather crops thru July....some crops still make it thru to the first freeze.

You can buy organic milk....milk is a big one....and milk products. You can get away from the hormones and antibiotics. You can buy free range eggs and chicken.

Every one has these visions of rural areas as family farmers....it isn't like that. To survive, most of these farmers have to have 1,000 acres.

There is an organic movement going here, and we have it pretty nice really. More and more, we see organic products and we have farmer's markets. This time of year, you either pay thru the nose for fresh food, or you eat the stuff you froze, dehydrated or canned all summer and fall.

Organic stores are mostly centered in progressive cities, but a lot of regular grocery stores have at least a section devoted to organic and transitional products.

So, yes, you can do some stuff.....and no, you don't need to know about farming. I have lived most of my adult life surrounded by the industry, had friends that were or are farmers....I see the honey wagon go by, 15 times per day, and smell dairyaire of 500 some cows. I don't need to fertilize, because the rain just washes whatever the farmer applied to higher ground to my lower ground.

Beef is an issue, and will remain an issue for a long time. Prion disease takes a very long time to develop altho 'mad cow' in the classic sense has a quicker onset. Obviously that would mean all dairy products. I still eat them and
I don't fret about it....not much you can do.

You can eat the foods that absorb less chemicals, and stay away from those that do, or buy those organically or transitionally grown.

I think it is a matter of minimizing....you can not get rid of it all.

Oh we need the bugs---they are part of the ecosystem---what would birds eat without bugs? Soil would not break down without bugs....Bugs are essential to the health of the planet....huge profits are not.

Soaking fresh foods in some salt water and rinsing it, gets rid of bugs....bugs on ripe food are not an issue...they are an issue if they eat the food before you get it. Wash the puppies off.