April 23-29th: national “eat local” challenge

One week.

Here in central NC, our local coffee roaster, Larry’s Beans, has some kickin packaging (website design produced by Internest, also local), and one of the quips on the bag is “a coffee bean is smaller than the top of your pinky. The little things have an impact.”

That’s it, that’s what I’ve got to say: start small, just start. One week. Join the eatlocalchallenge.com for one little week, April 23-29th; invite your friends (and people who linger within earshot); then report back.

OK, so locally roasted isn’t enough to fit coffee into my self-parameters, but you get to set your own goals and limitations. The challenge is made by a collective of bloggers, tends toward a 100 mile diet, and includes budgeting. One of the grave concerns of organic and local foods is accessibility: physical and financial. The US travels 1500 miles before it reaches your plate, a much spouted statistic these days, and that’s on top of the fossil fuels that go into mechanization that supplants human labor on numerous fronts, plus synthesized fertilizer production, subsidies, and the list goes on . . . What it means is that small and sustainable farmers actually become forced to charge more for building healthy soil, protecting water quality, and providing more nutritious foods. Knowing how far your food has traveled can be tough, as well as what’s been done to it in the “happy even-before” phase: just this week the FDA announced new and lax regulations on irradiation labeling.

Good news: Finding your local sources for produce is easier than you think with the Eat Well Guide, and your first local farmers market of the season should be a rite of spring and a paid

holiday. Whitney Skillcorn, of Robo Sapien fame and transplanted from San Fran, went with me yesterday to Pittsboro’s first market of the year; it was hoppin. I put in a special order of pickled jalapenos and loaded up on produce. Doug Jone’s offerings from Piedmont BioVeggies, the farm at Piedmont Biofuels, were downright bountiful. Doug, a seed-saving guru, can’t keep up with the demand for his carrots at our local coop Chatham Marketplace, and yesterday he limited me to four bunches of his seductively multi-colored bunches. Share the bounty; I get it. . . . Doug’s sweet potatoes have been curing all winter, the beets are so sweet I munched a raw one while walking the dogs this am, and the arugala begs for a blog “scratch and sniff” application.

Now I’m hungry. Brunch—off to eat my scrambled eggs from the Egg Ladee.   Join me?. . .

 April 23-29th.