Mi Vida Local: Week 1 Round-Up

Week one of Mi Vida Local has gone well, with just a few small bumps in the road. I've learned a few things that should help me get through the rest of the month:

1. I have to plan. When I don't, I end up needing a mid-day snack at work and heading to the Royal Farms for a granola bar and Diet Dr. Pepper--two no-nos this month. Next week: Prepare fruits and veggies for easy snacking and pack more in my lunch bag during the week.


2. Eating locally for a while makes the stomach super sensitive to certain foods. A quick trip to a fast-food place (another no-no) for a super-late dinner after a long day was a really bad idea. Next week: Prepare dinners (or ingredients) early in the week, for quick heating or cooking on late nights. If eating out is a must, I'll stick to local restaurants (not fast-food) and call ahead for take-out.


3. Necessity is the mother of invention. I've been using all of my creative cooking juices, coming up with some new recipes and rediscovering and altering some of my old favorites. Next week: Find and create some new recipes BEFORE I go to the market, which will keep me from scrambling at the end of the week to use up all the produce I bought.


4. If you plan to freeze produce for the winter months, make sure you have plenty of room in your freezer. While it wasn't a requirement of my local eating experiment, I'd gotten the great idea to preserve and freeze fruits and veggies so that I'll have them later when they're not so plentiful. Unfortunately, my best intentions to reduce my non-local eating this winter were stopped in their tracks when I realized I didn't have room in my tiny freezer for all the vegetables and fruits I wanted to put in there. Next week: Pull out that dehydrator and dry some fruit instead of freezing it. Next year: Look into buying a small chest freezer so that I can stock up on farmer's market fresh produce for the winter.

I haven't been completely successful this week in sticking to my local-only rules (with the allowable exceptions). But I'm learning a lot, and I'm enjoying the challenge to change my habits. Next week I'm going to be better about planning, which should help me avoid the non-local traps I've fallen into this week. Stay tuned!