purchase consciously: organic, local, fair trade...

I’m at my parents’ house tonight (who are around 70). It’s interesting to me how little whole food there is here. It’s all stuff like margarine or the kind of wheat bread with 23 ingredients or skim milk that has some kind of additives that make it thicker and whiter. I’d love to be able to arrive here and find a pot of fresh minestrone simmering on the stove. Perhaps I can do more of that at my own home for others…

First grocery shopping trip at home (KC, MO) since I made this goal. We have a fairly pricey store down the street that stocks a fair amount of organic stuff. It’s not ideal, but I was at least able to find some local tofu and eggs. I bought about 65% organic.

I’m interested in visiting Whole Foods and seeing how they are doing about getting local foods in. I was just in Oregon and they had a ton of local stuff. Undoubtedly there is more organic being produced there and over a longer season, but it does seem like we should be able to buy more local products that what I’ve seen so far. I’d like to talk to a manager there about any efforts they’re making to offer local.

I took a long afternoon coffee break today, searching the web before I did so. There are tons of coffee places here in Portland but I didn’t see any close that I knew would sell fair or direct trade. Starbucks has Cafe Estima occasionally, or you can have it French pressed, but it’s not really very good. So I walked about two miles down to Stumptown Coffee Roasters and back for a cup of Guatemalan direct trade and some beans. It was so worth it! The coffee is delicious and I’m happy to be doing my part…