Myra Goodman - Salads for Every Season

25 Recipes from Earthbound Farm

BY MYRA GOODMAN

Copyright 2011 by Myra Goodman
Author photo Scott Campbell

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproducedmechanically, electronically, or by any other means, including photocopyingwithout written permission of the publisher. Published simultaneously in Canada by Thomas Allen & Son Limited.

SALADS FOR EVERY SEASON is a compilation of selected recipes previously published in Food to Live By, with Linda Holland and Pamela McKinstry, and The Earthbound Cook, with Pamela McKinstry, Sarah LaCasse, and Ronni Sweet.

eISBN 978-0-7611-6563-7

Cover design by Janet Vicario

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No matter the season, my passion for salads is a constant: Whether its freezing or sweltering out, I eat at least one a day. I eat my salads slowly, and I enjoy every bite.

We all know that salads are healthy. But to me theres more to it than that. Salads are also beautiful and delicious. Beyond that, they offer an easy way to bring the best flavors of the seasons into your home.

Theres a huge selection of fresh salad greens available year round, but I make a special effort to enjoy fruits and vegetables at their peak in flavor and abundance, and I encourage you to do the same. The 25 salad recipes in this special e-book short are collected from my two cookbooks, The Earthbound Cook: 250 Recipes for Delicious Food and a Healthy Planet and Food to Live By: The Earthbound Farm Organic Cookbook. I hope theyll inspire in you a new sense of possibility. Seek out those early summer strawberries and raspberrieswith some good balsamic, fresh mixed greens, and a few crumbles of blue cheese, they redefine fast food.

Your salads can follow the seasons all year roundlate summer brings the opportunity to savor luscious tomatoes; in winter, embrace beets, citrus, and pomegranates; and in the springtime, experiment with kohlrabi, peas and baby turnips.

I created this e-book short (my first e-book ever) in part to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Earthbound Farms pre-washed salads. In 1986, whole heads of iceberg lettuce were almost the only grocery-store option available to salad lovers. So much has changed since thenback when I would have been writing this on a typewriter and relying on copious applications of white-out!

Twenty five years ago my husband Drew and I were two years into farming our backyard gardentwo and a half acres of fruit and nut trees, heirloom raspberries and baby greens in Carmel Valley, Californiaand operating a small roadside stand and local delivery route. Most people thought our dream of successful organic farming was a delusion, and assumed our baby greens would be at most a passing fad.

No one, including us, could have projected that Earthbound Farm would become the largest grower of organic produce in the country; that today we grow, wash, and sell more than 22 million servings of organic baby greens every week. That statistic amazes me. It doesnt seem so long ago that Drew and I washed every single salad we sold by hand!

What makes me even more proud and happy is that with the help of 150 growers, small and large, we farm almost 37,000 acres organically, avoiding the use of more than 11 million pounds of synthetic chemicals every year. Thats a lot of chemicals kept out of our food supply, air, water and soil.

I hope you will enjoy these salad recipes and visit our website (www.ebfarm.com) for more ideas to help you and your families thrive.

Wishing you many delicious and healthy meals!

Myra Goodman
Co-Founder, Earthbound Farm

I have spent my entire adult life devoted to organic farming, and I am passionate about sharing all the reasons why my commitment grows year after year. Here are twelve wonderful benefits of organic food and farming. I hope they convince you to make the organic choice whenever possible!

Choosing organic...

1. Keeps chemicals out of your bodyand the environment.

Organic food is grown without toxic synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. Although you usually cant see or taste pesticides on your food, testing by government agencies shows that significant percentages of tested samples of some conventional produce have detectable pesticide residues. In addition to entering our food supply, pesticides applied in the field drift from their target and contaminate our air, oceans, rivers, groundwater, and soil.

2. Eliminates the main source of dietary pesticide exposure for kids.

The average child in the United States is exposed to five pesticides every day in his or her food and drinking water. A study published in Environmental Health Perspectives in 2008 showed that switching to organic produce and juices for just five days virtually eliminates any sign of exposure to organophosphate insecticides in children who previously showed evidence of these chemicals in saliva or urine samples.

3. Protects farmworkers, wildlife, and nearby homes, schools, and businesses.

When conventional agricultural chemicals are used in farm fields, they affect the people who apply the chemicals as well as the environment nearby. A 2006 study published in Annals of Neurology found that workers who handled pesticides had a 70 percent higher incidence of Parkinsons disease than those who did not. A 2009 follow-up to that study found that instances of Parkinsons were twice as high among people who lived near farms sprayed with certain types of pesticides, compared with people who werent exposed.

4. Provides your family with highly nutritious produce.

According to The Organic Centers 2008 study titled New Evidence Confirms the Nutritional Superiority of Plant-Based Organic Foods, average levels of 11 nutrients are 25 percent higher in organic foods than in conventional foods, based on 236 scientifically valid comparisons. Overall, organic produce is approximately 30 percent higher in antioxidants than conventional produce. And organic prepared foods never contain hydrogenated oils or artificial flavors, colors, or preservatives.

5. Protects our precious oceans.

Conventional fertilizers are a big contributor to the dead zones in our oceans, caused in large part by an excess of nitrogen from synthetic farm fertilizers that run off farmland into rivers and oceans. The excess nutrients lead to massive algal blooms, which consume most of the life-giving oxygen in the water as they decompose. The results are large areas in the ocean that can no longer support marine life. In the Gulf of Mexico, where one of the largest ocean dead zones has been created, the breakdown of nitrogen has been reported to be approximately 70 percent from fertilizers, 11 percent from municipal sewage, 12 percent from animal waste, and 6 percent from atmospheric deposition.

6. Reduces contaminants in our drinking water.

The U.S. Geological Surveys 2008 Pesticide National Synthesis Project found at least one pesticide in every stream tested. Pesticides found most frequently, and in the highest concentrations, were synthetic chemicals used in conventional agriculture.