Where the Plastic Meets the Wallet

In relation to my previous post about reducing our plastic consumption, I've been taking a closer look at all of the plastic coming into our house, and immediately saw what our (plastic) achilles heel is: Costco. In a day when food prices are going nuts, we're trying to save on many fronts. Most of those also happen to bring our food closer to home: gardening, having chickens, gleaning, picking fruit locally, relying on local folks for our milk and meat, etc.

But then there are the things that are certainly not at all cheaper to buy locally. Number one on the list would be bread. We've got a couple of wonderful local bakeries that make awesome organic whole-grain breads. The rub? They're over $4.00 a loaf these days, eep! At Costco I can get two loaves of sprouted organic whole-grains bread for about $2.50 a loaf. Which, when you've got a son who eats as much as mine does, and a daughter who just joined the swim team (in addition to dance, horseback riding, karate, and bicycling everywhere), well you go through a lot of bread, so that really adds up. But unfortunately Costco likes to sell things in bulk, which means that you can't just buy one loaf of bread, you have to buy two of them. And they have to wrap them all up in extra plastic so that they're bagged up together, which is pretty irritating but not enough to make me spend $1.50 more for every loaf.

I know, I know. I should make my own. I've tried. A couple of times. The kids have begged me not to try again. I can make white-flour loaves that come out just fine, but whenever I try to add in the nutritional density of my favorite organic loaves, mine just come out...well... dense. And not in the nutritional sense. I'm contemplating a bread machine, but until then it's probably going to be Costco and the extra plastic bags.

Anyone who has a fool-proof seriously nutritious yet fluffy and wonderful tasting bread recipe, feel free to let me know!