Why My Television Rocks

Well, it's taking me some time but I've recovered from our days without television.

We did it. We turned the TV off. We told the kids that we were having a few days of no TV. Remarkably, they didn't pester us endlessly to turn it back on. They did, however, increase their request for DS time (Nintendo handheld) and computer game time. We tried to steer them away, keep them busy, and spend more time outside. We did feel the need to make more trips out with them to fill some time. Our kids don't exactly have a long attention span for playing on their own, and getting anything done when their constantly demanding your attention is impossible. But overall, they did well and we had many more creative Lego ships with heavy fire power by the end of that week.

My husband loved no TV time. Lately he's found that the TV gives him a headache, and he'd much prefer to listen to music and read on the couch at night. I, on the other hand, simply replaced my nighttime television watching with Facebook and computer games...and maybe a little Super Mario Bros. on my son's DS. So I'm fairly sure I did not honor the ideals behind that particular part of my No Impact Week. No excuses here, either. I have no guilt about the television, and I'll tell you why. Unless you're not interested, in which case I'd stop reading if I were you, cuz that's pretty much all I have left to talk about.

For my husband, he gets to go to work in the morning, and leave his work to come home in the evening. That isn't to say that once he walks out the door all thoughts of work are out of his mind, far from it, but once his day is done the work he has left for the next day is not staring at him from every direction, every corner, every Cheerio crunched under his foot.

For me, once the kids are in bed and my time is my own, there's still piles of laundry on the chair in the corner of the living room, chunks of crackers, cereal and lately, pomegranates sticking to the bottom of my sock in the dining room, Legos and babydolls and Candyland cards on the carpet in front of my sofa blocking my ability to open the recliner, dishes on the counter and filling the sink in the kitchen, and a host of other tasks awaiting my attention. But I keep my sanity by ignoring all that come 8:00. Truly, if it hasn't been attended to by then, it ain't gonna happen today!

Every mom who reads this knows how important this attitude is. And every mom reading this knows how the stress of "resting" with all of that surrounding you is like trying to sleep while someone shines a flashlight in your face. All that stuff is staring at me. Eating at me. Taunting me. It's egging me on to get up and take care of it, allowing myself a moment of triumph when, for just one night, for 12 short hours, it could all be gone and done...but it always comes back. The triumph is so brief. The clean just never lasts. And the precious evening hours that could have been spent sitting and recouping can never be recovered. So, I choose to ignore it. I pull the sheet up tight over my head. I turn on the television, open the computer, or, if I feel like it, a book, and I tune out the mess and tune in to whatever the heck I want on the TV. And I enjoy it! Even if it's one of my many silly, pointless, brain-cell-sucking reality shows, it's better then letting my unfinished work bury me.

As I've said before, this lowering of my family's impact on the planet and efforts to consume locally, it's only going to work if it doesn't cut into our happiness or lower our quality of life. I've added steps to my day (more work and effort) in order to reuse, reduce, and recycle; it's worth it, and it makes me happier. I've spent way more money by shopping as local and organic as possible; it's worth it, and it makes me happier. But turning off the television? For me, it's just not worth it. Maybe I'll change my mind some day. Maybe it works for you. But that's the beauty of this whole thing, everyone can make the changes that work best for them, and if we truly make as many changes as we can handle, the earth still wins!

No Impact Week - Day 4

Forgive me Colin for I have trashed...and driven...and eaten Cheeze-Its.

TRASH:

Here's my trash list for the last few days, ya know, for those who are interested in going through other peoples trash:

• Night time Pull-Ups - 3 a day
  
• Plastic clothing tags from new jammies my mom brought the kids
• Plastic wrapper from Trader Joe's frozen fish
• 4 small backings to kids Halloween tattoos
• Contents of the dustbuster
• 1 very broken crayon
• My 6yo's lunch crusts
• A cheese packet from Annie's Mac N Cheese
• Stonyfield Farm yogurt topper
• Plastic straps from 2 new doors that my father-in-law and husband installed in our house
• Trader Joe's Sesame Sticks bag (so yummy)
  
• Taco seasoning wrapper
• Wrapper from a package of ground bison meat

What I didn't do.

• Reach for a paper towel instead of my perfectly good, handy, useful, compostable Skoy cloths.
• Allow my semi-potty trained kids to get away with Pull-ups during the day. (cleaned up a lot of pee though)
• Throw out food scraps that I normally would have just because the kitchen composter was full and I think it's way too gross to go empty. I emptied it. For the first time. You're welcome honey.
• Throw out a perfectly good reusable ziploc bag just because the food that had been in it had gone bad and I really didn't want to have to clean (smell) it.
• Fill the trash can in one day. Or even two days. Crazy!

It turns out that food waste is one of our biggest trash contributors, and being thoughtful about our garbage kept me from dumping that waste when it could be turned into beautiful soil for our spring garden.

TRANSPORTATION:

We do not live in a city. In theory, I could walk to a specialty grocery store nearby, in about 45 minutes. Maybe more, because I gave away my double stroller and my 4yo would whine the whole way about why my 2yo gets to ride in the stroller and he doesn't. Then he'd say his knees hurt and he'd drop to the ground and whimper. I'd continue walking, because there's no way I'm going to cater to that kind of behavior. Then I'd come to a crosswalk and realize, that yes, actually I did have to go back for him because they tend to call the cops on people who leave their 4 year olds on the other side of a busy intersection even though they deserved it because they were whining...again. So, no, we're not going to do that.

Nothing is close. The library, the playgrounds, the schools...not only are they too far to walk, but they're not even near each other. The same is true for a hardware store and a shopping center and a large retailer (Target), they're all 23 minutes away from me, and 23 minutes away from each other. So grouping trips is tough. When I do need a Target run I try to buy it all so I can not go there again for a few months. It's been working out. I'm also, of course, trying to buy less so I don't need to go out at all.

EATING LOCAL:

Yeah, they just don't make Cheez-Its around here. I've looked. They don't make Doritos either. Bummer. These were a house staple when I was growing up. Around here, they're a treat, a sometimes food.

What they do make is Stonyfield Farm yogurt and milk, so I buy that. And I love picking up organic potatoes that come from Massachusetts. And I get my meat from a lovely local CSA called Chestnut Hill Farm. So, we're not doing too shabby. I also try to buy a lot of organic products, with the hope that at least the production of these items had a lighter impact on the planet.

SUMMARY:

I guess what I'm saying is, we're not doing too shabby around here. I don't have any feeling of failure about this project so far. I have not followed it as closely as I could or as closely as some will. But where I am now and where I was 5 years ago is like night and day. Every day I take active steps and I think, I truly stop and think (when I'm not mindlessly picking up cute tassled boots for my daughter), about what I'm doing and what more I could be doing. And even when I do buy those boots, those not snow-appropriate thus not seasonally required and not reused but cute, soft and well-loved boots, I think about it. Maybe next time, I'll walk right by them. Maybe.

