Friday, December 16, 2022

How Much Money Did I Spend on Food in 2021?

"In our society, growing food yourself has become the most radical of acts. It is truly the only effective protest, one that can-and will-overturn the corporate powers that be. By the process of directly working in harmony with nature, we do the one thing most essential to change the world-we change ourselves!" - Jules Dervaes

Holiday Feast
Holiday feast ready to be devoured.


It's almost 2023, so naturally we need to talk about 2021 before we can move on.  It has been a while since we've done a comprehensive review of expenses so let's take an in depth look at food expenses for 2021, shall we?

Before we dive into the nuts and bolts of my food expenses there are a few important things to keep in mind:  

1) I am on my very own journey and my expenses are currently not as low as they could or should be.

2) My current food bill now pales in comparison to what it was several years ago.

3) I never want myself to feel deprived so I do still spend money on "luxury" food items when I feel like it.

4) Processed foods in the U.S. are subsidized which is why they're so cheap at the grocery store.  These do not provide you with proper nutrition (plus the conventional growing practices for these foods destroy the earth) and I stay away from them at pretty much all costs.  I eat real food, which is not as cheap, but it's nutritious and...real.

5) 2021 still had the coronavirus pandemic raging on, which probably makes it an excellent example for continuing to look at food expenses.

While I grow more than enough food to last year round, the reality is that I live in a city and I happen to live close to a grocery store in addition to a lot of great farms.  I most certainly venture to the grocery store from time to time, usually for non-food items and am subjected to the same impulse buying urges as everyone else such as cookies, cheese or chocolate being on sale which as you'll see below and all end up in my shopping cart more often than I'd care to admit.  Just like any other human being I most certainly enjoy eating out from time to time.  I'm not a full on hermit and I do go out into the wide world from time to time so I do have food expenses... by choice though.  Sure I could just not go to the store or eat out at all and I would be just fine.  Just as you could wander off into the forest, build a lean-to and have that be your house for the rest of your life and you would be just fine.  It's certainly possible but where's the fun in that?

Here are James the Urban Famer's Food expenses for 2021:

Friday, December 2, 2022

Origin of Food

"Cuisine has become too complicated - this is about subject, verb, adjective: duck, turnips, sauce." - Alain Ducasse

Food Item
Random food in Malaysia.

Food - we all eat it but where exactly does it come from?  The ingredients obviously come from the ground and you can certainly eat a single ingredient as an entire meal.  How do the elegant collages of ingredients come about to form the traditional dishes that each and every culture across the world has?

Go ahead, think about it for a minute.  It's a fun thought experiment and I'll wait for you...