Saturday, May 30, 2009

The Beginning

This blog is a result of a lot of things, but mostly because I had no idea how to freeze asparagus.

Right now in Kitchener-Waterloo, there are a number of people preparing to eat local foods from within 100 miles of here starting July 4th as part of a challenge proposed by 2 naturopaths from a local wellness centre. My husband and I signed up to eat 95% of our food from local sources for 100 days (the other 5% coming only from fair trade sources), starting July 4th and ending at Thanksgiving.

That night as we took stock of our cupboards and freezer, we both realized that this is gonna take some preparation.

Saturday, I got to work. In the morning, I went to the market and got three big bunches of local asparagus. That night, I asked a friend if she wanted to trade some of her rhubarb for the zucchini that I'd just planted in my garden. 'This is going to be great!' I thought, and went to bed with visions of preserves lining my shelves, fresh made bread in the oven, and a basket full of home grown vegs on the counter.

Sunday morning brought me back to reality. 1) my gardening skills are scanty at best- promised zucchinis? oh dear. 2) I've never preserved anything in my life- canning was always something other people's mom's did, like baking. I had these plans to store nature's bounty for the winter, making local food part of our diet long after the end of the challenge- somehow, the plan didn't involve botulism. 3) I had 3 bunches of asparagus I had NO IDEA what to do with.

Luckily, the internet is awash with websites seemingly made for people like me. A quick google search netted this site.

Asparagus taken care of, I got to thinking. I have over a month to get ready, plus 100 days of challenge-- why not collect all the cool places, websites, and other resources about eating locally in one place? That way when people ask if there's a local place to get X, I can tell them. I also realized that if I don't get some sort of outlet for this localism I seem to have contracted, I just might drive people crazy with my stories about Esso vs. the Asparagus by the time Thanksgiving rolls around. And so, the blog was born.

This is hopefully going to shape up to be a neat list of places we've found in the community that provide local food. It's also going to be a place to talk about what worked, what didn't, what was hard, and how we're going to use the things we've learned in the future.

This may at times also be a good long rant about me craving Starbucks- hey, you've been warned!