How Did You Get Here?

Lunch, a seen in the title, is my least favourite meal of the day for a number of reasons:

• it ends up being RIGHT in the middle of my day, so it’s more of a nuisance
• it is the only meal I eat on-the-go
• I’m normally never hungry

So today, I had carrots and creamer potatoes roasted with some rosemary and thyme.

The carrots are from the “bulk” produce in Save-On-Foods and the potatoes were also from Save-On. I roasted these with extra virgin olive oil, home grown rosemary, and home grown thyme. The olive oil was purchased from Valoroso (my favourite market in Kelowna) and the herb plants were purchased from Save-On.

It was nice to see that my potatoes and carrots came from here– a family farm in Cloverdale. Once you click on the link, you see how much heavy-machinery they use to gather, harvest, and produce their crops. And so, I automatically wonder how much gas is needed to run these huge beasts. My produce would also have to make the trip up to Kelowna from Cloverdale via trucks. Again, more fossil fuels used up.

Also, how about those plastic bags that keep the produce from touching whatever else is in your basket. When I went into Cooper’s Foods today (a branch of Save-On-Foods) and asked where their plastic bags come from- they asked their manager. The store manager (who was in today, luckily) said that they would give me their card and I could send in an email of inquiry. So, no luck there.
My herb plants were from Save-On-Foods as well… and came without a label as they were on clearance. These are the plants that have been around for a while and look close to dying. I proved them wrong and brought them back to life. Here they are:

 

From left to right: Mint, Rosemary, and Basil.
And not seen in picture: pea sprouts and thyme.

My olive oil is from a store called Valoroso. This family actually travels to Italy to hand-pick which products they want to bring back to Canada. Some of the products come to Canada via plane, some via ship, and some via trucks or some sort of combination of any of these methods. The olive oil I bought is shipped and then delivered via truck. There will be more on Valoroso in my next post as I buy my lasagna from there. (They make all of their ready to eat food in their kitchen!) The packaging is a tin container with a plastic cup. The tin probably comes from a tin mine and the plastic from a factory. The emissions out-put is probably sky-high. *pun intended* And so, I researched the tin mining industry and couldn’t find much for Italian products aside from the fact that most of their tin comes from China or Russia. This is where my research stopped.. because have you seen theAi Weiwei documentary? To extract (or demand)  information about their tin-mining practices isn’t exactly a walk in the park. Looks like the information still needs to get out there!

Turns out lunch isn’t so boring after all.
Especially when you eat while you watch this Ted Talk.