« The Big Nasty | Main | March On! »
March 3, 2008
Southern Fare with Green Flair
Down in the Carolinas, it seems you can't drive a mile without passing a Bojangles, Churches Chickens or a Lizard's Thicket. While I admit fried chicken is good eatin, it certainly presents challenges to the 9-A-Day ( 9 to 12 servings of fresh fruits and vegetables a day) model that I subscribe to. Since I was there to help support a fundraiser for the University of South Carolina's Center for Colon Cancer Research, the importance of fresh fruits and vegetables to the local diet seemed even more poignant.
So, after 12 fruitless hours in the South, I decided to make a quick pit stop at a supermarket to stock up on some of the green stuff. I came across a market called Earth Fare, where bright, beautiful, organic and natural produce dominated. The in between aisles, which nutrition experts usually recommend shoppers avoid (you know, the ones with lots of pretty boxes, excess sugars and false health claims), were lined with simple, natural products that looked more like food than like toys, which I consider a very good thing. I could have spent hours in those aisle, examining the locally sourced Swiss chard, which was bursting with color and life, and jarred green tomato soups and butter pickles made just up the road a piece. I thought I had found my own personal Eden.
It wasn't until I got home that I realized my bounty had been packed up in plastic Wal-Mart bags. I was confused, so I called Earth Fare to investigate. When I asked the clerk who answered if they were part of the Wal-Mart Corporation, she answered with an ethusiastic "No way Jose!"
She then proceeded to tell me that my groceries had been package in a recycled bag as a part of their Friends of Earth Fare campaign. The Campaign partners with local charities and non-for-profits to collect plastic bags to be recycled as grocery bags. The effort not only helps to save our landfills from an overdose of plastic bags, Earth Fare gives back 10 cents per recycled bag to the charities and non-for-profits who provided them, which added up to almost $55,000 last year! Good will for the earth, and the community? Now that's what I call southern hospitality!
Sarah Copeland, Food Network Kitchens
Posted by Food Network at March 3, 2008 3:37 PM