"locally grown" signs everywhere at QFC

close-up of one of the signs

It was true – new signs everywhere! Before there had been or two, but now they’ve really popped up all over. Have they really changed the way they source foods, or have they just changed their presentation?

Scarier yet, I noticed on the side of my Facebook home page an advertisement and survey for Safeway, asking “What’s best about local produce?” with the options 1) High quality and taste, 2) Support for community, or 3) Good for environment. At the time, over 8,000 people had responded – I’d be interested to see the results, and to see how Safeway changes their in-store and out-of-store marketing.

How do corporations take “alternative” ideas and make them mainstream? How does eating locally – which requires a shift in thinking from food as a commodity to food as community in addition to a host of lifestyle changes – become something that’s trendy, desirable, and, scariest of all, convenient? Someone pointed out in class that while I had begrudged the 7.5 hours I spent shopping for local foods in one week, that in many cultures finding food is an entire day’s work. Why do I place so much value on my time, and on things other than finding, cooking, and eating food that I could be doing with my time? Why aren’t these things, the things that sustain life, supposed to be accomplished efficiently, quickly, cheaply, and conveniently? When alternative ideas are made mainstream through clever marketing strategies and even blatant marketing strategies such as drastically increased signage in a grocery store, what is lost from the alternative movement?

How do corporations take ideas of health and wellbeing and use them to push products and lifestyles? The lunchbag that I use is a re-usable bag from the time that I spent way too much on a pair of running tights at Lululemon. The bag is covered with all kinds of fun lifestyle propaganda, such as “Your outlook on life is a direct reflection of how much you like yourself,” “Stress is related to 99% of all illness,” and “Dance, sing, floss, and travel.” How does Lululemon want me to view my life, and how do their products fit into this worldview? Which foods (and which food retailers) fit into this worldview? Lululemon sells a trendy all-purpose totebag with special compartments for your yoga mat, your sigg water bottle, your iPod, your blackberry, your wallet, your work-out and post work-out clothes (that you bought from Lululemon)… all vanguards of a society where health and wealth go hand-in-hand, and where Healthy bodies and healthy commuunities become something you can buy, or achieve, with a change of signage at your neighborhood grocery store. I often see people who I feel are floating around in a Lululemon and Whole Foods utopian haze, oblivious to the market forces acting upon them.  For some info on controversy surrounding Lululemon bags, see here and here.

Ellensburg Farmers Market

I took a trip to Ellensburg this weekend to visit friends, and we were able to stop by the Ellensburg Farmers Market.  It’s a once weekly Market, Saturdays from 9am to 1pm.  It was a pretty lively market, lots of families and pets and musicians.  I was totally impressed by the variety of tomatoes offered by the Kittitas Valley Greenhouse right in Ellensburg – these are just some of the 30+ heirloom varieties they were selling that day.

Heirloom Tomatoes!

"10 Reasons to Buy Local" Sign at Whole Foods

My original intention was to compare food-miles between local and non-local meals.  However, since doing the challenge I’ve become much more interested in the issue of accessibility (both in geographic, monetary, and social terms) of local foods.  I noticed that my week of galavanting around Seattle with an air-conditioned car and a bus-pass and a job with a flexible schedule and a reasonable amount of money to able to spend freely and my close proximity Sandpoint/Laurelhurst) to so many of Seattle’s markets and higher-end stores (Whole Foods, Metropolitan Market, Trader Joes, PCC, etc) was most likely not typical of the lives of most people; in fact, it really wasn’t typical of myself.  It was a week-long experiment, something that I can not sit back and reflect upon but don’t have to continually live .

The scope of food access in Seattle is much to broad for a project of this nature, but I have chosen to examine the costs of the foods that I purchase during my challenge compared to the cost of the same foods from 3 distinct grocery stores: Whole Foods (specifically the Roosevelt Square location at 1026 NE 64th), Safeway (near U-Village, at 3020 NE 45th), and the Grocery Outlet (13201 Aurora Ave N).

This is a fairly informal study, one that was accomplished with a pen, paper, and a stroll through the produce sections of these grocery stores.  It is important to note the difficulties of comparing the cost of foods – some things are packaged or priced differently (per zucchini vs. per pound), and the quality of foods is subject to all kinds of conditions.  I have included the prices for most of the items I purchased during the challenge; those items that were purchased from PCC instead of a market are marked.  This website, about location and grocery store prices in the Seattle area, details more of the complications that arise from such a study.  This site, which claims “Whole Foods = Whole Paycheck,” does a similar study.

