3 Typical Locavore Dinners

You only eat local? Wow you must be starving, how can you find enough to eat! Well here is a taste of what I eat for dinner and where it comes from. Being local is more delicious than you can imagine!

Dinner 1: When it's too hot to cook

Homemade Vanilla Maple Sun Tea (Check my Recipe page!)

• Green Tea, from the free shelf at UNBC
• Vanilla, from the free shelf
• Maple Syrup, I brought back from the ByWard Market in Ottawa last summer

Prince George version of Caprese salad with:

• Basil, from my garden
• Cherrie Tomatoes from HSH Grocery
• Avalon Sharp Cheddar from Ave Maria's
• Balsamic vinegar & Olive oil, found on the free shelf
• Bread from the Farmers Market with Avalon Butter from Ave Maria's

Dessert

• Northern Haskap Ice Cream! From Frozen Paddle Ice Creamery a new vendor at the Prince George Farmers Market
• Orange, left behind by Couchsurfers

Dinner 2: When friends are coming over

This meal was created by the ingredients from the Hope Farm CSA box.

• Balsamic roast vegetables (made with Kale stems, beats & leaves, kohlrabi leaves), 
• Pizza with carrot & radish top pesto (Recipe), Pizza crust from the farmers market. 
• Potato salad
• Radish & Kohlrabi carpaccio (Recipe) 
• Fresh salad rolls with an Avocado left behind from more Couchsurfers

We used everything from root to tip! Thank you Hope Farm!

Dinner 3: When you harvest from your garden

This year I have a plot up at the PGPIRG Sustainable Learning garden at UNBC.  So sometimes dinner is what I bring home from the garden and make delicious! 
Garden Salad:

• Lettuce
• Kale
• Cucumber
• Tomato
• Basil
• Salted Sunflower seeds from Wilson Square Market 
• Balsamic vinegar from the free shelf for dressing

Cheers to great dinners and even greater company!
XX Melanie 

"Nobody trusts the industrial food system to give them good food." - Joel Salatin 

To hummus or not to hummus?

Angela and I at the University Farmers Market

So I have finished my last expired can of chickpeas that I had in the cupboard and am now faced with a very serious issue...to hummus or not to hummus? As a vegetarian I love eating it and it adds an import piece of protein to my diet but chickpeas just aren't local are they. Which leads me to my conundrum, I can buy organic chick peas from my local grocers Home Sweet Home but just because I can buy chickpeas locally, should I? On the other hand with the rule that I can eat locally prepared goods I can purchase delicious home-made hummus from them or the farmers market, but neither the raw chickpeas nor the prepared are truly local. How much sense does it make to purchase hummus I could make myself for much cheaper, only because I am not supposed to have the raw ingredients. Does this mean I can't eat hummus this year?


(Side note: here is a recipe for Balsamic Hummus that I am obsessed with! )

These are the types of ethical conversations I have with myself and often talk out with Angela on a near daily basis. I can agree that eating local is a very important part of this local challenge but the other part was to also include local living. If we take that into consideration, supporting local business', restaurants and suppliers would be in direct conflict with local eating ideals. Can I eat sushi that is from a local business even though they do not source locally? Even if I am eating at the most local restaurant in town which to my thinking is Nancy O's, will everything I intake be local?  Most likely not, but definitely better than my other options and the option of cutting any dinning out at all. Therefore from hummus comes the larger questions of what I can eat. I can think it to death and never really find a comfortable position, so for now I am sticking with locally sourced, locally produced and locally made.

Even though I am surprised people know my name , we have still been getting attention this week. Yesterday CKPG News stopped by our University Farmers Market Kickoff event for a chat. And this morning we did a quick little interview with CBC Radio 1 for their harvest series,  check out our conversation here. Thank you again for all the love and support! 


Happy Wednesday, 

Melanie 

"What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of action." - Meister Eckhard