Score!

Photo found at The Hungry Ghost Kid

I am doing a happy dance today because I have manifested myself some terrific produce deals today. I have been finding good deals at small independently-owned ethnic markets for years. One of the great things about these markets is that the owners are typically hands-on and accessible. If you want to buy things by the case, they are often happy to oblige, often at a discount. And, of course, they often sell tropical fruits that are either not available or highly expensive at grocery stores.

Last week, I got a case of 50 lbs. of Maradol papaya at my favorite Mexican tienda for $26 and was absolutely ecstatic. They were the ripest papayas I have ever purchased, all a beautiful golden color, and deliciously sweet and juicy.

This week I went back to the store with the intention of finding out what other goodies they can order for me by the case. They had received a huge delivery only moments before, and there were crates of produce and foodstuffs stacked up outside the doors and in all of the aisles of the market. They run a bustling restaurant next door, so they purchase a much larger quantity than your typical tiendita. As I maneauvered around skids of tortillas, my eye landed on a lone box right next to the front door. In the box were various heirloom tomatoes in a striking rainbow of hues. I asked the cashier, who is the wife of the owner, how much she wanted per pound, since I had never seen these carried by this store. Oh, she said, those were sent to us by mistake; we were going to send them back. Can I buy some, I asked. She went and found her husband, who offered me the entire case (probably 25 lbs or more) for $6!

We also discussed ordering mandarinas and oranges by the case. He told me that he will sell me a 50 lb. case of oranges for $20. But they're juicing oranges, he told me, I hope that's o.k. Um, YEAH!

Next week, I am going to talk to him about what else I can order by the case. Perhaps there are things he doesn't typically carry inside the store, but that his supplier has available. I mean, his prices are unbelievable!

I gave the owner and his wife some of the heirloom tomatoes to try, and talked to them a little about gardening, since the varieties look like some that I have grown in my own garden. I hope this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship!

Fruit Fun

A lovely papaya tree: coming soon to my back yard? Not!

So, I'm still struggling and suffering. LOL. Thanks to all of you who have left supportive comments on my blog. I really do appreciate it.

However, I don't want to talk about that right now... I want to talk about something crazy that happened today. Today, I cut open a ripe papaya (a Maradol variety from Mexico) and the seeds inside were all sprouted. Some had little tails, but some had actual seed leaves on them. Whoa! I've never seen that before. By the way, there was nothing wrong with the papaya. It was quite good.

I also had a ripe Hachiya persimmon tonight. I liked it! My husband got it at Woodman's in Rockford when he went to buy our son's birthday present. We don't go to Rockford much.

Our local grocery store just got Fuyu persimmons in. I was very excited, since I have been reading about persimmons on Banana Island and on Harmony's blog. They didn't have the price posted yet, but I decided to take a risk and put 3 in my cart for us to try. I got to the checkout with my persimmons and the rest of my fruit. I was tired and starting to zone out as the cashier was ringing everything. I suddenly began paying attention when the persimmons rang up at $4.97. "Wait!" I said in alarm, "How much are those a pound?"

"Oh, we sell them by the each," said the cashier. "They're $1.50 each." To put this in perspective, let me tell you that these persimmons are the size of a plum. And they are $1.50 each! Needless to say, I only got one persimmon, not three. It is still ripening on the counter. I hope to be able to tell you soon whether it is as extravagant as its price.

Finally, my son's birthday was yesterday and we celebrated the occasion with a combination of his two favorite fruits, apples and dates. We made an apple-date pie with a date crust, shredded Fuji apples, date sauce (made with water and dates) and a tiny sprinkle of Chinese 5 spice powder. (Recipe courtesy of the Path of Health, Chinese 5 spice our variation...) We all enjoyed it! Now, if only I had a photo. Note to self: charge the camera batteries the day before all birthdays. LOL!

