www.eatlocalchallenge.com

PELC: Some Non-Blogging Participants

Most of us are on day 2 of 7 of the Penny-Wise Eat Local Challenge.  We are a bit behind in getting the blog links posted, but hopefully that will go up today.  Until then, some excerpts from participation statements of non-blogger participants:

From Larissa in the Bay Area: I'm excited to participate in this challenge considering I've been trying very hard to eat seasonally and am also on a budget.  Living in the Bay Area makes eating locally a bit easier so I'm going to challenge myself further and keep my budget to $50 and only eat vegetables and fruits grown in California, specifically from local farmers markets (there is one pretty much every day here).  The only exception I will make is on my genmaicha tea....pretty sure it's not grown locally.  Additionally, I will be giving up soda and sparkling water beverages (for the budget as well as health and saving plastic!). 

From Pat in Canada: Despite being April in the north, I have lots of homegrown frozen fruits and veggies, canned beans and tomatoes, also salsa, pickled beet, dills. The local market has  hot-house lettuce, cukes, and tomatoes plus rutabaga, carrots, cabbage, leeks, parsnips, onions, sweet potatoes, white potatoes with fresh apples from local commercial cold storage. We have good local source  butchers, dairy, eggs, poultry.

FDA Knew About Risks

by Expat Chef

If you have seen the front page of most newspapers, then you know that the FDA was aware of the problems that led to the spinach and peanut butter contamination for some time before the outbreaks.

In the case of the Salmonella in the peanut butter, the FDA knew of the issues as early as 2005. When FDA inspectors requested documents from the ConAgra plant, they were refused. The FDA inspector left and the issue was not followed up on.

While the spotlight is being thrown onto the FDA, with reason, there are others who need to be called into question.

Eating the Lawn

by Heather C.

Here in Ohio it seemed impossible to participate in the Penny-Wise Eat Local Challenge.  The farmer's markets in my area don't open until July.  We are still about a month away from the frost-free date for planting.  About the only thing growing here is grass.  Then I remembered a scene from my childhood.  My neighbor, who was a botany professor, always used to go outside and pick greens from his lawn for a salad.  It used to freak me out as a kid to eat plants that I "knew" were weeds.  But now I pay good money for gourmet salad greens so maybe it is time to reinvestigate eating the lawn.

Where's My Beef (Coming From)?

by Expat Chef

A pig walks into a spinach field in California. A two-year-old in Idaho dies. Somewhere a cow gives birth to an exact replica of its sire. We buy a new freezer.

How can these events be related? With a nod to Michael Pollan, let me trace the events back to the source.

On Sept. 20, 2006, Kyle Allgood of Boise, Idaho died from eating food contaminated with E. coli O157:H7. Over 200 people in 26 states were sickened and two others died. This type of food poisoning is normally only associated with consumption of contaminated meat. The contaminated food source was spinach.

The spinach was grown in the Salinas Valley of California, and harvested just weeks earlier. It took a long time to trace the source of contamination. However, according to Dr. Reilly of the California Health Department, the outbreak was most likely caused when a feral pig walked into the spinach field after visiting a cattle feedlot nearby. The pig had the bacteria in its system and had carried on it some of the cattle manure from the feedlot.

Eating Penny-Wise: Getting the Conversation Started

by Jennifer BB

By now I shouldn’t be surprised by how often conversations about food come up with perfect strangers—but when the focus is on eating fresh and local, I’m still taken aback.  This happened most recently at a book signing for Lidia Bastianich’s new book (Lidia’s Italy).   Even though this was a cookbook event I never presume that folks are interested in the issues around eating locally.  I found myself on line for an hour sandwiched between someone who was just learning how to cook and another who was trying to figure out how to eat well with diabetes.  Without engineering it (I promise!) the conversation turned to eating locally on a budget. 

What’s best for your body is worst for your wallet

By Julie Cummins

During the Eat Local Challenge last year, there was a lot of discussion in the blogosphere about how expensive it is to eat locally produced food. Some people called it elitist, even snobby. This was hard for me to swallow, because the Eat Local Challenge was heartfelt and meaningful for me. But the exaggerated words do contain a grain of truth: a local diet does cost more and is more difficult to come by than the standard American fare. What troubles me most about this grain of truth is how far astray our food system has gone.  How could eating locally grown food—something that was once a given—now be so out of reach that it’s called elitist?

Meaty issues

by Jamie S.

The Penny-Wise Eat Local Challenge starts this Monday, so it’s as good a time as any to ask the question: Can meat be part of a local diet if you’re on a budget?

The pedantic ex-vegetarian in me is desperate to point out that if you are really serious about cutting costs, a veggie meal a couple of times a week (or more) is a great idea. But most people do prefer to have meat at dinner sometimes. Many Americans like to have it a lot.

So is locally raised meat out of reach of the average person, or is it an affordable luxury? Well, I can only speak for what’s available in my neck of the woods, but my experiences have been very encouraging.

Participating in the Penny-Wise Challenge?

Are you participating in the Penny-Wise Eat Local Challenge next week?  Don't forget to let us know!  Check out the Penny-Wise Nuts and Bolts for more information.

Simply in Season, a book review

by Liz

Once upon a time, many people in the US grew at least some portion of their own food.  They ate what was grown nearby, according to the seasons of the year.  Staples like flour, sugar, dry goods and spices were always readily available, but the fresh produce of the moment was determined by the season of the year.  It would have been unheard of to have access to asparagus in February; asparagus is a spring food, meant to be eaten in large quantities when the tender shoots emerged from the patch in your backyard.  Not to mention, the backyard asparagus is basically free compared to that $6 asparagus from the organic market.

Since the advent of the industrial revolution, we have been straying from our agricultural heritage, and have turned to much more energy-intensive methods of food production.  Instead of small, diverse farms peppering the landscape, the majority of our food today is grown on mega-farms not limited to corn and soy.  Monocultures of tomatoes, spinach and carrots stretch as far as the eye can see in certain parts of California, dependent on large machinery, petrochemical-based fertilizers and pesticides, farm subsidies, cheap migrant labor and cross-country refrigerated trucking.  Is this the kind of food system to be proud of?

Reducing Kitchen Waste by Eating Chard Stems

By Marc

Chard -- red, white, or yellow -- is one of my favorite leafy greens.  The flavor is mild, it is available all year at the Farmers' Markets in the Bay Area, and it is a perfect side dish for a wide variety of main courses.  I typically cook it with a bit of garlic, but it also works in a tortilla casserole, or a filling for pastry (the one in the May/June 1998 Saveur magazine is especially delicious). 

But I never eat the stems, and this waste of vegetable matter always bothered me.  So I recently started a project to sell myself on eating the chard stems, otherwise known as "stem sell research."