A Year of Inconvenience
By Rebecca Gerendasy
Pam Mehnert
April 27, 2010 Pam Mehnert, general manager of Outpost Natural Foods in the Milwaukee, WI, area, had an ‘Aha!’ moment and decided to challenge herself: stay out of the middle aisles of the grocery market, keep away from processed foods and over-packaged goods, and make from scratch all her meals and snacks. Her initial blog post (less than 2 weeks ago), Here’s How It Began, is a good place to start with her on this journey, or should I say quest?
Along the way I’m sure she’ll meet up with those who want to woo her back to convenience, question her own sanity about such an adventure, and bump into other folks attempting to do the same. So far it’s also been great reading the comments. Many good suggestions from folks already!
Personally I’ll be reading with interest how she progresses, and secretly hoping she’ll make it to next April intact, with many wisdoms shared, and perhaps evolve into a beacon of light that might help others through this fog of ‘edible food-like substances’, cooking from scratch, and getting beyond convenience foods of all types.
Best of luck, Pam!
Tags: Convenience foods, cooking, cooking from scratch, eating out, food co-op, homecooking, in defense of food, Local Food Economy, michael pollan
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2 Comments
You are awesome! How old are your kids now? Having kids does put a wrench into it, for sure. I have 2 at home – 12 and 15. The oldest is a good eater, the younger less so. It’s a challenge, to say the least, to get them to eat good healthy food. My hat is off to you. Looking forward to following your lead in this area – more of us need to climb aboard that ‘crazy bus’ – which isn’t really crazy at all.
Hi,
I just wanted to let you know that I made my 1/1/09 pledge one of not giving a single dollar to processed food companies. I’ve spent nearly a year and a half now sourcing local foods directly from farmers, growing it myself of making my own. I have a little blurb about the beginning of my journey here: http://www.sustainableeats.com/why-do-i-bother/. I’ve learn to butcher pigs and cure my own bacon & ham, make cheese, gotten bees and chickens, put up everything we need for winter from my garden and grind my own grains. The challenge for me is that I have two small kids who want goldfish crackers and breakfast cereal. I need to keep them happy enough that they don’t end up trading lunches at school or beg to eat at friend’s houses all the time. It gets infinitely harder when you add kids to the picture and try to balance this lifestyle with full time work. It’s been an amazing journey though that I think a great many others need to be taking, especially those with small kids. We need to reclaim the food chain!