Eat Local in Sammamish!

And so it begins, my mission to eat local in Sammamish Washington. I'm feeling really good about officially kicking off this effort. Last year I read the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver, and got my first exposure to eating locally, its benefits and its pitfalls. So after thinking it through, our journey to eat locally begins. This project is inspired by the opening of a farmers market in our community, the Sammamish Farmers Market. As long as the Market is open this year we'll continue the project. When it closes in October we'll reevaluate.

Let's start with some parameters. First of all, we'll commit to eating products from nearby states for about 80% of our total food intake. Our target area is Washington, Oregon, Idaho – with some products allowed from California & Alaska (fish). When shopping I'll prioritize the things that are closest to us as much as possible. We'll still buy some things from outside of this boundary, like coffee, tea, nuts, the occasional banana and some packaged foods. In the packaged foods categories we primarily consume cereal, crackers, chips and popcorn.

Organic is also important to me, no chemicals. Generally, if you can't pronounce it or identify it as an edible substance that comes from an animal or a plant - we don't eat it. There are a few exceptions, but not many. You might think with these rules that we're vegetarians, or Atkins / South Beach Diet people, or part of some other weird health food trend. But we're not. We eat surprisingly normal foods and the kids don't even know that we're different. They eat lunch from home as opposed to lunch provided from the school cafeteria, but that’s about the biggest difference that they can point out. Lots of kids eat home lunch, so it’s not so bad.

At meal times I stress healthy choices and appropriate serving sizes. My family is used to seeing vegetables on the table, but they rarely try them. That's OK for now. My rule is that they have to eat at least one fruit or vegetable with every meal. My job is to make sure that there's something that they WILL eat on the table like grapes, apples or lettuce. They don't have to try everything, it’s OK. Now that all of my boys are old enough to read, it's harder for me to disguise the organic, whole grain cereal that I buy as the same kind of cereal that they see on Nickelodeon TV, but I try.

A little bit about me, I'm a 42 year old mom of 3 boys aged 6, 7 and 13 – all of whom participate in sports and other extracurricular activities. I also have a full time job, a dog, a busy volunteer schedule, a husband, and a large house that demands cleaning. (Sadly for my husband, the list pretty much reflects my priorities too.)

What I don't have is time, time to cook, time to put up canned goods (OMG who has time for that!) or time to run all over town shopping for specialty ingredients. Our family stays fed with products from a few different stores: Costco, Safeway, the Farmers Market and infrequent trips to Whole Foods. If this experiment is going to work, it's going to have to work by shopping at these 4 places.

Eating locally also has to meet the demands of our schedule and our life. We have to have reasonable choices for fast weeknight dinners, dinners on the run while we car-pool a couple of kids around town, and easy / edible lunches for everyone in the family. Last but not least our way of eating has to be ‘cool,’ and certainly not different or weird, or my 13 year old won’t participate. If his sack lunch isn’t cool enough he uses his allowance money to buy school lunch. He thinks that I don’t know, but of course I do. Thankfully, he doesn’t buy lunch very often, which is a high compliment for my packed lunches.

As a stretch goal, I hope that we can continue to eat locally when we dine out AND when we’re on vacation. That’s a tall order, and the first challenge comes next week when we hit Disney World in Orlando for 11 days and nights!

One last thing about me: I have never ‘blogged’ before. I’m not even entirely sure how to ‘post’ this article. So you’re about to witness something interesting, the eating experiment, as well as something funny – my blogging attempts. Please laugh hard and long if you’re laughing with me. Please don’t tell me that you’re laughing at me. And I hope that as we’re all entertained, that we learn something along the way.