What does “Organic” mean?

Organic- means that every ingredient in the product or the single ingredient product itself was raised and harvested in an organic environment and is approved and certified by the USDA.

Still confused?

This means no pesticides, insecticides or herbicides are used while growing or collecting any product deemed organic.  When animals are involved neither antibiotics nor growth hormones are used, also no pesticides, insecticides and herbicides or synthetic fertilizers are used on the food of the animals.

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-Just a side note here…If you are eating animals or eating their eggs or dinking their milk you are ingesting everything they have ingested right down to the fertilizer put on their food, the antibiotics given to them for sores and/or hormones given to them to increase their size for sale; if you are pregnant or a nursing mother you are passing all of these things on to your child in utero or through your breast milk.

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Starting in 2002 growers who wanted to use the word “Organic” on their labels had to be certified under federal rules.   These regulations and certifications are costly for the grower and take years to obtain.  This leaves many farmers raising organic farms without going through the headache of being certified.


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Organic classifications are broken up into percentages of organic ingredients used.

100% Organic – This is an obvious one; all of the ingredients are organic.

Organic – The products bearing this have to contain at least 95–99% organic ingredients (by weight). This means that the other ingredients are not available organically but have to be approved by the NOP.

Both 100% Organic and Organic labeled products may display the USDA Organic seal.



Made with Organic Ingredients—If something is labeled this way it means that it must contain at least 70–94% organic ingredients. These products will not bear the USDA Organic seal.  But you may see that they will list up to three ingredients on the front of the packaging.

Other—These products contain less than 70% organic ingredients. They are also not allowed to bear the USDA Organic seal, but may only list organic ingredients on the information panel of the packaging.


The Environmental Working Group or EWG has even designed a free iphone app to help you while shopping.  It gives a complete list of the “Dirty Dozen and Clean 15” right on your phone.  Find it here:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dirty-produce/id312336368?mt=8


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“The Clean 15” or produce  confirmed to have the least amounts of pesticides by the EWG include: Onions, avocados, corn, pineapples, mangoes, asparagus, sweet peas, kiwifruits, cabbages, eggplants, papayas, watermelons, broccoli, tomatoes, and sweet potatoes.  This means if you are going to buy organic you can save a little money don’t buy these organic.

According to the EWG, here are the 12 fruits and vegetables with the most pesticide residue.  Deeming them the “Dirty Dozen” and suggested as the 12 most recommend fruits and vegetables you should buy organic. Peaches, apples, bell peppers, celery, nectarines, strawberries, cherries, kale, lettuce, imported grapes, carrots, and pears.


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Beware!  Don’t let products trick you into buying something.  Using words like smart, vitamin, clean and pure are marketing strategies to get consumers to buy products that are not always healthy for you.  Free range, sustainable, locally grown, seasonal, wild, fair trade, all natural and pure –  even though these are all positive and wonderful ways of living, if it doesn’t have the 100% certified organic symbol or the word organic on it, it is NOT organic.  Just because there is a locally grown, seasonal, sustainable farmers market on the corner of your town, it does not mean it is organic.  Ask them directly how they grow their crops. And know that there are many organic farms out there that cannot bear the seal because they have not yet attained it due to cost and time.  Yet, they are still growing organic farms.


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Did you know that things grown in the wild cannot be considered organic?  It’s true!  This includes the wild blueberries in my back yard untouched by chemicals, the water running off the snow topped mountains into a stream and the fish running in the fresh water stream off a beaten path, also clay and other minerals found in the earth possibly used in skin products.  Even though they are not contaminated by chemicals they are not classified as organic.


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I hope this helped you better understand some of the classifications of “Organic” on your journey to living a healthier life through Organic Living.


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By Brooks | Also posted in Organic Living | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

Some one recently asked me, “Why do you buy this organic stuff? Isn’t it really expensive?  What’s the difference between organic and not organic?”  My answer went something like this, “I buy it because it is better for my body. Yes, it is more expensive, but worth it in the long run.”


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This question about organic living raises a lot of questions and the answers can “open a can of worms.”

Living organically is not something you do overnight, in fact most people in the last four generations will only live a small percentage of their life “Organically.”


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This got me thinking about the why, what and how of living an organic life.  Why I and others choose to live organic. What is organic exactly and how can you start or better live organically?

I have broken them up into three different posts and who knows it may end up being more than that.  But first, why?

Here are some basic thoughts about organic living. Are you ready? Set? Let’s go Organic!


Why?

