On Milk and Honey (well, sugar)

There's some debate in the crunchy community about the relative benefits of local food vs. organic.  It can be argued that local is better for the environment while organic is better for the body.  Local food should be fresher, and buying it supports the local economy (and often small farmers and other businesses as opposed to megacorporations) while organic items are guaranteed to be "cleaner" from pesticides, artificial hormones, and so on.  Check out some articles that discuss it here and here.

This debate came to a head for me this week as I discovered that a neighborhood supermarket carries "local" milk - it's produced within 275 miles of where it's sold.
I was standing in front of the refrigerator case for at least 5 minutes, alternating between the gallon of Five Acre Farms 2% and the Wild Harvest Organic.  In the end I took the organic, promising to look into the local stuff when I got home, but of course forgot the name of the company by the time I was near the internet again.  So I sent BSB back a few days later for the local stuff, and discovered that while it's not certified organic, it's very responsibly produced.  275 miles is a pretty big radius, but it's a lot less than, say, Washington state to New York (which is a common journey for supermarket apples among other products).  So that info, combined with some research on the organic vs. local question, and the fact that Five Acres milk is $2 cheaper than organic, I think my decision is made.  I've pretty much convinced myself that coffee with 2% milk is as enjoyable as coffee with skim and a teaspoon or two of raw sugar.


Speaking of sugar... ever since paleo week, I've been a lot more attuned to sweetness, and to the amount of sweetening in the foods I make and buy.  After trying - and enjoying - a few dessert recipes that relied on fruit and a little honey or maple syrup rather than sugar, I've come to realize how overloaded so many of my usual ones are.

So when the muffin craving hit yesterday, I whipped out an old standby: mocha banana chocolate chip.  I've already gotten into the habit of making them with whole wheat flour, but this time I went a step or two further: coconut oil instead of margarine, and reducing the sugar by 1/4 cup.  I also sprinkled the chocolate chips on top instead of mixing them in, which seemed to fool QE pretty well.  And even with the changes, they came out beautifully.  I love successful recipe tweaks!  Here's hoping I can knock back the sugar in other places without messing them up too badly.

One last note: I don't have a mixer, and usually make baked goods by hand.  But I made the muffins in my food processor yesterday, which turned out to be a good move.  Coconut oil can be harder to incorporate than margarine or butter, and the blade mixed it in much more efficiently than I could have done with a spoon.  So note to those attempting to sub coconut oil: consider using a food processor to cream it.