Frugal vs. Natural

Since I just posted about green cleaning, I figured now was as good a time as any to vent write about green eating. Ideally, everything we ate would be locally and organically grown or raised. Unfortunately, we just don't have the grocery budget for that. So then the issue becomes, what do we compromise on? As I think I confessed earlier, I've dropped many of the organics I insisted on for Ethan's first year. He still gets ($6/gallon) organic milk, but his yogurt, meat, and some of his produce are conventional. I try to buy organic for the dirty dozen, at the very least, but sometimes the budget gets in the way yet again (especially since our local organic farm is having hard times due to the weather and a family emergency so all organics have to be bought at the store). And organic meat/cheese/eggs? There are not enough coupons in the world for us to afford that on a regular basis. It's frustrating because I would like to eat more responsibly, but do we dip into savings (or stop putting money into savings each month) in order to buy $6+/lb. organic chicken breasts when I can stock up on the conventional variety on sale for just $1.65/lb?

And eating organically isn't the only way I want to raise Ethan. I want him to be a locavore, too, supporting our small farmers and enjoying the fruits (and veggies and meats) of the land he lives on. We go to the farmer's market in our little town every Saturday morning, and I'm excited to start going to their new Wednesday afternoon one as well. There I stock up on kale, potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, zucchini, etc. All the veggies we need to get us through a week's worth of dinners. I also buy our local honey there, which we have been going through lately at an alarming rate. A couple of weeks ago, I even decided to purchase a few pork chops and some bacon for a dinner I'd been wanting to make for a while (but the grocery store pork chops didn't look good enough). The price tag for 2 dinners' + 1 breakfast's worth of meat? Over $20. $20 for the meat alone!!! And while that was some of the best bacon I've ever had, that's just not possible on a regular basis (which may be a good thing, in this case...)

So what's the answer? In a dream world, we'd have enough money to shop exclusively at Whole Foods and buy all our meat and produce at the farmer's market. In a slightly-less dream world, I could grow all our produce organically in our backyard and put that savings towards buying other organic/local goods. I would love to do this, but I lack both the know-how and the green thumb to make this a reality, I'm afraid. Our neighbor has started to grow a lot in an effort to reduce grocery costs, so she and my horticulturalist mother-in-law would be great resources, but, honestly, I'm intimidated. And it's that intimidation that has stopped me from starting a garden for three years now. ((Thanks to said mother-in-law, I do now have an amazing herb garden, which has already helped tremendously with produce costs since I use a LOT of herbs in cooking. I also tried to grow some spinach this year, but the deer ate it last week)).

Since I've missed out on planting a garden this year, I'm going to keep muddling through like we've been doing. I buy locally and organically where I can, and I try not to fret over the rest. I'm getting to know our local small farmers (my favorite new farm is a certified natural farm that I visited last week on the way home from sailing. She gave me the full tour and is just as friendly and helpful as can be!), and those relationships are as important for Ethan's culinary education as organic, locally-milled flour would be.