by Sara Zoe
I started off my post-August-challenge day with an avocado (on locally made bread, local eggs, local salsa, and local cheese). The lunch I just finished was peanut butter with locally made bread and my own raspberry jam made with very very local raspberries (and a totally non-local lemon and some sugar from who knows where). Next up, prosciutto.
But the avocado, peanut butter, and prosciutto were all carefully chosen: purchased at locally owned, independant stores. The peanut butter and prosciutto were produced by small scale companies, barely known.
And thus begins September's challenge, a continuation, but with a more relaxed rules.
- First and foremost, for September we will source most food from all New England. It will be such a relief to see cheese from Vermont and not have to dig out a rather large and detailed map, or to pass it up for lack of knowing where the listed town is located if said map has been forgotten at home.
- We will include locally produced foods, and ask less questions about ingredients. It's important to us to support local agriculture first and foremost, but it makes sense from a social/economic/sustainability standpoint to support local independant companies that are making smart choices.
- No chains. We had to go ahead and actually define this, because the ciabatta I want is made by a small but growing company that now has a couple locations, but all within 15 miles of each other. They use organic flours and treat their employees with respect, and do good things in the community. A chain has more than 7 locations. This means, for us, no shopping at Shaw's or Market Basket - this is a possibility because of having so many small retailers around. In fact, I didn't go into either store all August except for toilet paper. But normally, these are the places we get staples. Since staples no longer include produce from afar and processed foods, we don't really need these places.
- For foods that aren't grown around here, we will do our research and find sustainable options, if possible. We've found organic jasmine rice grown on a family-sized farm in Texas (which I guess could mean something entirely different than it does here in NH!), for example.
We're setting this up for ourselves again as a challenge. It's much much less of a challenge than August, but it still requires us to be more engaged, cook more, think more, make more intelligent decisions than our normal school-year-busy-lazy-I'm-hungry-now selves. We're enjoying the process of becoming sustainable consumers - that is, both what is sustainable in terms of what we are buying, but also what is sustainable in terms of what changes can we make on a permanent basis. B has lost weight and saved a lot of money (a lot more veggies & fruit, a lot less eating out during August). And we are eating very, very well.
