Dark Days Eat Local Challenge!

It's time! This is the blog where I'll be tracking my journey through the 2008-2009 Dark Days Eat Local Challenge. Here's the deal, from November 15th to March 15th I'm gonna cook at least one meal a week from locally sourced (aka grown) everything. Ok, almost everything. Urban Hennery has the signup list and the rules, but I'll post them here too:

The “Rules”:

1. Cook one meal a week featuring at least 90% local ingredients
2. You define local - the standard definitions range from 100, to 150 to 200 miles
3. Ingredients can be things you grew and preserved yourself, sourced from local farms and markets, or purchased at the store
4. Write about the meals you cook, your challenges finding ingredients, why you’re eating local or whatever else strikes your fancy for each recap. Photos are optional.
5. Include friends and family in your sourcing and eating as possible

To clarify my options I'm defining local as 150miles. This isn't a stab in the dark, this one was a bit of research and knowing my local farmers markets. 150miles covers pretty much all of the normal vendors that show up at the markets I frequent. That said, I do travel some and have friends that do the same, so if I have a trip for business or to see family/friends and in the course of my travels (or theirs) can find a good local source there for something I don't have local I'm taking credit for it. I've got some examples of this already for future posts.

I'm not signing up for too much blogging. Right now I'm aiming for one or two a week. I'm half of a working married couple with a 6month old...

Rule 5: Including friends and family is a big part of this challenge for me. It will be as much of a family and friends affair as I can make it. My family eats local and eco-friendly as much as we can so but we don't share that enough. I'm hoping that by the end of the challenge I'll have gotten at least some of my family and friends off their butts and out to a farmers market, or passing up chineese grown garlic in the grocery store and thinking like a locavore.