My own food situation, summarized

From livejournal, written September 25, 2008
To summarize my own food situation...

I was just in the kitchen trying to assimilate the $240 of groceries I got from the food buying club yesterday. It was our first order through them and I'm not really sure I'd go through them again. Some of the stuff I ordered was out of stock, which was disappointing, and I'm starting to realize I need to go back and look at the per pound prices of some of the bulk stuff I got. Some of it seems a little high, but I haven't properly looked yet.

My kitchen is extremely well-stocked. It generally is. I don't like to get too low on things we use frequently, and we both feel like having a surplus of food can only be a good thing. Not to say we're expecting a disaster or anything, but financial experts these days are recommending stocking up on foods, and it makes sense to us. Buying in bulk and catching sales is one way we save money on food, and it cuts back on unnecessary packaging and waste, and we have to shop for those things far less often. Sometimes we go to Ithaca, an hour away, when we have a long enough list of purchases/activities to justify the time and gas. This is getting less and less frequent as we're more conscious of our gas usage, but we really enjoy going to Ithaca and would go even if we didn't have specific reasons.

In this assimilation this morning, I filled up the garbanzo canister (keep intending to make big batches of hummus!!), and quinoa, moved stuff to the big freezer in the basement (including two placentas that are taking up valuable freezer space STILL) and was rather astonished to see how much frozen stuff we have. I've been consistently buying extra meat at the farmers market this summer, and stashing away quite a bit in the basement freezer (my mother's day present last year--yes, I asked for it). We also have two big freezer bags of organic blueberries we picked last month for an absurdly low price per pound, which Jake and Topaz love to eat frozen, and I love to bake with. I also recently bought a new blender/food processor combo to make smoothies and hummus and pesto and other stuff I keep thinking of.

I'm well-stocked with herbs and spices, and I grow a lot of herbs in the garden. Topaz is learning what all the different ones are, so sometimes I can send her out and pick some for dinner.

Condiments and oils and vinegar are another thing I've been gradually accumulating. We use a lot of olive oil, which I get in Ithaca--refill the bottle for a discount. These are the types of purchases that can cost a lot up front but can add so much to your food, not just in terms or taste, but health as well. I'm experimenting occasionally with making homemade salad dressings, and that of course requires oil and vinegar. I have never gone to the store and bought all of those things in one go (it would take up a week's food budget!) but I buy a bottle of vinegar or oil here and there as needed and it doesn't make too big of a dent in the budget. Gradually accumulating and stocking up are things I don't think too much about anymore, but I do realize that on a tighter budget it would be difficult or impossible to buy in bulk or participate in CSA, which require a substantial chunk of cash on the outset. Overall I think you can save a lot of money doing that kind of thing, but I also remember that when I was living alone and making too little money, that I would NEVER have been able to come up with even a couple hundred dollars for a CSA box. So in this experiment I won't include big initial expenditures like that, even though I think it is extremely advantageous. A bottle of oil or vinegar can last a while, unless you're making vinaigrette every night, and I see it as essential to any kitchen to have a good supply of a variety of oils, at the very least.

At Greenstar in Ithaca, you can buy oils and vinegars, honey, syrups, grains, coffee, nuts, beans, herbs, teas, seeds, spices, dried fruits, and probably more than that, in bulk--as little or as much as you want at a time. If I lived in Ithaca, this food experiment would be extremely simple taking advantage of that system. My goal now is to make a list of things I can buy in specific amounts in Binghamton. Wegmans has a small bulk section, including nuts and seeds, flours and grains, teas, herbs and spices, and coffee. It's not nearly as extensive as Greenstar, but certainly a good option. Down to Earth, in Endicott, also sells bulk food items as well as a wonderful assortment of supplements and specialty health foods that are impossible to find elsewhere in this area. Then there's the new place in Vestal by BU that I still haven't been to, and Health Beat in Johnson City, which I never go to and I don't know why.

We go through a lot of eggs around here. We have eggs for any meal, I bake with eggs, make quiche fairly often. Having farm fresh eggs spoils you, and the thought of spending $4 on a dozen organic eggs at a grocery store is a little bit ludicrous, especially after having REAL eggs, with yolks so orange that the first time you have them, you're sure there's something seriously wrong. But the taste of real, free-range organic eggs is something impossible to describe--seek them out and you'll be happy you did.

