Eating Local with Mighty Appetite

So, Mighty Appetite is a Washington Post food blog that I love to read -- and blog author Kim O'Donnell had a challenge this week to have her readers try to eat ten items produced within 100 miles. Since I love the whole concept but haven't nailed down the perfect execution of local eating yet, I thought I'd give it a whirl (before she up and moves to Seattle, sniff).

Here's what I ate in California (why yes, I am that kind of cheater):

Farmer's market local, organic strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries, smothered in Straus Family Creamery whipped cream, and handfuls of plums from the yard - while in the South Bay. Hardship.

Homegrown-basil pesto on steamed zucchini, potato and egg salad (all organic and grown/collected/cooked on site at Preston Vineyards) - plus don't forget the Madam Preston I got to sip with lunch...sigh. Dedication to the cause.

When we got home from our trip, I was exhausted, so we made burgers from some Polyface ground beef I had in the freezer. And here's what we found in our CSA boxes last night: yellow plums and green beans (et 'em up for dinner) and beets (in the slow cooker right now). Peaches are ripening in a brown bag. Go, Zurschmeides! Hey, DC local eating holds its own!

Here's my overall dilemma tho: What do people do about things like crackers? I can make my own bread in my bread machine but what do you do about things like bagels or little whole wheat bunny crackers? That your kids love? I now try to do things like pop popcorn myself (in a brown bag in the microwave to avoid all the packaging). But there are some items we eat routinely that are neither local or sustainable, 'tho they may be organic and bought in bulk. Should we just be skipping that stuff altogether? It's all those whole grain carbs, for the most part.

Makes me muse about environmentalism in general. I tend to cut myself and others mucho slack because I think that even if I/we changed just 50% of our habits, that would be an amazing difference. I also think that I can only change so much at one time. That's what I love about reading other blogs and chatting up other people who are trying to simplify and clean their lives -- I end up making so many more and deeper changes than I would have on my own. Living vicariously through you all and getting wiser because of it.

So thanks, Kim at Mighty Appetite, for getting me to more closely look at my local consumption (because of your challenge, I thought much more about the sources of all my foods, not just the 10 I'd be tracking). I'd love to hear from others the areas in which you've easily found organic, local, less-processed foods. Just don't tell me to make my own crackers. I'm not quite there yet!



*Photo courtesy of sxc. Read more!

Sacrifice Play

When my fifteen month old child picks up a purple marker with a gleam in his eye and begins playing a manic game of cap-on, cap-off? And I let him do it, knowing that the pen’s going to end up in his mouth? The very same mouth I went to great lengths to feed pureed-spinach-tinted frosting a few weeks ago rather than allow him to nibble synthetic green (food-safe) coloring? That mouth? Yes, that is a classic example of one of my parenting Sacrifice Plays. I know that I am conceding a small defeat (in this case, Crayola marker ingestion) for a larger goal (toddler empowerment, tantrum avoidance). So it makes me a hypocrite? Small price to pay.

We all play the parenting hands we’ve got. We maximize our kids’ well-being while sacrificing what we have to in order to meet life’s challenges. In our house, we like to say that everyone’s got to take one for the team. Our dog has been getting an extra breakfast or two lately, since the aforementioned toddler is fairly focused on plinking kibble into his bowl and it keeps him entertained while mom gets to, I don't know, blog (wink). The dog’s girth may suffer. But we all have to pull our weight in the family, as it were, to ensure that the whole is healthy.

I thought about weight recently in the grocery store. I’m one of those annoying virtuous people who usually shops at health food stores, co-ops, Whole Paycheck, Trader Joe’s, farmer’s markets, places I know won’t sneak cr*p worse than a "Conforms to ASTM D-4236" marker into my kid’s food. I make a lot of my own food (pancake mix, for starters, although I have to get the sugar out of that recipe). But sometimes, it is convenient (and cheaper?!) to go to a regular grocery store. What snuck into my cart the other day just made me groan.

Let me just say up front that (hypocrisy alert again) our house sees its fair share of candy. It’s not like processed sugar products don’t make their way into our lives. It’s just that when I am trying to grab whole wheat mini bagels for my teething toddler, it irks me that there would be high fructose corn syrup in the top five ingredients. Thank you very little, Thomas' Company. "The perfect wholesome snack for kids and people on the go"? Mmmm, that HFCS wholesome goodness.

When I am going for a whole wheat product, I really don’t expect to be making a Sacrifice Play. If I’m giving my kid a Ring Pop? I probably expect to have some artificial color tradeoffs. Giving my kid a (perfectly frozen) Ding Dong? I think I can sense there might be some troubling preservatives there. But whole wheat bagels? Come on, folks, that’s no place to sneak in a Sacrifice Play.

What are the Sacrifice Plays you face as a parent? Do any of the choices you’re forced to make seem unfair?

*Original DC Metro Moms post. Photo courtesy of SXC. Read more!