I was watching Oprah earlier this week and I was pleased to see her talking about food. I really enjoyed the show and all of the info she was giving to people. One of the parts of the show that I was really happy that she showed was the slaughter house. I think that it is so important for people to see where there food comes from especially meat.
One thing that has become very important to me is feeding my family healthy food that is not travelling halfway around the world before we get to eat it. Over the past two years I have tried to buy as much local produce, or produce that is travelling less than a day before it reaches us. I was actually surprised at how easy it has been to accomplish this. In the summer I shopped the local farmer's market weekly buying all kinds of wonderful produce from local farmers. I was also able to buy many things from the Superstore. They make it a priority to provide produce that is fresh and grown as close to local as possible. During the winter it has been a little harder to find things. We are eating a lot more frozen veggies and all the yummy canning I did in the fall.
This past fall was the first time in my life that I canned. My mother in-law was kind enough to show me the ropes and once I realized how easy canning was I went a little crazy. I went through 90lbs of tomatoes. I made tomato sauce,salsa, chili sauce and plain canned tomatoes. I canned 4 cases of peaches and 9 baskets of pears. There is nothing that compares to home made sauce and canned fruit that you know exactly what is in it and where it all came from. I am hoping to master gardening this coming summer so that I can use my own produce to make all these wonderful goodies. I had buy most of it from the local farmer's market and some from a Hutterite colony. It will make this an even cheaper option for us if I can grow my own garden.
When it comes to meat it is very important to me to know where the meat has come from and how the animals were treated. I can honestly say that I have never bought beef from a grocery store. I really don't like the idea of not knowing where it came from and what is in it. I am lucky to have cattle farmer's in my family and buy a good portion of our beef from them. We also shop at a small butcher shop in Starbuck, Manitoba. It has been around forever and is a lovely little family run business. I know that we can trust where the meat has come from when buying it from them. We are not huge pork eaters but bacon is always a must have. We purchase this from the same butcher. Chicken so far is my downfall when it comes to finding local. I do purchase chicken that is raised and slaughtered in Manitoba but I don't really like the idea of how they are raised in barns. I am still looking for a free range chicken farmer close by that I can buy meat from so if anyone knows one send me the info. We do tend to eat a lot of chicken so it is really important to me find a local free range supplier. Fish is easy when you live in Manitoba you can get great pickerel year round for a decent price or you can fish for yourself.
I do have a few downfalls that are hard to give up I will admit. I love avocados, and pineapple. Two things that I will never find local. But I will say that I think we have done a pretty good job of so far and we are headed in the right direction when it comes to food. It never something you can do all at once but even just buying local produce through the summer supports the local economy and makes a difference.
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