www.eatlocalchallenge.com

Let the Eat Global Challenge begin...

Or, at least, let us return to eating from California.

by Patrick

Yesterday, noticing a severe bareness of cupboards, we went to our local supernatural-market, New Seasons, to stock up on some basics. As it was the last day of May, we decided that the Eat Local Challenge was officially over.

Our Eat Local Challenge has been a heavily nuanced affair; we've made exceptions, we've lived without certain things and either found replacements or found that we didn't miss them so much . . . and then there are the things that we have lived without, and that I am really glad to see again.

Tis the season ...

for strawberries!  In recent years, several small strawberry growers have sprung up in our little corner of California, perhaps inspired by an article a decade or two ago in Organic Gardening about how profitable strawberry growing can be.  These patches are usually only 1-4 acres, located right next to a highway or main road through a rural portion of the landscape, with a pullout and fruit stand to make it easy for the customer.  Occasionally, I will still see "U-Pick" patches, but I suspect that the issues of insurance and liability in California are helping to make these operations endangered, if not extinct.

The ever-bearing kind of strawberries can produce throughout the late spring and summer on a small patch, and even though my permaculture background doesn't readily agree with monoculture, I can see that this method works for the small-scale commercial grower.  My co-worker and I stopped at a stand about 20 miles from home, following a lengthy meeting in Sacramento last week, and the heady fragrance of ripe berries hit us as we stepped out of the car.

Hitting the Sweet Spot

by Cookiecrumb

Everything tastes good! Even my savory dishes are inexplicably sweet, but not in a sugary way. Butter tastes sweet. Onions taste sweet. By god, the other day, hamburger tasted sweet.

Sweet! Oh my.

Last year I described the transformation I experienced after a month of eating locally as "rehab for my taste buds."

I haven't used sugar for 10 months, except for the occasional gummi bear, so I guess I have a whole new definition of "sweet."

I attribute this sensation not only to restricting my food to the 100-mile foodshed, but to the undeniable fact that the food is fresher — because it's local! Fresh peas are sweet. Fresh fish is sweet. Fresh yogurt is sweet.

Local Foods We Love

by Jack & Joanne

One of the results of last August's Eat Local Challenge was the creation of a page on our site devoted to local foods. It has blossomed into one very long page plus five sub-pages. We got this up last Fall and have updated it a few times since, including yesterday.

Fork & Bottle's  Great Local Foods

Since we took the Eat Local Challenge last August, our favorite local products are regulars in our pantry and fridge. After finding the best local choice in a number of categories, we can't go back; the quality and delicious-ness factor has made that local product a part of our lifestyle. Examples would be...

Living Large, and Local, for Lunch

by Holly

The days are already getting pretty darn long, here in Portland. I guess we're only about a month from Solstice, difficult though that is to believe. We've been talking about how nice the long evenings are because you can really do something with them. Often that's cooking, but it's nice to be able to take a ride, or work on bike maintenance, or make some pottery. So we've been trying out having lunch as our big meal, and having a simpler dinner. Fortunately, we work at home, so we can make lunch a bit of a production. This was a recent effort that stands out for its local flavors.

New Discoveries

by Patrick

As the month progresses, I am learning more about our local foodshed every day. Living in this way, always asking about where food comes from, and challenging ourselves to see how locally we can eat, brings a certain energy to nearly every meal. Our interactions with farmers, vendors, restaurateurs, and buyers at the grocery store are all imbued with a kind of vital force. Once I explain our mission, the person on the other end of the phone line, or the other side of the table, becomes excited and animated in their efforts to help us find information about the food we're buying, or a good source for something we need.

In the past week, we have made some decisions, and discovered some foods, that make me understand even more deeply the gray areas between "in the foodshed" and "out of the foodshed." I've begun to realize that this month's challenge is the refinement of a practice that will inform our food choices for the rest of our lives.

