Bridgey Speaks

I went to Giant Eagle on Sunday. It was a bit of a haphazard trip. I had no list, no direction, and somehow, very few brain cells functioning at 100%. I was hungry. However, despite these odds, I managed to keep it together and not just buy food items solely from the bakery. (In fact, I didn’t buy ANY items from the bakery!)

I actually ended up buying organic choices for at least 75% of my order. I was quite pleased to be able to do so in a traditional, averaged-size grocery store. Much of it was even on sale. All of it was from the “organic machine.”

I have mixed feelings about this. I have no doubt that the chicken I bought was not from happy chickens. While they were fed a “vegetarian diet,” that doesn’t mean that they ate food they are supposed to eat. However, they are from the “Nature’s Basket” group of products, a Giant Eagle brand of organic foods. These chickens were raised without hormones or antibiotics or a diet of other chickens. That’s a start.

Other products from mostly the Nature’s Basket and Cascadian Farms lines included cereal, pasta, milk, carrots, and salad dressing. I couldn’t find organic cheese and didn’t really check to see if there was organic ice cream (for Dave, of course).

So the mixed feelings come in at this point. I’m disappointed by knowing too much. This stuff is part of a machine that may not be as green and perfect as I’d like to pretend. The chickens may not have been happy. The cows that made the milk probably weren’t grass-fed. This stuff isn’t local. On the other hand, I am glad that these products are a step in the right direction for both health and environmental reasons. I feel that by buying them, I’m helping ensure that there is demand for these and hopefully future organic options and for those future options to be competitive in price and convenience. Overall I left happy.

The biggest disappointment was when I got home. Despite providing the bagger with three reusable bags (from that store, I might add), I got home to find several items wrapped in plastic bags inside those reusable bags. How did she put this past me, I thought. But the really annoying question was: why?

Last night we ate stuffed green peppers. This is unremarkable. In fact, this is not something we eat too often, because neither of us really likes the pepper part. (No orange or yellow pepper at GE Express. Boo.)

But last night we ate this meal with, instead of ground beef, ground pork from locally raised happy pigs. These pigs get to wander around outside and eat food that they are supposed to eat.

The meal was delicious, partly because the pork was very tasty and partly because I felt better about eating it. I got the meat from a local farmer’s market Laura told me about this weekend. I’ll definitely be going back.