People must recognize that the only way this lower impact way of living can be successful for the masses is if everyone just takes it a little at a time and gets to a point where they're doing the best that they can do and still live lives that are happy and meaningful to them. That's what I'm doing. So far...happy. :)

No Impact Week - Day 1 Make No Unnecessary Purchases

Define "unnecessary". My usual focus being on food, I thought I was off to a good start because my freezer is stocked from my October meat delivery from my meat CSA and my produce drawer has some green stuff in it left over from my last (thank goodness!) vegetable CSA pickup. I figured the only thing I should need to buy this week is milk, and that definitely falls under the category of necessary.

Did you know it snowed today? Here in Massachusetts, for most of the day, the biggest fluffiest snow flakes I have ever seen came down and made their best determined effort to stick and accumulate on my still blooming mums. It's supposed to be 60 on Wednesday. How is this pertinent?

My husband and I have been on a major cleaning out of office, basement, garage and house in general. That story of stuff thing? That's us. The part where the house is so full of stuff that things are bursting out the windows? Yeah, one more Christmas (and it's not that far off people!) and we'll be out on the streets while our stuff is all cozy inside...everywhere....taking over and multiplying. Cuz it totally does that! It's like you go to bed with not that much stuff but when you wake up in the morning...more stuff! It was a very wet summer. Maybe I should be keeping my stuff dryer.

Anyway, so we've been on this mission to get our cars back into the garage before it snows (missed that). We've been moving things out of the house and into the garage, and then listing them on Freecycle or Craigslist or Ebay. Slowly but surely things have been leaving. And slowly but surely I have been discovering things like my daughter's 24mth snow pants and jacket as well as the 24mth snow pants and jacket that someone had given me when my daughter was an infant, so I could use it when she grew into it, ya know and not have to spend the money to buy a new one. Oops.

I'm not exactly sure where I was headed with this huge tangent.... sorry. I'm sure it would have been an amusing tie in... Let me think. Nope, not sure. I did have a point here. Maybe I was trying to distract you from the original point of this blog post; my necessary spending. Well, I'll get back to it now and we'll see if I can link all of this together.

We were out of pull-ups. Yup, no trash day is going to be more like low-trash day here. All three of my children are potty-trained-ish. As long as I set a timer for every 30 minutes and insist that everyone goes every time it beeps, we're good. That includes through the night. So...pull-ups. I decided to go get them, taking my oldest along for the ride.

We walked into our local KMart and picked up our pull ups. Then we noticed they had snow pants out, and just the size we needed for my oldest son. They also had spiffy looking Spider Man snow boots, how cool is that? Oh, and the cutest little brown boots with tassles with poof balls at the end of them for my daughter. We also snagged a box of crayons, a box of pencils, and some dry erase markers.

Hmmm....necessary? Yeah, so I was so caught up in the whole house purging thing that I totally forgot that today was don't buy stuff day and so I went to the store to buy something necessary but then I bought, well, stuff. Stuff that maybe we needed eventually but definitely not today. Stuff that will hang in a closet for about a month and a half until real winter comes. Stuff that if I'd taken the time to look on Ebay, Craigslist, and Freecycle I probably could have picked up in used but good condition. I have a bin with over 300 crayons in it for my kids to use and color with. Is it necessary to buy a brand new box of 48 just because my oldest wants his "own"? Ugh!

I failed the don't buy stuff challenge. I failed in my efforts to purge my stuff because in the middle of it I went off and bought more. I failed in being a thoughtful consumer. I walked in, and thought there's a deal! There's a bargain! There's a shiny new whatever!

I'm not even going to bring up the disposable pull-ups thing, because if that were really the only thing I had purchased today it might be a debate worth having, but pull-ups are the least of my worries. As good as I thought I had been doing to buy less, think more about what I buy, and reuse what's already out there, today proved that I can still be just as careless with my acquirement of stuff as the next guy. girl. whatever.

But I am trying. I have been buying less. I have been shopping MUCH less. I have been thinking more. I have been looking for alternatives. I have been pushing myself to think and to be conscious of my actions and to use what I have instead of looking for the new and shiny. Today was a day when I should have been at the top of my game, and instead it was an eye-opening example of just how much further I have to go. But the good news is...I'm on my way! And taking part in this experiment is just one more step I can take in the right direction.

Please join the experiment.

My No Impact Week

As I set off on my journey to attempt eating locally my husband suggested I take a look at the blogs of some other writers who maybe have worked out the kinks of this eating locally thing and could offer some suggestions. I, of course, not wanting to hear about others and determined to pave my own way towards local consumption without the help of anyone who maybe had this thing all figured out and could offer some good suggestions and advice, ignored him. I usually do. He has some really good ideas, too. I'm just stubborn. But I don't realize I'm being stubborn until much later. I usually come around. Eventually. Unless of course he's just wrong. That has happened before, once or twice. What was I saying? Oh, yes.

So, a couple months into my project, I had this brilliant idea to see if there were any other bloggers out there looking to find local food and live more environmentally friendly, and that's when I discovered and started following Colin Beavan, aka No Impact Man.

Colin sort of dragged his wife and child through a year long experiment to live as environmentally responsible as possible in New York City. I say dragged his wife because that's how it seemed to be going in the teasers for his documentary about the experiment, but I've recently come across some disturbing information about Mrs. Beavan, and I have to say I feel slightly forsaken. You see, Colin's wife was apparently addicted to reality tv. I can sort of somewhat a little bit identify with that. Not completely, mind you. I mean, there's some seriously good reality tv out there, and some seriously bad reality tv. I only watch the good stuff. The good clean entertainment offered by professionals and nice people stuff. The educational stuff. You could even say that the shows I watch are helpful in assisting me in my environmental pursuits. Let me explain:

• Top Chef, for instance, is great for learning exciting new cooking techniques that I can use on all the local produce I've procured this year.
  

• Project Runway has taught me one or two things about making my own clothing, you know, if I ever thought I might want to do that for my family and all I had was 30 minutes to sketch, $150 for materials, and 1 day to "make it work"

• So You Think You Can Dance just makes me want to get up and dance. Maybe I'll take a dance class at the gym next week. Exercise is good for me and the environment. Maybe if I was in better shape I could walk and bike more and drive my car less. Excellent! So far so good.

• Americal Idol is all about perseverance and never giving up on your dream and finding the superstar within the girl next door, and if you're not her well at least they're brutally honest so you don't go around thinking maybe you are her and then you know for certain that not only can you not sing but you are a bad person for ever thinking you could and you should really go back to working at Walmart now. But not me! I'm the environmental girl next door. Yay me!

