A year without supermarkets

For lent 2011 I gave up supermarkets.

I hadn't intended to at first, but two weeks in I realised that tea, meat, cheese, beer and chocolate had all been consumed (all previous lenten targets), but I hadn't been to a supermarket.

"Why not?" I thought.

So 5 weeks later, eating my Easter egg, I realised I had fed myself only from our local food co-operative and The Co-operative (the similarity in names still causes confusion). A couple of things dawned on me:

1. I was not spending any more money - if anything I was spending less, as I was not impulse-spending on stuff I didn't need

2. I was eating more healthily. Instead of stocking up on filled pasta and frozen pizzas (staple for the single 'professional') I was making curries, tagines and tartes. I was eating more veg.

3. I must have halved my carbon footprint. Processed foods like those I bought previously contained ingredients which came from I-don't-know-where, worrying in itself. I now knew where all my food came from - and my veg came from just up the road.

4. I did not miss supermarkets. Go to our local food cooperative and you can sit on a sofa and have a cuppa whilst leafing through a magazine, with music playing in the background, then do your shopping at a leisurely pace. Go to our local supermarket and there are JML adverts playing loudly on screens, harsh lighting, and mums screaming at their kids, then "guess the price of the trolleyload" at the end. No contest.

I mostly kept this up, but when Jon and I got married we vowed to ditch supermarkets for good.

So far the only products we have not been able to obtain have been custard powder (recently remedied, MUCH to my relief) and vegan margarine - a problem only as we have some vegan friends who I would like to be able to provide for.

We now only use The Co-operative to buy cheese, butter and satsumas - not perfect, but much better. We have our milk (organic, of course) delivered by the milkman - the height of luxury, and in my eyes an important service to support for housebound people like my grandad. Not to mention no mountain of plastic milk bottles to recycle - and a job for our milkman.

We feed two people a pretty much entirely organic diet for £30 a week - plus an occasional trip to the farm shop for some meat. If something's out of season, we don't get to eat it. If we can't afford something within our £30 budget, we go without - with some tasty alternatives created in the kitchen.

I will openly admit that I am not a fan of supermarkets, and the ease with which Jon and I cope without them makes me realise how superficial our reliance on them is. If I need to use them in future I will, but I'd much rather get our groceries from somewhere where the owner knows our names, and the money supports local business.