A few things before bed

[mousme]

I went shopping at Loblaws yesterday.

1- Food is becoming stupidly expensive. I categorically refuse to spend $6.00 on American broccoli. Broccoli is not worth $6.00. I am going to go to my local fruit & veggies store and see if theirs is cheaper (and hopefully locally-grown!).

I am looking at the food I eat lately, in terms of how far it's had to travel to get to me, and it makes the mind boggle. Does anyone out there know of a good book which can tell me what kind of fruits (apart from apples) are grown locally? What the hell did people do before oranges and lemons were consistently available in cold climates?

Anyway.

2- I brought my two eco-bags with me, and am pleased to report that all my shopping fit in them, apart from potatoes, cat litter and cat food, for which I didn't use bags at all. Normally that would have taken at least six or seven plastic bags (and if I'd put the big stuff in bags too, it'd be more like twenty bags!).

More on this later. I am working out a plan in my head to get my grocery shopping done entirely without the use of a gasoline-dependent machine. However, I'm not there yet.

3- People are, fundamentally, pretty okay. I was trying to get the cat litter off a high shelf, and since it was almost all gone, the containers were wedged way at the back of the shelf. I am not short (5'7" which is the national average for women my age), but my fingers didn't *quite* reach that far. So I asked a woman taller than I if she could bring down a container for me, and she complied, although she looked a bit bemused. It was nice. :)

4- I bought a pot roast. They were on sale for something like $1.99 a pound. Tomorrow I shall stick it in my slow-cooker, or something like that, and have a lovely meal. Several lovely meals, more like.

Now I am off to bed. I've been getting to sleep far too late, these days.

Comments

[speedking162.livejournal.com]

I think that you could find out through farmers' markets around you, if there are them in Canada. They should have locally grown produce and they should be similarly priced but I am unsure.

[ai731.livejournal.com]

There are two main large farmer's markets in Montreal. One is very far away by public transport and the other is more expensive than it needs to be. owldaughter and I were kicking around the idea of car-pooling to the far-away one regularly come spring/summer...

[curtana.livejournal.com]

What the hell did people do before oranges and lemons were consistently available in cold climates?

They... didn't eat them? Or at least, only very rarely, as special treats. There's a reason getting an orange in your stocking at Christmas used to be a big deal.

Check out markets for locally-grown produce. I used to shop at a farmer's market in Toronto that was great, but I don't know where comparable places are in Montreal. Jean-Talon, I guess, though I've never actually gone there. The one I went to in Toronto was just one day a week, a much less formal sort of thing, just set up in and around a community centre.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah if the question is what did people do for vitamin c, then the answer is that meat is packed with the stuff. Humans and guinea pigs are the only mammals which don't produce their own vitamin c, all other mammals do. That's why scurvy was only ever a problem on ships, when there was no supply of fresh mammal meat available.

[dizietsma.livejournal.com]

that was me, by the way...forgot i had logged-out earlier

[curtana.livejournal.com]

Not to mention much more readily-available non-meat foods like cabbage and spinach. Sauerkraut was a major preventative of scurvy both on land and at sea before citrus fruits were readily available.

[mousme.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Atwater market is devolving into yuppie-prices, but I may check out Jean-Talon next time I'm in the area.

[moskevyu.livejournal.com]

I adore slow-cooker cooking. :o)

I unfortunately cannot weigh in on the vitamin c debate, but broccoli! Yipes. I've never seen it cost that much.

[mousme.livejournal.com]

Neither have I, hence my shock.

[whiskeygirl8.livejournal.com]

Is the broccoli different over here or do they just import it? If they just import it, why would they do that? If it is different over here, how is it different? (I doubt it is different, but I've heard of stranger things and that is the first thing that pops into the mind when one read, "American broccoli." Although, I strongly suspect it's just imported.)

[mousme.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I meant "imported from the US." It was just easier to say "American."

Although I've noticed our broccoli (as far as I've seen) has shorter and thicker stems and more flowers.

[silly-imp.livejournal.com]

$6 broccoli! Outrageous. I don't even think I've seen organic broccoli that high!

Try Atwater Market for local produce. They also have a local organic farm that has a booth there. I'm not sure who's there in the winter though. The only thing is, a lot of the booths sell produce imported from other farms in addition to their own stuff (and probably exclusively "imported" stuff in the winter. Just ask if it's local and they'll tell you.)

