It's Farmer's Market Time!

I am so excited because my local farmer's market, in Central Square Cambridge, opens this coming Monday! It runs every Monday from May 24 through November 22nd in the Harvest Co-Op parking lot. Every year there are an amazing variety of fruit-and-vegetable farms, bakers, grass-fed meat producers, and luscious flowers.

Gorgeous variety at the Central Square Farmer's Market, by Tiny Urban Kitchen

If you live in Massachusetts, you can find your own nearest market at massfarmersmarkets.org and if you live elsewhere, you can search on Local Harvest. If you haven't jumped on the bandwagon yet, give one a try! It is so important, more than ever, to support our local farms before they disappear, and to keep your money out of the hands of the huge food conglomerates who care more about production quantity than safety and quality. Have you seen Food, Inc. or read any of Michael Pollan's books and articles? Some of the most important journalism of our time.

New studies have shown that there is a definite link between ADHD and pesticides, and who knows how many of the increased number of cancer diagnoses are related as well... Given this recent revelation, most advice stresses washing "conventional" (non-organic) produce thoroughly. Unfortunately, a good number of the vegetables and fruits we eat are so high in water content that the pesticides on the outside almost always penetrate through the entire fruit. For "the dirty dozen" - the most notoriously contaminated foods- it is imperative to choose organic. Unfortunately Dole and other large companies have started their own organic production in countries where who knows what that designation really means, so the word begins to carry less and less weight. What you can almost always be sure of if you buy from local, small farms is that they use best practices even if they're not certified organic. It's expensive and wasteful to use chemical fertilizers and pesticides, when a good biodynamic farm requires none of it-- it's a perfect, closed system and it's the natural, truly "conventional" (as in throughout all of history except WWII until now) way to grow food. No scary chemicals, no petroleum-based fertilizers. If a farm stand doesn't have signs saying "no pesticides" then ask!

It can be more expensive to buy organic, of course, especially at natural foods stores like Whole Foods, but the seasonal bounty at a farmer's market almost always costs less than produce which has been trucked thousands of miles and passed through the expense-adding processes of marketing and middlemen. To further stretch your budget and survive through the winter when the less temperate areas close up production, think about learning to can or using a deep freeze!
If you are intimidated by the variety of strange veggies you encounter, pick up a book like How to Pick a Peach or Farmer's Market Cooking and start experimenting!

Happy produce shopping!

Thrifty Eats: Batch Cooking

Sundays are a wonderful day to kick back, enjoy the weather if it's lovely out, and perhaps get some chores and projects done around the house. I try to reserve a few hours of my Sunday to cook in bulk, no matter what my other obligations and desires are, because it ends up saving so much time and effort throughout the week, never mind money!



The first step in this process is to take stock of your pantry and refrigerator. If you're a Virgo, you will likely love this one: make a list of what you have on hand, with food group categories and quantities (this can be fun and be made permanent in Excel, if you are a spreadsheet girl like Struggling to Be Stylish). With a quick glance at your list you should be able to come up with one or two meals that can be made with only a few additional ingredients. Cross off your items as you include them on a separate meal-planning list, and create a shopping list for what you're missing while you're at it. Trust me, it sounds complex but you will waste so much less and avoid spending on take-out because you can't figure out what to make! Be sure to actually examine all foods you're planning to use and toss any expired produce or growing-its-own-colony bread. Once you've disovered what you need and made room for it, step two is, obviously, going shopping.

The old adages will serve you well here: don't shop on an empty stomach. Avoid the middle aisles where the chips and cookies live and try to stick to the whole, fresh foods around the perimeter. Make a list and stick to it. Try not to bring children who are easily swayed by fancy packaging and promises of gobs of salt and sugar.

The biggest mistake most Americans make when shopping for produce is buying far too much. If you've planned your meals you should know exactly what you need, and perhaps grab a few extra pieces of fruit for snacks. Don't worry that you'll run out-- you can always go to the store again if need be. It makes a lot more sense to shop twice a week than to end up throwing out piles of spoiled greens and smooshy zucchinis.

I like to do much of the washing and chopping immediately when I get home from the market so that vegetable snacks are easy to grab instead of junk. I keep Tupperware filled with carrot and celery sticks stacked on one side of the fridge, and sometimes diced peppers for quick meals as well. This is when I begin a big pot of chili or pasta with vegetables, also, while I'm getting the rest of the groceries put away and the kitchen cleaned up again. When it's done and cooled, I separate it into containers, label them and freeze them. Then I have my very own "Lean Cuisines" for work lunches or nights I am only cooking for myself. Saving $5-$10 at every meal by not getting takeout is definitely worth the extra effort.

Here are a few of my own "batch cooking" recipes, all of which are ridiculously easy and freeze tremendously well, published on SparkRecipes by SparkPeople (a terrific free healthy lifestyle site if that's something you're interested in!):

Vegetarian Chili
Lentil Stew
Spinach Mushroom pasta

Invest in a label-maker or just use small post-its to indicate what something is and when it was made, whether you store it in the fridge or freezer. Most leftovers have a shelf-life of one week. Most frozen goods can be stored six months to a year. Indicate when it should be tossed by, not just when it was made! Here's my fridge with the new system in place:




You're looking at a whopping 9 cubic feet of storage space (about a third of your average fridge) so planning is essential for me. You may not want or need to be quite this OCD about it, but keeping things visible, neat and labeled will help diminish the amount of money and food you waste.

