Eat Local Challenge

During the month of September, Vermont does this 'eat local' challenge. Andy and I have always talked about doing it, since we eat a lot of local food, but have never actually attempted to do it. The challenge is to eat food from local producers for a month. Now, the degrees of local vary from person to person and some people go all out and some people make certain exceptions to the rule (salt, for example, is not produced locally). Some people vary their definition of local, 50 miles from home, 100 miles, comes from Vermont, etc.

Because I am not taking the holistic approach, here is the definition for our family: It must be produced in the state of New Hampshire or Vermont. My dad often brings food over with him from New Hampshire when he comes (he has already told little man he is bringing carrots for his bunny tomorrow) and since it is cross-country season, I have races along the Vermont/New Hampshire boarder and one that actually takes place in New Hampshire. That and I grew up in New Hampshire, so why not? Also if we already have the food in the house, we're eating it! Spices and things like that do not count (I like salt, get over it!) and all bets are off tomorrow when we go to the fair.(YAY! THE FAIR! FRIED DOUGH!-pardon the interruption,it's just your editor) Although, they do have a few booths that do sell local food like maple creemees and apple crisp. Other than that, we are eating locally.

Here are some highlights so far:

The weather has been hot and it is much cooler outside than in this week, so we had friends over to hang out in the back yard and enjoy the evening. My enticement: pie! Of course, one of my other friends brought pizza and wine, which was just as good. We also had the friend who we are pretty sure bailed because she is the only one with air conditioning in the group and she didn't want to leave it

OK, so this one is kind of cool. Our school has this crazy senior project that all students have to do called graduation challenge. Because of the project, the middle schools that feed into our school, do something called an 8th grade challenge. This one kid, Alec, took a family recipe and went into business selling these pretzels http://www.alecsspicypretzels.com/. They became so popular that he now sells them everywhere. They are pretty good.

I was just impressed that Andy found meat that didn't cost a fortune. (It did cost a small fortune - I just wanted local chicken.)

This one is actually the source of some debate in our family. Andy hates corn, but I love corn on the cob in the summer. Little Man not only loves it, but has a ton of fun shucking the corn beforehand. Mommy 1 Daddy 0