Organic Food

Tonight we had dinner at our friends house and had an interesting conversation about organic food.  If you 'know me', whether it's in person or having been following the blog for a while, you know I love to grow my own garden in the summer.  Each year we have a great bounty of food and this year I was even extra productive and took a couple of bags of lettuce to the food bank as we couldn't eat all the lettuce I grow.  Although I like to grow a variety so there is usually more then enough. 

Our friends were recently on a vacation with their family and the family has an organic farm where they grow and supply food to sell at farmers markets and to local families.  I love the idea of this, I think growing and eating local food is a great idea.  I enjoy going to farmers markets and getting food from people there.  Calgary is lucky becuase we have quite a few good farmers markets too.  I often go to Millarville Market and Calgary Farmers Market.

But in reality only a small portion of the food I eat is from my garden or from a farmers market.  The majority of the food I eat comes from a gigantic Superstore.  Which I love, don't get me wrong.  I do think they also try to get local food when they can as well.  And I like that I have options there too.   The sell organic produce and sometimes I buy it and sometimes I don't.  I usually price match between the two and choose from there.  While I don't mind paying a bit more for organic foods I don't like paying a lot more.  That's one thing I like about growing it myself, it's very affordable.   I also don't mind paying a bit more for 'organic' meat.  I'll check the meat and if it's a dollar or two more for the organic stuff I'll happily pay that. 

I do often find that organic tastes better too, so I don't mind paying a bit extra for that too.  The problem is it's often hard to know if it's going to taste better or not.

Plus I find myself more willing to pay a bit more if I'm going to be eating the skin and if I think they have been sprayed with pesticides, like with strawberries.  

Other then a garden does anyone have any other affordable ways of buying organic foods?  Are there certain food that you are willing to pay more for? 

Jenn