Eating local, and I don’t mean at a restaurant!
I came across an article the other day that talked about eating only locally grown foods. The article contained a TED Talk video in relation to this. Now if you have never seen a TED Talk video, you are in for a treat! These videos cover a wide range of topics and the speakers are phenomenal! This particular video is called Relational Eating: Vicki Robin.
Going to give it my best!
In it, Vicki describes how she challenged herself to only eat what she could find within so many miles from her home (she’s a great speaker, by the way), with a few allotted “exotic” items. And so I asked myself the question, “Could I do it?” Well, we shall see. I’m giving myself eight days to try and only eat local, within a 100 mile radius. My start date will be Saturday, Oct. 18 and I will end on Sat. Oct. 25. So for the past few days, I’ve been planning out my strategy.
First, what food do I already have that I have grown. My list: spaghetti squash, tomato juice, lots of varieties of peppers, onions, lots of herbs and hey – a local wine!. Obviously this wouldn’t be enough so I needed to look else where. So I turned to a couple of farmers markets and a local food co-op, Local Roots Food Co-op. I was able to gather the following: turkey jerky, sweet clover honey, red potatoes, celery, two kinds of bread, eggs, bacon and butternut squash.
So we don’t have to suffer too much, Vicki allows 10 exotic items in the mixture. For me, I’ve decided that I won’t be able to go without the following: black pepper, butter, milk (with all the laws governing pasteurizing, I didn’t realize raw milk would be so hard to find locally), avocados, cheese, garlic, olive oil and two other items I’m don’t know of yet.
Some of the food items I gathered for the local food challenge
I’ll be honest, I’m a little nervous in that this will be very hard for me. I love my occasional beer, pizza, chips, etc.. But it will be a healthy challenge for me. I’ll be posting my progress on Facebook, so keep a watch out for those. After all is said and done, I’ll have a recap blog letting you know what worked, what didn’t, what the obstacles were and if I would like to do it again.
Wish me luck!