Data

Artisan Bread

• Market: $6/loaf from Tall Grass Bakery
• Whole Foods: $6.59/loaf from Tall Grass Bakery (same exact bread)
• Safeway: $2.89 for Safeway Select brand
• Grocery Outlet: Not available; commercially-produced only, starting from $0.99/loaf

Potatoes

• Market: $1.75/lb, or $8 for 5 lb (Cal Red) (Vashon Island, WA)
• Whole Foods: $1.99/lb organic (White, Red, or Yellow) (California)
• Safeway: $0.99/lb (White, Red, or Yellow) (USA)
• Grocery Outlet: $1.79 for 5 lb of Russett Potatoes (packaged in 5lb bags)(Pasco)

Chicken Breast

• Market: $4.50/lb
• Whole Foods: $4.69/lb packaged, $6.99/lb from the deli counter
• Safeway: $5.49/lb Foster Farms, $8.99/lb Safeway Organics
• Grocery Outlet: Not available (no chicken at all)

Pork Loin Chops

• Market: $6.99/lb (from PCC)
• Whole Foods: $5.99/lb packaged, $7.99/lb from deli counter
• Safeway: $4.49/lb packaged
• Grocery Outlet:$3.89/lb packaged

12 eggs

• Market: $2.99 (from PCC)
• Whole Foods: $3.50 (yet same brand as the eggs from PCC, Steiber Farm in Yelm)
• Safeway: from $0.99 for medium B eggs.  Of note: Safeway brand large AA eggs: $1.99.  Safeway brand Cage Free large AA eggs: $3.49.  Why aren’t they all cage-free?
• Grocery Outlet: $1.19

Dried Black Beans

• Market: $3/lb
• Whole Foods: Not available
• Safeway: Not available
• Grocery Outlet: Not available

Green Beans

• Market: $3.99/lb
• Whole Foods: $2.99/lb organic (“local”), $1.49/lb (USA)
• Safeway: Not available
• Grocery Outlet: Not available

Corn

• Market: 3 for $2 (Monroe)
• Whole Foods: 3 for $2 organic (Albany)
• Safeway: 2 for $1 (USA)
• Grocery Outlet: 2 for $1 (USA)

Onions

• Market: 1 bunch (2 or 3) for $2 (Monroe)
• Whole Foods: $1.49/lb organic (Wa)
• Safeway: $0.99/lb (USA)
• Grocery Outlet: $1.99/lb (USA)

Green Lettuce

• Market: $2/head
• Whole Foods: $2.49/head organic
• Safeway: $1.49/head, $2.39/head organic
• Grocery Outlet: $0.69/head (packaged)

Kale

• Market: $2/bunch
• Whole Foods: $2.49/bunch organic
• Safeway: not available
• Grocery Outlet: not available

Baby Bok Choy

• Market: $2/bunch
• Whole Foods: $2.99/lb organic
• Safeway: $3.99/lb
• Grocery Outlet: not available

Cilantro

• Market: $2/bunch
• Whole Foods: $1.99/bunch organic (WA/OR)
• Safeway: $1.99/bunch (USA/Mexico)
• Grocery Outlet: 3 for $0.99 (USA)

Chives

• Market: $2/bunch
• Whole Foods: not available
• Safeway: not available
• Grocery Outlet: not available

Tomatoes

• Market: $3.50/lb
• Whole Foods: $2.99/lb organic (Mexico)
• Safeway: $1.99/lb (Mexico), $2.98/lb organic/heirloom (Mexico)
• Grocery Outlet: $0.99 for a package of 4 (grown in CA, distributed in CO)

Asparagus

• Market: $4/bunch (Skagit Valley)
• Whole Foods: $2.99/lb organic (Peru)
• Safeway: $3.99/lb (Peru and Mexico)
• Grocery Outlet: not available

Eggplant

• Market: $2.99/lb (Mabton)
• Whole Foods: $2.49/lb organic (Wapato)
• Safeway: $1.99/lb (Mexico)
• Grocery Outlet: not available

Cucumber

• Market: $2.49/lb (Wapato) (from PCC)
• Whole Foods: $2.49/lb organic (Wapato)
• Safeway: $0.99/ea (USA)
• Grocery Outlet: $0.50/ea (Mexico)

Zucchini

• Market: $2/bunch (2-3) (Monroe)
• Whole Foods: $1.99/lb  organic (WA)
• Safeway: $1.79/lb (Mexico)
• Grocery Outlet: $0.50/ea (Mexico)

Carrots

• Market: $2/bunch (Monroe)
• Whole Foods: $2.49/bunch organic (Mt. Vernon)
• Safeway: $0.99/lb,  $1.99/bunch organic (USA)
• Grocery Outlet: baby carrots only, $1/16 oz. bag

Peaches

• Market: $2.49/lb (Matawa)
• Whole Foods: $1.99/lb organic (WA)
• Safeway: $0.98/lb (USA), $3.59/lb organic (USA)
• Grocery Outlet: 2 bags (2 lbs ea)/$3 (USA)

Pluots

• Market:$3.99/lb (Wenatchee)
• Whole Foods: $3.99/lb organic(USA)
• Safeway: $2.99/lb (USA)
• Grocery Outlet: not available

