Uses for Chokos - Kitchen Recipes, Animal Feed, and Help in the Garden

"One Small Serve" - homegrown food on a very small scale

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Given that we are very inefficient chicken keepers and get a lot more out of our flock than just chicken meat, and that we're just doing this exercise to see where it takes us, let's just halve that. Let's say $47.00 per roast chicken.

Then let's halve it again because our chickens, although they vary in size a lot, can be up to twice the size of the supermarket one. So now we're at $23.50.

(Our chickens are also twice as tough as supermarket ones -- we could put that down as a benefit measured in extra jaw muscles. True story -- the book Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art says that as our food has become more tender and we have had to work less and less at chewing it, our airways have shrunk and our faces have changed, and not towards the rugged outdoor look.)

Regardless of its chewing value, in dollar terms our chicken is still two and a half  times the price of the supermarket variety. 

The real value of a chicken 

I just tried to put a dollar value on a roast chicken from a back yard flock, but there's no way to factor in the intangible value of the multitude of other things that a home grown roast chicken is connected to.

Just to list some of the benefits our own family has experienced from raising our own chickens (obviously a limited view point but it'll do for demonstration purposes):

• Our deep litter chicken coop provides finished compost by the wheelbarrow load. And when we let them out to forage in the afternoons, the flock provides free farmyard/garden sanitation (manure spreading and insect control).
• When our children were small, caring for broody hens and clutches of eggs gave them meaningful biology lessons. Mama hens and fluffy baby chicks kept them occupied for hours at a time -- and not the way a screen does. And the still little forms that didn't make it out of the nest taught them that life comes hand in hand with death, and that sometimes outcomes are beyond our control. 
• Our chicken flock is also a source of meaning, purpose, and dignity for us. It enables us to put food on the table that we're proud of, that we've been intimately involved with, that we've grappled with the ethics of.
• Our chicken flock helps us feed ourselves in an "additive" way--with things like increased soil health and quality of life as by-products--instead of in an "extractive," industrial way.
• Our chicken raising experiences have helped us grow in our sense of responsibility and stewardship toward the land and lives that link directly to what's on the ends of our forks. 

One way to sum it up would be to say that a homegrown roast chicken on our table represents a journey from squeamish, and clueless (aka, easily led and largely dependent on others) towards capable, confident, and able to contribute -- even if its just by feeding ourselves a little more and relying a little less on unethical and unsustainable industrial agriculture.

Related reading 

Here's a page that links to all my other chicken-related posts, about keeping chickens (and their environment) healthy and happy and also about chicken behavior and what chickens have to do with calling in a kinder, more connected world.

"Regenerative Food Systems vs Industrial Agriculture: Why We Need More Hands in the Soil"

"One Small Serve" - home grown food on a small enough scale

Includes a series of free extra tips + free email support

This is an expanded version of an article that was originally published in the  May 2025 edition of What's On. 

Taro (Colocasia esculenta) is a tropical, starchy root crop. For backyard food growers, it's an easy, low maintenance producer of nutritious homegrown carbohydrates.

Once a taro patch is up and running it's a self-renewing, sustainable food source. And it can handle going underwater -- so when there's a big weather event that cuts the supply chain and the supermarkets run out of rice and pasta, your taro patch will come to the rescue.

If you live in the tropics or semi-tropics, are interested in food self-sufficiency and perhaps already enjoying a sense of achievement about growing some of your own food but still relying on supermarket staples to bulk out your meals -- you need to get acquainted with taro.

Taro - a staple food throughout the tropics and subtropics

Taro is recognized as one of the oldest cultivated crops in the world. It has a fascinating history including its part in the story of the Polynesian Way-Finders -- these amazing seafarers crossed vast oceans in canoes long before modern navigation instruments, and they brought taro with them on their voyages across the Pacific Ocean to Hawaii.

Taro ("kalo" in Hawaiian) became a staple food in Hawaii and has huge significance in Hawaiian culture.

Besides Hawaii, taro feeds millions of people in all tropical and subtropical regions, including Africa, China, Japan, New Guinea, all Pacific islands, the Caribbean islands, parts of Central and South America, and some regions in the United States³.

How to tell taro apart from other plants with "elephant ear" shaped leaves

All taro varieties have large, heart-shaped leaves on long stems coming from a thick, starchy base called the corm (the corm is the part you eat). The leaves, leaf stems, and corms vary in colour and size between the different varieties, but the general shape of the plant and the leaf is always similar.

In particular, taro leaves have a closed in "V" at the top of the heart shape. 

Have a good look at the taro leaves below...  

...and then compare them with the leaves in the next picture, which is a picture of "cocoyam" (Xanthosoma sagittifolium).

What did you see? 

Look at the top of the leaf. See how the "V" at the top is closed in on the taro leaves, and  open on the cocoyam leaves? 

To the best of my knowledge all taros (Colocasia esculenta) have this closed in "V" at the top of the leaf.

Also to the best of my knowledge, plants whose leaves have the open "V" include some that are edible and some that are poisonous. The plant pictured above -- "cocoyam" (Xanthosoma sagittifolium) is one of the edible ones.

Having said all that, the safest advice I can give you about identifying taro if you're still unsure is to do what I did:

Get your taro (and any other plant you're going to eat) from someone who is eating it regularly. That's the one way you can know for sure that the plant you have is edible.

Taro's many "common" names and its one Scientific name

Plants have "common names" - often a great many different common names for the same plant, and scientific names - one scientific name for each plant.

Common names arise from local dialects and uses. If you're unfamiliar with the dialect, the uses, or the plant itself, common names can be misleading. 

Scientific names are hard to learn, say, and remember, but they're more reliable than common names because (generally speaking) one plant can't have more than one scientific name. 

Everywhere I look on the internet, I see confusion about the names of plants with "elephant ear" shaped leaves. Maybe one day I'll have a go at untangling it all and writing a post to try to clear up some of the confusion, but for this post I just want to make it clear that I'm talking here about "taro," also often called "dasheen" or "eddoe" along with dozens of other common names, too numerous to list here. 

Lots of common names but only one scientific name: Colocasia esculenta. 

(More on "dasheen" and "eddoe" in the next section.)