Dairy. We don't drink milk outright, but I do put cream in my coffee and oatmeal, we have yogurt frequently (and bought a yogurt maker to start making our own), and occasional ice cream. We do enjoy cheese around here, and now that Topaz is eating a small amount of it, I've been including it in many of our meals. We also like to try random cheeses from Wegmans--it's fun and makes life a little more interesting. For a while I was doing cheese platters, but that was getting too expensive even for my taste, so now it's more of an occasional treat than an expected course at dinner.

We've cut back dramatically on meat consumption. Before, we couldn't go a meal without some kind of meat. Okay, that might be slightly overstating, as an oatmeal breakfast around here is never accompanied by meat or generally anything else. But my standards for meat have gone way up this year, and I stopped buying meat at Wegmans after reading Omnivore's Dilemma. Also, the occasional beef recalls at Wegmans really bothered me. So now I buy meat exclusively at the farmers market and directly from farms. The price per pound for organic/free-range/grass-fed meats is often higher than conventional meat at the grocery store, but well worth the extra money. Actually, the organic grass-fed beef we buy from a local farm is LESS than the conventional beef I was buying at Wegmans, and is FAR superior. I feel like I should be paying a lot more for it. Buying whole chickens costs less than buying parts, and we've inadvertently cut back on our meat consumption, so now it seems like a special treat or merely an accompaniment to a meal, not the focal point. So I don't have any qualms about spending more high-quality meat and eating less of it. It all works out, I think. Plus, I have the added and very important (to me) benefit of knowing where my food came from--how the animals were raised and fed, how they were treated, how they were processed. And yet another plus is that my decision to buy that meat directly supports the people who raise those animals. There's no factory farming going on here--I value that immensely and am willing to pay more to know that we're eating clean food and supporting people who provide it to us.

On the other hand, our vegetable consumption has gone way up. I get most of our vegetables from Skoloff Valley Organic Farm, and if I need anything else I go to Wegmans. So we're accomplishing eating local, organic, and in-season all at once, almost entirely. We did have a small garden this summer, but being very pregnant, then having a newborn, I didn't exactly give it much effort. I did cheat and buy organic seedlings from Greenstar, as opposed to starting seeds, but that was a compromise so we'd have SOMETHING even with our time/energy constraints. So we had a ton of zucchini and yellow squash, some tomatoes, potatoes, strawberries blackberries, and herbs. We had broccoli and cauliflower that we neglected to pick in time, and the deilcata and spaghetti squash I planted did not do well at all. Fruit mostly comes from Wegmans--I buy only organic, but only what looks really good, which is generally not much. Topaz reliably eats grapes, peaches, bananas, avocados, plums, cherries, melon, apples, pears, berries, etc. Those things can be very hit or miss and very pricey, so I get what looks best and try to buy enough to satisfy her. We did pick blueberries and apples this year, but in years past we've picked strawberries, raspberries, pears, and peaches. This year having Philip slowed me down quite a bit.

What we DON'T buy...that's a big list too. I don't buy anything in cans anymore. Okay, there is the occasional can of tuna. Try to avoid anything with a lot of packaging, and anything with ingredients I wouldn't use if I made the same thing from scratch. Preservatives, artificial colors and flavors, fillers, HFCS, al that stuff is out. This makes shopping a lot quicker and easier, because it instantly eliminates most of what is available at grocery stores. Sometimes I'll buy crackers, and I get Newman's Own organic spelt pretzels for Topaz. I bake a good amount, so I don't really buy cookies or mixes. We don't buy juice except for specific cravings--rarely. I don't think kids need juice, so Topaz generally only gets it from other people, rarely. When I was pregnant I did buy more frozen prepared foods out of desperation--Amy's organic mostly.

I have a decent amount of space for storing food. Good-size kitchen that's laid out very poorly, with very little counterspace. The ancient oven has never worked for us, so we have a toaster oven taking up half the space we do have It really is amazing how many things I've made in that taster oven. One day I'll have a real oven again. We have a huge table in the kitchen. On top--when it's not totally covered with random stuff everyone sets down on it, I do some food prep on it. We also have a small shelf on it with little canisters of things like lentils and beans and rices. Under the table, I have sacks of beans and wheat and anything that didn't fit in a canister. We don't have a pantry, so I put a tall bookcase next to the table to hold random packaged foods like pasta and the occasional jar of sauce, baking supplies, few canisters of stuff, and cookbooks. It's worked out well enough.

I do love kitchen gadgets, but I really don't room for many. I have and sometimes use a crockpot, rice cooker/steamer, blender/food processor, toaster oven, coffee grinder, French press...I think that's it. I want to get a nice veggie slicer at some point, and a stovetop espresso maker, and maybe some small things, but I feel like I have everything I need.