Blog Update!
For those of you not following me on Facebook, as of the Summer of 2019 I've moved to Central WA, to a tiny mountain town of less than 1,000 people.

I will be covering my exploits here in the Cascades, as I try to further reduce my impact on the environment. With the same attitude, just at a higher altitude!

Monday, July 2, 2007

Local Food Month begins

Local Food Month - July 2007Welcome to Local Food Month!

For those of you just checking in you can find out more about the guidelines here.

The gist of it is that for the month of July participating readers will try to increase their intake of locally grown, sustainable foods, while reducing the amount of processed and fast foods they eat. Kinda like the 100 Mile Diet meets the Slow Food Movement, but with a whole bunch of choices and variety.

To start the month off, we made a cherry pie, using local Bing cherries (homemade crust of course). I also tried my hand at making tofu from soymilk that I made at home. Between the food growing in the garden and local farmer's markets, this week we're set. Here's the dinner menu for this week:

Monday: veggie burgers made from okara left over from making soymilk/tofu and turnips from garden; locally made buns; salad from the garden
Tuesday: quesadillas with grilled tofu (handmade); roasted veggies from the garden; handmade tortillas
Wednesday: homemade pasta with greens from the garden;
Thursday: handmade pizza with not-so-local cheese, local tomatoes; salad from garden
Friday: (we usually eat out on Fridays) - restaurant that serves locally grown food

Also, there have been a lot of questions popping up in the comments regarding soy. I'm not ignoring them -- I'll address the soy issue (good vs. bad) in a post this month.

And, remember, it's not too late to join in on the fun!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I missed out on the low impact week, so I want join in on this. I was just thinking today that I want to try going all month with no fast food (I'm a long way from where I want to be!). So, I'll incorporate it this month, and only go out once a week to a locally owned restaurant. Honestly we don't normally eat out THAT much, it's just increased a lot lately.

I will also try to find as much locally (or at least statewide) grown food that I can to plan our meals. I'm excited!

~Mel

Anonymous said...

I'm still uncertain about making my own tofu. I'm almost convinced i'll mess it up horribly. LOL

Oldnovice said...

I spent a little time past few days reading old threads here and ended up ordering the yogurt maker based on your recommend, Chicken.

I only use tofu on occasion and never use soy milk, so it wouldn't be prudent to invest in the whole soy process for us. It was an interesting read, though.

Crunchy Chicken said...

Mel - Welcome aboard! I'll add you to the list. Congratulations on making the effort to wean yourself off of fast food.

Activist Mommy - the tofu making was pretty easy. I think next time I'll add more nigari as I like a more firm tofu than what I ended up with. But other than adding the nigari to the soymilk, letting it rest and putting it in a press of some sort, it's relatively easy.

oldnovice - our yogurt maker has gotten an incredible amount of use. We haven't bought any other yogurt except plain as a yogurt starter since then. Yeah, making tofu is probably not worth the effort if you don't use soy milk and rarely eat tofu :)

BTW, the okara burgers turned out nicely tonight. It was touch and go there for a while... it looked like it was going to be an abject failure until I took them out of the oven to flip them. Going in the oven they were a squishy, amorphous mass that held no shape of it's own. But they came out of the oven nice and crisp and held their own. I made a few extra and ended up freezing them.

My husband prefers Boca burgers but will eat these. I'll probably make them again sometime down the road, but they weren't so fantastic that I can't wait to make them again.

Anonymous said...

Hey, Crunchy, I just put up my first post about Local Food Month, if you want to add me as a co-sponsor! (I even put a plug in for the Diva Cup in the same post... really slick! LOL)