On Saturday mornings there's a farmers' market in Guelph near the downtown. It runs from N until 12PM. We enjoy shopping there when we manage to make it there in time. Sometimes, even if we wake up with ample time, we still don't make it. This morning, I dawdled with my computer a bit, dawdled on the way to the mall (where we catch a bus), and then dawdled in making change. I dawdle, we dawdle, we missed the last bus to make it before it closed :) I enjoy the apple cider I get there and the inexpensive free range eggs. The rest of the food might be more expensive than through No Frills, but I don't mind very much. I suppose I pay a premium for supporting local growers. Some of the produce isn't actually locally grown - locally imported, perhaps :) It's also pleasant and feels socially edifying (my word for the week). It's fun for me.
Well, we missed, and instead we got to go to No Frills. Hurrah for incredibly inexpensive food. We occasionally shop at an Ultra Food and Drug (A&P) that's nearby. I've taken issue with them for how they handle mislabelled prices (when I worked at a grocery story, we honoured our price tags!), "best before" dates with respect to their "fresh obsessed" policy, and generally high prices. (I'm selfish and want to pay as little as I can, apparently.) The increase in price of Silk soy milk brought an end to my regular business with Ultra, so we're also trying a different soy milk brand at No Frills. The new soy milk was a hundred times better when we taste-tested between the it and the remains of our Silk. Of course, that was because the Silk tasted like a combination of walnuts and Kraft dinner ~ mm, sour. The new soy milk tastes like blended boiled rice, and it's not bad. We'd also be interested in "free range" milk, if we could find it nearby.
I'll try a bit harder to make it to the farmers' market next week. I am concerned with my reliability and my ability to fulfill plans. Arguably, you could say argue that if it was important enough, I would have made it to the farmers' market. I will remain wary all the same.
What else? Right, pet stores. I visited one and as you will probably learn, I dislike it when human actions lead to animal suffering. I am not going to lecture anyone, because I have underdeveloped ideas on it all, but I still dislike it. In this case, we saw a goldfish in a piranha tank with chewed fins. I wanted to scoop it out, but of course didn't (for a variety of reasons). One of which was, if we remove it, or buy it, and save it, it will be replaced by another one. Of course it's the natural thing for piranha to do. The goldfish no longer stands much of a chance, and the fate for this goldfish was determined by a human. Why is this a problem? As a human, I feel like I have a choice in causing another creature harm. What does it mean for another creature to be harmed, of course? What does it mean for a human to be harmed? For a plant? Hmm. Hmm. We have rats.
Labels: animal welfare, green, groceries, life, pets, shopping, soy milk