• America's Next Top Model is so obvious it's insulting that anyone can't see the environmental upside. We have such an overwhelming food shortage in this world and Americans are the biggest gluttons of all. Just take a look here and see how much more we eat in a single week then they do in other countries. Then, watch Top Model and tell me that you are even thinking about eating more then water and locally grown celery until you've lost those last ten pounds. Seriously, those girls are the epitome of minimalist eating. That, or they vomit a lot. No one is naturally that skinny.
  

• Hell's Kitchen. Um. Okay, well...maybe sometimes I just like watching those idiots who go on reality television shows get told to f@@k off a lot.

My point is, I'm not watching totally worthless reality tv. It's all applicable to my goal, my journey, my mission. So I was more then a little disappointed when, not far into my borrowed from the library audio edition of Colin's new book, I found that it was Colin's wife who said that the first thing they should do is give up the tv. Why would she do this?! I identified with this woman. I counted on her to stand up for us. Crazy eco-conscious husband wanting to do the right thing for the environment but infringing on the personal happiness of his wife - I've got one of those! Starbucks - love it! Shopping - need it! Television - addicted to it! Give it up? And lose all of it's endless possibilities for education and inspiration?

(Yeah, no honey, this is not where I say that I'm willing to give up forever our 42" LCD with HD-Tivo. It's just not going to happen. There are some sacrifices that are beyond me.)

But I will do this. I will join Colin Beavan in the No Impact Experiment, which starts Sunday October 18th. And for one week, I will live a little bit as Colin and his wife did for an entire year.

On day 1, I will forgo purchasing anything but that which my family and I cannot live without.
On day 2, I will make no trash.
On day 3, I will give up driving unless absolutely necessary.
On day 4, I will eat foods that are grown or produced only in New England.
On day 5, I will um...I will....*deep breath*....I will unplug the television.
On day 6, I will use less water.
On day 7, I will pay it forward.
On day 8, I will plug the television back in.

It won't be easy, I know. But I look forward to this challenge for myself and my family. I hope we're successful in finding alternative ways to enjoy each other, have fun, and be more responsible stewards of this life we've been given and the planet we live it on.

Please join the experiment.

Our Vegetable CSA Experience

This spring we took the plunge and signed ourselves up with a local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). For an upfront fee we got a box of fruits and vegetables, as they became available, from June to October.

As those of you who read this post know, I am not exactly a vegetable lover. I did a lot of research into the CSA's in my area and ended up picking the Stillman's CSA because it seemed to offer mostly the vegetables I will grudgingly consume. Plus it's right near my sister-in-law's house, and I could beg her to pick it up when she got her own, thus saving me a "boring" trip out with the kids.

Now, I'm fairly certain that I cannot blame Stillman's for the 60+ days of rain that we experienced in June, July, and August. I also can't blame them for the subsequent crops that flourished in said 60+ days of rain. Regardless of who is to blame, what I seem to have received this summer went a little like this:

June: Beets, kale, beets, kale, zucchini, beets, kale, zucchini, small container of strawberries.
July: Oh look, more beets. A container of blueberries.
August: Zucchini, lettuce, some corn, and kale. 3 golden plums.
September: Eggplant, cucumber, weird lettuce, eggplant, cucumber, corn, weird lettuce, eggplant, weird lettuce, some apples, a melon.

Now, I'll admit that I'm paraphrasing. There were a few tomatoes, string beans, potatoes and other things thrown in, and I know that the Stillman's folks weren't intentionally loading me with ultra-healthy but ultimately, in this family anyway, inedible greenery. But honestly, I gave half of everything we got to my in-laws. By the 4th week, my sister-in-law refused to take any more beets or kale, and they may possibly have ended up in my garbage. I have guilt about this.

I'm starting to realize that if I had been born pre-supermarket I would have been naturally selected out of existence. You can call me childish or fussy or absurd (I do), but foods that don't please my palate generally make me gag. It's not that I don't want to eat kale, it's just that once you wilt the lettuce the texture is so revolting. I can appreciate the beauty of a freshly picked tomato, it's just that when you take a bite the guts squish out in your mouth.

Anyway, I will delve no further into this particular neurosis. Suffice it to say, while I thank Stillman's for their hard work and effort in providing fresh local produce to me and mine, and while I encourage you to seek out and connect with a CSA program local to you and your family, I will limit myself next year to supporting my local farmers market.

Okay, It's Time

I'm back. Where have I been, you may be asking? Or not, you may not care, and that's fine too. Just around the time we moved last year, and on through the summer, I was sooooo unbelievably tired. Sleeping 9 or 10 hours at night, and napping during the day, and finding no relief. It turns out, I had sleep apnea, which causes fatigue. Oh, and restless leg syndrome, which causes fatigue. Oh, and iron deficiency, which causes fatigue. Oh, and vitamin D deficiency, which...you guessed it, causes fatigue. So, if I met you last year around this time, please forgive me because there is virtually no way I remember your name.

Due to the consistent encouragement of family and friends, I am determined to pick this blog back up again. While my writing temporarily ceased, my locavore attempts did not. So, with the assistance of my new vitamin regimen and my killer bi-pap machine (yes, it kills me to wear it) here I go.

(not right here. you'll have to go to my next post.)

Where Have I Been All Summer???

Cheating, cheating, cheating!

After our big move to Acton I thought for sure it would be an exciting time to check out all of the farm stands and local food sources that would be closer to our new zip code. I pictured myself making daily forays and bringing home the wonderful local products that my area is sure to provide. Then I would stand in my new gleaming kitchen with it's meticulously cleaned countertops and whip up masterful meals of fresh vegetables and grass-fed meats while my children played gently and quietly in our spacious grassy backyard. My hair would be perfectly coiffed and my pearls would gleam at my throat. The image was so realistic that I could picture it down to the most minute detail.

Heh heh heh! Hee hee hee! Ha ha ha! Boy am I funny!


So, school has finally begun.










For the next 9 glorious months (not counting:

• Rosh Hashanah,
• Yom Kippur,
• Columbus Day,
  
• Veteren's Day,
• Thanksgiving Break,
• Christmas Break,
• Martin Luther King Day,
• Every Thursday After January 26th when we switch from the Morning Kindergarten to the Afternoon Kindergarten,
• Winter Recess,
• Good Friday,
  
• Spring Recess,
  
• Memorial Day, and
  
• Professional Days),
  

my perfect little storms will be reduced in number (during the hours of 9AM to 12PM) from 3 down to 2. And even more exciting, on Tuesdays and Thursdays we will be reduced from 2 down to 1. Whatever shall I do with all this free time????

I'm sure I know what I should do with this free time. Laundry, dishes, and general cleaning come directly to mind. But hey, let's face it, I haven't had time to do any of that stuff all summer long and we've all survived so why start now? So I'm back on my quest!

Once again I'm consulting the great Eat Well Guide available on the Kiwi Magazine website to find a list of local and sustainable farms and stores from which I can buy healthy, low-impact food items for my family. I am excited and ready. I am focused and determined. I am avoiding vaccuuming. Now, if I can just find those pearls...

