Grease AND Petroleum In Your Burger: Part I

This year I am going to try to eat more foods that were produced locally. This will be very difficult due to the fact that I pretty much eat at least one meal out a day; however, I am now fully motivated.

Someone recently recommended Barbara Kingsolver's book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle." Unlike her well-known novels of fiction, Ms. Kingsolver essentially mixes her family's memoirs on their endeavor into the wilderness to live on thier own crops with a ton of intriguing facts regarding the processes involved in our food intake.

Some interesting factoids from the book:

• Americans consume 400 gallons of oil per year per citizen for agriculture. The majority of this comes from the trip from farm to plate.
• The portion of agricultural fuel we pay is $80 billion or $725 per household each year.
• If every US citizen ate one meal a week from locally raised foods, we would reduce our country's oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels every week.
• Buying locally generates 3x as much revenue for the local economy.

This weekend I will attempt a visit to the Farmer's Market and let you know how it goes. If there are wild goat running amuck and pissing the aisles then I've got a problem.