Emily’s Eat Local Challenge – San Francisco

Yo.  So for this great class I’m taking at CCA called Contemporary Issues, we’re all encouraged to take on a Personal Sustainibility Project.  This concept was created by Act Now in order to make sustainability a more personal matter as opposed to a strictly environmental matter.

I have decided to challenge myself to eat locally for a month, and then take what I learn and incorporate it into my regular routine.  Eating local isn’t a new phenomenon, though it has gained momentum in the last few years.  I find it particularly appropriate to investigate right now as our economy implodes around us and the world gets steadily more polluted by our constant transport of goods including food.

My plan is to research, ask lots of questions, and make best friends with my local farmers’ market and my kitchen.  Luckily I have a good collection of delicious veggie cookbooks and have my trusty 101cookbooks.com, which is an awesome site full of insanely yummy recipes with an emphasis on veggie and local (to bay area) foods.

I hope to help make it a little easier for Bay Area residents to eat local, by sharing the knowledge I gain and by encouraging local grocers to stock locally-grown foods.  I plan to encounter plenty of challenges, and in tackling these challenges I will learn what is feasible (from a time standpoint as well as a cost standpoint) for a busy San Franciscan to incorporate into my routine, and what’s really hard to find/eat local.

My priorities will be thus:

Super yay: Locally grown (within 100 miles) organic items, mostly from the farmers’ market.
Yay: Semi locally (within 250 miles) items from farmers’ market or Rainbow/ Bi Rite/ other local market/ Whole Foods
Meh: Organic, but not local (though ideally west coast) or locally produced foods from non-local ingredients
Boo: Non organic, non local, packaged foods, ie: eating out or slipping back into my diet coke habit.

Wish me luck, and I’d love comments, suggestions, tips, cheerleaders, naysayers, whatever.