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.