August Food Expenses

Grocery Receipts

8/1 Cub Foods, $9.48, 1 1/2 lb. Fuji apples, 1 12 oz. package mango chunks, 1 12 oz. package cherries
8/1 Cub Foods, $11.07, 6 gallons reverse osmosis water, 1 seedless watermelon, 20 ears local corn
8/2 Cub Foods, $46.33, 1 large seeded watermelon, 2 lbs. Jazz apples, 5 lbs. Fuji apples, 6 lbs. organic Red Delicious apples, 6 organic kiwi fruit, 4 organic cantaloupe, 1 1/2 lb. organic nectarines, 3 large bags of discard bananas at 99 cents each--15 lbs.?
8/2 Sullivan's, $10.47, toilet paper, 2 12 oz. packages frozen raspberries
8/2 Nature's Path Health Food Store, $15.13, 1 lb. Brazil nuts, 1 lb. cashews
8/4 Freeport Farmer's Market, $22, 3 dozen ears peaches and cream corn, 25 sour apples, 8 large organic carrots, 1 organic Poona Kheera cucumber, 2 organic yellow cucumbers, 3 pints organic Mexican Midget cherry tomatoes, 2 quarts Early Girl slicing tomatoes, 1 bunch organi beets (given as a gift)
8/4 Aldi, $9.06, 3 seedless watermelon
8/4 Cub Foods, $6.68, 2 2/3 lbs. Fuji apples, 1 avocado, 1 bunch cilantro
8/5 Cub Foods, $77.16, 5 seeded watermelon, 7+ lbs. black grapes, 6 large Fuji apples, 6 organic cantaloupe, 2 bunches organic celery, 1 lb. organic romaine hearts
8/7 Sullivan's Foods, $10.87, 9 gallons reverse osmosis water, 1 lb. Fuji apples, almost 3 lbs. Michigan peaches
8/8 Edgebrook Farmers Market, $5, 2 large cantaloupes
8/8 Cub Foods, $13.03, 2 12 oz. packages each frozen cherries and mango chunks
8/9 Cub Foods, $41.12, 3 1/3 lbs. Fuji apples, 3 3/4 lbs. organic bananas, 2 1/4 lbs. organic red grapes, 4 large organic peaches, 2 1/3 lbs. organic green grapes, 3 lbs. organic Gala apples, 4 organic avocados
8/9 Cub Foods, $4?, 6 pack Mickey's beer (He is suffering extreme pain from a cracked rib and thought this would be a better option than Vicoden. I am not commenting on either choice.)
8/11 Freeport Farmer's Market, $27, 3 organic Florida Giant watermelons, 1 organic Crimson Sweet watermelon
8/12 Cub Foods, $20.89, 5 1/2 lbs. Braeburn apples, 9 lbs. organic bananas, 3 lbs. organic romaine hearts
8/13 Cub Foods, $3.09, 9 gallons reverse osmosis water
8/14 Cub Foods, $15.56, 2 1/2 lb. papaya, 1 1/4 lb. black plums, 5 1/2 Braeburn apples, 1 mango
8/15 Cub Foods, $98.24, 1 large honeydew melon, 13 lbs. Fuji apples, Canary melon (7 lbs.) Casaba melon (4 lbs.), 12 lbs. organic bananas, 2 lbs. organic red grapes, 2 heads organic celery, 2 lbs. organic romaine, 2 10 oz. packages organic spinach, 1 11 oz. package organic baby romaine, 2 lbs. organic green grapes, 1 lb. Medjool dates, 4 organic avocados (all rotten), 5 lbs. clementines (from South Africa!)
8/15-8/16, Jason's trip to game convention, $45 (his estimate)
8/17, Cub Foods, $, 6 lbs. Fuji apples, 5 lbs. clemnetines, 3 lbs. red grapes, 3 lbs. green grapes, 1/2 lb. Medjool dates, 2 nectarines, 5 lbs. organic bananas, 1 gallon reverse osmosis water
8/18 Freeport Farmer's Market, $46.50, 3 organic Florida giant watermelon, 2 organic Crimson Sweet watermelon (the best melons we've eaten this year!), 3 organic Sugar Baby melons, 1 lb. organic carrots, 2 organic lemon cucumbers, 7 oz. organic raspberries
8/19 Cub Foods, $17.44, 5 lbs. bananas, 2 1/2 lbs. green grapes, 2 1/2 lbs. black grapes, 4 lbs. Fuji apples


Total: $556.12


Free Food

8/3 Gift of 3 apricots, $1
8/4 Gift of 3 nectarines, 2 ears of corn, 2 yellow zucchini, and 1 lb. green beans, $5
8/12 Gift of 1 honey mango, 3 ears corn $2
8/15 Gift of 3/4 of a large papaya, $4
8/18 Gift of 5 lbs. of local pears, $5
8/19 Gift of 12 oz. dried Calimyrna figs, $3
Total: $20.00

Garden Produce (charging ourselves the value we'd get selling it at Farmer's Market)

