From ONLINE CERTIFICATE PROGRAMS

Organic food has become all the rage in recent years. Health-minded folks have gravitated toward the organic diet because it promises to rid the body of the typical bad stuff it absorbs when you consume mass produced foods. Organic produce is grown without the use of pesticides, herbicides or insecticides, and organic meats are raised without the use of growth hormones and antibiotics, ensuring that organic foods are authentically natural and entirely healthy. Whether you’re looking to expand your organic diet or you’re just interested in trying something new, the 15 best organic cooking blogs listed below are excellent resources for people who want to eat well.

Organic recipes

These blogs feature organic recipes useful for both novice and veteran organic eaters.

1. Deliciously Organic: While suffering through a debilitating illness, this blogger decided that she had to take action into her own hands, becoming a devoted organic eater and cook. When she’s not teaching an organic cooking class or writing her book, she’s adding delicious “uncomplicated” recipes to her blog.
2. Cook. Eat. Think.: A mom blogs about cooking for kids, seasonal eating and gardening. The colorful photos of the ingredients or finished product that she attaches to each post will have your stomach growling — excellent motivation for the novice organic cook.
3. Local Lemons: This blog’s name was inspired by the smell of citrus and roses in Berkeley, California, where tasty organic food is easily obtained year-round. Author Alison Arevelo pours her heart and soul into her cooking, creating unique meals from the fresh ingredients at her disposal.
4. Elana’s Pantry: This stay-at-home mom is dedicated to creating tasty organic, gluten-free dishes and providing her readers with the recipes. Organic eaters who suffer from food allergies — like the author and her son — find this blog particularly helpful.
5. Organic Test Kitchen: Recipes and product reviews are the meat and potatoes of this blog, as the author encourages his readers to give up their unhealthy habits and enjoy the tasty pleasures offered by organic food providers.
6. Organic Samm: Samm records a myriad of organic recipes, ranging from chicken nuggets to zucchini cannelloni with ricotta and pine nuts. She also suggests organic products that are sure to enhance your diet.
7. Cascadian Farm: Cascadian Farm is one of the original organic growers. It has an established history of providing fruits, veggies and grains that are beneficial to the land on which they were grown as well as the nutrition of the consumer. So naturally, the blog features delicious recipes for organic enthusiasts.
8. Big T’s Big Green Egg Recipe Blog: Scroll down the page and view the pictures of the mouthwatering dishes — they’ll have you wondering why you didn’t switch diets sooner. This blog is proof there’s nothing boring about organic food.

Beyond just organic cooking More: Organic Cooking Blogs…

From LESLIE CERIER

1¼ cups organic chickpeas, presoaked overnight
3½ cups water
4 bay leaves
1 strip dulse
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
6 cloves organic garlic, sliced
1 large organic onion (at least 1 cup), sliced
2 organic carrots (1½ cups)
1 small organic cauliflower (3 cups), cut into bite-sized pieces
1 tablespoon dried basil
½ teaspoon black pepper
½ teaspoon cardamon
¼ teaspoon dried cloves
¼ teaspoon sea salt

Drain and rinse beans well. Simmer beans, water, dulse, and bay leaves for about 30 minutes, until the beans begin to soften. Sauté garlic, onions, cauliflower, and carrots in olive oil for 5 minutes. Season with basil, cardamom, cloves, salt, and pepper.

Improvisations
1. Change the nationality of the stew by changing the seasoning. For instance, add curry powder, garam marsala, cinnamon, and cardamom for an Indian accent.

2. Leave out the cauliflower, or otherwise vary the vegetables. Try some potatoes and peppers.

3. Change the beans to kidney or pinto. Switch the herbs and spices to garlic, oregano, pepper, basil, cumin, and chili powder for a Mexican chili.

Serves 4-6
Time: 1 hour
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From GENE LOGSDON

Along the one lane country roads in our county, the traveler encounters an occasional roadside tree, all by itself at the edge of the endless fields of corn and soybeans. The casual passerby may see nothing unusual about the trees but those of us who have lived here almost as long as these trees have, think of them as quite remarkable. They stand as monuments commemorating the passing agrarian life we cherish.

