Mission Challenge: Words of Inspiration
We challenged people in the fast-growing town of Mission, B.C., to try local eating for 100 days starting on June 1. Nearly 100 people signed up on the spot - and we couldn’t resist signing up, too. We’re back on a fully local diet, this time with plenty of company and a camera crew taking it all in for the Food Network. Can a community change the way it eats? Let’s find out. If you’re in Mission and taking the challenge, we want to hear from you. And it’s never to late to get involved: Join in for a month, a week, even a single meal.
DAY 18 - Well, more than two weeks into the Mission 100-Mile Challenge and there’s a quiet, earnest sense of people keeping busy out there. It all feels pretty familiar to Alisa and me, but we’ve been having our ups and downs, too. Up: Scoring some fresh-picked asparagus, grilled just three minutes, fantastic. Down: A major sourdough breadmaking failure, incredibly crusty on the outside, stomach-turningly gooey on the inside.
Well, we live and learn - and we often learn best from others. We’re still eager to hear from more people in Mission. Meanwhile, here are some of the latest blogs we’ve heard about from local eaters hither and thither:
On the Farm: Thea in Woodford, Virginia, blogs about life as an intern on a sustainable farm, where she is trying to eat a (mostly) 100-mile diet. “I’m going to document everything from farming methods and the weather to my diet and emotional/spiritual wellness,” she tells us.
Market Musings: “Local food girl” Kristy in Seattle embarks on a Farmers’ Market Diet that leads into gardening and other addictive local eating behaviour . . . “One thing is certain,” she says, “the local eating habit is here to stay.”
Beth Eats Local: She’s doing a 100-mile diet for a year in Brighton, UK, a place that Alisa and I visited recently and came away astonished at the abundance of the local food system. Read on as Beth makes North American local eaters jealous with her access to fruit, veg, grains, salt, even cooking oils - all of which helps shape a vision of what strong, diverse local food cultures might one day look like around the world. She started on June 1, the same date as the Mission challenge, and she’s courageous enough to post recipes.
Food For Thought: Inspired by, ahem, the book The 100-Mile Diet, Colin in Haliburton, Ontario, tries eating only from within his province for a year. “My favourite food is chocolate and my favourite beverage is Coke… this should be interesting!” he writes.
Tom Libous: We’ve mentioned the local-eating New York state senator for District 52 before, but keep a special eye on his site in July, when his communications coordinator tells us they’ll be posting recipes from Italian, Moroccan, Indian, Indonesian, Chinese, and other styles of cooking, all done with local foods. We strongly agree that there’s no need for local eating to be monocultural!
Wild Man Wild Food: If anyone in Mission - or trying local eating anywhere - is feeling things might be a bit too . . . hard, well, check out this blog, where a UK forager named Fergus is living on wild foods . . .
Happy eating,
James
