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The month-long challenge to eat more locally grown and produced food returns as the September 2007 Eat Local Challenge -- now with a focus "on canning and preserving the bounty of September for the winter months."
One major question I have: Is canning and preserving really necessary in warmer climates like SoCal? I'm willing to look into it, but since we have robust farmers' markets here year-round, I feel like I could eat pretty well locally without dealing with the canning and preserving -- which sounds -- in the current heat wave -- a very hot and sweaty task....
That aside: Here are some LA-specific tips for eating local:
Try the 100-mile diet in Los Angeles. I tried a loose version of it a lil while ago, and still get most of my food accordingly. The key thing's not to freak yourself out to the point you give up. You might try starting small: Make one local meal a week in September, or just replace 1 item a week with a local version.
Find and shop at a farmers' market each week in September. Angelenos now even have a neat lil app that lets you google map your closest farmers' markets by day. Remember to take your own bag --
Stalk the Fallen Fruit people to find out when their next Fruit Jam is.
Start a lil garden! I got my starter plants at my farmers' market. Or if you're a hardcore gardener, check out Jenn and Nat's yard garden.
Dine at restaurants that support local farmers. I've reviewed a bunch here --
Throw a local foods potluck. Two benefits to pursuing this goal: 1. Party! 2. You only have to worry about making 1 local dish to fulfill your local eating goal.
Let your fun and food be known. Email the good people at Eat Local Challenge, editor@eatlocalchallenge.com, including the state you live in. Then:
- Add an Eat Local Challenge logo to your site.
- Blog about eating local, so others can learn from your successes and failures. Tag posts with "EatLocalChallenge"
- Take photos of local food, local farmers' markets and local farmers and post them to the Eat Local Challenge Flickr group.
- Contribute to the Eat Local Challenge blog by emailing posts to editor@eatlocalchallenge.com. All posts will be subject to Creative Commons license.
I'm off to the farmers' market --
BlogHer Contributing Editor Siel also blogs at greenLAgirl.com.
