Soul food

Well this past weekend I decided it was time to give this whole local eating thing a bang. After an hour of circling the Greenstar produce section I felt slightly disappointed the only local vegetable was a strange, orangery brown, not terribly pretty looking, potato/dicon thingy. It kind of resembled an oversize wart. So I did another round, at least my 5th. Finally, having discovered the ground beef, I was lucky enough to run into a family friend who had watched me aimlessly wander the store mumbling to myself "alph alpha seeds, 1 pint, 1 pint." In response to her quizzical look, and disbelief, "you're still here!" I conceded and told her of my attempts to eat local for the next week. Well lordy you would never believe how nice people are to help you out in a bind. Those witch nose vegetables turned out to be  sunchokes, "excellent on salads."

So an hour and a half later I had almost covered half of the bottom of my shopping cart, spent $42.79 (to the amazement of my mother who gasped "5 dollars for that little thing of butter, oh Marcellll"), and was glowing from check to shinning check.

All local (50 mile radius) shopping list---

.ground beef

.whole chicken

.unsalted butter

.plain yogurt

.corn grits

.bread flour

.ramps (another vegetable previously unbeknown to me. they're kind of like scallops. great on salads) 

.mutzu apples

.lettuce 

Arriving home I immediately assigned my sister to the task of baking two loves of bread, which of course she did an excellent job doing. 

My mom popped the loves in the oven in this morning. There's not much better than waking up to the soft, spongy small of bread. 

So today is day numero uno of eating local. I am actually quite proud of myself if i may say so. If it takes me 15 min to buy grits imagine how long it takes me to cook them.

Breakfast=

-local grits

-local milk

-local water 

-2 slices homemade local wheat bread

-local butter

-local mouth

Lunch=

- 2 sandwiches w/ homemade bread, local lettuce

- not local turkey (couldn't find any-- shouldn't have missed the farmers market) or mayo

- local apples

-not local rip-offf cheezit things

Snack

-4 pieces of bread w butter and local honey

Dinner=

- 2 grilled cheese sandwiches  (bread,cheese, butter)

-all local salad (apples, ramps, sunchoke, backyard dandelions, lettuce,"snow farm fetish" cheese, carrots) 

-local milk

I had to resort to grilled cheese because I didn't have any thawed meat. 

The temptation to eat chocolate and buy a milkshake was almost to hard to handle-- when have I ever not eaten something I wanted and that was not within my purchasing power....

So far the spoiled eco boy has encountered these problems--

• Eating 1 1/2 loves of bread in one day get's old fast. basically after the first day
• The hours of the piggery (place to get local wilberts) don't match up with times I am free
• Farmers market isn't until next week
• need to get more milk. don't have time
• Away baseball games mean i get home at 9. I eat lunch at 12. waiting 10 hours between eating means this sinewy build is loosing energy. I regret to say I have an away game tomorrow and I plan on eating the cheap white bread sub the team provides. Michael Pollan please do not strike me with a thousand lightning bolts!

Having fun. Oh ya