Eco-Chic Lifestyle Change Week 3: Weekly Update

My goal was to eat commit to one local meal a week.  I did achieve my one meal and more.  I did have one local meal. The only part that was not local was the balsamic vinaigrette I used for dressing on my salad, the salt, pepper and basil spices.  Last week we had fresh local basil but were out of it.

The challenges were thinking ahead to have a local dressing or maybe put some other local something on the salad that would have substituted. Also, the salt and pepper got used without thinking about it.  We could have used some additional veggies to take the place of that perhaps?

Getting the food was pretty easy. However, this week the farmers market didn't have any meat so we had to buy our local meat from Whole Foods instead. Still local.  We had chicken soup last week and I was hoping to get some mutton/goat meat.

Here is our meal!

Yup, even the water is local! 

It's even possible that the water glass, aka old spaghetti sauce jar, came from a local source as well. 

The salad are greens that Joel grew in his apartment 6 blocks away in his hydroponics system. 

We didn't get too creative this week on our meal from last week, but last weeks was SO GOOD!  This week wasn't quite as flavorful. Perhaps because the chicken was a little but more plump?

Here are the recipes... 

The first soup 

Potato and Leek Chicken Soup

1) Make Chicken Broth.  (I will include this process recipe in a later post)

2) Add Vegetables, etc.

Ingredients:
4 Leeks
1 Onion
6 Potatoes
1/2 cup rutabaga
1 cup carrot
1 tablespoon Ginger
1 cup fresh basil
Salt and Pepper to taste (approx 4 tablespoons salt, suggestion)

3) Simmer on low for at least 1 hour

The soup pictured above

Chicken and Turnips

1) Make Chicken Broth

2)  Add Vegetables, etc (and extra chicken, if wanted)

Ingredients:
Approx 6 quart pot
1 Large Turnip - (2 cups)
4 medium Potatoes
2 cups Carrot - cut in medium to small pieces
3 leeks
1 Onion
Salt and Pepper to taste (approx 4 tablespoons salt, suggestion)
Pinch of Basil

3) Simmer on low for at least 1 hour

This was my main, local meal focus.  We had left overs so I have been eating soup at other meals.  I also got various other veggies that I have been having for other meals and snacks too like purple potatoes, red pepper, kohlrabi, apples, broccoli, and red pepper.  

It has been fun to integrate more foods in more meals. It feels good. And, it tastes fantastic!  

I will continue with my goal as is. Not that I don't want to engage in new challenges but I have a lot going on the next few weeks, I don't want to over stress by trying to add additional local required meals, and I want to just let this be more of a new habit that is settling in. 

Score Your Diet...

I chose to do the "score your diet" option for our EYE OPENER this week.

You can experience this took for yourself by clicking here.

Score your diet takes into account various foods that you eat, how often, if they are organic, etc. and gives you a score in 3 categories, health, environmental impact and animal welfare.

My scores were as folllows

Health Score     86
Environmental Score      -17
Animal Welfare score     -5

this left me with a final score of 64

The scoring levels were...
60 =  excellent
15-59 = good
15 or less = Uh, oh, you need help.

As far as the type of food that scored the highest is fruits and veggies a "grand total" of 38 each.
Why was this my highest?  I make an effort to eat fruits and veggies.  I would like to add more variety in fruit. I eat more bananas than anything else.  I also try to have veggies as or as part of snacks and meals. I put that I eat 14 servings a week.  I believe that is true.  I know that some weeks it is well above that and some it is below. And, honestly, I am probably not as familiar with a serving size as I should be.   At 14 a week I feel so sad that, this is it.   I have read studies that suggest 9-12 servings a day and here is an article from Harvard School of Public Heath that says 5-13 per day.  I have heard doctors who study nutrition say 13 should be the norm especially if you are eating foods that have traveled and are growing in depleted soil. I am making an effort to eat local as well as organically grown veggies from farmers who are treating their soil well.

I appreciate that they took potatoes and iceberg lettuce out of the vegetables category. It adds validity to the test for me.

My lowest score went to sweets. A -9.  My other lowest were my meat consumption of a grand total of -6 for all 3 types. Most weeks I don't eat beef and I rarely eat pork but I wanted to add them.  Sweets....  not at my high point and where I want to be right now. Looking over my history, however, I'm doing pretty good.

I was thinking as I was trying to calculate my sweet intake.  My sweets look very different than they did years ago. My Bavarian cream doughnut and mocha would have counted as 2 sweets many years ago when  I ate them for breakfast all too often. Now my sweets on rare occasion are a gluten free muffin, and more often than that, these little candies that I found that contain only honey, mint and cocoa.

They are AMAZING!  Categorizing them as 1 and the doughnut as 1 are not exactly an equal point when I think about it.

My environmental score was -17.
My fruit and veggie consumption are the highest score in that column. To improve that, I would guess eating veggies and fruits as local as I can get would help reduce the negative impact.    Continue to eat meat that has been grown in good and appropriate conditions is important to keep that number down.  I am surprised to see whole grains have a minimal impact on the environment in this scale.  So, perhaps I could add some quality grains more often.  Cutting the little dairy out I do it would also reduce the number... depending on what I replaced it with, of course.

I find it interesting that candy category has no environmental impact.  I totally recognize that there is no way to quantify that with all it's variables on a specific quiz. It could just leave some to the wrong conclusion if they didn't understand the issues correctly.... "Eat pastries for planet earth!"  :)

So, what does this all mean to me?
It is good to put thought into my food. I do this a lot due to a gluten sensitivity and other food considerations so food doesn't pass my lips without some thought. This is a good reminder to me that I want to be taking a better look at the food I eat and figure out how to incorporate more fruits and veggies with greater ease, especially with time spent at school.

I hope that I am accurate with my estimates. I would like to do some tracking of what and the sizes to ensure that I'm really where I think I am at.

I really like that it looks at our impact on the environment and on animals. It is nice to have that included to see where I might be able to change things. It is also interesting that there is no PERFECT, non impacting way to eat.  According to this if you eat fruits and veggies, as is best, you have an impact on the environment. It would be interesting if it took composting into consideration as well, just to add another piece of the puzzle.

It was a good, mind provoking exercise.