An afternoon excursion!

Today, we decided to take a little field trip out to the lovely town of Burlington to see what we could discover about organic foods and local foods! Melissa and I first went to the farmer's market near the McDonald's right outside of our beloved Elon (the farmer's market outside Parish House is on Thursdays from 3-6:30 as we learned, if anyone is interested!!).

After taking a look around at the sparse options, we questioned the farmer in charge, and he told us that there are actually no foods in season in North Carolina right now, but that strawberries, cantaloupe, and broccoli are all starting up! Unfortunately, he was not able to give us much more information than that or tell us about any organic food markets or co-ops nearby in Burlington, and after some calls, we decided to check out the "organic" and "all-natural" food options at Lowe's foods. Although we will elaborate more on our discoveries there during our final presentation, we did discover the brand that seemed to be everywhere, and actually was organic - the Organic Full Circle logo was what we continuously looked for in every aisle. My groceries consisted of:

• 2 Amy's quick frozen dinners, on sale for 2/$5 (if this sounds familiar, think of the Amy's frozen products sold in the Fountain Market in downstairs Colonnades - that's right! Elon is trying to sell us natural frozen foods! Finally, some progress with food on campus! )
• a 24-pack of mozzarella cheese sticks (which were Lowe's food brand, but had the exact same ingredients as the Horizon organic cheese sticks, of which there were only 6 and they were twice the price)
• organic chips
• organic salsa

Although these will probably not feed me for two whole days, I will get two whole organic, all-natural meals out of this! My total came to about $16, pretty good for organic grocery shopping, I'd say, using a Lowe's card and the handy paper they hand out at the front of the store!

But wait! There's more! The RecycleMania group will be happy to hear that I remembered to ask for PAPER bags at the checkout! (Although we did realize that we forgot our sustainability cloth re-usable grocery bags, we still tried to do as much as we could to help Mother Earth :) )

-Genevieve D'Cruz