Simple Suggestion #201... Consider your food's sources

a view in our greenhouse today...
 Black Prince heirloom tomato plants

Wow, what a great bunch of people at this most recent round of Simplicity Study Circles. They're teaching me a lot -- and last night's discussion was the best one I've attended yet on the topic of Simplicity and Diet, just for all that I learned.

To be honest, I'm not the best at carrying through on this Simple Suggestion -- but as I've admitted often in the past, I'm no expert in Simplicity, but a traveller on the path toward a simpler, saner and more sustainable way of life. When it comes to food, growing, canning and freezing the organic bounty from our own backyard is my main effort toward ensuring that our family is eating healthy and local foods. But there is so much more that can be done, as last night's discussion made clear. For example, a wee conversation before we even got the circle started showed me that it wouldn't be that difficult to make my own yogurt -- and it would save on the hundreds of non-biodegradable plastic containers my family seems to collect because of the commercially produced store-bought variety we favour. So now I'm looking into how to make my own yogurt...

It's so easy to take our food for granted, to forget where it comes from and how it affects our bodies and our planet, and to allow the food system and its marketers to dictate to us how and what to eat. But the commercial food system is deeply flawed -- filled with Genetically Modified Organisms and super-processed foods that contribute to all sorts of health problems like obesity, heart disease and early-onset dementia, not to mention the impact its production is having on our only planet. And in the quest for greater food diversity and globalization, unsustainable food chains have been developed the world over. It is estimated that the average mouthful of North American food travels 1500 km from where it is produced to where it is consumed, contributing mightily to the planet's dis-ease through the increase in fossil fuel emissions and global climate change. Do we really need to eat strawberries from Argentina in January? Or can we learn to preserve the ones that grow at our local u-picks in the summer in jams, sauces and tarts, or support locals who make preserves and sell them at our local farmers' markets?

Today's challenge is one I know that I need to take to heart more often than I do. Producing food for my family in our garden is one thing, but being aware of the food system's conundrums is another. I know I should eat fewer animal products, but does it make sense to eat almonds all the way from California as protein instead? Where is my food coming from? Can I find more local sources that are using better farming practices and fewer pesticides in food production? And am I doing all I can to avoid processed foods that contain too much sugar, salt and fat?

There's always room for improvement, as we all acknowledged in our discussion last night. As consumers, we have power to push for improvements at our local food stores and suppliers, by asking hard questions about where our food is coming from and whether it could be sourced more locally.

Changing our diets can seem scary or overwhelming, but less so if we take one small step at a time. This is mine: instead of taking the convenient way out and buying my yogurt at the store, I have found two friends who are willing to share their own methods and expertise (thanks Su and Diane!), so guess what I'll soon be doing...? Watch for a yogurt moodling, coming soon...

P.S. Looking for more Simple Suggestions? Click here.

Simple Suggestion #82... Buy local where possible

My local shopping mall has a nice little farmer's market every Saturday. One day I was there buying some onions, and a tiny little senior citizen shuffled up to me and asked, "Nice onions?"
"Yes," I replied.
She came in closer to see for herself, then said, "Hmmph. They're cheaper at Safeway." And off she went to the big grocery store further down the mall.

Don't you just hate it when you think of what to say long after the opportunity has passed? What I should have said was that Safeway's onions probably come from California, and they're not so cheap when you add in the poorly-paid labour of the migrant workers who harvested them, the cost of the gasoline to transport them thousands of kilometres, and the carbon emissions of the trucks that brought them so far north. I could have suggested that we really ought to be supporting our local farmers, encouraging them by buying their produce so that they can grow more food for local markets, because there may come a day when the price of transporting onions from California will be prohibitive, or crops down there will fail, or there will be other reasons that we will need our farmers here to be doing well. If I would have pointed out to her that I don't mind paying a little more for my onions because they taste fresher than Safeway's and I like to kibbitz with the man who grew them and brought them to the mall in his truck, I wonder if she might have understood the happiness that comes from knowing where my produce originates and who is benefitting from its sale.