The last thing I'll mention here is that these frozen meals and any leftovers should never be reheated in their plastic containers. Ziploc has pledged to not put any terrible, horrible, no-good, very-bad dioxins or BPAs in their products, but no other brand has to my knowledge, and due to a lack of awareness/caring/FDA testing or regulation, we're still unsure how dangerous many other plastics in common use are. Better to defrost at room temperature until it's possible to slide your meal out and into glass (or microwave-safe ceramic without metal-based glazes) before microwaving. Or as a last resort in a time pinch, nuke for a few seconds to defrost/loosen from the plastic before doing most of the actual cooking in glass or ceramic.

Do you enjoy batch cooking? If so, please share a favorite recipe (it doesn't have to be meatless by any means, by the way).

Happy cooking!

Frugal Friday: Flexitarianism

OK, so "flexitarianism" is kind of a silly name because it's not like we're going to be eating flex. (Flax, on the other hand is a good choice, and lacking it can be like, deadly, if you don't eat fish. But I digress). Perhaps you've heard about it, though-- the movement is trying to encourage people not necessarily to become total vegetarians but just to include more meatless meals in their weekly diets, or to be more "flexible" in their choices.



If you've read Omnivore's Dilemma or any Michael Pollan, or seen Food, Inc. or the Meatrix, then you are aware what the situation with factory farms in this country is. If you don't, even though it's difficult to face, you should know. The word disturbing comes to mind-- or perhaps horrifying. Unfortunately, we can hardly expect the meat-and-potatoes mentality to change overnight, nor for avowed carnivores to pull an about-face, or for the increasingly-poor-and-underemployed masses to be willing to pay twice or three times as much for non-feedlot meat. It is essential, however, that we reduce the demand for cheaply-produced meat so that conditions improve for both the animals and for the impact of bacterial illnesses, etc. (Did you know that beef raised eating pasture and not in a crowded feed lot does not HAVE e.coli? It's not even a possibility. Cow stomach pH cannot support e. coli unless they're fed unnatural things like corn and soybeans [which are also nearly exclusively genetically modified, but I suppose that's a topic for another day]).

Even if you don't care one iota about the animals or worry about getting sick, think about this: major, major disasters have been created by man over-farming, throughout history, such as desertification (yeah, those huge, uninhabitable deserts in Africa? Humans created those. By over-grazing our livestock. Seriously). Large-scale pig farming alone is responsible for a staggering number of alarming events, and chicken and beef lots are really no better.

But what's a wife to do with a small grocery budget and a hungry man who demands his steak? To be honest, while change is difficult for all of us, if you adopt some "flexitarian" ideals you will be surprised how inexpensive and also satisfying it can be to go meatless now and then, and how quickly your stubborn significant other will learn to love it (especially if by happy coincidence he happens to drop a bit of belly and you make a big deal out of how sexy it is, ahem!)

Even when you're not cooking fully meatless meals, you can control cost, calories and contribution to the problem by dividing up your plate into just a quarter protein, a quarter whole grain and a full HALF vegetables. I do not recommend that you try to choke down three cups of broccoli at every meal-- variety is incredibly important, for both satiety and phytochemical benefit (if you don't eat all of the colors of veggies and fruit, you're missing out on essential nutrients). Instead, find a great book like More Vegetables, Please or How to Pick a Peach and learn delicious and easy prep for two or three (or more!) vegetables per meal. A little extra work, perhaps, but worth not dying of butt cancer. (It's true, not eating veggies gives you the asscancer. Come on, do you want that? I don't think even your burger-chugging boyfriend wants that). Also, PUT BUTTER ON THEM. Or cook them in olive oil. Use spices. Don't try to eat them all plain and boring and virtuous (although some veggies are delectable with nothing at all, like fresh spring asparagus.) ...And for the love of all that's holy, don't try to eat tomatoes in December or strawberries in August because they are out of season at those times and will be a pale, pathetic shadow of the real thing (not to mention far more expensive.) Next week I'll talk a little bit more about meatless recipes and finding local, seasonal produce, but a good start for at least knowing what to look for during which months is this great Pro-fruits-and-veggies site.

Do you have a stubborn meat-eater at home? Have you been able to or do you think it will be possible to influence their ways at all, with these tips, if you're interested in trying it?

Happy Cooking!

New Name

Hello lovely readers!

Just wanted to beg and plead that you switch your reader and (hopefully!) your blogroll over to the new url: www.wickedthrifty.blogspot.com!

We haven't actually moved but who knows how the redirect will work.

So... why?
If you're not from Boston, you may not know "wicked" as a synonym for "totally" or "absolutely." But really, it is. And a great one at that. ...And then there's the whole us being kind of a recovering goth, witchy type (think Stevie Nicks... and stay tuned for news about our new planned Etsy endeavors!) ...And also the matter of the lovely blonde Swede-in-California publishing under nearly the same name, a few months before this one.

So there was an epiphany, and it just made sense.

The focus of the blog will remain on beautiful clothes under $30, but we may switch it up a bit with some more home posts like this one and also about our decluttering process when the fiance moves in in May, along with some ideas and recipes for eating non-factory-farmed food and organic when possible without killing your food budget. Lots of tasty treats.

Hope you stay with the blog. Thanks for your comments- they mean so much!

Please take the poll on the right, just to satisfy curiosity ;) Thanks!