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 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 –
[crossposted on BlogHer]
Hi Siel -
I am doing part of my Eat Local Challenge this year from LA — at least for the next 2 weeks. I agree with you about preserving being less necessary here. Especially if you’re willing to go along with what’s in season. A couple of things come to mind: tomatoes. I’d rather preserve mine in the summer months than eat winter-grown tomatoes. And stonefruit if you are really into stonefruit.
Comment by jen maiser — September 1, 2007 @ 8:28 pm
Any idea how far they truck the food in from? I shop in Torrance, RPV and at a local Whole Foods; And probably will continue to pick up all my stuff at the farmers markets. But I wonder where the farms are?
Comment by Sreud ian Flip — September 4, 2007 @ 12:18 am
Good luck jen! You’re right — Tomatoes are essential for wintertime pasta dishes — which makes me think maybe basil is worth freezing too?
Sreud ian Flip — All the booths I buy at from my farmers’ market are from within Cali, which is good enough for me. Tutti Frutti farms, for ex, is near San Diego. Some come from farther north, but that’s still helluva lot better than, you know, other continents. At least in Santa Monica, many farmers’ll even have the location of their farm on their lil booth banners as a point of pride, so if you’re really trying to be strict about miles, you’ll find many farmers’re happy to brag ’bout how close they are.
Of course, I did have one goat cheese dude say he’s not local — and upon further questioning found out his farm’sRedwood Hill in Sonoma County — so it’s possible you’ll find the farmers have a stricter definition of local than you do :)
Comment by Siel — September 4, 2007 @ 12:28 am