Eat Local can be Luxury not Hairshirt
The resident curmudgeon I share the house with was full of apprehension about how puritanical the Eat Local project would be, how much we would have to give up, what of life’s little luxuries we would do without. Not So! Far from being Hairshirt, we find that eating local has its own rewards.
These include home-made bread every day, beef and rabbit stews for the meat eaters who
Quails Eggs from Darwin Nurseries
had veggie diets before and really fresh veg as well as using up last year’s fruit from the freezer, which previously I forgot about. This supplements the rhubarb from the allotment and the bananas we allowed as one of our exemptions.
It is a pleasure too to meet the people on the Sunday farmers market who sell the fish, the Mayfield veg, the CamCattle beef from cows that graze Midsumer Common and the salads from Wild Country Organics. Especially in the pouring rain as it was this morning! I also got strawberries from Oakington, very early ones from their tomato growing greenhouses. At the regular every day market, one of the stall holders saved me the first cuttings of asparagus from his local farm. What a treat! And it impressed visitors who came for lunch, served with the quails eggs I found at Darwin Nurseries on Newmarket Road beyond Cambridge Airport for only £1.99 a dozen.
But what I had not anticipated is how many opportunities Eat Local gives to open conversations about the carbon issues involved. Friends and visitors are often puzzled by the idea of restricting our diet to nearby growers, some amused about it but all tend to be intrigued and interested and eager to ask why we do it and what it involves. So carbon conversations happen naturally.
Posted by Sue