Sweetpea Bicycles

What a great day for local eating! While the beginning of the day saw its smattering of local foods – Washington apple, Nancy’s yogurt, Oregon-produced trail mix – but the real treat was having dinner at the home of our friends John and Elly. John is a chef, so dinner was elaborate and beautiful and simple all at once. While he was preparing squab ravioli and crème brule was getting stirred on the stove, I was handed a few Rainbow Trout. The kind that still have heads and tails. It had been a while, but I got in there and washed up those fish, went out back into the garden and grabbed some very local tomatoes and rosemary.

Even though Austin and I have a community garden plot, it is so far away from our apartment – and up a hill – that we don’t bike out there as much as we would like. We don’t have the kind of kitchen-garden relationship that makes it possible to leave something on the stove while you rush out back to grab a last minute ingredient. I have some cilantro and basil on the porch, but that’s it.

I have recently read of ways to grow vegetables indoors. Nothing terribly tropical, mind you, but the thought of having year round local spinach, kale, lettuce and herbs in my living room is pretty awesome. I hereby commit to getting on that project.

As for meeting our Challenge requirements, we came out as champs yesterday. We didn’t buy food until we headed over to the dinner party, when we stopped by Wild Oats to grab some Alden’s vanilla ice cream from Eugene and some Oregon blackberries and blueberries. 100% local purchases!

The new produce was maitake mushrooms. Very tasty.