Day 2, The Transition to Locavorism

Just back from the state fair, we still weren't too prepared to make a local breakfast today. My dad, who's usually at work before I'm awake, ended up eating Grapenuts cereal since I wasn't around to stop him. He also made his usual lunch, which consisted of peanut butter on rye bread (more on that below) and a salad from local vegetables.

My mom and I were planning on having the rest of the zucchini bread, but apparently being toted around all day in the hot sun did it no favors and it tasted atrocious this morning. My mom and I ended up just having blueberries, although we really could have had blueberry muffins if I weren't so slow to get started this morning.

For lunch, my mom and I had carrot sticks and boiled potatoes. Both the potatoes and carrots were from our CSA, Thorpes. She also ate what was left of the lamb from her dinner last night and some leftover cucumber salad I'd made from cucumbers from a friend's garden earlier this week.

For dinner, my parents had BLT's. The bacon was from Federal Meats, so it was probably local but conventionally produced. The lettuce was purchased at the East Aurora Farmers' Market. The tomatoes came from Thorpes. The bread locally made rye, though the ingredients were probably not locally sourced. Both the bread and the bacon was left over from before the Locavore Challenge began, and thus needed to be consumed while it was still good.

We all also had for dinner pesto on pasta that we bought at Farmers and Artisans earlier in the day. I'd made and frozen the pesto a couple of weeks ago from basil and parsley from the East Aurora Farmers' Market and garlic from Thorpes. We topped off our pesto and pasta with a bit of ricotta that needed to be used up, again locally made but possibly not from local sources.

We also got a lot of local food today. We went to The Country Cupboard, a natural foods store in East Aurora, for bluberries; Thorpes Farm near East Aurora, where we picked up our CSA vegetable share and also purchased some low spray fruit -- Ginger Gold apples, seeded grapes, and peaches; and Farmers and Artisans, a local foods store in Williamsville.

At Farmers and Artisans, we purchased Ithaca Milk Co. 1% milk from the Fingerlakes region, Meadow Creek Farm yogurt from Interlaken, organic sunflower oil, dark red kidney beans from the Fingerlakes region, and Flour City Pasta's Emmer-Lina Fettucini from Fairport. We'll probably being going back soon, since we've finished the pasta and already used a significant portion of the butter, milk, and yogurt, and probably would like to try one or two of the local cheeses available at Farmers and Artisans.

The service was excellent there, with one person (the owner or manager, perhaps) spending plenty of time with my mother explaining the properties of various oils. Grape seed oil is wonderful for sauteeing vegetables, but because of its high price it should be used sparingly. Sunflower seed oil can be used for the same purposed as grape seed oil and is much cheaper. Butternut squash seed oil is supposed to be wonderful to use in salads. The man who talked with my mother also looked over the list of suggested items for the pantry for the Locavore Challenge from NOFA-NY, and told us that he may be getting more items on the list, including oats and barley, later this month or this fall.

It was another day where we didn't eat 100% local. I've decided instead of letting this depress or upset me, I must remind myself that I am part of a family, which entails compromising sometimes. Hopefully, we'll soon be pure locavores, and I'll be able to describe the first few days of September as the transition into locavorism.