8/1 Green beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, summer squash, $12
8/3 Green beans, yellow French filet beans, red okra, tomatoes, cucumbers, sugar snap peas, $15
8/4 Savoy cabbage, $2
8/6 Worked in a friend's garden as an exchange--Slicing cucumbers, Thelma Saunders Sweet potato squash, various heirloom cherry tomatoes, green Japanese eggplant (given as a gift), $12
8/7 Heirloom tomatoes, Armenian serpent cucumbers, yellow French filet beans, okra, sugar snap peas, $6
8/8-8/19 I haven't been keeping up with this, but we've been eating a lot of tomatoes and cucumbers, okra, a bit of sweet corn (wrong variety for eating raw, so we'll be giving most of that away), tomatillos, summer squash, and a few snap beans, let's say $50

Total: $97.00

Garden Income

8/1 $18.00 (sold to Margaret Larson)
8/2 $17.00 (sold by a friend at a bigger city market)
8/4 $17.75
8/8 $37.55
8/11 $9.25
8/14 $17.00 (sold to Margaret Larson)
8/15 $24.00 (sold by a friend at a bigger city market)
8/18 $2.50
Total: $143.05

Garden Expenses

Total:0.00

Voting with Our Grocery Dollars in July

Salome LOVES organic celery

This is month 2 of recording what we bought, what we grew, what we found in the dumpster, and what we earned from our garden. This has been a learning experience.

For those of you who haven't been keeping up with our running log or expenses in July, it can be found here.

Our stated goals at the beginning of the month were to reduce our spending on groceries and gasoline, and limit 90% of our spending to bananas and local foods.

Total Grocery Receipts: $432.75
Estimated value of Free Food We Obtained This Month: $361.55
Estimated Value of Food We Grew This Month: $115.50
Total Consumption For a Family of 5 plus 1 Cat on a Raw Diet: $909.80
This works out to $29.34 per day.

We met our first goal and significantly reduced our spending on groceries! Yay! Our total grocery receipts were $213.02 less than last month. This even includes a whopping $78.38 restaurant tab, and $11.65 on food gifts for friends. If you remove cat food, restaurant and gift spending, water, toilet paper, and my husband's nonraw cheats, then we only spent $395.31 in total. Of course, last month's tab was artificially high because we invested over $100 on frozen meat for the cat. However, if you adjust both June and July's spending to only include raw human food, then we reduced our grocery spending by $74.79. Could have been better if we didn't buy so many lychee and raw bars and dates on our Chicago trip.

It was also nice to see that we double our money's worth out of our garden, although we earned about half at the Farmer's Market. I forgot how much I made selling lettuce!

Gasoline was harder to track since we didn't keep track of gas expenses either month. We took a trip to Chicago in our car, so it is unlikely. Also, we made a total of 30 separate trips to buy food. That's almost one trip per day. This is ridiculous, although I believe it was a couple of less trips than we took in June. We have obtained a bike for my husband and we plan to fix my bike. We hope to do more by bike and limit car trips. However, almost daily car trips are inevitable, since we garden 5 miles from our house on the other side of a busy highway. Often we must carry tools and large quantities of produce, so it makes riding a bike difficult. Tacking 1 or 2 extra miles onto the trip to stop at stores seems like no big deal. But, it really adds up over time.

We increased our consumption of locally grown products slightly from $274.00 in June to $292.56. However, when taken in context with our overall drop in spending, this means However, most of this was either grown by us or gifted to us by family and friends. If we think of each dollar we spend as a vote, we only increased our votes for local foods from $35.00 to $38.85; hardly a victory. We also bought more organic foods, though I didn't calculate the exact amount.

We definitely got more bananas this month than in June, but as to limiting our spending to bananas and local, we did not meet our goal.

In August, I begin an experiment to follow the 100 mile diet with the The Northwest Illinois Local Foods Task Force. Stay tuned for more information about this tomorrow. Should be an adventure!

Voting with my grocery dollars

Some of you may not be aware that I have been painstakingly recording our monthly grocery intake and dollar out-go every day in a post entitled June Food Expenses. Those of you who love to see what I get out of the dumpster and my garden will be really interested in that post.

Since today is the last day of June, I'd like to summarize our purchasing (and foraging) habits and reflect on how they impact our health and the health of our planet.

