I’ve been working on this post for days—when I finally realized it was Tuesday and I hadn’t surfaced for over a week, I decided to break this down into several parts and show you what I have so far. But before I get into just how nutty we are, let me give you an update on our winter food storage. As of today, March 16, we still have about 20 pounds of potatoes, 5 pounds each of carrots and parsnips, a pound of garlic, 10 apples (which we use for cooking, since they’re now too mealy to eat raw), 6 beets, 20 onions, 12 pomelo grapefruit (some friends from California brought them up here, in season, for Thanksgiving), 10 winter squash, and 3 pumpkins in storage, uncooked. And there are plenty of cooked, leftover beets and squash in the fridge. Our only casualties were two or three suicidal squash, and the Proctor Farmers Market opens a week from Saturday. We made it! I’m not even sick of squash yet (sure am sick of beets, though), and not one time did I break down and buy California strawberries or Argentinian spinach at the grocery store—a personal best.

As a footnote, there are a few things we buy that can’t be bought locally or stored seasonally. The things that can’t be grown here, but can come from California (Valencia oranges for juicing, mostly), we’ll buy occasionally. We can’t make soup stock without celery (part of the celery-carrot-onion Soup Stock Triumvirate), and since it won’t keep in the root cellar without an elaborate dirt-and-burlap system, we buy that year-round, too. Dried herbs, spices, tea, coffee, and chocolate are in, but tropical produce—bananas, pineapples, papayas, mangoes, etc.—no matter how much we love it, is usually out (mangoes are a once-a-year treat), because of the fossil fuel required to transport it.

The produce, though, is only part of the sustainability equation. We do most of our shopping, except for meats, dairy, and seafood—more on that in another post—at Madison Market, a member-owned food co-op in Seattle (Tacoma doesn’t have one yet, though we’re working on it), where we can be sure to find a wide range of organics, where the place of origin for every item is labeled, and where we can support local, non-corporate business. We’ve found, though, that even at the hippiest of co-ops, we still stick out like a sore thumb, because our cart looks like this:

That’s because with the exception of some specialty items, we buy nearly everything in bulk (even some household supplies like shampoo and soap), using our own odd mish-mash of salvaged, vintage, and reused containers.

This is the incredible bulk section at our co-op, which we’re lucky to have. But even if we didn’t have a co-op in the area, most natural food stores and even many conventional grocery stores have bulk sections. For us, this is the secret to why we can afford to buy organic for our entire food supply.

This particular bulk department has all of the standard staples (flour, sugar, cornmeal, whole grains, etc.),

many unusual items (like kamut or mung beans) and fun stuff (popcorn, chocolate chips, nuts, raisins, etc.),

even many varieties of pasta (I love the spaghetti and lasagna drawers).

My favorites? Grind-em-yourself organic nut butters, at a price comparable to the commercial stuff ($3.99 a pound for peanut butter). A jar of crunchy JIF at our local conventional grocery store goes for $3.49 for an 18 oz. jar, and adds the following ingredients: sugar, salt, molasses, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, and fully hydrogenated vegetable oil. Lovely. The organic hippie peanut butter ingredients? Just peanuts. It’s so good we usually just eat it right out of the jar, by the spoonful.

Another bonus is that each product is labeled with nutrition information, location of origin, and preparation instructions. But the best part, other than the organic bit, is that all of this bulk stuff is either comparably priced or even cheaper than packaged food. The huge savings comes with fancy-pants items like dried cranberries, wild rice, and arborio rice (since risotto is a staple for me, we buy a lot of this stuff).

