www.eatlocalchallenge.com

2008 Eat Local Challenge Blog Participants

by Jennifer Maiser, Editor

In addition to about 250 non-blogging participants, we have a longer list than ever of blogging participants this year. I would like to say that the late publication of this post is by design, but it wasn't.  However, in going through the list of blogs, I am happy that you will be checking them out this late in the month.  Many blogs give you a great sense of the Eat Local Challenge as a whole -- and you will be able to see the triumphs and difficulties with the challenge.  The list is broken down by region (and country) and interspersed with some of my favorite quotes from this month.

Belgium
Kate McNally

Canada
c’est pas moi je l’jure! • Hit Pay Dirt • Jen and Joey Go Green •

This is something I’ve noticed about local eating. I often have to do battle with my whims. I can’t just open a bag of potato chips when I get hungry, or most other prepared foods for that matter. Food preparation takes awhile and, unless a carrot or apple will do, I often go hungry while I prepare something more substantial. It makes me realize what a culture of convenience I live in. The idea of having to wait more than 15 minutes for food is foreign to most of us. -- Hit Pay Dirt, "Hunger Pangs"

Finland
Puikottelua

Sweden
Corpus Bon Vivant

Here in California, I’d say that everyone who lives here could easily eat at least 70% of their diet locally. In fact it would be a darn shame if Californian’s didn’t. I mean this is a huge agriculture state, in most spots it’s actually hard to keep things from growing. And the beauty of it is that we can grow things nearly year round. So we should be eating locally. It just makes sense. -- A Sonoma Garden, "11 Ways to Eat Locally in Sonoma"

California
Food She Thought • A Sonoma Garden • Becks & Posh • Butter is Love • Green LA Girl • Green Simple Frugal • Knitting Dahlias • Buy Local CA • Married With Dinner • The Inadvertent Gardener • Ward Road Garden • Jolly Ewe • Kale for Sale • What's Cooking Blog • A New Leaf Nutrition • Chez Us • Daaliciuos • Fight Like a Girl • Green & Chic • Kate Adelle • Kitchen Gadget Girl • Localette • Local Los Aneles • Real Farmstead Cheese • Simply Pies • Six by Ten • Spinach & Honey • Tiny Tummies • Tragic Sandwich • Windsor Green Grocer •

Mid-Atlantic
Bringing Down the Cool • Dagny Finds Faith • Foodie Tots • Cookin in the Cuse • Midge Pingleton's Pantry • Phlippin Sweet • Rural Recluse • The Salted Cod • Thoughts Like Pebbles • Walk Eastwood • Richmond Food Collective • Megan Seiter • All My Pretty Hates • Backyard Chili Bloggin • Eating Ithaca • Elizabeth Yalkut • Liberty on Tenth • Market Love • Richmond Food Collective • You are What I Eat •

What I'm figuring out about eating food from Michigan is:  while it's eminently possible to eat locally on a budget, it's not possible to eat locally when your life is on auto-pilot.  And I only call it auto-pilot because that's what the daily routine of glossing over life's small and meaningful moments (in an effort to get where?) seems like to me. -- The Farmers Marketer, "Food is love to the local eater"

Midwest
Accidental Wisconsinite • Food Happens • Big Adventures with Little Buddies • Cara, The 100-mile Diet • Fast Grow the Weeds • Green Leanings • Kaleidescope Living • The Farmers Marketer • Tofu is tasty • Vegan Cooking and Other Random Musings • Columbus Foodie • Lynnann's Path On Nature • Southampton Meat Market • Vegan Cupcake • South Depot Road • St. Charles County Wolds • Tigers & Strawberries •

The goal is not to “win” the Eat Local Challenge.  The goal is not to “prove” anything.  The goal is merely to learn.  Okay, Tammy?  Got that?  Everybody’s a winner when we do it that way, so calm down. -- Food on the Food, "Perspective"

