Eat Local Challenge October 2-8

The Ohio Department of Agriculture is sponsoring the "Eat Local Challenge" this week.  It started yesterday and runs through October 8th.  The goal of the challenge is to  "plan and prepare one meal every day using foods that are made, grown or raised in Ohio".  Being generally out of the news loop as usual, I just found out about the challenge in the middle of last week.  No matter, I decided to jump right in and take the challenge.  So here I am on day 2 and having mixed results.

Yesterday I had plans to go to a dinner to benefit the local humane society so I decided to choose breakfast as my challenge meal.  I did pretty good, but not 100%.  I made an egg sandwich using one egg from our own hens.  The cheese and the bread were both purchased at the Howe Meadow Farmer's Market in Peninsula, OH.  The orange juice I had was sadly not from Ohio.  If I had time to think ahead, I should have gone out to one of our local orchards and bought some apple cider.  So not too bad, but not perfect.

So day 1 of the challenge got me to thinking a lot about where our food comes from.  I have decided that it is going to be nearly impossible for me to make a complete meal just from Ohio products.  Oh I could do it I suppose, but the meal would be pretty bland.  Back in the summer, I had a source of fresh herbs and since I didn't know about the challenge then, I made no preparations to dry herbs for later use.  So if I made a meal today, I could not use any herbs, spices, salt, pepper, etc.  How about baking powder or baking soda that I use for my baked goods?  Nope, couldn't use any of that.  It would be a very basic meal using just local products.  I couldn't use my normal olive oil for stir fry.  And while there are some Ohio companies that make their own chocolate, I would waste a whole lot of gas to buy some.  But I guess when it comes down to it, all this thinking is the point of the challenge.  It makes you really appreciated the food system we have in place. 

Back to the challenge.  Day 2 was a mixed results day.  I did not prepare one meal with local food, but instead had at least one or two items each meal that were locally grown or made.  For breakfast, the eggs came from our farm and Mike made toast with bread from the farmer's market.  For lunch, I had a BBQ squirrel wrap sandwich (ok weird, I admit, but true and tasty) with squirrel from our farm.  I also had some watermelon from our garden.  Mike made a toasted cheese sandwich with farmer's market bread.  For dinner, we ate fried chicken made with chicken from our farm, the salad had tomatoes and cucumbers from our garden and farmer's market cheese.  The milk I drank came from United Dairy which is an Ohio company I am pretty sure.  Homemade chocolate chip cookies for dessert.  I'm not really sure though if homemade cookies count though as the only ingredient that was local were the eggs.  Everything else came from the grocery store.  Although I if had purchased homemade cookies from a baker at the farmer's market that would count.  So I am going to count my own.  *grin*  Overall, not bad, but I could have done much better.

Depending on how my day goes tomorrow, I may take a drive through the county and see what goodies I can find to add to the challenge.