Joan Dye Gussow ’50 and Peter LeCompte ’84 offer expert advice on how to set a more organic table...

As the popularity of organic foods grows, farmers’ markets are sprouting in towns across the country, hormone-free meats and cheeses are turning up in grocery store chains, and there’s even an endless variety of frozen organic foods for the culinarily challenged.

At its root, ‘organic’ refers to food that’s been certified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as containing nothing that nature didn’t intend. Livestock and poultry aren’t fed antibiotics or growth hormones, while crops are spared the use of pesticides, herbicides and synthetic fertilizers.

For organic gardener Joan Dye Gussow ’50 though, going organic specifically means buying locally grown organic food from farmers’ markets or neighborhood co-ops. Buying food—even meats—directly from farmers helps preserve a vanishing way of life, she says, and it keeps the food supply out of the hands of huge commercial farms that rely on cheap labor.

On the other hand, Peter LeCompte ’84 makes his living making sure pesticide-free, non-genetically modified foods are distributed widely and inexpensively, spreading the organic gospel to ordinary households. For him, it is important to make natural organic food available on a grand scale without dumping potentially harmful chemicals into the soil in the process.

We asked our experts to help us give a meal an organic makeover. Most of the ingredients seen here can be found at farmers markets, health food stores and some grocery chains. Committed foodies may want to buy or even pick the harvest
fresh from a farm. Find local organic farmers and co-ops at www.localharvest.org.

Joan Dye Gussow ’50, lives in Piermont, New York, where she grows all her own vegetables. She believes that we need to “get closer to the person who grows your food,” a creed that stems from more than two decades of organic gardening. It was a passion for gardening that led her to write This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader (Chelsea Green Publishing Co., 2001), described as part memoir, part manual and part manifesto.

Chickens and other animals grown and raised on small farms, Gussow points out, live gentler lives than those penned together by the thousands, and there are fewer steps between farm and freezer. The animal is less stressed, and the meat isn’t shipped long distances or handled roughly, all of which affects its freshness and succulence.

Winter vegetables such as parsnips, potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots and turnips are easy to find in most farmers’ markets late in the year, Gussow adds. Roasting them in olive oil with fresh rosemary and a dash of salt caramelizes them, so even people who turn up their noses at turnips won’t be able to resist.

Kale leaves are hardy enough to withstand a mild December and can be found in many farmers markets until late in the year. Blanched kale, served cool, has a sharp taste that makes a “wonderful contrast” to the winter vegetables.

As the Director of Purchasing for Small Planet Foods, a division of General Mills, Peter LeCompte ’84 travels from his home in Washington state to farms throughout the country and abroad where he selects the produce for Muir Glen tomato sauces and Cascade Farm frozen foods. Organic foods have become so popular, he says, “you can find almost any organic food almost anywhere in almost any season.”

Mesclun mix salad outsells all other organic produce, since it can be bought at farmers’ markets in bulk or already bagged at the grocery store. Who gobbles the most organic goodies? No surprise here: People living from the Bay Area up to Seattle.

Pasta sauce just tastes better when made from organic tomatoes, says LeCompte. The secret is buried in the soil, which gets its nutrients from decaying plants and bugs, rather than being stiffly controlled through fertilizers and other chemicals. The result: a hardier—and heartier—tomato.

Cheese, yogurt and other dairy products top the list of processed foods to gain popularity in organic form. Most grocery stores in California stock milk from dairies that shun antibiotics and hormones, and stores in other states are catching on quickly.

Peaches, when conventionally grown, are picked green and ripened by gassing, said LeCompte, so they never taste as scrumptious as those allowed to ripen on the tree. Gussow even freezes the peaches from the tree in her yard to enjoy year-round. She also recommends reconstituting dehydrated fruit for a simple dessert.

—Anne Levy