New England
How to Grow • Living Local NH • Mango Triathlete • Northeast Kingdom Localvores • Octoberland • Seasons Eatings Farm • Veg Year • Brave Potato • Food on the Food • Camberville Cuisine • Dirt 2 Dish • Late Bloomers Farm •  Retro Domestic • Yankee Food •

Southeast
Dusty Skin and All • Felicitea • Greene Onion • Gulf Coast Local Food • Sticks n' Spin • The Peaceful Palate • Tiger Mel • Val Webb • Postmodern Feeding • Smart Coast •

The Eat Local Challenge changed the look of the grocery isles. Rather than rows of rows of "food," I now see rows and rows of containers on cargo ships, chugging into the Philadelphia Port to unload from somewhere far away. And I see oil consumption - huge amounts of it in airlines as they hurry to ship the California Carrots to the East coast to maintain what little freshness is left in them. -- Backyard Chili Bloggin', "What I See at the Grocery Store Now"

Southwest
Earth Reign • Green Grazing •

West
Eat Local Hawaii • One Green Generation • Accidental Scientist •  • Ellen's Grind • Forever House • Hendrick Homestead • Music & Cats • Not So Urban Hennery • Rocky Mountain Musins • Shiba Guyz • Baking for Babies • Bare Medicine • Café Mama • Chez Artz • Kona Yoga • Weekly Way • Chocolate Crayon Family • Ecoyear • One Healthy Year • Seattle Local Food •

Jennifer Maiser is the editor of the Eat Local Challenge website.  She is often found behind a camera, on twitter, or writing for her site, Life Begins at 30.

Eat Local Challenge: Coming Soon!

Twelve days from now, participants around the nation will be taking part in the Eat Local Challenge.  It will take place through the month of October.  Have you signed up?

This year, we are asking some participants to be team leaders.  A team leader will check in with other participants in their geographic area, and help first-timers with hints and tips to successfully take the challenge.

Since this is the fourth annual challenge, there are a few people for whom eating locally is now a part of their daily lives.  If this describes you, please consider signing up for the challenge anyway and volunteering to be a team leader.  There are many new participants this year who would benefit from your expertise!

What About The Celery

By VI

Baby it's cold outside.  Around me, there's a limited growing season and no year-round farmer's markets.  Yet, thank you very much, I still manage, some oranges aside, to eat local.  The hardest thing about eating local in Chicago: not managing your stock of root vegetables or wondering where you could put fifty pounds of potatoes. No, it's not having to eat all those root vegetables and potatoes.  While my family and I allow exceptions for things that do not grow around here, those oranges; we will not dabble in stuff that we can get, at least in season.  So, no matter how bad our apricot crop was this year, we will not get an outta region apricot.  Which gets us to the celery.  That's hard.  I got a head of celery this week, and it made me really happy.

Eat Local Challenge Support on YouTube

This is a video produced by Parke Wilde, friend of the Eat Local Challenge, and publisher of U.S. Food Policy -- a blog that should be on everyone's blogrolls.

ELC Blog Highlight: Locavore on Core

Jessica of the Locavore on Core blog is not only challenging herself to the Eat Local Challenge, but she's doing it while on the Weight Watchers Core diet and on a budget.  From the little that I know of the Core Diet, it lends itself really well to a local foods emphasis with it's slant toward whole, unprocessed foods.  I love Jessica's postings about how satisfying good, whole foods can be:

I'm making conscious food choices not entirely based on the calorie count, but on the quality of the food, and I've found something surprising: I don't need a huge quantity if the food is high quality. A small amount of good, real cheese is so much more satisfying than a whole package of fat free cheese product.

If you have a minute to check out Jessica's blog and cheer her on, please do so!  She's working hard at all aspects of her food challenges.

ELC Blog Highlight: Livin' La Vida Local

Melanie of Livin' La Vida Local represents our San Diego blog contingent during this challenge.   Her entire blog is dedicated to food issues and the idea of eating locally-grown food, and it's becoming a terrific resource for San Diegans who are interested in eating local.  Read about her approach, and I think you'll agree that she's going about this in a balanced, positive way:

I don't boast of being an expert in what I am undertaking. This blog will chronicle what I learn, in hopes that by the end of the year I (and anybody who's listening in) will be more knowledgeable about living like a "localtarian."