Observations

Local Farmers working with Whole Foods

The first thing I saw when I walked into Whole Foods was a big sign with “10 Reasons to Eat Local” and a sign showing the local farms that provide produce.  The origins of all of the food was very clearly marked – when foods were grown “locally,” the name of the specific farm was given. Whole Foods emphasizes a few key words in their store – organic, natural, local, and quality.  Signs abound that alert consumers to which types of fruit tend to be waxed and how they can be washed, or to the health benefits of various fruits and vegetables, or to the efforts of Whole Foods to contract local farmers and support local communities.  There was a much larger selection at Whole Foods than at the other stores I visited – the only things I couldn’t find (out of the foods I chose to compare) were dried black beans and chives. Whereas the farmers market always hosts a huge array of fresh herbs, at Whole Foods they were only to be found in packages.  In the produce section,  there was not one single non-organic item to be found.  The meat section hosted a small array of packaged meats but a huge section of deli meats, ready to be cut and wrapped. The bread section at Whole Foods was full of everything from loaves of bread that one might find at a Trader Joes or a Fred Meyer, as well as specialized loaves of gluten free (some as expensive as $9.59/loaf) and a whole range of fresh artisan breads.

Buying ingredients for a simple chicken salad at Whole Foods (1 lb of chicken breast from the deli counter, a head of green lettuce, and a few tomatoes).would cost $12.98. This specific Whole Foods is located in Roosevelt, which, according to Zillow.com, has an average home price of $405,700.

At Safeway, I was also greeted with a sign emphasizing the “localness” of the produce offered.  The sign stated, “Locally Grown: We’re proud to support the finest local growers so you can enjoy the freshest produce around. Guaranteed!”  It also showed a map of the local farms contracted by Safeway, some of which are the same local farms that sell to Whole Foods and PCC.  Signage at Safeway was slightly hectic compared to signage at Whole Foods – signs stating “Locally grown” and “organic” were strewn throughout the produce area, but they didn’t always match up with produce that was actually grown locally.  Biographies of the local farms with photos were also spread throughout the produce section, but also didn’t quite match up.  The signs for specific items always showed the source of the food, and Safeway offered a selection of both organic and non-organic foods, although much less extensive than the selection at Whole Foods.  Only 4 items were missing from my search at Safeway.  The meat section at Safeway is an extensive collectin of packaged meats, with the fresh counter limited to seafoods.  The bread section at Safeway consists of a few baskets of artisan bread from the Safeway Select brand and an aisle of packaged loaves of bread.  Whereas the emphasis at Whole Foods was on quality, local-ness, and organic-ness, the emphasis at Safeway was on quality, local-ness, and organic-ness at a reasonable price, with an even cheaper alternative readily available.

Local sources of food at Safeway

The ingredients for the same simple chicken salad at Safeway would cost $8.97 using non-organic products or $14.36 using organic products. This Safeway is located in the University district, with an average home price of $408,000.

The Grocery Outlet on Aurora was void of any emphasis of local and organic foods, and emphasized price more than anything else.  In the produce section, food sources were marked, although never more specifically than “USA.”  There was a much smaller selection, with 10 items out of 22 missing from my search.  Grocery Outlet shoppers were also limited in their choice of specific items – instead of choosing from potatoes or bananas, for example, customers would have to buy an entire bag of potatoes of bananas with a price per bag instead of a price per pound.  There were a few organic foods, but they were limited to packaged goods such as cereals, Nature’s Path and Annie’s Homegrown in particular.  Whereas Whole Foods was located in the Roosevelt/Ravenna neighborhood surrounded by a number of luxury services (salons, clothing stores, etc), and the University District Safeway was adjacent to a large high-end shopping center (U-Village) and a university, the Aurora Grocery Outlet was located in a plaza with a Dollar Tree, a Ross, and a Burger King.

The ingredients for the same simple chicken salad at Safeway would cost $1.68 for lettuce and tomatoes, plus the price of chicken (which was not avaible at the time of my research, although pork (purely for comparison) was $3.89/lb). This Grocery Outlet was the Bitter Lake location; Bitter Lake has an average home price of $289,000.

This simple and informal study was by no means intended to be all-encompassing or conclusive.  My data shows that as the average home price of a neighborhood hosting the grocery store increases, the cost of foods (especially organic foods) increases as well.  Is more expensive food better?  Is “organic” food better?  Are those who live in areas of lower socioeconomic class therefore surrounded by the food that is of less value (monetarily, nutritiously, and socially) than those who live in more affluent areas?  Do people in less affluent areas travel outside of their neighborhoods for food, or does their lower socioeconmic status also limit their ability to travel freely and to find “healthy” foods at reasonable prices?  Where does one even find healthy foods at reasonable prices?  While some foods from the farmers markets were less expensive than those from Whole Foods or Safeway, some were more expensive, and none were as inexpensive as those to be found at the Grocery Outlet.  Is the “healthy, organic, local” lifestyle out of reach for those who regularly primarily patronize stores such as the Grocery Outlet? The Seattle Neighborhood Farmers Association produced a similar study here.

