Sick, isn't it? Could there be more plastic in there? Sometimes a girl has to shame herself into action I suppose. Food is such a sore subject around the Greenhab household, which is probably why we've waited so long to take action in this area.
So here's the sitch:
We have four people who live in our house on a regular basis: Me, Mr. Greenhab, the kid and Grandma Greenhab. Uncle Greenhab is currently visiting, helping us to prepare the house for the two newest babes who will arrive this summer. If you're counting along at home, that will be somewhere around 6 people on a regular basis.
Mr. Greenhab is a carnivore - the man hates veggies - so we eat meat almost every day. I know that the environmental impact of meat - beef especially - is enormous and I'd be happy having it just a few times a week. But if Daddy's not happy, nobody's happy. I'm trying to convince him that we should at least use it as an ingredient in our meals, as opposed to it being the main focus of every meal. We're also looking into co-ops where we can get locally and humanely raised meat but Mr. Greenhab's other nickname is "Cheapest Man on Earth", which is another reason why we've put off greening our food for so long. It's not cheap!
Toddler Greenhab likes snacks. We've made a firm "no individually packaged stuff" rule in our house - so no crackers or cookies or fake fruit in those cute little serving sized pouches. He's pretty okay with that. He does like his snacks though, and seems to know that mom's granola bars are not in the same league as store-bought.
Grandma Greenhab is a vegetarian, but doesn't really like vegetables. She's more of a pastatarian...or a breadatarian.
Me, I like convenience. I admit to being a horrible cook and hating cooking, so this is going to be a challenge for me.
So here are our goals when it comes to greening our food:
- Reduce the amount of pre-made food and mixes we buy - boxed mac & cheese, mashed potatoes, stuffing, desserts, etc. Hubster is on board with that because I'll be the one making them from scratch.
- I'd like to stop eating (factory) canned vegetables, which means buying a lot of local food in the summer and canning it myself. I experimented a little with this last summer. We'll see how the food tastes when I get brave enough to try it.
- Buy in bulk. Our local chain grocery store has a surprisingly decent selection of bulk ingredients like flour, sugar, various seeds, etc. but nothing like pasta or crackers or nuts. We also have a Natural Grocer's / Vitamin Cottage in town. Although all of their "bulk" food comes prepackaged in plastic bags!? I'm not sure how that makes it bulk. What I'd actually like to do is buy everything possible from bulk bins and put it into reusable bags, so I can avoid store packaging altogether.
- Make our snacks. They seem to be one of the biggest culprits of overpackaging. I've been experimenting with granola bars over the past few weeks..
- Eat less meat. Buy meat that is local.
- Eat more local fruits & veggies. We live in the mountains of Colorado, so the growing season is short and "local" becomes a relative term in the dead of winter. While I might want food grown within a 100 mile radius in the summer, I'm certainly happy buying food grown in neighboring states in the winter. (You know, as opposed to the strawberries from Mexico and blueberries from Chile that are in my fridge right now.)
Our other main area of focus this year is to reduce our use/consumption of plastic. We've done a great job of this when it comes to non food-related items. We use bar soap instead of soap in a bottle, we broke the bottled water habit long ago, we buy items in glass or cardboard instead of plastic when available, we even had a N0-Plastic Christmas (ahem, until Hub bought the kid a Big Wheel, that is). But man, when it comes to food, it is im.possible! Just look at that picture of our refrigerator! Every food item we buy has a piece of plastic attached to it somewhere. This is going to be tough. I might take a page from Beth Terry's (of Fake Plastic Fish) book and start weighing it each week. Maybe that will make a make us sick enough to our stomachs to take some real action.
Additionally, we'd like to continue to reduce the amount of "stuff" we buy. Over the past year we've made giant strides in this area. We pushed through the withdrawal early on and would like to push ourselves until it hurts just a wee bit more.
As time and budget allow, we'd like to continue to make our home more energy efficient. New windows would be fabulous, but are a little unrealistic at this time. We do plan to replace two old sliding doors with higher rated French doors this month while Uncle Greenhab, the handyman, is here.
I'm sure we'll work on many other things as the year goes on, but these are in the forefront of my mind right now. I've definitely come to a point where I look at each thing I do and each thing that passes through my hands and ask myself "What's the environmental impact here? What can I do to reduce that." Obviously when it comes to food, I haven't acted much on that! :) But it's certainly something I ponder with all that I do.
5 comments:
Food wise, you can do it. It takes time and don't try to tackle it all at once :) About 5 years ago, we ate about 75% packaged food (frozen meals, meals in a box, etc etc). Now we a frozen pizza is a treat, maybe once a month at best.
Just tackle one thing at a time :) It's totally doable! Good luck!
I'm also working on getting rid of plastics in my fridge. Our first step is to buy condiments in glass bottles instead of plastic, if possible. Once that becomes second nature, then we'll move on to other things.
Also, one of my friends is married to a carnivore. He eats meat and bread and canned corn. I suggested that she get the book Deceptively Delicious to get more veggies into his diet -- she's concerned about his health. Perhaps you can try a similar approach to the meat-eating idea? Is he receptive to using meat as an ingredient rather than a main focus?
Erica~ I so agree. "One step at a time" is how we've gone green thus far, right!? It all seems overwhelming at first, but you change slowly and soon it becomes second nature.
simplesavvy~ What is it w/ canned corn? That's what my husband loves too. Is there any veggie with LESS nutritional value than corn??
The key to downsizing the meat is to do it sooooo gradually that your carnivore doesn't notice the reduction. (This requires YOU cooking instead of him, but .... )
Try more casserole type dishes, soups, stews and pastas/sauces, with the meat dstributed in them. Maybe just one a week at first. The IDEA of doing w/o meat would bother him, but the great meals with just a little less meat that still tasre great will satisfy his needs. Do it vveerryy gradually. Try beef stew with potatoes, onions and CORN. Shepherds pie with beef, mashed potatoes and CORN, spaghetti or other pasta with spaghetti & meat sauce. (NO CORN!!) Homemade potpie with chicken or beef, potatoes and CORN. You get the gist . . . .
I know what you mean about local food in the winter. Right now I live in northern alberta (canada) and ``local food`` is food stored by farmers market people like carrots, cabbage, beets and onions. We could store it ourselves if we had a cold room...
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