This is not a vegetarian or vegan diet. I intend to eat meat, chicken, and seafood in addition to produce (but only if I can find them from local sources).

Read more about Melanie's journey at Livin' La Vida Local.

ELC Blog Highlight: Dirt to Dish

Katherine is blogging about her family's Eat Local Challenge on her blog Dirt to Dish.  Katherine has taken the challenge before, and I am so excited to read about her progress this time around because she has some additional goals in order to decrease her family's footprint on the earth.  Some of her goals: 

• Bring lunch to work.
• If we eat out, eat at locally-owned restaurants that use locally-grown ingredients.
• Stick to the average American food budget.
• Bike, walk, or train as often as possible.
• Buy (almost) nothing new.
• Tell friends about what we’re doing.

Read her entire list here.

ELC Blog Highlight: Maggie of My Room With a View

Maggie is participating in the Eat Local Challenge this month from her home in North Carolina.  Eating locally is already in practice in Maggie's home, and she has participated in One Local Summer and previous challenges.  She has set some admirable goals for her challenge this September:

I'm going to think about the challenge and approach it a little differently -looking for new local sources, writing about restaurants supporting local growers and farmers, and continuing to write about the garden. I'll also share a little bit of what we are doing to preserve our food and how we are continuing to grow as one season winds down and another begins.

Keep an eye on Maggie's progress on her blog My Room With a View.

How It All Adds Up

by Expat Chef

One of the things I have loved about the Eat Local Challenge (ELC) is that the more I participate, the easier and better it becomes. It's sustainable, too, as we can each define it and build it to fit the local environment in which we live. Best of all, is what ELC has brought to my life.

I found myself sitting at a lunch dedicated to local foods last week. The event was a stop on the Sustainable Table's Eat Well Guided Tour. The tables were filled with local foodies, activists, and farmers, some of whom produced the very food on our plates. I felt such great joy as we went around the room and each of us, not just our guests, shared our vision and experience of eating local. My heart swelled as I saw the actualization of our shared vision. Living proof that sustainable food systems work and are healthy for all who participate. Were it not for Jen Maiser and ELC, I would not have had this rich and wonderful experience.

The September 2007 Eat Local Challenge: Many ways to participate

by the Editors

For the third year in a row, the Eat Local Challenge website, in association with the Locavores, is hosting a month-long Eat Local Challenge.  This year, the challenge is in September with an emphasis on canning and preserving the bounty of September for the winter months. 

During this time, nationwide participants focus on what foods are available in our local foodshed and how we can support our local farmers.  This year, we have received many inquiries on the ways that supporters of the Eat Local Challenge can participate.  While the original challenge premise involves eating as much food from your local foodshed as possible during the month, there are many ways that you can participate.

Here are just a few:

1)  Commit to eating local for 30 days in September.  To do this, define what "local" means to you --  be it a 100-mile radius or your entire state or region.  Then designate any exceptions, define any extra goals you have during the month, and sign up on the Locavores website so that you can be counted.

2)  Write about your experience with eating locally on your blog.  What's it like in your area?  Which parts of eating locally are easy, and which are difficult?  What advice do you have for others? If you are participating, email us and tell us what state you live in.  Then tag all posts with the term "EatLocalChallenge" so that we can find your posts.  Want to show your support?  Add an Eat Local Challenge logo to your site!

3)  Take photos of local food, local farmers' markets and local farmers and post them to our Flickr group.

4)  Make one local meal a week in September.  Liz from Pocket Farm heads up the One Local Summer project which asks people to eat a local meal each week during the summer.  You can participate in a modified One Local Summer by committing to preparing one local meal for your family weekly through September.  Let us know how you do!

5)  Submit original content about your eat local experience to the Eat Local Challenge blog to be posted during September.  Email us your content or blog thoughts.  All posts will be subject to our Creative Commons license.