I never thought that I’d become one of those organic-food bores, shopping in quirky health-food stores rife with incense and patchouli, where it’s easier to buy a pound of mung beans than Hellmann’s mayonnaise. And if I feel out of place on foot wearing Prada shoes amidst a world of Birkenstocks, I’m not about to change that either -- just to blend in with the macrobiotic crowd shuffling down the aisles.

The truth is I haven’t joined the nimble ranks of health-food fanciers per se. I’m not mesmerized by such empty words as unprocessed, organic and natural that sparkle before my eyes like flickering filters against disease and ill health. Instead, my goal is to use the pure, untarnished elements of organic foods as core ingredients in home cooking. That is where I can control what goes into the pot. What comes out of it is essentially flavor.

I’ve always, for lack of a better phrase, “cooked from scratch.” If my chicken stock used to simmer with assembly-line birds and plastic wrapped vegetables, it now bubbles with organic ingredients only.

Is it tastier? I think so. Is it healthier? I think it is. I assume it’s no less healthy.

I’ve therefore become the kind of shopper who asks where the beef comes from and how it’s been raised. The same goes for dairy products and eggs, vegetables and meats, poultry and grains.

I can’t change totally though. I still use processed sugar in baking. Nothing else can really replace it. I try to eat stone-ground whole wheat bread over bread made with processed white flour. I still turn to white flour in baking, but at least it comes from specialty producers, like Hodgson Mills unbleached flour, readily available in supermarkets and health food stores.

For dairy products, I favor unpasteurized milk, cream and butter. Some food scientists believe that these don’t pose the same risks from their high-fat content because they are unprocessed.

It’s all a fairly big decision to do this. It’s certainly more time-consuming and more expensive, but I think the results are worth it. When I make, for example, cornbread or biscuits using Springbrook or Smiling Hill Farms naturally fermented buttermilk, the difference is remarkable.

Yet, who knows for certain?

Years ago, I was one of the editors on the famous low-fat diet regime devised by Nathan Pritikin, author of the Pritikin Diet. It basically advocated limiting fats in your diet to a bare minimum to ward off heart disease. Yet when Pritikin died at a relatively young age of 69 -- indeed too young for a health guru -- it didn’t bode well for his teachings, which many thought were extreme anyway. He died of a long-standing battle with leukemia. Skeptics probably asked, well shouldn’t his diet have helped prevent leukemia too?

A while ago I was having dinner with friends at their home. The wife and husband are great cooks, serving simple and delicious food. Before dinner, I was rambling on about the miraculous natural lamb that I get from a nearby farm. They didn’t comment much about my food discovery.

Wouldn’t you know, they served rack of lamb that evening? I was very impressed with the meat. It was perfect and tender, with wonderful flavor.

I said, "This lamb is sensational. Where did you get it?" thinking they knew a better source than mine.

"Hannaford’s, of course," she said, as my face turned bright red.

There’s always someone out there ready with a new miracle diet, as though one day the secret of immortality will be found hiding under a rock.

The newest food craze is the raw and living foods diet. Raw and living foods are defined as all fruits, vegetables, sprouts, nuts, seeds, grains and sea vegetables. Its basic premise involves safeguarding the natural enzymes found in foods by not cooking them. Enzymes aid in proper digestion, and cooking temperatures over 116 degrees fahrenheit destroys them. Under a no-cooking protocol, all the trace elements are able to reach our body, supplying oxygen to the cells, which then become unsatisfactory breeding grounds for such diseases as cancer to develop.

It’s all the craze in southern California, where supposedly actress Demi Moore pays a raw foods chef $1,000 per day not to cook her food.

To me, it conjures up the image that we must lay supine in a petrified forest, mouths open, and catch the falling fruits from the tree.

I suppose there is a bit of sense to all this. If we live to eat, we might as well do it with well-tempered pleasure and good, healthy habits.

Over the years I have maintained a diet that seems to work for me. It keeps my weight steady and certain health concerns in check.

I loosely follow a Mediterranean diet. It’s low in processed foods, animal fats and relies more on fruits, grains, vegetables and moderate amounts of fish, meat and poultry. Olive oil is the mainstay over butter, and grains and whole grain pastas virtually replace white potatoes. (When is the last time you had a baked potato in an Italian restaurant?)

I also favor foods that have high-fiber content. One example would be to eat sweet potatoes instead of giving in to the starchy white potato. It doesn’t mean I won’t occasionally devour an airy puree of Yukon golds.

I hardly position myself as an expert on all this. Rather, I’ve learned the basics of good eating and the virtues of whole foods. I’m a cook first and a very distant nutritionist second. Eating out as often as I do, it’s hard to adhere to such a regimen. But good restaurants are ever mindful of the quality of their ingredients. Increasingly you see on restaurant menus lists of their purveyors, most of whom are organic providers.

Fortunately Maine has a wealth of outlets from which to buy natural and organic foods. In the summer and fall months, the variety and quality of organic foodstuffs sold at farms stands around the state is astounding. I sorely miss them at this time of year.

Here is my short winter shopping list of area purveyors that I go to now.

Dairy & Vegetables

Royal River Foods, Route 1, Freeport. 865-0046. Good for organic vegetables, poultry products, flour, grains and unpasteurized milk (White Orchard Farms), unpasteurized heavy cream (Post Family Farm), unpasteurized butter (Caldwell Farms). They also sell the Post Farm’s delicious organic ice cream which is sweetened with either raw, organic sugar or honey.

The Whole Grocer, Marginal Way, Portland. 774-7711. Good for organic vegetables, poultry products, flour and grains, unpasteurized dairy products, with a similar product list as Royal River. Try the light cream from White Orchard Farms. It’s the only light cream that will whip. Because it’s made by hand, the fat content varies, so not all bottles will have "whipping" abilities.

Farm Stores

Springbroook Farm Dairy Store, Greely Road, Cumberland Center. 829-5977. Good for dairy (pasteurized) products, including their terrific naturally fermented buttermilk. Their own beef, and pork; poultry products are from Mainely Chicken. The pork is particularly good. High in old-fashioned flavor. The eggs come from hatcheries right at their farm. In the summer watch for them at the Cumberland Farmer’s Market for vegetables and other products.

Sunrise Acres Farms, Winn Road, Cumberland Center. 829-5594. Wonderful naturally raised lamb and chicken from their Winn Road farm. In the summer watch for them at the Cumberland Farmer’s Market for their vegetables, meats and poultry.

Smiling Hill Farms, Route 22, Westbrook, 775-4818. Good for pasteurized dairy products, cheese and ice cream

Butcher Shops

Forbes Meat Market, The Portland Public Market, Portland. 228-2044 They carry a large selection of naturally raised beef, lamb, pork, poultry, venison and game girds. Some are from local farms.

Curtis Custom Meats, Route 90, Warren. 273-2574. This is the quintessential old-fashioned butcher shop. Located on the Route 90 bypass between Warren and Rockport, the shop is located on a hill overlooking fields and farmland. A big sign on the road shows you where they are. Go there for natural cuts of beef, lamb and pork products. Particularly good is their house-brined (corned beef) brisket, the perfect ingredient for a New England Boiled Dinner. The Portland Greengrocer on Commercial Street in Portland carries some of their meats.

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