Guess who forgot to prepare for her challenge

I just realized that MY 10-Day Local Food Challenge – not just THE Challenge – is coming right up. I’ve spent so much time beating the LFC drums I forgot to look in my own cupboard. Just 3 more weeks. What will I eat for dinner – breakfast and lunch – October 1-10? Ever since my 30-day 10-mile diet in 2010, local provisioning is second nature. But third nature is a lot of other foods – cookies, nuts, bottled sauces and spreads and meals and on and on.

To check my preparedness I don’t think about recipes or menu plans. I think about basic groups:

Sweets: apples, dried apples, apple butter, blackberry jam, honey

Grains: Sundance Bakery bread using grains from Whidbey, kamut as a pilaf grain

Oil: hazelnut oil from Holmquists in Lynden WA. Gotta order. Can I get butter from Vicky Brown again? Gotta check.

Greens: Kale and chard from garden, head lettuce from Suncrest hydroponics on Bayview Road or from many farmer friends.

Roots: Potatoes from garden, plenty of beets and turnips

Squash: delicata from garden, other squash from local farmers

Beans: Still have lots of Rockwell beans from Georgie Smith plus green beans from my garden and farmers

Salt: I live by the sea. There must be salt

Dairy: have that covered, and this week’s delivery will turn into cheese if i am lucky

Tomatoes: have lots. sauce and slicing. and ketchup from a prior year. And will surely have plenty of green tomato chutney

Veggies: need to stock up on onions, cabbage, green beans, carrots etc at the Market this week!

Meat: have plenty of local beef in the freezer. Need to buy a local chicken.

Eggs: Skymeadow or some of the egg-stand eggs if i can find them.

Sauces: have ketchup. Have lots of zucchini relish (oops, made with white vinegar and sugar and spices – guess those are among my exotics now).

Herbs: oregano, basic, parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, lemon balm

Given this, my 10 exotics will be:

1. Vinegar
2. Sugar (just because of the zuke relish, otherwise I would not need it)
3. Citrus (probably lemons, but might substitute grapefruit)
4. Spices: I count these 5 essentials as one exotic-fennel, cumin, coriander, pepper, turmeric
5. Tamari
6. Coffee
7. Almonds

and… glory be I have 3 more … let’s see…. chocolate? avocados? nachos with lots of cheese, picadillo and hot sauce? wait, i think that last one doesn’t count as one exotic.

What am i missing?

Oh, friends! I’m going to find some friends to do it with me.

What about you? how are you preparing? Who will you do it with?