To clarify about organic fruits and veggies...

In my previous post, I intended the lists to serve as a reference for organic purchasing; I wanted to put my scrawled-on-a-paper-towel notes in one place so that I could access them when I make decisions about which produce to choose or substitute. I didn't at all mean to minimize the importance of organic food or the food we're getting.

Organic fruits and veggies

A few weeks ago, Steph and I signed up for Farm Fresh Delivery, and they bring us an assortment of organic fruits and vegetables every other Thursday, including some we wouldn't ordinarily buy. It's been fun to try new kinds of produce, and we can change the items if we find we can't face another head of broccoli or more apples one week. (If you should decide to sign up, please use my name as your referrer and we'll get a discount of some sort on our next order.)

I recently came across two articles online (unfortunately, I didn't save the links) that listed foods that derive the most benefit from being produced organically and those for which it doesn't matter as much. Here they are.

Foods that benefit the most from organic production:
beef
milk
coffee
peaches
apples
peppers
celery
strawberries
lettuce
grapes
potatoes
tomatoes
nectarines
cherries
pears

Foods that don't contain a lot of pesticides anyway if they're not produced organically:
watermelon
tangerines
oranges
grapefruit
bananas
peas
broccoli
cabbage
radishes
onions
blueberries
kiwi
pineapples
cauliflower
Brussels sprouts
raspberries
eggplant
mushrooms
asparagus
papaya
mango
avocadoes

Sour beef

When I was growing up, my parents would sometimes make traditional Czech foods. One of them that I enjoyed was sour beef and dumplings. We only ate it a couple of times per year because it's pretty time-intensive to make.

My dad came to visit last weekend and brought me a couple of servings that he'd frozen. (He makes it a lot more often now that he's retired again.) I was more than a little concerned that it might be the kind of food that you had to eat while growing up in order to stomach, let alone love, but Steph liked it a lot. I didn't take a picture because, well, it's not the most attractive-looking dinner.

I don't have my dad's recipe yet, but I Googled the phrase last night and found a few, none of which look like they're the one our family uses. I also found information about some restaurants in Baltimore that serve it. The Czech word for dumplings is spelled knedlicky; it's pronounced KLED-neek in my family. Most people seem to make small individual dumplings, whereas we make large ones and then slice them.

My Czech vocabulary is very small, and I have difficulty locating the correct spellings of the few words I do know because they aren't phonetic. A number of years ago my cousins and I compared the Czech words we knew from our dads, and we discovered we knew different ones. They know the word for mashed potatoes, for example, while I know the words for facial hair, pacifier, and tail (as in "dog following you around," not "appendage on the back of animals."

Earth Day

This afternoon we went to the Earth Day festival in downtown Indianapolis. (Yes, I know it's a week late. I don't know why.)

There were five large tents with many exhibitors in each. I declined many, many brochures because I already knew the information on them, but we picked up quite a few with new information. Specifically, we're going to look into a solar attic fan.

We brought Spike because it was such a nice day and he likes festivals. He got a little overwhelmed in the tents because there were so many people, but he enjoyed himself anyway and got lots of compliments.

After we visited all the exhibitors, we stopped by the row of food vendors for a snack. Steph had a bowl of red beans and rice and I had an alligator sandwich. Yes, it was real alligator. It resembled bratwurst and tasted fairly similar to it.

I was disappointed in some of the displays because they didn't teach me anything new. I know that I'm pretty well informed, but I wanted more. I was very disturbed to hear the Toyota representative giving a couple blatant misinformation about the Prius. I didn't interrupt her, but I should have said something. She told the couple that the Prius runs on electric power up to 50 mph and only turns on its gas engine on the highway. In simple terms, the Prius only has enough battery capacity to run about three miles on electric alone, and the speed cutoff is 42 mph. The gas engine will run whenever the battery needs to be charged and whenever the car needs it to provide extra heat to warm the cabin or the batteries. (Learn more from expert Prius owners at any of the Prius-related Yahoo! groups.)

Now we're heading to Good Earth, the natural food store in Broad Ripple, to go get some natural and organic food.

Burritos

Last week I got a voice mail message that I'd won 15 free Chipotle burritos in a drawing. (I'd dropped my card in a fishbowl the week before.) I called the guy back, and as it turns out, I had to redeem my 15 burritos all at one time. So I headed over there at lunchtime today with five of my co-workers, Steph, and two of Steph's co-workers. They gave us our burritos and even threw in free drinks, and they let me take the remaining six home. I told the guy that I'd be back and that I'd recommend the place. The burritos are tasty and are big enough that I could have saved some for later. I'm thinking that if I made some side dishes to go with it, Steph and I could split one of the remaining burritos for dinner.

Cookies

I just found out that Crisco has introduced a shortening without trans fat. I can make my M&M cookies again!

However, it's odd that the nutrition label pictured says that the shortening is not a significant source of calories from fat.

Over the weekend, I looked at the nutrition poster at Wendy's and found out that their fries have no trans fat, either. (I had a side salad instead of fries on Saturday, but now I'll know where I should get fries in the future.) The nutrition section of their site says that fries have half a gram of trans fat per serving, though. I'm not sure which information to believe.