Getting Here

Over the last year or so, my wife and I have tried to reduce our trash, and become a more sustainable household. It's proven to be expensive, and when you're just getting started, little expenses can make a difference. We still try to do things with the environment in mind, but buying milk in refillable jars for twice the price of milk in a non-refillable plastic jug had to go. Maybe someday when we have disposable income we can make more environmentally positive decisions, but until then we'll just have to make do. That said, we have monitored our garbage and it seems a fair bit comes from food. Not to mention when you get your food, it probably came a few hundred miles before it got to you. That head of lettuce may not be in a plastic bag, but it still bumped across miles and miles of pavement in a truck spewing noxious fumes into the air. But truly, how many people think about things like that? How many people see a jar of ketchup and think 'ketchup' instead of 'tomatoes, vinegar, sugar, spices?' With that in mind I've decided to try and harvest more of our meals from the local environment, be it fished, foraged or hunted. Being that we currently rent and don't have a garden, and no land to hunt, most of what is used to supplement our pantry will have to be foraged. Sounds daunting, but the more I look into it, the more I'm realizing that there are plenty of edibles growing like weeds outside my door.