Two types of taro: "dasheen" types and "eddoe" types 

Taro varieties can be loosely divided into two main types -- 

"Dasheen" types, or "wet-land taro," which are large to very large. They need very moist soil and are even happy to be periodically inundated. Dasheen types of taro produce a large central corm that you eat, and lots of baby offshoots for new taro plants.

"Eddoe" types are smaller than dasheens and can tolerate drier conditions. They produce small side cormels that you can eat all year round.

(If you really want to nerd out on taro types and names, you might be interested to know that "eddoe," Colocasia antiquorum, and "taro," Colocasia esculenta, were originally described as two separate species. But many later botanists consider them all to be members of a single, very variable species, the correct name for which is Colocasia esculenta⁴.

Within these two types, dasheen and eddoe, there are literally hundreds of varieties of taro to choose from in the tropical and semi-tropical regions of the world. Ask around in your local food growing community and be guided by local knowledge to find the ones that suit your area and your needs.

Growing conditions for taro

All taros like moist soil, and the large dasheen types are happy to be water-logged. If you have a wet area that you're not sure what to do with, plant some taro there.

If you don't already have a wet area and you want to make one, choose a spot and dig down at least 20 cm deep, line your hollow with lots of newspaper to slow the drainage, and fill/refill with compost or good quality soil. Once the taro is established, it and the soil microorganisms will start to change the soil so that it retains moisture more easily. 

As well as consistent moisture, all taros love compost or well rotted manure and some extra potassium. To provide potassium, you could use ash from your fireplace, banana peels and leaves as mulch, or a potassium rich fertilizer.

Taro grows in partial shade to full sun. The larger varieties will shade out other plants, so it does need space.

In frost free areas you can plant taro year round. It may slow down or go dormant in the cooler months, and it will explode in warm, wet conditions.

In the image above you see "dasheen" type taro, or "wetland" taro, probably growing in Hawaii where taro is an important food crop.

Planting and growing taro

One of my favorite things about taro is its perennial, self-renewing nature. In the act of harvesting some to eat, you can also propagate more.

Taro connects your garden to your kitchen -- the more taro you take to the kitchen, the more you have in the garden. 

Planting, harvesting, and replanting dasheen taros

The thick, starchy, hard corm at the base of a large dasheen-type taro plant has lots of little "eyes," each of which will produce a new taro plant. 

You can twist the baby plants off when they're about 15 cm tall, and plant them in a new location. Or you can let them grow right where they are and as they become more crowded they'll push the large, original corm up out of the ground so it's easier to harvest for eating. 

Lift the largest corm out and settle the others back down into the hole it leaves. Twist off and plant any little baby taros that have formed from the eyes of the mother corm -- even if they're still tiny, most of them will grow. 

Planting, harvesting, and replanting eddoe taros

Eddoe-type taro plants also produce small side cormels from the mother plant, but in this case you can eat the side cormels all year round (leave a few if you want your taro patch to grow larger) and leave the mother plant to produce more.

Growing new taro plants from the top of a corm

You can also grow new taro plants of both types by replanting the top of the starchy corm after harvesting the bottom section for eating.

When you replant the top of a taro plant, cut off all the leaves to reduce moisture loss. It'll grow new leaves after it has enough roots to draw water for them.

In the image above, you can see two taro tops that have been cut off the top of a corm, ready for replanting. On the right, you can see a small corm with a little "eye" sprouting into a new baby taro plant.

Spacing your taro planting

When I'm planting a dasheen taro patch I crowd the plants together in a tight clump of 3, then enough space to allow for compost and mulch between the clumps, then 3 more.

Eddo types can be spaced out a bit more, leaving room around each mother plant for lots of cormlets. 

How will I know when to harvest?

It can take up to 7-12 months after planting before your taro patch is producing lots of corms big enough to harvest. From then on, so long as its moist and well fed and you keep replanting as you go, your patch will be perpetually productive in frost free zones. 

Preparing your taro for cooking 

Ok, so you've harvested some taro -- you have in hand a muddy corm, possibly very large if it's a dasheen (the ones in the pic above are very small; I was impatient to try some), with roots sticking out all around the bottom and leaves growing out the top.

Cut off the top, including about 2 inches of corm (like the two on the left in the pic above), and replant it.

These have been scrubbed and allowed to dry. To the bottom left, you can see a top that could be replanted:

Scrub the remainder under running water, removing the roots and debris, then rinse, peel thickly, and keep rinsing as you go. It can be slippery, and may be slightly irritating for some people - so keep rinsing your hands as well as the taro. 

Cleaned, peeled, ready to cook:

Once it's well peeled, cut out any brown bits and it's ready for cooking. The simplest way to begin is to chop into chunks and boil until it's easy to pierce with a fork. Discard the cooking water.

Now you can do anything that tickles your fancy, from eating it as is with butter and salt (yum), to mashing it and using it as a flour replacement in a cake recipe (google "taro cake recipes" for ideas), to freezing it for later use.

You can also bake or steam taro, or slice and fry it to make chips or crisps.

The well known Hawaiian dish, "poi," is made from steamed/boiled, mashed, fermented
taro -- sour but nourishing and said to be very good for invalids, babies, or those with
compromised digestion.

One Small Serve - an eBook

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Why would you want to grow your own food?

In this series of posts we're focusing on reducing our reliance on supermarkets and industrial food for lots of reasons. Some of the main ones are to reduce our costs, to improve our nutrition, and to tread more lightly on the earth.

In case you missed the previous posts in the series, they are:

3 Supermarket Strategies to Help You Spend Less, Tread Lighter, and Live Better

Strategy #4 – to Help Parents Spend Less at the Supermarket

Strategy #5 – What’s Shaping Your Grocery Shopping Habits?

Strategy #6 – Wise Use of Whole Foods

This post - Strategy #7 - is about replacing some of your supermarket needs (in small steps) by making a start on growing your own food.

If you’ve never grown anything before, or if you live in an urban environment without access to garden areas, take heart. There are easy, small ways to start -- including if you are short on time, space, or confidence.

I've listed the following suggestions roughly in order from easy towards more challenging. We'll begin with what must be the simplest, cheapest, quickest way there is to get started growing a little bit of fresh food in your own home. 

