Driscoll’s Organic Raspberries vs. Driscoll’s Regular (non-organic) Raspberries

Driscoll’s Organic Raspberries vs. Driscoll’s Regular (non-organic) Raspberries

I was in Super Target shopping for groceries here in Minnesota and I came across some Driscoll’s organic raspberries that looked extremely tasty so I picked them up. As I walked down the aisle I came across the regular non-organic Driscoll’s raspberries which were $1 cheaper. With the container of organic in my hand, I leaned in to look closer at the regular since they were the same brand and I was so shocked I whipped out the phone camera and took a picture of them side-by-side. The regular (non-organic) raspberries were a pale red in comparison with a whitish powder coating, they were ripe and not rotten or anything, and if I wouldn’t have had the organic in my hand I wouldn’t have thought anyhting of it- but the difference in color and quality was so noticable it was like the other weren’t really like real raspberries at all.

Of course, once I took the picture, I kid you not, the produce man followed me around like I was a spy or something! Eventually, I’ll figure out how to get this mysterious phone picture off my phone and post it here for you to see!

Driscoll’s organic raspberries are USDA certified organic and the same company also offers non-organic raspberries. If they truly cared about why organic food is important and not just making more money of the designation “organic” how can they live with that?

Paya Organics at the Kalahari (Wisconsin Dells)

Paya Organics Review

by Kristina Blasen (June 2011)

Last week, we were on vacation at Wisconsin Dells and spent a night at the Kalahari resort on our last day before heading back to Minnesota. It was pretty neat that they had Paya organics shampoo, conditioner and bath soap in the room.

http://www.greensuites.com/Environmentally-Friendly-Hotel-Supplies/PAYA-Organics

According to their website, Paya products have:

•Biodegradable liquids and soaps made with natural and organic ingredients:
No Parabens, No Phthalates, No Mineral Oil

• Bottles made of PET, the most recyclable resin available

• Cartons & wrappers made with post-consumer recycled materials

• Cruelty free – never tested on animals

• All bottles and soaps are made in the USA

After being in the chlorine all day my hair was feeling dry and nasty, but this shampoo and conditioner worked great. The pool smell was gone and my hair was back to normal. It was strange though that the Kalahari is still using chlorine which is terrible for the body (lots of signs about showering off so you don’t get chemical burns and irritated skin, eyes, nose and throat were posted everywhere) when so many of the other hotels and resorts in Wisconsin Dells have switched to salt which is wonderful for the skin, not irritating and much nicer to play in!

We also stayed at the Wilderness Hotel where we had a great time, but they had the run-of-the-mill unidentifiable whitish shampoo in their bath though they had already switched to salt or some kind of non-chlorine mixture in their pools.

Organic mud shampoo is a no-go!

A quest for organic shampoo and conditioner that works!

by Kristina Blasen (2011)

I tried the Terressentials organic mud-based shampoo (Left Coast Lemon Pure Earth Hair Wash) for about a month and overall it is a no-go so I’m back to searching for something better…and cheaper…preferably local…

I loved knowing that I wasn’t putting chemicals in my hair that are known to cause cancer, the Lemon scent was great and it made my hair super soft, but you have to order it in the mail and it is super expensive and you need a lot when you first start using it for your hair to adjust (according to their website).

The big downside is that I have dark blonde hair and the mud shampoo significantly darkened the look of my hair and after repeated use the hair felt super soft, but also thick and gummy. I think this is because of the organic Castile based soap made from olive oil, since I tried a different Castile-soap and ran into the thick gummy feeling before. It isn’t all bad though, I love the Terressentials organic baby wash and their organic deodorant and I will order those again when I run out!

 

 

 

This time I’m trying out MasterCuts Moisture formula sulfate free shampoo and conditioner since they were on sale when I got my hair cut. These smell great, mildly fruity and for the first ten washes or so, all was well…until, there it was again, that gummy dirty hair buildup feeling [sigh]. It isn’t all bad though, one wash with a different shampoo every so often and these still work great!

 

 

Sample Girl Goes Organic!

