Change the World Wednesday Daily Challenge - buy local

Here's the daily challenge from Reduce Footprints for today:

Buy food that's being grown or produced locally, using local farms and local farmers' markets where possible.


This is actually something I plan to do once the farmer's markets open in my area.  Sure, we have one that is open year round but in doing some research I found that the ones open all year round don't exactly grow the produce nor is it organic.  So..not something I'm going to go out of my way to buy (because it would be out of my way).  However, come next month several open and I look forward to that.

However, oddly enough I stopped at a local store this past Friday to check out what they had that was local since I needed some items.  It's the first time I've been to the store so I didn't know what to expect.  I wanted eggs, apples, and lettuce.  Those were the things on the list for this weekend's Whole Food shopping trip. Since it wasn't a lot, I finally said..just go to this other store and see if I can get it there.   The store is called Local Harvest Grocery. I believe I've mentioned them before.   They were in the process of moving so I decided to wait for my first visit until after the move.

So  I went on Friday. I didn't realize it was their official Grand opening.  If I had known that I would have waited since it is a very small store and it was very packed, with long lines to check out (only 1 of 2 registers were open).

I was disappointed that they didn't have any lettuce. They had some spinach, but no lettuce.  I guess it's not exactly in season for my area right now though.  I did pick up 3 apples, which cost me $2.37. I don't like when places price apples by the quantity, it just seems so expensive. Plus the apples are usually somewhat large and I like smaller apples. I'm being picky though, right?

I also picked up a dozen eggs, they were $2.99.  This was a cheaper than the cage-free, vegetarian eggs I normally buy.  I like that the company is local as well.

My splurge item was a Dogtown Pizza. It's a local company who makes their pizza's by hand with fresh ingredients and then freeze them. Because they are made in STL and because they really only sell them in STL, they say the pizza's are in the grocery stores within 3 days. I liked all this info so I bought one, even though it cost $9.49 (I can get a large Domino's for less than that).  I checked out their website and I like that not only is Dogtown Pizza a local company, they get their dough from a local bakery and their sausage is from a local company as well.    I got the Tomato, Basil, Garlic variety and on their website it says this about it:
he newest in Dogtown pizzas varieties, is not only vegetarian, but free of preservatives, HFCS and MSGs
Sounds great to me!  So yes, it's expensive but I like supporting a local company, especially one that gets supplies from other local companies.

So will I shop there again?  I'm sure I will.  What I'll try to do is stop there on my way home from work when I know I need eggs and some produce.  Then I know that if they don't have the produce I need, the trip won't be wasted since I'll be getting the eggs.