Back To Local

Well, we did it. We moved. It's been a long couple of months, and the house is only 1/3rd unpacked. I've pretty much given up at this point. I'm very tempted to just donate the remainder of the unopened boxes. I mean, if I've lived without the stuff for this long, do I really need it?

I haven't had the chance to do too much local food hunting lately. The local Roche Bros does seem to have a nice selection of local produce, and it's nice that they label everything really well so you can tell where it came from. They're also very kid friendly. They have these little pint-sized shopping carts so your kids can have their own to push. Well, they have three pint-sized shopping carts really. And the chances there will be one there when you arrive with your expectant children is pretty slim. Plus if they do happen to have them available they will have one less than the number of expectant children you have and so they have to share (i.e. fight). And if by some miracle there are two of them, you will spend your entire shopping trip yelling at your children to :

• stop racing up and down the aisles!
• stop ramming into each other!
• don't run in to that little old lady!
• get over here next to me or I will make you put that cart back!
• take the king sized bag of king sized Snickers bars out of your cart!
• get over here, now!

And after you've put the carts back as punishment for your children's behavior you can then finally make it past aisle one. Luckily they have a lovely bathroom at the complete opposite end of the store because you will invariably have to visit it sometime between aisle 2 and 3, even though he went to the bathroom before you left the house. Then the baby will start crying because it's close to nap time but you were only supposed to be running into the store for 2 minutes to grab 3 items but now it's been 25 minutes and you've only managed to grab 1 of the items on your list and 19 items that were not on your list but that you needed or maybe needed or were probably going to need soon so you should save yourself the trip.

Checking out is nice. They take everything out of the cart for me, and bag it, and bring it to my car. That way I can concentrate on restocking the candy and gum they keep so conveniently right next to the register.

At least I got everything I needed.

Who am I kidding. I'll be back there again tomorrow.

We may have moved, but some things never change.

More soon.

A Whole New Local

So, here's the thing, my 4YO is going to be out of school in mid May, but until then he's in school for 3 hours a day. My 2YO naps two hours a day...sometimes. My 9MO is sort of thinking about maybe starting to sleep through the night pretty soon. So you can see that I have a lot of free time lately and I wasn't sure what on earth I was going to fill it with. So, we're moving.

An important side effect to this decision is that my whole radius of local is going to change in May. Balance Rock Farm, formerly my hot spot for locally and responsibly produced meat products, open M-F but not on Thursday when my in-laws have the boys, balanced because they have one candy product for every one meat product, is now going to be a 25 minute drive instead of a 16 minute drive. That may not seem like much to the average Joe, but remember I'm coordinating five here. I can't go on Thursdays or during the baby's first nap or during the baby's second nap or during the 2YOs nap which happens after the baby's first nap and during the first 30 minutes of the baby's second nap. I can't go in the morning when I'm dropping the 4YO off at school or around noon when I'm picking him up from school, or at 4:30 when I'm making dinner. After school gets out for the summer I think there's a 56 minute window between breakfast, first nap and lunch when I can maybe slip out with all three kids in tow and drive down there. Assuming, of course, no one poops. Then I lose 4 minutes and it just can't be done.

I have to admit, though that I'm excited to find some new local sources. Kiwi Magazine's website has this great tool where you can put in your zip code and it will help you find local Farms, Stores and Restaurants and it has a good list for me to work on as soon as we're settled. That should get me started in locating the local meat, eggs, and honey that we have grown accustomed to. And with Spring starting it will be nice to get some fresh fruit that hits a little closer to home then Chile. Oh, about that...

I have been buying fruit from Chile. This is a total cop-out on the local front. I'm slightly ashamed but only slightly. I've come to the conclusion that local is a great idea but in practice, in Massachusetts in the winter, it's impossible. My kids will not eat canned or frozen fruit. They will not eat 90% of all cooked vegetables. I've tried serving them over and over and over and over. Even if it is environmentally and morally wrong, I just can't stop buying fresh Chilean blueberries, raspberries and strawberries. I don't know where my fresh green beans come from but I know that once I've engaged my son in a crunching contest (thanks Nanna) he'll chomp them right down. This question that I've posed in my blog title turned out to be more about a family of five having a healthy and nutritious diet more than could I actually find products in a local and responsible way. The answer is unfortunate from my perspective.

I need my kids to eat healthy fruits and vegetables.
I need them to eat them all year long.
I feel I have no choice but to buy them and serve them.

Is this awful? Can I balance out the awful by dedicating myself to buying local produce the second it becomes available in my area? They have carbon offset credits, how about local offset credits. I mean, let's face it, I've never really checked a label before in my life until I started this blog. Now I look at them ALL THE TIME. I've become more conscientious of where my food is coming from and what it contains then ever before in my life. Does this make up for the fact that when I can I buy local, when local's not an option I buy organic, and when organic's not an option I buy from Chile? I don't know. The answer does not seem to be in the California chardonnay I'm sipping. Not yet anyway. There's still a good half a bottle left. Maybe the answer's like the prize in the box of cereal...at the bottom. Didn't your mother tell you you couldn't have the prize until you finished the cereal? I better get drinking. I'll let you know.

Enough Already

All right, enough of the doom and gloom already. I promise my next post will be back on mission, featuring all the highlights of my fun-filled attempts to buy local foods without succumbing to my kids constant and obsessive desire for candy and marshmallows.

Before I move on...

As much as I highly plagiarized Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma, there is much I left out. I do recommend you pick it up at your bookstore or library. I never before thought I could be interested in farming, but his description of the symbiosis between animal and vegetation that occurs on Joel Salatan's farm was absolutely fascinating. You will never again find yourself quite so enthralled with cows, pigs, chickens, grass, grubs, and poop. Plus mushroom hunting now sounds like a most exciting adventure, and I think mushroom taste like moldy dirt!

Anyway, I promise to move on. I hope you read the book. Let's get back to local.

Do Not Read This Blog Post: Part 4

Chickens.

Yup, I'm going to ruin the chickens for you.

I've done beef and pork. Are you sure you want to hear about this?

Well, if you're that much of a glutton for punishment...

Laying hens (the ones your eggs come from) spend their short little lives piled together 6 or 7 together in a wire condo about 24" x 24". They are packed too tightly to ever fully stretch their wings. All of their natural chickeny instincts are thwarted. There's no ground to scratch or bugs to eat from yummy 4 day old cow poop. The accommodations are so caring and loving, the chickens often resort to acts of cannibalism as well as rubbing their breast against the wire mesh until they are bald and bleeding. Roughly 10% of the hens, ungracious enough to appreciate the care and concern put into their upkeep, respond to the stress of their existence by dying; don't worry, that loss is figured into the cost of production. When the surviving (not to be confused with living) hens output begins to ebb, they are "force-molted" to stimulate a last surge of egg laying before they give out; this is accomplished by the five star treatment of, no not massages and manicures, but by cutting them off from food, water and sunlight for several days. They lay their last few eggs, then they die.





