What is Expensive?

Now that I'm back in America after 1 year of traveling in Eastern Europe, I wonder sometimes if I didn't go there just for the food. In Germany, I had the freshest and most delicious bread. I thought the Germans must have perfected this art. The butter. Also fresh and much tastier than anything I buy at Trader Joe's (nothing against TJs, I just don't know where to buy farm fresh butter). In Spain, of course, was the superb coffee. Turkey: I could write a whole chapter on that. Basically, the food was very plain without much variety in the supermarkets. But it was fresh and generally tasty. Macedonia, Bulgaria, Croatia -- even in a huge city like Zagreb, it was impossible NOT to find the local (farmers') market. They are ubiquitous. And they are found every day. That's where you generally do your shopping. The prices are no more than the supermarkets, in fact they are probably less, and many of those things are just not found at the supermarket; why? because they are sold at the green market across the street. That seems like a good way to do things, in my opinion.
In Crete, every family I met keeps their own family farm. In addition to their regular professions. That's where they get their eggs, olive oil, milk and cream, tree fruits, and vegetables. This is the way it is and has always been done in Crete.
So, when I came back to the US, I wondered in part, if I had taken a very expensive trip (actually it was cheap when you consider I was gone a year) just to get my mouth on consistently local, fresh, high quality and affordable, accessible food. That's the way it should be.

I came across this interview with Joel Salatin the farmer who was in Food, Inc., which I finally had a chance to see today. I think it's quite good. Check it out.