Pesticides - blech!

I've always loved - and preferred - local, seasonal, organic foodstuffs. Yeah, all those buzzwords. But it's true - I was destined for that after being fed baby food that my mom made by hand in her mouli mill from stuff grown in her very own garden. Or purchased from some recluse farmer - eggs, goat cheese, and milk all arrived in our house in battered cardboard crates after long, bumpy trips down dirt roads in our VW poptop bus. She was a cook and baker at a (hushed voice) health food store when those were hidden, tiny places with names like "Mountain Mama's" and "Rainbow Crystal Market." She baked bread and made soup and said things like "co-op," and "brewer's yeast" and fed me carob stars. She might have made her pie crust from whole wheat flour (good god) and forced quinoa down my throat two decades before it was the Next Hip Thing - but she also set a standard for the taste of spring lettuces still tinged with the mineral taste of warm dirt, and the sour sunshine flavor of apricots shaken right from the old orchard trees. I love her for that.

Now that I'm looking toward my own mamahood, and thinking about the fact that a freakin' brain stem is taking shape in there, I've become even more dedicated to drinking organic milk and choosing pesticide-free fruits and veg. I mean, with it so readily available (even at Safeway!), why not? I don't even have to haul the kids to the outskirts of town and make friends with weird hermits to get the stuff. It's worth the extra buck per gallon or pound when I'm growing an entire nervous system for another human being.

That said, it isn't always possible to buy organic. What if I really, really need that guacamole for my shredded guajillo pork tacos, and organic avocados are nowhere to be seen? Thus, the handiness of a recent study that measured the amounts of pesticide in produce, and broke them down into two lists - stuff you should definitely try to buy organic, and stuff that has a consistently low pesticide load. Handy info! I first read it in Consumer Reports, but it's also posted online here. And here's a short version for Miss Tasty readers:

12 Most Contaminated with Pesticides - Buy These Organic
• Apples
• Bell Peppers
• Celery
• Cherries
• Imported Grapes
• Nectarines
• Peaches
• Pears
• Potatoes
• Red Raspberries
• Spinach
• Strawberries

12 Least Contaminated with Pesticides
• Asparagus
• Avocados
• Bananas
• Broccoli
• Cauliflower
• Corn (sweet)
• Kiwi
• Mangos
• Onions
• Papaya
• Pineapples
• Peas (sweet)

See you in the aisles. (And by the way - I still hate brown rice.)