Nell Newman is my new hero

This past Christmas, CornyT and I spent a week at his brother and sister-in-law's place in the San Francisco area. While we were there we could not help notice how their kitchen was dominated by organic products. Almost everything you could shove into your kisser was prefaced with that panacea organic. Recently, I thought I would investigate this whole organic nonsense and determine for myself if there was more to this than a fancy marketing trick to manipulate the middle-class. Plus for some strange reason I have become obsessed with getting the freshest, best tasting foods I can get my hands on so I have been interested if organic is different from traditionally grown products. In this quest to understand what constitutes an Organic product and if the organic label is really more than just a status symbol stamped on my food, I discovered Nell Newman. Nell Newman is so sensible. Not only is she the scion of Hollywood power couple, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodwarde, she is also an established animal conservationist and scientist and just a practical, down-to-earth gal. Her book Newman's Own Organics Guide to a Good Life is a sensible guide to living responsibly in the modern world. She never suggests that you drastically change your life and be some kind of annoying, self-righteous tree-hugger chastising your friends for using styro-foam. Her book is chock full of simple, practical ways to be a little more conservative with our resources.
So, all that being said it is still hard to know if Organic is really organic - no pesticides, veg fed beef, - or just a marketing ploy because there is a lot of money to be made on manipulating consumers buying habits. This site can help make some sense of the various organic labels. Also, Walmart has decided there may be something to this organic thing (that something being a way to make more money, of course) so we may see more and more organic labels on our food. This will of course make it harder and harder to determine if this food is really worth the extra price. Anyway, after reading Ms. Newman's fantastic book and all the websites I can crunch in a lunch hour or while watching movies with CornyT on the couch, I still am not buying much organic food from the supermarket. What we are doing now is visiting our local farmer's market every Saturday and for not much more than grocery store prices buying the most delicious strawberries, garlic, pork and lots of other yummy things. There is nothing like a strawberry picked two hours before you plop it in your mouth. YUM YUM!