Is organic sustainable?

by | Sep 11, 2012 | Blog

Given several insightful responses to this post, I have corrected my misconception that organic = humanely raised. Most often it does not and I shouldn’t use the terms interchangeably.

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The other day I had a very heated conversation with an individual who found the concept of eating humanely-raised animals hypocritical and stupid (I’m paraphrasing, as his choice of words was much more colorful and much less appropriate).  It was akin to another angry conversation with a chef at a German restaurant in San Jose, who furiously berated my choice to choose humanely-raised and just like the German chef, this individual had two basic points:

  1. Organic farming (i.e. humanely raised animals) can’t feed the world
  2. If you care so much about animals then don’t eat them, but if you’re going to kill them anyways, who cares how they lived

I strongly disagree on both!

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Buying what’s in season: veggies and fruits that is!

by | Apr 15, 2011 | Blog

With most grocery stores brimming with fruits and vegetables all year-around, it’s difficult to know what’s in season and what’s not. Farmers markets on the other hand sell only what is freshly (and locally) grown – yet another great reason to buy produce from farmer’s markets!

But for those of us who find ourselves schlepping to the grocery store for our asparagus and zucchini, Center for Urban Education and Sustainable Agriculture (CUESA) has a great seasonal chart that can help identify the ‘in-season’ items.

Here’s just a snapshot of the easy to read vegetable chart available on CUESA’s website. Just follow the links to check out the vegetable and fruit charts.

If you want to find out which farmers markets carry each fruit and vegetable, just click on the name.