Local Food and Fasting

I recently signed up to due a local food eating challenge. It's called the Dark Days of winter eat local Challenge. The basic's are simple. Once a week, prepare a meal from a local, LEGIT sources and blog about it. All the ingredients need to be local and sustainably raised. Cool, I'm down with that! I'm all about legit, local food. I can cook. I have a camera and a food blog...right? The challenge goes from November 27th, 2011 through March 31st, 2012. Eighteen meals. Eighteen blog posts. I not fully clear on the nuts and bolts of posting, but it seems like there is a lot of nice locavores that could help me out.

I am doing the Dark Days Challenge because I was challenged. An awesome local food blogger sent out a challenge and I responded. I want to eat local food and I honestly think it is one of the best lifestyle changes you could make. But it's hard! You need to change the way you see your food source. Convenience and instant gratification are not as available. I wanted to challenge myself to make ONE meal a week. That's the point of this challenge: To get the word about local food out and encourage local eating.

I recently weighted myself... Dude, not good. My lack of discipline has been gaining on me. After I saw my weight I ran out and bought a juicer. I had nothing but juice for four days. Today the thought of having another pint of juice makes me want to puke. So, I added some more food to my diet by doing The Daniel Fast. The Daniel Fast is: fruits, veggies, whole grains, water, nuts, beans... No: dairy, meat, sweeteners, additives... I am doing The Daniel Fast to clean out my body. I have been eating way too much crap food and drinking like 50 oz of pop a day... Yeah! I am trying to lower cravings for sugar and crap food.

I plan on doing The Daniel Fast until Christmas. This makes the Dark Days Challenge interesting. I went to the co-op today to get whole wheat for The Daniel Fast and I bought some local veggies for a soup. I had a hard time buying local food at the co-op. I went by the "Buy Local" sticker next to the price tag. I got a onion, a butternut squash and a bag of root veggies for soup. I plan on cutting them up and throwing them in a stock pot with water for an hour and a half. Then taking a picture. Seriously? It seems pretty half-assed to me, but I have 17 more post to do. And this needs to be something I will do for local food outside of the challenge.