Reading back through last week’s post I realized that I might want to unpick some of my reasons for choosing the goals I did. This week I’ll look at my food related goals.
Food Goals
- Limiting eating out to once a month.
I have three main reasons for wanting to do this- Financial, health, and environmental.
We cannot afford to go out more often than this. Even though we really shouldn’t we have been going out at least once and sometimes 3-4 times each pay period. Astonishingly enough, when you overspend in one area of your life, you’re effectively taking money away from other areas of your life. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to be taking money away from things like our fuel and grocery budgets to fund going out, especially when where we’re going out is often not really good enough to merit having spent the money.
Our bodies really can’t afford to have us go out either. We don’t go out for fast food but some of our choices probably aren’t much better. We’re so careful about what we put into our bodies at home, choosing to eat a largely plant based diet with as much organic as possible and almost nothing processed, that it really doesn’t make any sense that we would put so much crap into our system when we go out. It makes so much more sense to mindfully choose one place to go out each month that will be both tasty and meet the expectations that we set for ourselves when we cook at home.
We've made a commitment to eating foods that are, as much as we can manage, responsibly grown or raised so as to minimize the negative impacts on the environment. We also feel it is important to eat animals that are raised not only in an environmentally ethical way but also in a way that is as humane and healthy as possible for them. Eating crap food from restaurants that source everything through national food suppliers doesn't even remotely meet those standards. There are some very good local restaurants around here that source their produce and meats from local farms that responsibly grow and raise their produce and animals. They are however a bit more expensive and so take a bit more planning to be able to afford, especially if we plan on taking the kids.
- Because we'll be limiting our going out, make sure I've made snacks and easy to travel food so we don't end up going out simply because we're starving and not at home.
This seems fairly self explanatory. It is going to require a fair amount of consistent production of easy to travel with foods though. It is not uncommon for us to have to leave the house on short notice or to end up having to be gone longer than we initially planned. These are the situations where we have been most likely to end up going out.
- Get back to making bread, crackers, and granola bars on a weekly basis.
Some of this goal stems from the last- bread, crackers, and granola bars are all great foods to have on hand when you’re out of the house. These are also ways for me to be able to eat certain types of foods. I can’t eat conventionally made breads because of the yeast and often they contain corn also. I can however eat many types of quick breads as well as my own home-started sourdough. Commercially made crackers are often made with yeast and corn as well and are not usually be all that good for you. I’ve found that homemade crackers are both really tasty and quite easy to make but have gotten out of the habit of making them consistently. I love granola bars and the kids do too but any way you look at them even the organic ones are not good for you and very expensive. I can make them infinitely healthier and more cheaply than anything I could ever buy.
- Track where we're spending our food money. Continue to move as much as possible to local food sources including fruits and veggies, dairy, and grains. Limit those things that cannot be provided by local sources. Exceptions to include olive oil, Asian food ingredients that cannot be sourced locally, and nuts.
I’ve never really tracked where we’re spending our food money. I do know that compared to 3 yrs ago far, far more of our food is local and/or organic. As of right now we get 80% of our vegetables from a local organic CSA. Another 5% is grown by us, which I hope dramatically increases over the next years as the kids get older and the garden becomes more developed. The last 15% is grocery store bought, pretty much never organic, and probably unnecessary. This year we will be getting a larger share from the CSA which we hope translates into not spending anything on store bought vegetables. Fruit is much more difficult. There are some things that we easily have access to through friends and family but much more that we have to spend more time sourcing. It’s almost impossible to find good sources for organically grown local fruit around here and it is for us, prohibitively expensive. This year I hope to find better sources for local organic berries and apples but I have resigned myself to conventionally grown local peaches and that I will probably have to supplement my homegrown tomatoes with conventionally grown ones from a local farm. We have our own pear tree and my parents have some apples and Italian prunes and none of those are ever sprayed.
We’re joining a dairy CSA in March. It will give us a gallon of organic raw milk each week for the same price that we’ve been paying for a gallon of Organic Valley milk. We won’t be able to afford cheeses that are organic and local but we do buy most of our cheese and our butter from local producers. Our eggs have long been from a local farm and will remain so until we either have our own chickens or the CSA provides them.
We buy our grains and flours as much as possible from Azure Standard which is a natural and organic foods bulk ordering company. They are based in Oregon have their own organic farms for wheat and oats and a few other grains. I can easily afford to provide our family with quality grains and flours through them which makes it much easier for me to meet my goals of making my own breads and crackers.
- Continue to put up as much food as possible. U-picks, trades, and canning/prep parties are good things.
I managed to can jam, some tomato puree, pickled peppers, plums, and apple and pear sauces this last year. I would like to far more canning this year especially as I now have a pressure canner. I froze broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and berries. I need probably 4x as many berries and tomatoes as I got last year . I would like to can peaches this year also. We need to get a dehydrator which would give us another option for food preserving.
- Renew my love for reasonable portion sizes.
I’m pretty sure this is self explanatory. I can go months where I really only eat what my body needs and then suddenly will start to creep back to the habit of snacking the entire time I’m cooking, eating seconds I’m not actually hungry for, and simply eating because something tastes really good even if I’m not actually hungry. I’m not an advocate of dieting but there is something to be said for eating foods that are nutrient dense, of very good quality, and in portions that are actually reasonable.
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