Homegrown and local foods


Beef steak tomato
Originally uploaded by JeanC38.
Everyone by now has heard of the problem with fresh bagged spinach and e coli. Scary stuff I must say, if you can't trust the food in the grocery stores, what can you trust.

One thing a person can do is grow their own if they can, or start buying locally if it is available. More and more there are farmers markets and green grocers popping up. Some of the bigger cities have markets where you can buy fresh farm produce for a lot cheaper then what you'd buy in the big mega grocery stores.

I've been doing a bit of gardening for a few years now and I am finlly getting the hang of things. I actually have tomatos that not only survived, they have been turning red. I grew my own salad blend and spinach, along with some cabbage, bush beans and sugar snap peas. While I haven't grown enough I can put up a 6 month or even a year's worth, I have been enjoying the fruits of my labor and want more. So I am planning my next years garden now and even working on a fall/winter garden of fresh greens such as spinach, lettuce, boc choi and anything else that will grow in cold frames. WIth luck I should have fresh veg for Thanksgiving.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, there is a movement to have a 100 Mile Thanksgiving this year (in both the US and Canada for their respective Thanksgivings). It is being sponored by 100 Mile Diet a site the encourages people to buy their food from sources no more then a 100 miles radius from your home. I'm thinking this would be a great chance for me to actually start buying produce sold by our local green grocers and save back some of what I've grown to serve for Thanksgiving dinner.

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