My word for the year in 2011 was decluttering. While the decluttering process continues (and I think will for quite some time), I've picked a new phrase for 2012, which is Food Awareness.
Food awareness can encompass a few different things, and I plan to follow Dixiebelle's year of eating nutriously closely, and try out some of the recipe's from Linda Woodrow's various food challenges, ie school lunchbox snacks, breakfast cereals, and this year's challenge, in-season vegetarian meals.
But my specific concern for this year is to focus more on our food supply, to buy more local food and learn to cook more seasonally. I'll be using Simply in Season for ideas, so expect to see some recipe reviews here this year, and I'll be shopping more at the farmer's markets.
I'm going to focus on eating more local food generally, but I also plan to make sure we have one meal a week that is made from solely local food.
Lunch: greens mostly out of the garden, tomato from the farmers market, eggs from the chooks. The olive oil and balsamic were not local though, nor was the left over feta.
Tricia, of Little Eco Footprints, and her family have undertaken a challenge this year to avoid all supermarkets and chain stores. I am planning to join her in that challenge for a month at sone point, but I also don't want to overwhelm myself by taking on too much at once. But I do want to work on having less supermarket visits in general.
One thing I need to consider is what does "local" mean, when it comes to food shopping? There have been people at the farmers markets before from as far afield as Adelaide, which is what? About 13 hours drive from here? That's not the same as flying it in from the Northern Hemisphere, but it's hardly local. There is also usually a stall from the Canberra Organic Farm, so I figure we can start out there each week, but they only have a fairly limited selection. Last Sunday, most of the other stall holders came from around Picton, Cowra, Young or Batlow, all between about 160 and 220km away. There were a few more local places, but most don't sell much variety (lots of eggs, for instance, which we certainly don't need to buy!).
Of course, there were also quite a lot of people who weren't there last week (still on holidays, presumably), so this Sunday may be different.
If you are a 'buy local' person, what do you consider local?
