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

this goal will become the norm for most of us. As a certifiable tree hugger this is the silver lining in the dark cloud of the high price of transporting goods.

Go Vegan!

walked past the store today and remembered that i needed a birthday pressie for a friend, so took the opportunity to have a look around in this shop. prices have gone up significantly since the last time i shopped with their catalogue shopping, but i found a couple of lovely items that were suitable for my friend, hope she likes elephants :D

went to the supermarket today to buy the usual brand, when i noticed next to it a packed of Scarborough Fair tea, fair trade and all, so i took that one instead.

atm i am blessed to have neighbours that supply me with a lot of their excess produce almost daily, bless them!
ended up with 6 capsicums which stuffed and baked last night…. delicious! the night before we had aubergine (marinated and grilled) they tasted awesome!
my own crop is slowly coming to fruit, got it in a bit late but seems to do alright.
locally there aren’t any markets here, which is a bummer!
soon i am moving to the other side of the continent, small town, there are heaps of weekend markets around, so i can do it proper!

After some reading (Botany of desire, Omnivores Dilemma, Fast food nation) I’ve got the idea that having our food fly / trucked around the world might not be the best thing I can do for our environment. There’s a great local farm (lull farm) where we can get local produce nearly all year round (we are still getting local taters, apples, onions, garlic, carrots, squash, canned tomatoes, and other good stuff.
While I do not know if they are organic, I’m sure the apples are not, IMHO local tops organic in this case. In addition, I’ve started paying a lot more attention to what’s in what I eat. It’s amazing, even simple items like bread crumbs can have a list an arms length… when all that should be in there is flour, water, yeast, salt… scary!

So the farm is closed. The orchard is still open, and so is greensgrow, but they are both much farther away. Maybe I need a root cellar. Seriously, what did people eat in the winter before Chilean produce?

This one is going to be a little harder for me now, I have less access now that I’ve moved :(

I would say about half of the food I buy is one or the other, and hopefully my “gardening” goal will help with this.

Fall in New England. You can’t pass a farm stand without seeing pumpkins, bushels of apples, winter squash, and all the other winter storage foods. Today we stopped at a farm stand and bought a peck of apples, and a loaf of fresh bread. Stopped at another and bought some sugar pumpkins, and stopped at one more for Kabocha pumpkins. When we got home I made a batch of apple sauce, and followed it up with a large pot of pumpkin soup. Nothing better than fresh fall produce.
AO