Vert-à-Go

The Environmental Working Group has just released the 5th edition of its Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides. This handy cut-out-and-carry card lists which fruits and vegetables have the highest (and lowest) levels of pesticides so you can see at a glance when it’s most important to buy organically-grown produce and when the benefits of organic are less dramatic.

An EWG simulation of thousands of consumers eating high and low pesticide diets shows that people can lower their pesticide exposure by almost 80 percent by avoiding the top twelve most contaminated fruits and vegetables and eating the least contaminated instead. Eating the 12 most contaminated fruits and vegetables will expose a person to about 10 pesticides per day, on average. Eating the 15 least contaminated will expose a person to less than 2 pesticides per day. (Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides)

Living in Saskatchewan, it’s much easier to find organic versions of some of the Dirty Dozen than others, especially if you prefer to buy more locally-grown produce. For instance:

• I don’t remember ever seeing organic BC peaches, nectarines,  pears, or cherries–I have seen Washington-grown ones at Safeway, but their taste was disappointing (I’ve eaten amazing organic soft fruit while in Washington, so freshness is obviously the issue, not inherent quality!). Most times, I would really rather eat something else entirely rather than risk spending a lot of money on imported out-of-season fruit that turns out to be sour or woody.
• Grandora Gardens (at the Saskatoon Farmers’ Market) and other vendors sell bell peppers treated with biological controls during late-spring/summer/early-autumn. You can grow your own in the summer.
• It has become much easier to buy organically-grown strawberries in the supermarket–both Safeway and Extra Foods often have Driscoll’s organic berries for sale during the spring and summer (imported from California). Local u-pick strawberries are not organically grown and although they certainly try to minimise chemical application, I am unsure about the level of pesticides involved. It’s pretty easy to grow your own–they are perennials and like all berries, taste a thousand times better picked straight off the plant.
• Organically-grown celery is easily found at (most/selected branches) Safeway, Sobey’s, and Extra Foods–let me know if you have trouble tracking it down.
• I’ve not seen organically-grown kale, but suspect it would be available at Dad’s–this is not really something I ever buy as there are so many other options for locally-grown greens (buy grow, freeze, or sprout your own year-round).
• Lettuce, again, is available from Grandora Gardens and other farmers’ market vendors in season. It is also ridiculously easy to grow your own from early May-September.
• Chilean grapes are often treated with up to 17 different pesticides. If you can’t find organic ones, US-grown grapes use fewer pesticides.
• Organically-grown carrots are available in grocery stores, but the ones from the farmers’ market are far superior in taste. I don’t know if conventional Saskatchewan carrot growers need to use as many pesticides on their carrots as those grown further south–our drier climate and colder winters can help reduce the need for many fungicides/insecticides.

And as far as the Clean 15 goes?

1. I tend to buy onions either from the farmers’ market, but I have no qualms about buying conventional Manitoba-grown ones from the grocery store.
2. I don’t buy a lot of avocados but will likely continue to get the odd regular one from the grocery store.
3. I tend to buy fresh corn in season from the farmers’ market, and then conventionally-grown frozen.
4. I generally have a greater concern about whether pineapple (and other tropical fruit) is fair trade and what the working conditions are for the farm workers than whether it’s organic.
5. I’m not a huge mango fan!
6. I buy asparagus in season from the farmers’ market. I never buy it from South America as the food miles are just too appalling.
7. I buy fresh peas from the farmers’ market and am still trying to find a large-enough, sunny-enough patch to grow my own. Otherwise, frozen conventional.
8. Kiwi fruit gives me an anaphylactic reaction, so I never buy them! It is very high on the list of allergy-inducing fruit, so be careful before giving it to children or serving it to guests.
9. I buy cabbage from the farmers’ market is so fresh and delicious and economical, but good to know that the grocery store is an acceptable backup.
10. I have personally never figured out how to make eggplant edible, myself! I’ll happily eat someone else’s.
11. I don’t think I’ve ever bought a papaya!
12. I never buy watermelon out of the summer season because it comes so far and tastes so dreadful, but will feel more comfortable about buying it from the grocery store when I do (now, if I could just find a fool-proof method for choosing a good one! Any advice?).
13. Interesting that broccoli rates so highly. I would have thought it would have ranked much worse because of all the tiny flowers that are vulnerable to pests! I like to buy it locally when it’s in season because it’s so beautiful and fresh, and bought organic when it’s on sale. But I will feel much happier about picking up a bag of regularly-grown from the bargain bin in future!
14. Again, interesting that tomatoes rated so highly. I would have thought they’d be worse, although I suppose if they’re grown in a greenhouse, pests are not a huge problem. My main issue is that grocery store tomatoes taste vile, and conventionally-grown tomatoes can be vulnerable to salmonella due to bad growing practices. Avoiding pesticide residue is not the only reason to buy organic! I grow my own in the summer, and buy from Grandora/other farmers’ market vendors during late spring/summer/autumn. (it takes a *lot* of energy to heat a greenhouse in Saskatchewan, or even BC, in the winter–very possibly moreso than growing them in a hot southern field and trucking them north). Seasonality is my main consideration–I haven’t bought a fresh tomato for months (and yes, I am missing them A LOT).
15. Sweet potato is something else that I’d usually get at the regular grocery store.

