Today is Day #2 of the Upper Valley Localvores January Challenge! How’s everyone doing? I had a delicious stuffed acorn squash last night using butternuts (nuts, not squash) purchased at the Winter Farmers Market. (sauteed onions, garlic, celeriac, diced Trukenbrod whole wheat bread, sage, thyme, chopped butternuts, yum!)

It was wonderful to meet and talk with so many folks at the Localvore table at Saturday’s Winter Farmers Market - our Buffalo Chili and Black Bean-Wheat Berry Chili samples were well received and we had 18 new registrants. We have more than doubled our numbers from last January’s Localvore Challenge; we now have at least 45 people officially registered. Thanks to Cindy Heath for the beautiful Upper Valley Localvore banner that she created in time for the winter market!

Sunday’s Valley News had a good article: “Catering to the Localvores” written by Chris Fleisher who interviewed many local food folks in preparation for the article. It was interesting to read that, this summer, a quarter of all food served at Dartmouth College was locally grown, certainly a much more encouraging statistic than that “Vermont ranked No 1 in the nation for annual per capita direct sales (of locally grown food) at $15.52 per person.” (Direct sales exclude sales at grocery stores, coops, restaurants, and sales of processed foods—for these and other reasons, direct sales represent only a small portion of total local food activity- yet the amount seems pitifully small - I’m sure I spent that just on sweet corn in August!) You can check Chris’s Localvore blog at http://www.ChrisFleisher.com/blog

It’d be great to hear from other localvores at this blog. Recipes? Meal ideas? Sources of hard to find foods?

Hope to see many of you at Wednesday’s Localvore Potluck for all challenge-takers. Cindy Heath will be bringing a gift of carrots to distribute from Michael Smith of Gypsy Meadow Farm in Plainfield NH.

Happy local eating!

Pat