Is it Constitutionally correct to ban GM food? Please fee free to share graphic and link back to this post Logos are theirs, graphic is mine. :)

Many of you may know that I am 100% into organic, heirloom gardening and a die-hard advocate for our US Constitution.

I hate GM food and would never eat any of it if we could afford to eat only organic all the time. This is a huge controversy. Those on the side of GM food say it has never been proven to cause issues, those on the other side say it has. We have heard that Monsanto buys off the companies doing the research to top it off.

All of that being said, I am curious about your opinions and insight. Please respectfully state your opinion on the subject of banning GM food and if you feel it is constitutional for the USA to do so. If you respond to others, again, do it respectfully or I will delete your comments.

Here is my current personal opinion, which is subject to change with more information:

"I am not sure I am into banning Monsanto, DOW, etc.  In our country, that seems to fly in the face of our US Constitution and liberty.

But I believe it should be a lot more difficult and expensive for a chemical or something that has been altered to make it on the market than organic, natural food. I am into disclosing truth to people and letting them decide what they want. I believe we should stop subsidies to farmers and telling them what to grow and then forcing a market for their abundance of GMO product. Let farmers grow what they want and if they can sell it depends on their wisdom and hard work. If we disclose the truth, take away subsidies, and make the competition legit I think we would see a different outcome.

In my area of Northern California, the organic farmers here cannot afford to be certified as such, so cannot legally sell their food as organic. I believe this is wrong.

Most people I have spoken to have said they would eat organic food if they could afford it. Almost all people are for labeling of GM food, but don't want it to raise the price on their groceries, as times are tough enough."

This is my 2 cents. What is yours?

Thank you in advance for taking the time to share your opinions and insights. :)

Organic Curly Endive with Bacon and Garlic Dressing Recipe

Salad King Endive heirloom seeds germinated easily and grew into the most beautiful and lush curly green salad leaves.

Organic Salad King Endive in my Garden by Victory Seeds

Unfortunately, we have had a lot of heat early this spring in Northern California, so my endive is wanting to bolt. I will plant some more specifically for this salad recipe, but this time they will be in an area which receives more shade.

Endive is another power packed super food, but it can be a bit on the bitter side for a salad green by itself. Mixed in with lettuce leaves it tastes wonderful. However, making my Curly Endive Salad with Bacon and Garlic Dressing is even better! The dressing is tangy sweet which hides any bitterness of the endive leaves.

Organic Curly Endive Salad with Bacon and Garlic Dressing

Curly Endive Salad with Bacon and Garlic Dressing

(print recipe)

Ingredients

• 6 bacon slices, browned and crumbled into bite size pieces (reserving some bacon grease to saute garlic)
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 1/2 tablespoons mild honey
• 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
• 3 tablespoons unfiltered apple cider vinegar
• 1 large egg
• 1 cup prepared chicken broth
• 1 large head curly endive, washed and spun, torn into bite-size pieces (if stems are large or hard, only use the curly leaves and discard all stems)

Instructions

In a small bowl combine sugar and flour. Then whisk in the apple cider vinegar, egg, and chicken broth. Sit aside.

Saute garlic in bacon grease

Saute the minced garlic in the bacon grease until its fragrant (a couple of minutes). Stir in the broth mixture and continue stirring until thickens over med heat. Remove from heat, stir in salt and pepper to taste. Add the bacon pieces.

After dressing thickens, add bacon.

Toss the endive with the warm bacon dressing in a salad bowl and serve.

Organic Garden Seedlings started with recyclables

My children and I started a compost pile a couple of years ago, as one way of recycling and improving the health of our garden. However, there is more than one way to use recycle household "trash" in the garden.

Enter toilet paper, paper towel, and gift wrap rolls. In the past we put them in our blue recycling bin. Then we thought we had done a little more to nurture our earth by tearing them up into small pieces and throwing them into our compost pile. But how about a money saver and earth-friendly use of these items in the garden?