Here are the lists of the best and the worst–you can get a printable version of the EWG Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides that you can put in your wallet here. Remember, avoiding pesticide residue is not the sole reason for buying organically grown produce–organic practices can help improve soil, reduce water usage, improve environmental conditions for animals, birds, and insects, and may (but certainly not always!) go hand in hand with better working conditions for farm workers. It often (but again, certainly not always) may have a lower risk of disease or contamination. Conversely, local conventionally-grown produce may in fact have a better environmental footprint than imported organic. But reducing pesticide exposure is a pretty major concern for most organic consumers, and so it pays to know exactly what you’re eating.

The Dirty Dozen (always buy organic)

1. peach
2. apple
3. bell pepper
4. celery
5. nectarine
6. strawberries
7. cherries
8. kale
9. lettuce
10. grapes–imported (this is a US guide, so this would mean non-US-grown grapes)
11. carrot
12. pear

The Clean 15 (lowest in pesticides)

1. onion
2. avocado
3. corn
4. pineapple
5. mango
6. asparagus
7. peas
8. kiwi
9. cabbage
10. eggplant
11. papaya
12. watermelon
13. broccoli
14. tomato
15. sweet potato

My source spotted a few organic produce specials at the Extra Foods on Broadway: a 3lb bag of organic BC Gala or Granny Smith apples for $2.99 and organic bananas are under a dollar. She said that organic avocados were also on sale. The flyer lists organic BC Ambrosia apples for $1.29/lb, but I’m not sure if they’re available at the Broadway location or not. The location on 51st Street has a good range of organic produce.

I also checked the Safeway flyer online and they have a lot of organic produce on sale. I like that you can search their flyer for the word ‘organic’ (or any word, obviously!): strawberries ($3.49), lots of Canadian/US apples for $1.49, celery $1.49, green peppers $2.99, Canadian white mushrooms $1.99, frozen blue/raspberries/mango $5.49, (these are all Club Safeway specials so you need to use one of their loyalty cards).

Extra Foods on Broadway has moved apples and other organic fruit further down the store to the middle aisle because the organic ‘ghetto’ section was getting too crowded. It’s great to see organic produce being normalised and put right among the ‘regular’ food. Safeway has been doing this a lot more in the past year. I was thrilled to see one of their main strawberry specials last year was all-organic and given high profile right at the front of the produce department at the 85h Street location–they didn’t even have a non-organic variety offered at all that week, which is great, considering that strawberries are one of the most chemically-treated fruits out there and a great organic choice.

One of my fondest childhood holiday memories was driving into the city after school with my parents to go late-night shopping and then finishing up at the candy counter at the Bay. We were each allowed to pick out several different kinds of candies that we would set out around the house on Christmas Eve, each in its special little dish. We had to choose carefully, because we only got to do it once a year, but there were some permanent standbys. Peppermints, macaroons, rosettes, slowpokes, butter mints, chocolate-covered raisins and peanuts, chocolate buds, butter mints, After 8s, willow crisps…it was almost better than Halloween! (we graciously let the grownups keep the boring old unshelled nuts and wield the scary silver nutcracker themselves.)

I still enjoy having extra treats around the house at Christmas time as an adult. But what about the dark side of the chocolate trade, which exploits cocoa bean farmers and plantation workers (many of whom are children working in slavery?) Fair trade rules for cocoa bean production prohibit child labour, increase the amount of money paid to farmers, and encourage safer and more environmentally sustainable farming methods. And you can rest assure that there are plenty of ethically-produced (and locally-available) goodies to satisfy your seasonal sweet tooth.

10,000 Villages is a good starting point (not only for edibles but also for beautiful fair trade Christmas decorations and gifts)–there, you can pick up Divine fair trade chocolate-covered mint wafers (After 8-style), as well as charming chocolate advent calendars (the calendars are also available at Turning the Tide Bookstore). 10,000 Villages also carries Amazon Flame’s chocolate-covered brazil nuts (both milk and dark). You can also perk yourself up in festive fashion with Just Us holiday blend coffee, described as “robust and mellow with a hint of spice”.