So...now you know what I know. Don't you feel better now? Oh, and just so you don't think that the hen's pitiful existence was all for nothing... When you are looking through the eggs at the grocery store, and you put a package back because one of the dozen is broken, the grocery store does not switch out the broken one with a whole one, it just tosses the perfectly good remaining eleven into the garbage. Go us!

Do Not Read This Blog Post: Part 3

So let's talk about corn.

How did the US develop into a country with a corn-based food system?

1. In the early 20th century American corn breeders figured out how to make a hybrid corn seed that ensures a large crop of corn per acre. However, the seeds this hybrid corn makes produces crappy corn, so farmers who use it are forced to buy new seeds every year.
2. 1947 marked the end of the war. All that leftover ammonium nitrate, previously used to create explosives, made perfect nitrogen for plants, and especially for the afore-mentioned hybrid corn which consumes more fertilizer then any other crop.
3. In the fall of 1972 Russia purchased 30 million tons of American grain, pushing the sale and price of corn sky high.
4. In 1973 the inflation rate for food was so high that housewives were protesting at the supermarkets.
   
5. In response, the Dept. of Agriculture pushed farmers to grow more and more, and changed the earlier practice of giving loans to farmers during down seasons into a plan of direct payments to farmers.
6. With these new subsidies in place, it didn't matter what price farmers set on their corn, the government guaranteed they would make up the rest. Since the government was subsidizing every bushel of corn, farmers were encouraged to flood the market and grow as much as possible.
   
7. Today, it costs roughly $2.50 to grow a bushel of Iowa corn, and it's being sold for $1.45 a bushel. So, the more the farmer grows, the more money he'll get in subsidies. Thus...lots and lots and lots of corn.

So, now the government had solved the issue of farmers going out of business. Of course, now that everyone was growing corn instead of other produce we had to start shipping the other produce across the country because local selection was now very limited, but that's another day and another problem. Let's talk about what the real problem is...what do you do with all this friggin corn? I mean, it's not the sweet stuff that we butter, salt and pepper and serve with our corn...er, I mean steaks. This is mostly feed quality stuff and we've got more than we know what to do with. What on earth could we possibly make it in to? I'll tell you.

• Corn is fed to steers (steak), chicken, turkey, pig, lamb, catfish, tilapia, and salmon. (Salmon are carnivores but are being genetically modified to eat corn to help us deal with the surplus.)
• Milk, cheese and yogurt come from cows that eat corn, so are essentially of corn.
  
• Eggs, from corn.

Then there's:

• corn flour,
  
• corn oil,
  
• licithin,
  
• mono-, di-, and triglycerides,
  
• citric acid,
• high fructose corn syrup,
  
• beer (alcohol fermented from glucose refined from corn),
• modified and unmodified starch,
  
• glucose syrup,
  
• maltodextrin,
  
• crystalline fructose,
• ascorbic acid,
• dextrose,
  
• lactic acid,
• lysine,
• maltose,
• MSG,
  
• polyols,
• caramel color,
  
• xanthan gum,
  
• the shine on the cover of your magazine,
• the vegetable wax on your cucumbers,
• the ethanol in your automobile.

Have you ever seen these ingredients before? Well, I think you should look a little closer at what's in your cupboard. (Actually, that's not true. I don't think you should look. I don't even think you should really be reading this at all. I can't stress this to you enough , but I sense that I am not getting through.)

• Ninety percent of the bread in the bread aisle at your grocery store contain as the second or third ingredient High Fructose Corn Syrup (yes, even your whole wheats).
  
• It's in your Kraft Mac & Cheese as Citric Acid and Lactic Acid.
  
• Coco-Cola? about 50% corn.
  
• Your ketchup has High Fructose Corn Syrup and Corn Syrup.
  
• Ruffles should be all potato, right? Well, it depends on which oil is currently cheepest so it could very well be Corn Oil (that's why it says "Contains One Or More Of The Following").
  
• Hood Ice Cream Sandwiches also have High Fructose Corn Syrup, Corn Syrup, Mono and Diglycerides.
  
• Old El Paso "Flour" Tortillas: Mono and Diglycerides, Corn Syrup Solids, Corn Starch.
  
• Cheerios: Modified Corn Starch, Corn Starch.
  
• The first two ingredients of Log Cabin "Maple Syrup" are Corn Syrup and High Fructose Corn Syrup.
  
• Stove Top Stuffing: High Fructose Corn Syrup, Corn Protein, Caramel Color, Citric Acid. Yup, we're stuffing our corn chickens with corn stuffing.
  
• Oreos: High Fructose Corn Syrup, Cornstarch.
  
• Betty Crocker Potatoes Au Gratin: Corn Starch, Maltodextrin, Modified Corn Starch, Mono and Diglycerides, Lactic Acid.
  

In fact, if you look at the ingredients in the snack aisles of your grocery store you'll find that eighty percent of the products contain corn in one form or another. None of our food is actually made of food anymore. It seems like it's just broken down, reformulated, enriched flour, random chemicals, and corn in all of its various forms. And we just keep growing more.


So now you know how we came to the corn thing. If you read the first post that I specifically told you not to read, you'll understand why I personally have come to the conclusion that corn is not so good for cattle. Here is one more reason why our corn-based agriculture system is not such a good idea:

Add together the natural gas in the fertilizer used on the hybrid corn we grow, with the fossil fuels it takes to make the pesticides, drive the tractors, and harvest, dry, and transport the corn, and what you find is that every bushel of industrial corn requires the equivalent of between a quarter and a third of a gallon of oil to grow it; around fifty gallons of oil per acre of corn. Think about that the next time you hear someone touting the wonders of ethanol as an alternative to our oil consumption problems!




*I'm in everything image originated by NatalieDee.

Do Not Read This Blog Post: Part 2

I know that I promised you the answer to "why corn?", but here's the thing. On Saturday, my 8 month old developed a fever of 103. She continued to have a fever until Wednesday morning. On Sunday, my 4YO started the fever, and it's still going strong. On Wednesday, my 2YO developed the fever. Now, I probably could have managed to post a blog entry before now, except that my husband has a "man cold". In fact, he had a man cold three weeks ago, and this past week decided his man cold wasn't enough and he needed to get really sick and be completely out of commission and bed-ridden for 5 days solid. "Wah, I feel woozy. Wah, I'm disoriented. Wah, my head is pounding. Wah, I have no peripheral vision. Wah, I can't stay upright." Wuss. Sorry, I mean, poor little bunny. Needless to say my ability to blog, as well as my ability to go foraging for local dinner meat, has gone right out the window.