Start sprouts in a jar on your kitchen bench

Sprouting seeds, grains, and legumes is a simple process that takes no more space than a kitchen draining board. It's a way that you can use indirect sunlight and moisture to increase the volume, digestibility, and nutrition levels of seeds, grains, and legumes.

All you need is a clean jar, a piece of loose weave fabric or netting, a large rubber band or some string, water, some indirect sunlight, and some edible seeds grains/legumes. (Preferably organic and definitely not treated in any way that would stop them from sprouting.)

At its most basic, sprouting goes like this: Put a small amount of seed or grain in the bottom of your jar, cover with water, and leave for up to 12 hours (less for smaller seeds).

Cover the mouth of the jar with a fabric or net that will hold the seeds and release the water; drain. After that, rinse and drain your seeds at least every 12 hours, keeping them moist but not wet. Watch for them to start to sprout, which should happen within a day or so. Keep rinsing and draining till the sprouts are the size you want, and viola: homegrown food!

You can use your sprouts in lots of ways: toss them into a stir fry, add to salads, add to sandwiches, blend them up in smoothies... 

Food that grows in soil is always my preference, but sprouting is hard to beat if you're short on space or time or you just need a not-too-daunting way to get started growing something.

A how-to resource and a word of caution

There are a different soaking and sprouting times for different sizes and types of seed, and its good to be sure you're not letting your sprouts get slimy or moldy - for details, this post is a comprehensive  guide covering pretty much everything you could want to know.

The only thing I would add to it is a word of caution about soy, which I suggest you avoid entirely, and other legumes, which I suggest you cook after sprouting.

(See this article by environmental journalist Tara Lohan about soy effects on human and environmental health and how soy got so big, this one about soy farming as a deforestation driver, and this one about soy in processed foods, if you're keen to know more about why I suggest avoiding soy.)

All other legume sprouts, in my opinion, should be cooked before you eat them. All legumes are hefty to digest and some more so than others -- cooking them after sprouting gives you double insurance that you'll get their health benefits without an upset tummy.

Kidney beans are particularly tricky according to some sources, so give those a miss unless you've done your own research and you're confident you know what you're doing. 

Other than the legume family, if you can sprout it you can probably eat it! Have fun experimenting, compost your failures learning experiences, and enjoy your successes

Grow edible things in containers

(Or your could grow drinkable things in containers -- see the section below for ideas on that.)

The great advantage of growing food plants in containers is that, well, they're contained. So they're more manageable than even a small garden plot. Small and manageable is good, because we need strategies we can maintain.

If you're doing this for the first time and you can afford to buy seedlings and potting mix, do.

Or you can get off to a slower but much less expensive start by starting your own seeds and making your own compost and potting mix, which is beyond the scope of this post but isn't as hard as it might sound. You can also get creative with finding free containers, such as unwanted polystyrene boxes, instead of buying pots.

Whichever way you go about it, start small and then build slowly, so you don't get overwhelmed. 

Greens and herbs of many kinds are super easy to grow in pots, and so long as you feed them, keep them moist, and can put them where they receive enough sunlight, the more you harvest the better they grow.

Learning about ways to feed your potted plants can be a whole other adventure, just as composting can -- there's so much to learn and explore.

But for now, just start. If its really daunting, limit yourself to starting with ONE pot. The first time you snip some chives to add to a bowl of soup -- even if the chives came already potted from Bunnings and the soup from a can -- you'll have started growing your own food. Anything's possible from there. 

Grow low-maintenance perennial herbs and make chilled teas

Growing something you can drink counts too.

Do you buy soft drinks, carbonated water, cordials, or fruit juices? Consider replacing them with teas made from things that grow in containers (see above) or in your garden. (Actually, its only called "tea" if it includes leaves from the tea plant Camellia sinensis; otherwise its proper name in herbal lore is a "tisane." But we'll stick with "tea" to keep things simple.)

Any herb you collect fresh from your containers or your garden to make tea with will be way healthier for you than herbs grown in mono-cultures, packaged, and transported. And don't even get me started on the sugar content and other non-food ingredients in bottled beverages. And, on top of all that, there's the cost savings.

Chilled herbal tea examples

If you live in a more temperate region with proper winters, here's a list of 18 herbs for you.

Let's start with ginger tea. (I wrote a detailed post about growing ginger here.)

Grate fresh ginger rhizome into a heat proof jug or jar (scrub it clean first, but no need to peel) and pour boiling water on it. Let it steep for as long as you like. Overnight is fine (it will be stronger, so you can dilute it more and it will go further) and ten minutes is fine too.

Add honey (its easier to dissolve if you add it when the tea is still a bit warm, but I don't add while its hot because I use live, raw honey, and I don't want to destroy its goodness with heat).

Then chill, dilute to preference (I put a bit in the bottom of a cup and add water; my husband drinks it straight), and enjoy as a refreshing, healthy, thirst quenching drink. 

Another plant you can use to make a refreshing chilled tea is Mexican tarragon, which I wrote about here.

Another is lemon grass (Cymbopogon citratus), a low-maintenance tropical perennial which also does ok in a large container if you need to bring it in to protect from frost. It has a slew of health benefits you might not have known about (I didn't).

Yet another is hibiscus (Hibiscus sabdariffa) -- yes, hibiscus flowers that we grew up thinking were just for decoration can be made into a healthy tea.

There are many more, but that should get you started. Now you can skip the bottled beverages section next time you're down that aisle.

Next, another kind of drink. 

Make kombucha 

Kombucha is regular sweet black tea that has been converted to a fermented beverage . It's cheap to make and is a delicious and healthy replacement for sweetened drinks.

What transforms the sweetened tea into a sugar-free probiotic (and puts this in the "homegrown" category) is something that grows on top of the tea, called a Scoby. Scoby stands for "symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeasts." Fear not - they're all friendly varieties that build healthy gut flora in humans.

It takes a bit more to learn kombucha making than it does for herbal tea, so rather than try and condense it here I'll share a basic resource to get you started.

By drinking kombucha regularly (especially if you also eat un-pasturised sauerkraut and/or un-pasturized yogurt/kefir) you can scratch probiotic powders and pills off your shopping list too.

Grow tough, easy fruit/vegetable climbers in narrow spaces

This is really an extension on the container growing section above, except that now instead of talking "balcony or porch," we're talking about narrow places where there's not much space but what there is goes all the way up.