The big question why? I grew up living right next to a crop of sugar beats on a farm in California.  Every Saturday morning at sunrise a crop duster (a small plane filled with pesticides) would zoom overhead and I watched in amazement as the pilot just missed the barn.  Throughout the week I would wave to our neighbor on his tractor just simply dusting his crops. Little did I know the effects of the dangerous chemicals being sprayed into the air meant for the plants below.


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Everyday we buy and eat food that has been sprayed with pesticides, insecticides and herbicides.  As we eat our beautiful salad or large, crunchy apple we turn a blind eye to the fact that we are ingesting genetically modified fruits and vegetables.  And we savor the glass of milk we are drinking with our cookies even though it is filled with hormones and antibiotics given to the cow who gave us the milk.


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I think it really hit me when I realized as a pregnant and nursing mother that everything I was eating was being passed right to my unborn child in utero and then through my breast milk. By eating “un-organic” animals or drinking their milk I was ingesting everything they had ingested right down to the fertilizer put on their food, the antibiotics given to them for sores or illness and/or hormones given to them to increase their size for sale.  This is also true with the produce I was eating tainted by the unseen chemicals sprayed on them.  It was shortly after that thought that I gave up dairy: beef, milk, and cheese.  I started to pay attention to organic food and started to ask myself, “Why should I eat organic?”  I thought to myself, “I am moving one step forward by eating fruits and vegetables and maybe two steps back because of the poisons in and on them.” I read that the National Academy of Science reported, “neurologic and behavioral effects may result from low-level exposure to pesticides.” Various studies indicate that pesticides can negatively affect the nervous system, increase the risk of cancer, and decrease fertility.  This had me rushing to buy organic food.  But,  I quickly found that buying organic food is sometimes more expensive than buying non-organic food.  Here’s another why for you, why does it cost more to not have pesticides and hormones in our food? Why is it more expensive to eat healthier?  Why do we pay less to have our food pumped full of chemicals?

 

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Yes, it may cost more at the moment to buy the food, but this organic life style will contribute to a healthier you!  Pesticides, hormones, and antibiotics are proven to be damaging to humans when we are exposed to high levels or to low levels over a long period of time.  In my opinion, to take this one step further shouldn’t we try to avoid exposing ourselves to these man-made chemicals at any level? And aren’t we exposing ourselves to them in our food at high levels sometimes or low levels over a long period of time (like our whole life.)  This would mean that they are in fact damaging to our bodies. Hence, the guy below wearing the space suit…ok I’m ready to eat that! NOT!


 

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By avoiding these poisons I am healthier.  Through my efforts of living an organic life I have found that I save on medical expenses and long term medical dollars in return. I have an overall well being and connection with my environment.

Think organic and consider not only the health of your body and your family but the overall health of our environment and future generations.  If we are what we eat (and drink and breath I might add) then we need to seriously think about what is being put into our food, wasted in our waters and spattered into our air.


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Organic living promotes a healthy earth and restores and builds healthy soil.  Healthy soil, free of chemicals produces a healthy product and therefore, a healthy you.

Let us remember our children.  We need to not only protect their bodies now, but their future.



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Let’s not ask why, but why not.  Why aren’t we taking better care of ourselves, our children and our earth?

Be sure to bookmark this page and check back soon to see my thoughts on What is “Organic”?

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By Brooks | Also posted in Organic Living | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (2)

A couple of years ago I was walking through the store just after Valentine’s Day and noticed all of the Easter Decorations.  You know plastic eggs, green grass, baskets and tons of candy.  My kids were all excited, “Oh, can we get some Easter stuff? Can we?”  Just looking at all of the stuff made me really mad.  “This isn’t Easter stuff?”  I know this is all fun and I did it when I was a kid, but this is not why we celebrate Easter.  Do you know why we celebrate Easter? It’s not about a bunny that brings eggs and hides them; I’m so confused by that concept anyway.  In that moment I boycotted all of that Easter stuff, not forever, just for a little while.  I decided to find a way to teach my children about the true meaning of Easter and if it were possible to incorporate both – the stuff that most of the world thinks of as Easter stuff and the religious meaning of Easter.


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What it has evolved to is this:

On the first day of spring or Spring Equinox we celebrate spring by coloring eggs, hiding eggs, making cookies, giving gifts of spring to friends, planting seeds and these kinds of things.  This way we do do these things and the kids and I have a lot of fun doing them, but they are not associated with Easter.  After a cold, dark winter, spring is definitely something to celebrate, so we have called it “Spring Celebration.”

