LocavOregon

It’s November and pretty much every farmers market is now closed until late spring. These are the challenging months for locavores. I signed up for the late season subscription to my CSA and so I’m still getting lettuce, greens, squash, and some root vegetables. But I am wondering what I will do until May. I froze a lot of roasted tomatoes, but other than tomatoes I had no surplus to put away. I really regret that my CSA didn’t seem to produce carrots or potatoes in any quantity. I still look at those as great winter staples.

Since May, I have changed my cooking and shopping habits tremendously. We have eaten out only rarely for dinner. I felt the pressure to use those vegetables I got from the CSA, which drove me to cook different dishes. I supplemented them with more produce from the farmers markets. In the end, I only stopped at the grocery store or Costco for meat, bread and milk products.

My aim was always to explore being more of a locavore, rather than a strict locavore, and in that these past six months have been extremely successful. But there were many other virtues:

• Saved money on impulse buys at grocery stores
• Saved money on eating out.
• Saved space in the trash can as there were very few take-out containers.
• Ate a far wider variety of vegetables
• Found sources for grass-fed beef
• Learned or created many new recipes.

With the recession, by spending a big chunk of money for a CSA subscription, I probably saved 5 to 10 times that amount in reduced expenses for eating out and buying prepared foods in the grocery store. While it can be more expensive to buy local products, it promotes a lifestyle that saves big bucks over a typical American “I’ll pick something up on the way home” lifestyle.

I have already signed up for the 2009 CSA subscription.