I have made a change in a long-standing habit. Practically since we moved to San Francisco in 1998 I have gone to the farmer’s market every Saturday. I love seeing what is available, and I have learned to plan my meals around what is locally available. As far as I am concerned, if I can’t get it at the market, it just doesn’t exist. I am currently anxious for avocados to be back in season.
My Grocery Shopping Habit
At some point I quit going to the grocery store. In San Francisco you can get groceries delivered. First there was WebVan (long gone, but awesome), now I use Safeway.com (very much less awesome). This was a change of habit that was easy to make! I have my non-perishable needs delivered about once a month, and I fill in as needed from my neighborhood grocery stores and the odd trip to Whole Foods or Trader Joe. I am kind of amazed now when I do go into a grocery store–it is overwhelming and there is so much stuff I would never buy. It was easy to change this.
Because of the way the holidays fell in December, the CUESCA decided not to have the Saturday farmer’s market on Saturday, December 26. Fortunately I overheard this at the first vendor I visited on December 19, so I was able to buy accordingly to cover two weeks. Our next stop after the market is usually at the butcher, so I bought enough there to get us through to January 2 (which ended up being more like January 7 because they decided to close on the 2nd) there too, and I went to the Italian market for a few things as well.
Why My Habit Needed to Change
It was such a revelation on the 26th to have a Saturday which wasn’t a flurry of must-do activities, that I told Mitch we needed to change our habit and start going to the market every-other-week just to bring some sanity back to our weekends. January 30, which should have been a trip to the farmer’s market after being gone the previous three weekends was called off because of Super Bowl City. I went to the butcher and the Italian market on the 30th while Mitch attended a client meeting. On Sunday we went to our local farmer’s market: smaller, but I got the things I needed for the week and my favorite fruit vendor had a stall there.
February 6 was another Super Bowl bust day for the farmer’s market, but I had purchased sufficiently for two weeks the previous week, so we just had to go get fruit on Sunday. I had been buying things I needed each time I walked through our local shopping areas, so I was well provisioned for the week ahead. Saturday morning I walked to get things for lunch and Super Bowl.
I buy a lot of fruit. Mitch isn’t a big veggie consumer, so we get most of our fiber from fruit. For one week I bought approximately 30 oranges, 8 asian pears, and a few lemons. I am continuously asked at the market if I am baking pies (our current joke is about orange pie) or if I own a restaurant. Nope. I serve fruit twice a day to both of us and a third time to myself.
I’m happy to have reclaimed some hours on Saturdays; we are eating exactly the same–I just changed our procurement habits. This opened up a bit of free time for me. The drawings here are one of the things I’ve done with the reclaimed time. This is a habit I would really like to make part of my life–doing regular, if not daily drawing.
The Drawing Habit
CreativeBug is having a drawing-a-day challenge, so I am just following their prompts. I got a little stuck on the one for yesterday, and had to do a little research just to make sure I understood it. I didn’t have time to do a drawing because it was a teaching day, but I sketched out my concept on the back of a piece of paper at the end of my second class. I am interested enough that I am going to work on it as a drawing, not just a concept. The prompt was Representational and Abstract Bottle.
Leave a Reply