days eleven & twelve

I've been thinking about the idea versus the reality of eating locally. Before starting this project, I thought about local eating all the time and really supported the idea. I thought that eating locally 100 percent would be a tiny change for me, and actually pretty easy. As it turns out, eating locally theoretically is really easy for me because I don't battle with cost issues etc. I have always wanted to support local farmers with my dollars, even when I had fewer jobs and couldn't afford to. Yet the reality is that eating locally all the time needs to be done and not just thought about, before you can really say what you think about it (if that makes sense). I was drifting about on this ideal, trying to explain it to family etc ... before I had actually committed to trying it for real. Which is totally different than thinking about it. I am whole-heartedly committed to this in theory, and trying as hard as possible in reality. I just didn't realize the difficulty involved with cooking and the time involved with buying each product. I can't just run to the co-op when I need an ingredient. I need to think about where it came from too. I'm almost to the half-way point and I already feel like some days I want to eat a huge non-local cupcake for lunch and then do the same for dinner. But I'm also so glad I am going through this. Because now I know what is worth spending the time to do. And I know what I miss and will appreciate so much more (sugar, chocolate, oats, balsamic vinegar, bread, convenience). And I know what is available to me locally that I didn't know about before. And I will continue keeping the market as my first grocery stop, forever. I will buy every ingredient that grows locally, locally, whenever I can. I will buy from local stores and restaurants when I can't control the ingredients themselves. I will only buy non-locally when it's something that doesn't harm the economy/environment (spices). So all this is good. Okay - just processing a bit. Here's how I did:

On Thursday I went to Lazy Jane's for breakfast (see above paragraph about eating locally all the time in theory versus reality). I actually ended up eating something I could have, in theory, made locally by myself. A waffle with berries and cream. Yum.

For lunch I made mashed sweet potatoes. I bought a potato ricer last week and I can't believe I lived so long without one! Seriously, this made the mashed potato process delightful and beyond easy. When I bought the sweet potatoes at the market I was concerned that they looked so "scary" I guess. But I figured they were just a different variety than I was used to. Well. They cooked into a yellowish color and tasted like acorn squash. Still good, but not what i was going after. I'll look for sweet potatoes from a different vendor next week.

For dinner I made butter rolls, replacing the regular flour with whole wheat and the sugar with honey. The dough hardly rose during the rising phase, so I was a bit concerned. I turned the oven on real low, covered the dough with a towel and stuck it in the oven. It rose pretty quickly after that and baked-up amazingly! Tasted so good that I ate 4 out of 12 for dinner alone. I also sauteed some spinach and had some havarti cheese.

On Friday I tried to finish-up leftovers from the week, in anticipation of another huge round of Saturday marketing. Ate the rest of my yogurt, cheese, applesauce, and vegetables for breakfast and lunch. Also ate four more butter rolls (have to repeat this recipe again). Dinner was with Troy's family in Freeport, Illinois, at this nice place called Rafters. I had cornbread-encrusted pork medallions ... something else I could have made locally in theory. That's another thing ... so many recipes, in order to make local, require ingredients that are a two-part process (making pasta from scratch for a spaghetti recipe or making bread from scratch for croutons in a salad).

Troy's family was trying to help me in my local oat-seeking quest by offering suggestions. We also had a nice conversation about the project in general and about government subsidies for farmers growing commodities: corn and soybeans. After dinner we went to the Union Dairy and got ice cream. So perfect. So appreciated.