When I lived in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, I used the public transit system, like I do now in Roanoke. The systems are similar: there’s a central hub that all lines pass through, with one bus an hour on most routes. Limited evening service, though Roanoke’s is easier to negotiate than Bethlehem’s, which was really abysmal. In Bethlehem, if you were out past 5:30 or 6:00 p.m., you just might not get home at all. Here, you can fiddle around till at least seven.

That type of bus system is designed to meet the basic needs of the poor and disabled, I suspect, and doesn’t aim to attract mainstream passengers, but I’ll save that for another post or another blog entirely. The point is, this kind of transit is a real time-eater. So, largely because I could get there easily, I wound up shopping regularly at a store (part of a local chain called Valley Farm Market) that carried no organic produce at all. Not even carrots. But they had a wonderful selection of conventional fruits and vegetables, three to five times as much as any of the big chains, and a decent amount of it was local. It was also cheap, and that was important.

Once I decided to shop there, I put a good bit of effort into trying to figure out how to make the lightest food footprint I could within the limits of conventional agriculture. Tonight I was reminded of all that research when I read “Cooking up a Storm,” an online publication from the UK’s FCRN (Food Climate Research Network). This group has used life cycle assessment to critique the British diet and make recommendations for lowering the greenhouse gas emissions attributable to food. Reducing meat and dairy consumption, heavily processed empty calories, and alcoholic beverages are three of the biggest steps. Just switching to a plant-centered, seasonal diet is a huge change for most people.

So I forgive myself for deciding to buy two hot peppers and a lemon at the Kroger that it was easy to get to rather than my other choices: taking another hour to get to the natural foods market over in the hip part of town, or walking a couple of no-sidewalk miles to the fancy new Kroger with the big organic department. This weekend, when I get ready to cook for other people again, I’ll make the big trip and get the organic canned tomatoes and bag of onions for my chili. But I want to remind myself from time to time not to turn into some kind of dietary control freak.

There were other choices to make on the same trip. I’ve never gotten very sophisticated about apples, and Golden Delicious remains my favorite for eating out of hand. So when I saw a five-pound bag of beautiful, flawless, local, medium-sized fruit for sale at the farmer’s market for $3.00 I almost bought them. I wanted to hear the woman at the stand tell me that they were low-spray. So I asked her if she got tired of hearing people ask about chemicals and all that. She admitted that she did. The apples wouldn’t be beautiful if they didn’t spray, she said, and because they lived in a wet area they needed fungicides, too. So I bought three apples rather than the bargain bagful, partly because I still wanted them and partly to be neighborly. I didn’t tell her I had paid twice as much per pound for a half-bushel of heavily spotted, tart baking apples, some of which were on the wrinkled side. The Environmental Working Group puts apples at number 2 (right behind peaches) on the list of produce with the most pesticide residue. (I usually check their web site to make sure I don’t buy conventional produce from the “dirty dozen” at the top of the list.)

At Big Lots, I bought four big cans of my friend Lou’s favorite crushed tomatoes, on sale, for him. The label says they’re “all natural,” meaning nothing. A little gift. For me, a big jar of ground cumin for a dollar and a sixty-cent Honest Tea, both in plastic bottles. Last time, I bought organic cumin, but right now I feel kind of poor. Is there a logic to paying $10 a gallon for local milk straight out of the cow, eight bucks for sorghum, and a dollar for discount herbs? Maybe there is, and maybe it’s just a seat-of-the-pants choice that will come out different next time. I don’t know how cumin is grown, or where. I might want to read about it. That’s my job.

My friend from Botetourt, who brings me three gallons of wonderful milk from Coco the Cow each week, sent along a quart jar of local sorghum this time. It cost eight bucks and came from Buchanan County, about 30 miles from here. I put it in my oats-and-yogurt and my coffee today, and liked it fine. I think I may try making cookies with it also — the Raspberry Tahini ones.

Our chickens, who were born the first week of June, have been laying since about November 13th, but I already had a couple dozen eggs in the refrigerator and just tonight tasted our own. I cooked them up with onions, garlic, olive oil, and butter, and had some butter-fried apples and yogurt as a chaser. Good. Very good. Since my plan is to eat from the Peasant Fare menu, I guess I’ll have to figure out how to serve up little frittatas or no-crust quiches.

The only thing I’m eating these days that won’t be on the menu is an occasional can of salmon. Some time back I found canned wild Alaskan salmon at Costco and asked my sister to get me some more, but wound up with Atlantic salmon instead. Farm-raised, so not the same thing. But I’ll finish it, and share the juice with Zio Gato, my no-longer-kitten.

