I had every intention of acing the Penny-Wise Eat Local Challenge this week. I had read through the preparatory stories and posts, and thought: how hard could it be to prepare a week’s worth of meals using only local ingredients for no more than $144? Easy-peasy.
Then the end of the week got busy, and we spent the weekend painting a room – glorious red stripes, mmm – and waxing the ceiling. Yes, the ceiling. Don’t ask; it didn’t turn out anything like it did on the HGTV episode that had inspired our arm-wrenching, neck-twisting adventure. Alas.
I thought about the Challenge. I did. I just didn’t get out and shop and, you know, make a plan.
So Monday morning rolled around, as they do. On Mondays I’m up at 5:45, in my car at 6:30, in the city by 7:00, and the morning goes so fast that I don’t usually get to eat. Yesterday was no different. By 12:30, I was starving.
I could have driven to Whole Foods for a local apple and a Saint Benoit yogurt, but it was out of my way, and I was really hungry, and so I dropped by Greens on my way to the bridge and stood in their take-out line for black bean chili over rice and cup of Moroccan chickpea soup.
When I got home, and took the first bite of black bean chili, I nearly spit it out. The grated cheese they had sprinkled over the top was moldy. Yech. But I was too hungry to throw it all away, and so I scraped off the top layer and ate the bottom half of beans and brown rice. The soup was better. But none of it was local. Or cheap.
My afternoon was a similar tornado – deadlines, e-mails that needed immediate response, new projects starting, a sweet-faced dog to walk – so that by the end of the day I was too exhausted to assemble the complex recipe I had intended. Instead, I changed into pajamas and opened up a bottle of delicious merlot from Oakville, local but not remotely within the budget, and made a 2-minute stir-fry of prawns and asparagus from Fat Belly Farms. And retired to my bed with a book.
And thus my first day of the challenge turned out much like the waxed ceiling: not even vaguely like the hoped-for vision.
Oh, but there are more days in the week. I’m not giving up yet.