We cut them into the size of small seedling pots, filled them with our homemade potting soil mixture, and then add our heirloom seeds. But wait, it gets better. You know those plastic containers your produce comes in? Strawberries, blueberries, mix salad greens, etc? Most of the time they have plenty of venting in the bottom and top, but if not, we add some slits. They become a miniature DIY greenhouse, which increases our germination rates. Once our seeds germinate, we live the lid open.

By placing the seeds in the cut up tubes, they are much easier to remove from our miniature greenhouses without the soil crumbling away from the roots and no damage to the stems. We stick the entire thing in the new pot or ground and we are good to go. The cardboard tubes breakdown in the soil and become compost. We recycle more than this in our garden, but I will save that for another day!

Organic Gardening Education - Irrigation Canals in Ancient Mesopotamia

As many of you know, I not only have a passion for organic gardening, but I also enjoy using it as an opportunity to teach my children about history and science, while sharing life skills with them. Each year, my children pick out which veges or flowers they will not only plant, but also care for and harvest.

Thus, I have decided to do a series on organic gardening with kids, that will also cover science and history lessons you can implement in your garden or home schooling.

Organic Gardening Education Two thumbs up for successful irrigation

 When learning about how the ancient people of our earth used to get water to their plants, something so simple to us, became more of a challenge. The first lesson was from Ancient Mesopotamia and how they irrigated their first crops.

I try not to buy anything unless we cannot figure out a way to achieve a lesson without new resources. After a family event recently, we had several disposable, large aluminum roaster/serving pans on hand.  Snipping an end off each of them, carefully not to cut myself on the sharp edges, I then used binder clips to hold them together, as well as tape.

Organic Gardening Education with Kids - The process of forming irrigation canals.

One can line the inside of the pans with a large trash bag if desired to help hold in the soil and water. We did snip a small rectangle on one side and then on the other to act as a river entering and exiting the region. The goal was to figure out how to get that water when poured from our watering can, to go into various "farming" regions alongside the river, without washing all the soil away.

We also had quite a few "river rocks" from an old fish tank available for our use, as well as twigs from our neighborhood.

Organic Gardening Education with Children - Took a couple of tries to get the water to reach all the land.

I try to take photos of most of our "experiments" in history and science as a visual aid to add to their history and/or science binders. And it did not stop here. After this lesson, we were able to move onto various simple machines that made irrigating crops even easier as knowledge and experience increased. Such as how a lever made it easier to lift water over the banks.

My children now realize that turning on a hose and watering the garden is not such a chore compared to what their ancestors went through to grow crops. Learning about life through hands-on experience helps cultivate a greater appreciation of what we have and a desire to improve upon it for future generations.

* BONUS: Play the Geography Challenge of Being an Ancient Farmer for a year.

Organic Spring Rapini AKA Broccoli Raab in the garden Seeds by Victory Seeds Company

Buongiorno miei amata amici! 
This is my first year to grow Organic Spring Rapini and it was with some trepidation that I attempted it, as I was not even sure of its purpose. I mean the heads don't amount to much, so it was not like a score of broccoli. However, one of my favorite heirloom seed companies, Victory Seeds, gave me the opportunity to try something new and it is an Italian staple. And I can always count on Mike and Denise from Victory Seeds to help me if I run into any gardening challenges.

Freshly cut and rinsed Organic Spring Rapini

After reading Niki Jabbour's book The Year Round Vegetable Gardener, much to my delight I learned that I could cut this plant once or twice and expect regrowth, so it is a bit of a cut and come again plant. This I have now done and yes, I have new growth shooting up.

Preparing Spring Rapini for Roasting

Following the cutting and rinsing, I stored the Rapini wrapped in a damp paper towel in the refrigerator until I was ready to roast it.

I placed the rapini on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.  Then I covered it olive oil and grated Himalayan Pink Sea Salt onto it, before sticking it in the oven at 350 degrees and roasting for about 20 minutes.  

Roasted Organic Spring Rapini or Broccoli Raab Recipe

I removed it from the oven once the leaves were crisp and the stems were tender. The leaves are beautiful, translucent, almost like green stained glass. The taste is a cross between broccoli and kale chips with a texture crossed between the two as well.  The Nutritional Analysis shows Rapini is another Green Superfood, much like Kale and may just be the 2014 Food of the Year.