However, I did read one quick little tidbit from Omnivore's Dilemma while rocking my daughter to sleep at 2 in the morning after she had vomited on me for the 4th time that day.

Are you ready? You can still turn back.

Trust me, you don't want to think about this. Stay ignorant!

Pigs raised in a CAFOs (Confined Animal Feeding Operations) are weaned just a few days after they're born, instead of the few weeks they would wean in nature. This causes them to have a life-long need to suckle. Unable to resist this temptation, they bite the tails of the other pigs. Now, usually if a pig's tail is bitten it will get aggressive and confront the offender, but CAFO pigs are so demoralized by their living situation that they just ignore the biting. This leads to infection. So, to stop this from happening, pigs raised in CAFOs have their tails clipped at a young age. Oh, and they don't cut the tails off so the other pigs won't bite them, they cut the tails off to make them more sensitive so that when the other pigs bite them even the demoralized CAFO pigs will turn around and get aggressive.

Do Not Read This Blog Post: Part 1

Seriously, I'm not kidding.

This is your last chance. Take the blue pill.

All right, but don't say I didn't warn you.

Several friends, on reading my blog, suggested I read a book called The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. (By the way, I'm never speaking to either of you again.) I've just finished the 1st of three parts to this book and I'm going to sum up what I've learned. After all, why should I suffer alone?

I swear I'm going to do it. I am not messing around here people.

Fine, whatever.

When cows eat grass:

1. Sunlight and rain make the grass grow.
2. The cow eats the grass.
3. The cow spreads the grass seed, planting it with his hooves.
4. The cow fertilizes the grass seed with manure.
5. In the cow's rumen (one of its many stomach units) the grass ferments, is broken down by bacteria, and is digested and turned into high quality protein.

So basically, a useless plant to humans, grass is grown and sustained by the cow, and turned into protein, using a sustainable, solar-powered food chain that produces food by transforming sunlight into protein. How cool is that?

When cows eat corn:



Corn fed cows nurse for the first few months of their life and graze on grass until around 8 months of age.

1. The cow is transported from the grass lands to the feedlot.
2. At the feedlot they are given a mixture of corn, alfalfa hay, silage, liquefied fat (beef tallow...yup, we're forcing this herbivore into cannibalism), protein supplements (molasses and urea, a form of synthetic nitrogen made from natural gas), liquid vitamins, synthetic estrogen and antibiotics.
3. The cow's rumen isn't meant to break down corn the way it does grass so... The fermentation of corn in the cows rumen causes tons of extra gas as well as a layer of foamy slime that traps the gas, causing it to inflate like a balloon until the rumen presses against the animal's lungs.
4. When this happens they force a hose down the animal's esophagus to keep it from suffocating.
   
5. The cow develops acidosis. The condition can lead to diarrhea, ulcers, bloat, rumenitis, liver disease, and a general weakening of the immune system leaving the animal vulnerable to pneumonia, as well as a whole host of other nasty feedlot illnesses. They're given tons of antibiotics to deal with these conditions. However...
6. Over time the acids from digesting the corn eat away at the rumen wall, allowing bacteria to enter the cow's bloodstream. The microbes end up in the liver where they form abscesses and impair liver function. In some pens up to 70 percent of cows are found at slaughter to have abscessed livers.
   
7. The good news is, the cows are fattened up in 14 months with corn instead of the 4 years it takes with grass. And the meat they produce are filled with lots more yummy saturated fats and lots less of those troublesomely healthy omega 3 fatty acids, as compared to their grass grown brethren.
   

Oh, and while at the feedlot the animals create a lagoon of manure with nitrogen and phosphorus levels so high that the manure can't be used on crops for fertilizer because they would kill them. It also contains heavy metals and hormone residues, all which end up in waterways downstream from the feedlots. They sleep on large piles of manure which end up on their hides and thus in our hamburgers requiring us to cook them longer so we don't die from the e coli that breeds in said cow shit that, I repeat, ends up in our food.

So, instead of a nice closed loop system of sunlight energy turning into healthy animal protein, at 25 pounds of corn a day a steer will have consumed in his lifetime the equivalent of thirty-five gallons of oil, or nearly a barrel. That's just one. Some plants slaughter 400 animals an hour. Plus there's the antibiotics that have to be produced, the protein supplements, the vitamins, the synthetic estrogen, the maintaining of the feedlots, the shipping of the corn, etc., etc. All these things to make up for feeding them something they are not biologically designed to eat!

So, with all the trouble and oil it requires to feed cows corn instead of grass, why are we doing it? Well, let's talk about that. Next time. In part two. You don't want to read that one either. Trust me. It gets worse then cow poop in your hamburger.

Oh, And About That Ham

If you're reading my posts in order you may or may not have noticed that I picked up a "fresh ham shank" from Balance Rock the other day. Well, tonight I cooked it.

When I was a little girl I remember how much I absolutely loved Thanksgiving dinner. It was probably my most favorite holiday. I loved a whole mouthful of turkey, mashed potatoes, corn, and gravy all at once. It was like heaven. I also remembered my mother making some silly comment about how some day she'd come to my house for Thanksgiving dinner. I distinctly remember my precocious response, "You can come but you're cooking it. There's no way I'm ever sticking my hand up a turkey's butt."

Yup, that's me, the happily unaware meat eater. My meat does not come with a head attached, nor feathers, nor anything else to remind me that it was once a living breathing thing. And in my mind I can easily disassociate my meat products from the animals they used to be. I need to be able to disassociate because as you all now know my becoming a vegetarian would most definitely lead to starvation.

So, I love bacon. It does not look like Wilbur. I love pork chops. Also, no resemblance to Wilbur. And who doesn't love a freshly warmed honey baked ham? No Wilbur! So, when I saw a "fresh ham shank" sitting in the freezer of my ecologically responsible local farm store, I decided I would go for it even though I knew it would not be conveniently spiral sliced for me.

Yeah, want to know what a "fresh ham shank" looks like?

This is my idea of a yummy ham:




See how little this looks like the animal it came from?











This, on the other hand, is a ham shank.




I can picture where it's little leg used to be!




Imagine my surprise when I removed the shank from the opaque butcher paper, which I know they used to hide the contents from unsuspecting souls like myself, only to find an actual honest to goodness pig hind-quarter...blood and all! Eeewww! It still had the skin on it! Why didn't anyone warn me? Yeah, yeah, I've seen chicken skin and turkey skin, but I didn't grow up on a farm so I've never seen pig skin. It still had a few stray hairs! Ach!

Okay, okay, so I guess I'm growing up a little here. I still use a long spoon to get the giblets out of my turkey butt and push the onion and carrots inside. But today I actually did score an honest to goodness ham shank per the instructions in my Joy Of Cooking cookbook and I have to say that for the next 3 hours the house smelled tremendous.

