I’m a pretty healthy eater. I eat a lot of fresh veggies and fruits and I prefer whole-grain breads and pastas to the bleached, flavorless versions. I like fish and I try to eat leaner cuts of meat. And I buy organic food when I can, but I’m not a slave to it. So after reading Michael Pollan’s new book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, my boyfriend and I were both so intrigued by the idea of the grass-fed animal and the organically farmed vegetable that we decided to perform an experiment.
We live in Washington, DC. Last Saturday we visited the Dupont Circle farmer’s market, bound and determined to buy the all the ingredients for our Sunday supper with one $20 bill. The weather was unseasonably nice (or is DC supposed to feel like San Diego this time of year?) and we happily strolled through the maze of vendors selling apples, homemade candles, and fresh-cut flowers. Every table offered something colorful and different. We tasted pears and tomatoes, whole-grain breads and gazpacho (isn’t that a summer soup?) as we meandered through the converted parking lot. We couldn’t decide on what to make for dinner…and then it hit us: pork chops. If you’re going to eat pork, shouldn’t it at the very least be organic? That’s the way we figured it.
So we bought two small pork chops. At just over $8, that ate up about half of our stash. The tomatoes we tasted were out of this world, so we decided that we’d have a salad of mixed greens (already at home in the fridge) to accompany the tasty little guys. Subtract another $4. The brightly colored yams at the neighboring table were practically begging us to take them home, so we got a handful of those—they were small, so we figured we’d eat two each. Another $3. To round it all out, we selected a beautiful, hand-made loaf of four-hundred-grain bread—well, you know what I mean. It had loads of different grains, a lovely toasted color, and it smelled simply divine. $5.
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