I'm not always the best dinner guest. I cringe I when see reams of plastic and tin foil smothering otherwise perfectly good food. Here are some tricks and tips for going packageless at home. 

When you can only use half of the cantelope, onion or other round fruit or vegetable, simply place it on a plate and into the fridge. No need for plastic wrap!

Place a cookie sheet over your casserole and there is no need for tin foil!

Great experience at the newly opened Alfafa's in Boulder. All the hippy kids working there were totally into this package-less experiment and were ready to help me out. 

I really wanted olives from the olive bar but I had only brought produce bags and no containers so I had to be satisfied with one taster. 

Veggies at Alfafa's. The kind cashier helped arrange them for the photo. 

I was dying for some juice, after a day in the cubicle breathing in god-knows what, so I had to buy some carrots. 

I began the adventure at Vitamin Cottage on Wadsworth and 72nd in Arvada, Colorado - a sprawling hell hole more or less. It was actually pretty easy. I just got some produce - baby potatoes, radishes, carrots, baby bok choy, cantelope, apples, and some parsley. Vitamin Cottage sells their bulk items in pre-packaged heavy duty plastic bags, so i couldn't get any bulk - big juicy organic raisins were calling me - but no go. 

I got to the register and thought it would be cool to get a picture of the cashier scanning my free-breathing food, both of them, together, open to the elements as nature intended. I told her I was doing this 30-day blog and asked if she would mind. After a moment, she decided she had to call a supervisor, who also had to call a supervisor. I finally go the go-ahead but wasn't allowed to capture the vitamin cottage logo, which lives on the smocks at chest level. See picture above. I did get some genuine Vitamin Cottage Cashier hands in the picture though. 

I never got around to the juice, but when I got home, I had a few spoonfuls of leftover room-temperature sticky rice and salty beans that I had made the night before to hold me over until I could make dinner. Then I washed the lettuce, spun it and put the salad in the spinner into the fridge for easy access throughout the week. I also washed the radishes, ate one, and put in bowl in the fridge.

I decided to make pasta from unbleached organic white flour, crushed green pepper corns, an egg, salt and some water. I threw the rest of the ingredients into a pot to simmer and dinner was served! I cooked the sausage and veggies in water since I haven't dealt yet with non-packaged oils. I did have some bacon fat in a jar in the fridge but decided against it for this time.