Organic Scavenger Hunt!

Wow! Today was full of new information! I was looking for a job in local markets on the Internet and I happened to stumble on some very interesting information. Did you know that our food takes long road trips before actually getting to us? Arrowhead bottled water alone travels about 2,500 miles to get to Los Angeles, CA from Greenwich, CT. Who thought that the clear, hydrating substance would take such a long trip before reaching you? The bananas in our local supermarkets come all the way from Guatemala! That’s about 2,200 miles away! Imagine walking these distances just to get your servings of fruit! Oh, and guess what…pasta…it does not come from Italy. It comes from Bannockburn, IL. – nowhere near Italy. Because these foods travel so far to get to us the prices are going up! Transporting these items is not free. With the lack of oil there is no gas, without gas the transportation becomes costly and those costs need to be paid. This is why looking for edibles such as oranges, fresh meats, yogurts, etc have now become a scavenger hunt! Organic foods are worth the wait I guess…it sure beats all those frankenfoods. Frankenfoods are all those chemically enhanced goods – this can usually be your meats and poultry. Now that the oil crisis is taking a toll on society many of us are becoming locavores. We are all on the search for a local farmer’s market. There is even talk about starting a community garden. It is about time the community gets together to do something about these ridiculous “treasure hunts”. Just yesterday my mom sent me out to buy some fresh chicken, milk, and bananas. The bananas were not that hard to find but the milk and chicken…oh my goodness! I felt like I was looking for hidden treasure. I went to the corner store that is near my house and that is where I found the bananas. The bananas were not perfectly ripe but they were good enough to buy. They were the usual yellow color with some dark spots on the skin. There was no milk or chicken. All they had on their shelves were napkins, juices, and a small variety of fruits. I decided to go to Food4Less to see if they had milk and fresh chicken. They had neither! I told my mom that we had to go to Superior so we went. Entering the store we saw that they had milk! I ran for it and got a hold of two gallons. With the bananas and milk checked off we went to find some chicken. Arriving at the meats and poultry section we discovered that it was all gone! I was in shock…I never thought it would be that hard to find some fresh chicken! We finally decided to go to Family Farms. We looked around and saw that there were several pieces still there. It was about time! I never thought that I would be so happy to see those raw, pale pink pieces of poultry. It took us about two hours to find only three things! When I would usually have a cart-full I just had bananas, fresh chicken, and milk!