20 Days Into the Eat Local Challenge - What I See at the Grocery Store Now

My husband used to moan and groan when I'd take too long reading nutrition content on labels of every product I contemplated purchasing at the grocery store. NOW he moans and groans when I scan the product for its origin. The Eat Local Challenge changed the look of the grocery isles. Rather than rows of rows of "food," I now see rows and rows of containers on cargo ships, chugging into the Philadelphia Port to unload from somewhere far away. And I see oil consumption - huge amounts of it in airlines as they hurry to ship the California Carrots to the East coast to maintain what little freshness is left in them. Rick heard Michael Pollen on NPR talking about his letter to the president-elect, Farmer in Chief, and the oil seeping from food, and that's now what I see at the grocery store -- crude oil just running down the isles and oozing from the cracks in boxes. Our cart is no longer overflowing. I can barely bring myself to buy food if I can't find the Origin: USA on it somewhere. Even USA is a stretch - I'd LOVE PA Preferred, but its just not there. Even Pennsylvania Cider doesn't have the PA Preferred sticker on the rack like the store promised to do. I'm dissappointed with the GIANT store. Organics? Forget it. I'm now worried about the source of Nature's Promise Organics after finding out the corn comes from China. But Rick likes those cheap China prices. So he'll continue to dump the oil in the cart, and I'll continue to cringe. Yes, I feel like I've really cut back on a ton of food from Giant (just me -- not hubby!) -- but I also feel pretty darn good with the substitutions -- I'll get the names of the Jersey cows that produce the raw milk next week.