Yep, It's Pesticide Free

I've enjoyed going to the local farmer's market every other Saturday morning even when the offerings are pretty much what I see at the supermarket. After all, the stuff is about as close to homegrown as I'm likely to get. I have a black thumb (I'd be on trial for attempted genocide if plants had legal rights), and if somebody else didn't grow it, I'd probably starve.

The one drawback for a city / suburban wimpy girl like me is that there's a little too much nature in natural. Last week when I washed the locally grown broccoli, I found a few — make that two dozen — locally raised caterpillars or grubs or whatever those green things that live on and eat broccoli are called.

Alrighty. Nobody said it's easy being green. I pulled my chopsticks out of a drawer, and went to work plucking out the little buggers — very gently because I don't know if I can stand the feeling of squishing another living being — as if my grilling a steak or braising a pork shoulder is somehow morally different. Why the heck aren't I vegan?

Being natural apparently means spending 40 minutes cleaning broccoli. Because not only did I pry a dozen juicy green residents of various sizes from my veggie, I also had to pull apart each floret into miniscule pieces, submerging them in a big bowl of water, and discovered an equal number of well-hidden stowaways who would have become the meat component of the dish had I not been so persistent.

What was I thinking? After about an hour total of cleaning and cooking the broccoli with a few crushed cloves of garlic, my three kids devoured the entire bowl, leaving nothing for me and my husband. And that's the reason I don't want poisonous pesticides in our food.