Week 1 - Challenges and Victories

One week into my experiment I've experienced a number of challenges. First of all, it is almost impossible to eliminate plastics from your food supply without significantly changing your eating habits. For instance: cheese. 99.9% of cheese is wrapped in plastic. The ones I did find weren't the type of cheese I needed. We eat quesadillas weekly over here and local chevre isn't the best option for that. One of the reasons I decided to start this blog was a lack of resources when googling "plastic free cheese". I did find two great posts from Plastic Free Life and No New Plastic which pretty much confirmed that I would have to buy a 12 pound wheel of cheese if I wanted it to be plastic-free, good luck finding cheese that was organic. Particularly bad news considering the fact that foods high in fat absorb the greatest amounts of BPA and other plastic-related chemicals. Here are some other items I have had no luck with finding plastic free replacements for:

Tortillas
Organic Salsa (why is it so hard to make fresh salsa that tastes right?)
Organic Crackers (yeah, I know... I can eat Wasa. sigh.)
Puffed Kamut (my toddler's staple snack, can't find in bulk)

So I guess it's pretty much goodbye to our weekly quesadillas, since all the ingredients are plastic wrapped. But! Here's the good news. I have had a number of victories this week with replacing many of our plastic wrapped foods for super fresh plastic free versions.