My latest obsession: buying local, eating local, growing my own, supporting local businesses rather than the mega-market giants. It will take some deliberate planning on my part (I am nothing if not a champion planner – the carry through? iffy 
). It will mean doing my grocery shopping in one place and my non-grocery shopping in another (right now, a mega-market, but will be on a much reduced level). I have found a few local food producers and plan to start buying more from the food cooperative and local farmers markets. But I will only buy from vendors that actually grow their food and not just truck it in. I will also be listing my finds. So here goes:
03-03-2011: I continue to buy monthly from the Oklahoma Food Cooperative which supports farmers and growers throughout the state. I’ll try to do better about updating this page – yeah, right.
04-11-2010: Haven’t been keeping up with this page very well, have I? Sorry. I’ve been continuing to buy from the Food Co-op every month. They will be opening a 3rd pickup site in my town and I”ve volunteered to manage it. I can’t wait! Farmers’ Market opens on the 17th! The summer Saturday ritual begins again. I love this time of year.
08-04-2009: Found a new very small market across the street from my office! Every Tuesday 3-6. Purchased okra, cantalope, peaches, granola. Yummy fried okra for dinner and granola for a snack today. Good stuff.
7-20-2009: Behind in my la vida local postings, but have been purchasing from the local farmers market the last few weeks such goodies as fresh strawberries, okra and more okra! Peaches that were heavenly in a cobbler, a yummy sugar free date loaf and this week a not so yummy sugar free batch of apple oat mini muffins. They had kind of a funky aftertaste. Its funny that the vendor, who sells several producer’s products at his booth, actually tried to talk me out of them by saying he really preferred the date loaf. Guess he tried the apple oat muffins and didn’t like them either! Let’s see – free range eggs and a wonderful chocolate Italian ice from the guy who mixes his own flavors.
5-28-2009 First visit to the new location for the OSU-OKC farmers market mid-week offering. Purchased salsa, breakfast bread chock full of dates, raisins and walnuts (will make a good local food offering for the next Buy Fresh Buy Local meeting), shortbread cookies (yum!) and an orange mint plant – should be interesting in tea. Woohoo!
5-21-2009 Monthly Food Co-op order: 3 lbs. ground buffalo, 4 dozen eggs, and get this! A handmade cobweb broom made by a 10 year old boy from a farm family! How cool is that!
5-9-2009 Farmers Market strawberries (expensive, tasty, but got kinda mushy pretty fast), artisan pretzel (yum!) and free range eggs.
4-25-2009 Purchased six tomato plants from locally owned Farmer’s Grain. Very nice folks. They have monthly gardening classes.
4-21-2009 Made my first trip to this season’s farmers market. Bought strawberries, open range eggs and very yummy bread. The artisan break maker is new to the market this year. He says he traveled to Germany to train in bread making. His breads all have German names and he uses no sweetner in his whole grain breads. Great! I have gotten accustomed to eating unsweetened breads and when I break down and buy a loaf of “whole wheat” at the store, the sweetness is startling. Even the “sugar free” variety is sweet. Still making my own yogurt and loving it. Its so good made with organic milk that it needs no sweetner of any kind. Just mix in granola and enjoy. Making granola all the time now. Ordered a great bread pan from Lehman’s. Can’t wait for it to arrive.
3-19-2009 Found a local source for cheese making supplies: rennet, cultures, etc. Same place I found the yogurt maker (which I finally figured out how to use BTW). The supplies themselves are not manufactured locally, but I will be supporting a local business instead of sending my money off somewhere else via the internet. That’s a good thing.
3-14-09 Eggs again; the lettuce is coming up in the garden!
3-2-09 Recent purchases directly from local food producer or locally owned store:
egg from local producer
bread from local baker (will soon be baking my own)
lettuce from a local grower (will soon plant my own)
have placed March order with Food Cooperative (buffalo, eggs, lettuce, to-die-for dip, 25 lbs wheat berries, whole wheat tortillas)
yogurt maker from locally owned health food store
