Oh You Can't Elope With A Cantaloupe

Have to use these foods more...

Avocados -- love avocados...I should come up with another way of eating them regularly. Right now, they go into our smoothies, but when I'm not making smoothies, we're not eating avocados. Conventional avocados shouldn't have too much residual pesticides.

Blueberries & Blackberries -- again, I use these in our smoothies but nothing else. Blackberries should be organic because of the sheer amount of pesticides used to grow them conventionally; for some reason, less pesticides are used to grow conventional blueberries, so those are ok to buy.

Cantaloupes -- out of season right now I think. And I can never finish one before it goes bad. Something to strive towards.

Carrots & Beets -- I use lots of carrots (who doesn't?). The beets are harder...especially as your hands end up RED when you cut/cook them. I saw a recipe for chocolate beet cake today...maybe I will try that out. :) Or make up some baked beets. Beets are in season right now and available at our farmers' market.

Flax Seeds -- Two heaping tablespoons go into each smoothie and I use these in hot breakfast cereals and other recipes (replacing eggs). Apparently, the flax oil hasn't been shown to have the same benefits as the ground flax - who knew?

Green Lettuce -- I don't really eat salad. Guess I should. Hmm...

Kale -- Big check. Love kale. Love all the different types of kale. J loves kale. Even A seems to like kale. I've been dreaming about adding kale to smoothies...maybe I will try that next week. (And yes, I mean sleep dreaming. That and work have been my dreams lately. The kale is the happier dream.)

Sesame Seeds -- that quiche I made on Sunday had lots of sesame seeds. Used up all my store though, so I will have to buy more. J ate a bunch just out of the jar (when she was supposed to be adding them to the recipe or sprinkling them on top!), so she obviously loves them. And tahini is just ground sesame seeds. We use tahini all the time for sauces.

Strawberries -- out of season now. I use frozen ones in our smoothies. Strawberries are one of those foods you're supposed to buy organic, but we can't afford that right now. The frozen strawberries in BK are expensive to start with (not as bad as the frozen blackberries, raspberries, or blueberries, but still), and the organic ones are three or four times the cost! I had high hopes of picking our own strawberries this year while I was out on maternity leave, but that just did not happen. Oh well. There's always next year!

Tomatoes -- who doesn't love tomatoes? We love them, and fortunately "we" includes D. Tomatoes are probably one of his favorite foods. The farmers' market is still overflowing with tomatoes, but I can't seem to use up all the ones I buy in time (before they go bad). Fortunately, the organic canned tomatoes tend to be approximately the same price as the conventional or are regularly on sale, so I can get organic ones year-round.