Monday, January 26, 2009

Dark Days Challenge - Week 10 Report

Wow, here we are on week 10 already! This was a tough week for me as far as local eating goes. I'm trying to remember if I felt this way last winter about this time. As I recall, it actually seemed to get even more difficult about March. In any case, last week was an unusually busy one for me at work. But, it still is not full time and I think many or most of the other challenge participants work regular full time jobs, so I don't think that flies as an excuse.

I was contemplating our evening meals and not coming up with a single one that ended up with 90% local ingredients - or even 75 or 80%. But, then I remembered our breakfast on the morning of the inauguration! Because the inauguration was important to us, Grady and I both chose to stay home from work (nice to have that option) that morning so we could watch it together on TV. So, I decided that it was an opportunity to have something other than our standard cold or hot cereal weekday breakfast. I made scrambled eggs with mushrooms and cheese. And we even had a couple slices of bacon and hashbrown potatoes just in case our arteries needed a little clogging up. For good measure, we also had banana slices.

Eggs - from Yelm, Washington(a little over 100 miles from here), cage free, vegetarian fed, etc.
Cheese - Willamette Valley Cheese Co. pepper jack
Mushrooms - Oregon grown shitakes
Potatoes - locally grown yellow fin, but I can't remember exactly where exactly
bacon- made at New Seasons with Pacific Village pork
bananas - not at all local

So, I guess it wasn't a complete flop of a week with regard to the challenge. Our other meals certainly used many local products, but I'd guess they were closer to half and half. (Like red beans and rice - local beans, California rice.) Plenty of room for improvement in the coming week!


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It does get hard when work and the rest of life becomes crazy. In a way though, by having partially local meals more frequently, you still hit the local target overall, right? Using local ingredients throughout the week is just as good (IMO) as combining them all into a single meal.
What are yellow fin potatoes?

Joan said...

Yellow fins have a light tan skin and a yellow flesh. The ones I get are always small, but I don't know if that's because those are preferred or if it is just a coincidence. One website listed them as Yukon/Yellow Fin, so they may well be related to, or the same as, Yukon golds. Often my choice of a potato has more to do with it coming from a local farm than it being a specific kind of potato. But, I think true afficionados use certain types of potatoes for certain kinds of dishes. For all of my Irish heritage, I'm not much of a potato expert!