Today I took my lunch to school. It was the first time in a while I skipped out on the hot lunch served at my school. I ate a sandwich made with white bread, summer sausage, cheese, and lettuce. I had a side of strawberry applesauce and fruit leather and drank local milk that I brought form home. I was a quick and easy lunch that kept me full until dinnertime.
We had great success cooking another chicken tonight! This chicken was much fatter than the last. We were not gnawing on the bones- meat was coming off in chunk! It was great. We cooked it in the crock-pot all day versus baking it for an hour and a half like our last. Onions were put in the bottom of the crock-pot and stuffed in the chicken. My mom put butter under and over the skin and added salt and pepper. It made the chicken soft and moist. We also made mashed potatoes from Minnesota. My dad especially thought these were good, commenting that they were the best he had eaten in a long time.
I feel more satisfied today than I have the entire week. We are learning to eat bigger meals, as there isn't any real snacking during the day. It is also nice to have some of the food we got from Lund's.
My mom talked to a friend who works at a co-op today. She told my mom that it is considered impressive when a person's diet is 75% local. I thought this was interesting. It seemed at first comforting that it needs to be only 3/4ths local, but on second thought that seems rather high. I have had a lot of difficulty finding the local food, not to mention driving over twenty minutes to find it (an hour both ways for meat). It seems somewhat ironic that a person must drive pretty far
away to buy locally grown food.
Nicole -
ReplyDeleteI wonder how much of the challenge of eating local is simply in learning how to do it. Already after just a couple of days you're better at it than you were at first. With most 'skills' you can't just begin to do something and they happen automatically. You have to practice and practice and practice. And, that is a bit of what you are learning here.
I thought your point excellent about the irony that in trying to eat locally grown food that you are having to drive all over the place. Somehow that just doesn't seem right.
All in all, though, I'm learning a lot from your experiment and enjoying your report and findings.
Nicole,
ReplyDeleteGood point about the driving. In Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Polan also talks about the inherent trade-off in eating locally--ie., you have to use fossil fuels to avoid using fossil fuels..
Luke