3/31/2010

As you know, we are trying to eat as much organic food as possible (available, convenient and affordable) so we did some web surfing and found that around a million websites contain lists of the 12 foods that you "should always buy organic"  As an aside; The list changes yearly as farming practices do.   Almost none of them had the list in the same order of importance.  That got me to wondering, just how many combinations can you get out of twelve items? Answer: 479,001,600.  So I randomly picked a webpage to quote.  Here they are in one of the 479,001,600 possible combinations.

• Peaches
• Apples
• Peppers
• Celery
• Nectarines
• Cherries
• Strawberries
• Lettuce
• Grapes (imported)
• Pears 
• Spinach
• Potatoes

Then we started looking around at what foods are least important to buy organic.  Go back and re-read the first paragraph but change the 12 into 15 and 479,001,600 with 2.44796 to the 16th power.

• Onions
• Avocados
• Corn on the cob
• Pineapples
• Mangos
• Asparagus
• Sweat Peas
• Kiwi (that one surprised me)
• Cabbages
• Eggplants (Even though 2/3 of the Worlds eggplant is grown in New Jersey!   Did you know that there are actually two types of the common eggplants we eat? The first has an oval dimple at the blossom end and has less seeds.  The other has a very round shape and more seeds.  Some people say that there are male and female eggplants with the males being the ones with fewer seeds.   It is also widely believed that Thomas Jefferson was the first person to bring eggplants to America.)
• Papayas
• Watermelons
• Broccoli
• Tomatoes
• Sweet Potatoes

You should really wash your fruits and vegetables before cooking or eating. If you use any of the commercially available "Veggie" cleaners, Stop.  It has bee proven that a quick bath in distilled water or a quick spray with a mixture of 1/4 white vinegar to 3/4 distilled water (we use tap water as it is purified "in house") then a rinse in clean water, is just as, if not more effective than the commercially available fruit washes. 

That's it for tonight, eat well!

Bald Bill