Grocery Shopping
It was a sunny Sunday afternoon when I walked with my roommate to her car to go to Kroger. On the drive there, we also picked up her sister. After catching up, the three of us started talking about my food challenge. I shared my thoughts with them on how I felt this challenge may be a bit tough but that I was very excited to get started!
While at Kroger, it seemed like I stuck to the produce area and never went into the aisles, except the canned food aisle. I bought a bunch of fresh produce and canned vegetables. Normally, I would buy frozen vegetables, because they are packed at their freshest point and never go bad before I use them up, but they are packaged in a plastic bag.
As a side note, there is no overall significant difference in nutrient content between fresh, frozen, canned produce found at the store. Of course, freshly harvested foods are the most nutritious, but produce loses some of those nutrients during the trucking and shipping time after harvesting and during refrigerated storage. For frozen and canned foods, they are both packed soon after harvesting, last for months, and only lose minimal amounts of nutrients during processing. Some prefer canned over frozen because of the taste and the additional salt or sugar added during the canning process. While doing this research, I thought it was interesting how this study found that frozen produce can sometimes be more nutritious than freshly stored for five days in the fridge. It seems that zero waste eating may sometimes mean making less ideal calls for nutrition.
Now, back to the story. When I was looking for the individual big carrot sticks in the bins without packaging, I didn’t see them, so I immediately went to the next alternative: baby carrots. Those baby carrots came in a plastic bag, but it seemed normal for me to add them to my cart. It took a few minutes before I realized that I needed to put them back. At that point, I saw a store worker and asked if there were any more of the non-packaged carrots. He kindly went and got some, but to my shock, he ripped open a bag of them, like one that you would normally see on the shelf, and then placed them in the bin. I couldn’t believe that was where the carrots came from. I guess it helps eliminate food waste in a way by allowing customers to buy only what they need, not the whole bag, but still.
I was also looking for ways to buy sandwich meat without packaging at Kroger, so I asked the guy behind the meat counter. He said that I could bring my own container, but that he would still have to use wax paper to weigh the meat and then print out a label for checkout. That’s still reducing some waste? There were also the cooked rotisserie chickens that came in a plastic container but had a plastic label too. That got me thinking, do I have to remove all the labels before recycling something? According to this website, it’s unnecessary! Plastics, glass, and metal go through a high heating process that removes the labels.
Although not on my recipe list, I bought a carton of eggs because they can be a good snack. (Usually I would buy granola bars, but they come in soo much packaging and are individually wrapped.) However, when I returned home, I realized that I was fooled by the number 6 recycling triangle on the foam container for the eggs. Apparently, number 6 items are usually recyclable, but foam is an exception and can only be recycled curbside in a few select cities. Ann Arbor is not one of them.
So, after dropping off my groceries at home, I walked about 10 minutes to the local food co-op. It happened to be very easy to buy my bulk foods there. I just asked the person at the register if I could use my own containers, and he said yes!
Ann Arbor People's Food Co-Op bulk spices and grains sections. He instructed me to weigh my container first and then record on my phone which food PLU# went with each container. I was so glad I had the right number of containers of the appropriate sizes to buy oats, rice, quinoa, and lentils. But, I forgot to bring the small container I had for spices. Since I didn’t even have a big container left, I thought about skipping the spice, but knew that sometimes recipes do not turn out well if certain spices are missing. As a result, I used one of the provided small plastic bags and considered that I was still reducing waste because I would only be getting the amount needed.
Here is everything I bought from Kroger and the Co-Op. Ingredients for lunch, breakfast, and dinner for the week totaled to $34.90.
Looks like I forgot to include the bananas in this image. You can also see I used plastic bags for the carrots and apples, but those are bags I previously had and am reusing.Cooking
Cooking the two recipes felt like it took FOREVER. But the prep time, actual cooking, and cleaning up took about 2-3 hours; thinking back, it’s really not that much time for making 14 meals for the week. I usually only meal prep one recipe (dinner) because I have sandwich ingredients that I make the night before for lunch. Meal prepping dinner usually takes me just under an hour, so I’m just not that used to spending so much time at once cooking. On the bright side, I had the red lentil daal for dinner, and it was delicious. The peas were a great addition. I also ate an apple and some of the extra carrots.
Red lentil daal and roasted stuffed peppers.The only trash I made from these two meal prep dishes was from the hidden wrapper from the boullion cube (cubes packaged in cardboard) and the stickers on the produce. All food scraps, like cut-off ends of vegetables and onion peels, went into the compost. Later in the week, I’ll be putting my fruit peels and eggshells in there. I’m thankful my house this year has a compost bin. One of my roommates is kind enough to take the container home when it’s full to add to her family's outdoor compost pile.
For some reason, the city of Ann Arbor does not take compost during the winter. Another caveat is that paper towels, napkins, and commercial biodegradable ware cannot go into our house compost, because those items only degrade well in commercial facilities.
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