by Cookiecrumb
About four days ago, I decided to quit the Eat Local Challenge.
I made myself a burrito with non-local ingredients to celebrate.
Then I realized, aw, darn, the cheese was local.
No matter how hard I might try to be a non-participant, I find I eat locally most of the time anyway, whether I try to or not.
And that is because of my participation in the Challenge last year — it completely changed the way I shop for food.
After a tricky first couple of weeks finding my bearings last August, I learned who my purveyors should be. I kept an ear out for new sources of supply. I did my research, and it paid off: Shopping for local food became easy.
A lot of the learning came as a result of interacting with fellow food bloggers; somebody would locate a producer of a local whole-wheat flour and share the news… somebody else would nail down a perfect local yogurt and talk about it. Pretty soon we were all picking each others’ brains and/or announcing our latest find. Communal enlightenment. It was great.
So why did I decide to quit the Challenge this time?
First, because I didn’t feel that I was learning anything new. Not that being turned on to someone’s discovery of a decent, not-too-expensive local olive oil this month was unwelcome news. On the contrary. I don’t expect to be able to source all my local provisions by myself; I’m always grateful for new information.
But the new information is just data chunks. I’ve already learned HOW to be a local eater, and I wasn’t getting much satisfaction out of a droopy learning curve this time.
My second reason for quitting was because I came to see the endeavor as a little artificial. I’ve already said I know I can eat a 100% local diet for the entire month. I can do it by searching out suppliers for everything that fits my definition of local (100 miles, in my case), and simply going without foods that fall outside. It’s easy to do in Northern California. Skipping soy sauce for a month? I’ll survive.
But then I thought, why? Why would I exclude soy sauce? Or black pepper? Or any other food that doesn’t harm the local economy, the environment or international trade laws?
Well. I realized I was talking about what we’ve defined here at the Challenge as “exceptions.” We all define our exceptions in our own way. I had stridently chosen to go for a 100% local diet — just because I knew I could. Maybe I was showing off.
At which point I realized I had indeed learned something. I learned, as I said above, that I already do eat locally, probably about 75% of the time during the year when I’m not even trying.
The oddest result of my “quitting” the Challenge, though, has been to quit quitting. I jumped back up in the saddle. I relaxed a couple of restrictions, but I decided to stick it out.
And then yesterday, I made a meal from 100% local ingredients (including homemade Japanese-style pickles) and it was one of the best things I’ve ever eaten.
Cookiecrumb lives in Marin County, California, and writes I'm Mad and I Eat, a blog that carelessly weaves food and politics, and occasionally devolves into utter silliness.