Time for Lunchtime

by Cookiecrumb

So here I am, merrily flouncing my way through ELC 2006. I haven’t fallen off the wagon even once, and all of a sudden that feels very embarrassing to me.

The only exceptions I declared for the month are salt and tea (I erroneously declared wine, forgetting that, um, I live pretty close to wine country). And I have my own source of local salt, if I choose to use it. (Soon, I promise.)

I have no genuine reason to feel embarrassed about my diet: All these great foodstuffs are available in my area; it’s just lucky for me (more than lucky, it’s intentional – it’s why I live here).

But when I read the remarks of other ELC participants who are stumbling through this endeavor for the first time, or who live in areas not as well blessed as the Bay Area, I wince.

Don't Forget to eat the Flowers

by mipmup

Back around Valentines' day, when all things flowery were on my mind, I wrote a post that included some alarming statistics about the cost of all things flowery that showed up on The Worsted Witch, self-described "card-carrying environmentalist." She posted:

"Seventy percent of flowers sold in the U.S. are imported, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Commercial flowers produced in countries such as Colombia and Ecuador are sprayed with highly toxic pesticides, fungicides, and fumigants—20 percent of which are banned in the U.S. and Canada for being extremely carcinogenic—in order to maintain their fresh, unblemished appearances."

While I'm eating local this month, I have also made a commitment to buy locally-grown flowers.

Responsible Eating.....Responsible Selling

By Holli

I come to this year’s eat local challenge from a slightly different perspective. You see, not only am I in the process of developing and growing my own chocolate business, I am also working with a friend to open a new café in San Francisco. Since I am just getting my first post up on the site, and that is merely due to my confusion about the process, let me tell you a bit about all three of these issues: me, chocolate and the café.

Starting with me: I did the “eat local challenge” last year and found it to be much tougher then I had originally anticipated. I must admit, I wasn’t always successful. But then again, if it was so durn easy to succeed, we wouldn’t need this forum. Like much in life, it is a process of improvement not perfection. 

Bye, Bye, Rosie: The Search for local Free Range Chicken

by Jack & Joanne

Jack and I listened to Michael Pollan speak at a Napa Slow Food event in St. Helena last weekend. He was truly inspiring and is a wonderful speaker. I'm very eager to read his new book, Omnivore's Dilemna, especially the chapters where he follows a Whole Foods meal back to the source, which he talked about that evening.

Already, as a result of his talk, I have to go find a new chicken source. Rosie (which is the organic brand local to us – from Petaluma Poultry) which Whole Foods carry and we've been eating, apparently does not meet my definition of free range.

According to Pollan, chickens are housed in 100ft long barracks with a little roll-up door at the end which leads to a beautiful green lawn. The door is locked until the chickens are 5 weeks old. (Can't go out earlier as they might get sick.) Then chickens get a "holiday" opportunity to go outside for the final 2 weeks of their 7-week-life.

List your local farms

by Julie Cummins

For those of you who live in San Francisco, here's something to make your Eat Local Challenge a little easier: a list of local farms that sell at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market and are less than 100 miles away. Many of the farms also sell at other Bay Area farmers' markets.

As I was describing the Eat Local Challenge to a shopper at the market, she said, "Aren't all the farms from within 100 miles?" The answer is no-- there are many farmers in the market who bring produce from farther reaches of the state, including citrus, dates, blueberries, and other beloved foods. And learning where each food comes from is what this Challenge is all about.

I encourage people from other cities to compile lists of farms in your area!

Thanks to Maggie Gosselin at CUESA for putting together the list.

SF Guide to Local Cheeses

by Jen Maiser

If you are not from San Francisco, do not continue reading this post.  It is one of those annoying posts that proves the bounty of our area.

Stephanie Lucianovic is a fellow Bay Area Bites contributor and the author of The Grub Report.  I read Stephanie's writing long before I ever met her, as she was the author of one of my favorite posts ever: "How not to act in a cheese shop."  She also works at one of the Bay Area's finest cheese shops.  This shop is known nationwide for supporting artisan cheesemakers and seeking out the best of small production cheeses. 

