Organic Living

Eat Organic on a Budget—It Can Be Done!

Eat Organic on a Budget—It Can Be Done!

Let’s start with full disclosure: I am not by nature a frugal shopper, nor a shopper on a budget. In fact, I’ve been known to make sales people gawk at me when my bill gets tallied (like when I drive an hour to the closest Whole Foods with a cooler in the back of my […]

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Free Organic Fruit! Plant an Orchard

Free Organic Fruit! Plant an Orchard

This spring I am planting an orchard. I’ve got the spot picked out, and I’ve just submitted my order for trees. People like to say you can’t grow fruit organically, but I know it’s possible. Certainly, I buy organic fruit at the supermarket, and at my local farmer’s market. And I grew up eating cherries […]

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Pancakes from Scratch in a Pinch

Pancakes from Scratch in a Pinch

The other weekend my daughter had a sleepover, and I needed to redeem myself with breakfast, since the dinner I’d served the night before was…well…absolutely horrible. It was leftover Chinese food. Unthinkable, right? So, the kids asked for pancakes, and I said yes before I realized I was out of my usual organic mix. And […]

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It's Buffalo Wing Time!

It’s Buffalo Wing Time!

The Super Bowl is this weekend. (I don’t need to tell you that!) I’m not a big watcher of the game, but I do love my wings. Since my husband grew up near Buffalo, he introduced me to wings in all their variations early in our relationship. I was already a wing girl then, in […]

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Steve Jobs, Barack Obama, and the State of Change

Steve Jobs, Barack Obama, and the State of Change

On Wednesday, I watched two big speeches. On Huffingtonpost.com—along with about 800,000 other people (you could see the number of people watching it change in real time)—I saw a blurry Steve Jobs unveil Apple’s latest creation, the iPad, thanks to some guy holding up an iPhone to record the event. The video quality was spotty. […]

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Pickled Red Beet Eggs: Beautiful and Delicious

Pickled Red Beet Eggs: Beautiful and Delicious

Last week I was making Easter dinner (wait, I’ll explain!) for a photo shoot for the April Issue of Prevention magazine. They are doing a story on my upcoming book, Organic Manifesto, and wanted a real Maria’s Farm Country Kitchen holiday meal to feature in their pages. So, this being for a spring issue, I […]

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It's Time to Order Seeds

It’s Time to Order Seeds

Holidays are over; decorations are put away. The winter darkness is starting to lift a tiny bit, but the cold doldrums are here to stay for a while. These are all the indelible signs that it’s time to order seeds and plants for this year’s garden. Sure, you can wait until spring, and rush to […]

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Crazy for Popovers!

Crazy for Popovers!

A month or two ago I had the pleasure of dining at the exclusive corporate headquarters of the Hearst publishing empire. It was a private dining room on the 44th floor, and a waiter brought in a giant golden thing as big as my daughter’s head and put it on my bread plate. Hungry woman […]

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