MG: eat local challenge

first, have you heard about the hopeful development in Australian sheep welfare? hooray for the sheep! i'm relieved and elated--changes on such scale are possible (assuming all goes well, that is).

a little sock progress before i get to the point of this post... i started hubby's second sock, successfully evading the second sock syndrome. tiny toes on little dpns:


foot grown on mini-circulars, then the heel half went back on dpns, which are slightly smaller in diameter (denser heel):


ok, i read about the eat local challenge on Absinthe Knits and mellowtrouble. this was a while ago, but i never got my act together while i was away to post about it or officially join. i have been making efforts for the challenge however.

when i'm in berkeley, it's easy to eat in the way i prefer--deliciously and sustainably most of the time. while i was in dayton, ohio this summer, eating well was hard for me. in the discouraging landscape of corporate chains for restaurants and stores alike, grocery shopping became a depressing event. i got lazy about making an effort for fresh, sustainable goods.

the eat local challenge reminded me to work a bit harder for more options, so hubby and i drove to the Webster Street Market downtown. look what we found!


it's a sampling of what we brought home: freshly baked salted rye bread, gorgeous blueberries, local yogurt cheese, cannelini beans (for soup!), and unrefined raw sugar. we also found a stand called "Azra Desserts" where this friendly man sells his beautiful cookies--just a small number of simple things on his ingredient list. you know, flour, butter, sugar; no hydrogenated oil in sight. we bought some linzer cookies w/ raspberry jam. they were so yummy--buttery and sweet with a tiny bit of tartness from the jam.



i know not everything we purchased was grown in the area (in the 100-mile radius sense). i'm guessing the sugar and the beans came from elsewhere, but for me, there are layers of eating local... if not grown locally, then baked, roasted, pickled, crafted, sewn, marketed locally.

i like supporting small merchants (instead of the shipping and administration of large corporate chains). at places like the webster market, i also have the benefit of variety. raw sugar and cannelini beans are not everyday items in the dayton supermarket. and the prices were excellent too.

my market goods were fresh and flavorful. the blueberries were plump and dusky blue. we also brought home a canteloup whose sticky sweet scent you could catch at arm's length... just the way it should be.