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Worried about pesticides in your food?

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Are you worried about the pesticides that might be contaminating the fruits and vegetables that you eat? If you are, you’re in luck.

The Environmental Working Group has come out with a list of 45 fruits and vegetables ranked according to the level of pesticide contamination. The results were based on U.S. Food and Drug administration testing.

The most contaminated fruit and vegetables include strawberries, apples and celery. The top of the list of most contaminated food items is Peaches with a pesticide load of 100.

The cleanest fruit and vegetables include mangoes, pineapples, onions, and avocados. The least contaminated of the list has a pesticide load of 1.

I never realized that peaches had such a high contamination load. I always thought apples were the worst of the bunch.

What the report lacks is actual amounts of pesticides. The items rated on the list are organized on a scale that shows which produce has more pesticides, but without knowing the exact amount of contamination it’s hard to say if the pesticide contamination in peaches is harmful or if the low amount found in pineapple really is a safe level.

If you are worried about pesticide contaminants the best thing to do is limit your exposure.

Not everyone can grow all of their own food supply, nor necessarily do it organically, but you can limit your exposure to pesticide contaminated fruit and vegetables by trying to make some of your purchase organic produce. Know what’s on the list and try to make sure that when you want to buy some of the items that are listed as being most pesticide contaminated, like peaches and apples, that you make those purchases organic.

If you do happen to have a garden try to grow organically. My garden is organic and I find it quite easy to maintain and as you can see from all the photos on this site my plants are very healthy.






Healthy drinks with a new juicer

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I’m sure that many of you made New Years Resolutions that began on January first. If you did make a resolution have you managed to stick to it?

I kept saying that I didn’t make any resolutions this year, but now that I think about it I believe that I did. The only reason I didn’t realize it is because I made my resolution way back in November. Remember when we got our Lab puppy? Well we got her for a few reasons, the main one being that I wanted a companion at home, but the other big reason was that I knew having a dog would force me to get outside several times a day for a walk.

As many of you know I’ve got Crohn’s disease and it’s been real bad for the last few years, so I’ve basically been living in chronic pain day in and day out. Remember last year I had long gaps where I’d say I hadn’t even been in my garden? That’s so unlike me! My lack of gardening and garden related visits last year was purely related to how bad I was feeling.

Getting a puppy, especially an active one like a Labrador Retriever, that needs to be exercised several times daily would surely force me to get outside and get active no matter how I was feeling right? Well it worked. Plus, getting outside and walking around sort of makes me feel better. It doesn’t help the pain I’m in much, but it takes my mind off of it.

I’ve also lost a little bit of the weight I’d gained last year due to my increasing activity.

Now I’m wondering what else can I do to improve my health? I have trouble eating a lot of foods because I don’t digest food well or some foods just don’t agree with my system, but I’ve been considering getting a juicer again. I was looking at the juicers at Wize.com and I’m pretty sure we’ll get one before the month is over.

We used to have a juicer, but we gave it away to one of my husbands aunts a few years ago as we weren’t using it. However now I’m thinking about all the fresh juices that I can make with a juicer and it sounds good to me. I can also juice carrots and other veggies, some of which are hard for me to eat raw or cooked because of the crohns. I’m sure that my body would appreciate the juiced form!

If you’ve been thinking of looking at juicers visit Wize.com. They have five pages of juicers on their site and each one is rated by consumers. The juicers, and other products on the site, are listed by highest rating. The ratings are made by those who have used the various products so it’s a consumer satisfaction rating.

You can read consumer reviews of each juicer (or other products) in order to see what features other people liked best, view product details and see the price range for each juicer as well as a listing of several online stores where you might purchase the juicer of your choosing.

Take a look at the whole site to find other products that you’ve been thinking about buying and read reviews before you buy.

As for me? I think I’ll take a look at their juicer listings and try to find one that’s been well rated and that fits my budget. I’m really going to work on getting healthy this year and I think a juicer will help as much as those walks with our dog will!

Crazy Squirrel

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Earlier today I was upstairs and I happened to look out the window at my garden. Much to my surprise and amusement I saw a grey squirrel running around doing some strange stuff.

You see, yesterday evening I was cleaning out our freezer and I found some disgusting frost bitten hamburger buns. Instead of just throwing them in the garbage I decided to crumble up the bread and threw it on the lawn in the backyard for the birds or whatever else was out there to discover.

I had actually expected the bread pieces to be gone this morning since there are raccoons in the area – but it seems they haven’t been coming into our yard as much as they used to, so most of the bread was still scattered across the lawn this morning.

So, anyway, I was upstairs watching this grey squirrel. He’d run into the backyard and carefully select the piece of bread he wanted. Why he chose one over the other I’m not sure, but he was being selective.

He’d take a piece of bread, run through the back garden flower bed and climb the short fence. From there he’d jump onto the curved wooden trellis we have had clematis vines growing on. In front of that trellis we have this huge ugly silver wire that supports the tall wooden electric pole in our neighbors backyard. I grow a honeysuckle vine on this eye sore of a wire and it disguises it somewhat.

Well, the squirrel climbed up and stuffed his piece of bread between this wire and the the entwined honeysuckle vine. He then climbed down to select another piece of bread and repeated the procedure.

I guess he was storing his bread for later. Like a bird or another squirrel wouldn’t find his stock pile?

Later in the day I saw the same squirrel in the garden. There was still some bread left and he was back to selecting his favorite pieces but this time I think he was storing them in the Rose of Sharon tree or the fence behind it. I couldn’t see clearly, but the branches were sure moving around a lot. I suspected he was stuffing them in the crock of a branch.

What a crazy squirrel. Have you ever seen a squirrel do anything like this? I’m certainly used to them digging little holes in my garden beds to store bread, nuts, peach pits and so on, but I’ve never seen one stuff bread between vines or branches!

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