It's Not Easy Being Green

You would never believe how long it takes for me to do the weekly grocery shopping. Waaaaay too long. I have friends with 4 kids under 10 who do it in less time.

The reason for this slow torture is that for someone like me--someone trying to "think global and eat local"--every aisle is a veritable mine field of moral and personal dilemmas.

"Silk" or milk for my tea? Blam! Sure the milk is local, and doesn't contain hormones or antibiotics, but it isn't organic (I can get regional organic milk, but Rhode Island has their own local brand. One of their dairies is right up the road from my house, so I can see my milk being made). And the "Silk" is made from soy products, doesn't cancel the antioxidant effects of my fair trade, organic tea (obviously not local), and asks nothing from Mama Moo. But sometimes the soy milk is made from genetically modified Frankenbeans grown, undoubtedly, on some huge corporate farm receiving heavy subsidies while squeezing my local, small, family farmer out of existence. Whimper...

Then--blam!--I am in the mine-laden produce section. Most days my family eats vegetarian (one night a week is "meat night" if we can get locally produced, grass-fed, grass-finished beef from a local farmer we met, but sometimes he is out of stock.) so I really depend on veggies and fruits in our diet. But we live in a place where the growing season is pretty short, the average last frost date is May 1st, and the last farmer's market is usually at the end of October. During the summer months we live in Fresh Food Nirvana, but after that nearly everything is imported and all I can see when I look at the "grown in California," and "grown in Guatemala" stickers on the produce is petroleum dollar signs. So what shall it be? "5 a day" or 5 days away? And unless I move to Mexico, Hawaii, or another tropical port of call, a pineapple or banana will never be local. Then there is the beauty contest. Organic and heirloom variety fruits and vegetables don't always travel well in refrigerated trucks, so while I stand at our grocery's small organic section which is only half filled with wimpy, sickly-looking choices, I find myself looking, longingly, at the woman over by the non-organic, out-of-season, gorgeous bell peppers and think how easy it would be to just step softly over next to her, and smile, as I filled my bags with those bright reds and greens and yellows. Sometimes I start to and then--blam! Aren't consciences a drag? Sigh...

I go ten rounds in my head over packaging, too. Anything packaged in plastic (read: nearly everything) gets serious thought from me because our local recycle center only allows us to recycle plastic #'s 1 and 2, which isn't very much (we have lived in places that take #'s 1-5 and I can hear a choir of angels in my head when I think of those places). So, do I buy the pre-washed salad greens in the non-recyclable plastic bag, or in the non-recyclable plastic box? Blam! Well, I can re-use the box, which is great, and I do, but one can only save so many for future use before having to add a wing onto the house (not sure my landlord would approve). Don't buy the pre-washed salad you say? True, but let's face it--sometimes even "greenies" need to be able to dump greens in a bowl and call it a day. And even if I buy the do-it-yourself lettuce brought home in a re-usable market bag, I'll have the same dilemma with a different product in the next 13 aisles...

(Cue scary Jaws-like music here) If I ever invite you to go grocery shopping with me--run!