67. Eating local - what i've learned

My sad attempt at a tortilla.

Well, the week was over last Saturday. Whew. I am just now rested enough to blog about the experience. I'm doing this pro v con style:

Pros:

• Simple cooking. While I appreciate complex food, going simple was pretty nice. Just flour, butter, and milk for biscuits. Easy. Simple. I liked that.
• Support local farmers. I enjoyed being able to give the local economy a boost.
• Lost weight. I lost 4 pounds this week. I think at least half was the liquid calories I love...sweet tea, iced coffee, juice. But, it helped that I couldn't snack on anything prepackaged. Snacks were fruit and veggies.
• Reality check for kids. It was fun to talk to them about local food, what pioneer people used to do to eat, etc. And for the most part, they ate everything and enjoyed it.
• Matt's creative! I've always known that my husband is creative in the kitchen. Give him a handful of leftovers and 30 minutes...you got an amazing dish that could grace the plate of a nice restaurant. This experience made it even more clear that he's amazing. 
• I learned something about honey. Clover honey - bees get the nectar from clovers. Wildflower honey - from wildflowers. Interesting stuff.

Cons:

• Expensive! Meat and cheese...crazy expensive. Fruit and veggies in season were reasonable. This lifestyle is not sustainable for us. You really have to have a moral conviction to eat mostly local because your wallet takes a hit. 
• Not enough taste difference. I was surprised here...and I gotta admit has not been my personal experience in the past. Most of the foods were no better than non local food. With the exception of the fruit. The fruit was amazing. I'll take local blackberries and peaches any day. The veggies? Not so much. I'll take the cheap Aldi's.
• Hard to snack. Unless you have 30 minutes to prepare something. I have 4 kids. Enough said.
• Human nature. I've never craved a soda from a vending machine before. But knowing that I couldn't have it made me want it. 
• Complicates life a little. Scratch cooking everything is too hard and too time consuming. Give me a snack of gold fish and juice please. 
• Shopping took a lot longer. I assume this would be a learning curve and would eventually get quicker and easier. But for this week...it was hard. Not to mention that the farmers markets don't have shopping carts where I can strap in my kids and hand them a cookie (thank you, Harris Teeter).

So, my conclusion:

I apprciate eating local. For things grown locally and priced reasonably. But, I also appreciate that God made the whole earth produce wonderful and diverse things. I missed olive oil, chocolate, and coffee the most. So happy God made those.