These trees are hickories, already bearing when I was born seventy some years ago. To understand why they are precious, visualize this landscape when these trees first sprouted at least a hundred years ago. Much of this land was originally forested, and was still in the process of being cleared. All through the 20th century, more trees vanished every year. By the time I worked in the fields, there were still a few sentinels of the old forest dotting the grain fields and pastures. They were left there mostly for shade. In those days farmers spent a lot of time  in the blazing sun, not in tractor cabs, and all of you who have felt the July sun bearing mercilessly down on you know what a pleasure it is to be able to rest a bit in the shade. Worth losing a little bit of corn for. A few trees in the pastures were spared for the same reason— shade for the livestock.

One by one, these silent sentinels from the past were cut down or died. It was not much of a bother to dodge a field tree with two-row equipment, but when corn planters grew to the 12-row, 20-row and 30-row size, dodging a tree could mean that many crooked rows or double- planted rows, two things no corn farmer can abide.

Finally, today, only the lonely hickories at the edges of the fields along the roads remain (see photo). They are bothersome to farmers too, and to understand why they remain, one must know a bit about hickories. Rarely do you find two of them exactly alike in the woods. They do not come true to seed. Two next to each other can have quite different nuts in size, shape, thickness of shell, and ease of nutmeat extraction. Only a few specimens have really good nuts for fast and easy cracking. So when the forests were cleared away, farmers deliberately left the best hickories, since the nutmeats were highly prized for table use back when people could not or would not buy nuts in stores. Invariably, the old trees that still stand along the roads have been spared for a hundred years because they bear the choicest nuts. More: Lonely Hickories…

From JESSE COOL

2 servings

¾ pound fresh fish or shellfish
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
2 tablespoons chopped organic red onion
¼ cup coarsely chopped organic red bell pepper
2 garlic cloves, minced
½ cup cubed cooked organic potatoes
2 tablespoons crisp dry white wine
½ to ¾ cup clam juice or fish stock
1 to 2 tablespoons chopped fresh tarragon
1 to 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
Salt and freshly ground pepper

Wash and shell the shellfish. Rinse the fish fillets and cut them into bite-size pieces. Cover and refrigerate.

Heat the oil in a 10-inch skillet over medium heat. Sauté the onion, bell pepper, and garlic until soft, about 5 minutes. Add the potatoes and cook, stirring, until warmed through and slightly browned, about 5 minutes. Add the wine, clam juice, tarragon, and parsley. Bring it to a simmer, and add the seafood. Cover and cook until the fish is flaky and the shellfish is cooked through, about 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Do ahead: Clean and cut up the seafood. Prepare and cook the vegetable mixture. Refrigerate, covered.

In the morning (about 15 minutes): Rewarm the vegetables and proceed as directed.
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From LISA BARNES

By the age of 9 months, baby will likely let you know he is interested in feeding himself by grabbing the spoon and picking food up in his hands. It will be a while yet before he is able to wield a spoon on his own, but he can certainly learn to eat with his hands now. At mealtime, alongside any food you’re spoon-feeding him offer small pieces of tender foods that he can pick up himself. Note that babies do not need teeth in order to eat finger foods. They can mash foods very efficiently with their gums. However, to begin with, you should choose foods that are very soft or that dissolve easily.

As baby becomes comfortable with finger foods, they can start to make up more of his meal. Scatter a few pieces of 2 or 3 different foods on baby’s high-chair tray so that he can choose. You can add more tidbits as baby eats them. Serving too much food to a baby at once can be overwhelming to him and can inspire throwing and smearing.

Organic Fruits & Vegetables
Choose produce that is naturally soft, or steam it until tender.

·Ripe soft fruit: plums, pears, peaches
·Chunks of ripe banana or avocado rolled in crushed oat cereal
·Finely diced cooked apples or Asian pears
·Finely diced well-cooked vegetables: carrots, broccoli, tender green beans, squash

Organic Meat & Dairy
These high-protein foods are in demand among rapidly growing babies.

·Pasteurized semi-soft cheese, cut into tiny dice
·Rye bread smeared with goat cheese or liverwurst and cut into little pieces or strips
·Finely diced cooked chicken and turkey

Organic Grains & Legumes
Grains and legumes provide energy for busy babies learning to crawl and move around independently.

·Small pieces of rice cake
·Pieces or strands of well-cooked rice pasta
·Low-sugar O-shaped oat or rice cereal
·Halved or mashed well-cooked (or canned) beans
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