Eat locally, think yummy

My librarian skilz failed me. There is a great great great article in this month's Gourmet, Bill McKibben writing about eating food only from his watershed for an entire year. The man lives in Vermont. Not some pansy southern Cal location. Vermont. It is well written and definitely inspiring. I wanted to find an electronic link so you could be inspired, too, but I can't. So you could go to your local library and read it, or something equally lame. It is worth it, and you might discover some other fun things about your local library. Like that they have a million cookbooks you can check out for free. Probably a real librarian could've found the electronic link. I'm only a fake librarian.

On the heels of that inspiring article, I read about the Eat Local Challenge going on for the month of August. For those of us not organized enough for a year of watershed eating, draw a 100 mile radius around yourself, and do the best you can for a month. And August has got to be the easiest month, especially for us New Englanders.

I am definitely inspired to try to do my best this year. I always do, but I'll throw a little more thought into the few mass produced products I buy, such as the bread from my local bakery - just where is that wheat coming from, Ollie? And eating out is going to take a hit (not an entirely bad thing).

I'm up for a more concerted, organized, seacoast-wide sort of thing next year. Get the local food writers on board, the farmer's market association, maybe some chefs will do some special dinners (we have those kind of enthusiastic chefs around here and that's half the fun of their food), get some nice fun maps made up and start researching all that is local.

So to sum up this rambling unfocused post - I am taking the Eat Local Challenge this August, and I hope you consider some level of involvement, too. Maybe by next August we can get as organized as the Locavores of San Francisco and really have a grand old time. Make it a national local thing. Or something.

ps. I didn't really talk about why all this is important. So look here if you need a clue.