Buying Local

I wish I didn’t feel like I have to say this but I do so I will. This is NOT virtue signaling. I understand that there are less expensive ways/places to buy food, but compared to eating out, buying food directly from the producer and cooking/eating at home is still less expensive in most cases.

I love having a garden but I cannot grow all our veggies, nor can I grow veggies all year. I can preserve them from the garden in various ways but take potatoes for example – I can grow enough potatoes to get us through the year. I will can some, freeze dry some, make mashed potatoes, freeze dry those and put them in the blender to have “instant” mashed potatoes but in February, I may want a baked potato; or in December, I may want potato salad, then I will have to buy potatoes.

I can buy strawberries from the pick your own farm and freeze dry those and that’s good enough for me all year but sometimes Vince wants fresh strawberries. We pick blueberries and freeze those but they aren’t great for eating as a snack . . we end up buying quite a few blueberries during the year.

There are things I cannot grow and cannot buy from local farmers – artichokes come to mind. I’m sure there are other things.

I am not opposed to buy things we cannot provide for ourselves but I’m buying a whole lot less than I used to.

We buy our milk from a local dairy. We drive to their farm store and pick it up. There are at least three people within a couple of miles of me that sell eggs. In the summer, we buy peaches and I can those and freeze dry them. In about September, we’ll start buying apples from a farm just across the state line in Kansas. I will freeze dry those and can them in various ways.

Most all of the canned foods, as well as dry beans, now come from Azure Standard.

Vince goes to the store way more than I do. He drinks almond milk. He buys mangoes, grapes, cantaloupe. He still buys bread, even though I bake bread.

We had been buying a whole cow from a Mennonite farmer but a friend and her husband raise beef cattle so we will get our next one from them. Chad found a lady in Kansas who raises and sells some kind of heirloom pigs. We each bought one of those this year and have ordered another one.

We’ve been buying bacon and sausage from the grocery store but I was watching a video last week and a lady had made Italian Tomato Italian Sausage Soup. The lady in the video (this isn’t the exactly recipe she used but it’s the one I used and it’s good!) was saying how she gets her homemade Italian sausage from a local butcher shop and I was thinking . . I wish I had a place like that to go! Fast forward a couple of days and I saw a post on Facebook from a farmer not far from here who sells all kinds of pork products. He has his meat processed at a local butcher shop (same one I use) and he has them make his sausage products. The farmer sells on Facebook, delivers to various places, including my town. So I ordered some things to try:

I got two of each of these – Chorizo, Italian Sausage, Hot Breakfast Sauce and Summer Sausage with Cheese & Jalapenos. I will use the breakfast sausage as part of our breakfast in the morning. I have the Summer Sausage defrosting and we will have some of that as a snack tomorrow – maybe with crackers and hummus!

For the 8 one pound packages of sausage, I paid $43, including tax. That’s about $5.375 per pound. I can buy Jimmy Dean’s sausage for $4.62 /pound or an off brand for about $3.50/pound but Vince and I were talking about it and if we go out to breakfast at a sit down type place (not fast food), if we get sausage, eggs, hashbrowns and toast, it’s going to be at least $12 without tax, tip or drink. The same items to cook at home would be:

• Sausage – we will get at least 10 sausage patties from a one pound roll of sausage so that’s about .53 per sausage slice or $1.05 for the sausage because meals usually come with two slices.
• Eggs – One lady down the street sells her eggs for $3/dozen, which is .25/egg. The one I prefer to buy from sells hers for $5. She uses organic feed and I trust how she handles her eggs. That comes to about .43/egg. I’m guessing most restaurant eggs would be the .25/egg variety but I’m doing to split the difference and say about .35/egg so that’s .70 for two eggs.
• Bread – I don’t have a clue how much toast would cost for store bought bread so just to make it easy, I can buy a bag of frozen biscuits (Mary B’s) at Walmart for $5.20 and there are 20 biscuits in there so that makes them each .26 each.
• Hash Browns – I also don’t have a clue how to compare frozen hashbrowns but Walmart has a 26 oz. bag for $3.42. That’s .13/oz and I’m guessing each serving is 6 oz. Purely a guess! That would be .78 for a serving of frozen hashbrowns at home.

According to my calculations, a breakfast at home would cost less than $3 per person for the ingredients. Some are thinking there’s the time involved, the cost of cooking, etc. but there’s time involved to drive to the restaurant, wait for your food, drive home. Add in the cost of a tip and there doesn’t take much argument to convince me that eating at home is best. There are things I cannot make well at home or don’t enjoy making and there are times I just want to go out to eat. I don’t fry foods so if I want fried fish or fried chicken, we’re going out! There’s an Italian restaurant we like in Pittsburg, KS and we have to go there one day this coming week and we’ll eat there. I’m not 100% anti-eat out but there has to be a very good reason for us to do it.

I am 100% happy to have found the meat guy with the variety of sausages. I will talk to Chad and we may end up getting our next pig from him too.