Eat Local Challenge

Soylent Versus Savory Greens

A Siblings’ Summer Challenge—2011

By John Sieglaff

It’s funny, but ever since I can remember I’ve loved to eat food. There’s just something brilliantly fundamental to this most intimate act of putting food inside your body. In a world that’s filling to the brim with packaged soup, gas station burgers, and jarred cheese, it’s no wonder why anyone would want to give their diet a complete overhaul.

The majority of grocery store products aren’t even considered food by the strictest sense of the word. After eating the processed inventions that are able to pass as food these days, soylent green sounds like a treat.

And so it was this unfortunate and rather grotesque twist that the American diet has taken in the last several decades that ultimately led my sister and me to challenge ourselves this summer to not set foot inside a grocery store.

When I mention this challenge to people their eyes tend to bulge, many laugh in my face, and—on occasion—milk comes spurting out their nostrils.

But really, what it’s come down to in our household is that we only want food with verified origins. For us, sources of such foods are the Eau Claire Downtown Farmers Market, Just Local Food, and the garden in our own front yard.

As the harvest season approaches—the great reward of nature—I can’t help but to look back and recount the benefits of our summer challenge.

The Farmers Market has been a considerable help in our summer dietary endeavor. When you want your food farm fresh this is the way to go.

My favorite thing about the Farmers Market is that it’s outdoors. You purchase one food item at a time and no part of the excursion—besides the mass of goers—feels like grocery shopping.

And even though the aisles do get crowded with other green eaters, it still doesn’t feel like grocery shopping because everyone is happy to be there. It doesn’t seem like a chore that they’re doing; it’s something they enjoy. It’s nice to be out with your community to celebrate this amazing, edible nature.

From the wide assortment of newly-picked, verdant greens—and not the soylent kind—to Gingerbread Jersey’s tongue-stinging, farm fresh Screaming Hot Cheese—the best kind of cheese ever—the market has got pretty much everything you need to make it through to the next week.

While it’s great to utilize the Farmers Market in the summer—not to mention the monthly winter markets—Just Local Food is a great year-round option for green eating.

It may be small, but it’s loaded to the brim with fresh produce and pretty much everything you can get at a grocery store.

They have a great selection of bulk food dispensers, various organic snacks, and—my personal favorite—the assortment of fair trade coffee.

But the food isn’t the only great thing there; the people who work there go above and beyond to educate their customers and make sure they leave happy. Though you can’t always find the most specific food item you may be looking for, there’s always some suggestion they can propose.

They even offer recipes that correlate with what they have in stock. If they were any more helpful they’d be coming to your house and cooking your meals for you.

Which brings us down to the garden.

Unfortunately, as amateurs, our garden feels like more work than payoff. But really, when you want fresh food you can’t beat the just-picked, garden-fresh, independently grown food

The greatest thing about your own garden is that the only requirements are sunlight, soil, water, and love. And by love I mean the sweaty labor of digging up the sod, installing a perimeter fence, weeding and thinning—all in eighty degree, scorching hot, humid weather.

But seriously, sometimes it’s really nice to put in the necessary work for a garden. After all, the input equals the output; and when you reap the benefits of your work—or, dare I say, “the fruits of your labor”—it’s pretty much nature’s way of thanking you.

It’s very cool to see things come full circle that way.

The greatest reward of having your own garden—or eating organically altogether—is the reminder it brings that you are an animal on this planet, participating in the natural world.

When you allow yourself to fall into nature and let it catch you, support you, sustain you, there’s no greater high.

Of course, in today’s society it’s hard not to be tempted to go the easier, and sadly, cheaper route by ordering off the dollar menu at McDonald’s or buying a bag of potato chips at the gas station.

My sister and I still make trips to the grocery store when money is tight or we’ll order a pizza when we’re feeling lazy, but we’re making small steps toward a healthier, greener diet. It’s a beautiful thing.

Lately we’ve been expanding our sources to other stores around town with an emphasis on healthy and local food like Hahn’s Market and Mother Nature’s Food.

While the steps we’re taking may be small ones, I much prefer them to stuffing myself with Gardetto’s, Doritos, and other soylent snacks—besides, I hear they’re made out of people.