Cocoa Camino has a wonderful range of large fair trade chocolate bars in various flavours (bittersweet, milk, dark, espresso, orange, white with cocoa nibs, moccachino, almond, and mint). One of my favourite quick and easy desserts is broken-up chocolate bars piled on a plate with fruit (thank you, Nigel Slater!). These would be fabulous for that. You can also get semi-sweet chocolate chips and cocoa powder for your baking, as well as hot chocolate mix (both dark and regular). Cocoa Camino products are available at a number of stores, including Dad’s Nutrition Centre, Herbs and Health, and Steep Hill Co-op (these stores carry other fair trade chocolate bar brands as well, including Endangered Species Chocolate).

You can also buy Cocoa Camino chocolate and cocoa from Nancy Allan, who runs a home-based fair trade business called Just Delights (call her on 664-6071). Nancy carries a wide variety of other fair trade products, including coffees and teas, and is often seen with all of them on display at her booth at information fairs throughout the year (like Seedy Saturday and World Food Day). She had a Christmas open house yesterday, where I picked up a couple of chocolate bars. Of course, yesterday was Buy Nothing Day, but having already decided that vegetables from the farmers’ market couldn’t possibly count, I went one further and decided that fair trade goodies didn’t count either!

You can also pick up chocolate cherry almond bark (made with local sour cherries) from Wayne and Clare Pearson at Prairie Sun Orchard (call 242-7573 or email prairiesunorchard@sasktel.net). They have a stall at the Saskatoon Farmers’ Market on Saturdays, where they also sell their stupendous ice cream. The cherry swirl, cherry chocolate, and raspberry flavours (again, made with their own fruit) are all divine.

The quintessential holiday treat, of course, is the candy cane, and you will be happy to know that you can get wonderful ones from Pure Fun (available at Dad’s Nutrition Centre). Pure Fun’s candy canes are made from organic evaporated cane jucie, organic brown rice syrup, organic fruit juice, and natural peppermint oil. They are really delicious and I (and my kids) highly recommend them. Now, if only I could convince myself that they won’t all surreptitiously disappear off the tree before the 25th!

photo: my 2008 Weird James Beard Award winner

When you grow your own food, you inevitably produce some bizarre specimens from time to time. Nature isn’t perfect–no matter what those bins of clone-like supermarket produce or air-brushed food magazine photos might lead you to believe. This prejudice against misshapen vegetables is responsible for supermarkets rejecting thousands of tons of perfectly edible food every year, which, if farmers cannot sell elsewhere, is relegated to compost or animal feed, or simply left to rot in the field. It also forces a significant number of farmers to use pesticides for purely cosmetic reasons.

How did we reach a point where so much food is wasted or unnecessarily doused with chemicals simply because someone decides it doesn’t look pretty enough to eat? I believe that a vicious circle has been created between consumers, who refuse to buy blemished produce, and supermarkets, which respond to and then further feed that choice by only stocking cosmetically uniform produce. Generations of people have become so removed from the food production chain that they no longer understand that vegetables come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, that they are grown in fields exposed to insects and the elements, and that the best-tasting fruits and vegetables are often the funniest-loooking ones. Because they’ve never grown their own food and usually have no idea who is growing the food they buy or how they’re doing it, their main instinct in the supermarket is fear*–fear that can only be assauged by seeing the same reassuringly familiar and homogeneous produce every time they walk in.

Thankfully, there is a growing backlash against this produce perfectionism. I also hope that as more people take up gardening, they will develop an emotional investment in their food that will keep them from cavalierly tossing a not-so-perfect specimen. Indeed, I hope that they will embrace them and celebrate them (and, if possible, eat them)!

This year, I’ve given my annual weird vegetable award to the potato above, which is shaped like some kind of…well, I’m not exactly sure, but it’s got an interesting snout, at any rate, and it looks quite jovial. For more amusing examples of Regular Food Gone Horribly Wrong, visit MoFA (Museum of Food Abnormalities). And please comment about or send pictures of your own strange home-grown examples!

* fear of eating food that ‘tastes gross’, fear of eating food that has gone bad, fear of germs and dirt on food, fear of getting sick from food, and the deep-seated fear of acknowledging that food is produced in the real world and isn’t just magicked out of thin air by white-clad fairies.

