I only just discovered that a group of dedicated and smart local food lovers in Maine is hosting a March Eat Local Challenge! Centered around Belfast, Maine, the challenge asks participants to:
Participate in the Eat Local challenge in a variety of ways. Choose one, try several or do them all!
–Make an all Maine-grown meal to enter a drawing for a gift basket of local goodies (for details on the allowable ingredients ‘from away’ see below)
–Include at least one locally-grown ingredient in every meal this month
–Spend a certain amount of money or a given percentage of your food budget on local ingredients.
–Join friends for a local feast
–Make all-Maine snacks
What a welcoming challenge! And there are prizes, a celebration dinner, and other community oriented activities. These guys definitely get that one of the best parts about local foods is the connections that are made not only with farmers, but neighbors and new friends.
Best of luck Mainers! And thanks for the inspiration - March and April are the cruelest months up here in New England in terms of local foods, I'm glad to see that the sort of inspiration for creativity (called Yankee Ingenuity around these parts) in food is alive and well as the days get longer.
Read more about the Eat Local Challenge happening right now in Maine.
Sara Zoe is the coordinator of the community group Seacoast Eat Local, which works to connect farmers and consumers through winter farmers' markets, resource guides, and our own Eat Local Challenge, done at the easiest time of year, 'cuz we're wimps compared to Mainers.
