My goal this year: Healthify and localize my family

One of the first things that I say to Pat when he gets home from work these days is: "I saw on Oprah today about..." So I watch a lot day time TV now. haha!
So, I saw on Oprah the other day about Food Inc., the documentary that came out in 2009. We finally saw it streaming on Netflix last night and I was unable to sleep after that. It's about the food industry and how the animals are raised and treated to give us meat. It also talks about what's actually in our food, and also about seeds. I've read some about these topics before: Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver. But books are books; whatever images come out from them are what I make up based on words - and the images that I come up with are kinda vague at best. But this documentary had a lot of very sad and graphic images that was too real. It made me feel really disgusted about the food that we eat, mainly meats and vegetables. So last night, I decided to make a few change:

1. Starting this year, my family is going to be part of the Community Supported Agriculture at a nearby Honey Brook Organic Farm. It's quite simple. We just pay the farmer a determined amount and every week for 20 weeks of the growing season here in NJ, we get a supply of fresh organic fruits and vegetables from the farm. This farm is 7 miles from where we live so instead of driving to the market, we would just drive to the farm to pick up the box of veggies and at the same time, pick some additional items straight from the land. How wonderful, amazing, and local. It comes out to be about $25 a week which is probably about what I would spend for produce in a given week.

2. Farmers' Market is starting again in Lawrenceville in May. We can walk to the farmer's market from our house. There, they have fresh locally raised chicken from a farm just outside of Princeton - Griggstown Quail Farm. I can get our weekly supply of chicken there. From what I remember, a whole chicken there is about $15, which is way more than what I usually pay. I've gotten a whole chicken for about $4 at the grocery store. But maybe that's the price of a real chicken raised outside on grass and bugs.

3. There's another farm about 2 miles from our house - Cherry Grove Farm (on the way to Pat's work), where they sell beef and pork raised on that farm. We often see cows hanging out near the fence, chilling or eating grass. I guess those happy cows become the beef that they sell. I've actually never been on that farm but I think I will go soon. They also have farm eggs and they also make their own cheese. Yum.

4. We will continue to buy our apples and apple cider and other fruits from Terhune Orchard, just 5 minutes away.

5. We will continue to buy our milk from the Halo Farm, a micro-dairy in Lawrenceville. Their milk is only $1.19 a 1/2 gallon. It's local without antibiotics and hormones. They also make amazing ice cream with lots of flavors for less than $2 a pint. And really really good.

So even though we miss living in California cities, these are the advantages of living in Central NJ. We are surrounded by farms and if we try, we could eat very locally for half of the year. I will keep posting my progress.

I am very optimistic about this!
But I will not give up packaged junk food and sweets that I love so much.
And I will not give up Trader Joe's that just opened in Princeton!!!
I tried to go whole wheat on Pasta but that didn't go so well.
I tried to go brown rice but that didn't go so well at all.