Homegrown Happy Valley’s first annual Eat Local Challenge
Get your canvas bags ready: it’s time to kick off Homegrown Happy Valley’s first annual Eat Local Challenge! Beginning with the opening of our summer farmer’s markets and concluding at the end of Labor Day weekend, we hope to inspire you to eat locally this season.
What is local? Local is usually a 150-mile distance from where you live, but you can define it as an area near you (such as your county or state).
Why eat local? There are many reasons, but a CliffsNotes version includes supporting the local farmers/community, eating fresher and more flavorful food, and helping the environment by reducing the need for food to travel by air, train, and cross-country trucks. Check out Katie’s post “What the heck is a locavore, anyway?” for more information on becoming a local eater.
Many different communities across the country sponsor “eat local” challenges. Some challenge people to eat food grown or produced within a 100-mile radius for one week (minus things like chocolate, coffee, and spices). Others challenge people to eat at non-chain restaurants for a month or an entire season.
What is our challenge? We’re leaving that in your hands. You get to choose your own personal local food goal. Here are a few examples, but remember, it’s up to YOU!
- Purchase items from a local farmers market once a week
- Prepare a monthly meal with predominantly local ingredients
- Purchase only local milk
- Eat only locally grown vegetables and fruits
- Join a CSA
- Drink only locally brewed beer
- Eat local strawberries and blueberries. That means buying them only when they’re in season. Once they’re gone, you’re finished!
- Eat only local meat
- Spend 10% of your grocery budget on local food
- Eat one unfamiliar vegetable a week from the farmer’s market
- Eat one or two meals monthly at a locally owned restaurant
It doesn’t matter how big or small the goal, it’s your challenge. And it’s never too late to “join;” you can eat local for the summer, month, week, or a day!
How can you get involved? Besides adding your personal goal in the “Leave a Reply” box below, there are other ways to get involved in Homegrown Happy Valley’s Eat Local Challenge:
- Upload some local food pictures to our flickr site
- Share recipes on our Facebook page
- Share thoughts and experiences about eating local on your own blog and link back to ours
- Comment about your own use of local food on our Eat Local Challenge blog posts
Think of Homegrown Happy Valley as your local food coach this summer. We’ll suggest recipes that incorporate items at the farmer’s market and your CSA box, spotlight restaurants using local food, and entice you with pictures of food items of the week.
Now it’s your turn to tell us how you want to challenge yourself to eat local. If you’re ready to commit to Homegrown Happy Valley’s inaugural Eat Local Challenge, leave a reply in the box below, go to the market of your choice, and get started!
Eat Local Challenge logo used with permission from www.eatlocalchallenge.com.
This entry was posted on Friday, May 29th, 2009 at 6:07 am and is filed under Eat Local Challenge, Events, Farm, Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
May 29th, 2009 at 7:25 am
My goal is to purchase only local meat, eggs, fruits, and vegetables through our CSA and local farmer’s markets (avocados and bananas are my exceptions from time to time!) I hope to either make my own or purchase local yogurt and bread as well. This will be my third summer challenging myself in this way, and it’s really not as difficult as it might seem. I have found it to be an exciting way to plan meals because seasonal vegetables and fruits are available for a short time in our area. We stuff ourselves with asparagus…and then by the time we are “tired” of it, it’s time to move onto something else that comes into season, and so on.
Good luck everyone…and have fun with your challenges!
May 29th, 2009 at 11:38 am
My goal is local meat, eggs, yogurt, and veggies through our Tait CSA and the farmer’s market. Tonight my Homegrown friends are teaching me how to roast a chicken so I can start buying the local birds. Look for a video of Operation Chicken Roast soon!
Since my 4-year-old son’s veggie and fruit consumption consists of just apples, apple sauce, sweet potato “fries,” and bananas, I’ll have to make some exceptions. And now that I’ve discovered that my 1-year-old loves strawberries, I must confess that I started buying ones from Cali. Looking forward to that local strawberry harvest soon! Anyone know where i can get full fat yogurt for my daughter?
May 29th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
My goal for this summer is to use every last leaf of lettuce, speck of radish, juicy tomato and purple rootball of what I’ve come to learn is kohlrabi from my farmshare. I’m also going to challenge myself to learn to prepare local native fish and to finally stock up on the uber-fresh salmon steaks from the farmer’s market (I need a pass on the fact they’re from Alaska, but at least I can have a conversation in person with the guy who actually caught them!)
