Indulgence

I have to admit that I'm starting to feel the difficulty of eating local. Starting this journey in the middle of winter without any preserved produce is wearing on me. I am soooooooo tired of apples and pears and carrots and potatoes (well... ok. I'm not actually tired of potatoes, yet, but I can tell that I soon will be). Even though it's spring here, it's way too early for new varieties to be ready to eat. Heck, not everything has even started budding yet.

In order to keep from going entirely insane, and because I was overwhelmed with an intense craving, I bought a gallon of Simply Orange Juice (with lots of pulp and no ingredients other than orange juice - not from concentrate). It's amazing how good oj tastes when you haven't had citrus in ages. My stomach isn't 100% on board with this because of the acidity, but the rest of my body is loving it.

As with any special diet, I think that the key to success is moderation. I refuse to feel guilty for indulging in something healthy that my body demanded. I need to remind myself that one of the most amazing things in modern America is that we can get fresh fruits and vegetables year round. We tend to take that for granted. When starting out on a new path, it is easy to demonize anything that isn't right in line with that path, but the truth is, there are pros and cons to everything. Do I think that eating local is beneficial to both the planet and me? Yep. Do I think that consuming something that had to travel 1000 miles from California is evil? Nope, but I'm not going to do it on a regular basis - only when the good outweighs the bad. In this case, my body's need for --insert nutrient that I wasn't getting enough of here-- trumped my desire to eat local.