Plants like cherry tomatoes, regular climbing tomatoes, peppers and capsicums, egg plants, pepinos, cucumbers, peas and green beans, and probably more that aren't coming to mind, can all be grown in containers and trained up trellises to make use of vertical spaces.

Other, more rambling vines that we think of as space hogs can be used cleverly, too, for example by allowing them to grow up a trellis and then over a pergola or car port. Chokos, pumpkins, and passion fruit come to mind.

Sweet potato vines can be grown in a large pot to give space for tubers, or a smaller one if you plan to just eat the vine tips as a nutritious green vegetable. 

Chokos are less nutritious, but so easy once you get them going. I wrote about 7 Ways to Use the Humble Choko Vine, here.

Even pumpkins can grow on trellises. I always fear that the vine won't hold that heavy fruit up in the air, but it does. And pumpkins can also be harvested before they're large, and be cooked and eaten like you would a zucchini. In my experience small unripe pumpkins are interchange-able with zucchini in the kitchen, and a LOT easier to grow.

Grow mushrooms

Full disclosure: mushrooms in my experience haven't been the easiest things to grow. I can't (yet) count them among my successes. But so far I've only made a few attempts, and I'm not giving up because mushrooms are SUPER nutritious and many types are also safely medicinal.

I believe that food should be the first place we turn when we need medicine. And I'm convinced that food from our own immediate environment is a significant key to building our health and resilience, so we can reduce our reliance on pharmacies as well as supermarkets. Mushrooms are such super-foods that no matter how many times I fail at growing them in abundance, I intend to persist till I crack it. (It's mainly a case of moving it up the list of priorities...)

Anyway, if you're keen, consider starting with a kit the first few times to dip your toes in. There are lots of mushroom growing kits out there; search online for "mushroom growing kits" in your area. 

And while you're waiting for your kit to sprout, you might like to check out these online courses, the first one free and the other so reasonably priced that its almost a no-brainer.

Free Mini-Course: Get started with your Mushroom Growing Journey

Grow a Mushroom Garden at Home: an Online Course

Or search for another mushroom growing resources that tickle your fancy - they're springing up everywhere (pardon the pun).

Grow edible insects in a tub on a bench

The insects in the picture are silkworms, which are easy to raise on mulberry leaves at home. Many other types of insects can also be raised at home -- as food for you, your chickens, or your fish.

Around 2 billion people, world wide, eat insects.

Yes, we picky folks would need to get past the ick-factor.

And no, insects aren't pettable.

But if you have serious space constraints and you can get past those two hurdles, you could produce your own ethical, high-quality, super-local, balanced and complete protein at a fraction of the cost of any other comparable protein source, on a bench in a corner.

No, I haven't tried this personally yet. (At least, not for human food. We've had a few goes at growing black soldier fly larvae for chicken food and fish food, but we're still very much in the learning stages.)

But if I had no space to raise other kinds of livestock and I couldn't afford to buy ethically raised meat, I wouldn't hesitate to put "learn how to farm insects for food" at the top of my list of priorities.

I don't believe that fake meat from a lab is the answer to any of our meat-related challenges. Nature placed insects near the base of all food chains with the same exquisite wisdom she applied to the rest of her Creation. I would much rather eat insects as designed by Nature than meat designed in a lab.

So. If that tickles your fancy, here are some resources to explore:

Insects are delicious and nutritious

Farming Edible Insects - hello zero footprint protein

12 Garden Insects You Can Eat

And if you're not keen right now, that's ok. File it away at the back of your mind for if you ever do need or want to explore it.

TAKE ACTION

Ok. That was lots of ideas. But ideas are utterly useless without action.

So don't close this tab until you've chosen one thing to take action on. The very first thing that pops into your mind as you mentally scan back through this list -- that's the one.

If you’re new to growing your own food:

• Choose an option and take a first step to get started. You could note in your notebook (from the first post in this series) what you need to do next to keep moving, but do that after you've taken action. 
• If you have to look something up, limit your research so you don't fall down the rabbit hole and never make it out! Just look up the basics so you can get started.
• Consider what basic supplies you’ll need and add them to your shopping list if you can't find them in your house.
  

If you’re not new to growing your own food:

• Chose one thing you’re growing but not making very good use of. Ask yourself, what would I need to do differently to bring this food from where-ever it grows, into my kitchen more regularly?
• Or, What one thing is there that I'm not growing yet but would like to?
• Or, What one thing I'm already growing would I like to grow more of, so I could use it more often?
• The best way to get better at growing your own food is to make it as easy and simple as possible to eat something--anything--directly from your garden on a daily basis.  “One Garden Meal Per Day” expands on that idea.
• The eBook  "One Small Serve" describes a selection of low-maintenance, nutritious perennial plants and ways to build a "one serve at a time" food growing habit that's small and simple enough to maintain -- including for someone who knows that gardening will never be the center-piece of their life.
  

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This is the next in a series about reducing your reliance on supermarkets and industrial food. In case you missed the others, they are:

3 Supermarket Strategies to Help You Spend Less, Tread Lighter, and Live Better

Strategy #4 – to Help Parents Spend Less at the Supermarket

Strategy #5 – What’s Shaping Your Grocery Shopping Habits?

There was a time when our family was completely reliant on the supermarket. We had no idea where our food was coming from and we were powerless to take care of our own basic health needs or to do anything about rising food and fuel prices. 

Today we eat in ways that are much healthier and more economical both for us and for the places and communities our food comes from. And if extreme weather were to cut off our family's access to town, we'd be able to go for many weeks (barring serious accidents) without needing the supermarket or the pharmacy.

A big reason for all of that (besides our efforts over the years to learn to grow lots of our own food and to use simple, natural remedies to take care of our health) is that we've learned to reject convenience foods and replace them with carefully selected and prepared whole foods, which is the topic of this post. 

What would be helpful?

Before we go on: this post is in the nature of an overview, with some hints and tips thrown in. You may find this is enough to prompt ideas or jog you into action to take more steps on your own journey. 

But if you find yourself wanting more detail, please comment at the bottom and tell me what would be helpful for you. In the coming months I'll be investing thought and time into creating more practical, step-by-step, "hand-holding" style resources and I'd love to hear what would be most helpful to you for where you're at right now. 

