100th Post--and a New Challenge

Wow I can hardly believe that this is my 100th post.  What started as a way to inspire my writing and the local food scene has turned into more than a sideline hobby.  This blog and the connections it has enabled has truly changed the way I view the world, our food systems, the issues of poverty and hunger, and our health and medical systems. 

In just six months I have seen folks get excited about the possiblities for a more delicious and more just food system in Central New York.  I've met winemakers, chefs, cooks, farmers, agitators and people of every stripe who just want to be able to eat well.  I've discovered other Central New York food, wine, and sustainability bloggers and connected with--and learned from--bloggers from across the world.  So what's next?

As we enter the holiday season, as Thanksgiving and Christmas feasts loom on the horizon, I'm still interested in how to really invest my time, money, and diet in the local scene.  Back in August, at the end of the Eat Local Challenge, I speculated about whether a commitment to eating local could be sustained in the cold winter months of upstate New York.  Well, I'm ready to give it a try. 

With Bill McKibben as my inspiration, I'm going to commit to eating locally through the end of the calendar year.  I'll use the same exemptions I claimed this summer and I will blog about how it is going each week. 

I realize all of the arguments about the ways in which eating locally is unsustainable when done 100% of the time--I've made some of them myself.  But to me, this is the real test of the viability of such a lifestyle change--if I can do it in the winter, the rest of the year should be easy. 

I'll begin when I get home this weekend.  I'll take stock of my freezer and all of the summer fruits and vegetables that I put up in preparation for these colder months.  And I will begin to re-examine in a new way the choices that came so easily in times of plenty.  This should be an interesting but delicious ride.  I can't wait to see what I'll learn.

Comments

[weekendwino]

Congratulations on your 100th post. Here's to many many hundreds more. I'm just trying to make it to the 15th post, but you and the other wonderful bloggers out there inspire me to keep posting.

[Jill Hurst-Wahl]

Are your older posts someplace else? Here I only see an archive that goes back to Nov. 2005.