This is part 5 in a longer series of how we are taking 7 months to assess our lifestyles & try to be more intentional with our time and resources. If you are just joining us, you can start your binge here and this will all make more sense.

Alright, we're officially 20 days into our eating local experiment! 

I must confess, this has been significantly harder than we expected! Our precious, red strawberries molded after 48 hours, the lettuce is wilting, and I am still not sure how to make radishes. Oh, and don’t get me started on what the packets of meat did to my refrigerator. Blood, everywhere!! RubyMae is still not laying eggs after the Puppy Attack of 2018. We have also eaten out...more times than I can count. We tried to convince ourselves that nothing can be more local than guacamole prepared at your table... 

We are not good at this, plain & simple.

This past week has been especially hard. After our epic food run to Dekalb Farmer’s Market in my last post, we discovered that weekly grocery shopping isn’t the most ideal during this phase of our intentionality project. We got a plethora of food, but couldn’t eat it fast enough. Once crisp cobs of corn ended up soggy in our compost bin before we could take our first bite. Wasting food does not settle well on our hearts. As Americans, we waste so much food (source), saying it is not edible, when in fact, it just may have some bruising we are not used to. This project has pushed me past my "I'm pretty sure we shouldn't eat that" level as we are learning more and more about how to save & utilize all the food we purchased.

We never want to willingly do something that wastes food or resources that could have been shared with others who have different needs than ours. Additionally, we don't feel comfortable just replacing the rotten food, so our kitchen is bare boned as we have had to scavenge & be creative with the foods we do have left.

So, we are adding to the list of lessons we’ve learned: We need to only buy what we can eat & won’t expire over then next 3-4 days.

That sounds fairly simple, and compared to what many around the world have to do for food, it is. However, it is pushing us further out of our routine by adding a few more steps to our already adventurous quest for local, happy groceries. We now need to consider: reviewing our schedules for the upcoming days (William hates to plan ahead!), & coming up with a realistic number of times we will prepare food or eat at home. Extra thought is required as we have to incorporate an additional grocery run in our week. A major component of this experiment is to cut down on the energy used to get our food to our table, so one more 30 minute drive across town just for groceries seems to be counteractive. Therefore, we are doing our best to plan other errands & our grocery shopping (remember, this often includes more than one produce store) in one trip.  Again, an easy task, however, it just adds another level of prep & thought whereas before we would just travel to the nearest grocery store once & be done with it. 

Yet, we have realized that is the entire point of this process: to remove comfort and convenience when it comes to our grocery shopping habits and to become increasingly aware of how lucky we are to have food at our disposal all the time. Our month of eating local is supposed to make us think before each meal: where did this come from? Who spent long hours working so that this food was grown just right? Who looked at the sky, worried about late frosts, and tipped their hat to the Creator when the sun shined down on their crops once again? We’ve asked ourselves, how far did this travel to end up on my plate? What nutrients & food do our bodies really need? Are we eating out only because it is convenient? What foods do I have now & how can I create a meal from them? What foods should we eat first & what foods can be saved for a while? The list goes on. 

When asking these questions, we become increasingly aware of how what is in our stomach is directly tied to someone's livelihood--big or small-- and it gives us a new appreciation for the delicious variety of food our region produces.

Our kitchen is lively as we inhale the fresh strawberries & our eyes dance upon the plethora of colors on our counters--red, yellow, green, peach, and white. There is something good about having to be creative with the seasonal food set before us. We’ve tried new recipes and honestly, loved them! Bow tie pasta (from previous pantry run) with shrimp & a “bangbang” sauce. The most scrumptious cornbread biscuits topped with local, grass fed beef patties, and local pimento cheese--get in my belly! Pancakes from North Carolina with apple butter from Marietta, GA that tastes "Just Like [the owner's] Grandma's!" The taste of sweetness on my tongue puts me right back in my own Grandmother's kitchen as she spread her locally grown apple butter on my toast. Different apples, different regions of the nation, different recipes, but there is something about this local jar that reminds me there is something very sacred in the way food connects us and reminds us of love. 

Eating local may be a new set of challenges & habits for us that we have quite mastered, but our souls are starting to settle into this new rhythm of subsistence,  grateful for the taste, the vibrance, the centuries past, and the farmers' hands.