It all starts the day before spring, which this year was a Friday.  After school we started right away by boiling our eggs, 4 dozen and making our cookie dough and getting into the freezer to harden for a while. (Sarah’s Sugar Cookies )


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Then we placed loose change into the plastic eggs.  (TIP:  Through out the year I have a Tupperware container in the laundry room and anytime I find loose change in a pocket or in the bottom of my purse I put it in there.  This is the change I used for the plastic eggs.)


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We colored eggs.  We gave symbols to things so that what we were doing had meaning.

Why eggs?  Well, because they symbolize new birth and at spring time we celebrate the rebirth and new birth of plants and animals and life.

Why do we color them?  With spring come so many colors of life – the leaves, flowers, the sky, and animals we haven’t seen for a while.

This brings about the question of hiding eggs.  We hide them and find them again to remember that everything has a season and even spring hides for a while and then when we find it, it is filled with nice surprises.

Now, you may think this is a little heavy for some of your younger children, but when you do something every year as tradition it becomes a foundation for them to form their life upon.  They build memories and also some of the things that seem so insignificant now have meaning.


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And then we made sugar cookies way into the night.


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I tell the children, “Tomorrow is spring and everything will start to bloom and even if it is cold outside it will be spring inside.”  I didn’t know if it would be sunny, rainy or snowy in the morning, just prayed for sun.  Last year we had about 6 feet of snow outside.  But when I woke up it was so sunny, I wanted to cry!  Thank you.  It may only be sunny for one day and then rain for weeks.  I better enjoy it today.

I went downstairs and put finishing touches on their buckets; I do sand castle or beach buckets, not baskets, because then I know the children will use them. Or find a used basket or bucket to use. You don’t have to spend a lot of money on them. Baskets are pretty and all but then they just get trashed or unused.  I put seed starters and a little candy in their buckets.

I got some inexpensive fake flowers (or as my youngest likes to call them ‘pretend flowers’) from Joann’s.  I put them all over the house!


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I also did a candy tower which looks absolutely awesome, I think!


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I hid the real eggs inside…


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and plastic eggs outside and put more flowers outside.


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The kids came downstairs and they were really excited!  They noticed the flowers and yes, we had candy for breakfast…breakfast snack that is.

First they looked for eggs inside.  Then we went outside to find eggs.  They loved seeing the flowers outside!  Finding eggs is always fun.   It always takes them a few seconds to find the eggs where it seems like it took me an hour to hide them.

Then while they looked through their plastic eggs, I made frosting and we frosted the cookies.  It was super fun!


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In our home we celebrate Easter as the day of resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  We start our celebration the Sunday before Easter Sunday, on Palm Sunday when Jesus was welcomed back into Jerusalem.  We celebrate Easter all week long.  We sing songs, read scripture, talk about the parables He taught, eat new foods, and learn of His life, look at maps, learn of Jewish customs, and remember Him.  We remember that He died for us and also on Easter morning He rose from the dead and He lives!  Since we started doing our spring celebration, our Easter has become more focused on the Savior.  It is a really special week.  I know there are a lot of families out there that want to make their holidays more meaningful.  I invite you to think about ways to do this.

I was surprised the first year we tried this we didn’t even color eggs and the kids were fine with it.  And each year they look forward to hearing the stories, singing the songs and learning a little more about Jesus Christ.

I will be posting more about our Easter week and ways you can do this too!  But this week, spring break for us, we may be up skiing, but we are still going to celebrate spring!

Here is the book I have used to help me with our Easter week, you may be interested in it.

A Christ-Centered Easter: Day-by-Day Activities to Celebrate Easter Week


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By Brooks | Also posted in Family Fun | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (3)

Here under Home and Family I plan on giving you the philosophies of Brooks.  I am not an expert, but I do have a home and a family so I can speak from experience.  I have been married for a little more than 13 years.  We met about 15 years ago in Hawaii attending college.  We now have three children and have lived in Alaska our whole married life.  I have a degree in Psychology with the intention of being a marriage and family counselor.  So, here in Ladies Learn I can give you little tidbits of what I’ve learned from experiences in my own life mingled with things I’ve learned out of a text book, along with the things I’ve observed from the lives of others.

Having Fun: We live in busy times.  Families are put under a lot of pressure and stress these days.  It used to be that families depended on each other to literally have food on the table, shelter over head and clothes on their backs.  It was a group effort.  And many hours were spent talking, reading aloud, telling stories from the past and singing and dancing together for entertainment.  Now-a-days we spend little time conversing with one another, working or playing together.  With all the hustle and bustle of our lives, do we remember to have fun?  We spend a lot of time in school, at work, playing sports and driving everywhere.  We watch a lot of T.V. and sit in front of our computers (guilty) but do we remember to have fun?  After lectures on how to behave, clean up your mess, do your homework, practice your music, do we remember to laugh and hug, praise and have fun?

