My coop is participating in an Eat Local Challenge, starting today. The challenge is to eat 80% of your food from Local and/or Michigan sources. I am going to do my darnedest to keep up, and I’m actually excited! Obviously, since it has aroused me to update my blog.
I’ve been doing some poking around the web, mostly the site of the folks who are spearheading this challenge – Eat Local America. A lot of what I am seeing on the web is focusing on eating meat, and old “vegetarians” mustering up their strength to “process” old friends (that is, cut up animals) so they can make a meal, and being congratulated and encouraged by other locovores. This is most disheartening.
As a vegan, I think I have experienced some of the challenges of locovores in promoting and discussing the way we eat. I think we deal with some of the same perceptions, namely that there isn’t enough to eat if you eat this way. I really like Carol Adams’ advice in her book Living Among Meat Eaters, she said to create abundance with veganism, which is easy, but it doesn’t seem easy to meat eaters who are watching you at the family picnic eating salad. I took her advice to heart and began bringing food with me everywhere. I think she is one of the reasons I really got into cooking, and became pretty ok at it. People where afraid at first, “Oh, god, is that tofu?” and I wasn’t a good cook at first, but I learned, and they began to trust that I knew what I was doing and looked forward to my contributions. Now I am a bit of a Vegan Queen of the area, and have built an army of tofu eaters.
Like I said, creating abundance is easy with veganism, but I do feel challenged with Local. I live in a small town in the middle of Michigan. You’d think with all this farm land, we’d be swimming in whole grains, beans, fruits and veggies; but most of that goes to feed animals we consume. My coop does very well. We have plenty of Michigan-grown beans, spelt flour, and tons of veggies. We even have Michigan-made tofu and tempeh, and Eden Foods is based out of Michigan, with many items grown in Michigan. Even with all this, the idea of being restricted to local foods makes me feel nervous and mutinous (All I wanna eat is mangoes and avocados). Knowing that many local challengees are going to be focusing their meals around animals that share their space, breath their air; I want to prove that being vegan and local is just as easy and delicious.
I will be using this blog to check in and hold myself accountable for the next few weeks. So I will start off honestly — I only thought about eating local today, For breakfast , I had Indian leftovers and for dinner, I had Hunan. I’ll make up for it!
I plan on dusting off the old crock pot and cooking some beans, I am going to make homemade dumplings and pasta with our Michigan Spelt flour, cobblers with local berries. Oh, I’ve got plans. I will check in a few times a weeks, more later!
I also feel that hiding under the guise of locovore can make some people feel better about eating meat and consuming reproductive products. I don’t think there is a such thing as “humane” meat, milk or eggs. More on that later.
