"bagged salad" news and stories

Earthbound Farm, the company that started out on a small farm selling organic raspberries, has become one of the nation's largest producers of organic fruits and vegetables. They created the bagged salads that have become staples for so many of us (although sadly, their spinach was thought to have been the source of the E. coli outbreak in 2006) and made organic foods widely available.

In 2006, Myra Goldman, one of the founders of Earthbound Farm wrote (along with Linda Holland and Pamela McKinstry) a cookbook called Food to Live By, The Earthbound Farm Organic Cookbook. It is a volume that embraces the organic ethos and offers up nearly 400 pages of recipes, many of which are from the Organic Kitchen at the Earthbound Farmstand or Goldman's own kitchen.

As is typically true for me when it comes to cookbooks, one of my favorite parts of this book was the introduction. Goldman takes ten pages to share the store of how she and her husband got started farming, where they came from (they were both originally New Yorkers) and how she fell in love with fresh, organic foods. Beyond the introduction, the section of the book that felt the most personal and had the most appealing recipes was the breakfast and brunch section, in which Goldman shares stories of cooking for her kids and includes recipes for savory treats like Spinach, Feta and Mushroom Quiche (the picture looks amazing) and sweet ones like Persimmon and Date Breakfast Bread.

How and when did you fall in love with food?

These days, everyone is familiar with the term organic. It is plastered over everything in the grocery store, from instant oatmeal to cartons of milk. However just 25 years ago, organic foods weren't really on the popular radar. One of the first companies to come along and start making people aware of benefits of eating foods grow without the use of chemicals was Earthbound Farm. Started in 1984 with a 2 1/2 acre raspberry crop, they've expanded into one of the largest producers of organic produce in the country. You know those pre-washed bagged salads that your family tears through each week? They were the ones who started that trend.

This year, they are celebrating their 24th birthday and they're doing it in style. Each day for during the month of July, the folks at Earthbound are giving away three copies of their cookbook, Food to Live By. Everyone who enters to win will also get a $1 off coupon for any Earthbound Farm product. Additionally, they've put up 24 tasty recipes and 24 reasons to choose organic foods. So head on over and say happy birthday to a company who helped lead the organic movement.

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You had to work late. The traffic on the commute home was horrible. You're tired. You're hungry. But you've got to get dinner for the family on the table now. What do you do?

You could resort to picking up a bucket from the Colonel on your way home, or call for pizza delivery, but you're better than that, right? Apparently, you are, according to a study by UCLA's Center on Everyday Lives of Families that did the first academic study to track American families moment by moment as they make dinner. They had expected to see a lot more takeout in working families but what they really saw was that 70% of the households in the study cooked at home. However, these "home-cooked" meals heavy reliance on "convenience foods."

However, these convenience foods, things that augment home cooking, didn't necessarily make dinner preparation any faster or easier. In fact, the difference in time to prepare dinner between a household that relied on convenience foods like boxed mixes, packaged vegetables, and pre-made stirfries and a household that made everything from scratch, was not statistically significant.

Really? You mean all this time I've been using Hamburger Helper, and I could have made lasagna from scratch in the same amount of time?!?!

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