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This project has been an amazing experience for me to understand the overall effects that eating locally will have on our society. I have gained a knowledge surrounding our environment from this project that I never thought I would completely adapt myself with. I have conquered my fears of local eating and broaden my views and stomach to the world of healthy, local foods!
My favorite aspect of this project was my time spent with my mother. Not only did I gain a great sense of the beauty of local eating, but my relationship with my mother has grown a tremendous amount. Through going to the local farmer’s markets together we have bonded on a completely different level. We had such a blast going to the market and bettering our lives together.
I also have really enjoyed the reality that has sunken into me since beginning this. I have taken a strong interest in farmers lives now. I truly respect each and every one of them on a whole new level then I previously did. Now I understand the gift that they produce for each of us. Every day they wake up and supply us with food, and don’t gain very much in return. They work themselves to the bone to feed these countries residents and don’t get nearly the amount of respect that they should. They awake at the break of dawn to complete their jobs.
Currently I am trying to decide how serious I am going to be in the future about my local eating habits. Since I will be relocating to Kansas City the farmers market will be right down the street from my apartment and I look forward to hopefully using that to my advantage. Being here in Manhattan sometimes makes it rather difficult to keep up, but hopefully my time in Kansas City will be very beneficial.
Overall, this project has brought out the best in my eating. It has changed my views on local eating and farmers in general. Farmers deserve the utmost respect and I have definitely gained that respect for them throughout this project. Hopefully the relationships that I have formed with some of these people can continue to blossom and grow and I can continue to learn more and more about local eating and their lives in general.
This week was particularly difficult for me. I had so much trouble not eating locally. I must admit, I broke down and got tacos from Taco Bell. I know, I know… I broke my own rules. Next week I will be better!
I keep on thinking about local eating and how I expect for it to influence my life. I really have enjoyed this way of life and respect people who eat this way so much. I also hope that this can be applied to other aspects of my life as well. Everyone has such cool ideas on how to better our environment and I hope to use them in my every day life.
I’m really struggling with this this week and every commercial I see on tv makes it more and more difficult to keep away from fast food restaurants and sit down joints. Hopefully I can keep on pushing until next week…
This week I decided to do something slightly strange, but otherwise still effective with my blog. My older sisters live on opposite sides of the United States. Kate lives in San Fransisco, and Leigh lives in Philadelphia. I decided that while I am eating locally, I wanted to see what they could do in their places of residence.
When I called Kate she seemed very eager to jump at the chance. With a hippie-ish attitude on life, she tries to eat mainly organically. With this project she got the chance to go to a local farmers market, rather than her local organic section of her neighborhood grocery store. She chose to go to Alemany’s Farmers Market. She learned from them that in California they have extremely strict rules on the quality of what is being produced. Daily they have members from the Department of Agriculture who go to this market and take inventory of the farmers produce. In California they have amazingly delicious fruits, which I desperately wish we had here in Kansas! Kate’s favorite finding was getting what she explained as “ungodly” zucchini!
Meanwhile, my sister Leigh had an assortment of different markets she could go to as she came across around 7 different ones located extremely close to her. She decided on the 12th street Farmer’s market. Leigh is extremely picky on how healthy everything she eats is, so this was very good for her to find more places she can get her health food. Although she is always skeptical when there isn’t nutritional facts on everything, she put true trust in these farmers and said she plans on returning.
I found this on YouTube and it shows the beauty that is in San Fransisco Farmer’s Markets. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJHn-fcn5vw
I found this important for me to do because it showed me the differences in foods you can find throughout our country. While California had amazing fruits, fish and blackberries, Philadelphia has beautiful pears and an amazing assortment of cheeses! Here in Kansas I feel as if we have a great mixture of everything! This next Saturday I plan on taking a trip to the Farmer’s Market we have here in town, with all 6 of my roommates! Hopefully we find some amazing stuff!!
This weekend was quite the experience. As it was a religious holiday for my family, I thought it would be a great time to take it upon myself to immerse my relatives in local foods. My mom and I decided to go very early Saturday morning to the farmer’s market. We made purchases of parsley (as it is called for in our Seder), eggs (to make them hardboiled), carrots (for our soup), and a few other necessities. We did the best we could to localize everything that we were eating. And while I couldn’t get matzah locally, the majority of our meal was all from local vendors. It was quite the experience for my entire family! They were very impressed!