I will admit to feeling a little bit guilty about being a meat eater, though. I mean, I just can't help feeling sad knowing that, because of me, somewhere out there is a very gimpy three-legged pig.

Back to Balance

So I finally made a return to Balance Rock Farm. It was a beautiful Thursday morning. I love Thursdays. It's the one day a week when my in-laws pick up my two wonderful boys around 8:30 in the morning and it's just me and the baby until around 4:00 at night. It's my errand day. One time it was my sit around and do nothing day, but then I really hated the ensuing Friday because of all the pile up my laziness created.

So, with just one child in tow I made my way back to the farm. We went in and actually took some time perusing the small shelves and refrigerators for the various local products available. They had a nice selection of locally made cheeses this time and the freezers were full of a variety of meats. I picked up some more pork chops, a whole chicken, and a fresh ham shank, as well as some cheddar cheese. It was a very relaxing trip. I only had to explain to Allison once that no she could not have any of the various varieties of candy because, thankfully, she has yet to grow any teeth (we're still nursing). It was great.

We proceeded benignly to the register to pay for our goods and I plotted my future Thursdays and my local eating plans around a weekly trip out here. We had a nice long chat with the man who owns the farm (really long, I wasn't sure we were getting out of there). Then, as we made our way to the door he added, "Oh, by the way, I came over here to the shop because I saw you pulling in, but I just wanted to let you know we decided to start closing on Thursdays from now on. Have a nice day!"

What The Heck Do They Grow Here Anyway?

I have a confession to make. I've been getting my groceries from the grocery store. I haven't even been looking at labels. I even bought non-organic chicken because, well, it was on sale for $.79/lb. I feel like I've let you down. This local eating thing is a lot tougher than I expected.

I kind of thought that if I looked around for places that carried local things, found the time to go to them despite my three cute little distractions, forked out the extra money, and made a few minor dietary concessions then I'd be able to buy almost everything we eat locally. Yeah, that was silly. Do you know what they actually grow here in the fine state of Massachusetts? (I'm going to Google it right now, I'll let you know.)

Fish/Shellfish
Pumpkins
Goats
Sheep
Pigs
Cows
Duck
Chicken
Turkey
Grapes/Wine
Blueberries
Strawberries
Potatoes
Cheese (okay, technically they don't grow cheese here)
Honey
Maple Syrup
Cranberries
Apples
Peaches
Plums
Turnips
Tomatoes
Lettuce
Corn
Squash
Cucumbers
Peppers
Mesclun (What the heck is Mesclun? Hold on... Ah, it's a salad mix. Why don't they just say salad mix?)
Eggs
Raspberries
Milk
Quince
Pears
Carrots
Onions
Tomatoes
Cherries
Bison (seriously, I'm not kidding, check it out)
Cucumbers
Eggplant

Okay, I'm sure there's more. All of this food sounds really good but let's narrow the list down a bit more. What is grown in the state of Massachusetts that's available to, say, me and you, in the winter months?

Dairy Products
Squash, Potatoes
Apples
Maple Syrup, Honey
Wine
Turkey, Chicken, Duck, Beef, Pork, Sheep, Bison, Fish/Shellfish

Do I give up now? Nah. At least I can try to buy this stuff all locally.

Tune in next time for more adventures in eating locally when we make our triumphant return to Balance Rock Farm!

7th Generation

I don't get it. I bought some 7th Generation diapers a couple of weeks ago to see if this die-hard three-time Huggies fan could be converted to a more eco-friendly alternative. I have previously attempted GDiapers, and they're fantastic if you have five more minutes and/or two more hands, per diaper change, than I do. Okay, by fantastic I mean a super cute environmentally superior alternative that leaked every time I tried them and required a lot more effort than I was personally willing to expend, but aside from that I HIGHLY recommend trying them. You can have mine. Just shoot me an email.

Anyway, to get back to what I was saying before. I don't get it. I put the 7th Generation diapers on my son. Then, forgetting that I had put them on my son, I left him in the diaper for the same length of time I usually do with the Huggies: about an hour longer than one should let a 2YO walk around in the same diaper thus ensuring the diaper will surpass maximum capacity which you only become aware of because he comes running over complaining that the diaper has given up and is now lodged halfway down one of his pant legs. (Can't imagine why those GDiapers leaked.) Anyway, I managed to change him just moments shy of the tab release time and no leaks!

Testing doesn't get much more sophisticated then this. There's been poop. There's been pee. There's been what comes out after Nanna feeds him dried apricots, figs, raisins and bananas all within a two hour period. Sorry for grossing you out but the point is, these diapers work. They work just as good as Huggies. I don't get it.

I can go on Amazon and buy 4 boxes of size 4 Seventh Generation diapers, that's 136 diapers, for $41.99. That works out to 0.30875 per diaper, so roughly .31 cents. I can buy 4 boxes of size 4 Huggies diapers, that's 100 diapers, for $31.36. That works out to 0.3136 per diaper, so roughly .31 cents. The Huggies diapers are made with whatever ink they use to print character pictures all over the diaper (my 7 month old insists on Pooh, very appropriately) as well as chlorine to bleach the diaper a lovely shade of white. The 7th Generation ones are made chorine-free, latex-free, fragrance-free and TBT-free. I don't get it.

Doesn't it cost more money to make things environmentally safer? Isn't that the whole point of using all these crazy nasty toxins? I just don't get how the 7th Generation people can be selling the same product as the Huggies people for the same price but without all the poisons. I don't get it. But, I do know which ones I plan to buy from now on.

Okay, yeah, so my 7 month old threw a holy fit when she discovered that poo would only appear inside her new diapers and was no longer printed on the outside. Of course she did. Who can blame her? But then I sat down and had a reasonable discussion with her about how the inks and chemicals used on her old diapers, while making them pretty, were completely unnecessary and added harmful toxins to our environment so I needed her to do a little soul-searching and decide if it was more important that her poop and pee be conveyed to the trash by an ecologically responsible diaper or by Pooh. She's still thinking it over, but I think she'll come around.

Bolton Orchards

I apologize to my 21 fans (Google Analytics is so cool) for the delay in posting. Two of my three munchkins have been battling one hell of a cold and the weather has not been cooperating. We had one inch of snow on Friday and school was canceled. Wimps. I'm sure my parents are loving the irony of my new-found hatred for the "snow day". I have managed to find a few brief minutes though, due to the fact that my 7 month old has been awake since 5:30 AM and despite my repeated request that she drift happily off to sleep again, here I sit posting to you. So what's new?

The other night we had a 50% local dinner. We ate the pork chops and local MacIntosh applesauce from Balance Rock Farm, and organic corn as well as peas with pearl onions that were from California, not Belgium! I'll admit this meal is way short of mission, but it is a start. And thanks to the comments posted on this blog I have a whole list of resources to pursue.

