Local Challenge

A friend in Chicago invited me to participate in the "Keep It Local" challenge run by Erin Loughlin. Erin started this challenge because she wanted to challenger herself to eat locally and thought it would be fun to have some company while doing so.

Part of Erin's inspiration came from this fact: "If every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country’s oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week. That’s not gallons, but barrels." Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver. (2007) p. 5

We only have to do one local meal a week, but I'm an overachiever and have been doing more than that. Here's a few photos of my local meals so far:













(sausage and bell peppers on sourdough bread, black bean and sausage stew, bison and root vegetable stew.)

Living in California, and being a devoted shopper at my farmer's market, I thought that it'd be easy to find local EVERYTHING. Since starting the challenge, I'm beginning to rethink that. I've realized I don't know where half the farmers at my market come from (although by law, it has to be within the state of California.) But that means the food could be traveling up to 725 miles and, while that's still less than half of the 1500 miles the average American meal travels, it's still not exactly local. With this in mind, I'm going to start paying more attention to where the farmers I buy from are located.

I've decided for the last two weeks of the challenge, my local meal has to be vegan as well since the United Nations has found that almost a fifth of all global warming emissions comes from livestock production.

Our Daily Bread

Today Rob's Facebook status was that he was waiting for me to drag my ass out of bed so we could go to the farmer's market. He took this photo to prove we did eventually make it.

Here's what we got: eggs, bell peppers in two colors, onions, broccoli, carrots, turnips, heirloom tomato (yes, just one), satsuma tangerines, mushrooms, baguette and, in the very back, a bison brisket I plan to brine for our Christmas dinner. Yum!

It ain't easy being green

Boy, Kermit sure had it right, but I don't think he was talking about the environment when he sang those words so many years ago.

For three years, my husband and I have shopped every Sunday at our local farmers' market. In addition to the usual fare, our market has several vendors who sell artisan soaps. We like these soaps very much, but much to our chagrin, every time we buy it, we have to FIGHT not to get a bag.

I heard today on NPR that one trillion plastic bags are produced every year, about 1,000 for every person on the planet. Even before I knew that horrifying piece of trivia, I've been a fan of reusable, canvas shopping bags. I mean really, it's not that hard to say, "I don't need a bag." Five simple words that can do a lot of good for our seriously diseased planet.

Five simple words that are simple to say, but not so easy to hear, at least not for any of the three different soap vendors at our market. Every other vendor at the market has always respected the fact we bring our own bags. Soap vendors really have an issue with it, even when I show them that one of our canvas bags actually has a separate pocket where the soap can sit all by its lonesome, safe from whatever terrifying injuries our tangerines might want to inflict on it.

We've tried all sorts of tricks to avoid arguing with the soap vendors. At one vendor, we've learned to always have exact change --that way we can pick up our bar and scoot away while he's still waving a plastic bag at us. Yesterday, however, we bought from a vendor who has to cut the bars from a large brick. Despite our objections, our soap was wrapped in a cardboard take-out container, which I have now set aside to bring back to the market so I can avoid having another one forced on me next week.

What are these soap vendors so in love with their packaging? Is naked soap really so offensive? Or perhaps they are afraid that without a bag, their beloved soaps might -- gasp! -- get dirty???