The Eat Local Challenge
After hearing about it at the Salmon Nation Block Party last weekend, Austin and I decided to do the Ecotrust Eat Local Challenge. After looking at the challenge targets: one week of spending ten percent of food money on local foods, trying one new fruit or vegetable a day, and trying our hand at the preservation of one local in-season product, we figured we were up for the challenge.
The part that I am most intrigued by is the new veggie/fruit a day. I remember one winter with my dad, who was living in Russia but was back in the States for a visit. He was awed by everything that was available in grocery stores in America compared to the limited selection available in Russia. He decided that he would not go into a grocery store without buying at least one thing that he had never tried before. That was the trip when I had my first and only pork rind. Fruits and veggies are conservative, and quite do-able in comparison.
Day One:
I woke up this morning and felt in my bones that it was the end of the tomato season. Maybe I feel this stuff a bit prematurely (lots of broken bones that claim expertise in matters meteorological), but I have been waiting for this moment.
The day when I figured I could get a smoking deal on some end-of-season tomatoes for making and freezing pizza sauce. We did this last fall and had amazing pizza until early spring. The motivation was right, clearly, for kicking off the Ramsland family’s Eat Local Challenge week.
Our first food purchase – coffee. Stumptown Coffee, to be specific. With a name like Stumptown can we consider it local even though the beans were from Ethiopia?
We took a special trip to the Farmer’s Market at Portland State University to hunt down the finest local tomato deal we could. As we scouted out our tomatoes we found some local goat cheese, broccoli, cauliflower, a variegated zucchini and a vegetable that I have never really met before: the kohlrabi. I had to ask which part of this bulbous, leafy thing was the edible part. This will be a challenge to take on later in the week.
We left the Farmer’s Market with nine pounds of tomatoes – a steal at ninety-five cents a pound.
Today’s new vegetable is one that we have eaten, just never really purchased and prepared. I chose some local organic Rainbow Kale to put on our pizza. This in place of the usual spinach, which is apparently having a bit of an e-coli problem just now, so it is the perfect time to try something different.
