Dru's Local Diet Primer - Does your Mango need a "green card"?

This is just an update as I gear up to begin a "local/restricted range diet". I have to admit that at first I had some major concerns regarding not only where one would find out information regarding creating a diet based around locally grown foods but also setting aside the time needed to study where one would be able to shop for certain items.

I suppose I am lucky in that I am not really a vegetarian. I have before told people that so they wouldn't question why I am not eating a burger etc, but I tend to not eat that much red meat. I suppose I do dine on poultry a bit and I know that if I had to give up dairy I would just die. I don't understand how people can live without cheese. Oh, the glory that is cheese.

So, I started digging around. Checking all the typical "green" websites, doing quite a bit of googling (spell check won't let that one fly) and have stumbled across quite a bit of helpful guides that should make this attempt much easier.

My first little bit of news comes in the form of a series of articles/blogs that were posted on Grist Magazine's website earlier in the year. This was basically the launch pad for a 100 mile diet which eventually spawned 100 Mile Diet .org that has many "hold your hand step by step guides" to local eating, including a tool to map out your circumfrance if you are bad with maps and a winter eating guide!

Next up I would like to offer Eat Well Guide.org and Local Harvest.org which are both guides that allow you to discover local markets, farms and restaurants that all use local produce within a set radius. While this information is generated from businesses and farms submitting their own information and therefore having to know about these sites in the first place I think it is a great place to start. I have to admit I get generally pretty excited about going to markets and farms that sell produce, etc. Oh boy!

The last resource I want to offer up on this topic right now is Pesticide Wallet Guide that has some basic information regarding produce and its (and eventually YOUR) exposure to pesticides. I don't mean to throw this in to scare anyone but I figured that if you read this far you have some interest into what you are putting into your bodies.

The purpose of this whole experiment is mostly to expose myself to foods and cooking techniques that I am not currently aware of, to inform myself of what comes from where and when it is at it's freshest, to make a comment on where food comes from and therefore on how much energy is spent on transportation, and to discover a local vernacular based in delicious foods.

I plan to try to visit different places, keep a record of what was from where, possibly including prices, and just talk to as many people as I can to make this easier for anyone else who wants to attempt it in Cleveland. Of course I will record all my adventures here for posterity. Wish me luck.

-picture ganked from Grist Mag.