I Scream for sherbet.

August 1, 2011
 

Where did the summer go and where did the year go.  Ever get the feeling that you stood still and time fly by.  Well let us stop time and do something good for ourselves and our families.  What you don’t know what you can do?   How about some ice cream?  Get out that old ice cream maker in the back.  Make some fresh ice cream or sherbet for the family.  Never did it?  Still in the box?  Well then, you need to open that box clean it out and get the bowl or mixing part in the freezer ASAP.  It needs to be frozen before you begin.  Then after each use, clean it out and stick it in the freezer in a plastic bag so you don’t  get freezer burn.   Once it is frozen you are ready to begin. 

Now you will need some sugar about a cup and 7 tablespoons of water.  Gently boil until the sugar disappears.  Next add the juice of a lemon or lime, or lemon oil or some mint leaves 3-4.  If you used the leaves, when they wilt pull them out and send to the compost heap.  Cool the syrup.  Now add 3 ¾ cups of a juice, orange is what we like.  Lemon juice or some citrus will work well.  Nectarine would work as well.  Yes it is very liquidly.   Now take the bowl or center piece out of the freezer and place in the machine. Add your liquid and turn on.  It will mix very slowly.  Yes it looks like it will not pull together. Wait wait. About half an hour it will be ready to eat.  If still to soft for you place the container in the freezer until solid enough.  Enjoy!

Organic or Not

We always look for the best foods to buy for our family.  After much research I found that it pays to buy these foods from the organic section.  On my next post I will tell you which ones to buy from the regular section.  We have grown many of these in our gaden to make sure they are organic.

Celery
Peaches           The animals eat ours before we pick them
Strawberries   A few plants go a long way and are fun to grow.
Apples
Blueberries (Domestic)  In NJ we have organic farms and freeze the berries.
Nectarines
Sweet Bell Peppers  We grow our own.  Not hard and great to grow.
Spinach
Cherries
Potatoes  We tried growing them this year in planters.  Not hard and now we have some to store.
               Next year we will plant more.
Grapes they are growing on the side of our home.

Why should you care about pesticides? There is a growing consensus in the scientific community that small doses of pesticides and other chemicals can have adverse effects on health, especially during vulnerable periods such as fetal development and childhood. We know that chemicals are bad and now we learn that they can affect birth defects.

Of the 12 most contaminated foods, seven are fruits.

More than 96 percent of peaches tested positive for pesticides, followed by nectarines (95.1 percent) and apples (93.6 percent).

Nearly 86 percent of peaches contained 2 or more pesticide residues ‚ followed by apples (82.3 percent) and nectarines (80.6 percent).


Among the vegetables:
Some 95 percent all celery samples tested positive for pesticides, followed by imported cucumbers (84.5 percent) and potatoes (84.2 percent).

Nearly 85 percent of celery samples contained multiple pesticides, followed by sweet bell peppers (61.5 percent) and collard greens (53.2 percent).

Also keep in mind that maintaining your family's health is not the only reason to choose organic food. Pesticide and herbicide use contaminates groundwater, ruins soil structures and promotes erosion, and may be a contributor to "colony collapse disorder," the sudden and mysterious die-off of pollinating honeybees that threatens the American food supply. Buying or growing organic food is good for the health of the planet.

PLU Codes and What they mean

As you pull out the food from the grocery store you wonder why they bother to put those little stickers on each and every peach. They are hard to take off but tell you a wealth of knowledge if only you can decipher the code. The glue on these stickers is food safe but don’t eat the sticker.
Those little stickers are called the PLU code or the price lookup number that speed you out at the checkout stand. This little code also tells you how the fruit was grown. You can tell if the fruit was genetically modified, organically grown or produced with chemical fertilizers, fungicides, or herbicides. All this valuable information that you did not even know you had.

Here is the code breaker:
Conventionally grown (grown with chemicals) PLU code consists of four numbers.
Organically grown fruit A five-numeral PLU prefaced by the number 9.
Genetically engineered (GM) fruit A five-numeral PLU prefaced by the number 8.

The numeric system was developed by the Produce Electronic Identification Board, an affiliate of the Produce Marketing Association, a Newark, Delaware-based trade group for the produce industry.

I try always to buy as much food as I can that starts with a 9. The next best is anything that does not start with a 8. While all food is to some extent genetically modified by cross pollination and selective breading, I prefer that it be done the natural way and not by the manual transfer of genes of one species to another.