One of the best ways to save money on produce and eat well is to grow your own garden. I find so much satisfaction with picking my own vegetables, knowing that they are fresh. As much as I like shopping at the farmers’ market, which I will always do for things that I can’t grow and don’t plan to, I find it so much more convenient to “have that market” in my backyard. Every year I grow salad greens, spinach, cucumbers, snow peas, green beans, tomatoes and squash. We’ll be lucky if we get tomatoes this year in Seattle with the extended cool weather. I’m hoping for a late summer so I can enjoy fresh tomatoes that are not from Sacramento.

I recently read the book “Plenty” which was about a couple living in Vancouver, BC who followed the 100-mile diet for a full year. They only ate foods that were grown within a 100 mile radius of where they lived. I give them loads of credit for all the effort they put into finding locally grown foods, canning and preserving for the lean times, and experimenting with unfamiliar foods. It’s not something I think I could do due to the time required to search for these things and the inconveniences of searching them out. But I wonder if there will be a time in the near future in which gas prices become so high that we can’t expect to get our food from all the corners of the world. Maybe we would be healthier to invest time in the preparation of local foods and lowering our expectations for certain foods to be available year round. For now, I’m happy to harvest from my garden and shop at the farmers’ market with the occasional trip to Trader Joes for special foods. I plan to learn and explore how the 100-mile diet would work in Seattle.

I was talking to an elderly relative a few weeks ago and she was voicing her concern about the supply of rice at Costco.  She went there and saw only two bags of rice on the pallet and bought up the two large bags of rice.  I could only imagine what was going to happen next in her well-connected community of Chinese women, the news would spread quickly and all the little old Chinese women were going to flock to Costco along with all the other stores to buy rice.  Given that my relative lives alone I wasn’t sure how many years worth of rice she was planning to stockpile.  In order to stem a massive shortage of rice in Seattle, I tried to convince her that there was plenty of rice available and that I would find rice for her should her two large bags run out.  It doesn’t seem to matter now.  Last week I saw news report for the Bay Area, the Costco stores are running low on rice and limiting consumers to one bag.   Unfortunately we’re in a sense fueling our own shortages and high prices, by panic buying and food hording.   I can’t really blame the little old Chinese women in Seattle but I know where to go should I need some rice.   I fear the food riots occurring in third world countries may be nearer that we think. 

I attended the Green Festival this last weekend in Seattle. What great selection of speakers and exhibitors! Saw Jim Hightower and his folksy take on politics, Frances Moore Lappe, my personal hero for her book Diet for a Small Planet, Hope’s Edge is another one of her important books and Amy Goodman, from Democracy Now! They all carried the common theme of how each and every one of us can become a part of positive change. It’s a difficult time with the Iraq war and mounting loss of life, climate change with our setbacks in environmental policy, and food scarcity in some areas, including the rising cost of food due to the redirection of resources to bio-fuels. These were all inspirational speakers. I encourage everyone to attend the Green Festival if it is anywhere near you. If you missed the speeches I’m told they will be available on  greenfestivals.org   Catch the next Green Festival in Chicago!