Falling Off the Wagon a Bit

The Eat Local Challenge in October was a learning experience -- a concept reiterated in In Defense of Food, Abundance and Depletion, Deep Economy and many other books out there on the shifting economy and food sourcing. A gal at work talked about watching a show, the Lipstick Jungle (I'm embarrassed to say I never saw or heard of it until now!) and how the girls were going to attempt to eat Thanksgiving Dinner locally. She got a kick out of this...but thought it was a good idea - and of course it struck up a conversation about it. While some things I learned about "stuck" like the elimination of boxed, processed cereal, most meat (although I'll do an occassional local organic piece of meat), many processed food items or food with more than 5 ingredients in it, and weekly trips to the farmers market for local apples/vegetables, etc. Other things I love were much more difficult in keeping it local. The local milk made me fat, so I gave it, cheese, and butter up. Thus, soy milk is processed and not local along with organic vegetable margarine. So there's my first trip-up. Pasta -- I missed it immensely and start buying east coast-made pasta (Ohio). No, its certainly not local, but at least I'm trying to keep it regional. And the worst one of them all, I've been craving fresh greens for a salad and was sucked in by this product -- organicgirl. After spending nearly an hour trying to research the source and the supposedly "compostable" container, I've come to the conclusion its from China the compostable container really isn't compostable - you have to take it to a commercial/municipal composter -- it won't compost in the backyard compost pile. I e-mailed the company asking where their product is grown and of course I got no reply. I sent a second e-mail and I'm waiting to hear (I told them I'm not purchasing from them anymore and will tell others to do the same if they don't reply). The only tiny thing I found out was the owner was under another company name and the CEO had an oriental name. Hmm. Buggers. So always, always be wary of any product that is pre-packaged and claims to be organic. Now the hard part is getting back on that wagon. Eating local is not an easy task in winter! Can't wait until next spring, summer, and fall, to grow, grow, grow and harvest, harvest, harvest, and can, can, can. It'll be a busy year next year.