Now that my Tuv Ha’Aretz (Hazon CSA) has started this year, I’m starting to get into a pleasant routine of planning meals around my weekly bounty (and my boyfriend’s kitchen).  The last two weeks we have seen beautiful fresh spring greens perfect for fun and interesting salads that I’ve dressed with (in various combinations) grated raw beets, honey and almond oil, crushed raw cashews, whole grain mustard and balsamic vinegar.

We’ve enjoyed the meals, and fortuitously there always seems to be enough salad left over for a hearty lunch the next day.  Each time I carefully put the salad in a container to take to work with me – and each time I promptly leave it on the kitchen counter.  A practice that leaves me both without a lunch that day and a wilted salad back at my boyfriend’s place.

Getting beyond my feelings of guilt that I’ve wasted otherwise very good food, it did get me thinking.  Is it more economical to buy a salad out than packing my own?

So pretend that I’m your average run of the mill consumer.  If I wanted to pack a salad to take to work with me for lunch, I’d have to go to a grocery store, and pick up some sort of lettuce, maybe tomatoes, cucumbers and maybe even some canned chickpeas.  I have olive oil and vinegars, but even so this isn’t a very interesting salad.  And because I’m buying for one, the quantities that I’m purchasing these items in would probably allow me to have this (rather dull) salad for 3-4 days.  Of course there are the days I am not eating lunch at my desk, or I’ve forgotten it at home – but basically that is providing me lunch for the week.

The retail cost of that home salad no doubt would come to a total less than picking up a $6.50 deli salad every day.  But for that price I could get far more variety, possibly fresher vegetables (my home salad is far more perky at the start of the week than the end) and the luxury of not forgetting it as I’m running out the door in the morning.  But is it more economical, on the grand scale, to buy my salad retail after the deli has purchased its vegetables in bulk?  What if I went to a deli that only sold organic vegetables?  Would my individual buying power influence other delis to provide organic options?

Of course nothing really compares to my CSA salad for freshness and sustainability (if I could only remember it the next morning).  But is there an argument for bulk purchasing?  Because I chose to (generally) eat local and sustainable when I can, is there an argument to be made in supporting my sometimes deli salad habit?