The Challenge has begun!

Day 1 for us.
Got off to a rocky start this morning when I read Vicki’s email update that contained a thread from FB on this project…I had thought I could at least go there and read other people’s conversations – but apparently not. (I’m not on FB). This made me realize how important it is to me to be in connection with other people when doing a challenging project like this.

That’s good though too…..to recognize how important connecting with other like minded people is.

Anyway….we’ll continue on with the project and comment here.
Yesterday I spent time preparing for our 10 days. I put away some perishable items that we won’t be eating….some things went into the freezer.

I’ve dehydrating some herbs from the garden and will grind some. I’ve never used homegrown coriander so that will be fun to use. And homegrown rosemary. Dried and fresh ground.

Today we’re having chicken soup with fresh herbs and coconut milk and lemon juice (two of our exotics). Also local potatoes fried in lard and seasoned with rosemary. I tried to make a gelatin with our raspberries, black currants and elderberries but it didn’t set up. I’ve never made gelatin with these fruits so maybe they were too acidic to let it set – not sure.

I also made a bread with almond flour (an exotic) and lots of eggs. It’s dense and lovely. Kind of reminiscent of pound cake texture-wise, but not as sweet. A snack of apples from our yard, and local hazel nuts pre-soaked with salted water and then baked.

Good luck to everyone on their food journey!

I will start on October 8th too!

I’m also not a FB user and appreciate the blog. I began my 10-day challenge yesterday and was surprised by what my Austin grocery store defines as “local”. Many of the foods labeled as such were actually from over 500 miles away, so I’m glad to have a midweek farmer’s market close to home. I made a few substitutions to my list of exotics. I’ve already made a rockin’ stew and discovered a delicious red wine from nearby Driftwood, Tx. May all of you meet your challenges and enjoy health and happiness along the way!

Since we are not on Facebook we will use this space to share about our 10 day challenge experience.

Vicki asks: …”use this space to share your stories. Where are you? When are you doing the challenge? If you are underway, what are you learning? Are you doing it solo or with your family or with a group?”

My husband and I live in Bellingham Washington, on the north edge of town. We have a small house on a 1/2 acre of land in a neighborhood with similar lots….older homes and large-ish yards. (many with gardens and chickens).

We are doing the challenge between Wednesday Oct. 8th through Friday the 17th. (so starting tomorrow!!!)

Our household is my husband and myself. I had wanted to post about this project on our Transition Whatcom Ning site but it is “down” right now – off line. If it gets back on line I would like to introduce this project through the ning site and write a blog about our experience there too. I know there are other people interested in this sort of project in our area. And we have various versions of Eat-local themes during September of each year for the last 10 or so years. There are different ideas of what it means to eat local…often it includes eating at local restaurants or buying locally produced foods even tho the ingredients aren’t grown locally. All of this is good…..eating local supports local businesses even if they don’t use all locally grown foods.

In 2005 (or so) we participated in an eat local event for 7 days. I started with the plan of using ONLY locally available foods (from wthin 100 miles). After 3 days I made exceptions for salt and olive oil. (I had thought I’d try with local kelp instead of salt and local hazel nut oil instead of other oils. But hazel nut oil is not a good oil for cooking at med heat or higher. And kelp, while salty, is not good tasting in many dishes.)

That 7 day experience was totally amazing on so many levels. We got first had experience – from our bodies – the necessity of certain basic ingredients like salt. Another eye opener was that virtually all packaged foods – even natural organic packaged foods – have most ingredients that are from far away. I already cook from scratch A LOT and buy locally grown foods A LOT, but doing that challenge really stretched me in good ways. I had to PLAN and cook a lot more. It did take more time and energy. But most big changes do.

My husband and I are in our 50’s and have some health issues for which we have been doing healing diet protocols to address. Like the 10 day challenge here, those diets also require eliminating a lot of foods and cooking whole foods from scratch. At first I didn’t think we could do the 10 day local eating challenge while also being on our special healing diets. But actually it has prepared us. For example, I am well acquainted with how to make substitutions when you can’t eat certain foods – what do you replace them with and still have a ‘balanced’ meal?. …Easy for me to do now.

When it comes down to it….this project requires us to do just that…..take a limited palette of foods and create yummy meals that provide us with the nourishment we need. As Vicki has pointed out, we, in our modern times have access to a HUGE range of foods all year, every day….This is very unusual in all the time of our human history. In the past and in most of the past we had a limited pallet of foods and the availability of foods changed with the seasons.

This ability to be flexible and change our foods with the seasons and the availability must be a deep memory. If that’s so then we can access that. And that can be fun!!!

So we are preparing for the challenge and learning a lot.

Thanks Vicki, for making this blog an option for participating.

We’re not on Facebook but plan to share our thoughts here on the blog.

We start our 10 days this Wednesday October 8th. Right now I’m researching food ingredients, sources and making our menus.
Angela and David