Sourcing Local Foods

 Once again, I feel the need to say "this is not virtual signaling!"

While I'm not opposed to buying most of our groceries from the grocery store, my preference is to buy as much as we can locally. While I'm thankful for the groceries stores we have here, I wish we had something like HEB (we'll never have that in MO) or Kroger or one of the big stores like they have in Kansas City . . but we don't.

Vince and I were talking the other day and I can't even remember the last time I was in Walmart. It's probably been two or three months. I was in Aldi a couple of weeks ago because I wanted the Dachshund slippers. I don't go to the store often. Sunday I did place a Walmart order to be delivered but there was no food on the list. It was jars and cleaning supplies.

As far as groceries, I do buy most everything except fresh produce and fruit from Azure Standard and we get that delivery once a month. I think Tuesday is our last day to add to our Azure list for this month. I don't order from them November - February because we never know what day our delivery will be and since we have to drive to the other side of Carthage to meet the truck, based on our October delivery date being the week of October 26, I'm betting the delivery will be a day or so before Thanksgiving and closer to Christmas than I'll want to deal with. Then, the weather can be a problem in January and February so I feel like I need to have more on my Azure order this month but I can't think of anything else we're close to needed to refill. Here's the total of my order as of this morning.

Baking soda, cornstarch, cream of tartar (I make my own baking powder) are pretty normal things. I love, LOVE the Sierra Nevada Jalapeno Jack Raw cheese. I get 5 pounds of that almost every time I order. I may end up changing that to 10 pounds because 5 pounds is NOT going to last until I order again. OK . . I went back and changed it.  I use palm fruit shortening for baking - especially pie crusts and biscuits. The 4 pound container is $4.08 per pound where they have a 33 pound container that is $2.09 per pound but that one comes in a bag where the smaller one comes in a tub. The contents of the bat would have to be transferred to a 5 gallon bucket and something else because it's too much to fit in one 5 gallon bucket. The price per pound keeps making me want to get the 33 pounds but we only use two of the 4 pound containers per year so really, I need to stick with the 4 pound container. Vince likes sunflower seed butter and I've been buying the 5 pounds container of roasted seeds but you can see that's $21.40 where the raw ones are $14.37. I'm going to try roasting them at home and see if he's ok with that.

Yesterday morning I started to cook breakfast and realized everything we were having had come from someone local.

The greens (Tatsoi and purple leaf bok choy) came from our garden. The sausage came from a young man who has all kinds of pork for sale. He lives north of Carthage but his mom lives near me so when I'm getting low, I will place an order with him, he will get it to her and she and I will get together so I can get my order. The pears came from the orchard about 40 miles from here in Kansas and the eggs came from maybe 2 miles down the road. I wish they had come from my own chickens . . but I don't have chickens and Vince says NO!! Of course, I made the bread.

It was supposed to be a spinach frittata but I had the other greens in the garden so that's what we used. And, we had strawberry jam made by a neighbor who grows her own strawberries!

I wish every meal we ate came from local sources but, that's pretty unlikely.