Sure, I'll share. Our current circles are:
1) Garden
2) Supermarket
3) Weekly farmer's markets
4) Food co-op
5) Specialty/ethnic
Our ideal circles are:
1) Garden
2) Weekly farmer's markets
3) Food co-op
4) Supermarket
5) Specialty/ethnic
When we wrote out the things that we buy from each source - we saw that the reason the supermarket was in spot #2 wasn't necessarily food.
Garden - eggs, herbs, seasonal veg
Supermarket - milk, yogurt, veg, fruit, beer & wine, toilet paper, soap & vinegar, hygiene, bags & jars
Weekly farmer's markets - veg, fruit, milk, cheese, honey, meat
Food co-op - grains, beans, canned & frozen, veg, fruit, milk, butter, cheese, baking
Specialty/ethnic - ethnic groceries, apothecary
The only things we intend to buy at the supermarket are toilet paper, waste bags, soap, etc. But then we buy other stuff there - because convenience - most often milk, yogurt, butter; sometimes produce for a specific recipe, fish. This looks like the biggest thing that's out of place. Here's our ideal:
Garden - eggs, herbs, seasonal veg, fruit
Weekly farmer's markets - veg, fruit, milk, cheese, honey, meat
Food co-op - grains, beans, canned & frozen, veg, fruit, milk, butter, cheese, baking, hygiene
Supermarket - beer & wine, toilet paper, soap & vinegar, bags & jars
Specialty/ethnic - ethnic groceries, apothecary, hygiene
So we need to do several things:
1) We need to cut out the convenience buying at the supermarket - a "no supermarket dairy" policy would almost fix our whole thing. I guess this is pretty predictable.
2) We need to get more food coming from home - especially fruit. Many fruit trees are coming along in pots and a few will be able to go in the ground this year. And we've got two new spots prepared for blackberries, so when they go on clearance this spring we're gonna go nuts.
3) We need to stop buying hygiene stuff at the supermarket (couple of small exceptions based on price). And we could also try harder to source hygiene from the apothecary.
4) There are 2 community gardening opportunities that we haven't taken advantage of yet. We're going to start one this spring, and we'll look into the other to see if it's something we want to do.
Bumping the co-op up to #2 is as easy as scheduling a regular weekly trip. I used to take piano lessons next door to the co-op every week, so we know this works. It's just something we have to add to our schedule and then stick to it.
The thing that seems most likely to trip us up is yogurt. We eat a lot of yogurt. We've made our own several times but we've never really stuck with it. I guess this is as good a time to fix that as ever...