Total Grocery Receipts: $645.77

Estimated value of Free Food We Obtained This Month: $575.67

Estimated Value of Food We Grew This Month: $57.00

Total Consumption For a Family of 5 plus 1 Cat on a Raw Diet: $1278.44

This works out to $42.61 per day.

At first glance, this seems like an overwhelming number, but there are some mitigating factors to consider.

First, we spent a grand total of $135.81 on cat food for Bart, who we are transitioning to a raw diet. Much of this food is still in the freezer and though we will have continued expenses in future months, this amount will greatly decrease in upcoming months. Subtracting this amount from our total grocery receipts would make our total out-of-pocket expenditures for our 5 humans a total $509.96, much less than we spent before we discovered the amazing combo of raw food AND dumpster diving, when our average was more like $850.

Second, we spent $16.01 on non-raw food. This expense won't continue.

Third, this amount includes paying $0.33 per gallon for the water we drink. In June, we purchased 45 gallons of water. This may not be a concern for families who have water purification systems (or access to a clean spring). Our family spent only $470.10 on raw human food this month.

Finally, we have a large quantity of food remaining in the fridge and the freezer. This "inventory" is always in flux at our house and after months of tracking our expenses, it will balance out and we will be able to see our patterns of consumption more clearly.

$470.10 is NOT too much to invest in optimal health. For that matter, neither is $1278.44, if you have that kind of money to spend. (Check your budget. How much is spent on medications and out-of-pocket health bills? How much do you spend eating out, drinking alchohol or pop, and consuming processed junk foods? How much of your budget is spent on entertainment or luxury items? Are you sure you can't afford some fruit? :)

How do our spending habits affect the health of the planet? This question is so important to me, as I want my children and their children, and all children for that matter, to have the benefit of living in a clean, healthy, beautiful place.

One issue I am particularly interested in is consuming a high percentage of my food from local sources. Buying locally supports my local economy. It means that my food is fresher, healthier, and requires many less resources to deliver to my plate. I can meet (or be) the person who grew the food and have some influence on their practices. This month, $274 of local foods were consumed in my household. This equates to 21% of our total food consumption. However, if each dollar is a "vote" then the picture changes. Because of my gardening and foraging practices, many of our local foods were not "purchases." (Of course, by dumpster diving, much of our non-local consumption was also not purchased.) This means we only spent $35 purchasing food from local producers. This equates to 8% of our actual dollars spent on food.

Another issue is our support of organic (or better) agriculture. Conventional agriculture is doing so much damage to our ecosystem and our bodies, I feel exhausted just thinking about explaining it. In The 80-10-10 Diet, Dr. Graham says that choosing between cooked organic food and raw non-organic food is like "choosing whether to shoot oneself in the foot or shoot oneself in the hand." Unfortunately, though much of the produce we purchase locally is not sprayed with pesticides, much of it is not organic either. Many of the local producers use commercial fertilizer and/or use non-organic seed or seedlings (I do this one myself). Our source of local free-range eggs does feed some commercial chicken food to her chickens.

In our area, organic produce is difficult to find. Certain items are never available--watermelon, for example, or are available for short periods of time (grapes). The cost is quite high, usually at least twice that of conventional produce, and the quality is sometimes poorer. I believe that we will continue to improve our supply only if we demand it and build it. I plan to document my family's moves in this direction in the coming months! This month, we consumed $119.75 in organics, but only $42.78 in actual expenditures (or dollar votes, as I like to call them).

Finally, if you visited the June Food Expenses post, you will note that we went to the store virtually every day this month. This is RIDICULOUS. Sometimes, we went because we were going to our garden and it was on the way, but many times, we were making trips specifically to go to the store. Several days, we actually went to the store more than once. Surely, better planning next month will result in less pollution coming from our tailpipe and less money leaking from our wallet.

Next month, we plan to trim our expenditures by only purchasing bananas, cat food, and water at the grocery store. We will purchase everything else at the Farmer's Market, harvest it from our garden, or get it out of the dumpster.

Diggin' in the dirt...

So, as you, my faithful readers may know, I'm a bit of a nutcase and I have THREE gardens. One is a 4 x 8 raised bed at the community garden. One is at my house (in too much shade--LOL!) and is made up of three 4 x 12 foot grids a'la Square Foot Gardening. And the other is a huge expanse that I haven't even measured out at my friend's farm. It's about the size of my house lot, I think. And then, of course, I volunteer in a big plot grown in the community garden where the proceeds go to the food pantry.

