The carrots at the farmers market are the biggest, fattest and most delicious carrots I have ever seen and tasted. I tend to buy a lot of them during the week because I enjoy juicing them. Carrot and apple or carrot and pear juice really are one of the most refreshing juices. I love the slight sweetness to them. I had it for breakfast with my green smoothie in celebration of St-Patrick’s day on Saturday.

One of the many reasons I enjoy purchasing from the farmers market, is that I can use my own produce bags (no questions asked) and there are no stickers on the fruit or veggies. The farmers are so delightful and are always more than happy to answer all my crazy questions. I feel good knowing I am supporting local agriculture.

We almost purchased all our produce locally. Whole Foods sells local Texas oranges and grapefruit, and little E enjoys them. Unfortunately, they had zero local oranges and little E is on an orange fix. If I didn't buy the californian ones, I am not sure what she would eat. I bought a few – much less than usual hoping that this coming week there will be some available at Whole Foods. And, well the banana’s are fair-trade from Mexico. I wish I could grow a banana tree- a girl can dream!

1-PURCHASES

Farmers market (all grown in Texas)

• 16 small pickled cucumbers
• 6 small cartons of strawberries
• 2 cartons of small tomatoes
• 12-14 large tomatoes
• 8 red/yellow/green peppers
• 1 head of cauliflower
• 10 super large carrots- I mean gigantic
• 1 bunch of fresh cilantro
• 1 large bag of spinach
• 3 bunches of asparagus
• 2 small baskets of red potatoes
• 5 pears

Sub-Total: 60.00

Whole Foods

Bulk

• 1 bunch of fair trade banana (2.45 lbs)
• 4 grapefruit (local 4.41 lbs)
• 10 oranges (4 lbs)

Non-Bulk

• 4 glass bottles of Kombucha
• 1 bottle of Frey organic white wine
• 1 paper bag of tortillas  (local)

Sub-Total: 44.85

Non-food items

• Green sprouts cutlery for little E
• 2 x 50.00 $ iTunes gift cards
• Natural rubber squeaky mushroom (like Sophie the giraffe)

Sub-total: 122.71

Restaurants

• Monday: Chipotle for lunch 11.50
• Wednesday: J.P had his weekly lunch at Chipotle 8.50
• Thursday: We tried a new restaurant similar to Chipotle called FreeBirds World Buritos. It was good, but I like Chipotle better. 14.47
• Saturday: We have not had pizza in weeks so we decided to get a beer and pizza for St-Patty’s at Mellow Mushroom 34.00

Sub-Total: 68.47

Total: 296.03

2-COMPOSTING

I decided to slowly get back into juicing this past week. I have to admit I missed my juice. It seems we had so much compost that it was overflowing. I try to use the pulp from my juice, but since I juice often I can’t seem to keep up. So- at least half ends in the compost. Better than the trash, I suppose.

The total weight of our compost was 15 lbs.

3-RECYCLING

I still feel as though our recycling bin is multiplying at an alarming rate. I am thinking it is all the junk mail we receive daily. This past week we received at least 10, if not more of those stupid flyers. Poor trees being cut down all for nothing- I do not even look at them. Just toss them in the recycling. When I am back home we will not have that problem because they do not deliver junk mail at our house. Thank goodness.

4-TRASH

Our trash basket this week was pretty much empty again, just like the past month and a half. I am so proud of how well we are doing. I never would have thought 7 months ago that we would be able to pull this off. I am so looking forward to what the next 5 months will bring.

Our garbage this week comprised of the usual suspects: receipts, pieces of plastic from my Kombucha bottles, 1 piece of plastic wrap from tempeh, a few random pieces of plastic and a few stickers from our fruit and veggies that I was not able to save for little E’s sticker album. Sometimes, I wash the fruit before taking the sticker off, and well the stickers usually do not make it to the album.

5-TRAVEL

This week J.P drove to work one day, and I travelled to the the farmers market and Whole Foods.  Oh yes- we also had to drive around a few nights because a certain someone did not want to go to sleep. We walked everywhere else we needed to go- though.

The total distance traveled on the TDI was  247km (153mi) and we filled up 47.3L (12.5gals) for a total of  50.00.