Shall we all get into the habit?

Thekla · Mar 19, 2012

Bravo, Philothei !

This is indeed something we can all do !
We are blessed to live where we can buy from farms directly, and our main grocer also supplies meat and dairy from local farms. Our grocer also grows and sells in season.

For those interested in gardening (private or small scale for selling), perhaps this book may be of use. (Using this method, we were able to grow enough food for our small family in two five by six plots, plus randomly planted fruit bushes).

Amazon.com: The New Self-Sufficient Gardener (9780756628987): John Seymour: Books

If you plan to have animals, geese are an excellent alarm system.
(The farmer we bought chicken and lamb from, before he moved, used geese this way.)

We now have a concrete yard ().

But we have discovered that raspberries do well in a small wardrobe.

This year we will try black currants and akebia (for fruit and beauty) in containers, along with the rest of our container "crops" (swiss chard, sorrel, lettuce, cucumber, tomato, red orach, and various herbs.)

Ortho_Cat · Mar 19, 2012

i fear it is all too expensive for me at the moment...

Knee V · Mar 19, 2012

We'll have fencing so that our critters can't escape. For now I'm pulling grass and putting it in their cages. I know that's not the same, but at least they're eating plenty of grass and not just feed.

Thekla · Mar 19, 2012

Free range meat is expensive, but here is my family's experience with this:

Before we moved south, we ate (organic) farm raised meats. After our move, such a thing was not available, so we ate conventional chicken. After a time, we found a supermarket (30 mins. away) which carried grass fed meats. And of course, as we were quite poor at the time, I was hesitant to spend the money for the difference. Finally, when we had a few extra bucks, I bought some free range chicken legs. Our children usually ate two conventional chicken legs each; every time I bought free range, they claimed they were full after one leg. (And also claimed the chicken tasted much better). I'm not sure if everyone has found that free range is more filling, but in our case it turned out to be only somewhat more expensive.

MKJ · Mar 19, 2012

Thekla said:
Amazon.com: The New Self-Sufficient Gardener (9780756628987): John Seymour: Books

Of course being interested in local living, we will try not to buy from Amazon, which has rather questionable labour practices as well.

I've read some of Seymore's other things which I enjoyed, but I find some of his gardening advice not so useful as he is dealing with British weather. Lots of talk of "winter crops" and such like that would never grow in Canada in February.

I like geese and ducks, but boy they produce a lot of.... manure.

Dorothea · Mar 19, 2012

knee-v said:
What is sad is that we've come to accept the unnaturally low prices of much of our produce as "normal", when they are anything but. Local prices are not high, they're just where they should be. Chain super market produce is absolute crap and the low prices reflect that.

My wife and I are just starting to produce our own food. We recently bought some "meat" to raise, breed, and slaughter, and we just built some raised garden beds for some vegetables. Our hope is to turn as much of our 4 acres into some kind of food production (growing vegetables and grazing animals). We'd like to be as self-sufficient as possible WRT food. There is a "natural farm" about a half hour away from us, and we're going to start doing some shopping there (we just discovered it), but we also really like the idea of bringing our food expenses down to an absolute minimum.

That sounds great. Hopefully, some day in the future, we can do that.

Thekla · Mar 19, 2012

MKJ said:
Thekla said:

Amazon.com: The New Self-Sufficient Gardener (9780756628987): John Seymour: Books

Of course being interested in local living, we will try not to buy from Amazon, which has rather questionable labour practices as well.

I've read some of Seymore's other things which I enjoyed, but I find some of his gardening advice not so useful as he is dealing with British weather. Lots of talk of "winter crops" and such like that would never grow in Canada in February.

I like geese and ducks, but boy they produce a lot of.... manure.

Click to expand...

Actually, I don't buy from Amazon either

Indeed, at our local Amazon warehouse (where a friend worked) they did not install air conditioning but instead kept ambulances parked outside to transport heat exhaustion suffers !

They undermine local economies (tax issue) and the opportunity to support local bookstores which often act as de facto community centers (even when, *sigh*, all that is available locally is a chain). They take a massive cut from their sellers (I need to look into policies at Alibris and ABE, too.)

Their cost/discount policies hurt small publishers; their publishing moves and size threaten to monopolize publishing. This is not only dangerous to diversity in publishing, this is exactly the strategy used to kill the competition - and then of course price to consumer will rise.

Actually, although Pa. is warmer, you might look into open pollinated Russian and Czech tomatoes. They don't mind the cold so much, and would bear into the cold season when other varieties were long gone. In PA, they put up with a Feb/March planting too. Swiss chard can grow through the snow, as can some other greens (bloody sorrel, at least here).

Best with your growing !

