Tomato scare.

Earlier it was spinach and Ecoli, now it's tomatoes and salmonella. Hmm, wonder if this is the trend that we are signing up for the future? So for now, throw out your roma and red round tomatoes (I hear grape, cherry and tomatoes on the vine with the stem attached are ok), for more details:

http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/09/news/companies/mcdonalds_tomatoes.ap/index.htm?section=money_latest

and

http://thegreatergreen.typepad.com/weblog/2008/06/tomatoes-recalled-due-to-salmonella-concerns-time-for-organic-vegetables-1.html

Sigh.

Organic cloth.

After reading "Home safe home" by the safe home guru, Debra Lynn Dadd, I started studying labels in tshirts and pants before buying new clothes. As far as possible, I have been trying to avoid blends, polyester and trying to buy clothes made of 100% cotton with natural dyes. And this is one such experiment: 100% organic cotton tshirt (i,e cotton grown without the use of herbicides, pesticides or synthetic fertilizers) from the mall. It's soft to the touch and really light, remains to be seen how much of it's softness it will maintain after a machine wash :)

Non-toxic cutting boards.

I have been looking online and in magazines/books to select a nice cutting board that would be non-toxic, environmentally friendly and fairly uncomplicated to maintain. The first thing I did was eliminate plastic cutting boards, I bought a couple of wooden cutting boards from walmart. Then I started reading more about wooden cutting boards and realized the story didn't just end with eliminating plastic. Apparently, the glue used to make wooden cutting boards is formaldehyde-based (try browsing through my favorite website, EWG and look for formaldehyde glues or just google and you will find enough reasons not to buy these boards). Finally selected this nice bamboo cutting board from Totally Bamboo made with food-safe non-formaldehyde glues and free of stains and paints.


I saw a few epicurean cutting surfaces that are supposed to be non-toxic too, at Bed, Bath & Beyond, looks promising...

Additives, preservatives in bread

A couple of months ago I decided to look up all the zillion bread varieties that my local Kroger had to offer to see if I could pick one that had ingredients that I could 1. pronounce, 2. identify!

I spent 20 minutes or so in the aisle and was soon joined by another lady looking for a natural bread that had more fiber since her husband needed to have more fiber :p So, we continued looking at "All Natural", "No colors or preservatives", "Organic ingredients" and so on. That's when I decided to actually look into the ingredient list and make some sense of it. So, here's an incomplete list of some common ingredients in bread, side-effects, what to avoid etc.

1. The easy ones first, I picked organic bread made of unbleached, unrefined whole-wheat or whole-grain flour.

2. The next ingredient to avoid on my list was HCFS (high fructose corn syrup), hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils (trans fats) and boy! that one was trouble! Almost all the bread varieties there had HCFS except the organic one. That eliminated like 95% of the available packages.

3. I avoided the ones that had a super long list of ingredients and listed colors, dyes (red lake, blue lake blah)

Finally got home what I thought was a pretty good loaf of bread although it listed ingredients I couldn't really identify. After some research, here is what I found about the ingredients on my bread:

1. Propionic acid, Sodium/Calcium/Potassium propionate - Avoid and here's why.

2. Mono and di- glycerides - Hmm, preferably avoid and here's why.

3. Sodium stearoyl-2-lactylate - I vote to avoid, might be of animal origin and anything found in my face cream, I just don't want in my bread!

4. Nitrite, Nitrate, Sulfites, Potassium Bromate - avoid and here's why.

This is hardly a comprehensive list but something I can refer back to for the next time. If you have an ingredient you are unsure about in your bread, do post a comment and I'll try to find out more information. For now, I bought Great Harvest Bread Co. bread from my local whole foods co-op and it has "Fresh ground 100% whole wheat flour, water, yeast and honey" - that's it! And it's locally made!

So long then, happy researching for your perfect bread, tried making bread at home people?!