I'm more and more glad that I didn't join the CSF (community supported fishery) like I had initially intended. It was the threat of worms that swayed me against it, but I've since learned that the Cape Ann CSF, while local, isn't eco-friendly. The majority of their product is cod, which, according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium's website, is an endangered fish. Apparently only 10% of the cod population is still in the ocean. Not only did questions of types of fish caught by Cape Ann arise, but HOW they fish, which is by bottom trawl (dragging) which pulls up all kinds of fish that get killed and thrown back in the ocean.
I didn't pull this information up myself, I read it from the localvores blog that I occasionally glance at. If I hadn't gone to the site I would have no idea and would have believed that the CSF was a great idea. It's becoming more and more difficult to figure out what food is good to eat.
In an ideal world I would belong to a CSA and buy all additional foods from local farmers markets. I would freeze or can foods for winter and live entirely off of locally produced food that I know is grown/harvested the way I want it to be. There are a few problems with this though.
A) On weeknights I don't cook. Food often goes to waste if I don't find some day/time to do a mass cooking experience.
B) Gerd's dinner diet is not veggie friendly. I ended up switching our biweekly food basket (not a CSA but organic) to 3/4 fruit because the veggies weren't getting eaten. Even the 1/4 veggies sometimes rot before I get to them. Dinner is typically bread with cheese and salami. It's not my favorite dinner, but it's easy, filling, and I don't have to cook.
C) We also eat out a lot. Breakfast and lunch I've pretty much been eating out or eating leftovers from when we go out. Now that I'm at work again, I really want to get away during lunch. I've tried to convince myself that I could eat a home lunch and then go for a walk, but it's not the same thing. I want to sit somewhere nice, not surrounded by broken desks and mismatched chairs and relax for a while. I had put together a breakroom for this purpose before I left, but within a month of my departure they threw the couch away and set up the table as an instructor desk.
I used to cook once a week and then store the food for the week. I'm trying to get back to that system, even if it isn't with local foods, just to get back on track with a healthy diet. Oat ne of my problems though, is that whenever I go into a grocery store I can't find anything that I want to eat. I want to eat in season foods, which are hard to identify, and I want to cook from scratch. If I go into the store with a recipe it may not be in season, and if I don't go in with a recipe I have no idea what to cook.
I am so frustrated with the food issue. I really don't know what I should be doing to ensure that I'm eating conscientiously.
2 comments:
Its cool that you're making the effort to research. We're....not as much. Busy summer, lots of trips to big box stores where we can pick up milk and some basics for cheap, and a diet that is more packaged and less natural (though I need to start transitioning my food to cut out the powdered drinks & meal bars).
I tried looking for a local CSA-type program in St. Louis at the beginning of the summer. I checked several sites with lists, and did various google searches. Nada. There is apparently an opportunity for someone to start one here.
Maybe I'll take the kids in the morning to one of the local farmer's markets. There ARE like 5 times more of those around town than there were a couple of years ago (there used to be like 2, now they're everywhere).
And, we're starting to harvest a crop of extremely sweet home-grown cherry tomatoes. I have some poblanos that are getting close too. And we *might* get a pumpkin or two--the jury's still out on that one....
I'm making a big effort to move away from anything in a package. Obviously it hasn't been entirely probable for me yet. I continue to believe that if I really *really* wanted to make the effort I could be virtually package free.
I used to say it was a time constraint that kept me from really doing what I wanted to do, but up until last week I didn't have a job and I wasn't doing any better.
During school I wasn't a straight A student because I wanted to have a well rounded life (or so the idea goes). I think I *could* be a straight A eater, but the effort needed go get there is extreme, and I've never had a straight A personality.
Now that I'm discovering that what I THOUGHT was eco-friendly isn't really. I've made all this progress, but sometimes if feels like I'm back at square one. You think you're doing what's good and right, and then you discover you're really not.
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