Personal Project Update

So the reason I originally decided upon this project was to learn to make more things myself. While it's since changed to more of an exploration of my current eating habits and their environmental and economic ramifications (not to mention their effect on my health), I've still been working at making a few more things myself. Here are a few examples:

Green beans for lunch: Okay, so it's nothing spectacular. But, for me, it is different. See, during the week at least, my lunches are pretty bland: I make a sandwich with ham, turkey, salami, or roast beef, and add some yogurt and/or fruit to go with it. This is largely because I am always looking for something quick and easy to take to SPEA with me (so that I don't have to always buy my lunch at the SPEA Cafe). I've found a bowl of green beans to be surprisingly easy and good. I was a little concerned that I'd still be hungry, but when I add a piece of fruit, I'm usually good for a while. On top of that, the beans are from the farmer's market, so not only am I avoiding unhealthy lunch meat, but I'm also helping the local economy as well.

Spaghetti with organic sauce and mixed greens: Once again, nothing special or new to me (I eat pasta all the time), but the ingredients are slightly different. I've never used organic spaghetti sauce before, but I actually found the stuff I bought at Kroger (sorry) to be pretty good. On top of that, the salad contains greens from the farmer's market, which tastes better than the salad mix you buy at the store.

Homemade jambalaya: I actually make this dish fairly often, but this time, instead of a chicken breast from a big frozen bag purchased at the grocery store, I used a big chicken breast bought from Schacht Farm, a local Bloomington farm that sells at the farmer's market. The chicken there is free-range and fed only locally-grown grains as a supplement. The result was very positive, even if the rest of the ingredients were all store-bought (because that's what I had on hand at the time).

Homemade pizza: Here's the one I really liked. I make pizza a lot, but I generally buy a Boboli crust for, like, $4.50 to do so. This time I tried making my own crust and varying the toppings a bit. The crust is made from whole grain oat flour and yeast bought at Bloomingfoods, while the onion and green pepper are both organic (one bought from the farmer's market, the other from Bloomingfoods). The pepperoni, sauce, and cheese are all from Kroger, as they were all leftover from when I had made pizza previously. There were actually supposed to be some organic mushrooms on there, too, but by the time I got around to making the pizza, they'd been sitting out for several days and were too dried out to use. The result was a mixed bag. I've never made my own crust before, and it needs some work. I did enjoy mixing up the toppings with some fresh, organic products.

I guess these were the types of things I was hoping to accomplish with this project. It's not necessarily a drastic diet overhaul, but by making some things myself that I used to buy packaged from the grocery store, and by using more environmentally-friend ingredients, I'm hoping I'm making a bit of a difference.

Happy belated Thanksgiving.