With that said, let's get started...

Why buy whole foods?

Heavily processed foods, obviously, give you heaps of convenience. You get to eat them right out of the packet or with very minimal preparation. But convenience foods also cut you off from nature, from the sources of your food, and give you:

• less nutrition,
• more additives,
• more packaging,
• higher cost per meal,
• less empowerment (convenience foods are habit forming in two ways: 1, their ingredients interfere with your body’s innate intelligence about what is good for it, and 2, you come to rely on them as a quick fix ),
• gradually declining health and energy levels, and
• the nagging awareness that you’re buying from giant conglomerates that are squeezing the life out of farming communities, and the biodiversity out of ecosystems, around the Earth.
  

In the long run you're paying for that cheap convenience with your health and well-being, not to mention what industrially produced and processed foods do to our ecosystems and communities. 

When you buy whole foods, you do have to prepare them yourself. There’s no getting around the fact that in order for you to eat nourishing food that doesn’t cost the Earth, some planning and organization is required on your part.

But that's really the only downside, and I've found that it's at least as much about planning and organizing as it is about spending more time in the kitchen.

And in my opinion, it’s worth it. When you do put in the effort to buy more whole foods and learn to use them, you’ll get:

• better nutrition (so much so that its impossible to state the difference in one small bullet point)
  
• gradual restoration of your body’s innate intelligence about what you need, vs what the food industry wants you to want
• a feeling of empowerment: as you learn to use whole foods you'll also be learning to be more in charge of your own eating habits, enjoyment, and health, and less reliant on anonymous giants who have no interest in your health
• a sense of satisfaction in knowing you’re taking better care of the Earth just by how you eat
• a sense of re-connection, perhaps even of home-coming, as you engage with your food closer to its source
  
• positive knock-on effects in other areas of your life as all these things begin to strengthen you in subtle ways

A whole food example

Here’s an example from my life of buying a whole food and using it in ways that help me feed my family well without spending my entire life in the kitchen.

I buy organic brown rice and cook 1 to 2 kg of it at a time. 

Whole grains are more nutritious than processed ones, but they can be problematic to digest and get the full nutritional benefit from unless we know how to prepare them properly. So I have a preparation and cooking process for brown rice that involves a few steps and some forethought and planning.

The process requires my presence in the kitchen, but not a huge amount of hands-on time; I can be doing other things while the rice is doing its thing. 

The result is cooked rice that’s highly digestible and nutritious, keeps well in the coldest part of the fridge, and can be used in different ways as a base or a side in a variety of meals.

I don't bother freezing it (in fact I'm not sure what freezing would do to its texture); in nearly 15 years of doing this I've never had my cooked rice go off before I could use it all up in my family of four. 

A few other ideas

Legumes

Legumes/pulses (such as dried beans or lentils) are relatively economical to buy.

(Unfortunately, pulses/legumes are among the crops routinely sprayed with glyphosate--Round Up--to desiccate them before harvest so it’s important to get them organic if you can manage it. The increased cost of organic pulses brings us closer to what real food really costs when farmers reject the industrial cheap food model and insist on something healthier. And on the upside, dried legumes do keep – so once you're comfortable using them you can consider buying organic in bulk for a better price. Best of all, if you live in parts of the world that grow them, buy your legumes directly from a farmer and cut out the industrial supply chain altogether.)

Like whole grains, it’s important to learn how to prepare legumes before cooking to increase their digestibility. Once you have the hang of it, legume preparation fits in with other kitchen routines and the pay-off in improved nutrition is well-worth it. Left-overs from bulk cook-ups of legumes can be refrigerated, frozen, and used in a myriad of ways in subsequent meals. Wisely prepared and combined with other whole foods, legumes can be a simple and nutritious whole-food staple in your kitchen.  

There’s even a recipe for chocolate brownies that uses cooked dry beans in place of flour. Search the internet for “recipe for black bean brownies” and you’ll find a plethora of options. (I credit Katie at KitchenStewardship.com for first introducing me to this idea, and she’s an excellent resource for all things whole food, real food, and healthy eating.)

Cooking in bulk for frozen meals

When you go to the effort of cooking any meal that can be frozen, cook much larger amounts and freeze some for easy, home cooked “convenience meals” on other days.

Cooking veggies in bulk

When you cook any kind of veggie, Its almost always worth doing double or triple, or as much as you can fit in whatever cooking vessel you're using.

The excess can go into bubble and squeak, frittata, be reheated under the grill and served topped with grilled cheese, or be quickly reheated in a fry pan and served with fried eggs on top or scrambled eggs mixed in.

Having already-cooked veggies at hand makes it easier to increase your veggie consumption, something most of us could do with, and it's hard to go past the all-around nutrition of a pan of fried garden greens and homegrown eggs.

(It’s really ok, even beneficial, to cook and reheat your veggies, including greens. Read more here about cooked vs raw.)

Teaming up with a friend

Team up with a friend, cook in bulk, and swap portions. You and your kids will appreciate the variety, and you’ll get ideas to expand your own repertoire.

Take action 

If you’re not already practiced at bypassing processed foods, here are some action steps for you to try... 

• Sit down with a cup of tea, your notebook, and Google (or preferably Ecosia.org rather than Google). 
• Choose just one type of whole food that appeals to you, to work with initially. If you need to, look up the basics for how to store and prepare that food. Scribble down 2 or 3 meals in which you could use that food as a main ingredient over the coming week, or whatever time frame makes sense for you. 
• Put that food item on your shopping list. Then prepare it in a basic way and in sufficient quantity for the 2 or 3 meals you listed. (Don’t buy it in large bulk quantities yet, and don't cook any one meal in bulk for freezing until you're confident your family will eat it happily - The last thing you want is a freezer full of meals your family won't eat.)
•  Pat yourself on the back. You’ve just prepared the foundation for several meals and taken a step away from reliance on convenience foods.

If you are already practiced at bypassing processed foods:

• Take stock of your meal planning as it relates to your supermarket habits: Are you already doing all you can to streamline your processes? Are you as efficient as you can be? Are there any areas where you could work smarter instead of harder?  What about nutrition, are there areas where a little more attention to detail might yeild a boost in nutrition?
  
