Looks like we've made it......

.....We left each other on the way...to another love. Looks like we made it....or I thought so til today. Until you were there everywhere, and all I could taste was love the way we made it!

It doesn't take a '70's song to remind us food is love in our household. We travel with food in mind. We have vacations where there are no pictures of us, only pictures of the food we've eaten. We invite people to our home to share food and, by extension, love.

That's why I'm excited to share with you our greatest food accomplishment to date (the antithesis of Chef Thom's root beer experiment): WE LIVED LOCAL FOR A WHOLE YEAR!!!!!! Our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program started again last week with beautiful salad greens, radishes, chives, mint, lemon balm and asparagus. Our goal was to live local for a year, and it LOOKS LIKE WE'VE MADE IT!!!!!!!!!

Achieving our goal gives us the chance to pontificate about our experience. And, you, as unfortunate subscribers to our blog, will now be forced to travel this sentimental journey with us. Our top ten observations:

(10) We got soooooooo lucky with the amount of food we preserved. We did not have a guide or reference point. We just guessed, and we guessed correctly! Chalk this one up to, "We'd rather be lucky than smart."

(9) You can still entertain while living locally. We hosted multiple dinner parties at our home without going to the grocery store. Can you imagine the luxury?

(8) Canned tomatoes will chase away the winter blues. After 60 or 70 gray days in a row (check), there is nothing more soul nourishing than opening home canned tomatoes and smelling SUMMER.

(7) The barter system works! You read our pain as we noshed on green beans ad nauseum (literally). Thanks to our friends from Seldom Seen Farms for trading green beans for canned, diced tomatoes. We haven't been this happy to trade something out of our lunch boxes since grade school.

(6) You will cook more creatively with limited supplies. Let's face it, the beginning of Spring is a tough time for dining locally at your own home. The winter supplies have dwindled. The spring crops have yet to arrive. You will become incredibly resourceful when you start to evaluate what you can make with apples, green beans, corn on the cob, pureed peppers and plums. Danger: There are no known recipes that contain all these ingredients!

(5) Out of season produce is as flavorful as my shoes (sorry, Jimmy Choo). We've spent years buying peppers in January, watermelons in December and cucumbers in April (HINT: these things are all out of season). We never realized how flavorless they were until we ate our tasty food at home, preserved in season, then ate somewhere else serving out of season foods. Those waxy peppers don't look good to us in January anymore.

(4) We discovered new restaurants. When we decided to get serious about all this, we started eating at places better aligned with our food philosophy. We've always liked R Bistro and added City Cafe and others to our repertoire as a result.

(3) We know the names of the people who grow our food. We know if our chickens lived happy, free range lives. We know the RDA for wheat berries (did you know these are grown locally?) We discovered local mushrooms. We fell in love with Local Folks ketchup (wicked good, if you've never tried it). We know these folks by name, we've visited many of their farms, and none of our food has been recalled. Yippee!

(2) We've earned the right to play "Revolution" repeatedly. Remember the lines, "You say you got a real solution? Well, you know, we'd all love to see the plan." We made a plan and lived it out! We're advancing the local food revolution! It's awesome!

(1) Anticipation rocks! Do you remember what it's like to really, really, really want something? A new bike? A Boy Scout merit badge? A pony? A promotion? Antonio Banderas? Eva Longoria (before the -Parker)? That feeling where you absolutely must have and it will give anything to get it NOW........even though you can't have it RIGHT NOW......which is what makes it so good when you finally get it! That's what happens when you eat food in season. You know you love asparagus, and the season is coming. You know you really, really love tomatoes, and you'll have some in two and a half months. Waiting makes it better. There's NOTHING like that first bite.

If you would like to learn more about Locavore Living, we will be speaking at the Slow Food Indy event in conjunction with the Weston A. Price Foundation. It is on the 30 of August, at Weston A Price's facility in Fishers, 116 & 69; it's the rec building of a Methodist church