How Far Did Your Food Travel-- Winter Edition

This is my second winter in Maine... snow has lost all novelty, I've completely wiped out coming out of my office TWICE (this winter), and I hear there's a brutal cold front coming in. Winter, which I used to think consisted of December and January, is losing its appeal. Or, has lost its appeal. Its' only saving grace is that winter is citrus season, and I love blood oranges. Cara cara oranges are a distant second, and anything in the tangerine/tangelo family is up there too.

Anyways, MSNBC has this slideshow of which foods travel the farthest in winter. Basically it's a list of non-winter produce grown in South America and Asia so that the rest of the world does not have to deal with seasonality in their diets. The slideshow only deals with traveling distance and not growing conditions, and as someone who bought strawberries earlier this week, I have to wonder about the energy used to grow stuff within the US but in greenhouses. Like the Backyard Beauty tomatoes that are ubiquitous in New England year-round and are indoor-grown in Maine. What's the carbon footprint of THAT?

How Did We Do?

On the major elements:

(1) Not shopping: great, until mid-December. The only notable purchases before December were 2 shower curtains (for a clawfoot tub) and a portable dishwasher ($125 from Craigslist), both when we moved into the new apartment. Oh, and 2 Halloween costumes purchased from Goodwill (and returned to the Goodwill bin, so the money spent was pretty much a donation, I think).

(2) Buying US-grown groceries or organic: okay. The organic exception was supposed to be for coffea/tea but I ended up using it more than I expected, which really adds to your grocery bill. But it takes about 5 seconds to look for an organic label, it takes about a minute to see if something is actually US-grown. Except for produce, usually the answer is unclear anyways. This was by far the suckiest part of the experiment. I thought we'd get into a groove of what we could/could not eat but even at the end I was still constantly checking labels.

(3) Not driving less than 2 miles: pretty good. Only major exceptions were late at night when I didn't feel safe walking home and maybe a couple of times last winter when the sidewalks were like skating rinks.

(4) Eating out at restaurants: limit was one breakfast or lunch and one dinner out per week. This rule didn't apply to Elliott, but even so I think we did pretty well. This is definitely one cost I think we should cut down on in the following year. The thing is, when you limit going out to eat, you feel entitled to spend more than you normally would. So you don't feel so guilty about ordering that extra drink or appetizer, or dessert, even if you normally wouldn't. Plus if you're not eating at a big chain restaurant, you tell yourself you're helping the local economy!

I'd say most dinners cost us around $30-40 total and breakfast probably around $20-25. So per year, a low estimate is $2,600; a high estimate is $3,380. That's a lot of money.

Mall!.. and other shopping...

To sum up the last 2 weeks in December:

I bought Elliott's x-mas present: 1 stainless steel water bottle ($13) and a pair of house slippers ($24). Elliott went the more eco-friendly, non-consumerist route and got me tickets to Diavolo at Merrill Auditorium.



I bought $78 worth of stuff at Swimoutlet.com-- 2 swimsuits, 1 pair of swim trunks for Elliott, a swim cap, and goggles. Actually, it was $58 because I returned one of the swimsuits.

We bought a 12-piece Pyrex storage set and 4-cup measuring cup at Bed, Bath, and Beyond ($32 minus $10 coupon minus $5 rebate = $17) and threw out a lot of the plastic ware. I'm really bad about re-using takeout containers; I can't bear to throw them out or recycle them. So this is a step in the right direction of not giving ourselves cancer.

Anntaylorloft.com had this buy one get one free sale (I get their promo emails to my hotmail account-- big mistake!). They also had this navy blue trench coat I've been eyeing ever since Meredith wore one on this episode of Grey's Anatomy waaaaay back. So I got one in navy blue and my sister got one in khaki for a total of $140.



The day after Christmas we had to kill some time while in Ellsworth so we stopped by the LL Bean Outlet there and bought: 1 sweater for Elliott ($20), 2 sweaters for me ($12 and $15), Bean bag ($7), and a Stonewall Kitchen gift basket (for us; $12).

And the one trip that occurred January 1 (no rulebreaking!): I got this $50 gift card to the mall from work. I'm very proud to say even though I've lived in Portland for over 1.5 years, this was my first time actually in the mall (okay, one time I went into Linens 'n Things to buy one item and one time we went to Macy's because Elliott had a gift card, but both times were before this experiment and we didn't actually venture into the mall part). Anyways, it reminded me why I don't shop at malls. Eighty percent of the people were middle and high schoolers killing time and the other 20% are people walking slower than molasses in January... in Maine... northern Maine. We spent what seemed like forever there but at the end of the day I had an additional two pairs of office-appropriate pants plus a sweater ($40 + $14 + $25 - $50 gift card = $29). Elliott got 2 pairs of pants for $25 (total!), which were put on a gift card. I never thought going shopping at a mall would ever be an "event" in my life but... here we are. Oh, and the car wouldn't start when we were trying to leave the mall; I can't figure out if this was the mall gods trying beckon us back in or the anti-mall gods punishing us. Thankfully a good samaritan gave us a jump.