• Pick an area (just one!) where you know you can do better, and note down what action you want to take.

You're not trying to be super-human

Remember, no matter where you are on this journey, you're not trying to be super-woman or super-man. The objective is just to live a life that feels as right to you as can be.

In the context of your current circumstances, and with the goal being health for your family and for the ecosystems and farming communities that feed you, what could feel a little more “right” for you? 

Start there.

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This post is about how our social routines and our physical environments shape our grocery shopping habits and nudge us in our buying decisions. Once you see these influences at work in your life, you'll be able to respond to them in more deliberate ways rather than just being prompted by them without realizing it.

This is Strategy #5 in a series of strategies for reducing our reliance on the globalized industrial food system. If you haven't read the previous two posts in this series please do that first, then come back to this one. The previous posts are:

1. "3 Supermarket Strategies to Help You Spend Less, Tread Lighter, and Live Better"
2. "Strategy #4: to Help Parents Spend Less at the Supermarket"

Who is in charge of your grocery shopping habits?

We think we're running our lives with rational thinking, logic, and will power. But studies show that in actual fact our environment has much more influence on our behavior than we realize. (I wrote about how our environment can distract us from our goals or guide us toward them, here.)

We'll start this post with some examples of how our physical and social environments shape our habits. Then we'll look at how the environment inside the supermarket is designed to prompt us to buy more, and I'll share a specific example of how a family routine was prompting me to go shopping more often than I needed to.

Finally, I'll give you some suggestions for how you can make use of all of this and become more aware and deliberate about your shopping choices.

How our environments shape us

For a very obvious example of how our social environment can support or hinder us in making changes to our behavior, think about a habit like smoking. If you were a smoker who wanted to stop, it would be essential to put yourself in environments where no-one else smokes. Hanging around with smokers would make it extremely difficult to break the habit and sustain the change for the long term. 

Our physical environment shapes us too, literally as well as figuratively. For example if you took all the raised seating out of your living area and replaced it with a mat and cushions on the floor, you'd gradually adjust to sitting on the floor with associated changes in posture, flexibility, and mobility over time.

James Clear, author on habits and behavior change, calls this “choice architecture,” and says it’s “the number one driver of better habits.” (He should know; he wrote a New York Times best seller on the topic of how to change our behavior.)

Marketers know all about how our environments influence our behaviors, and they make full use of it. In the next section, I'll show you how the environment inside a supermarket is specifically designed to prompt you to buy more than you had planned to when you walked in there.

How "a few things" becomes a trolley-load

Everything about the way supermarkets are laid out and the ways the shelves are packed is designed to prompt you to buy: 

• the size of the shopping trolley (research shows that you buy more if your trolley looks empty)
• delicious bakery smells wafting over you as enter, to whet your appetite for all the foods you're about to be choosing
  
• fresh fruit and veg near the entrance to give an impression of healthful freshness that lingers for the rest of your visit and to give you the feeling that you've already selected healthy stuff, so further along it's ok to indulge in a few extra "treats"
  
• placement of specific items at eye height for you and your kids 
• the placement of items on hooks that protrude out a little from the shelves and are a different, but related, category to the other items in that aisle 
• stacks of snack foods at the ends of the aisles - high traffic areas that you can't avoid passing by
• and of course, at the check out, the magazines for you to help yourself to as you wait in line to pay, and the sugar snacks for you to pick up since you're now hungry and light headed from all the stimuli you've just been subjected to

If I were a supermarket manager, perhaps I'd make similar decisions. I hope I wouldn't, but then I'd probably go broke or get sacked. I'm glad I'm not a supermarket manager. 

***

The next section is an example of how our weekly family routine was putting me in close proximity to the supermarket which was prompting me to go shopping twice as often as I needed to, and what I did about it. 

How a good book is helping me take care of my grocery shopping habits

This example showed up in my Supermarket Notebook a while ago. (I introduced the idea of keeping a Supermarket Notebook in Strategy #1.)

First, some context: we live in a rural area and we’re home educators. Our daughter does dance lessons every Tuesday afternoon during school term, which is a reason for a weekly town trip. During school holidays, there’s no dance class so there's no regular weekly requirement to go to town.

Now, to the point of the story: a while ago, I realized that during school holidays we only go shopping about once every two to three weeks. But, during school term we seem to need to go shopping once a week. On dance class day. Now isn't that interesting?

Being in town on dance class day, in close proximity to the supermarket, was prompting me to “just go in and get a few things.” And then before you know it, "a few things" turns into a trolley-load. Which, as we discussed in the previous section, isn't by coincidence.

Now, I go shopping every second week, at the most, all year round. But how did I break the habit of weekly shopping during school term?

Every second week when I drive my daughter to dance class, I take a good book. I park outside dance, let my daughter out, then lean the seat back and take out my book. (Ahhhhh... I LOVE a good book. And as I said in this post, reading is a great way to immerse yourself in something that makes you feel good.)

So there I stay, reading my book rather than marinating in marketing messages, until it's time to drive home. I save on fuel and grocery costs and I get to relax for an hour and a half that I would otherwise have spent running around shopping. 

Necessity is the mother of invention

This strategy helps me re-affirm to myself and my family that we don't need the grocery store every week. Our efforts at growing some of our own food, making our own bathroom and cleaning products, and generally being as frugal as we can, are all paying off.

But what if it doesn't work? What if you get near the end of the "non-shopping week" and realize you forgot to stock up enough on this or that, and now it isn't going to last until the next shopping trip?

Necessity is the mother of invention. By putting yourself in this predicament you have actually set up your environment--specifically that empty spot on the bathroom or pantry shelf or in the fridge--to prompt you to be more resourceful than you otherwise would have to be.

The consumer economy wants you to be reliant on shopping frequently. But you don't have to be. You can train yourself, gradually, to be less and less reliant on the quick and easy fixes that are dangled in front of us like peanuts for monkeys.

Take action

Understanding why supermarkets are set up the way they are enables us to avoid falling for the trickery quite so easily. And seeing how our behaviors are linked together in our routines enables us to tweak our routines to support the kinds of behavior change we want in our lives. 

