Rachel's Locavore Blog

It all began, May 10, 2008, when I went to Kris and Joe's Locavore meeting. It's about eating locally grown and produced food for one year. Here are the rules:

• Everything you eat must come from within a 100 mile radius (as the crow flies)
• You can have three exceptions, and your exceptions can change.
• You can have two meals per month where you can eat whatever you want.
• The experiment starts January 1st, 2009 and goes for one year.

That's it. As long as it's from this area, you can eat it!

It was a very exciting meeting. Some folks raised there hand that they want to sign up. I need to think about this. I already gave up meat and dairy, don't eat frozen food, AND I'm trying an experiment with a non-electric refrigerator called a pot-in-pot that limits how long I can store left-overs because it isn't that cold.

May 17, 2008

Hey! I just thought of a problem. If I want to get a few chickens, where am I going to get their grain?

May 16, 2008

You know - I made a fuss about people driving thither and yon to get each item of local food. We need a central place to purchase things so we don't pollute. But I was thinking - that's a dang good way at first to get intimate with how and where food is produced.

May 13, 2008

I'm realizing that a really important part of this is that there is no local food processing. How am I'm going to chair an organization and make a living? Do I have to make my own bread, pasta, peanut-butter, catsup, mayonnaise? Or should I just live off of things in the raw?

What we need are some cottage industries around here making condiments, tofu, the basics. Possibly families could work together on this - especially if our three exceptions are the same.

May 12, 2008

Right away I'm walking around with a note-pad trying to list what I can eat, what I can't eat, what I hope I can find, and what will be my three exception items. People - they're serious! They include things like salt and cinnamon as an item.
Here are things I'm toying with for my three exceptions:

wheat
tofu
margarine
leavening (like baking powder)
oats
rice
pea-nuts/peanut butter

May 11, 2008

I was thinking this morning - what if we NEED to do this due to some problem like expensive gas, or some break down. Let's not mess around. We need to start getting this system set up. With 100 other people helping, I'm not going to starve. I called Kris and Joe and signed up.