The Adventures of Sample Girl

(Preview)

Well, I wasn’t thinking of posting here about my book The Adventures of Sample Girl until I was making the sneek peek preview tonight and realized that I thought about going “organic” a long time before I ever started this blog!

There are some funny stories in here about how bad some of the “organic” samples I was giving out actually taste when I tried them out before serving them to the customers and how their “healthy” reputation didn’t always match the ingredients on the box!

Check it out!

Here’s a link to the free preview!

https://www.createspace.com/Preview/1082741

You can buy the book here:

https://www.createspace.com/3608374

A quest for a deodorant I’m not allergic to…Terressentials Zesty Citrus

Terressentials Deodorant- Zesty Citrus scent

Terressentials Zesty Citrus Experiment

by Kristina Blasen (2011)

After doing some online research I decided to order Terressentials Zesty Citrus deodorant since I’ve already tried several name brands of deodorant and antiperspirant and either I’m allergic to the scent or I’m allergic to something in the product formulation that makes me super ITCHY and red!

The Terressentials website has a lot of great information and articles. Sadly, their awesome articles will remain hidden for most since they look like ads going down the right side of the page with each title in a little box with a picture…you can check them out here: www.terressentials.com/

I’d already checked out the local natural foods store (Valley Natural Foods) and they didn’t carry what I was looking for- I wanted something 100% organic not something with a token 5 or 10% organic ingredients and the rest all the chemicals in non-organic deodorant.

Terressentials makes Fragrance- free Aloe Vera, Zen Spice, Lavender Fresh and Zesty Citrus deodorants.

Good news is, the smell doesn’t make me sick, it is light and smells like citrus with a mix of lemon and orange smell. It’s working just fine without all those nasty ingredients.

Here are the ingredients so you can compare:

Organic Zesty Citrus

Organic aloe vera juice°, mineral blend, baking soda, organic extract° of wildcrafted usnea, organic extracts° of organic yucca° and organic white willow°, essential oils of organic sweet orange°, organic lemon°, organic true lavender°, organic rosemary°, organic ginger°, organic tea tree°, organic clove bud°, organic bergamot°, organic ylang ylang° and organic eucalyptus°.

°USDA Certified Organic

Let’s compare this with the ingredients of a common brand name deodorant for women you can find on your local store’s shelf.

Secret (Non-organic)

Aluminum Zirconium, Trichlorohydrex Gly, Cyclomethicone, Dimethicone, Polyethylene, Silica and Propylene Carbonate.

Tasty Organic Tea- Numi Organic Tea Honeybush, Bushmans Brew

Organic Honeybush tea

Numi Organic Tea Honeybush, Bushmans Brew

by Kristina Blasen (2011)

This stuff is so tasty, it is addicting! It has a very mild sweet taste. No sweetener needed. It has caffeine and a low amount of tannin (that is the stuff that makes your black tea a dark brown color and also what gives strong tea a bitter taste). It is rich in antioxidants, phytoestrogens and essential minerals, so it’s good for you!

I love this because it is widely available, I found mine at the local grocery store here in Minnesota, but you can also find it in the health food or natural food stores as well. It runs $5.49-$6.99 a box though and never seems to go on sale, so, like most organic products, that is a big drawback.

Numi makes a whole line of great organic teas, a few years ago friends gave me a sampler pack for Christmas and the only one I can’t recommend is the Gunpowder Green- that one tastes EXACTLY like a stick from a campfire in a cup! It has a strong smoke flavor that might be useful for marinating vegetables or something, but since I grabbed it without looking at the package and added milk and honey then drank it in the car on the way to work…well, I’m sure you can imagine what a shock that was when I took a sip! Tea everywhere and me teaching in a wet shirt. Eww, I can still taste it just thinking about it!

Honeybush Plant

Stick with the Honeybush, it’s wonderful!

Earthgrown Organics- Coconut, Walnut and Almond rolled dates

Earthgrown Organics

Coconut & Walnut Rolled Dates

by Kristina Blasen (2011)

Amazing, heavenly and wonderful. An all natural candy bar replacement. I got the Earthgrown Organics variety pack with unsweetened coconut rolled dates, almond rolled dates and walnut rolled dates to try it out. Ouch, the pack I got had a pound of fruit and was $6.99, there were probably 12 bars in there to start. (Ha, ha! I don’t know for sure because I ate some of them!)