Ann_of_Love · Mar 19, 2012

Thekla said:
Our children usually ate two conventional chicken legs each; every time I bought free range, they claimed they were full after one leg. (And also claimed the chicken tasted much better). I'm not sure if everyone has found that free range is more filling, but in our case it turned out to be only somewhat more expensive.

I have actually found this to be true as well.

ProScribe · Mar 19, 2012

No kidding - going to a grocery store for 2-3 people can cost $1000 dollars a month.

Thekla · Mar 19, 2012

Ann_of_Love said:
I have actually found this to be true as well.

Hello, and thank-you

That's interesting to hear !

rusmeister · Mar 19, 2012

Good stuff from MKJ, Knee-V and Thekla,
The only little thought I'd add (an addition to Knee-V's) for those of us that haven't been so "green" and are used to the big chain stores is that it might help to consider the higher price of natural food as a tax we impose on ourselves, to put more healthy food, less unhealthy food, and saner quantities on our tables, and to contribute to return to saner, more local economies and away from globalism, which basically buys our freedom with its low, low, low prices and tactics.

Philothei · Mar 19, 2012

Yep! well said Rus... I am looking forward to make my changes in our eating habits..We need to cook more fresh produce and consume less "man made" snacks...All these manifactured goods are nothing but color, salt, sugar and chems

Thekla · Mar 19, 2012

rusmeister said:
Good stuff from MKJ, Knee-V and Thekla,
The only little thought I'd add (an addition to Knee-V's) for those of us that haven't been so "green" and are used to the big chain stores is that it might help to consider the higher price of natural food as a tax we impose on ourselves, to put more healthy food, less unhealthy food, and saner quantities on our tables, and to contribute to return to saner, more local economies and away from globalism, which basically buys our freedom with its low, low, low prices and tactics.

And this "tax" is actually a form of good stewardship, and a tax which will keep us from passing on yet another debt (in a different form) to our children's generation.

Ortho_Cat · Mar 19, 2012

but they are tasty color, salt, sugar, and chems!

Ortho_Cat · Mar 19, 2012

Ann_of_Love said:
I have actually found this to be true as well.

it makes sense, because the leg muscles would be more dense from roaming around. May have to try this...

gurneyhalleck1 · Mar 19, 2012

I eat a very organic, natural diet. I'm also vegetarian and abhor meat. I don't care if it is corn-fed or grass-fed, I don't eat meat.

My wife and I try to eat a lot of non-processed foods and foods without pesticides and nonsense. We also try to eat non-GMO soy in the soy products we depend on as vegetarians. I eat tons of blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, peaches, mangos, kale, broccoli, tofu, beans, long grain rice, and foods rich in anti-oxidants. I refuse to give up olive oil, period. It's a majorly healthy part of our cooking and diet.

I don't trust the food industry much. I don't think the USDA has our best interests at hand most of the time either.

If everyone watched movies like "Food Inc." we'd all be a lot better off.

I am blown away when I go to Asia, at how nice it is to see smaller portion sizes. The American plate has become a platter the size of a tray. The portions are enormous and fit for a grizzly bear. We over-salt our foods in restaurants with enough sodium to kill a rhino. We over-butter, throw grease into everything, and the U.S. diet is driven by convenience and speed and big portions. We could learn a lot from Europe and Asia in many respects. Although I'm blown-away at how unhealthy and fattening the filipino diet is whenever I go there with my wife. It's appauling!

-Kyriaki- · Mar 20, 2012

American plate sizes scare me - I live in a Western country, and we're quite close in practice in some ways to America, but we don't eat anywhere near as much as you do. There are 'American style' steak houses here and I usually eat about half my plate and am still very full. We also tend to eat a *lot* of vegetables here, in varying forms - our food is increasingly more influenced by Asia, because it's so close to where we live and because there are a lot of migrants from there that have come here. We're also starting to realise that the Asian diet is actually quite a practical one (rice, unless grown very efficiently (and most Australian rice could work on that to be honest) aside) for the climate we live in, with plenty of fresh food cooked reasonably quickly so that we don't have to spend a long time in a very hot kitchen. We also cook outdoors an awful lot. In winter we're more traditional with things like pasta, casseroles and stews, as well as the classic lamb chop with mashed potato, peas and carrots (how's THAT for seasonal? lamb is quite cheap here, we have more sheep than people), but summer we eat an awful lot of salad with our meat and that's a good trend. Of course, fast food is still terrible, and it's mostly quite similar to American fast food (although McDonalds in particular is much better here with what products they use and their nutritional value is better, with lots of reasonably healthy options), but as far as everyday cooking goes we're not bad.

I had nasi lemak for lunch from one of the small restaurant things in our cafeteria area at uni today - an upturned bowl of coconut rice on a plate, covered in peanut sauce, with different dishes around it to eat with the rice - very small amounts of chicken in the peanut sauce, half a boiled egg on a sambal sauce, a dried fish and peanut mixture, a pickled vegetable dish and sliced cucumber. It was amazingly good and very filling, and most of it wasn't meat!