The ingredients for the same simple chicken salad with locally-sourced ingredients (using the figures in the list above) would cost $10.

Average home prices in the neighborhoods hosting the U-District Farmers Markets: (sourced from Zillow unless otherwise noted)

• U-district: $408,800
• West Seattle: $413,300
• Broadway: $326,500
• Columbia City: $336,000
• Phinney: $435,300
• Lake City: $399,000 (source)
• Magnolia: $525,000 (source)

The average home price in Seattle is $377,200, with 5 out of 7 of the Seattle Farmers Markets located in neighborhoods with home prices above the city-wide average.

So what does it all mean?  Is eating locally (or more importantly, eating home-cooked food from sources that you can know and trust while cultivating a sense of community) something that should be more accessible to the residents of Seattle, and if so, how can we make it more accessible?  What can be done on a personal, community, and national scale to decrease the gap between producers and consumers – geographically, monetarily, and socially?

1) Does it cost more to shop, cook, and eat locally / Is eating locally feasible for someone with little money?

When I sat down to crunch the numbers, I looked at my spending patterns for the month prior to the eat-local-challenge, the week of the challenge, and the two weeks that have passed since the challenged ended (this information was pretty accessible because I’m fairly anal-retentive about keeping receipts and doing bookkeeping and such).

For the month prior to the challenge:

• Average $/week at restaurants: $48.75
• Average $/week at grocery stores: $31.60
• Average$/week on food total: $80.38

For the week of the challenge:

• $ at restaurants: $9.50
• $ at markets/grocery stores: $117.77*
• $ for food total: $127.27*

*Important confounding factor:  Corbin and I generally split the cost of food at grocery stores and restaurants.  The figures for the weeks before and after the challenge reflect only what I myself paid, whereas the figures for the challenge represent the total cost of all of the food purchased for purpose of the challenge.  Since Corbin ate breakfast and lunch himself most days, I paid for the majority of the food at markets, but not all.  We used cash at the markets and didn’t keep close tabs on who paid for what, but we figure that I paid for about 2/3 of the market food, which comes out to around $84.

For the 2 weeks after the challenge:

• Average $/week at restaurants: $20.16
• Average $/week at grocery stores: $48.71
• Average$/week on food total: $68.87

So, when the price of my food for the week of the challenge was adjusted to $84 to reflect the money that I spent personally, it was still more expensive to eat locally when compared to my usual habits.  An interesting trend that I noticed was that for each of the four weeks preceding the challenge, I spent more money at restaurants than I did on groceries, and I went out to eat 4-5 times a week and went grocery shopping 2-3 times a week; after the challenge, however, I spent more money at grocery stores than at restaurants, and I was going out to eat less and going grocery shopping (and to markets) much more often.  I’ve definitely made a shift to cooking more, and this (more so than the geographic source of my food) has probably been the most significant financial benefit of the challenge.  It is also of interest that in two weeks following the challenge I spent less on food than I had all summer.  This is probably a combination of several things: grocery shopping more than eating out, buying select things at the market that I know to be less expensive, thinking more critically about what I’m going to be eating and spending more time planning and preparing to make the most of my food, etc.

From the complexities of my personal situation, it’s difficult to say if eating locally is more or less expensive than buying food from grocery stores (although it’s certainly cheaper to cook than to go out).  I’m hoping to explore this soon by doing a comparison of the prices of foods I bought at the market to their grocery store prices – keep an eye out for the answer to this question in the next entry!

2) Does it take more time to shop, cook, and eat locally / Is eating locally feasible for someone with little time?

Yes!  Well, at first.  I feel that there’s a big learning curve here, both for shopping and cooking.  The time it takes to shop has two important factors: transportation time and shopping time.  During my challenge I spent a huge amount of time in transit: I took 3 big trips to markets – West Seattle, Columbia City, and the U-District – and each of these trips took about 2-hours from start to finish.  The first two locations required at least 30 minutes of driving in each direction, and the U-district market required bussing and walking.  In addition, I stopped by PCC 3 times, and these trips took about 20 minutes from start to finish.  So, all in all, I spent about 7 hours shopping for food this week… the first thing my mind thinks is that 7 hours of work at a minimum wage job ($8.55/hr in WA) would provide about $59.85.   In a normal week, I probably stop by the grocery store around 5 times for about 30 minutes each time (2.5 hours/week).  However, it also takes time to go to restaurants, whether you’re eating there or getting food to go.  There’s also the issue of the costs incurred in travelling great distances: it’s about 9 miles from my house to the West Seattle Market, and about 10 miles from my house to the Columbia City Farmers Market.  Assuming that these trips were totally traffic-free (which they werent), and assuming that gas was around $2.90/gallon, and that the car gets about 25 miles/gallon, this would have been $4.41 in gas for these two trips alone.  $4.41 may not be a ton of money, but it’s significant to note that I already had a car; without one, each of these long trips would have meant around an hour on a bus each way – a bus trip means not only the $2+ of bus fare, the the time it takes to wait for and sit on a bus.

