Day Seven

Last day of eating locally! Today I ate a moldy bagel for lunch. My parents told me mold can't hurt me and to just eat it so I did. This bagel was moldy because it had no preservatives (an apparent side affect of eating locally). It tasted normal, just a little fuzz growing in some areas. I also ate my usual fruit leather, strawberry applesauce and milk.

Today I had to work so I ate some dried cherries during my break and when I got home I ate a grilled cheese and summer sausage sandwich, salad, and root beer. We had ice cream later. It was a great meal I was able to throw together in minutes.

Tonight we watched King Corn, a documentary. It was another aspect of my project I hadn't considered yet. Two guys decided to grow one acre of corn in Iowa. They cared for the corn just as any farmer in Iowa would and followed the corn to where it ends up. It reiterated the issues small farmers face in America and it showed the effects of eating corn in almost every meal (corn-fed beef, corn syrup, etc.). It was interesting because they said that a farmer in Iowa used to be able to feed himself from his own crop. Nowadays, farmers barely ever eat their crops. The corn is basically inedible until it is processed. It makes sense that no one is able to eat locally if even farmers can't.

This film also opened my eyes to how farming has progressed in this century. They said how in the 1901 people would spend 30% of their income on food. Now people spend 16%. America wants cheap food, so corporations provide it. It also showed how hard people had to work in the early part of this century. With more time and more money you think Americans would be happier, but I don't know if we are. It was a good movie and I would recommend it to anyone interested in gaining a new perspective about farming and America's corn production.

The last thing I wanted to talk about in regard to eating locally. I honestly did not know at the beginning of this week if it would be possible for a Minnesotan to eat locally. I have decided it is definitely possible to eat locally all year round. It may take time, energy, and money, but if someone is willing to sacrifice it is possible.

This is a great blog to check out if you are interested in learning more about eating locally, http://www.eatlocalchallenge.com/ This blog was started in 2005, long before it became popular to eat locally. It includes great pictures and recipes. Check it out!

Day Six

Is it really day six already? This week has gone faster than I thought it would! Today was again a smooth day of eating locally grown food. As my dad said in an earlier comment it is very true that this diet takes practice and finally with five days under my belt the practice is paying off.

As I was walking out the door for school this morning I suddenly realized I had not made a lunch last night. Panic set in and I ran around the kitchen throwing anything in my lunch bag I could. Surprisingly, it did not take very long. I ended up with a sun-butter and jelly sandwich, yogurt with granola, strawberry applesauce, fruit leather, and chocolate milk. It only took me about five minutes to throw together.

We made a special dinner tonight. Homemade pasta! We used $9.50 worth of tomatoes, a pound of ground beef, fresh basil, and garlic (not local). Then we cooked local pasta. It was very different than pasta sauce out of a jar, but extremely good and very filling. My mom also commented on how little fat the meal had in it.

I think I was wrong about the unhealthy side of eating locally. While I am lacking in fruits and some vegetables, this diet is actually quite healthy. No longer are fatty, packaged foods available, and most of the time I don't crave snacks between meals. As we were talking about this last night, America's problem with obesity came up. If everyone were to eat locally grown food, I am positive that the U.S. would not have an issue with obesity.

I think eating locally is going to get more and more popular. By eating locally we keep our money circulating in small communities, we eat healthier food choices, we save the environment, and we eat better tasting food. This year Plymouth is starting its first farmer's market. This shows the desire we have as a community to eat locally. I am thrilled to visit Plymouth's farmer's market and thrilled that it will have its debut this summer.

Day Five

Today was a much better day. I started the day off right- with breakfast! I ate sun-butter on toast with honey. I think I eat less sugar when I am only eating locally grown; the sun-butter and honey tasted very sweet. It was good though and I had enough energy to last until lunch.

For lunch I ate a summer sausage, sprouts, cheese, and butter sandwich, yogurt with granola, Honest Tea, and fruit leather. This diet seems a little repeptitive, but I think if you were to stick with it for more than a week you would be able to buy more variety. Today I planned ahead for dinner and ate a burger and salad with milk. After work I had a root beer float! It was very exciting and very tasty.

I am finally fully comfortable eating locally. Yesterday was very discouraging, but I got over the worst part of the week and now I am sad to think I only have two more days! Today it seemed completely natural to eat only locally grown food.

I did not have any huge epiphanies about eating locally grown food today, simply that it is comfortable now, planning ahead makes for a much happier day, and eating locally grown food can be done.

Day Four

Today was a perfect example of how difficult eating locally can be. I began the day with no breakfast because there isn't a lot you can eat on the run. I always wake up late - definitely my fault, but still a factor in eating locally. Then I was attending a lunch during the day, but could not eat there because the food was not local. I packed a lunch last night and ate it in the car. It was a bagel, yogurt with granola, fruit leather, and chocolate milk. It was good, but a little messy to eat in the car.

Then I had to work. Most of the time I am good about planning what to eat, but if not, I normally just eat a frozen dinner or eat at Macy's. Unfortunately, I was running out of time between the lunch and heading to work. I needed to eat before work because I would not get off until 9pm. I reheated mashed potatoes and ate a yogurt. It was fine, but kind of a strange combination for dinner. After work I ate Minnesota Creamery ice cream.

For me, eating locally does not mean eating healthily (as you can see from my day... did I eat much besides starch?). It also does not mean eating organically. Eating only locally grown food has a different goal than both healthy and organic eating. Local saves the environment rather than your body. Healthy and organic save your body rather than the environment.

