Local reporter Larissa Cardey has started her adventure in eating locally on a budget. She shares the ups and downs of each week. This is the fourth part of a series.

By Larissa Cardey

It has been three weeks since I started this adventure in eating locally on a budget of $15.50 per week. For the first time, this project feels like something I can handle, rather than a challenge.

I spent less than my allotted budget on groceries this past week and I still have fresh food from my first week. With a greater variety of ingredients to cook with, I’ve made dishes I actually want to eat instead of relying on a few random items to make a meal.

After searching Foodnetwork.ca, I found a great recipe to liven up my beets: a roasted beet and goat cheese salad. Although I made a few substitutions - red beets instead of golden, red onion instead of shallot and garden lettuce instead of arugula - the recipe softened the strong taste of the beets and worked out well.

I’m also starting to take a more relaxed approach to this diet by allowing myself to use ingredients I did not purchase with my local food budget more often. I ate my first local sandwich and it was delicious: a fried egg topped with tomato, onion, basil and goat cheese. The toast was the one item that didn’t come out of my budget.

With food left over from previous weeks, I’ve become a little more generous. Unlike the apple muffin hoarding in week two, I actually shared my basket of strawberries with my mom.

Despite these positive changes, I’m still finding the grocery shopping part a bit of a challenge. For the first time since I was a kid, I walked into the Hamilton Farmers’ Market and was both overjoyed and overwhelmed.

I soon realized some vendors were selling produce from the United States. I had to balance comparing prices with carefully reading the origin of product signs. I felt like I was back in week one on my first shopping trip at Food Basics.

Eventually, I found the local cucumber, tomatoes, goat cheese, zucchini, strawberries and eggs that met my budget. I bought everything for $14.39. 

Harvesting Your Own Produce

Harvesting your own produce is a good way to save money and support local farmers. I’ve learned about two Hamilton projects that enable people to do just that.

Hamilton Fruit Tree Project

The Hamilton Fruit Tree Project is made up of a team of volunteers who go to local homes to harvest the fruit from their yards. The fruit is then divided up between volunteers, food banks, breakfast programs and homeowners.

The homeowners include seniors and families who can’t consume the large amounts of fruit their trees grow, explained Juby Lee, the program’s coordinator.

Since the project started in 2005, the majority of the participants have been youth in their 20s. When the volunteers see the fruit go from the tree to the basket, it creates a sense of accomplishment in a short period of time. This is something participants don’t usually get to experience while volunteering in other spaces, said Lee.

While the project supports eating locally and helps the participants understand where their food comes from, how can young people find the time to harvest fruit?

The project’s flexibility is one of the things that attracts volunteers, said Lee. They can volunteer as often as they want. When harvests occur, they last for periods of about 45 minutes to two hours that take place from about 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

McQuesten Community Garden

In Hamilton’s east end, 16-year-old Affan Sajid and 12-year-old Kashan Sajid have been helping out in the McQuesten Community Garden where their family has a plot. The garden is located behind unit 67 of the housing complex at 2 Oriole Crescent.

For $10, plots are available to families who live in the McQuesten neighbourhood for the season. Families can grow produce and flowers, explained Theresa Phair, volunteer garden facilitator.

If a family can’t pay, they are asked to provide “sweat equity” where they contribute their labour to the garden’s communal plot, she said. The produce from the communal plot is shared with the local food bank and other community agencies. People who live outside of the community can purchase plots if they are available.

Kashan and Affan help weed and water. Affan said he works in the garden because it is a good way to assist the community and it has encouraged others to also help in the garden, including his friends. There are more volunteers this summer and the garden is even bigger than it was last year.

Kashan said he helps out because it gives him something to do and enables his family and others to get food from the garden instead of buying it from the grocery store.

Finding the time to work in the garden is easy, they said.  

“I just go any time I want,” said Kashan.

Plum Picking

Last Thursday, I participated in a Hamilton Fruit Tree Project harvest. Along with four others, I spent almost an hour helping pick the little red and green-hued plums from the tree of a Hamilton home.

We used our hands to pick the low-hanging plums and used a fruit picker to grab the high-hanging ones. Holding on to the long, narrow handle, I hoisted the picker up to the plums, hooked the little prongs around them and pulled until the plums fell into the little cloth sack attached to the prongs.

By the end, my arms and shoulders were sore from hoisting up the picker. Although it was hard work on a hot day, it was satisfying to see the four large shopping bags we had filled nearly halfway with plums.

It was convenient to volunteer on a day that worked for my schedule and to complete the harvest in under an hour.  

Once I got home with my share, I took a bite into a slightly sour, slightly sweet plum. Was it the best tasting plum I have ever had? Nope. But that didn’t matter to me because I got to pick my fruit and eat it too.

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