Thanks for the link Annie, I checked it out, and as of the date of that article, Seminis did sell to Territorial and Johnny's as well as Fedco. It could be that a couple of the brassicas I just bought from Fedco, as well as the Lollo Rosa lettuce from Burpee could have come from Seminis. I will have to call the companies and check. A short snippet from the article Annie posted: " Taking spinach into his own hands: Nash Huber doesnâÂÂt want to get stuck depending on a hybrid that might get dropped by a mega-company owner on a whim. He also doesnâÂÂt want to lose any of the vigor, disease resistance, etc. that hybrid has provided. So Nash is working on dehybridizing �" breeding an open-pollinated spinach that is well adapted to his needs. (pictured: Huber, left; Matthew Dillon, right) Posted February 22, 2005: The news of MonsantoâÂÂs agreement to purchase Seminis has received little attention from the media other than the financial pages and a few seed industry and anti-globalization web sites. But then again, why should it? How many consumers �" of food or seed �" have even heard of Seminis? And yet, as Seminis spinmeister Gary Koppenjan said, âÂÂIf you've had a salad, you've had a Seminis product." It is estimated that Seminis controls 40 percent of the U.S. vegetable seed market and 20 percent of the world market�"supplying the genetics for 55 percent of the lettuce on U.S. supermarket shelves, 75 percent of the tomatoes, and 85 percent of the peppers, with strong holdings in beans, cucumbers, squash, melons, broccoli, cabbage, spinach and peas. The companyâÂÂs biggest revenue source comes from tomato and peppers seeds, followed by cucumbers and beans. In large part, these numbers reflect usage of Seminis varieties within large industrial production geared towards supermarkets, but Seminis seeds are also widely used by regional conventional and organic farmers as well as market and home gardeners. JohnnyâÂÂs, Territorial, Fedco, NicholâÂÂs, Rupp, Osborne, Snow, and Stokes are among the dozens of commercial and garden seed catalogs that carry the more than 3,500 varieties that comprise Seminisâ offerings. This includes dozens of All-American Selections and an increasing number of varieties licensed to third parties for certified organic seed production. The brand-name companies under Seminis (such as Petoseed) have developed, released, produced and distributed varieties common to the market farmer and even home gardener. These include Big Beef, Sweet Baby Girl and Early Girl Tomatoes; Simpsons Elite and Red Sails Lettuces; Red Knight and King Arthur Peppers; Gold Rush and Blackjack Zucchinis; Stars & Stripes Melon; and Bush Delicata and Early Butternut squashes (see sidebar for other popular varieties)." So home gardeners DO have to check their seed, these are very popular varieties though the article is NOT saying that these...

I am with Annie and Laceyvail on this one. Beef is actually a very efficient use of resources provided it is grass fed and finished. Cattle can graze on grass grown in a field that is not suitable to grow other crops. Small scale production of beef fed what they are supposed to eat is not a risk for e-coli, is high in the good fats we all should be eating, does not produce toxic waste but fertilizer instead and is not inhumane. I have gotten to the point that I will not buy supermarket beef. I just got back from vacation and we eat local sea food the whole week. What a delicious way to stand up for what i believe in. As all the health scares occur i feel very happy to live in VT where we can eat almost only small farm produced food. The last few years have seen me happily eating and serving spinach, beef tomatoes etc as here we have a thriving small local agricultural food structure. -Robin

We don't have a Whole Foods here in town, but we too went through the "Wild Oats buying out a local natural food chain" fiasco. When Wild Oats decided they weren't making enough money, a local grocer took over the stores. Now they're amazingly well stocked, with very knowledgeable staff (the cheese and wine stewards are amazing). They will let you sample anything in the store like Whole Foods and Trader Joes and will order in anything you want. Recently I was feeling lazy and wanted to just buy a jar of dulce de leche, found that the brand I was used to seeing was no longer on the shelf and spoke with the cheese steward. She had brought it in as a special purchase, but promised to have it back on the shelves the next week! While I don't know if you'll see the same responsiveness at a large chain like Whole Foods, sometimes it is well worth the money to get the quality, selection and service that a higher end grocery can provide. Good luck with your personal chef endeavor Eileen! Oh, and Annie, I get odd looks for my Carhartt jacket too, you're not alone! Bri

Grainlady - thank you. That link is wonderful. Just full of good guidelines. Nancy - that's good to know about running cold water through the chicken. With fish, I put it in a bowl of ice water - and that defrosts it within a couple of hours, but I hadn't thought of a way to apply water to chicken - thanks. Sometimes I defrost in the microwave if I'm going to use it right away - like steaks or chicken breasts. But I didn't think I should do that with a whole chicken. Also, sometimes with chicken breasts, I plan to marinate overnight - in which case I think it's a no-no to defrost in the microwave (which would partially cook it) and then marinate. Are their some soups you wouldn't microwave? The one I have is potato-fennel - and I thought I recalled something about the texture being effected by either freezing or microwaving. Thanks. Lynn. Lynn.