Joshua G. · Mar 20, 2012

gurneyhalleck1 said:
I eat a very organic, natural diet. I'm also vegetarian and abhor meat. I don't care if it is corn-fed or grass-fed, I don't eat meat.

My wife and I try to eat a lot of non-processed foods and foods without pesticides and nonsense. We also try to eat non-GMO soy in the soy products we depend on as vegetarians. I eat tons of blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, peaches, mangos, kale, broccoli, tofu, beans, long grain rice, and foods rich in anti-oxidants. I refuse to give up olive oil, period. It's a majorly healthy part of our cooking and diet.

I don't trust the food industry much. I don't think the USDA has our best interests at hand most of the time either.

If everyone watched movies like "Food Inc." we'd all be a lot better off.

I am blown away when I go to Asia, at how nice it is to see smaller portion sizes. The American plate has become a platter the size of a tray. The portions are enormous and fit for a grizzly bear. We over-salt our foods in restaurants with enough sodium to kill a rhino. We over-butter, throw grease into everything, and the U.S. diet is driven by convenience and speed and big portions. We could learn a lot from Europe and Asia in many respects. Although I'm blown-away at how unhealthy and fattening the filipino diet is whenever I go there with my wife. It's appauling!

I agree with you on the USDA. I love it (sarcasm) when some food industry rep is interviewed about something controversial and they say "It's safe: the USDA approves of it" and my wife and I look at it each other like "and?" as if the latter were proof of anything other than that we aren't eating shards of glass (mind goes back to SNLs classic Christmas skit wherein they advertize "glass in a bag" for kids. lol).

Personally, what I care about more than chemicals (not that that shouldn't matter) is hormones. I don't know, but I would find it hard to believe that that isn't a big reason behind why our girls start to mature so early (starting menstrual cycles in elementary school!). I am sure there are other factors but...

And the fact that red dye (and what's the other proven culprit of ADD symtpoms... yellows dyes) is still allowed in food and food geared towards children despite what science clearly shows us.

I'm not convinced all of these chemicals are the worst thing in the world, despite how it sounds on paper. They aren't great and should be avoided if people have the stamina and dinero. But I guess I feel like for someone like my wife and I, there are SOOOOOO many battles to pick and we would get burnt out quickly. We just don't have the activist mindset to be able to penny pinch literally everywhere so as to completely buck the system. So, for us, we choose the battles we know we can sustain in the long run. Watching carbs, making sure we invest heavily in fruits and veggies (even if they have chemicals... I am convinced it's better than less fruits and veggies), try to buy stuff with out hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oils/fats (like "natural" peanut butter) and other little things that form part of my kids' staples.

Oh, and we do get organic milk, but I have a question: does that mean it's hormone free? I actually care more about that than chemicals. Can someone let me know? And if not, where do you find that?

Josh

choirfiend · Mar 20, 2012

Ortho_Cat said:
it makes sense, because the leg muscles would be more dense from roaming around. May have to try this...

Also, the fat profile is completely different and contains a lot more vitamins and versions of the "healthy fats" that are GOOD for you. Animals are healthier when they are allowed to live like animals, and killed humanely.

choirfiend · Mar 20, 2012

All milk is hormone free. they are not allowed to have hormones in the milk. Cows may receive rBST, but it does not pass into the milk, so milk that advertises that it is from cows who dont get rBST is the same as milk from cows that might. The difference is in the lives of the cows.

What you might consider is not hormones directly in food, but how the chemicals that are in food might affect the hormonal and adrenal systems in your kids' bodies.

I partially buy local and partially buy cheap. During the summer I love the farmers markets that abound here, during the winter I love the cheap frozen broccoli, berries, and romaine hearts that I can get at Sams Club. I'm trying to move to buying ethically raised meat. Our local Wegmans has grassfed ground beef for $5/lb. It wasnt much more expensive than the 97%lean non-grassfed stuff. We don't eat a TON of meat (with me being vegetarian) so I'm trying to get my hubby on board for smaller portions of healthier stuff more often. I'd love it if I could find grassfed butter. We do have a local dairy, still serving milk in glass bottles, and that's what I buy 90% of the time.

It's nutritionally worth it to spend more on the quality meats and vegetables. they have samples of all kinds of foods saved from 50-60 years ago. They test the nutritional content (and the flavor profile!) against today's food, and yesteryear's food is much more nutritionally dense and tasted better, too. Today's food is being "bred" for longetivity, color, and lack of flaws, as well as size. That leaves you with a pretty, large, plant that will last through the weeks before it gets to your plate with less nutrients. It has more celluose to be bigger, but spends less time on the vine, which leaves less time to absorb nutrients and is just more starch and water, essentially.

Shall we all get into the habit?

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