I love food. I think about it often. But it seems to be the only thing on my mind since I started the local food challenge on Saturday morning.
My 100-mile diet got off to a great start with an amazing breakfast being sold at the Local Food Challenge booth. It consisted of delicious beet and carrot pancakes courtesy of the New Farm interns, served with a garlic, dill, and yogurt sauce. There were also more traditional buttermilk blueberry pancakes and whole spelt pancakes. The breakfast sausages were from Stayner Meat Packers (I took note for next time I need to get meat.)
I can’t say I have been eating poorly since then – the quality is great — but my creativity with using what’s available and my excitement is dwindling. I really am used to eating what I want, when I want it.
I used to think cooking for one was hard. Try cooking all-local for one.
Also, snacks are difficult – the only thing I can think of is fruit, salad, or a pepperoni stick, which I have been going through like madwoman.
“I’m just going to make a quick salad,” was my most-used phrase over the long weekend. They are fantastic salads, don’t get me wrong; mixed greens, mustard greens, and kale from the New Farm, topped with dill goats cheese, and yellow plums, or beautiful multi-coloured carrots. But the sheer amount of salad I have been eating is borderline ridiculous.
The thing is, I haven’t had any bread or pasta. Some of the quickest meals you can make involve those items. I could make my own bread, but I don’t even have the time to figure out where to get flour from. That will be this week’s goal: eat some bread.
I have discovered: Georgian Hills winery has some nice wines; Creemore Springs does not grow on site, but I have been drinking it anyway. Close enough? I am a caffeine-addict – I feel like I might actually die without coffee, so I have been doing the next best thing and having ethically-produced, fairly-traded, locally roasted coffee. The cheese I have had is some of the best in my life.
I tried going out for dinner while my family was here on the weekend. I was irritating even myself. Although the restaurant sourced its meat and seasonal vegetables locally, imported vegetables were mixed in with the medley, the potatoes were from P.E.I., Plus, I could not have any seasoning on my steak. So really, I had a ball of steak for dinner, which warranted another quick salad when I got home.
I have been eating a lot of raw vegetables; roasting a lot of potatoes and beets; frying sausages and eggs; using a lot of dill, basil, oregano, onion, and garlic for flavouring; and covering most things in cheese. I replaced the contents of the pepper grinder with coriander seeds, which is a good alternative and instead of replacing olive oil with canola of flax, I have been consuming an awful lot of butter.
Honesty, I’m not sure if I can afford to do this for a full two weeks, but I haven’t given up yet.
100 miles from the E-B 
Sounds like you’re doing great. I managed to find a local grainery who solds gazillions of things and packaged it all as “Atlantic Produced”….quinoa, flax seeds, you name it. Of course, almost all of it was being imported and ground in their eqiupment and repackaged, so only about three grains were local (oats, a whole wheat and an all purpose style flour), but good enough. We bought those in bulk to save money. My husband bought a cheap pasta maker from the mall and now makes his own pasta and has many recipes for really quick bread (we included the yeast as one of our freebie items).
It is hard to be creative with limited ingredients, but it also encourages a whole new range of creativity as you really can’t follow recipes. I’ve got some recipes broken up by ingredients on my blog, if you need some ideas (www.100milelocavores.blogspot.com). I used lots of dried beans, pasta, soups, breads, cheese, eggs, honey, maple syrup, etc.