Zero Waste Shop Winnipeg - glass swing top jar being held by my hand from the top and it’s full of whole yellow peas. Background light.

PFJ: Money & Food

Budget / money vs supporting local food systems / farmers. 

This one is a bit of a pickle for a lot of folks, especially with the idea that it also needs to be all certified organic. It all sounds rather 💸 

Remember you don’t have to do everything all at once. One thing I wish I could have told 4-5 years ago Marisa is start in the pantry not the fridge. I would have started with grains & pulses, and only bought local. 

Why? This was the biggest learning curve and still is, learning how to work with dry goods I never really had in my repertoire. Take for example this jar of yellow peas I am holding, basically a chickpea sub. 🤯

One of the biggest hurdle to local foods was untying myself from the globalization / colonization of food to instead looking at the shit you could probably find in a old recipe book’s margins. 

This also meant allowing my minimalism to permeate into my kitchen menus. Why does a fridge have a billion condiments? Can we shift our consumption of cow milk to oat? Do you actually like cheese Cody? Can I do closer to home beet sugar vs the fancier cane sugar? It’s not easy at all to ask yourself all the why’s but that basically what this entire thing is about, why? 

These local peas were a part of the @adagioacres winter grain CSA, however, you can pick up a lot of these grains and pulses in bulk or brown bags at @organic.planet.worker.coop. Start with one dry good and only buy what you need, not a whole damn giant bag or jar. 

The other major hurdle was the idea of giant grocery “hauls.” We all learned to grocery shop in big, to stock a giant fridge and have a large portion go to waste? This is different for every household and schedule but I do smaller weekly grocery shops for produce. Allows me less time in the grocery store, easier to carry on foot, less waste, and I only have to think my week ahead. 

This topic is large but I boiled it down a bit here to get to started. 

Marisa

with love

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