We made it!
The local eating adventure is winding to a close, but judging by the pile of veggies in our fridge, and impending CSA pick up today, we'll continue to eat pretty locally. I'd say we were much closer to Michael Pollan's "eat food. mostly vegetables." these past few weeks than we generally are.
We have decided to try to continue to focus our meat purchases on those of the extremely local variety. Buying from a farmer you can actually talk to, and ask about their farming practices, it optimal, but when that's not possible we'll focus on sourcing from sustainable farms from local businesses. Because it's definitely more expensive to buy meat of the sustainable variety, we will limit our meals cooked with meat to two per week if possible. This will be an experiment of sorts for a while, we'll see how it goes.
The cost breakdown of eating this lcoally has been a frequent question- so I'll attempt to break it down. Over the past 2 weeks we have definitely spent more on groceries, and spent more at the farmers markets. But, we weren't eating out, something we generally do at least once if not twice per week. So the overall total we spent on food was probably slightly less than normal. Paying the local premium also meant we were getting higher quality products in quite a few cases. The milk we were drinking for instance was Amazingly Good, but $4.49 for a glass jug (1/2 gallon?), and we normally spend $3 for a 1/2 gallon of organic milk. The difference in quality was very apparent and it cost more (and required an extra car trip to pick up in this case- it's bikeable if we decide to go that route in the future we'll have to bike there...). (Once you factor in that we weren't eating cereal and were going through half as much milk each week, it's a wash though I suppose on cost.)
Now, I am going to celebrate with a much deserved latte (don't worry from a local business that only roasts fair trade beans :-) )
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