“Last” One Local Summer

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It’s the end of One Local Summer, the 10-week Eat local challenge put out there by Liz at Pocket Farm and answered by many. I am thinking of taking the September 2007 Eat Local Challenge too. I hould hurry: it’s September already!

  • Last meal

Our last OLS meal was spaghetti bolognese, with only the organic, whole wheat pasta and the salt and pepper non-local. All the other ingredients were from the Farmer’s Market or Drumlin Farm, none of which are more than 100 miles away (tomatoes, red and green bell peppers, carrots, onions, garlic – lots! – squash, ground beef) and my herb garden at 0 miles (rosemary, thyme, oregano).

No photographs, though! It was a big pot, but we had friends over for dinner and then we enjoyed it for another lunch and dinner, and then, then it was all gone! And I had forgotten to snap a picture…

I want to mention one very special thing, though, about this pasta sauce: Amie ate it! Granted, she ate the beefy chunks, but she didn’t mind (so much) a piece of carrot or pepper sticking to it. Must make it again, even more of it, and freeze it.

  • Local eating all summer round

Almost as soon as we took it on, the OLS challenge changed our entire week’s food habits, not just for the one agreed upon meal.

Yesterday at dinner at a friends’ place, we had avocado in our salads. It was such an intense, exceptional experience. As I voiced this to our hosts, I realized that since we took the OLS challenge, we haven’t had any of the impossible-to-be-local fare that we used to eat: avocado, banana, kiwi, oranges… And we hadn’t missed them!

I think we could keep on doing this for September, and I want to make a go of it into October, but I’m afraid we won’t be able to keep it up much longer after that. Living in a small space, with a little top-of-the-fridge freezer, I wasn’t able to preserve or freeze any of the local summer food.

I’m curious to see when the turning point comes, who will notice first…

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