Inspired to take steps to buy local and shift your eating habits to incorporate items grown and produced closer to home?
Here’s a short list of ways you can explore your local foodshed and ease into eating a locally inspired diet at your own pace!
Feel free to complete all 14 action steps or pick and choose which ones you’d like to explore first. It doesn’t matter how many you complete or if you do them in order, as long as you’re taking a few steps toward a more local diet and having a bit of fun with it all!
- Replace Something Familiar – Pick one item you normally purchase at the grocery store (carrots, tomatoes, spinach, apples, ground beef, chicken, eggs, etc.) and purchase that item from a local farmer or rancher. Use all of your senses to explore how different that item is…I guarantee you will notice a considerable difference in taste, texture, smell, color, etc! You can’t see the nutrients in there, but the difference is considerable.
- One New Item – Pick one new-to-you, locally grown or raised item from the Farmers Market, local Co-op, road-side stand or UPick Farm and enjoy it however you see fit!
- Sow Some Seeds – Whether you live in an apartment or have acres to plant out, this is the week to push a few seeds into soil and get started on this seasons growing! Read more about this here.
- Create a Locally Inspired Meal – Create an entire meal using only locally sourced items! Pick any meal you’d like to localize; breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Your meal can be as simple or as complicated as you like, just as long as it is 100% locally sourced 🙂
- Explore Local Restaurants who Support Local Growers and Producers – Treat yourself to a meal in a cafe, coffee shop or restaurant that sources at least some of their ingredients locally! Ask around in your community, check with your local Farmer’s Market, research online, call and ask a few questions. Once you’ve picked a place, go out and enjoy some local food and/or beverages with local ties.
- Harvest Your Own with U Pick Farms – Visit a U-Pick Farm (AKA You Pick Farms) or make plans to do so for when they’re ready for you! Ask around in your community, check with your local Farmer’s Market, research online, call and ask a few questions. Then, gather a few friends or your family and make a day of it! Building memories while supporting local growers is a Win-Win for everyone!
- Swap One Non-Food Item – Swap out one non-food item for a locally produced item! Whether it’s a bar of soap, some lotion, a salve or something else entirely, remember that anything sourced and produced locally is better for the environment than anything shipped from thousands of miles away, filled with a hundred ingredients and packaged in plastic.
- Support Community Supported Agriculture – A CSA is when “A farmer offers a certain number of “shares” to the public. Typically the share consists of a box of vegetables, but other farm products may be included. Interested consumers purchase a share (aka a “membership” or a “subscription”) and in return receive a box (bag, basket) of seasonal produce each week throughout the farming season.” Whether you are already a participant, looking into joining one, or simply want to gain some knowledge to help yourself, your family, or your friends, every dollar going into the local agricultural community helps! Local Harvest has a whole section devoted to CSA’s, so go forth and explore
- Community Gardens – Community Gardens are said to have been around in the US since the 1890’s and have benefited people from a variety of backgrounds in cities large and small through all kinds of struggles and good times alike! Ask around and do a bit of research. I bet there is some form of community garden in your area, whether it be in a local park, at a school, in a religious community, or on a rooftop. And hey, if there’s a waitlist, please put yourself on it. You never know when a spot might open up!
- Food Origins – By now, we’ve all heard the statistic that the average meal in the U.S. travels an average of 1500 miles from farm to table (please enlighten me if you live outside the US and have the stats for your own country). Now, I don’t expect you to learn where everything you eat actually comes from, unless you want to 😉 I would challenge you, though, to pick one or two of your favorite items and do a little research on them. Once you find out how far they’ve traveled to get to you, I challenge you to assess how you might offset some of those miles to help create a smaller carbon footprint.
- Swap One Beverage – Every drop counts! Swap out one beverage that you drink often or keep in the house for a locally produced beverage! Whether it’s tea, cider, juice, wine, beer or another beverage, as long as it is produced locally, it makes a difference!
- Use It All – This may require a bit of out-of-the-box thinking, but I promise you it’s worth it to use all of an item in your cooking. For example, if you’re planning to cook chicken this week, plan on using the whole chicken…so if you roast a whole chicken, make a stock out of the carcass! If you are planning to eat carrots, plan to eat the carrot tops, too (they’re great sauteed with greens, turned into a pesto, or thrown into veggie fried rice)!
- Potluck Meals – Here’s a fun opportunity to engage your friends and family in your efforts to go local in a non-scary way (don’t ask my why, but there are a lot of people out there who just do not understand why anyone would choose to limit their diets by eating locally). You can go about this in one of two was:
- Host your very own Food Independence Potluck where you will ask your guests to bring potluck items made with as many locally sourced ingredients as possible with the request that your friends and family source as many ingredients locally as possible…or
- While attending someone else’s potluck or BBQ work to ensure that your own Potluck item is made with as many locally sourced ingredients as possible! Then, share some fun facts about eating local with your fellow Potluckers!
- Preserve – Did you know that ~40% of all food is wasted? Whether it’s “ugly produce that never gets purchased or food you scrape from your plate into the trash or the spinach that goes wilty and slimy in your fridge, food waste it a huge concern and something we can all work to lessen! One way to avoid waste is to preserve any abundance you have on hand. Whether you preserve extra herbs by drying them or freezing them in olive oil, canning up some tomato sauce (and turning their skins into tomato powder), blanching and freezing extra spinach/kale/chard, or by canning up some small batches of fruits and veggies, every bit of food saved makes an impact.
Please note:
Local items can be more expensive than the typical grocery store prices, but I promise you, it’s worth it, even if you can only afford a single local item right now. From the support of local producers to the lowered carbon footprint to the freshness (and glorious taste) of the products, buying local truly does make a difference.
Plus, you’ll avoid food waste because your local produce items were just harvested (usually within 24 hours of your purchase), which means they’ll last much longer in your fridge!
Every step, every action counts! Enjoy the journey 🙂
xoxo,
M
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