[curtana.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, I meant to add - I'm fairly sure that at the Loblaws we go to, the produce says (roughly) where it's from - Quebec, Canada, US, or wherever. Look closely on the little signs that also tell you the price - it may be in fairly small print. Or if it's something that's usually sold boxed, like berries, it should say on the label.

[mousme.livejournal.com]

Yep. I couldn't find a single damned local vegetable at my Loblaws. It was most disheartening.

Next time, I'm going to try my local place. ai731 and baronscartop tell me that it's quite good and very reasonably priced.

[curtana.livejournal.com]

couldn't find a single damned local vegetable at my Loblaws.

's cause it's January ;)

[ai731.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean. I was livid one time in November when oranges and lemons and limes from California and Africa were on sale and I couldn't find a single bag of local cranberries; which should have been in season, dammit.

[ai731.livejournal.com]

I also bought a $1.99 pot roast and will be slow-cooking it in my wonderful slow-cooker.

[mousme.livejournal.com]

I just dumped mine in the slow-cooker a few minutes ago. I am looking forward to tonight.

Would you be willing to post your recipe to recipe_trade? I found a slow-cooker recipe online, and if it turns out well I'll post it too. Oh, wait. Unless yours is already in response to toughlovemuse's post on pot roast? *goes to check*

[ai731.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we weren't thrilled with the cranberry pot roast recipe, though you might like it better than we did. I think I'm going to do this one just with onions & potatoes & turnips & maybe even some kind of bean.

[mellybean71.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I only skimmed the comments so I don't know if this has been covered but there's a store in NDG that is organic and supposedly very well priced. They have a lot of local stuff.

You could try contacting the Maison Vert co-op and asking them if they could reccomend places with local stuff. They also have a lot of good eco-friendly stuff.

I'll ask around at my Church too.

[fruity-spikey.livejournal.com]

www.marmiton.org

is the website i was telling you about , in french and very good recipes !

[urban-homestead.livejournal.com]

What the hell did people do before oranges and lemons were consistently available in cold climates?

Cannot resist the family anecdote: My grandmother was a homesteader in rural Manitoba and she had at least one childhood winter where frost came before the harvest, and she ate nothing - NOTHING - but pickled fish and potatoes for eight months. She lived to 95 so I guess it didn't hurt her, but... **shudder**
On the other hand, she got all her vitamin C needs met via those potatoes. And by the time my mother was born, the family ate homegrown, home-canned tomatoes, rhubarb and high-bush cranberries all winter long. It made for some funny food combinations; to this day, many Manitobans whose ancestors were Polish homesteaders douse their perogies with jam. But if jam is the only fruit you have, you're going to come up with some funny culinary traditions to reflect that.

Much as I love eating locally, I know what that means if you are strict about it, and it just isn't for me. The occasional orange or avocado will not kill the environment - the biggest environmental concern is packaged food, where the ingredients have been around the world several times being processed and assembled. I think it is possible to go a long, long way to minimising your footprint without being rigid about it. Packaged food, home heating, and cars are the biggies to keep low.

[mousme.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm not planning on Eliminating All Citrus F0r3v4h ZOMG! or anything like that. ;)

It just occurred to me that, supposing it was The End Of The World As We Know It, and all transportation broke down, that I would likely never see an orange or a lemon again, except under very rare circumstances.

And then I wondered just what people did for Vitamin C when there was no citrus around.

Pickled fish and potatoes, eh? I suppose it builds character. :P

[urban-homestead.livejournal.com]

Well, I didn't mean to suggest you *personally* were planning to eliminate all citrus, but there are a lot of people who think everyone should eat exclusively locally all the time, and just thinking about them makes me feel all refute-y. I think they mostly live in California, so it's easy for *them* to say! I am generally on board with the locavore movement, but I don't think it's necessary to make a religion of it, which unfortunately many people currently seem to be doing. I blame Alice Waters. :)

I am always happy and impressed to find another non-B.C. Canadian who is even trying to eat locally, though, which is what prompted me to answer. I eat 95% locally and even that sometimes feels a bit sacrificial.

[mousme.livejournal.com]

Also, I owe you a debt of gratitude: I shamelessly raided your userinfo for nifty-looking communities, and am now a member of two or three. :)