I hate grocery shopping. It is exhausting for me to go to the grocery store, so I try not to go unless I absolutely have to because all I can think about are where the food came from. Who handled it, how far did it travel, is it imported and if so from where and is it fair trade, etc.. And I am buying organic foods, so I don't have to worry too much about "is it genetically engineered", since that is not allowed with certified organic foods (and the reason I am so vigilant about where my food originates). Imagine what I'd go through if I was buying conventional foodstuffs.
Luckily, I rarely have to go for much more than milk, cereal and our beloved organic blue corn chips. Plus, I buy staples like grain products, rice, etc., in bulk, directly from the source in most cases. During our growing season, I preserve a lot of foods by canning, freezing and drying. I make relishes, ketchups, sauces, pickles, jams and jellies from things when they are at their peak. I know every ingredient that went into the end result, intimately.
Additionally, we have our own bee hives, chickens, buy local meats from neighboring farms, get our butter and cheese directly from Calico Dairy. We also attend the Davidson Farmer's Market (we are founding farmers and are vendors there) which runs year round, so I generally don't need very much thru the winter months.
In our own late fall/winter garden each season, we usually have pac choi, mixed and head lettuces, arugula, several kinds of kale, cabbages, broccoli, spinach, chard and cress which we plant to eat fresh as long as they last, along with sweet potatoes and winter squash stored from earlier harvest. If the winter is mild, we would be able to glean from this garden all winter or until it was regularly cold enough to freeze things. And we plant things that can withstand extremely low nighttime temps, provided the days warm up. And still, even with all of the local bounty available at the Farmer's Market, and what we plant to see us through, there are times when I have to make a market run.
Another thing that wears me out at the market is that since I love to cook (and winter is the only time I really have time to seriously be in the kitchen), everything I see (except for paper products, etc.) is a potential ingredient for something tasty. So, I end up with total sensory overload and buy things that I have no idea how they got into the cart. I am also in the grocery store for hours sometimes because I read every label and
package to make sure I am getting what I am paying for. For example, I used to buy Silk Soy Milk because it was just a superior product to everything else I have available to me in my area. It was organic and although I have a corporate beef with Dean Foods, the owner of Silk Soy, it was my soymilk of choice (I am truly allergic, not lactose intolerant, to cow's milk and grew up drinking goat's milk, which I never acquired a taste for, and soy milk for which I did.) I am still not too pleased with the "bait and switch" that the manufacturers of Silk Soy pulled with the organic labeling of their products, but since I know about it and what to look for, that eased my mind a teenytiny bit.
Because I do only buy organic, this can get quite expensive so a trip to the grocery store for me is an exercise in self-control. But, as I said earlier, I do have to go to the supermarket sometimes and recently, I went to Super Target, since they have the best selection of organic products in my immediate area. It is always like sticker shock on a new car every time I do go to shop and this most recent trip was not exception. It was off season for us, so I bought some things I would not normally buy.
- 2 medium sized Slicing Cukes (What a disappointment these things were. I cut the first one and it had a big hard mass of seeds in the middle that I couldn't even cut with a knife and we threw it out. The other one was dry and yellow inside, even thought the outside looked perfect.)
- 1 Pgk (7 Small) Tomatoes (Campari's, about the size of a pingpong ball)
12 ounces was the pkg wgt. These are the only tomatoes I will buy that I didn't grow and only when I am desperate for a fresh tomato. They were quite tasty but they didn't go very far. - 1 Med. Yellow Squash and 1 Med. Zuchinni (pkgd. together - not quite 1# wgt. We had 2 meals from those.)
- 4 avocados (which were partially black inside...yuck...I made gray guacamole...tasted okay but looked horrendous)
- 1 lb bag of green onions
- 2 pkgs organic cheddar cheese (8 slices per pkg.)
- 1 Amy's Spinach Pizza (on sale so we indulged)
- 2 bags organic frozen french fries (don't ask)
- 1 lb bag carrots (there are 5 carrots in the bag)
- 1 head of broccoli (cold killed ours early)
- 2 boxes of organic oatmeal (on sale)
- 1 Pkg of 6 flatbreads
- 2 pkgs shredded organic cheddar cheese (likewise on sale and an indulgence)
- 1 Jar of organic peanut butter (staple)
- 1 lb organic butter (staple)
- 3 lb. bag of onions (staple)
- 5 lb bag of russet potatoes (staple)
- 1 Jar of non-organic Mayo (staple)
(Note: Everything I bought was certified organic, except for the mayo...hard to find organic mayo that doesn't taste like Elmer's glue, or at least what I imagine it tastes like. The staples will last us a while. They were out of those blue corn chips I mentioned.)
That is the entire list of what we bought. If it looks like a lot, it isn't. Everything listed above fit into 3 bags...and the total was $106.87. That means that the average cost of each item listed was $3.34 (of course some were more, some were less...but that is the average.) I think if I had been buying conventional food, I could have gotten 2 or 3 times as much for my money but I would have stressed so much over it that it wouldn't have been worth it.
Another thing that happens when I go to the supermarket is that I watch people more than I intend to, I think. Good thing I am discreet about it, although I have been known to volunteer information if someone is looking at an organic product and looks confused. Like the other day, there was a man looking at the soy milk in the cooler and he looked really confused so I kind of sidled up to him and asked him which was his favorite. He said he thought he liked the Silk Soy the best (see....) but he thought it was organic and he didn't see the label on it anywhere. So, seeing my opening, I told him about how the company had repackaged the organic Silk products but basically just took the green certified organic label off the non-organic products, leaving the cartons looking exactly like they did originally. I also said that many of their customers were really upset about this (remember the previous comment about the "bait and switch" that peeved me) but since the label did say that the soybeans were domestically grown and non-GMO, I was still buying it.
I am also a bit obsessed with what other people have in their carts and it hurts my soul to see what is being fed to children. Adults have the ability to choose what they eat and I feel bad for them, too, but not as much as for the little people. That day at Super Target, I was kind of on the same route around the store as a youngish woman with three small children. Bless her heart, she had her cart jam packed with Cheetos, sugary cereals, loaves of white bread, sodas, frozen pizzas and other processed and packaged foods. Not a single fresh fruit or vegetable or anything that I would consider healthy in the whole cart. And I left the store at the same time she did, so I am pretty sure that she was not going to head back around to the produce section of the store.
I know it is partially an economic thing, the reason we buy such horrible foodstuffs, but I think it there are a lot of other factors in play. It saddens me to think that she could have done so much better for her children with just a little guidance. Too bad American food manufacturers don't take more responsibility for what they are stocking the shelves these days.
This article was written just over 18 months ago and was taken from my Simply Sustainable blog site.
Copyright 2009 Suzanne R. Ballard
