You are currently browsing the daily archive for June 30, 2009.
Cost of food per person per day: $2.25. The cost of eating has fallen through the basement, thanks to our pre-paid CSAs for milk, meat and produce! I bought so little at our grocery store this month that the produce manager asked if I’d moved away!
Relevant books read or re-read: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver;
What’s In This Stuff?: The Hidden Toxins in Everyday Products – and What You Can Do About Them by Patricia Thomas;
Conscious Eating by Gabriel Cousens;
Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything by Daniel Goleman
Relevant movies watched: Food, Inc.
Energy Level: Moderate. My energy level is severely impacted if I spend any time in the sun, which I try to do every day. On rainy days my energy level is quite high.
Visible health improvements: For years now I have had to apply moisturizer to my entire body several times a week, and my hands several times a day. I have noticed the last month or so that I have cut back to less than once a week for my entire body, and don’t even think about hand lotion anymore at all. The skin around my fingernails no longer hardens, cracks and bleeds and the callouses on my feet no longer require my weekly cheese-grater routine. My fingernails are flat and shiny, almost like they have clear polish on them.
Not an improvement at all, I gained two pounds this month. My knees ache miserably the hours before a severe thunderstorm and I have found it difficult to get out of bed four or five mornings in June. I think perhaps I’m slipping a little in my resolve to eat properly and my laziness is showing up as increased aches and pains. I know we have forsaken the practice of having some lacto-fermented food every day, and I have cut back on the amount of homemade kombucha I’ve been consuming.
Life during the summer months is always very, very busy for our family as our teens take summer jobs for which they require transportation to and from; the younger childrens’ friends are off from school and available for play dates; fun summer activities like trips to the pool and the free summer movie program start up; and of course, there’s nearly a full afternoon at the Farmer’s Market each week! I have been lax in performing the necessary prep work for easy mealtimes, and have been caught a couple times sneaking through the drive-thru for an emergency meal on the go. I’m going to keep a closer eye on that.
Other notes: I was able to snip $15 a month off our household expenses in June by cancelling one of our trash receptacles! I noticed this new lifestyle creates much less trash, and the trash we generate is more of the recyclable nature than the non-recyclables we generated on the Standard American Diet. I already have two cavies who dearly love my salad trimmings (lettuce and carrot ends, bell pepper slices, etc.) and am considering getting my vermicomposting (worm farm) going again to reduce our waste even more.
There are many advantages to eating a diet of in-season, locally grown food.
Gorgeous Tomatoes at the Farmer's Market by Jill Clardy, on Flickr
Supporting your local economy by purchasing from the farmers, growers, dairies and ranchers in your state, county or town keeps your food dollars at home supports your area and keeps it alive. Allowing a neighborhood to die and become blighted by sending jobs out of the community is a sad way to lose neighbors and friends.
Eating foods appropriate for the season and your location helps your body deal with the stresses and challenges that your own climate poses. Soft, tender, leafy greens turn bitter and run to seed when the weather gets hot. There is evidence that our bodies need the nutrients in those greens in the spring as a tonic between heavier winter foods and the heat of summer. Sure, grocery stores carry tomatoes year round now, but there is something special about that flavor in the heat of summer.
Consuming food within hours of harvest ensures the greatest amount of nutrients are being provided to your body, not wasted during shipment. Foods can be harvested at their peak of freshness and not picked green and exposed to gas to artificially ripen them. Honestly, I find the best reason to eat fresh-from-the-field is flavor. Nothing compares to a Juliet tomato still warm from the sun.
Conserving fuel and reducing emissions is a tricky proposition. I learned this week that those red bell peppers from Holland I was not purchasing use about 60% less oil to get to me by boat than the ones flown in from California (where most US-labeled organics are grown.) But neither Holland nor California can offer me the sweet spicy flavor or the higher vitamin C content of red bell peppers grown within a few miles of my own home.
Heirloom varieties of vegetables are becoming increasingly rare as large growers opt for shipment-stable varieties. Fewer of us have ever seen a pink tomato, purple carrot or brown bell pepper than ever before. By growing a wide variety of foods, your local farmer is enriching the local environment, preserving diversity and capturing a legacy for future generations. That amazing photo at the top of this post sure doesn’t look like the supermarket tomato table, does it?
Preserving our future by perpetuating the time-honored methods of small to medium scale farming, organic farming, family farming and gardening is something your local farmer may not get a lot of credit for. I think it is incredibly important that these methods be kept alive for future generations. If we permit the local, small farmer to become a relic of history, we will lose a vital link to our own self-sufficiency that at some point in the future, might well save our lives. And most farmers are more than willing to sit and discuss their methods with anyone interested, giving help and guidance to other farmers and backyard gardeners alike.
These are all arguments you’ve likely heard before. It is the last day of June as I write this, and farmer’s markets all over the US are in full swing. Please, set aside a percentage of your grocery fund this week to take to your local farmer’s market. Ask about what you see there. Talk to the farmers, dairy people and meat growers. Find out where they do their work, how they manage their farms and what they are doing to support your local economy. Visit the market’s tent and find out if they are producers-only (no resellers allowed), if they take food stamps, what other projects they support. Take your time and browse and talk. It might seem time consuming and overwhelming at first, but it is so worth the effort.
If you don’t know where to find your local farmer’s market, start here: Local Harvest
This post is part of the Natural Cures blog carnival, hosted by Hartkeisonline.
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