Once at the market, however, the time it takes to actually shop is probably comparable to what it takes at a grocery store.  The first time I went to the market for the challenge was a bit overwhelming, and it naturally took longer, but since the challenge I’ve been shopping weekly at the U-district market and it’s pretty quick. especially now that I know how much I can expect to pay and who I like to buy from.

The time it takes to cook depends on the person.  I spent at least an hour preparing food every night, sometimes more on nights when I had been to the market.  This is another situation where I feel that experience helps, but I’ve also realized that I don’t really view time spent cooking as a negative thing, but as a luxury – to have the time to cook (even if you’re moving around other parts of your life to make time) is something I think everyone should have.

When considering transportation, shopping, and time, I think that it is certainly feasible to eat a combination of local and non-local foods.    While striving for multiple market visits can be a huge drain on resources (gas, time, money, and sometimes patience), visiting a weekly market for select foods is certainly reasonable.

With both time and money, there are visible costs and hidden costs.  The visible cost of a $0.99 bag of pre-prepared salad  from a grocery store that’s 5 minutes from your house may appear to be less than a $2 head of lettuce and a $1.50 tomato from a market that took 20 minutes to get to, but the hidden costs of that $0.99 bag of salad include worker wages, farm overhead, transportation across great distances, processing, packaging, advertising, and all of the costs associated with the grocery store (grocery store worker wages and overhead and advertising).  The hidden price of a quick trip to the grocery store and a hassle-free meal is that sometimes rushing around from place to place isn’t all that great – why spend as little time as possible cooking and eating so that you can hurry up and enjoy the rest of your busy life?  Why not just enjoy cooking and eating?

3) What changes did I have to make to my lifestyle to eat local for one week, and are these changes sustainable?

When a friend asked me if my week-long local lifestyle was something I could keep up with in the future, I replied, “No.  Well, maybe.  Actually, yes.”  The biggest shift was changing around my daily life to creat time, as discussed above.  I also had to change the way that I choose which foods to eat – during the challenge, I salivated over phad thai and bananas and Haagen-Dazs Five Ice Cream, which I generally don’t even think twice about eating.  However, every time I take a trip to the grocery store I can’t help but check for signs and read labels to find the origins of my food.  I can’t say for sure if my individual actions (buying products that are as local and as free of corn syrup and hydrogenated oils as possible) will produce a worldwide revolution, but I know that I feel better about consuming these foods for my own personal health – I trust a locally-produced loaf of artisan bread more than I do a 99-cent loaf of Sara Lee, especially when I can talk to the artisan bakers and ask them exactly what goes into their bread and even ask the growers how their wheat is produced.

Eating 100% locally is not something that I view as appropriate or feasible for everyone – as much as I would love for everyone in the world to have unending supplies of money and time (mostly time, you can find a lot of good stuff if you have the time) to consume as locally as possible, introducing local foods and cultivating relationships with local growers (even if it’s just knowing a familiar face at the market) is something that I now view as feasible, sustainable, and necessary.

4) Is the “eat local movement” beneficial in my own life?

Yes!  I feel that to talk about the merits of eating local without actually immersing yourself in it (even if it’s only for a week) is to deny yourself the opportunity to change your way of living and thinking and consuming.  In the span of a week, I met local growers and introduced to a wonderful community of people; I spent time cooking and learning to cook new things; I learned to appreciate and to question where my food comes from; I ate a much more healthy diet than I ever have; and I talked to lots and lots of people and (hopefully) got them thinking about the sources of their food.

]]> http://hungryhippie.wordpress.com/2009/08/14/crunching-the-numbers/feed/ 0 marieeeeee http://hungryhippie.wordpress.com/2009/08/02/first-day-after-the-challenge/ http://hungryhippie.wordpress.com/2009/08/02/first-day-after-the-challenge/#comments Sun, 02 Aug 2009 08:01:43 +0000 Marie http://hungryhippie.wordpress.com/?p=95 ]]> I’m free!  I woke up this morning, walked into the kitchen, and was so relieved to know that I could really eat anything in there, even though everything I ate for breakfast was local anyways.  Corbin and I went down to Pike Place to go to the Piroshky Bakery and the Crumpet Shop.  We visited the local vendors who sell from stalls twice a week, as well as going through the main market, which sells some some local and some not-so-local foods.  Sosio’s Fruit and Produce, one of the permanent vendors, was selling amaaaaaazing peaches from eastern Washington.  I asked the man in charge about his efforts to source his produce locally, and he replied, “A lot of guys get their peaches from wherever, but I have a guy in eastern Washington.  I know his name, I know what he looks like, I talk to him almost nightly, I know how the peaches are doing, I know exactly where they’re from, I know exactly what varieties he grows.  There not just “peaches” from some farmer, their the exact peaches I want fromthe exact person and place that I want, and they’re amazing.”

