Sunday, September 7, 2008

The home stretch

So we're down to the last week.

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm losing a little bit of steam on my local challenge.  I'm not necessarily eating less locally, but I'm just not blogging about it as much because I'm not thinking about it as much.  

 I really had no clue that I'd be able to eat so local for so long without feeling deprived.  When we started this back in June I thought I'd fall way off the wagon by the time the official local challenge started.  And I've certainly not eaten 80% local the entire 3 months, but it's been pretty close.  And all in all, it's not as hard as I thought it would be.  I mean, sure, I miss avocados and bananas.  But I'll  eat all the apples and raspberries I can while they're local.

I think I'm worried that if the challenge is not in the forefront of my mind (like it was for the first few months) then I won't stick with it.  It's sort of like when I first became a vegetarian back in 6th grade and used to have nightmares about eating hamburgers because I my dream I'd forget that I was a vegetarian.  But just like I rarely think about not eating meat now, I'm thinking less and less about eating local...even while I do it.  

Like today I barely cooked anything.  I grabbed a few berries from the backyard this morning before heading off to meet some friends.  I had leftover roasted baby red potatoes (from WI) with homemade hummus (MN chickpeas) for lunch.  Then I snacked on some homemade salsa and chips in the middles of the day and stopped at the Wedge while in Minneapolis for my dinner (Their deli's collard greens are awesome!).  Not too shabby.  

So I think local might be a long-term partner of mine now.  We've passed the lusty obsessive phase and have seen each other with ratty hair and morning breath...and we're still together.  

2 comments:

nano said...

Yeah, time does fly, huh?

Nice ending analogy, by the way!

Tatertotlovers said...

The Eat Local Challenge ended slowly and quietly for me. By August I started to pay less diligent attention to the percentage of local products I was eating, and I wasn't making conscious decision to plan for new local treats. Gotta say though, I took stock of my meals over the last week or so and I think I'm unconsciously hitting approximately 50% local still- and that's pretty good. If you think of all the changes we made to our store, product selection, shopping materials, customer recommendations, etc, it's actually quite amazing.