Done > Perfect 🥫

the first lesson embraced in my 100-mile radius experiment

I’ve long been a fan of weekly farmer’s markets, homemade skin salves, and buying the kombucha made closer to me., but that doesn’t mean I haven’t learned a heckuva lot the past few weeks in my current 100-mile experiment. I’ve learned that even though we live in Texas, for whatever reason there’s still a brand of tortilla chips imported from New Jersey sitting on my grocery store’s shelves, the woman selling well-reputed locally-made laundry soap opens her shop whenever she feels like it (which isn’t often), and the couple I’ve bought our milk from are in their late 70s and are scared of their own website.

I’m so glad I know all these particulars, and I never would have had I not embarked on this experiment.

To ease into this idea, I’m giving myself lots of grace to wade into the waters gradually. After all, I’ve got a book releasing in a few weeks which means I don’t have much spare time these days, on top of which I have the usual to-dos of essays to grade and soups to stir. I’m sitting squarely in the outer concentric circle of my ultimate bull’s eye of getting the vast majority of our supplies, community, and recreation from our hundred-mile radius.

Right now, that outer circle looks like a focus on distribution rather than origin.

I’ll take those tortilla chips as an example. At my local grocery store, I’ve got scores of options for this ubiquitous Texas staple: I could buy the popular brand from San Antonio, a city nestled comfortably in my 100-mile radius. I could buy the slightly more expensive, smaller brand that makes better chips from San Marcos, even closer to me and on the way to San Antonio. I could opt for the chips made literally in front of me, by the bakery within the grocery store (and dang, those are good chips). I could buy the smaller brand that I’m sure means well enough but is simply from New Jersey. Or I could go with the internationally-known brands made somewhere in a factory here in the U.S. but are distributed all over the globe.

It’s easy enough to cross off the huge conglomerate brands as well as the Yankee varieties (for several reasons beyond just my 100-mile experiment if we’re being honest). The three options left available to me are all good choices, so it just depends on what I’m in the mood for, really: the bakery chips are a splurge but make great nachos, the small brand close to us makes a delicate chip that’s fantastic for snacking, and the San Antonio chips are a good, reliable standby. I really can’t go wrong with any of them, which is why this week I went with the bakery (we had Make Your Own Nachos on the menu this weekend).