Greg and I have been discussing changing our grocery shopping habits. We'd like to try buying more local foods, and we'd like to eat a bit more organic, especially when it comes to produce.
I've spent too many hours over the last few days trying to figure out the best options, keeping in mind the above two goals, and also weighing the financial impact and the time impact (i.e. I don't want to shop at four different places). It seriously should not be this hard.
The first version of the plan is to start buying produce and a few other items from spud! and start buying our meat from Glenwood Meats. These two places don't fully meet the local and organic requirements, but it's a start. The beauty of spud! is that I don't have to leave the house. And we'll try to go to Glenwood Meats once a month, when we do our Costco trip to counteract our positive impact buy disposable diapers for two kids. The remainder of our groceries will likely come from Fairway, because Greg works above one. Since we currently drive to Thrifty's at least once a week, hopefully this grand plan will reduce our gas usage.
I just don't know if it's worth the time I've been spending menu planning, ordering food, writing grocery lists and scheduling our grocery shopping. If you're going to go organic, shouldn't you go entirely organic? Or does eating somewhat organically help? Ditto for local food. I suppose it does, but I still struggle with figuring out what the right thing to do is -- ethically, environmentally, financially, practically, and from a health perspective.
Comments
Good Luck
Hope that you find the Red Barn Market as exciting as we did once we discovered the meats and much less expensive fruits and veggies. And the kids love the ice cream at Mattick's (http://www.matticksfarm.com/merchants/red%20barn/matticks_market.html) and mommy loves the scrapbook store :)
heck with it...
...just order pizza and Chinese all the time!
cus those are certainly
cus those are certainly healthy foods ;)
change ain't easy
I hear you. I went through this last year, and wow...it was stressful! It took so much more out of me than I thought it should, but it was a big change. And change? It's exhausting!
You are changing something that has a pretty big impact on your lifestyle, as much as it doesn't seem like it from the outset. The other side of this change, from my perspective is pretty good. I mean, I really take for granted that we do eat locally and organic as much as is available. It's just the way we do things now, and it feels good when I think about it. And that's the thing, once you've made the change, you don't really think about it after a while. It's just how you do things. And it's your habit, and it's easy.
I'd like to hear if this is as economical for you as I think it is for me. I have discovered that we eat out A LOT for lunch and snacks. It has only hit me recently, as we are here, and I have to actually cook. There's no Demitasse, Vanilla, or Cafe Misto to provide healthy, organic, or vegetarian treats to go with the coffee. I can even get my lattes in the kitchen here. Very strange indeed!
Sorry for the epic comment, but it's an epic topic, that I should probably post a little more about on my own site! :)
Oh, and by the way...good on you!!!
I think part of it is where
I think part of it is where we are with our kids too. It takes more effort to pack up an infant than a toddler (or older). If the errand takes more than an hour or 2 then either sox stays home with beet, they both go, or the whole family goes.
Also setting up a new system for handling things is hard. Once the system is rolling along, it will be easy to keep it moving.