The Local Co-op

So after I couldn’t find the farmers market where it was supposed to be on Sunday morning, I went to my local co-op (Ocean Beach People's Organic Foods Market) to take care of our produce for the week. I don’t have to be a member to buy there, although members receive a 10% discount. This particular co-op guarantees all their produce is grown organically, so that saved me the trouble of figuring that out (something I will have to address at the Farmers Market). With notebook and pencil in hand, I circled the produce crates about 10 times, picking up items, putting them back down, scribbling down their names and origins, and otherwise annoying all the rest of the shoppers who were trying to go about their shopping efficiently. My primary task was to determine which items were grown locally. Conveniently, this co-op labels most of the produce not only with the name of the product, but also its origins. I immediately eliminated all produce without an origin provided. Then I slowly eliminated others that came from too far away to be considered local (Thank you, hubby, for taking my phone calls and looking them up!). I ended up down to just one kind of potato, one type of onion, and few other items, bypassing only a strangely shaped squash about the size of my head (it frightened me really). The picture above includes romaine lettuce, kumquats (Valley Center, CA), Corn, Hass Avocados (Valley Center, CA), German Butterball Potatoes (Fallbrook, CA), tomatoes (Indio, CA), blood oranges(Fallbrook, CA), spring onion (Hemet, CA), green pepper, and blackberries (Valley Center) - all within 100 miles!

I spent a little less than $15 for what you see in the picture and more. We’ve already tried the blackberries and oranges – both delicious! The blackberries, in particular, were the largest I could remember seeing and were sweet. Yum!