Farmer's Market Finds and Eat Local Challeng Update

There were only 3 farmer's at our mid week market, but they each had something different, so we ended up with a nice variety of things (we bought something from everyone). I am particularly excited about the cantaloupe as it may be one of the last we have this season. One of the amazing benefits of a challenge like that is that we are trying new things and since there is very little fruit in season in our area right now, we are learning to like pears (I'll be 40 in a few days and this is the FIRST time in my life that I've actually enjoyed eating pears!) We also made pear sauce out of some of them and have enjoyed that as well.

You know, eating locally has really stretched us over the years. Were it not for wanting to support local farmers we would never have tried and learned to like things like kale, cooked cabbage and beets. In fact, its hard for me to believe that only 3 years ago, I had to ask the farmer what to do with the cabbage we were buying, lol. I've also learned to like some things in their natural state that I used to only eat cooked into something else. For example, tomatoes and blueberries. Until this year, only my dh would eat blueberries out of hand, but now we all do and we love them! And until last year, I did not like fresh sliced tomatoes (I think because grocery store tomatoes are so Styrofoam like), but now - yum!

We have been eating local eggs for breakfast the last few days. Today I have an early appointment, so we will probably just have the leftover pancakes from Monday (in the freezer) with local honey. Tuesday we had pizza for lunch - they boys just wanted plain cheese, I made mine with caramelized local onions. Tuesday's supper was BBQ grassfed beef sandwiches with local tomatoes. I'm sure we had other things to eat that day, but on Tuesday I felt particularly sick, and I don't remember everything we had. Yesterday's lunch was PB sandwiches and we made and enjoyed some yummy fig pinwheel cookies (now I know what we will do with all of our fig preserves). The cookies are delicious, though a bit rich (they contain our homegrown fig preserves and local pecans), which is a good thing, because it keeps me from eating too many of them, lol.
We made burger buns yesterday and for supper we had tuna burgers (at dh's request) with pears and sliced tomatoes and cucumbers. It is hard to imagine for me, but we are getting tired of eating beef. I think today we will probably have chicken to go with our yummy local veggies from the market.

So far, making an effort to eat only or almost only locally grown foods has been a fun and eye opening experiment. It has stretched us in some interesting ways and I'm hoping to put together a wrap up post about it over the weekend.