Last Friday my sister dropped by the Borden Farmers’ Market on her way back from North Battleford to Saskatoon. The most exciting discovery at this excellent weekly market was the locally-grown apricots for sale. Grown just over the south side of the Borden Bridge, these baby-sized apricots have amazing flavour and the most incredible aroma (I would actually describe it as perfume). My four-year-old declared, wide-eyed, after his fourth or fifth, “I have NEVER eaten anything like this in my entire life!” Me neither–but you can bet I’ll do whatever it takes to track some more down soon. The thought of jam made with these little guys almost sends me into a Homer Simpson-style drooling trance.

Borden Farmer’s Market

• Fridays 1-7pm (May to October)
• Borden Fire Hall
• Borden, SK (40 minutes north of Saskatoon on Highway 16)

This morning my sister and I headed out of town to pick raspberries for a couple of hours. I have a small raspberry patch in the back garden that has kept us in breakfast berries for the past few weeks, but they’re nearing the end of their season. The kids and I could happily eat raspberries every day for the rest of our lives, so it seemed like a good idea to get some extra tucked away into the freezer.

Although there are quite a lot of u-pick raspberry farms outside of Saskatoon (search for ‘raspberries’ in the product field at the Saskatchewan Fruit Growers Association web site), we plumped for the closest–Rhodes’ Raspberries and Blackcurrants.

Started four years ago by Peter Rhodes, this family-owned orchard grows eight different varieties of raspberries on ten acres (including Boyne, Souris, and Red River, among others). We picked Novas and Skeena today, both of which were large and very sweet. The Novas had a slightly ‘wilder’ taste, but we liked them both a lot.

And as you can tell by the farm’s name, it also produces blackcurrants–two acres of the antioxidant-packed fruit. Rhodes says that his blackcurrants are a particularly hearty variety from Poland and have been very successful in the Saskatchewan climate. The blackcurrants we saw were plump and beautifully formed, and had an excellent flavour–quite tangy, so highly suitable for cooking and preserving.

Rhodes also has some some exciting news for expat Brits and transplanted west-coasters–he has planted blackberries this year, which he hopes will bear fruit next summer. Not generally considered hardy in our climate, this variety of blackberry is claimed to be able to withstand -40C temperatures. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that they make it!

How to freeze raspberries (or blackcurrants)

Choose firm, dry berries. Lightly inspect berries for foreign matter or blemishes. Refrigerate immediately in shallow containers. Freeze unwashed* on trays in a single layer until hard (about 30 minutes). Pack quickly into freezer bags, removing as much air as possible, or freezer containers, leaving 1 cm (1/2 inch) headspace.  Rinse and drain just before use.

– from the Saskatchewan Fruit Growers Asssociation

* I tend to wash mine first; I actually submerge them in water to drive out any hidden critters (an unavoidable hazard with raspberries), then drain really well and freeze on a tray. Get them into the freezer as quickly as possible after picking to maintain vitamins and texture.

Rhodes’ Raspberries and Blackcurrants

• RR3 Site 300 (Box 45)
• Saskatoon, SK S7K 3J6
• (306) 934-6748
• peterrhodes2@sasktel.net
• Web site: www.rhodesraspberries.ca

How to get there: Take Dundonald Avenue, which becomes Valley Road past the Saskatoon Landfill. One minute past the landfill, turn right onto the Cedar Villa Estate gravel road. Once you get past the Chappell Conservation Marsh, turn left onto the first gravel road (it’s the only left-turn gravel road before Cedar Villa Estates).  The orchard gate is ¾s of a mile down this road on the left.

Prices:

• Raspberries $10/4L ice cream pail (u-pick) or $20 pre-picked**
• Blackcurrants $15/4L pail (picked over), or $20 (picked over and all stems removed).

Cash or cheques accepted.

**It takes about an hour to pick a pail. Be prepared to do quite a lot of picking on your knees–I recommend long trousers, long sleeves, and arriving early in the day. Bring your water bottle (but save room for some of Peter’s delicious ice cream or sorbet at the end!)

Do you have a pesky gardening question? The University of Saskatchewan’s Gardenline is now open for the season and is taking calls from domestic gardeners and small-scale commercial growers.

Gardenline offers information and advice on everything green. You can ask about starting seeds, growing vegetables, fruit, houseplants, trees and shrubs, yard and garden plants, and find out how to deal with diseases and pests.

The free phone line (966-5865) will be open until 31 August on Mondays to Thursdays, from 9am-noon and 1-4pm. You can also email questions to gardenline@usask.ca.

Gardenline’s web site also has a ton of very informative articles grouped by category (they are rather awkward to search, but fun to browse). You can find advice on planting early vegetables here.