There are a couple of good reasons for my keeping the Peasant Fare dishes simple. One is, if I don’t keep my time in the kitchen within a reasonable range, my prices will get out of hand. Why is that so hard? Mainly, I think, it’s because I’m offering six different items. It’s a lot easier to give somebody a quart of chili rather than a pint of chili and a pint of lentils. But there’s a principle behind that choice, and it’s one my mother (a dietitian) never let me forget: Eat a variety of foods. I want the Peasant Fare to exemplify a healthy diet, so variety has to be a part of it.

A second reason has to do with the Peasant Fare’s educational mission. A lot of people don’t know what to do with vegetables. I want anyone with any experience at all in the kitchen to be able to figure out what I’ve done and recreate the dish (improvising at will, of course). If you’re going to cook most of your own meals, then most of what you cook has to be simply prepared. If you want to know how I cooked something, anything, just ask. Happy to share.

Below is a variation of the text that I used for a flyer at the Green Living and Energy Expo last weekend. After that, I analyze this week’s Peasant Fare. Just goes to show, it really takes a lot of effort and planning to eat Green. I hardly ever think about anything else, and only managed to get 85% organic and 46% local. Still, it *is* November. Wonder what the numbers will be in late January?

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By following these guidelines, you can reduce food-related greenhouse gas emissions by 90%!

Your groceries should be 70% Local and Organic, 25% Whole and Unprocessed Bulk Foods, and 5% Conventional and Processed Foods

70% Local and Organic:

See our list of local suppliers for local sources of sustainably produced vegetables, grains, meat, eggs, and dairy products. This category includes food you grow yourself (at home or in a community garden), food you purchase from local farmers at the Farmer’s Market, or anything produced within about one hundred miles of home. The grower doesn’t have to be “certified organic,” but should be organic in practice, because chemical fertilizers are major greenhouse gas contributors! This should average out to 70% of your diet, year round.

25% Whole and Unprocessed Organic Foods (bought in bulk with minimal packaging) This category includes whole, unprocessed beans, grains, and things like fair trade and sustainably grown tea, coffee, and spices. Americans spend very little on these things (except coffee) because for most people whole grains and beans don’t constitute a large portion of the diet. But these are nutritious and inexpensive, and it takes comparatively little energy to produce and transport them. Purchased in bulk, with minimal packaging, such non-local items could make up as much as 25% of your diet.

5% Conventional and Processed Foods — This is the category that currently makes up more than 50% of most people’s diets and is the source of most food-related greenhouse gas emissions. Conventional, feed-lot beef is the worst offender by far, but out-of-season fruits and vegetables transported long distances, anything transported by airplane, and processed foods like chips and soda, fall into this category as well. Keep these items to a minimum.

Following these guidelines, if you purchased twenty food items in a week, you’d buy fourteen locally produced items, five whole and unprocessed bulk foods, and one conventional, processed or out-of-season product—this would reduce the environmental impact of your diet by as much as 90%! It can be done! See our list of local suppliers to get started on greening your diet.

Sources of a sample November Peasant Fare menu:

Oven-roasted Jersey sweet potatoes with apples and grass-fed, local butter

White beans with onions, garlic and peppers.

Spicy black bean spread

Fresh garden greens

OR tender cooked chard with onions, garlic

Bread, Yogurt and Peanut butter/chocolate chip Cookies

Ingredients from Citygrown gardens:

dried beans, salad greens, sweet potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, chard

Ingredients purchased directly from other local growers:

apples, milk, butter, eggs, flour, wheatberries

Ingredients from Frankferd Farms (our organic and bulk supplier in Pennsylvania):

dried beans, maple syrup, flour, yeast, sunflower seeds, rice, baking powder, olive oil, sesame oil

Ingredients bought retail (Roanoke Natural Foods Co-op or Kroger organic department):

onions, garlic, cornmeal, peanut butter, chocolate chips

12 items local and organic

9 bulk items, all but three (olive oil, baking powder, maple syrup) organic

5 retail items, all but one (garlic) organic

four of 26 items not organic = 15.4% (84.6% organic)

twelve of 26 items local organic = 46%

six of 26 items bulk organic = 23%

four items organic retail = 15.4%

three bulk items, conventional = 11.6%

one of 26 items totally conventional (not bulk, not local, not organic, from the grocery store) = 4%

I like that last number, but would like to get the local content higher.