Don't go Bananas!

Or at least don't blow your grocery budget on organic bananas!

Okay, I know that sounds harsh. Organic farming is still widely-acknowledged as being better for the soil and water, so organic bananas DO provide a benefit.

If your specific concern is the ingestion of pesticides, bananas are a low-risk produce item. My daughter loves bananas and can eat 1 a day herself, so I bought them a few times at our organic foods store...for $.99/lb, roughly twice what they go for at our other market.

Although non-organic bananas are treated with pesticide, the sprayed pesticides remain on the skin, leaving the fruit 'safe' for consumption. Bananas have appeared on multiple lists of "XX number of foods you don't need to buy organic" including this one at The Daily Green and this one on MSN Health & Fitness (thanks for the link, Andrea!). Paying twice as much for no health benefit...not worth it on my budget!

Another way to save on your banana grocery budget is to REDUCE your waste. I have been guilty more than once of letting the last two bananas go brown and then they are slipped into the garbage (*gasp!*). Here are two great ways to prevent yourself from committing this most heinous produce sin.

1. Reduce your waste by extending the life of your produce. I have not yet tried this method, but am looking forward to trying the Green Bags recommended by fellow-blogger Chele.

2. If you still aren't able to eat your 'nanas before they turn all brown and blotchety, then for heaven's sake make Banana Bread!

This is the recipe I use - an amalgamation from several cookbook recipes.

Emily's Best Banana Bread

Ingredients:

• 3 or 4 overripe mashed bananas, well-mashed
  
• 1/3 cup melted butter
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup whole-wheat flour
  
• 1 tsp baking soda
• pinch of salt

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350 and butter a loaf pan.
Mix together butter and mashed bananas in a large bowl. Add sugar, eggs and vanilla and stir until mixed in. Slowly stir in the dry ingredients until just blended. Pour into buttered loaf pan and bake 45 - 60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
Cool loaf in pan on the cooling rack for 15 minutes, then take the loaf out of the pan and allow to cool on rack.

July Project: Greener Groceries on a Budget

I'll be an honest critic of my own blog and say that my posts have felt a little helter-skelter. I've got so many ideas floating around in my head - some that I'm starting to experiment with, some that I'm not (yet) - but I want to write about them all right away!
For the benefit of you, my loyal reader (singular?) I am going to try to focus on one area each month. Because I LOVE food, I decided to pick groceries as my first area.

My goal this month will be to make changes to my shopping and consumption in order to make more ecologically-friendly AND healthy choices. I will attempt to do this in as budget-neutral a method as possible.
I've tracked my grocery spending in previous months, and I'll track it this month as well. At the end of the month, we'll review and see how well I did.

To Be or Not To Be - Organic?

This is something I've been struggling with for a while. I know organic is often touted as being "better" but the price premiums on so many of the foods makes it just seem like too much money for too little benefit. As a parent of a baby/toddler this past year, I assuaged some of that guilt by buying as much organic foods for my daughter as possible, but left the 'regular' stuff for the adults.
I've been reading a lot about pros and cons of organic foodstuffs. My current thinking is that the most cost-effective way to get the health benefits of organic while staying within my grocery budget is to make informed purchasing decision. Sounds like common sense, right? It is, but it just takes time to do the research, and who has time? I've seen lots of lists on the web of which organic foods to "splurge" on and I'm collating a lot of that information here.
The first change I am going to make is to organic Dairy.

I found this info on The Daily Green.

"Pesticides and other man-made chemicals have been found in human breast milk, so it should come as no surprise that they have been found in dairy products. While any residues detected have been rare, and of low concentration, milk is of special concern because it is a staple of children's diets.
Organic dairies cannot feed their cows with grains grown with pesticides, nor can they use antibiotics or growth hormones like rGBH or rbST."

In addition, I've read from various sources that the hormones in dairy are being linked to early puberty rates in girls. WHOA. I am NOT okay with that. My daughter gets most of her protein from yogurt, cheese and milk and I shudder to think that there could be chemicals in that affecting her so deeply.

I went to our discount grocery and found 1/2 gallon of organic milk (2%) for $2.99. YIKES! I was buying a whole gallon of 'hormone milk' for $2.50. This one is going to hurt, but I would much rather spend the cash now than have it adversely affect my daughter's health.

