n my way home from the city today I had to stop by the grocery store, so I picked up an extra green vegetable for dinner. We just had kale and collard greens, but the only other decent green in the organic section was some sorry-looking broccoli at $3.98/head. On the other hand, in the regular section a fresh batch of beautiful brussels sprouts was just being added to the bins, at $1.88/pound. Sometimes I'm not so sure about organic - not the idea of it, but the reality of it in practice. Is my extra money really going towards a more sustainable product that's moving my local food chain in a positive direction? Or did the broccoli get trucked in from even further away than the sprouts? The only way to know for sure would be to shop the Good Earth store in town where they tell you these things (or trek to a farmer's market on its available days), but I'm not quite entrenched enough in the culture of my little hippie town to brave its doors. I still need to shop somewhere that sells Entenmann's and Coke.

Anyway, I picked the brussels sprouts. They roasted up beautifully and are pictured here tucked in a lettuce cup along with homemade mac and cheese, salad with separate dressing container, and sweet potato pie - a bento of winter comfort foods. I packed the salad in its own container so M. could microwave the other things if he liked. My makeshift packaging isn't ideal, but at least the pie fit on top of the salad in the main container after being wrapped up and put all together.