My Farmers Market Run

Last weekend I went to the farmers market determined to get back to eating way more veggies than I have been when trying to eat way more calories (I was eating tons more meat, avocados, and nuts and just couldn't eat all the veggies because I wasn't hungry and had no room left in my stomach). Anyway, I only had $16 cash so that was my budget and my goal was quality first, volume second, and diversity third. This is half the budget of my local delivery box, so I had to circle the market probably 5 times to determine my best course of action and here is what you can get:

• 540g Kale - $1.25
• 866g Romaine lettuce - $1.25
• 726g Green beans - $2.00
• 508g Leeks - $1.50
• 462g Leaf lettuce - $1.25
• 954g Beets (with greens) - $1.25
• 917g Guava - $2.25
• 1,438g Persimmons (super ripe, the 'Crack' fruit) - $4.00
• 779g White carrots - $1.25

This was 16 pounds of food for $16. This was a very good deal, but it took 1.15 hours to figure it out: not a very good use of time (although I like shopping for food). It would be tough to accomplish this value if I hadn't had the experience of living as a super poor person in Italy forced to subside on farmers market's cheapest foods. When I was out there in Milano I would walk the markets looking for the best deals, striving for $0.50 worth of whatever I could use. I could have easily spent $28+ on this food.

With all this being said, here are the reasons why Farmer Fresh to you is a better idea:

• Diversity: I normally get the same amount of veggies, but never two heads of lettuce, plus very similar greens of kale and beets. I bought all similar types of these veggies because the vendor was selling them for such a cheap price. If you lack diversity, you lack options, you can become bored easily and soon to fall off Paleo.
  
• Compliments: FFTY gives you things like herbs, citrus, garlic or ginger, and though those seem like small considerations, they really are not. If your herb is basil the menu options will take you from China to Italy. Cilantro? China to Mexico. Thyme, rosemary, chives, etc.? France to Germany to America North and South. How do you cook kale with no herbs? Its a big deal.
  
• Value: My time isn't worth this effort. Granted, this was a tough challenge and maybe I could have pulled off a FFTY box with practice, or in 30 minutes with $32 bucks but what would that mean? Equal physical monetary exchange, equal volume, diversity, and quality, minus a half hour plus travel time. You can't stack these cards to be equal or greater value than FFTY.
  
• Randomness: gone. There is no randomness here. Though seemingly random, this is truly controlled chaos with the appearance of randomness. Everything is known. Why? I can't make cost/value based decisions with out knowing the value of the thing that I am buying. For example, I could have bought a handful of white sapote, which I only knew what they were because of FFTY, but I had no idea of the value.
  Off the top of your head: how much are 9 golf ball sized white sapote worth (maybe 3/2 pounds)? I had $2.25 with me at the time. They wanted $1.75 per pound. I bought over two pounds of guava for my money because I knew that they would be $6 at Ralph's. That was not a random decision.

There was a lot of shit there, and way more choices than I get offered in my FFTY boxes, but none of them were memorable enough for me to, well..., remember. I do remember seeing persimmons on sale for $3+/p, green beans for $2.5/p, sweet potatoes for $2/p, heirloom toma....