JONTILLMAN.COM | part of the problem since 1976

The majority of “simple living” or “frugal” websites, magazines, and newsletters go on and on endlessly about cutting grocery costs, and while I understand that the supermarket is one of the most advertising-laden spaces in modern life and thus requires vigilance, but the constant attention placed on food and groceries by advocates of thrift and frugal make eating out to be some sort of necessary evil to be relegated to the smallest, cheapest portion of our lives possible.

This attitude, which seems to be widespread among advocates of “simple” or “frugal” living is inherently destructive. When you think of groceries, or any other type of good in this way, not only are you spending as much (or more) time paying attention to money, purchasing and acquiring than someone who simply goes to the store and buys things, you are participating directly in the type of one-upmanship and status whoring that creates so much consumer angst in consumerist society - you’re just inverting the status game, not abandoning it.

Yes, my grocery bill is likely far lower than most peoples, almost to the point of being ridiculous, but I didn’t set out with that as a goal. It came about as a happy side effect of wanting to deal directly with more things in my life, to remove abstractions. I like food. A lot. I enjoy growing it, shopping for it, cooking it, presenting it, eating it, dealing with it in as many ways as I can, really. My tiny grocery bill came about as a natural result of my interest in and love of food. It’s not as odd as it sounds…

The large majority of the food sold in the average supermarket is, in my estimation, worthless. It is pablum for the masses - largely devoid of flavor, texture, love or soul. It is more packaging and marketing than sustenance, and it blunts the intellect and dulls the spirit to contemplate consuming it, much less to actually do so. Groceries are the ultimate LCD consumer good. Very early in my quest to live deliberately I decided that I was not going to settle for mediocre food. I was going to demand quality and beauty in all of the things that I would put into my body.

This uncompromising dedication to quality in my food has led me to, in short order, almost completely abandon grocery stores, and the commercial food chain they are the end points of. In food, quality can be measured in terms of freshness and care.

Freshness is mostly determined by the distance food must travel, and the degree of processing it has undergone, most of which is done to prepare it to travel. The produce section of youe grocery store is chock full of vegetable and fruit varietals that are bred specifically for their capacity to hide the amount of abuse they have undergone during transport. Local, heirloom varieties taste better because producers who consume their own produce, or distribute it locally do not care so much about how thick the skin of their grapes is, but how they taste. So, local produce is almost always tastier, higher quality stuff.

Meat, while also affected by the distance/processing question (such as steaks pumped full of water to make them appear appetizing a month after they were butchered, as well as to increase their selling weight), is most affected by the other part of the quality equation; care. Commercial meat production is about providing the minimum amount of animal care necessary for the critter to still be able to walk when it is “ready” for slaughter. When it comes to quality meat, the watchwords are “benign neglect”. Free-range chickens are inherently tastier than cooped chickens, and wild game is far and away tastier and higher quality than lot-fed cattle.

So, having realized these two things, I now, almost exclusively, source the two largest categories of groceries; produce and meat, locally. I shoot, or barter for, venison during hunting season. I buy my fish off of the docks, since I live by the ocean. I frequent the only grocery store in town that buys their produce locally, and supplement it with trips to farm stands. I am learning to grow my own vegetables and berries to further increase the quality of my food stuffs. Basically, at this point, I visit the grocery store to buy dry-goods such as beans, pease, rice and flours, since I bake all of my own bread, but I am looking for ways to reduce the miles that these items must travel to me as well.