Diet
Produce
Homegrown: My garden is getting there. It is beginning to produce, but nothing edible yet. Unfortunately, as it begins to be productive, I will be moving to my parents' house. I haven't figured out yet if I can transplant anything. I will start a new garden (with a much clearer focus) as soon as possible after the move. For now, the farmer's market is where it is at.
Vegetables: Whatever is at the farmer's market is what I eat. I've tried a few things I'd never had before with really good results. Jicama, beets, daikon radishes and sweet potatoes (I had never had sweet potatoes!) have all been successfully incorporated. In fact, I've started eating sweet potatoes every day. They are really incredibly nutritious (high fiber, vitamins C and A and potassium).
Fruits: Fruit is harder. The fruits that I find currently at my local farmer's market are restricted, basically, to strawberries and oranges. I eat each of these every day, but fruits are such wonderful packages of fiber, carbs and vitamins, I'd really like more variety. So I supplement organic apples and bananas from Whole Foods. I would like to start a banana grove at my parents' house. I will be moving back there in about one month. The way I figure it, if I eat one (sometimes two) every day, my father eats one as well as he is apt to do, and my mother and brother each eat a couple every week, we are up to nearly twenty bananas a week! Clearly we could eat enough bananas to justify a tree or two, which I believe I can purchase (and get advice on) from the Crowley Nursery here is Sarasota (http://crowleynursery.net/). As far as apples, I suppose they are actually doing less for me, nutritionally, than an orange. I will have to find a more sustainably acquired fruit for variety. I have also been enjoying dried fruits I buy from a local company at my farmer's market. The man at the booth was not particularly knowledgeable about where the fruit comes from or where it is dried, so more research is necessary.
Protein
I've been getting enough protein through eating beans, nuts, milk products and eggs. When I move home I will be joining a local food buying club that enables me to get farm fresh, pastured eggs and milk once a month. Because milk goes bad rather quickly, I will attempt overbuying and then freezing. However, if this does not work, the closest health food store (less than a mile) from my parents' house sells milk from a local farm. I've also been eating protein muffins that I've made at home. The original recipe is here, my subsitutions are here. These muffins have 17g of protein and 3g of fiber. They are also high in calcium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium and vitamin C (and offer 11% of my daily iron needs. Iron is my most difficult nutrient to sustain, at the moment). I have been experimenting with different types of beans, and I have found lentils to be a really nutritious option as they are high in fiber, iron and protein. Red beans are also on my menu a lot for the same reasons.
A note on dairy: Eggs I have covered. Milk I've got covered. I began making my own yogurt using a machine. This has turned out really beautifully.
Challenges
The only things left in my diet that are processed are: bread, cottage cheese and dried fruit. There are also some ingredients in my muffins (dried milk, soy flour, apple sauce) that I would like to address. I will, until I am inspired to bake it, forgo eating bread. It isn't adding anything to my nutrition that I can't get elsewhere, but a piece of toast is a nice fiber-y addition to a vegetable laden frittata. Cottage cheese I don't feel like I can give up on because I love it and it is so good for protein and calcium. It is not that hard to make, but it will have to wait a few weeks for me to get the time to experiment with it. Again, dried fruit (not to mention dried milk) will just have to wait a few weeks. After I get my tax return, I plan on buying a food dehydrator and (perhaps) a mill for grains. I think with these two pieces of equipment I can buy all of my food in whole, fresh form.
What about the lentils and the red beans?? For now I am buying them dried and in bulk. I am not aware of any better way to obtain these products at this time. It is my last priority, and it may turn out that I will have to replace these things in my diet.
Philosophy
Why am I doing this? What is the big deal with opting out? I am trying to figure this out, myself. Right now, I can see other people's reasons for living similar lifestyles, and I can share my opinions on these possible reasons:
health- It is natural to assume that eating fresher foods will result in more nutrients and less unnatural chemicals entering the body. People who eat fresh foods will, from what I've read (press me for a citation, please, and inspire me to prove this), live longer, higher quality lives with a much lower risk for heart disease and cancer. Fantastic. I want that. However, I don't know why I want that. What does it matter if I am basically healthy or super healthy? Will it make me happier? Do I want to live longer? This is my intense anti-spiritualist atheism at work here. If I am just going to die anyway, who cares? I would like not to suffer while I am alive, though, and it seems like my risk for avoidable suffering greatly decreases with a mindful, simple, fresh diet. This isn't what I think about when I choose what I eat, though. There is something else that drives my obsession. When I turn down iced tea that came from a soda gun instead of a tea bag, it isn't because I want to avoid heart disease. Then what is it?
the man- Some people who opt out want to avoid the man. The giant food industry (including the industrial organic) is a weird, sociopathic system aimed at making money and not at providing a product that increases the health of the individual, society or the natural world. It is totally creepy. I think this is more where I stand, because when I think about where my food really comes from it totally freaks me out. I refer sometimes to the hands that touch my food, but these are not physical hands, most of the hands I mean are actually machines. I mean the metaphorical hands. The journey a french fry takes from a potato somewhere across the country that is shipped and chopped and injected with chemicals (which could have come from anywhere, geographically) and seasoned and frozen and shipped again to a supplier, and then probably a third time to a grocery store or restaraunt where it is plunged into oil that has been chemicaled and seasoned and any variety of other things before the french fry is dusted one more time with whatever is in "seasoning" and finally consumed. It is insane. I don't want any part of it. This still begs the question: why not? Why do I care? How does it affect me personally day to day if I eat the damned Frankenfry or not? I DON'T KNOW!
I don't know if I'll ever know.
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