I was thinking of ways to make this change budget-neutral. I thought about just posting "we'll buy one less liter of soda" but that would be a lie, since we don't normally buy soda and you, my readers, deserve full-on honesty. I think we'll buy less juice. I always swore my kid wouldn't be a juice addict, but when other caregivers come into play, you let some things slide. Once she discovered juice at daycare, I decided to give her some at home, too. I think we'll buy one bottle of juice each week, and when it's out, her options will just be water or milk (or mom's V8, which she loves, bless her heart!).

Something else to think about: The more demand there is for organic milk, the more producers will jump into the game. As that continues to happen, supply will increase and drive the price down. We're actually already seeing the benefits of our economic system in the widespread availability of organic foods.

We also buy organic yogurt from Stonyfield Farm Organic Yogurt. We can find it at our local grocery and big chains like Wal-Mart.

Eating Seasonally

This is something I'm just beginning to learn about. I'm about 100 pages in to "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver. The concept of eating seasonally makes sense to me. Eat it when it's fresh and move on to the next big thing when the seasons over. Doing this would definitely expand my fruit and vegetable consumption - I'm currently stuck on the apple, orange juice, banana, broccoli, baby carrots and salad routine beget of convenience. Feeling adventurous today, I hauled my quasi-agreeable daughter out of bed early to go to our local Farmer's Market. You know, that place you always mean to stop by on your way to work, but never remember until it's too late? Anyway, apparently a lot of good stuff is "in season!"

1. Basil. To symbolize my "turning over a new leaf" I bought myself a basil plant (yes, I'm rather literal) for a whopping $1.50 (see profile photo).
I love cooking with basil, and HATE buying those awful little pre-packaged plastic boxes with what has to be stale-imitation-basil, which is the only basil I can find in our local grocery stores. I am known to have the blackest of thumbs, but the friendly vendor assured me that I just needed to plant it, stick it in the sun and pick from it when the new little leaves were starting to sprout. Here goes nothing!

2. Cherries. With stems and seeds and NOT the kind that comes in fun mixed drinks. Hmmm. I bought a big bag full (for $5, I think). Too big, as it turns out. I need to do some research ahead of time. Anyway, I got home and looked up cherry recipes and found an easy one for Cherry Clafouti (basically a giant cherry pancake). I started slicing and pitting cherries, and my daughter sat on the floor at my feet gobbling down as many quartered cherries as I could hand her!
The recipe for Cherry Clafouti couldn't be easier and is as follows:

3/4 c. sugar
3/4 c. flour
4 eggs
1 c. milk
3 c. fresh, halved & pitted cherries

Preheat oven to 375. Grease a pie pan with butter.
Dump cherries into greased pie pan.
In a mixing bowl, mix together the flour, sugar and eggs. Slowly stir in the milk to make a runny pancake-like batter.
Pour the batter over the cherries (the cherries will float to the top.
Bake for 35-45 minutes or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean.
Allow to cool on a wire rack. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve warm.

In France, this is a dessert, but it makes a pretty fantastic breakfast, too. ;)



3. Summer Squash. Two green and one yellow - all three were good sized and had a beatiful unmarred skin - for $1.75. My 20-month old daughter sat and watched Barney today while noshing on some raw zucchini stick. I offered her some ranch dip, but she turned up her nose. She likes her "keenie" straight, apparently.

4. Beets. I know this is going to be a tough sell to my husband, but I love beets. Unbeknown to me, beets do not grow in a can. Additionally, they come with stems and leaves attached (and are one big bunch for $1). Puzzled, I asked our friendly farmer's marketress how to cook these things. She recommended cutting off most of the stem (more on that later) and steaming the beets in about an inch of boiling water. The dunk them in some cold water and the skins will slip right off and you'll have beets that are closer to my canned favorites (but hopefully better tasting and more nutritious.
Now, back to the stems. One of my biggest goals is to reduce my waste, so I asked her if the leaves or stems were edible. Yup! She said to sautee the leaves much like you would spinach - some butter and garlic and cook until tender.
So yes, that would be TWO vegetable side dishes for $1!