Limits, Schmimits

We were standing in the co-op last Saturday, my wife and I, choosing a few things to cook for the weekend.  I’d had this grandiose idea brewing for a while, based on stories like Barbara Kingsolver’s year of local eating, the kids from Plenty, the one-month experiment in Novella Carpenter’s Farm City.  It was bold, radical, and informed by the idea that the co-op only works if you shop there.

Why not, I thought, eat just from the co-op for a month?

It immediately seemed impractical and gave me panic—after all, we have kids! They hate actual food! My lazy mind began offering exceptions and corollaries and alterations.  Okay, I thought, how about just two weeks?  And excluding school lunches.  And restaurants.  And work lunches. This was true laziness; you don’t have to believe me, but the co-op offers a ton of stuff, from Annie’s Cheddar Bunnies to Newman-Os to squash to hot dogs.  It’s good stuff.  It’s mostly local, and it’s all as naturally produced as possible.  You could live off this place, no problem.  But it still seemed stifling, somehow, to limit our family to one shopping destination, even if it was for just two weeks.  For instance, what about beer?

I didn’t say anything while a working volunteer rang us up, but outside I realized that the market was open, right there, and here we were at the beginning of a long weekend that could accommodate some longer-term cooking. We were walking to the car when I suggested we give it a try.  The idea was news to my wife, who quickly began to calculate what that would mean for our weekly grocery shopping, planned for the next day.  We negotiated the final form of the deal, which looked like this:

• We would buy food only from the co-op for two weeks.
• Exclusions: lunches (school and work); restaurant dinners (And possible weekend lunches. And breakfasts.); parties
• Plus we could eat anything we already had in the house.

Truly, we had eviscerated the noble experiments of the visionaries I mentioned, but we figured we’d only do what we could do.  We trotted back in and grabbed milk, bread, more eggs, and a few other things that suddenly leapt out at us.

It was my idea, so I knew this would put pressure on me.  We were almost out of deli turkey, for instance, a household staple.  I’d roast a chicken and we’d give the kids some white meat for lunch!  I could bake some bread (although we bought a loaf at the co-op)!  I’d organize the freezer!  I’d find temporary substitutes for the unsubstituteable: Cheerios, tuna fish, string cheese, canned soup.  (There is apparently no substitute for Cheerios, but I found sardines, mild New York cheeses, and I boiled up a half-gallon of chicken stock yesterday.)

I cooked up a mess of food last weekend and we’re still eating off it for breakfast and dinners.  I did, in fact, organize the freezer.  Tonight there was a Co-op board meeting, and my board-member wife had promised to bring a dessert.  We searched the cupboards and freezer, unearthing bags of frozen berries, oats, brown sugar, flour, butter—cobbler!

We’re almost out of beer, but I know someone who’s brewing ten gallons of hard cider, so I think we’ll survive.

This is the week to send in your annual $25 maintenance fee.  This is also an ideal time to give a gift membership.  Finally, you’ve just GOT to come down and shop at the Harvest Market.  If every member-owner spends an average of $10 a week at the co-op, it will flourish.