Here’s how it works: we save every usable container that comes our way (tins, mason jars, old spice bottles; we try to use only metal, wood and glass, but there are a few exceptions, like our ancient Tupperware canisters), and stick a piece of masking tape on each one. At the co-op, we have each container weighed at the deli stand—this is the really important part, because each item is sold by weight. If your glass jar weights 1.5 pounds, and you buy 3 oz of something expensive, you don’t want to be overcharged for it! So we write the weight (called the “tare weight”) of the container on the tape. Then, above that, we write put the PLU (item) number of whatever is in that container. This is mostly done on the honor system, but they can certainly check your items if you say your container weighs 27 pounds, or if your jar contains macadamia nuts and you labeled it as flour. If you aren’t insane like we are, and don’t come to the store with three dozen tins and jars (and since people always comment when we go, and I never see anybody else doing this, I’m guessing most people don’t), there are paper bags to put your bulk items in. We reuse containers not only to cut down on packaging and waste, but also so that when we get home, we can just put them right in the cupboard and we’re done.

Because we have to do most of our shopping in Seattle, we usually only do this every six to eight weeks. So of course that makes us The Weirdos with the Tupperware, and creates a bit of a spectacle at the checkout counter. But the employees always tell us how happy they are to see us doing this, so I don’t think they mind entering in all those tare weights.

As I said earlier, it’s possible to do this at lots of stores, and not just co-ops—but I should add that it’s not always as easy at those places. The biggest reason for this is that at high-end grocery stores like Metropolitan Market and Whole Foods, the vast majority of their customers use the store’s plastic and paper containers for their purchases—so their check stands aren’t usually set up to handle heavier, reusable containers. So unless you remember to teach the cashier how to do the math manually, you risk being overcharged. I’m somewhat dismayed that these “green” grocery stores haven’t gotten with the program yet (in my book, further evidence that their “green” claims are a bunch of marketing hooey), but if people like us continue to be a pain in the rear end, things will change.

I realize that people without cars or co-ops might not be able to shop only every couple of months. But since we started doing this several years ago, we’ve seen some very positive side effects—including a huge drop in impulse spending, and the ability to make spontaneous meals for unexpected guests. Also, since if we forget something we have to go without it for two months, we’ve gotten very good at planning meals and keeping track of what we have. Another benefit of shopping at these intervals is that as members, we receive a 10% off coupon every month (you don’t have to be a member to shop there, though), and with larger orders that translates to a big discount.

Whenever we tell this story to others, they invariably say, “I’d buy organic food, too, but I can’t afford it.” Yes, organic convenience food is very expensive, but since it’s also processed, it’s really no better for us than conventional junk food. The key lies in sticking to ingredients, rather than store-bought meals. I’m going to get more in depth into our household economics in the next post, but since we only buy staples, and very rarely eat out, we don’t spend nearly as much on food as people think. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average American household spent $6,443 on food alone in 2008—$3,744 eating at home, and $2,698 eating out. For our household, that would come out to be about $8.82 per person, per day. We added up all of our food expenses from last year, and between buying all-organic groceries, cooking from scratch, and eating out about once a month, we spent about $8.22 per person, per day in 2009. Slightly less than the national average. That’s pretty darn good.

As I’ve said before, these are simply choices we’ve made, and we feel it makes our lives healthier and better. Plus, buying in bulk with reused containers has the added benefit of producing zero waste—I was shocked when it dawned on me that what I used to throw away was almost entirely made up of packaging! The amount of non-recyclable, non-compostable trash we produce now amounts to one small grocery bag or less—some weeks we don’t even take out the trash, because there’s nothing to take out.

We’re not out to convert anyone, and we’re not completely puritan about it—we eat conventional food in restaurants, we still go out for (local!) ice cream, we make compromises for things like citrus fruit, and we’ll never refuse a meal offered at a friend or relative’s house. I’m not writing about this because I want to change anybody else’s habits (although I’d love to change some things about the American agricultural industry)—but because people ask. All the time.

And I also write about our food choices because this really wasn’t such a hard change to make. Slow, yes, but not difficult. I find now, a few years later, that I get sick far less often, that when I’m hungry I crave nutritional foods instead of junk, and that my palette is more refined (no small feat, considering that I have almost no sense of smell), just because I gave up processed food. The amazing thing is that for the most part, I don’t miss my old habits.

I’d do it all again in a heartbeat—I only wish I’d done it sooner.