Sunday, May 3, 2009

Eating logically

In America, we've become accustomed to a great variety of food from around the world. While that's great for a treat, eating it as a matter of course takes the pleasure from it and adds a lot to the food bill.

It used to be that eating locally was the normal thing. People didn't have cranberry sauce in areas where cranberries didn't grow, except for holiday meals. Olives were the same... only at special meals.

At home we seldom had dessert except for Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter and when we did, it was gooseberry pie or chokecherry jelly on toast. On very rare occasion we'd have ice cream or cookies - never both.

We had candy once a month, when Mom bought groceries; soft drinks were the same. Mom was a good cook and we ate a variety of food, but much of it was homegrown. Of course at the time, deer were plentiful and my brothers liked to hunt so we had good meat, too.

Is eating locally healthier? Probably so. Is it cheaper? Definitely. Frugal living looks at every aspect of every part of living. Look at your total food bill... and see if eating a little closer to home will decrease it.

6 comments:

  1. Pat, that makes a lot of sense. If we really think about it, how much does the "food" really cost. We are paying a great deal of money for transporting food from other countries as well as transporting food across our own country. Truckers, owners of trucking companies, and other "middle men" all have to be paid. Ultimately the customers are the ones to pay them. It really would be cheaper to buy locally. It would also be fresher and of better quality--harvested at it's prime.

    Ragards, Peg

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  2. You made my point very well, Peg. :)

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  3. I grew up only having one dessert per meal... if mom baked a cake we had one tiny piece of cake... or if we had ice cream we had a small dish of ice cream...
    NOW my mom lives with me and she will eat 3 or 4 different sweets for her dessert. She is 89 so I guess she wants to eat all the goodies she can..Anyway I reminded her about her one dessert rule and she said," Well, we couldn't afford more than that back then and now "I" can afford to eat what I want and so I shall."

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  4. I love the point you make!
    However, I am curious. I live in a place where citrus does not grow locally. So, what then would I do for vitamen C?
    I live near Colorado.
    Thanks for all your wisdom,
    Heather

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  5. Heather, here's a quick list of Vitamin C sources:
    Food Sources of Vitamin CAs you can see, citrus fruits are not even the top sources. Peppers can be frozen for year 'round eating, as can some of the other sources.

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  6. To clarify that, I live in Colorado, and we can grow peppers, broccoli, strawberries, brussels sprouts, tomatoes, etc.,all good sources of Vitamin C.

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