I also made a great discovery I wish I had found earlier – the vendor that sells dried fruits (right in between the flying fish and the doughnut stall) sells spelt flour from Marlin, Washington (about 200 miles away from Seattle).  Had I found this earlier in the week (and also had I had more free time) I could’ve made locally-produced pastries.

Overall, I’m glad that I did the eat-local challenge, and glad that it’s over.  More to come later.

Sosio's Fruit and Produce in Pike Place

SHOP

The banner outside of the U-District Market

I slept in and took a 10 minute bus ride to the University District Farmer’s Market this morning.  I usually stop by the U-District market on Saturdays on my way back from yoga (to pick up a few seasonal fruits, but I had never really done the majority of my shopping here despite how close and convenient it is.)  What I love about this market is the feeling of community, more so than I’ve seen at other markets.  Maybe it’s because it’s on a Saturday, maybe because it’s located where people will naturally stroll through, but the U-District market always has a lot going on: live music (today, a jazz quartet playing Dave Brubeck in the University Heights plaza, two local guitarist selling CDs, and two women playing the fiddle), a Chef in Residence to answer all of your cooking questions, the Ask a Master Gardener booth sponsored by WSU, the University Heights P-Patch, and Seattle Youth Garden Works.

While picking out ears of corn from Willie Green’s Organic Farm in Monroe, I had a great conversation with the vendor, Deanna.  Deanna is a schoolteacher during the year who works with the farm/CSA during the summer – she bikes to the farm and works the markets 5 days a week.  When I asked her about why she believes in eating local, she said that it’s so great environmentally (you don’t have trucks driving thousands of miles) and that it’s really the only way to create small, sustainable farmlands.  When she can’t shop at the market, Deann

A local vendor

a said that she always tries to buy local and organic at the grocery store.  I asked her if she thought Seattle had a food culture, and she replied that Seattle is years ahead of many other cities, including our neighbors in Bellevue.  She said that Seattleites tend to bike, to bring their own shopping bags, and to purchase more of their groceries at the market – usually $20 per purchase at her stall as opposed to $5 in Bellevue.  Deanna said, “People are so into the market culture in Seattle, and they really know what’s going on.  Someone at a market in Bellevue once asked, ‘How long is the fair going on?’  I was thinking, ‘This isn’t a fair, I don’t see a ferris wheel!’  Even in Monroe, where a lot of the farmers are from, the market is terrible compared to markets in Seattle.”

Since today’s my last day of the challenge, it was a nice relief knowing that I didn’t have to buy food for several days.  I bought what I knew I needed for today’s meals and then whatever else looked good.

Today’s shopping list: $17.75 total

• Whole Grain Spelt Sourdough Bread from Tall Grass Bakery , $6.  This is the only bread they make that’s sourced entirely locally – I just called the bakery and the spelt is from Ephrata.  Also, they only sell the spelt bread on Saturdays and Sundays.  This was such a fantastic find because I have a mild wheat intolerance and generally seek out spelt bread anyways.  I wish I had found this earlier in the week (Tall Grass was at the West Seattle market last Sunday but they had sold out), it would have been so much easier to make lunches this week had I had bread.
• Fat-Free Quark Cheese from Appel Farms in Ferndale, $2.75.  I asked the vendor what cheese would go well with eggplant and she recommended this – I had never heard of Quark before, but it’s a soft curd cheese used in central european dishes and tastes similar to cream cheese.  I just had it on hot spelt bread – so good!  This is a must-buy in the future. I’m definitely buying the full-fat version next time though, because the fat-free that I bought tastes pretty different from the stuff that I sampled.
• 2 huge sweet onions from Youa Her & Kaying’s Garden in Monroe, $2.
• 3 ears of corn from Willie Green’s Organic Farm in Monroe, $2 ($0.75/ear).  What was left was the last of 26 cases of corn they brought in that morning!
• 2 organic tomatoes from Homestead Organic Produce in Quincy, $3 ($3.50/lb).
• cilantro from Blong’s Garden in Snoqualmie, $2/bunch

EAT

Dinner!

Before heading off to the market I had whatever was left of the peaches, plums, and pluots.  In the afternoon I cleaned the house and cooked for a few hours, snacking on hot spelt bread with quark.  For dinner I made black beans with onions, peppers and cilantro; colache (zucchini, summer squash, tomato, corn, and onions); and  spelt sandwiches with tomato and baked eggplant with a quark/garlic spread.  The bread was really hearty, and just the right thickness to absorb the juices of the eggplant and tomato without becoming soggy.  I have a ton of leftovers for tomorrow, so it looks like I’ll be eating local tomorrow too!  I also still have some zucchini, summer squash, and kale.  Oh, and I realized that the chocolate milk we have in our fridge from Metropolitan Market is from Lynden Dairy Farm.  Sweet!

