Friday, August 21, 2009

Eating Locally- Day 2

First of all, two quick notes. One, I was unable to locate my notebook that contains the prices I paid for all of the food that I’ll be eating this week. For those of you that are interested, I’ll look again tomorrow and let you know if I find it. Two, I actually purchased an additional item yesterday that I forgot to mention, eight ounces of honey from Mason’s own Environmental Studies on the Piedmont program.

Now, let me say, I’m eating well; I definitely have more than enough to eat and what I’m eating seems to be nutritiously complete (and delicious). That being said, even though this is only my second day of this experiment, there are certainly at least a few things that I already miss. First and foremost, I miss bread. I love bread. I have five favorite foods: mashed potatoes, blueberries, potato chips, nachos, and bread. I was definitely expecting to be able buy bread at the market yesterday, but the bread vendors were unfortunately not there. Not eating bread for a week will be a big adjustment for me. I also miss hot sauce. Especially Sriacha hot sauce. Oh well.

In any case, it occurred to me that although this is day two, I neglected to write about what I actually ate yesterday. For lunch, I had part of an apple. For dinner, I fried half of a tomato along with three eggs and some cheddar cheese, and added some fresh basil for flavor; essentially it was scrambled eggs with tomatoes, basil, and cheese. All of it was quite good, maybe even delicious.

Today, I finished the apple that I started at lunch yesterday for breakfast. For lunch, I had a peach and two of the 12 eggs that I hard-boiled last night. Dinner consisted of three more scrambled eggs; this time with tomatoes, peppers, basil, rosemary, thyme, and some cheddar cheese. I also harvested a whole bunch of tomatoes from my garden that I used to make a tomato soup of sorts. Essentially I diced about 12 smallish tomatoes that I fried in butter along with the fresh herbs. The result was a watery substance that I liken to a cross between soup, stew and spaghetti sauce. It was so good that I had two bowls.

As I started with, I’m eating plenty of good food and I have absolutely no reason to complain. Regardless of the fact that I’m lacking a few things that I’m accustomed to and might want, I’m acutely aware of the privilege that I have. I already realize that this experiment will not turn out the way that I expected, however, I think that it will end up being much more interesting than I expected. Check back tomorrow for further insights.