One of my husband’s favorite “party games” is to say to someone, “Give Leah any address in Manhattan, and she’ll tell you the zip code.” Nine times out of 10, I’m right. You see, I have this weird, almost “Rain Man”-like obsession with numbers. Over the years I’ve memorized phone numbers, zip and area codes, and bank account numbers. In fact, when I recalled our 13-digit checking account number the other day at the bank, the teller actually did call me “Rain Man.”

Perhaps this obsession with numbers is why I always got a 99 on my math Regents exam every year in high school (never 100, don’t know why). And though I’ve been writing since my elementary school years, as a student it was in science and math where I excelled.

Despite memorizing random strings of numbers, I am terrible with dates. The best example of this was after my husband and I got married in 1992. I issued a “press release” to the local paper in the town where we grew up (Bill and I have known each other since 4th grade) so they could write about our recent wedding. When the piece came out the next week, I’d discovered that I’d gotten our wedding date wrong. Nearly 16 years later I still haven’t lived that down.

So I guess it should come as no surprise that I just missed and forgot about the one-year anniversary of this blog, which I began on June 6, 2007. It originated as Suddenly Frugal but quickly became The Lean Green Family (first in spirit, then in actual name) when I realized that going green would help us save green.

If you’d like to take a trip down memory lane, here is a link to my first post. Funny thing is, back then I was complaining about gas being close to $3 a gallon. Oh, for the good old days.

Happy reading!

Today I was reading an article with tips in it about ways to save on your grocery bills, now that everything, including food shopping, is more expensive. As this article explained, you can cancel your vacations and try to drive less, but you can’t stop feeding your family. Therefore the key is figuring out how to feed your family for less.

One of the many frugal suggestions included growing your own vegetables. In my old house we had an awesome sunny spot where we successfully had a vegetable garden of tomatoes, squash and pumpkins. Sometimes the garden resembled the indoor jungle in the movie “Jumanji.” Unfortunately, we do not have a similarly sunny spot in the new house but we do have our CSA for fresh produce.

Of course, finding a “safe” way to get vegetables is top of mind these days, now that the FDA has recalled tomatoes due to a salmonella outbreak. Just how do tomatoes become contaminated with salmonella, a bacteria that lives harmlessly in animal’s intestinal tracts? Well, it can get on the “outside” of the body when people don’t wash their hands after using the bathroom or after cutting raw meat, or if animal feces are near fruits and vegetables. And if salmonella gets on your food and you eat, you can get very, very sick.

According to the FDA, not all tomatoes are affected by the recent salmonella outbreak, and you can check this web page here for locations not affected. In addition, it is recommended that you buy certain kinds of tomatoes that have not seemed to have had salmonella on them, such as cherry tomatoes or tomatoes still on the vine–supposedly these are grown in greenhouses where salmonella isn’t a problem.

Of course, if you pick your own tomatoes in your backyard, you’re probably pretty safe from salmonella, unless your dog or outdoor cat likes to poop near your garden. That said, it’s always wise to wash your tomatoes or other produce in running water, and gently rub the surface of the fruit or vegetable to remove any residue. An expert in this CNN article recommends cutting away any remaining stem as a way of avoiding contamination. At the same time you should remove the outer layer of lettuce just to be on the safe side.

Even though farmer’s markets and CSA farms probably aren’t exempt from salmonella outbreaks, I would feel a little safer buying my produce locally at such places. Why? Because these are probably smaller operations with more control over picking conditions. Hopefully, that means that the produce grown there is less likely to be contaminated. I realize that nothing is 100% safe, but it’s something to keep in mind, especially if you’re trying to eat locally and want to avoid buying tomatoes (or other produce) that was grown thousands of miles away.