The photo above is from my garden here at home. Note the lovely Black-seeded Simpson lettuce interspersed with cilantro volunteers that I have decided to tolerate. The tall stuff is garlic. I planted that last year and it never sprouted. And here it is this year, now that I have given up eating garlic. Isn't that just like life? Oh, well, I'm sure I can sell it. The very back row is endive, but it isn't up very high yet.

Please, pay no attention to the weeds in the path, or my crude grid made of lath (Square-foot Mel with his beautiful white military-precision grids would have a conniption!)

I worked in both the community garden and my big garden out at the farm. At the farm, my husband came and hoed weeds, made squash hills, and mulched with straw. What a nice guy. The girls helped me plant some purple pole beans, scarlett runner beans, Malabar spinach, and two kinds of fennel. I also planted several varieties of summer squash, winter squash, and cucumbers. My daughter planted a couple of replacement peppers for some that got trampled by the cows. All that's left for spring planting is cantaloupes and more cucumbers. And pinto beans are going in where the lettuce is coming out. Tomorrow I harvest the remaining Four Seasons lettuce for the Farmer's Market.

Tonight, I moved a ton of compost from a donor's house into bags in my car. Tomorrow I spread it. What a workout! I was supposed to have help from another garden volunteer, but he works on an ambulance and got a call, so he couldn't make it. I got a very nice workout!

Payday. Woohoo! It always feels nice to have grocery money. For about $100, my husband bought 8 watermelons, the first bing cherries of the season (not ripe enough, darn it!), bananas, cantaloupes, cucumbers, peppers, romaine lettuce, bok choy, grape tomatoes, mangoes, and frozen berries.

Today I ate:

8 a.m. About 1/2 of a large watermelon

12 -1 p.m. 3 bananas, some Four Seasons lettuce, some lamb's quarters

5:30 3 C. of cherries (most weren't ripe enough)

9 p.m. A little over 1/2 of a large watermelon

Windy Day

Wow, has it ever been windy here! And we could sure use some rain. We were supposed to get it tomorrow, but now the forecast has been changed to say no rain...

I had a full day with gardening, grocery shopping, dumpster diving, and a meeting/ work time at the community garden. And of course, I watched the season finale of LOST!

Today's dumpster haul was unbelievable at first glance--at least 25 quarts of strawberries, 20 packages of mushrooms (that looked perfect, not brown at all), 3 2-lb packages of grapes, 6 4-packs of D 'Anjou pears, 9 lbs. of apples, a small box full of limes and lemons, a bunch of celery, and one lonely package of Roma tomatoes. Of course, after my husband picked through the strawberries and grapes and took out all of the moldy ones, the size was reduced by over half. We gave away the mushrooms and spread the fruit wealth a bit among our friends (but not too much--we gotta eat!)

I then went inside Aldi and spent $38 on 3 large seedless watermelons, bananas, cucumbers, multicolored peppers, more apples, grape tomatoes, a couple of pounds of romaine (still haven't harvested any of my own lettuce), a package of frozen raspberries, and a can of chicken breast for the cat.

As we checked out, the cashier joked with us about how we are "her produce family." "Who eats all of these bananas?" she asked the girls. Of course, they were too shy to answer.

In June, I would like to accurately record how much we spend on food and how much it would cost us factoring in the price of the food we get for free out of the dumpster. Will I get that organized? We shall see.

Today's food:

8 a.m. One medium cantaloupe
9:30 a.m. 1/2 C. fresh pineapple (left from the kids' breakfast and I couldn't resist)
Noon About 2 C. red grapes
1-ish: some lamb's quarters while I was weeding in the garden
1:30 A blender soup made with a large cucumber, some red and yellow pepper, 3 roma tomatoes, a couple of stalks of celery, the juice of one lemon, and my typical mixture of onion powder, Italian seasoning, and salt
6:30 p.m. (on the run between the meeting and the work time at the garden) A green smoothie made with romaine, 3 small bananas, and 12 oz. thawed raspberries
10 p.m. A romaine salad w/ a blended salad dressing of cucumber, roma tomatoes, celery, lime juice and my typical mexican seasoning mixture of onion powder, cumin, and a dash of salt with the unusual addition of sundried tomatoes and cayenne pepper

Total: 1220 calories

Now don't even think it... Why is Greenmama eating a big salad with cayenne at 10 p.m.?!? An excellent question my friends.

Well, I'm worn out, so off to bed I go.