Eat Local Challenge, Challenged

Yesterday, after six hours of dealing with hundreds of strangers and having eaten only toast and some of Lisa's snack food (because I had no time to make quality food of my own to bring) I was craving a salad. I've been craving salad a lot lately, but I was craving it the way a pregnant lady craves ice cream. My body was screaming out for one of those really satisfyingly fattening salads that can only come from a salad bar. I begged Lisa E. to take me to Whole Foods on our way home because I was so hungry.

So I had a salad with hard boiled eggs, cheese, croutons, shredded carrots, lettuce, spinach, garbanzo beans, and marinated mushrooms all smothered in ranch dressing. Many of the items on this salad would not have found it's way into my house because of my eat local challenge. Lisa wanted to know how eating out fits into my challenge. This is not the first time she's asked. I explained that I was not going to concern myself with eating local when eating at friend's houses or when eating out.

Here (for every one's benefit) is my challenge outlined quite clearly: The parameters of our personal eat local challenge.

I said in my outline that "We are not choosing to be extreme in our approach." That should explain a lot right there. I have also said that the point of the challenge isn't to suffer so that others will be impressed with me or to be unrealistic in my approach. Taking an eat local challenge is a very flexible endeavor which an individual can approach with any degree of severity that they like. The point is to heighten your awareness of what you buy at the grocery store, to recalibrate how you cook to include more seasonal eating.

Perhaps my personal local eating challenge should be called a "cook local challenge".

In case any of you out there don't think I've been suffering enough with this challenge for it to be authentically a challenge, I submit for you a list of what I'm not buying/eating right now (barring a few transgressions admitted to several days ago):

vegetables: lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, cucumbers, celery, summer squash, green beans, eggplant, beets, fennel, asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, hot peppers, cilantro, avocados, sprouts, or shallots.

fruits: bananas, peaches, nectarines, plums, strawberries, pears (because I can't find any local ones right now though they are still in season), blueberries, grapes, pineapple, oranges, grapefruit, limes, lemons, tangerines, or kiwis (except for the ones that were given to me by Lisa E.'s mom Andrea).

everything else I'm not buying: cous cous, pasta*, buckwheat, white rice, brown rice, feta, mozzarella, tofu, (anything soy), garbanzo beans, ketchup, coconut milk, canned vegetables (which includes any canned tomato products)*, canned fruit*, olives of any description, frozen fruit*, frozen vegetables*, pine nuts, almonds, pecans, cashews, peanut butter, peanuts, cream cheese, cereal, dried cranberries, raisins, or croutons.



Now, I challenge anyone to cook without all of those ingredients for even a week.

Lisa's skepticism about eating out fitting into my local challenge is fair enough. If she were to create her own eat local challenge I am sure she would not allow herself to eat out. However, I grew up in a household in which certain foods rarely made their way past the door. We did not eat white bread. My mom did not buy refined sugar (which is to say: white or brown granulated) nor did she ever fry anything. She didn't buy anything with artificial food coloring in it nor did she allow creepy colorful kid's cereals into her pantry. However, when the family went out to eat, we were all allowed to eat what we wanted. Naturally we often went to restaurants with good quality food, but she never prevented us from getting deserts made with white sugar, enchiladas made with white flour tortillas, or grilled cheese sandwiches made from white bread, artificial butter, and processed cheese.

I can't say exactly what her reasons were for the way she did everything, but I have heard her say that the reason she let us eat sugar and things like donuts sometimes when we went out is because she didn't think it was healthy to make those things into "forbidden fruit" which, in her personal experience, makes things much more enticing. She wanted us to have those things often enough that we didn't feel totally deprived, but not in our house where she could make such better things for us to eat.

That's how I feel about eating out. If I was to not allow myself to eat out at any place that didn't have totally local meals, I would have to make a pledge not to eat out for a year, or forever. Which means that I would have starved myself into passing out yesterday. Because even though I got to eat Lisa's generously shared snacks, Lisa doesn't buy mostly local food. So I couldn't have eaten her bread, her crackers, her celery, probably not her carrots (though maybe?), certainly not her raisins covered in chocolate, and I also wouldn't have been able to eat the crappy little muffin from the vendor's breakfast and I wouldn't have been able to eat that salad from Whole Foods.

Nor the pizza that awaited us at Lisa's house.

I would have had to go an entire day without eating a bite of food because I can't control what my friends buy, and I also can't control what restaurants offer and I had no time to prepare anything for myself.

That is why, when I can't prepare food ahead of time (which during the last few weeks has been very difficult) I am not going to agonize over having to buy lunch at Harvest Fresh from which almost no ingredients are local. I did not pledge to starve when out in the world.

What I pledged was to control what I cook in my own kitchen. I'm pretty proud of how few transgressions I've had in my own kitchen for the last three and a half months. As for the gift of kiwis from Andrea? It was a wonderful respite from a really boring fruitless few weeks, and I didn't buy them myself, nor did I ask her to buy them for me.

The oranges I stole from Lisa's kitchen? Now that is a transgression indeed. But I'm not sorry for it. They stared at me. They taunted. They did little hula dances in front of my eyes. There were about thirty of them. I just couldn't stand it. Until last week when someone at the holiday market gave me a tangerine I hadn't had citrus for three months. That's a long time to go without it.

Not having had citrus for so long has made me appreciate it even more. Though, I think that even when the challenge is over citrus will be a luxury that I won't often indulge in.

I still feel good about the parameters I've set for my challenge and I think if it doesn't sound right to anyone else, then it must be time for them to take on their own challenge so that they can make up rules that make sense for their own lives.

Any takers?