I asked Stephanie to give us a guide to the cheeses available within 100 miles of San Francisco, and the SF Guide to Local Cheeses was born.  Please continue reading for the list or click here for a pdf of the guide.  All of the cheeses in the list are available at Cowgirl Creamery.

Living in Eden, Drying out from the Rains

by Tana Butler

(Pictured at left: my table last August, a partial display of the week's acquisition from various farmers markets.)

I tell people I live in Eden. As in, "The Garden of Eden," where "garden" in fact means "more organic/sustainable farms than any county in California," and probably the entire country. With roughly a third the acreage and population of Fresno, Santa Cruz County has 30% more organic farms.

It has become my life's work to visit, photograph, and write about these places—not just here, but wherever I travel in the world. Travel itself has taken on a new meaning: I'm not interested in going somewhere unless I can squeeze in a visit to a farm or a farmers market.

Lamb from Harvey Farms

by Birdsong S.

For me, one of the best parts of making an effort to eat locally has been getting to know more about my food sources and discovering new ones. If you visit my personal blog, you will find that I am a passionate knitter and occasional quilter. That is why, back in March, a member of my quilt guild who also knits asked if I wanted to visit Harvey Farms for the annual sheep shearing. I had met Anna a few times, as she is a member of our guild, living on the other side of Yuba Pass. She is a fourth-generation sheep rancher, it turns out, who has focused her 80-head flock on wool production. Much of the wool gets turned into quilt batts, and some into quality knitting yarn. Anna also teaches felting and needlefelting classes at the farm, and last fall, she and her husband Don, put in several acres of blueberries.

I for one welcome our new corporate overlords

by Suzanne Miller

I first read about the Locavores and the Eat Local Challenge almost a year ago in an SF Chronicle article. It instantly appealed to me.

I had been floundering, trying to figure out what was seasonal (anyone ever looked at agriculture harvesting tables??). Wandering the farmers markets, I’d clutch my cloth bag and wonder what on earth people did with eggplants. But joining a group of people eating local for a month seemed… I dunno, doable. It also motivated me to get serious and buy a fricking eggplant.

When I started getting ready for August, amazing things happened.

 

In desperation, I joined a CSA, which I recommend for eat-local newbies. You don’t need to figure out what to buy, when, or what to do with it. You get a box of just-picked produce from a local farm with a newsletter telling you how to store the food, ideas for cooking the food, and farm updates. 

Local Halibut

by Claire Tompkins

Taking on this challenge has given me a good reason to talk to the farmers at my local market (Grand Lake in Oakland, CA), although I'm usually too shy to do that.  I had a chat with the fishmonger there (can't remember the company name) and bought some local halibut from him, which I'm relieved to discover (after the fact) is on the Seafood Watch guide as a "Best Choice."  I find fish a little challenging to cook, but this halibut was fantastic.  I look forward to trying it again. 

Claire is an enthusiastic backyard gardener.  Her nascent blog is here:  www.organiclifeblog.com

Women at the plough

by Suzanne Miller

The UC Davis Small Farm Center recently published a book honoring 17 California farmers, ranchers, beekeepers, chese makers and wine makers.  All women.  Cool, huh?

One them is Jennifer Greene, who runs Windborne Farm up in Fort Jones (near the Oregon border).  She's on the cover and yes, she uses draft horses to plough her farm!  I belong to her grain CSA and there's nothing like bags of freshly ground flour to inspire me to bake.  She might be technically beyond a 100 mile radius of my house, but I'm keeping in mind the spirit of the challenge.  If you know of a locally-owned, sustainable, organic farm that's a bit beyond your foodshed but offers juicy carrots, fragrant honey or some cheese you just can't live without, consider making it an exemption.

Suzanne Miller lives in Northern California and writes about her attempts to eat local, grow native plants and live life at www.adjectivenoun.com.