I found these in the produce section at the local grocery store. Earthgrown Organics is a local company headquartered here in Minnesota too.

Walnut Date Rolls

These date rolls have 110 calories each, so you get two for the caloric price of a candy bar, but trust me, these taste WAY better and they actually have some nutrition in them.

Dates have protein, fiber, ash, calcium, phosphorus, iron, potassium, vitamin A, and niacin – and a chemical-laden chocolate bar has what??

Dates are kind of neat actually, instant energy from all that natural fruit sugar, but the fiber made me feel full even though it was a tiny amount of food and the energy boost lasted all afternoon. No 4:30 p.m. nap, at least only one for baby and not for me too!

Mrs. Meyers Clean Day Soap

Mrs. Meyers Clean Day soap- Lemon Verbena

Lemon Verbena

by Kristina Blasen (2011)

Since the organic aisle of my local grocery store is cheaper than the local natural foods store I wanted to see what kind of soaps, shampoos and cleaning products that they carried. I found Mrs. Meyers Clean Day bar soap (and a lot of other products from the same company) which was made here in Minnesota. Cool, local is good, but it was $5.49 which in my world, was a whole lot of money for soap!

This is castile soap made from olive oil. I bought the Lemon Verbena to try out, but they also had Basil which smelled great and Lavender (which I didn’t smell since I’m allergic to lavender).

I was looking for a replacement for my pump hand soaps that I keep in the bathrooms and by the kitchen sink. I checked those out and though the ingredients weren’t toxic, they weren’t that great either so I put them on my mental list of non-organic stuff okay to finish up, but I’m not buying again!

The neat thing about this soap is that you can use it on your hands and body, but also to wash your hair! So, I’ve road-tested it for you and it all checks out. Hand soap, check. Body soap, check. Worked for shaving without causing cuts like regular soap, good! I used it in my hair too, smells fresh, not too strong, just clean and it made my hair clean and shiny without being oily.

Okay, now this company should really start paying me, since this is a great testimonial for them!

So, overall, I’m happy to find a replacement product so easily for my hand soap and the only pinch is the price. (Although it is pretty versatile so if it replaces a bunch of products it might be cheaper in the long run.)

The Organic Conversion

What's in Your Food? by Bill Statham

Hi! Welcome to the “covert” organic, a little blog about converting from the processed foods and products full of chemicals and other unhealthy junk to natural foods and organic products- all while eiking by on a tiny budget and using my brain to research chemicals and pick good alternative products.

This is really a snapshot of the ongoing story chronicling my slow conversion from buying the average everyday brand name foods, bath and beauty products, laundry and cleaning products that I grew up with to buying organic in order to reduce my exposure to toxic stuff.

I’m checking the labels and researching what those crazy chemical names mean on the back of the label and with some help from a great book called “What’s in Your Food?” by Bill Stratham. Research has shown that those chemical names that we assume are okay since they are in the food and products that we buy at the local stores aren’t always “okay”.

Sometimes those long names tacked on at the end of the list of ingredients are just the formal name for a vitamin and not something that is bad for you, but sometimes those names are hiding chemicals that are known carcinogens or mutagens.

Like a lot of people, I’m on a budget and besides finding all the hidden chemicals that are in pretty much everything, I’m finding it hard to buy organic because it costs so much more than all those chemical-laden brand name products that are on every store shelf and I have to look a lot harder and research more to find out which organic alternatives are the best and where to buy them.

Mrs. Meyers Clean Day Soap- Basil

I’m trying out different natural products as I replace the “old” brand name chemical-laden stuff I always bought before because it was cheap and widely available and seeing what works and what is the most cost-effective.

Luckily, I read a lot of great articles that point me in the right direction of products and chemicals to watch out for, then I go and do my own research so I call tell the real from the quacks.

So, that is what this blog is going to be about…I think. 🙂

by Kristina Blasen (2011)