Organic Food Coupons & Homemade Bagels

Very excited to announce that we launched our new website this week, OrganicFoodCoupons.com.

It is a work in progress but already has come fantastic recipes, photos and listing of companies, farms, co-ops, and grocery stores that offer free organic food coupons.

A lot of the coupons that I have found are available on the manufacture/farm site that you can just print and bring to the grocery store.

Talk about saving time and money- I love it! Would much rather be sewing that hanging out at the grocery store looking for deals.

We made yummy bagels today too- will have the recipe up very soon for those.

Top 7 Eco Friendly Ways To Buy and Cook Food

1. Become a locovore- Buy food that is locally grown or raised. This is beneficial for many reasons. You are eating seasonal fresh foods, lessens the carbon foot print of the food (time it travels from grower to your store, and best of all it supports your local economy.

2. Eat Seasonal Foods- It helps to minimize the environmental impact caused by foods being shipped in and it lessens the chances that you will be consuming "damaged" from the shipping process. The great news is that after you complete a season, you can can or jar food to eat when it is not in season. A few great resources for further reading on eating seasonal are:

Sustanabletable.org

Wonderful resource to help you eat and shop locally. The website offers the local/seasonal advise based on your state.

Natural Resources Defense Council

Has a fantastic online tool to calculate the "food miles" to help you determine what is freshest to you.

3. Be Frugal

Use up all of what you purchase and shop from a list so you will not be tempted by what the store/market wants you to buy. At the end of the week, consider making a refrigerator soup by cleaning out all the extra veggies you did not consume, you could even make the broth from a chicken or ham bone if you had one that week.

4. Eat Less Meat and More Plant Foods

Cooking Green:Reducing Your Carbon Footprint in the Kitchen New Green Basics Way by Kate Heyhoe

5. Compost food waste

compost the food scraps that you could not use up in frugal recipes. Use the compost to grow fresh fruits and veggies to feed your family.

6. Research Seafood before purchasing

Visit the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) for a list of fisheries that meet the criteria for sustainability. You also want to consider only purchasing sustainable species of fish.

The Monteray Bay Aquarium provides a seafood watch fact sheet.

7. Take the first step and start today.

You do not have to do it all right 100% of the time, but if you can make small changes in your eating and shopping habits it will really add up.

Top 10 Foods that you should buy organic

We try to buy all organic food when possible. I know it can be expensive, so some foods are higher on the list than others because of the likely hood that they will have been treated with pesticides.

Top 10 foods that are more likely than others to have been in contact with pesticides.

1. Apples

2. Potatoes

3. Lettuce

4. Bell Peppers

5. Strawberries

6. Celery

7. Spinach

8. Peaches

9. Carrots

10. Nectarines

Top 10 foods that are least likely to contain pesticides

1. Pineapples

2. Egg Plant

3. Asparagus

4. Onions

5. Broccoli

6. Mangos

7. Kiwi Fruit

8. Bananas

9. Avocados

10. Cabbage