Wednesday, August 18, 2010

September 1

My husband and I have made a decision, set a goal and hope to stick to it for 30 days. We are going to eat only local foods, with the exception of a few items that we can not find in Wisconsin for 30 days. Our set date is September 1, 2010.

Eric has been on my case for a long time to try this. He read "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver. It inspired him to make our garden big enough to feed the family a wide array of vegetables. He wanted to try to get local in other areas for health and environmental reasons. I resisted this for a long time. I did not want to give up some favorite foods of mine.
Those foods are :

coffee
avocados
bananas
cashews
tea
chocolate
vanilla
pineapple
peanut butter
soy and almond milk

Obviously, these are not foods found in the frozen tundra, aka Wisconsin. So, I resisted and he finally gave up. But, after enough reading of the benefits of the local food movement, I finally decided to give in for one month to see how it would go. My only condition, that like Barabara Kingsolver, we have a list of food that we agree to buy that is not local. My list would include all the above foods mentioned. But, we will have to shorten it, add some necessities that are not local and learn to adapt.

I realize that we are lucky to do this challenge in the state of Wisconsin. After all, we are the dairy state, making the true necessities attainable. Cheese, ice cream, yogurt, sour cream and cream cheese will not be hard to keep on our list. We also live in Milwaukee, which is known for beer. So our cocktail needs are covered. We also have most vegetables and fruits readily available at our local farmers markets as well as locally raised meats. So, I think we will be fine. I will continue to use food that I have in the house that was not local. It would be wasteful to throw away a bag of pretzels just because they were not made in the area.

So, wish us luck as we prepare to go into uncharted territory in just 2 short weeks. Please, pass on advice as needed so that we can be successful in this endeavor.

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