www.eatlocalchallenge.com

On Quitting the Challenge

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.

Food Is Where You Find It

by Birdsong S.

Some people have been commenting that the Eat Local Challenge is too hard or too expensive.  I want to address this by discussing some of the free sources of food I have found over the years...

I love to walk and when I lived in the big city of Sacramento back twenty years ago, I was almost always able to walk to work.  The Central Valley climate is very benign, and there were lots and lots of citrus trees along my various routes: lemons, kumquats, oranges. Walnuts were also quite common, both the English and Black varieties, and so were figs, a luxury in many climates.  Many were even in vacant lots, where homes had once been, now either torn or burnt down.

Incredible Edibles

by Liz

No matter where in the country you live, local eggs are in abundance in May.  As a natural part of their cycle of fertility, chickens raised in small flocks without supplemental light will lay more eggs in the spring than in the dark of winter, making eggs a truly seasonal food.

Eggs are a relatively inexpensive item -- around here, local, organic ones go for about $3 a dozen, duck eggs slightly more.  I've heard of people in other states that will gladly pay $6 a dozen for high quality local eggs, the argument being that even at 50¢ per egg, it still makes for an economical meal.  I truly believe that the egg is one of nature's perfect foods, which is why my springtime meal planning revolves heavily around eggs in its various forms, one of which is the frittata.

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.

Eating locally helps me understand a far-away cuisine

By Marc

When I got into the Eat Local Challenge, I expected that it would introduce me to new ingredients and to new ways to use old ones.  It therefore came as a surprise to me when my local focus led me to a deeper understanding of the cooking of Japan, a country that is half a world away.   

I have visited Japan many times, and although being a vegetarian tourist in Japan is difficult (if not impossible), I have a great fondness for the food.  But I almost never cook Japanese at home.  It might be that I have relied too much on cookbooks and become trapped by ingredient lists and recipes.  Or, more likely, that I had not yet met my muses.    

Now how much would you pay?

By Julie Cummins

At the risk of being viewed as obsessive-compulsive, I'll share with you something I did this past week. Well, yeah, I ate almost exclusively food that was grown and produced within 100 miles of my home. But that wasn't the most obsessive part. I also kept a notebook of my meals and made meticulous calculations of how much they cost.

I'd heard people doubting that eating local could be done on a budget. I've heard this kind of lament before, working at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market in San Francisco. It's true that some local, organic food can cost more than supermarket produce (which is often imported from nations with much cheaper labor and looser environmental laws), but you can also find quite reasonably priced produce at the farmers' market.

I was curious to see how much eating local would cost.

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.

May 2006 Eat Local Challenge Participant List

by The Editors

The 2006 Eat Local Challenge participant list includes over fifty bloggers from areas around the country, Canada, and even France.  It includes challenge veterans and challenge newbies.  This group of bloggers joins the over 700 people taking the challenge this month with the Locavores. 

The Locavores started as a Bay Area group, however the nationwide participation as proven by this list should cast aside any doubts that eating locally is only a Bay Area game -- a game that others in the country can't play due to different agricultural limitations.  In the same way that marathoners all run the race for different reasons, each blogger in this group is taking the challenge at their own pace and with their own goals. 

We hope that you'll have a chance to check out some of these blogs.  The depth of the conversation that is started by these blogs is overwhelming.  We hope, on www.eatlocalchallenge.com, to feature many of these blogs throughout the month and to bring you their stories.

Field trip report #1: Strawberry fields forever

by Jamie S.

I've been living in the South for...let's see, six years now. And still it catches me off guard. If I hadn't been involved in the Eat Local Challenge, I might never have noticed that Georgia's strawberry season is in full swing right now. It's over by the end of May--I could have missed it by mistake, which would have been very unfortunate indeed.

So yesterday, while I was in town, I decided to take a break from my errands and pick some strawberries. Washington Farms is tucked in among some of the University of Georgia's myriad agriculture demonstration sites. It's an unassuming flat spot with a few novelty livestock pens and a couple of acres of raised, black-plasticked strawberry rows.