Chris and I went to the farmer's market today. We almost didn't go because of the Rose Parade shenanigans, but I made my sad face. When we got down to PSU Chris was stressed out because he had so much to do today, but then we ate a breakfast burrito with bacon and everything was looking up.
We got some of our market faves: Ancient Heritage 'Adelle', a fresh soft cheese made from sheep's and cow's milk, and Old Irish flavor smoked salmon from The Smokery.
We also discovered some new favorites-tiny cookies from Two Tarts Bakery. These cookies were super small, about the size of a half-dollar, but packed full of flavor and richness. They didn't need to be much bigger. What a great antidote to the supersize giant cookie trend of the past decade.
Sure, the farmer's market is expensive, and it would be impractical to make it my main source of groceries, but I look at it more as a shopping excursion. I can get out all that pent-up consumer frustration without bringing home a pile of made-in-china crap, and at the end of the day it's not nearly as expensive as a trip to Anthropologie. All the money I spend will stay in the community.
One of the interesting things about sustainable food is that the prices have not risen as far or as fast as that of conventional food. The energy squeeze raises the price of chemical fertilizer, and makes it more expensive to truck food from far away. But not so much the organic summer squash from Sauvie Island. The rising cost of staple foods has caused the price of grain-fed meat and dairy products to skyrocket, but has had little effect on the price of grass-fed sheep's milk cheese like the kind we purchased. So even though, in all fairness, most of the food at the farmer's market qualifies as overpriced 'yuppie food', it's starting to look more reasonable every day as the conventional agricultural system begins to fail. If food and oil prices continue to rise, the folks at the farmer's market will become an integral part of the food supply chain.
No comments:
Post a Comment