Suddenly Frugal Blog

Yesterday, my mother and I went to the supermarket to pick up supplies for Christmas dinner. As usual I grabbed my reusable shopping bags, and off we went. We had many predictable items on the list–salad basics, dessert ideas and milk–so I expected it would be an easy, in-and-out shopping experience. Boy, was I wrong.

Besides the throngs of last-minute Christmas shoppers, what also slowed us down was my newly focused green lens. That is, as I stood in the produce department, searching out the origins of the fruits and vegetables I wanted to select, I couldn’t help but get depressed. Why was it that the lion’s share of items I wanted to buy were from far, far away?

Well, of course I know the answer: Americans have become so used to having in-season fruits and vegetables, even when they are technically out of season, that groceries now ship these products in from all over the country. No wonder the tomatoes, lettuce and tangerines I was considering were from Mexico.

Sure, the apples were from Washington (at least that’s in the United States), but Washington state is a good 2,000+ miles from my home. Studies have shown that, on average, food travels 1,500 miles to your local grocery store, so imagine how much fossil fuel was used in its transport? If we’re all working to live a more green life, then this concept of locavore (which I sort of teased in a previous blog posting) really does make sense.

Back in the produce aisle, I was getting more and more depressed. What was I going to get for dinner?

I ended up picking up some organic greens, under the Giant generic brand Nature’s Promise. The only geographic information I could find on the package was Maryland, which isn’t too far from where I live. I suspect, though, that my organic greens did, in fact, come from some place much warmer than Maryland in December, but I couldn’t tell. And I did end up getting some honey crisp apples from Washington, because I figured they were better than the gala apples from New Zealand. But in the end, I picked up a red pepper grown in Mexico, held my breath and placed it in my shopping cart without looking. I’ll use it in tomorrow’s Christmas meal but I’m not sure how good I’m going to feel about it.

I feel like I’ve just broken some sort of green karma but, as my mother (who was growing increasingly frustrated with my militant produce shopping ways) said, “It’s commendable that you want to be green, but you’ve also got to be reasonable.”

Note to self: do more research on locally grown and available produce throughout the year, and get busy on that root cellar you want to build in the basement so that you can stockpile fresh fruit and vegetables when they are in season.