My better - and more sensible - half recently got us a Costco card. I’ve mixed feelings on membership clubs. Not everything you buy in feeding-trough proportions amounts to a good deal. Some items do. Thus, I have a healthy skepticism as to whether the cost of membership is worth the benefit.

Take today’s visit. The cereal we use was pricier, juice a mixed bag and flour a bargain. It’s the last item I want to focus on, spurred by this article on The New York Times site arguing for a green tomorrow through baby steps today.

Both my regular readers know I’ve been baking bread. A lot. Given the volume, buying bulk flour makes sense. At Trader Joe’s, a 5 pound bag of flour costs about $3.50, or 70 cents per pound. That’s cheaper than buying bread at Joe’s, where one loaf can set you back that much. Still, I know the wisdom of bulk from buying at co-ops in the past.

Which brings me back to Costco, where a 25 pound bag weighs in at just $9.49. For those penny-tight-wads out there (like me), that’s 38 cents per pound, or almost 46 percent cheaper. Cha-ching!

Inspired by Michael Pollan’s Times piece, which talks about growing your own vegetables, I crunched a few numbers. Assuming about four cups per pound, 25 pounds comes to 100 cups. I use about six and a half cups per batch. Rounding down, that’s roughly 15 batches. Each batch yields three small loaves. So, for that $9.49, I’m getting about 45 loaves at around 21 cents per loaf.

All this flowery math doesn’t account for feeding the starter I have. Its hunger could eat into the savings, pushing the per-loaf cost up to maybe 25 cents.

It also doesn’t account for the electricity used in baking, which admittedly could be substantial. On the other side of the green balance sheet, I can’t know how much gas cooking at home could save. Remember: If you got it, a truck brought it. For argument’s sake, let’s say those two things cancel each other out. Humor me.

Being able to provide bread for my modest household for under a quarter a loaf is a good feeling. I don’t know if it’s virtuous, as Pollan might hope, but it does re-engage me with the origin of a staple food. That, Pollan might say, makes one baby step toward conservation.

Next step: a victory garden.