It was nice to have the whole day to cook and be creative.   I’m sitting in my papasan, just having eaten an awesome local dinner, and watching the sun go down.  This is the life.  I really really hope that I’ll always have days like this, when I have time to talk to people at the market and try new foods and get new recipes and cook just for the sake of cooking.

Eggie the Eggplant, before he became my dinner.

SHOP

Singing bananas on the side of Rising Sun Farms

I’m going to the U-District Farmer’s Market tomorrow morning and I have enough food until then, but I thought I’d stop by Rising Sun Farms in Ravenna at 15th Ave NE and NE 65th.  I was really surprised at how cheap everything was – kale for 99 cents a bunch, grapes for 59 cents/lb, and nectarines for 1.59/lb.  A mix of local and not – things that were local had “Washington” written on the sign, and when I asked one of the workers where my kale and nectarines were from he was happy to go and check. There was also a mix of organic and not, and a mix of produce as well as bags of nuts and dried fruits, tofu, granola bars, and drinks.  This blogger isn’t a huge fan of Rising Sun, but I thought it was alright.

Today’s shopping list: $4 total

• kale, 99 cents/bunch (Kent)
• nectarines, $1.49/lb (Monroe)

EAT

As usual, 2 hard boiled eggs (the last of the dozen I bought on Sunday) for breakfast.  Snacked on peaches and pluots during the day, and had leftover asparagus and potatoes for lunch.  For dinner I had the very last of the potatoes (I’m pretty excited to not eat potatoes for a while) and a salad.

I’ve used up everything that I’ve bought this week except half of my bunch of chives, half an onion, a few zucchini and squash, one of two pieces of fruit, and my black beans.  I noticed that I’m much more likely to want to use my produce (whether I’m cooking for myself or for others) before it goes bad when I personally bought it from the grower and talked to people who harvested it than when I just bought it as a sterile sort of plastic-wrapped commodity from a grocery store.  The food becomes not just something that you buy and then maybe eat or maybe discard, but something that has significance, something that’s been the focus of a lot of time and attention from both the growers who took the time to produce and sell the food and the local consumer who carved some time of their schedule and made an effort to go to the market and interact with something more than shopping carts and self-scan checkouts.

Dinner leftovers turned into tomorrow's lunch

Talk about a long day.  I woke up at 6am,  took a yoga class, taught a yoga class, went to a class at UW, worked for 8 hours, and came home at 10pm facing the prospect of needing to prepare 3 meals – dinner, and the next day’s breakfast and lunch.  Maybe I whined a lot, but really it’s the whiny times that you can learn a lot from.  I learned, for example, how very easy it can be to justify giving up and going to the grocery store or to a restaurant.  When it was approaching midnight and I was finishing up sauteing potatoes and asparagus and hard-boiling eggs and cutting up fruits and veggies for snacks the next day and cleaning up the kitchen while thinking about the fact that I had to get out of bed in 5 short hours and do it all again, there really was nothing I wanted more than to be able to eat a frozen dinner and buy lunch the next day.  It would have taken 10 minutes instead of nearly 2 hours – that’s 2 hours of sleep, 2 hours of work, 2 hours of homework, 2 hours of spending time with friends.  Though I’ve begrudged the fact that the week I chose to eat local coincided with one of the busiest weeks I’ve had all summer, it’s really allowed me to examine one of my research questions: Is the local diet feasible, especially for someone with “no time?”  Cooking at midnight is certainly possible, but at the moment it was anything but preferable.  I love to cook, but it was interesting to be forced to cook when I would rather have taken an easier route and bought something.  It’s been interseting to just not have the option of eating out… when I think about it, eating out isn’t really that much easier.  Having to leave the house, choose somewhere, drive somewhere, stand in line, and spend more money isn’t really that much easier than putting together a meal at home if you’ve done a fairly good job of planning ahead and you have essential foods on hand.

I’m really excited, though, about how well I’ve been eating.  I’ve been learning lots of scary things about the dangers of high fructose corn syrup and partially hydrogenated oils, and I recently started paying close attention to how often these things appear in foods that I eat, and it’s really scary how prevalent they are.  It’s recently become very frustrating to shop for anything at all at a grocery store, because it seems like everything from bread to peanut butter to yogurt (things that might seem healthy) has some amount of corn syrup of hydrogenated oil.  This week, I really feel good about everything that I’ve consumed (with the exception of otter pops, heh), and it’s really refreshing.

