Homegrown Happy Valley

As a child, I was a big fan of the Strawberry Shortcake doll. I would dream up different ways to serve strawberries to my Barbies and G.I. Joes with my Berry Bake Shoppe. Now that the first berry of the summer has arrived, I’m once again dreaming of strawberry concoctions. Fortunately my recipes have matured a bit.

Week Two marks the beginning of strawberry season. How will you use strawberries, and how are you doing on your personal Eat Local Challenge? Leave a reply and let us know (you can now opt to be e-mailed with follow up comments!)

Each Monday during the Eat Local Challenge we’ll post “7 Days of Local Eating.” This is a compilation of what the three of us at Homegrown Happy Valley do with the food that’s available at the farmer’s markets and in our CSA boxes each week (Katie and I belong to Village Acres CSA; Michele belongs to Tait Farm.) We’ll try to note the source of the food where possible, but since we sometimes lose track, we’ll denote those food items as simply “local.” We’ll also include a tip or special note for each week (and we’d love to hear from you in the “Leave a Reply” box below for your own tips and recipes!)

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).

Spring cleaning? If you’re a parent that probably means boxing up those fleece, footy pajamas and picking up some cotton bedtime threads for your kids. Here’s a chance to turn a routine purging exercise into a community deed times two.

Step one: Buy a pair of the PJs pictured below, which  are either locally made or sold at a locally-owned shop. Sorry kid, no, Spider Man or Tinker Bell here, but your mom will be much happier looking at something else for a change.

Asparagus is filling up baskets, spring onions are popping, and strawberries and rhubarb are on their way. (I can taste the rhubarb crisp already.) To celebrate the most delicious time of the year, Homegrown Happy Valley will be kicking off its inaugural Eat Local Challenge on Friday, May 29.

Coinciding with the first State College Farmer’s Market of 2009, the Eat Local Challenge hopes to inspire you to eat locally this season.

The days I’m reminded why I love State College usually start with my son and I riding our bike to school and work. We have been commuting by bike during the warmer months for a few years now and graduated from trailer to trail-a-bike. We might start out the morning frenzied, searching for socks and running late, but by the time we get to his school, we are (usually) cool, calm, and collected. On our way, we’ve listened to the birds chirping, waved to the garbage truck, and spelled out and counted the political lawn signs.

To help kick off Bike to Work Week, which runs tomorrow through May 8th, we asked Jordyn Drayton, co-owner of Freeze Thaw Cycles, a sponsor of the event, how to turn yourself into a greener commuter.

What’s the unexpected upside to biking to work?

Freeze Thaw Cycles is one of the sponsors of Bike to Work Week.

People feel that it has the same effect as your cup of coffee in the morning. It wakes you up, so you’re ready to go and alert.

What about the sweat factor?

Every morning when my kids eat breakfast, we watch an amazing show outside our window. Squirrels fly from tree limbs, flowers sway in the breeze, and birds dart back and forth, working harder than a employee on an assembly line. It’s more interesting than anything I’ve seen on TV and I don’t have to fight Comcast to watch it.

Earth and all it encompasses is free. Hopefully, we celebrate it every day, whether by watching the show out our window or appreciating our surroundings on a walk to work, but today we observe it as a holiday.