Shoulda, coulda, woulda. Next time, I'll be more prepared to defend the simplicity of buying from my local producer.

What's your favourite local product?

P.S. Looking for more Simple Suggestions? Try here.

#59 of 100 Simple Suggestions... Shop at a farmer's market

This summer, we visited Seattle, and saw the famous Pike Place Market, one of the oldest farmer's markets in the U.S. We thoroughly enjoyed walking through, eating some tasty treats, and seeing all the fish, food, flowers and produce available there. It was a fun, happening place. We got quite a kick out of a busker with a trained parrot that did all sorts of tricks and turned somersaults on anyone's hand...

Here in Edmonton, we're fortunate to have a couple of pretty amazing Saturday farmer's markets, and there's a good one out in Sherwood Park on Thursday evenings, too. I love the atmosphere at all of them -- inevitably, shoppers run into people they know, there's kibbitzing at the stalls, the "fast" foods are of the delicious, home-made variety, sometimes there's busking, and always there's good humour. Best of all, though, is produce that has come short distances in comparison to what we find in big grocery stores, and it's sold by the people who grew it and probably picked it fresh in the days before the market. Shopping at a farmer's market is a way to do good things for the planet, local producers, and your palate. What's not to love?

So this suggestion is really a challenge to those who have never shopped at a Farmer's Market. Go. See. Taste. Enjoy the atmosphere. And get hooked!

P.S. Looking for more Simple Suggestions? Try here.

Local food insomnia

I love autumn for the wealth of produce that's extremely local and in season. Neighbour Bob's apples taste better than anything we can ever buy at the grocery store. Our pear tree overflowed with its goodness to us and the many people we are able to offer pears (the busdriver that took me to my dental appointment downtown this morning calls me the "pear lady"), and we're swimming in carrots, zucchini, spaghetti squash, beans, kale, and tomatoes. We even have six nice-sized pumpkins this year, which thrills me like I never imagined pumpkins could. Yes, I know I'm weird, but I have this incredible pumpkin soup recipe...

But a bout of insomnia like the one I had last night sets me to worrying about our world and its food habits. Why is it that, at 1 a.m., all the world's problems loom larger than the universe? Two years ago, our bee population took a noticeable hit, and my usually humming yard was empty of fuzzy buzzing friends. They haunted my wakeful should-be-sleeping hours at that time. This year the bees seemed to be almost back to their usual population density, fighting over blossoms in the yard, so it's not them that kept me awake last night -- it was our Late Blight Disease, the one that caused the great Irish Potato Famine in the middle of the 1800s. It made an appearance in Edmonton this fall, spoiling a lot of gardeners' tomato and potato yields and spreading quickly because of the unusual, highly humid weather we've had (today is only our fourth mostly sunny day this month, and we're back to rain tomorrow). The thing about the blight is that if you've got it, you can't plant any tomato or potato relatives (peppers and eggplants don't do well here, but still...) for at least three years.

What had my brain spinning last night was this: in our highly urbanized world, we city-folk have become extremely dependent on distant places to send us the food we need to keep us from starvation. Very few of us know anything about growing food for ourselves because we can buy strawberries from Argentina (and everything else from everywhere else) on a whim. (Aside: my daughter's friend didn't know that the main ingredient in salsa was tomatoes, so far are we separated from food production, sigh.) In the meantime, our small local farmers' livelihoods and lands are being threatened from all sides -- by developers, mega farming corporations, overapplication of chemicals, genetically modified foods, peak oil, you name it. And we are, for the most part, oblivious to the fact that, should the food system break down for whatever reason, we might once again have something like the great famine on our empty plates.

I'm not trying to be alarmist here... it's just what went through my brain while I was longing for sleep. It was enough to make me think that it's time to get really serious about shopping weekly at the local farmer's market even if I have to drive twenty minutes to do it, and after that, to eventually get me dreaming about making a big, steaming pot of hearty beet borscht from my backyard ingredients. The food I'll buy at the farmer's market (once my garden produce is put away to feed us for a little while at least) won't be travelling across an entire continent -- or keep me awake at night wondering if I've done enough to support local food producers.