May 29th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
My goal is to use local dairy, eggs, produce, meat and bread to feed my family this summer. Whether it comes from my CSA box, one of our fabulous local farmers markets, or my own backyard, I’ll try and keep it local. But like many other mommies out there I will have to buy bananas and some non-fruit or -veggie snacks for my daughter (can’t always reason with a hungry two-year-old) at the grocery store, but I hope those purchases will be limited.
One last thing …if anyone out there has a recipe for fruit snacks, or crispy cheese crackers (something akin to Cheez-Its) please pass it along. Anything I can make here at home with fresh ingredients is another one of my goals.
May 29th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Katie, there’s a very easy recipe for crackers in Mark Bittman’s cookbook, How to Cook Everything. If you don’t have access to it, let me know and I’ll send it to you. I haven’t made them with cheese yet but plan to.
May 29th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
For awesome local yogurt, check out Spring Bank Acres Farm stand at the weekly downtown market in State College. Raymond makes awesome raw dairy products, including some incredible flavored yogurt!
May 29th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
Thanks Cori! I love to read Mark Bittman, but I don’t own one of his cookbooks … yet. I’ll try to see if I can find it online if not I’ll let you know.
May 29th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
I plan to grow what I can this year, and until I get my own garden stash going, I am shopping at the local farmer’s markets as much as possible. And buying local meat and dairy–one of the perks of living in Central PA. I am also trying to find new ways to prepare what is in season–to prevent veggie burnout. Two things I learned already, sauteed radishes are great, as are turnip oven fries!
May 31st, 2009 at 7:37 am
Moving to State College has given us the opportunity to get most of what we eat—meat, dairy, produce—locally. So for this challenge, I tried to think about what I buy at Wegmans that I could shift to a local source. I love to bake, and those supplies fill my cart each week. I’m not up to milling my own flour, but it did occur to me that I could stop buying sugar and adjust my recipes so I can use local honey. It’s kind of a trifecta in my book: it’s local, it’s cheaper, and it’s better for us. Anyone have any advice as I make the switch? My first batch of cookies were…ummm…dense:-)
June 1st, 2009 at 8:47 pm
Thinking tacos with local beef for later in the week. There must be a way to sneak in the spinach for my 4-year-old, right? Suggestions?
June 1st, 2009 at 9:34 pm
We must be thinking the same thing! We had taco and burritos made from local beef this evening and Ava ate a mixture of spinach and chard in her baby burrito. I sauteed fresh spinach and chard with some garlic infused olive oil and salt. I then added her favorites; cheese, black beans, and sour cream to the mixture and wrapped it in a tortilla. She told me it was “very tasty,” and didn’t seem to realize that anything was different.
June 2nd, 2009 at 7:42 am
My challenge is to not eat refined sugar but just things sweetened naturally or with local honey.
Thanks Beth and all for the inspiration!
June 2nd, 2009 at 2:51 pm
Well I made it through the first week of challenge and I think I may have pulled it off. I made kohlrabi with potatoes and peas (the recipe used the k-rab greens too). And I finished off my rhubarb stash by making rhubarb nut muffins and a rhubarb strawberry pie. I froze the muffins and pie for our vacation with family next week so I can share the splendor of happy valley with the extended family. Ready for my next load of Village Acres bounty!
June 3rd, 2009 at 5:00 pm
Meg - I just found this blurb online about subbing honey for sugar: http://www.gardenstew.com/about1284.html. Hope that helps! Let us know how your next batch of baked goods turns out!
Way to go Holly! Great idea to freeze desserts and goodies for vacation.
June 4th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
Because we also are veterans of Village Acres CSA we’ve done fairly well at eating locally, but we haven’t “challenged” ourselves beyond what comes pretty easily.
After talking with my husband we decided a good challenge for us would be to purchase only local meat and eggs. Again we have a good start on this with Blue Rooster, Village Acres and farmer’s markets, but darn those poor little sets of chicken thighs in those jumbo packs at the grocery store. They are just so cheap, it is so hard to resist. (must visualize sad, over-medicated, packed together chickens when at store). So that’s our challenge. No sad chickens. (or sad pork tenderloins - not as cheap but oh so easy).
Now if only there were some way to stop my husband from “forgetting” when he goes shopping.
June 5th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Homegrown Happy Valley » Blog Archive » Will Work for Fresh Produce says:[...] part of Homegrown Happy Valley’s Eat Local Challenge, I will be chronicling my experience working on a local farm in exchange for fresh produce. I [...]