Randal Smathers's Blog (8)

Those of you who haven’t called, written or stopped me or my staff on the street to talk about this project should step right up. Both of you; everybody else has.

The response to this column from readers has been amazing. When Carol Tashie first suggested I try the Localvore Challenge, I wanted to get readers involved, somehow. But coordinating a group — starting with finding willing

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There’s a reason this isn’t called the localvore holiday.

It’s time to talk about time.

First, the good news: My family is happy that I am coming home every night to eat dinner instead of reheating what’s in the fridge at midnight or getting take-out to eat at my desk. And I’m happy to have an excuse to get out of the office for an hour in the evening.

Now the bad news: This experiment has about doubled the time and effort my wife puts into preparing food. Think about… Continue

Since I started this project last week, someone brought up the idea that eating localvore is a yuppie affectation and unrealistic for the average Joe or Jane.

Guilty as charged.

Unfortunately, it's the easiest thing in the world to feed your family on junk food, fast food, over-processed food and what "Married with Children" once called "near-food products." Go into your local convenience store and think about that statement. Sadly, Skittles are not a fruit.

Local food… Continue

If anybody knows the perils and benefits of buying local food, it’s David Raymond, owner, gardener, chef and salesman for Salsa from the Gut.

Unlike some other brands of “Vermont” salsa, Raymond’s product is almost all-local, from the tomatoes through the chilies. He makes it in his garage — his next-door neighbor, fortunately, loves the smell — in the Rutland neighborhood whose nickname graces his product.

There are times in the dark of winter when he can’t buy local vegetable… Continue

I'm not eating my lawn; it just tastes like it.

Today is the first day of actually embarking on the Localvore Challenge after a couple of weeks of thinking about it and a weekend of hunting up foodstuffs that have traveled less than 100 miles to our table.

I'm eating lunch at my desk as I write this, and the Cabot-cheddar-on-homemade-bread sandwich is delicious. The salad greens are another story. The greens themselves - some from the farmers market, some from neighbors' garden… Continue

Even for a family that already tries to eat fresh, healthy food, the biggest adjustment in trying to eat all-local food is in the shopping.

See if this is how you shop for your family: You write out an enormous list of everything you need for a week or so, clip some coupons from the flier in the Sunday paper, and decide on which supermarket to shop in based on a combination of the week's specials, how full the parking lot usually is and a semiconscious memory of how long the checkout li… Continue

Different people try eating locally for a variety of reasons. Some come to it because they feel strongly that we should not be shipping food thousands of miles, especially when we live in such plenty in Vermont.

Others are practicing for what they see as the coming oil crash, when the cost of shipping will become prohibitively expensive, or because they just believe in sustainable living.

Still others, myself included, believe first in supporting the local economy. My family

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Next week, my family and I will be embarking on the Localvore Challenge, the goal of which is to eat nothing but locally produced food for a given time: In our case, a week.

The challenges typically take place once in each season. My wife and I have been talking on and off about trying to do a challenge since we heard about it in the spring, but the idea of trying to eat only local food in March without having spent the fall putting stuff in the freezer seemed too daunting, so we're tak… Continue