Being a localitarian is quite a unique experience. I have discovered that it impacts the ways in which you look at your lifestyle. While it begins by making you take a look at the ways in which you eat, it ends up making you reflect on your overall lifestyle choices.
Local food consumption not only influences your personal choices in eating habits, it always influences my views on consumerism. In the short time that I have worked on this project I find myself doubting the truth of products. Especially in relation to foods it has been truly making me question the labor and processes of non local foods. I won’t lie, I still have cravings for lean cuisines and michelina’s frozen dinners! Even with those products though I am now looking at the process it had to go through in order for me to spend my 99 cents on one. Take for example a shrimp fettuccine. Not only do they need to create the pasta, but they need to get the shrimps and they need farmers to pick the broccoli. Then they need to get it packaged. Then it gets shipped. So much effort and time is involved for me to spend 99 cents. In my eyes that is worth a whole lot more than 99 cents. Which is exactly what I am learning from my discovery of local foods. I am contemplating these negative ways in which we impact our economy. As the weeks go on it gets easier and easier for me to embrace my new eating style. My next task, I’m not going to Kansas City for my groceries this week, I will be going to People’s Grocery and get local there!
Well, I agree with everyone, my going to Kansas City is a little nuts. Luckily for me, last week I was in KC anyways and April 19th I will be as well for my Jewish Holiday of Passover. So thankfully I won’t be going out of my way. I know it is a bit out of control and frustrating since our class is dedicated to helping out our environment and my driving is causing damage. Unfortunately I live in Kansas City and my family want me to be there.
This project has actually been quite a bit more difficult than I had initially thought. I am not used to eating in this manner and I keep craving other foods. I’m not going to lie, I have broken down. It is my birthday tomorrow and I went out for dinner tonight at Chili’s… I KNOW I AM SO SORRY! My mom sent me a gift card and told me I had to… you can’t say no to that! From now on though I will try my best to stick to my word and only eat local foods.
The farmers market in Kansas City last weekend was very different from what I had expected. I went into the experience thinking that the food choices would be extremely selective. Yet it wasn’t. They had EVERYTHING I could have imagined them having. I stuck mostly to fresh vegetables and breads- and I got a few eggs and chicken- and next time I think I will broaden my pickings. After class the other day I keep on having my doubts though. I am so terrified of being scammed and not truly getting fresh and pure foods grown locally. Perhaps I will need to simply put my trust into others and believe. I spoke with a lady at the market and she told me that in order to know whether or not you are getting truly local foods you must simply try to get a good vibe from the vendor.
Overall, I am really excited about how this is going so far and can’t wait to continue this further. Hopefully I will do better in the upcoming weeks, but as of now I think I’m off to a pretty good start!
Hi everyone! Well, as I start my first blog I am finding myself rather nervous and uneasy! I have decided to become a Localitarian. Basically, what this is is someone who’s food consumption all comes from local farmer’s markets/places of business that come from farms or gardens within a 200 mile radius to Manhattan, Kansas. At first I was extremely nervous as I thought immediately of Kansas City’s Farmer’s Market and wasn’t quite sure of the distance. Even though I am from Kansas City, I still wasn’t sure if the market was over 200 miles away. I have never been to a true Farmer’s Market before- in all honesty I have done the majority of my grocery shopping throughout my life at Wal-Mart and Target. As it turns out, it is 125 miles from Manhattan to the City Market at 5th and Walnut in Kansas City! As I was doing my research to decipher which market would be the right one for my personal needs and lifestyle I have decided that if I can make it to the Kansas City, City Market between 7am and 3:30 every Saturday then I most definitely can conquer this task. When I was looking at the website for the market the opening stated, “Since its inception in 1857, the City Market has been one of the largest and most enduring public farmers’ markets in the Midwest, linking growers and small businesses with the Kansas City community. In addition, over 30 full time merchants are open year round and offer specialty foods, fresh meats and seafood, restaurants and cafes, floral, home accessories and much more”. It seems almost too perfect to be true. I know already that this is going to be tremendously difficult for me to truly achieve as I adore going out to eat and going to fast food restaurants… but this is it! It’s time to break the habit! When I was relating this topic to our ecofeminism class it is very easy. In today’s class for example our entire conversation was based off of local food purchasing. One of our classmates even spoke of a place here in town, The People’s Grocery, which I also think would be a wonderful place for me to look into as well. Overall, I am extremely excited to get this process started and start kicking my bad habit of not eating proper foods and start giving back to my community by supporting our local farmers and local suppliers!