Here are some suggestions for ways to use your Supermarket Notebook (from the first post in this series) to figure out how you're currently being influenced and decide what you want to change about that. 

1. Think about what prompts you to go grocery shopping as often as you do. Are there things in your physical environment, your family routines or your social routines that make it easy or logical for you to go on certain days? Do you really need to go that often? Could you consolidate your trips so that you go less often, shop more efficiently, and build your "resourcefulness muscles" between grocery shopping trips?
   
2.  Think about how your buying decisions are being influenced once you get into the supermarket. Go through the list above, of ways that the supermarket environment is set up to influence your choices. Which ones have you been falling for? Remember, they're subtle. They're designed to work without you being aware of them. What can you do to make yourself impervious to them? (There are tips in Strategy #3 and Strategy #4 that might help.)
3. Scribble the answers to all these questions on the Notes Pages in your Supermarket Notebook. You haven't tried to change anything yet. Just begin by getting it all out on those pages so you can see what's really going on. Gradually (give it time) you'll see ways you might be able to make changes. Write those ideas down as they come to you. 
4. Try one idea at a time (remember Strategy #2, take it in small steps) and write down the outcomes so you'll have a record of what you've tried, what helped you spend less or shop smarter, what didn't, and what you learned in the process. 

An important tip is that useful, actionable answers may not come right away to the questions you ask in your notebook. Be patient. Ask again next week, and the week after, until gradually the answers and insights start to flow. Give yourself time to find ways to make positive changes to your routines and habits that will really stick. 

References and resources

Here are two short videos, (each a little over 2 minutes) and a short read (less than 2 minutes) about how supermarkets are designed, from a consumer advocacy website called FoolProofMe.org, who suggest that we "make healthy skepticism a habit" in this commercialized world.

Are You Being Super-Marketed at the Grocery Store? - video

The Untold Truth About Grocery Stores! - video

The Low-down on Super-Marketing - short post

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In a recent post, “3 Strategies to help you spend less at the Supermarket,” I said I believe we can gradually re-build food sovereignty in our local communities by making tiny shifts in our thinking, values, and habits.

These are shifts that help us move away from the supermarket giants towards healthier, more ethical, and still affordable ways of sourcing our needs. I see them as very effective because they address several needs at once:

Furthermore, we're addressing these needs while doing something we'd be doing anyway: feeding our families. 

Envisioning the food system we want

Many people have already made big shifts. For example, one reader who commented on the last post has drastically cut her supermarket reliance by shopping at the local co-op and using a local milk man and green grocer.

That’s an inspiring picture for us to hold in our minds. Imagine if, in every neighborhood, you could trade eggs for excess greens with a neighbor, receive your milk from a farmer you know by name, and shop for your other needs at a local co-op, knowing that your dollar helps keep it thriving⁵.

Lots of neighborhoods don’t yet have access to food systems like this. How do we build them?

I don’t have a quick and easy answer, unfortunately. But I do feel sure that if we just do what we can to put one foot in front of the other toward more localized and ethical food systems, things will shift. It's not possible or necessary to have this all sorted out by lunchtime tomorrow.

Just to be on the look out for what steps you can take and to take them when you can, is enough. 

So, with that vision of healthy food systems in mind, here is another strategy to help you on your journey of small steps away from industrial food and toward healthy, ethical food. This strategy is especially for parents.

(Please, if you haven't read the previous post with the first 3 strategies, do that first. Then come back to this post.)

Strategy #4: Set yourself and your child/ren up for success before you leave home

What could you do before you leave home, to set yourself and your children up for success at the supermarket? Your exact answer will be unique to you and your children, of course, but here are some ideas and suggestions to get you started.

Scribble one or more of these down in your Supermarket Notebook (from Strategy #1) and make it happen next time you go shopping.

Eat before you shop

If you can, eat a decent meal before you go shopping. At least have a snack that wont spike your blood sugar and then leave you feeling hungry an hour later. The reason for this is that the last thing you want to be feeling as you push that trolley along the aisles is hunger or light-headedness. Hunger triggers buying decisions we otherwise wouldn't make.

Feed the kids too! And/or consider having healthy snacks for them in your handbag that you can reach for if you need to. If your child has a snack to much on, especially an interesting one that they don’t get very often, they’ll be less interested in snatching things off the shelves.

When my kids were little, one of the first items I would buy at the supermarket was a small packet of soft cheese for them to much on as they sat in the trolley. I would keep the empty packet, and pay for it at the check out counter along with everything else. It was a special treat that the kids loved, it kept them occupied, and it didn't spike their blood sugar or excite them.

Supermarket-only toys

Consider keeping a  supermarket-only toy ready for your small child/ren that’s just for playing with while they’re sitting in the shopping trolley. It’s difficult to compete with the novelty and glitz that a small child sees in a supermarket, but a toy that’s just for her, that she never sees any other time, will help a bit.

(One word of caution: I never used screens as toys or distractions for my kids. Now that they’re older they use the computer to research things they are interested in and to do creative work, but they have never used screens for gaming or socializing. In fact, the creators of digital products expressly say that they don’t allow their own kids to play with them -- which should be instructive for the rest of us!⁶)

Enlist the kids' help instead of fighting with them

Have a plan for how your older child is going to help with the shopping rather than hinder it. If the child is old enough, consider giving him his very own short list of items that he is responsible for noticing and putting in the trolley. The list can grow as his capacity grows.

A child who feels that their contributions are valued will be much more cooperative than one who is constantly hearing, “No! Don’t touch that! Put that back!”

Be clear

Be clear with your kids before you leave home about why you’re going to the supermarket.

(Hint: it’s not to spend your heard-earned money on spur-of-the-moment purchases and strange substances masquerading as food, to line the pockets of wealthy executives at the expense of your health and well-being.)

Consider having a short family meeting, perhaps during a meal the day before you go shopping, where you assert some variation of: “Here’s what is on our list. We are only going to buy anything that is not on our list if it meets such and such criteria.” An example of the criteria might be: it’s a real food or a needed product that is on special and has a good use-by date.

Your kids won't remember the details the first few times you do this, but it will be clear to them that you have a plan. And s/he who has a plan invariably gets to lead the way.

Building self-directed lives

Even very young children will gradually take all of this on board. You’ll be shaping their supermarket expectations ahead of time, which reduces disappointments and friction.

