Can A Family Of Four Eat Whole Organic Food Without Going To The Grocery Store?
That’s our goal.
For the past three months we’ve primarily gone to Farmer’s Markets for our vegetables and fruits. This past weekend, I signed us up for fresh organic milk and dairy delivery. I’m also getting us ready for the CSA Box from Full Cirlcle Farms. With Bill the Butcher’s Organic Meat down the street, I’m nearly ready to say good-bye to traditional American grocery stores.
This is a process that has been in the works for six months now. And we’re almost ready.
I originally wanted to blog about our transition away from all packaged foods, processed cheeses/meats/snacks. But I noticed it was such a gradual change, it was difficult to document. One week I’d make our own granola bars to see if it was possible to get healthy snacks for the children from home. I’d experiment with drying fruits to see if I can get away from fruit leather at the store. I’d bake bread, fail, and bake another loaf.
We’re set up to have most of our food delivered straight from the farms, literally within 20 miles of our home, and meat sold down the street from local farmers. It’s been a process. But there is one more step in the process we’re still preparing for.
Our own fresh garden.
Throughout the winter we’re learning when to plant, till and harvest. We’re studying how to best prepare our garden beds. The goal is, by next summer, to suppliment our CSA box and farmer’s market trips with our own vegetables. Eventually, we’ll supply our own.
My goal now is to blog my own experiment: Can we, a family of four, eat fresh organic, whole foods without a grocery store and can we do it for under 800 dollars a month?
Follow along.
When you’re ready to begin the process, I’d like to offer a few documentaries and books to start with. Some of these are available on Netflix for streaming. Some are books you can check out of the library. You don’t have to break the bank to make wise choices, but I urge you to begin somewhere. Even if it’s whole oats instead of instant for breakfast. Trust me, every step counts.
Two of the latest inspiring and informational resources:
*Available at Netflix Streaming
*Next up: An experiment. The subject? Me. Inspired by Enlighten Up! Documentary
Nov, 08, 2010 Filed in: Essays •Resources • Read the Archives
Eating Europe
In the past few months, I’ve painstakingly removed most processed food from our home and slowly moved my food purchases to the Farmer’s Markets and local butchers. Costco is no longer our grocery store, as I refuse to purchase anything with a shelf life longer than a week.
This is incovienent, true. But as we’ve discussed, good clean whole food is not only dirty, it is work.
Our ancestors lived this truth. Why should we ignore it?
Each time I travel to Europe, I lose weight while eating an abundance of wonderful food. I’ve recently spent a week eating like a princess. The food, the markets, the coffee, the beer. BY GOD Europe is a lush place for a woman who is a food hippie. The chicken is all range free. The milk is all hormone free. The eggs, the bread, the chocolate. Everything is without excessive sugar or salt or processed this-and-that.
I came home yesterday in a furry to completely change how my family views meals. I’ve prepared home-cooked muffins, eggs, soup, salad. My children are not allowed processed peanut butter already, but I have new resolve to prevent anything but freshly crushed peanuts on their traditional “PB&J” sandwiches. I’m even making my own Jam now.
I have a passion for food that I can not explain. It’s not just food as a source of nourishment, but as a perceived enemy of America’s women and a death sentence to dieters. As a college undergraduate, I studied nutrition like it was a drug. I’m not only informed by reading books such as Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food, Food Rules, and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, but I recently began reading The End of Overeating which backs up this thinking with scientific facts.
It only takes three hours to watch Killer at Large: Why Obesity is America’s Greatest Threat and Food Inc. to change your entire lifestyle. I promise you will never step foot in a traditional American grocery store again.
So why do we allow our food to be processed, modified, faked and packaged?
And how do we rebel against that?
As bloggers we have a special influence. It can be used for good or evil, but we have a voice now. Collectively, we’re able to make changes and see progress in a very new-age and real-world way. If ever you think of not blogging, simply find a cause you have a passion about and rekindle your spirit. It is with that tone that I am posting here now: I will not let America capitalize our food.
I will not participate in such radical food dogma.
I will not eat industrialized food.
I will not participate in practices that threaten my daughter to mature in to puberty at the age of 8.
And I will not be quiet about it.
It’s not only weight gain, the threat of high cholesterol (which I currently have) or type II diabetes (which my father has and I am predisposed for), but the now real concern that my nearly six year old daughter could begin to menstruate in three years. Three years. Neither she nor I are ready for this.
According to TIME magazine’s article on the topic:
“The theory that has the broadest support among scientists holds that early puberty is somehow tied up with a much more familiar phenomenon: weight gain . ... higher levels of insulin appear to stimulate the production of sex hormones from the ovary and the adrenal gland.”
Read more.
The introduction of TV dinners, the microwave, and convenience. We are slowly tracing these “wonderful inventions” to a slew of consequences nobody could predict. Unfortunately, too many Americans are living in denial or ignorance. I will not be one.
Last week I studied my host in Germany as she prepared meals. I went to the markets with her. I asked questions about their methods for growing and providing food. I did the same in Holland and England years before. I’ve started a repertoire of recipes, of habits and expectations. But I still want to travel to Europe and study the culture even further, to learn to cook like the French, to expand my attitudes toward health and wellness. As an exercised and diet crazed country, we have nothing to show for it.
Perhaps it is time to learn from our brothers and sisters living a better lifestyle. Perhaps it’s time to Eat Europe.
Join along with me if you’d like. My goal here? To present a way of living Europe while being in America. Starting now.
**Recommended reading:
Recommended viewing:
Oct, 08, 2010 Filed in: Essays •Resources • Read the Archives
Cop out post relating to Rocket science by @thicket
Perfect hardboiled eggs
Put (*cough*...farm fresh) eggs in pan, add cold water to an inch above them.
Bring to water to a gentle boil and keep that going for ONE MINUTE ONLY.
Turn heat off and cover your pot for SIX MINUTES ONLY.
Plunge eggs into ice cold water, repeat when water heats up from eggs.
The yolk should not be grey on the outside. The inner core of the yolk should be slightly darker and moister than the outside. That my friends is a delectable hardboiled egg.
*I have tried vingar in the boiling water to make hardboiled eggs peel better, I have never noticed a difference. The ease of peeling an egg seems to be how old the egg is, we use very fresh eggs so they are always a nightmare to peel.
If your experience differs, do tell. I love me some easy to peel hardboiled eggs, but not enough to buy them at the grocery store.
**If you live at a higher elevation you need to increase this time…to what I don’t know. I’m so helpful.