One little store I've been meaning to look at, Bolton Orchards, is only 3.3 miles from my house. I've been in there before but never really paid close attention to their products, other than the obvious prevalence of apples. After dinner last night I realized that we were in need of milk and eggs, and at 6:30 PM on the Sunday of a holiday weekend local beggars cannot be choosers. I knew I could get these things from local sources at my large grocery store, but I assume that supporting smaller, locally run stores is really more inline with my mission. Since the baby had been awake for 5 long, sniffling, sneezing hours I figured a trip out would provide her a much-needed car nap. It was a great plan until my 4YO insisted he should come along.

Those of you with more than 1 child know that any time you get to leave the house with 1 less child then you have produced, it's like a tiny vacation... usually.

"Oohhh, I want some of those small oranges!"

"Those are apricots," I replied. Local? Well, yeah if you live in South America.

"I want some!"

"You don't even know what they are. What if you don't like them? Let's get some apples!"

"I will, I will like them. I promise! Please!"

• 3 Chilean Apricots, check.

"Peaches!"

"Apricots are enough, honey."

"Please! Please! I promise I'll eat them!"

• 3 Chilean Peaches, check

I turned to peruse the vegetables and was fairly disappointed until I came across a bag of locally grown potatoes. I was beginning to wonder if Maine was the closest I'd ever get.

• 5 lb bag of potatoes, local, check

"Ooohh, nuts! Can we get some nuts?"

"We still have nuts leftover from Thanksgiving."

"Not these nuts," he said, excitedly scooping a heap of mixed nuts.

"Yes, those same kind of nuts."

"But not THESE nuts," he emphasized, as if those mixed nuts were so obviously different from our current batch of mixed nuts.

"We don't need any more nuts." I wonder where all these mixed nuts are from, anyway. (Hee hee, I Googled it and someone actually posted this question: "Where do Brazil nuts comes from?") I tried to meander through the store in my search for local goods.

"Mommy, I'm going to look at this candy."

"We're not getting any candy."

"I know! I'm just going to look at it."

"Come on, let's go look at these great apples. Which ones should we get?"

• 1/2 peck of apples, local, check
• 2 dozen eggs, local, check
  
• Cabot Farm butter, VT, check
• Boar's Head bacon, somewhere in the US, check
• Oakhurst milk, somewhere in New England, check

"Mommy! Mommy! Marshmallows! Can we buy marshmallows? I love marshmallows. Marshmallows are so yummy! Can we buy some? Can we bring them home and have them in hot chocolate? I love marshmallows in hot chocolate. Can we get some?"

I can honestly say that I've never bought marshmallows before. How do kids find out about these things? "Sure," I responded distractedly. I was scanning the freezer section hoping to find locally grown frozen produce. Someone had to carry it. There was a buzzing sound in the background as I shopped, it sounded something like this:

"Yay! Thank you mommy. I am so excited. I love hot chocolate with marshmallows. I can't wait. When we get home we'll have hot chocolate and put marshmallows in it. Mommy do you like hot chocolate with marshmallows in it? I do. It's so yummy. I can't wait. Can you?"

I hope you don't mind, I paraphrased.

I looked down at my crazed 4YO. "What happened to you? Did you have like 5 teaspoons of sugar before we left the house?" We rounded the corner. A woman was standing in front of a whole wall of locally jarred jams and jellies. She was close to tears.

"I'm so excited," she said, "I think I'm going to have to go home and have hot chocolate with marshmallows."

• Bag of jet-puffed mini-marshmallows, made in the USA, check

"Can we go home now? I want to have my hot chocolate and marshmallows."

"Let me look at these jellies first." There were a large variety of flavors and they all had the Bolton Orchards label on them. The address on the back was that of the store I was in. How do you determine local-ness on products like this? It's quite possible that the jarring was done here at the orchard, but it's highly unlikely the grapes are local, so does it count as a local product? I mean, it must be more local than the Polaner All Fruit I normally buy, but I suppose if I want to truly be local I need to switch from grapes to something like strawberries that at least has a chance of being picked and processed locally. I think I can make that change. Next time.

• Grape "fruit spread", local?, check

Well, it wasn't my worst outing, I don't think I accidentally picked up anything from the UK this time. Out of my 10 purchases, 6 of them are at least from my tri-state region. Clearly my 4YO is a bad influence on my shopping habits, though. But I do have to admit, as we sat together as a family sipping hot chocolate with mini-marshmallows floating in it, taking turns lobbing them across the table and into each other's open mouths, I am kind of glad I brought him along.

With Apologies To The Bunnies

I'm finding that one of the biggest challenges to eating local is that it seems to also mean eating healthy. I've yet to come across any locally grown foods that come in a box and taste like Cheez-Its. Over the past couple of years I have done my best to reassociate into the unhealthy category foods like Doritos, Ruffles, Heluva Good French Onion Dip, and Easy Cheese. Admittedly I once considered them central to not only my diet but my general happiness in life. This is no longer the case. The downside is, I have been unable to find a suitable replacement. You see, I am picky. And let me explain so I can be perfectly clear what I mean when I say I'm picky:

Vegetables fall into two categories, those I hate and those I tolerate. I will eat raw peppers but not cooked. Any food cooked with green peppers in it tends to taste of green peppers, and I cannot eat that. I like onions if they are breaded, crispy and deep fried. I hate tomatoes but like salsa (I dip, I do not scoop). I hate mushrooms in all of their various incarnations and no matter what they've been marinating in. Squash is right out. Sweet potatoes are fine as long as you don't forget the brown sugar. Raw broccoli, green beans, carrots and cauliflower I can eat but please pass the aforementioned Heluva Good French Onion dip. Do not cook or "wilt" my lettuce, ew. I don't mind peas with pearl onions, but I don't eat the pearl onions and I use a generous amount of butter, salt and pepper. Corn is probably my favorite vegetable followed closely by potatoes, but again a generous portion of butter and salt are required, and I've never had a potato that didn't require two dollops of sour cream. Beets taste like dirt. Pickled beets taste like pickled dirt. My in-laws have lately been on a rutabaga kick...good for them. Celery is of the devil and people keep insisting it has no flavor but if that were the case then why, tell me why, do they insist on putting it in otherwise perfectly yummy things like chicken-salad? I could go on.

The point is, when one has such strict limitations on what one can consume without gagging, how am I supposed to adjust to this whole local thing. I know what you're thinking, it wasn't your idea! It was mine. And it's a good idea. I think I may have mentioned that I have three very small children. I want to bring them up with healthy attitudes about food as well as where that food comes from. And just switching to wheat bread (as I made myself do reluctantly after my first son was born) is not going to get me there.

So here I sit, eating raw broccoli generously dipped in Italian Dressing (hey, it's a start) instead of munching on the two BJs sized bags of Doritos in my cupboard. The broccoli isn't local of course, but when spring rolls around and we do start getting in fresh local produce, my hope is that my palate will be ready. Lookout bunnies.