You’ll also be teaching them something incredibly valuable: how to hold to a meaningful course of action rather than be swayed by the noise and distractions that are aimed at parting us with our our money and our ability to lead a self-directed life that respects other lives on Earth.

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I intend for our grandchildren to grow up connected to their food supply and liberated from the consumer economy. When they learn about the destructive mono-cultures and global-corporate supply chains that supplied the supermarkets we relied on, they’ll wonder what we were thinking. 

Not to mention what they might wonder when they hear about the toilet paper debacle.

I've been thinking a lot about what we can do to make it easier on ourselves to begin (or continue) to gradually replace the weekly supermarket shopping trip with something healthier. Here's some of what I've come up with so far. 

Basic principles and broad strategies

We know that most of the stuff on supermarket shelves is not great for our health, and that it’s terrible for the health of ecosystems, farming communities, and local economies.

On top of that, we can see food prices rising as packets and bottles get smaller (or their contents do). And then there’s the skyrocketing cost of the fuel required for driving to the supermarket.

Whether we view it in terms of health, ethics, or affordability, it's making less and less sense to drive to the supermarket frequently.

But how can we find the time and develop the resources we need to become independent of the supermarket? How will we replace our weekly supermarket trip with affordable, local, healthy, ethical ways of sourcing our needs? What would that even look like, and what are the steps to get there?

Without sitting down and discussing your personal circumstances, I can't suggest how you should embark on this journey or which ways to go. But there are some basic principles we can apply to the process of figuring this out. I’ve been thinking about them (a lot, for a long time) and I’ve come up with some broad strategies that might be helpful. 

The first is to know where you're at right now, and to do that you're going to need a way of keeping track of your supermarket-related habits.

Strategy #1: Create a "Supermarket Notebook" 

Before you can make a map, you have to get to know the terrain. You have to figure out where you're at right now and what the habits and tendencies are that have put you there.

Get a dedicated note book and label it your "Supermarket Notebook." Then you can keep your shopping lists instead of throwing them away after each shopping trip (or not having a list at all), and you can gradually build up a record of your buying habits. Date each list, and scribble at the bottom what you spent. Or staple the receipt to the page. 

Keep the next page blank, for notes. That way, as you're writing your shopping list or when you get home and you're stapling your receipt in, you'll have space to scribble down a few notes about whatever comes to mind that might be relevant.

You could also turn to the last page/s of the note book and put down a few notes about how  you’d like this journey to look, why its important to you, and/or where you’d like it to take you to.

Personally, being a bit of a nerd, I keep supermarket note book and a spreadsheet on the computer. 

The spreadsheet has columns like “fruit and veg,” “cold section,” “packaged/processed,” “bathroom,” “laundry,” etc. I have one I created years ago with what things I regularly bought in each column before I started this journey. And I have more recent versions that I fill in from time to time so I can see my progress.

When I feel despondent about how much I still rely on the supermarket, it's encouraging to be able to look back and see how far we've actually come. 

Strategy #2: Keep the steps small

It’s important to be kind to yourself in this process.

Ditching the supermarket is a bit like trying to eat a whole elephant: the only way to do it is one bite at a time. You only need one criteria for how to tackle it: KEEP THE BITES SMALL. You'll never get your elephant eaten if you choke yourself on the first few bites. When we want the changes we're making to actually stick, bigger or faster is definitely not better. 

As you build the habit of keeping your “supermarket notebook” up to date, you’ll already have achieved something that’s worth a small celebration: bringing more mindfulness and awareness to your shopping habits and needs. How will you celebrate this first, important step?

As you live your life, go shopping, and take notes, be on the look out for small improvements that suggest themselves to you as you scribble and scan your notes.

If you see two you could implement this week, I suggest you restrain yourself. Use just one of them, pat yourself on the back, and save the second one for next week. 

You never know, you might even build up a backlog of delicious ideas you can look forward to trying out

As you make each small change, note them down on your "notes pages."  This way you'll have a “breadcrumb trail” to come back to if (when) you temporarily fall of the wagon and revert back to where you started.

Strategy #3: Get Clear on What You Really Need

Ask questions. Question everything, because there's always something to learn. 

In the context of writing your shopping list and shopping at the supermarket, I have two kinds of questions for you to ask about the products you’re considering.:

1. questions about whether you really need an item 
2. questions about who is influencing your thinking about this item

Lets take a look at both of these types of questions as they relate to your supermarket shopping habits.

Questions about whether you really need something

Ask yourself, “Do I/we really need this? What would happen if I didn’t buy this?”

If the answer is “Yes, I really need this,” then go ahead. Put it on the list, put it in the trolley, and move on.
(As time goes by your concepts of what you really need might change, but there’s no hurry. Remember: be kind to yourself!)

But maybe the answer that comes up might be more like, “After a year of not buying this I would have saved a small fortune and kept a small mountain of trash out of landfill.”

If that kind of answer comes up, you know what to do. Leave  it off the list, and leave it on the shelf.

Questions about who’s influencing your thinking

Items on supermarket shelves that our grandparents never heard of or imagined have become “necessities” today because of shared ideas that nobody is questioning. 

Now I have a surprise for you (not). Most of those shared ideas, if not all of them, were planted in the public psyche over the last 100+ years by clever, manipulative marketing. 

Who runs the marketing campaigns? Profit-focused corporations. Not health-focused. Not ethics-focused. Profit-focused. 

Are you surprised? Me neither. Ask yourself, “Who says I need this thing in my life? My mother? People on my Facebook feed?  Someone who will profit from my purchase?”

We love our mothers. We love our friends and family on Facebook or where-ever we interact with them (hopefully that’s in person at least some of the time). But loving them doesn’t mean we have to shop like they do or live like they do.

And as for the profit-focused corporations funding the advertising campaigns that generate that sense of inadequacy and lack and the need to keep up with the Jones’s… well as far as I’m concerned, they can go jump in a lake.

So those were the first three strategies I came up with when I asked myself, “how could we make it easier to begin (or continue) to de-throne the supermarket and its destructive supply chain and replace it with something healthier?”

I hope you've found this helpful or thought-provoking, and I'd love to hear your comments and suggestions to help my thinking along!

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