Do you get where I’m going with this?  Having fun is essential to family happiness!  Laughter is a healing and bonding tool.  In moments of anger and disappointment, laughter can soften hearts and relieve tension.  Creating a home filled with fun can also invite a more open relationship with your partner and children.  Let’s remember to make memories worth remembering.

Have fun playing board games.  My kids love it when I play these games with them.  Sometimes it is not exactly what I want to do and honestly there have been times when all I’m thinking of is how long it’s going to take us to clean up after the big mess we’ve made, but they are having a blast and that’s what they are going to remember.

Pretend!  Imagine!  One time I read Narnia out loud to my kids and I had the idea to go into the coat closet and then fumble our way out and when we got out, then we were in Narnia and we all put on blankets because it was cold and huddled around each other as I continued to read.  They loved it!  As I get older it gets harder and harder to pretend.  But do it some time, you’ll see, it’s fun.


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Get out of the house.  Go on a walk, bike ride, hike, camping, fishing…the list goes on and on.  Yes, it is cold here.  But there are lots of things to do outside.  We love to go to the beach and look at sea creatures.  Or walk out to the glacier.  I know not everyone has a glacier in their backyard, but make a favorite spot for your family.  Seize the moments of warmth and sunshine if only for an hour or ten minutes.  Take these moments to tell your kids  stories about when you were small or lessons you’ve learned.  Keep it fun though.


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Be silly!  It’s OK to joke and be silly.


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Being silly as a family can take pressure away.  When some of those walls come down you can see each other in new ways and communicate more openly.


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Even mom and dad can be silly.  Remember it feels good to laugh.


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When you can’t go outside do something fun inside.  We play the Wii together.  Can’t you tell it’s fun!


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Let the kids tell the stories, you may hear it in a whole new perspective.  Give them the chance to decide what fun you’ll have.  Let them sing or dance for you.  Maybe they would like to make up a play or puppet show and you can play a small role in it or just watch.  There could be tickets and programs.  Make popcorn and sell it for hugs and kisses.


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If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands! “Clap, clap.”

Have fun!

brookstag




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By Brooks | Also posted in Family Fun | Comments (1)

If women didn’t exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning.  ~Aristotle Onassis

Ouch!  I’m going to try and take this as a compliment, but I’m not sure if it was one.


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Am I the only one that cringes when people talk about a budget and money?  I know what a budget is and I know we all need one, but then I start thinking about all the money I want to spend outside of my budget and I think,  “Am I the only one that feels this way?”  Money is not something that everyone likes to talk about, but it does need to be discussed.

How are we going to make money? How will we spend our money? How will we save money?  What will we do with our play money?  Do we even have play money?  What is play money again?  These are all the beginning questions each individual and each couple needs to ask and answer.

The safe way to double your money is to fold it over once and put it in your pocket.  ~Frank Hubbard

I ought to try this some time.

We all have our own set of feelings about money and issues with money.  I am not in any position to tell you what to do with your money or how to do it; except that I do know that money is important in many aspects of life if not all aspects.  It’s just not everything. Finding that balance is essential for happiness and unique to every person and family.  Knowing that at the end of the day your needs are met allows you to find joy in life, see the bigger picture and reflect on deeper things.  But if financial struggles are overshadowing all aspects of your life then there is often no room for joy only time spent searching for hope.

The best way for a person to have happy thoughts is to count his blessings and not his cash.  ~Author Unknown

Amen!


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To say that money really isn’t important would be a lie, because it is important to be able to: feed the mouths you are responsible for, provide shelter and pay for medical expenses.  It is our responsibility to do all that we can to first be self reliant.  Unfortunately, to rely on others to pay for our needs or to go into debt to pay for our needs only puts us in bondage.

Still, sometimes after all of our exhausting efforts we need help and are left to depend on others. This is OK too.  Sometimes this means making huge sacrifices and living on very little until we are able to finish school or training in order to obtain a job that will provide a comfortable living for ourselves and our family.  And sometimes it just means waiting, until there is a job.

Waste your money and you’re only out of money, but waste your time and you’ve lost a part of your life.  ~Michael Leboeuf

In the mean time, yes, work hard, but understand that having a budget and talking about ways to have your money work for you does help.  Take one day at a time, count your blessings and love those around you freely!

It’s really all you can do.


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No matter how hard you hug your money, it never hugs back.  ~Quoted in P.S. I Love You, compiled by H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

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By Brooks | Also posted in Finance | Comments (0)