Can you eat slow food and still pay your rent?

Another misconception is the idea that slow-foodism is an elitist eating club…the goal is to link small producers to consumers to re-establish the continuum between our food's origins, our tables and our pocketbooks.
—Françoise Kayler, a spokesperson for the Quebec’s slow food movement

Many people call Whole Foods whole paycheck for good reason. Yesterday I dropped by for a bottle of organic dish soap and walked out with an $8 loaf of rice bread, a container of organic goat yogurt and some ridiculously expensive bio-dynamic tahini concoction. I was $50 bucks lighter when I got back on my bike.

I tried to break this cycle last Saturday by going to the secret Saturday only whole sale market called Pro- Organics. These are the folks that supply the high end, organic retailers. The test would be: “Could I walk away with just as many groceries as my regular weekly shop at Santa Barbara on Commercial Dr.” We got inside and found salmon to be a great price. $8 a pound for wild coho and a smoking good deal, $15 a pound, for black cod. Fisherman at the docks don’t give that great a deal. The free range eggs were $6.25, which is more than the farmer’s market. We bought a bunch of apricots that we had high hopes for, but it turned out that half were rotten already. That’s the thing with slow food. If you take too much time, you may not enjoy your food at its freshest.

I ended up dropping $102.81 for a box full of groceries and I did not walk away feeling like I got ripped off.

Organic Grocery List
3 pounds of salmon
2 pounds of black cod
1 bunch of kale
1 spinach garlic baguette
2 pretzels/1 foccacia loaf
1 pound of couscous
1 pound of red lentils
1 head of red lettuce
2 pounds of apricots
4 avocados
1 dozen free range eggs
1 pint of blueberries
1 butternut squash
4 vanilla beans (complete pod)
3 lemons
3 tomatoes
2 large bak choy
1 bunch spinach
5 apples

POLL
Do you think we got good value for our money? Come on gang - let's hear your comments!

p.s. If you want to know where this wholesale organic market is, ping us on Facebook by searching for the Dashing Donkeys.