Locavore Challenge

The locavore challenged ran September 8-22, 2010.  The goal was to only buy and eat local.  I Failed.  No I didn’t just fail, I failed horribly, not an epic fail, but a pretty bad fail.

Okay, eating local is hard in the Midwest.  Eating local and not going to Green City Market is near to impossible. 

While I wasn’t successful with the challenge I do have a much great sense of where my food comes from.

For dairy, there was only one company I found that was from Wisconsin.  Organic Valley.  I was kind of perplexed because I thought most diary sold in the grocery stores was from Wisconsin.  I guess not.  And this makes me think that Wisconsin needs to re-evaluate their license plates claiming they are the diary state.

I found ZERO local yogurt producers at the grocery stores.  Kefir was the closest I came.  Lifeway is based out of Skokie, IL and claims to use local producers when possible.  I originally bought mango Kefir but changed to blueberry because mangos are not very local (which was okay with me because I like the blueberry better in Kefir but not in the Lassi).

Moving past diary to vegetables and fruits.  Around 99% of our fruits and vegetables are from California.  I ate a lot of the things that came from our garden and bought from the garden stand.  I also found watermelons from Illinois (jackpot..winner winner chicken dinner!) at whole foods.   But things like strawberries and melons and potatoes are not local.  Nor was lettuce, cucumbers, carrots, celery, green beans….like I said 99% of our vegetables come from California.

Meat.  I found buying meat the easiest.  Whole Foods meat in Illinois comes from farms in Indiana or Michigan.  Well unless you want a lamb chop.  Then they come from half way around the world, New Zealand.

I didn’t buy any canned goods or packaged goods other than bread that I bought from the bakery.  I discovered a pasta maker in Madison, Wisconsin who makes fantastic fresh pasta that cooks to a perfect al dente.

Coffee.  Have you seen Juan Valdez roaming the streets of Chicago?   I did buy from a local coffee roaster instead of my usual brands (Hills Brothers Whole Bean or Allegro).

I do think if I was a part of CSA or went to the larger farmers market it would have been easier.  Variety is extremely limited in the grocery stores.   It wasn’t anymore expensive to eat local.  I tried new things.  But I missed avocados, lemons, limes, and yogurt.

The challenge was really eye opening.