Let's rewind. Three summers ago, I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and Omnivore's Dilemma and they truly changed the way I ate. Rather quickly, I stopped buying processed 'diet' foods and started buying whole foods. Local and organic? Even better!
That summer, I made my first solo trip to the farmer's market and with one bite of a local Texas Cannonball watermelon, I was sold. Local food tastes better. It supports the local economy. It decreases dependance on fossil fuel. I could honestly write a thesis on this, but I won't (hmmm can I somehow relate this to my nursing education thesis? Just kidding... maybe.)
Those two books opened my eyes to the rather freeing idea that food could be friend and not foe. The following summer, I finally read In Defense of Food which was almost a synthesis of Pollan's previous book and the logic behind Kingsolver's autobiographical novel. Since then, Ross and I have gone to countless farmer's markets and joined 2 different CSAs.
This summer, I still wanted to try to go just one week without depending on the grocery store. I figured spices and tea have been traded for centuries, so we would keep those. But we could otherwise live on all things local for a week! Ross hesitantly agreed that it would be a fun challenge. We're one day in and it has been fantastically stressful. I mean, our lives are already fantastically stressful right now, so I'm not sure why I decided to throw a wrench in and change everything about our eating habits for a week. Because that's never stressful.
Actually, I know why I threw it in the mix. It's because I honestly didn't think it would be that different. I already buy and consume a boatload of farmer's market produce each week. A few tweaks here and there, and it won't be too different. I conveniently forgot that I'm gluten intolerant. I would love to get a loaf of bread from a local bakery or, better yet, buy a bag of locally grown and ground flour from Badseed and make my own bread for the week. And pancakes for breakfast. And muffins for snacks! This challenge wouldn't be difficult at all. Those recipes all just need some combination of flour, eggs, butter, and honey, all of which can be found from local sources.
With gluten out, I decided to adapt my favorite cornbread recipe and indeed, I made a decent cornbread muffin with all local ingredients. Success! But I ate one and got a stomachache. I figured it was a fluke and tried it again the next day: stomachache. Ross was totally fine, so I figured the culprit was the local milk (I normally use coconut milk with this recipe). I guess I can no longer stomach dairy even in baked goods. And when you eliminate the local milk, yogurt, and cheese that's available, you basically have a lot of meat and veggies left. Which is fine. Great, actually. I feel best when I eat lots of veggies and protein. But OMG.we.are.so.busy. I'm used to bringing weird lunches to work, but this is a less traditional work week and I didn't want to cart around 5 tupperwares of finicky food to my STABLE class or to my new clinical site with its unfamiliar routines and break rooms.
All that babbling to say, I stand corrected. Eating locally is harder than it looks. We actually did spend a little less on groceries this week, but it's going to take A LOT more time to prepare all this food. Historically, leaving the farm and working away from home certainly fueled the move toward convenience foods and now, more than ever, I understand why. While I don't eat many 'convenience' foods like Hot Pockets (but yum) and Hostess cupcakes, I have underestimated the convenience of oatmeal and bananas for breakfast, nut butter on a spoon for a quick snack, and (gluten-free) pasta for an easy dinner on a busy night.
It's been humbling to realize I rely more on 'the system' than I originally thought. Nonetheless, I remain more committed than ever to supporting local farmers who still want to make fresh food available and accessible in this economy.
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