struggles

i'm feeling a little hormonal or something today, so please excuse the following rantings and ravings and perhaps over indulgent pontifications. feel free to roll your eyes.

as our nation turns towards washington, whether each individual is expecting great things or disaster, one of the issues on the forefront of most of our minds is the economy. i don't know that anyone can argue that it's not a mess, and i think things are tight for a lot of us.

on my message board, we had a discussion regarding incomes and relativity. how $100,000 affords varying levels of financial comfort across different states, for example. a mid-level 4 bedroom house that could cost $1,000,000 in california might cost $400,000 in another state, or $200,000 in another. it's really kind of an interesting concept to think through, cost of living. it is something that, aside from our choice of locale (when possible), we don't have any direct control over.

then there are the things we do have direct control over - our monthly expenses. some things are required (such as a mortgage or rent, electricity, water), and some things, no matter how adamantly we say we can't live without them, are luxuries (such as cable tv). still, in both categories, we make decisions (to our varying levels of financial ability) on how much to spend.

could our mortgage be smaller? sure. we could have bought a smaller house (though the 4 rooms are filling up fast). we could have bought a house that needed work. or, we could be renting. there is a finite range we can operate in, but it is a range that offers us choices.

what our struggle right now is the way we buy food. we spend more than your average american on food each month. it is a conscious decision we made, in order to lead a lifestyle we think is important for our family, and for the earth. local and natural (not necessarily organic) is essential to us. we could probably nearly halve our monthly expenses on food if we shopped at the supermarket, and if we returned to buying processed foods, easily halve the bill.

before we were married, we began doing all our grocery shopping at atlanta's dekalb farmer's market, a place i still miss dearly. the ydfm is the mecca of food shopping in atlanta - they have everything, from all over the world. they are a literal warehouse. they have dry goods from everywhere, every nationality. their spice selection a dream (in both the actual selection and the price). they have produce you've never seen before. after shopping there, a supermarket's produce section is positively embarrassing; a pathetic display of sad looking produce, and a measly selection at that. the seafood, the meats, the cheeses. i miss our saturday mornings there. and we took full advantage of every department, spending quite possibly more at times than we do even now. but we could afford to (speaking just numbers): we shared a rented house with 3 other renters, so all our bills were fractions of a whole. looking back, i do wish we had worked harder to save more, but don't you always?

i remember when we were first married, we were serious pros at grocery shopping. we were renting our own house, our bills increased; we were trying to spend less. we would, on average, save 30-40% off our bill: spend $150, save $100. i meal planned by buying almost only things that were on sale, and more often than not, on sale AND with a coupon. but what products have coupons? things in boxes, packages. we bought lots of those frozen boxes of vegetables "with sauce", for example. we would still go to the farmer's market sometimes, we would still buy some things fresh. bryan was also working nights at the time, so we only ate dinner together a few days a week, which made cooking a lesser priority. was it healthy to eat those processed foods? no. but it was economical.

we moved, we got raises, bryan began working days: whatever the reason, we bettered our standard of living. we began shopping at the farmer's market again, and discovered the buford farmer's market as well. we had dinner parties. we only ate bell & evans chickens. my wine rack was always stocked. hannah, 4 years old at the time, had something click in her cute little head, and decided she no longer wanted kraft macaroni and cheese or chef boyardee - she wisely decided that whatever we were having was fine. we spent more than the average american on food. we were refining our lifestyle to that of a yuppie couple. but, it was more than that - food was our hobby. that's what we wanted.

and so it continued. when we moved to milwaukee, we struggled to find the same types of places to shop. there were no giant, indoor, year round "farmer's" markets (and if i'm wrong, please let me know!). last spring, we joined a csa with a farm we love (and have signed up with again for this year). bryan planted a garden, which will have more focus and, i'm guessing, productivity, this summer. but we didn't have the same resources. so we shopped at the "better" of the supermarkets, buying natural and/or organic where we could.