Trying to stay cool

Dear goodness it’s hot.  104 degrees in Seattle today, and 90 in Miami… something’s not right.   Today was the Columbia City Farmer’s Market in South Seattle.  I feel so bad for making Corbin drive me all the way down there from the U-district in rush hour traffic.  And back.  And then to Eastlake to pick up a friend’s papasan, which had cat hair all over it, to which he’s allergic.  Our 2.5 hour tour of Seattle was definitely less than comfortable, but it’s done now.  We were thinking of going to the Lake City market tomorrow instead, but it’s just going to be another hot day.  The drive to Columbia City that takes 20 minutes on a good day took about 45 minutes today; I feel like we hit every single red light between Montlake and Rainier Ave.  We passed what seemed like 25 grocery stores along the way, and I realized how crazy it was to drive all the way across town, especially on a day like today, for groceries.

I wonder how far people travel to shop at the farmers markets on a regular basis… I certainly wouldn’t have gone today were I not doing the week-long challenge.  The drive was 45 minutes worth of gas (which really should be factored into the cost of today’s food), and a bus-ride on the 48 and a transfer or two would have taken at least an hour.  Also, living where I do (SandPoint) I have a few options for farmer’s markets – I can go to the U-district on Saturdays, Phinney on Fridays is pretty close, Lake City on Thursday is just a few minutes north, and Capitol Hill on Sundays isn’t that far either.  For those living close to Columbia City who aren’t willing to spend the hour it takes to get to another market, Wednesdays are the only day for the market.

Joan braving the 104 degree heat

There weren’t a ton of people out at the market, which was to be expected, but all of the vendors were out in full force.  Many of those that I talked to said they had been standing out in the sun for hours, and that they worked the markets 4-5 days a week.  The biodegradable cups for Apple Raspberry cider from Rockridge Orchards started to melt together and the vendor said, “These aren’t supposed to melt until it hits 104 degrees… well, guess how hot it is!”

Having shopped in West Seattle on Sunday, today I had a better idea of what I needed to buy and where to buy it.  There were  a lot of familiar faces, but also some vendors I hadn’t seen before.  I was really glad to Alvarez Farms with their black beans and peanuts and peppers.  We were pretty quick about getting what we needed and getting back on the road and out of the heat… although you can’t really get out of the heat when it’s like this in Seattle.

Today’s shopping list: $26.50 total

• peaches from Lyall’s Farm in Matawa, $5.50 ($2.49/lb)
• pluots and plums from Tiny’s Organic in Wenatchee, $6 ($3.99/lb)
• asparagus from Canales Produce in the Skagit Valley, $4 ($4/bunch)
• green beans from Alvarez Farms in Mabton, $3 ($3.99/lb)
• black beans from Alvarez Farms in Mabton, $3 ($2.99/lb)
• eggplant from Alvarez Farms in Mabton, $5 ($2.99/lb)

EAT

Being in a hot kitchen on a day like today is no fun, let me tell you.  For dinner I sauteed more of the potatoes, and fried up the green beans and eggplant.  I’ve never made eggplant myself before, and I’m so happy that I tried it and I can’t wait to get more.  For breakfast and lunch I did my eggs/fruit/leftovers thing.  It’s been so great having tons of fresh fruit with me every day, because the things I usually snack on (granola bars, pretzels, etc) aren’t nearly as satisfying, especially on a hot day.

Today’s shopping list: $23.08 total

• 4 ears of yellow corn from Inaba Produce in Wapato via PCC, $3.16 (79 cents/lb)
• 1 organic cucumber from Inaba Produce in Wapato via PCC, $1.99 ($2.49/lb)
• organic apricots from Inaba Produce in Wapato via PCC, $4.25 ($2.99/lb)
• pork top loin chops from Pure Country Pork in Ephrata via PCC, $4.68 ($6.99/lb)
• gelato at Fainting Goat, $9 ($4.50/2-scoops)

EAT

Fainting Goat Gelato in Wallingford

For breakfast I had hard boiled eggs and I snacked on organic Lodi apples.  I had a fresh salad and last night’s leftovers for lunch, and when I got home I made kale chips (pieces of kale tossed with oil and salt and baked until crispy).  For dinner I sauteed more potatoes and stir fried pork and bok choy in a wok.  Corbin and I went out to dessert at Fainting Goat Gelato in Wallingford.  Fainting Goat is family owned, and they get all of their organic cow’s and goat’s milk from Lynden Farm and Garden in Lynden.  The “Fainting Goat” gelato is made of goat’s milk and mastic, a type of resin.  It was such a relief to find a place to go out to eat that was all local, and gelato was perfect on a day like today (94 degrees!).  We almost went to Homegrown in Fremont for dinner, but they closed early with a sign out in front that said, “Too Hot to Live, Closing Early.”  I called the folks at Homegrown and asked them if they source their food from within 150 miles of Seattle.  They said that 150 miles would be a real stretch, but that almost everything is from within 300 miles.