It has surprised me how unhealthy eating locally is at times. This week I have had close to no Vitamin C, I have had carbohydrates out of this world, and have had little balance in my diet. Eating locally forces you to plan ahead for your meals. This normally means healthy and better meals, but for me, I have found there isn't always enough time or energy to plan and cook every meal. It has not forced me to eat my fruit and vegetables; it has done quite the opposite.

I am feeling somewhat discouraged in my challenge to eat locally; somehow I don't have the drive it would take to eat locally all the time. I know if I were more passionate I would have more endurance and patience with this diet, but right now I'm feeling tired and hungry.

Day Three

The local food week is in full swing now. We are beginning to figure out how to make more filling and better tasting meals. Today was a great success.

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.

Day Two

Second day of eating locally! I did not eat anything for breakfast today because it is difficult to eat locally when you're on the go. For lunch I decided to make pancakes. Luckily we had Minnesota syrup on hand, otherwise we would have been eating our pancakes with honey. The pancakes had a different texture; when I was mixing them the batter seemed to froth. Locally grown food has a different texture. Turned out the pancakes were delicious and we ate locally manufactured strawberry applesauce to go with it.

I thought I did a really good job buying food at Seward's, but it already seems to be a little scarce. After work my mom and I decided to go to Lund's to hunt down some locally grown food. We found some more cheese and tomatoes, but they had nothing else in the produce section. The lady there told us we should have come three months ago or to try again in the summer. I have been told that numerous times. We tried to find local peanut butter, but no such luck. The best alternative was sun-butter, a sort of peanut butter made out of sunflower seeds. We were also very excited to find summer sausage for my lunch and wild rice sausages for dinner. We found pasties from Wisconsin and root beer! We also got, ice cream, egg, strawberry crisp, and yogurt.

For dinner we ate the pasties (a meat and potato filled pastry). My parents thought they were very funny by labeling our ketchup bottle as local. It got us talking about how difficult it would be to eat solely locally grown food.

I am confused on a few things. Firstly, I do not understand how packaged foods I bought at Seward's could be local. Do they grow all the ingredients locally or is it simply put together locally? Also, if something is manufactured somewhere, are all its ingredients from the same place? If you were not allowed to eat any packaged or frozen items while on a locally grown food diet, Minnesotans would need to be canning day and night all summer long. It would be very difficult to sustain this lifestyle without thorough planning.

This lifestyle is not for the short on cash. We have been very surprised to find that prices have been very high. My mom was shocked to find out that for $85.00 we only got that much meat. For $123.00 of groceries we could not have lasted a week. We racked up another $82.00 at Lund's (total minus plant, see receipt- click to enlarge). If you were not committed to this lifestyle it would be difficult to spend this much money on food.

It is also very difficult not having any fruit. We were discussing how people got their vitamin C in the olden days, but we still have not figured it out. It could have been that they stored apples and other fruit that can be grown in Minnesota. Or my mom said that potatoes do have a little vitamin C. I miss not having any fruit or juice. At least this half of the experiment is only for a week. I can't wait for Target week!

Day One

My family began eating locally today. I think we will lose weight on this locally grown diet. I was quite hungry all day.

I began the day at 8:30 driving to the farm with my dad. We ate local bread and jam with milk for breakfast. We traveled 43.8 miles to buy locally grown beef, lamb, and chicken. All their livestock was grass fed. We arrived around 9:30 and were greeted by the farmer and his son, Mike and Brandon. They took us to the barn and introduced us to all the sheep. They didn't have many sheep, but they were cute, though very shy. They had some lambs that had been born recently.

Mike and Brandon farm on six acres. Each had another day job and their farm was work on the side, though a full time job in itself. Next they brought us to their giant freezer. They brought out boxes of meat for us to choose from. We bought two chickens, two pounds of ground beef, three steaks, a rack of lamb, and lamb for stew. It cost us $85.00 and they threw in three bacon burgers. It was very expensive meat, but we felt like we were also paying for the time they spent talking to us. Other people would not be paying to get a tour and I am beginning to realize eating locally is very expensive.

Next they took us to see the cattle. They were stored at Mike's father's farm, a 40-acre lot. We met Swissy, the milk cow, who they had pulled from the herd because she was being bullied. It was nice to see a farmer who was able to tell when a cow was being bullied or getting too skinny. Swissy let us pet her and seemed very docile for a cow. We also got to see the bull. He was huge and we didn't get close to him. We asked a few more questions and it was obvious the farmers were passionate about their work.

My dad and I took away two main ideas from this visit. First we learned how difficult it is for small scale farmers to make a living. With limited markets, materials, and animals, these farmers have to work extremely hard to break even. Secondly, we found out that eating locally can be quite expensive. While we knew full well that Mike and Brandon worked hard for these animals and deserved the price they marked, it was difficult knowing we could buy the same product for much less at the grocery store. For instance, we bought a free-range, grass fed, chicken for $14.00; at Lund's you can buy a much plumper chicken for $4.50.

For lunch I ate a bagel and cream cheese. It was surprisingly delicious. I also ate some dried cherries. My whole family has commented on the difference of the spread. Our butter and cream cheese from the normal grocery store is very smooth and easy to put on. These spreads are very tough, as if lacking oil.

For dinner we cooked a chicken (we put on seasoning that was not local...). It took over an hour to cook. We also cooked a giant beet, four potatoes, and some peas. It was a good meal, but the chicken had very little meat on it! It had very fit little legs and about a third of a normal chicken's breast meat. The skin on the chicken was very tough. I would not say it was the most enjoyable meal as it took a very long time to cook and was not the tastiest.

At ten o'clock I was starved. My boyfriend and I were planning to go to Perkins, but then I realized that Perkins is not local. It was kind of sad having to go home to eat. It made me realize how making a decision about the way you eat not only affects you, but also the people around you. I went home and had a peach yogurt.