last summer, i read The United States of Arugula: The Sun Dried, Cold Pressed, Dark Roasted, Extra Virgin Story of the American Food Revolution. while i knew some of the information presented by the book, and had an inkling about others, i had no idea about some of the details. it was by reading this book that it cemented in my mind that we had to do what we knew was right all along: buy local, buy natural, be conscious of the commercial machine. we joined the outpost, a local co-op linked into local resources, supplying with non-local products when local was not feasible (or economical, to a certain degree). all their products are natural (which, contrary to popular belief, is sometimes a stricter standard than organic). we didn't go into this blind. we knew it would cost us more. and we saw our food bill begin to rise.

but in now reading michael pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, which goes into far more detail (and so if you don't want to know, then i highly suggest you don't read it, because once you do, you cannot forget, or look at some food products in the same way again), i know we have to do this. there are a lot of reasons why we make this commitment, and i won't go into them here, because that's not the reason for this post. suffice to say i realize 100% that this is our decision, our commitment, and that not everyone shares the same view. and i don't have any opinion on that one way or another; i certainly don't think less of anyone because they don't have the same opinion as me. and yes, i do realize that outside of eating only what we ourselves prepare at home, not all the "bad" things can be avoided. and that's fine. we just do our best, we control what we can.

my most immediate struggle is orange soda. silly, right? i love orange soda. when bryan and i were on isla mujeres, in mexico, it was the most popular drink on the island. so we ended up drinking a lot of it during our stay. when we got home, we found we had developed a taste for it, so continued to buy orange soda. we developed an affection for the sunkist brand, and so continued to buy it. i realized only the other week that while i desire to avoid HFCS (again, for possibly non-obvious reasons that i won't enumerate here), sunkist orange soda is loaded with it. which i wouldn't mind so much if it were an occasional treat. but, i like to bring an orange soda to work with me. it's something to look forward to with lunch. and i'll have a few on the weekends as well. i may be drinking less soda than the average american, but by drinking it every day, it was not an occasional indulgence. the problem is that buying orange soda made with actual sugar is over twice as expensive as buying one with HFCS. how can i justify spending over $7 for 12 cans of soda made with cane sugar, when HFCS soda is $3 for the same amount? it's a dilemna i haven't yet solved.

the fact of the matter is, it costs more to buy local/natural/organic. and that sucks, plain and simple. the decision to do this was in part simple, but also based on a complex set of details, but the immediate effect is quite simple - you pay more, and that sucks. i quite often hear a little nagging voice in my head, telling me how much we could save (literally right into our savings account) by not shopping this way. i could go back to the supermarket and get everything under one roof. i could try to not care about all the details. it's the longer reaching effects that aren't so simple to see, and it's those things i have to remind myself to consider at those times. not only is it our hobby and thus the thing we want to invest in, buy "only the best" for. but it's also so important to us, we believe, for both our personal health as well as the health of the earth. so it's a struggle, constantly. we are lucky enough (and i say luck, but we also worked hard to get where we are) to be in a position to mostly be able to afford to do so. but not everyone has the same opportunity or ability. we'll continue to limp along and make it a priority, and hope that the economy gets better, and things get easier. our garden will grow, we'll become more familiar with what we can attain locally on our own. we'll find new places and new ways to shop.

some people think i get crazy about all this stuff, and i guess i kind of do. i am very, very passionate about it. food is my religion. food is tied to the world population, her economy and politics, and the world itself - terra firma (and not so firma; water and air, too). in my mind, it's all part of the same whole and thus inseparable from my beliefs, spiritual and otherwise. whether you believe in god, allah, mother nature, or no one, whatever created this earth - divine or scientific - should be respected. it is the earth that nourishes us. and if you've ever had sugar snap peas directly from the vine and still warm from the sun, or fresh baked bread direct from the oven and slathered in sweet cream butter, or seen that guy at your local korean population's favorite noodle place literally beat and twist and cut noodle dough in a way that looks like magic, or listened the the abuela teach someone how to make a mole with all 38 ingredients and their measurements remembered solely in her head, or eaten bryan's chile paste or chicken jello or hot sauce or tamales - all grown and made and handled and shared with the intent of pure love - then maybe you understand me a little.