Food
I never did post the end of the no-supermarket saga: I made it five weeks without buying anything non-local. After four weeks, I "needed" non-local stuff, but I didn't get around to going to the store until a week later. It was Trader Joe's--still haven't been to the supermarket.
Ever since I found another new hobby (saving camp, as you can probably tell), food hasn't been as much on my mind. But I'm still buying very little that isn't local--flour, sugar, butter, the occasional thing from a local business, like when I ran out of cheese and the cheese people didn't show up to farmer's, so I bought more at an Italian deli.
I've baked two loaves of bread for Nicole's lunches. One loaf was a little dry; the next recipe I tried made an absurdly small loaf (so today she got two tiny sandwiches). If ANYONE has a great whole-wheat or mostly whole-wheat bread recipe that makes nice big loaves, please let me know.
Yesterday we went to our CSA's annual Farm Day, which is a lower-key event than many Farm Days. It mostly features gleaning, and we did: we got a lot of tomatoes, peppers, and a few strawberries. Some of the tomatoes are green, for fried green tomatoes, which I'm going to try making tonight. I've never eaten any, which complicates it slightly.
Afterward, craving ice cream, which we hadn't had in over a month, we stopped at Grocery Outlet--also on the gleaning theme, except the food isn't free. It was a good Grocery Outlet day, and we bought a whole lot of non-local stuff there, including some interesting cheeses and a winter's worth of canned butter beans, (which I love heated slightly, drizzled with olive oil, and sprinkled with salt and pepper).
Ever since I found another new hobby (saving camp, as you can probably tell), food hasn't been as much on my mind. But I'm still buying very little that isn't local--flour, sugar, butter, the occasional thing from a local business, like when I ran out of cheese and the cheese people didn't show up to farmer's, so I bought more at an Italian deli.
I've baked two loaves of bread for Nicole's lunches. One loaf was a little dry; the next recipe I tried made an absurdly small loaf (so today she got two tiny sandwiches). If ANYONE has a great whole-wheat or mostly whole-wheat bread recipe that makes nice big loaves, please let me know.
Yesterday we went to our CSA's annual Farm Day, which is a lower-key event than many Farm Days. It mostly features gleaning, and we did: we got a lot of tomatoes, peppers, and a few strawberries. Some of the tomatoes are green, for fried green tomatoes, which I'm going to try making tonight. I've never eaten any, which complicates it slightly.
Afterward, craving ice cream, which we hadn't had in over a month, we stopped at Grocery Outlet--also on the gleaning theme, except the food isn't free. It was a good Grocery Outlet day, and we bought a whole lot of non-local stuff there, including some interesting cheeses and a winter's worth of canned butter beans, (which I love heated slightly, drizzled with olive oil, and sprinkled with salt and pepper).