We get everything from grated Parmesean and Ramano cheese to locally milled,
This seems as though it goes against all common sense and depending on where you live, it might. We are not shopping at Fred Meyer (Kroger) with their small (though ever expanding) bulk foods or at Wild Oats (Whole Foods) and some upscale market places where everything costs more. We are fortunate enough to live around a regionally employee owned supermarket chain which provides dozens of selections of bulk food. However, an internet search might find you amazed at the number of stores offering such options. When our store stopped carrying raw sugar, I went on a quest to find more in bulk. The internet search gave me five other places which were much closer that carried the product. The difference in price was about 60 cents more a pound because the stores were independent and not a chain, but still well below buying the sugar in a package.
As much as Jules likes it, he has said it was the largest degree of culture shock to him. Where would we store all these jars of stuff? We are going
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The initial output for unpackaging you pantry is a little more because you have to have a place to store all of your culinary treasure that is now without its box. Standard glass jars can be purchased most anywhere (even Ikea) and cost around 10-20 dollars a piece. (I think we got ours at Fred Meyer (Kroger)) Once purchased, they last f
The initial thought I had about going over to bulk was "Where would we put it all?" I had no idea it would actually thin out our pantry because I had no idea how much packaged and processed food we actually ate. Now, that we have transitioned over to bulk foods and I have been reading up on the subject it kinda creeps me out!
Many things about the way our culture acquires its food I'd never really considered. However, I needed to do so reading up on ways to lower the costs of our household, and on ways to make it run outside of the mainstream. We were (and in many ways still are) a highly normal American family. I didn't honestly know much about food storage, or how much flour the average family uses in a month when making their own food (the internet tells all), or what goes into making corn bread without a box. So I hit the local library and began reading, I started with Google
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Currently, each food item in a typical U.S. meal has traveled an average of 1,500 miles. The amount of fuel it takes to put a meal on the table outweighs the amount of energy we gain from consumption of the food itself. Not only is fuel consumption created in direct transport, but also through processing, packaging, warehousing, and refrigeration. This doesn't even count the fossil fuels used in the synthetic fertilizer and pesticide used to grow and keep the food perfect looking.
Just think of it this way, if every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country's oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week. That's not gallons but barrels.
Statistics and Information acquired from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver
Our families grocery bill is now $150 a month ($200 if you add the pet food and supplies) and we rarely ever go out to Taco Bell or Burger King anymore. We no longer associate cereal with a cartoon character, fruit with packaged gelatinous chewables, and Macaroni and cheese with a blue box. I make our food. I know what goes into it and where most of it came from. Our garbage bill has been cut %75 because we now have pick up only once a month due to a complete lack of packaging and an ever growing compost bin. More than anything else, we aren't getting sick anymore.
Jules spent most of last year feeling ill; when he got sick so did the Spicy Barracuda. Neither have had much over a day or two of feeling as though the onset of a cold might be coming. Though I have no direct evidence this is from a change in our diet and decrease in stress, there isn't much else that has changed. In general, we just feel better now that we eat better.
One thing I really like about buying in bulk is that there's less packaging in the trash. Have you noticed the same thing? We recently went down to the smallest bin our garbage utility offer (which also costs half as much as the next largest).
ReplyDeleteWe're in the same boat! Our trash company doesn't allow you to choose the size, ours is how many times they pick up in month. We're down to only one and the price break was a nice unforeseen perk!
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