Our First Dinner

So it is official, Dave is going through coffee withdrawal and all the lovely headaches, nausea, fatigue that go along with it. Though he is admirably trying to play it down by blaming the weather, we both know better...
Today proved to be a true test of wanting what you can't have. Mairin never, ever, throughout her entire University career had any desire to eat anything from the food trucks parked along St.George Street, but today was a different story. As we headed over to Hart House to pick up our 1st CSA share of the season, the wafting scent of grease from the fry trucks became unfortunately seductive. Looks like there is so much truth to the idea that you always want what you can't have!
Other than Dave's coffee hangover and Mairin's musing cravings, things have been going well. Since breakfast and lunch were prepared the pervious day, dinner proved to be the greatest "challenge".
Here are some things we learned this evening:

Red Fife Wheat Flour is a strange beast. Red Fife is the major wheat source in Ontario and is considered a heritage crop. That's all fine and dandy and doesn't mean very much, what it does boil down to though is a texture difference. This became highly apparent when we tried to bake a pie with it. Instead of being powdery like regular white flour, it is flakey and becomes a little mushy when you add water. Due to its flakiness though, it rolls out really easily, so it was a boost of confidence to our dough making skills. When cooked, though, it remains very dense and doesn't develop the buttery lightness of regular flour. The flavour was great, nutty, a little sweet and earthy, but it was definitely a heavy pie. We both agree it will make great pasta, but we may be on the hunt for some white flour very soon. Anyone feel like a road-trip to Peterborough?

Now without a heavy selection of condiments, spices and sauces available to douse all over our food, we really taste our food for what it is. Meat tastes like meat. Mashed potatoes with sour cream and chives from our garden taste like just that and nothing more. There is no subtly to our food now, it is what it is. This is not a bad thing in many ways, the potatoes were great, it really just speaks to quality of ingredients. It was a few months ago, actually, that we started eating Hewitt's Dairy yoghurt (a family dairy from Hangersville, ON). It is plain, skim, cows milk yoghurt, but after trying it for the first time, we never went back to big brands. It is creamy and smooth and has a brightness that we have never tasted before in yoghurt. Its not as widely available, so we have to make a point of getting it, but it is so worth it for that taste (and it's cheap)! But it proves the point that you don't need to disguise your food, if it is good quality and prepared with care.

So as the sun sets on our 1st 130 mile day, we remain hopeful about our success in the future. We are starting to realize how much time we are actually going to have to spend thinking about what we are going to eat, but that necessity is so much more appetizing with a fridge full of beautiful, fresh, green, spring produce...

Getting Ready

There is an odd sense of calm that comes before every storm... Seriously though, we do feel like we're ready, even though we have about 7 items of food in our cupboard and maybe a dozen more in the fridge.
We had originally planned on having a "last meal", to celebrate the day before our venture into the local eating. The necessity, however, of maneuvering the overcrowded subway to track down said 7 local ingredients meant that our pre d-day dinner consisted of gelato and spanakopita. This isn't so disappointing though considering that Monday was our anniversary and we ate more tacos than should be humanly possible from our favourite Annex taco joint, Tacos al Asador!
We have tried to prepare for tomorrow a bit, so as not to shock ourselves completely when we have to prepare meals. We made a granola to eat for breakfast out of oat flakes, dried niagara cherries, peanuts, honey and butter. We thought of making egg salad for lunch, but then realized we would have to make our own mayo and quickly decided to leave that for another day. Instead, tomorrow's lunch will likely be strawberry and spinach salad with hard boiled eggs. Not too shabby, we think!
Sometimes when you pare things down to their simplest form, you gain a sense of clarity and we think with the 7 items of food we own right now, we are hopefully on our way to learning to live more with less.
Now what are we going to make for dinner...

The Idea

As many have been inspired by the 100 mile diet of BC's Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon, we have decided to embark on our own journey of local eating, straight from the heart of the smoggy Toronto summer!

Our Motivations:

A desire to be accountable for what we eat, to understand the effort and passion put into producing food, to engage in a dialogue about what we eat, to support a growing community of food producers big and small, expand our cooking skills, to walk the walk, to understand commitment to our bodies, to the environment, to the spirit of the world and to each other.

The terms of our diet have been altered slightly from the original 100 mile format.

First, we have extended our local eating zone to encompass 130 miles, taking out the area within 100 miles of Toronto in US and applying it to the outside area of our region to give us a total radius of 130 miles from the city.

Second, in congruence with our 130 mile region, we have committed to this challenge for 130 days beginning on June.9th, 2010. This will not necessarily account to 130 consecutive days. As the summer pulls us in many directions, requiring us to travel, we plan to tack on any days we spend outside of the city to the end of our diet, making it therefore a total of 130 days of eating locally in the city.

Things we already know we'll miss:

Coffee (Dave's lifeblood), Pepper (Mairin is in denial), Chocolate, Olive oil, Olives, Hot Sauce, Loukoumades, Cold Beer on a Patio.

We are Excited and Scared

Happy and Mournful

Prepared and Chaotic

Energized and Exhausted

by the prospect of the challenge to come!

So, come break some bread with us (if we can figure out how to make it...)as we journey to Eat More, With Less in 130 miles, for 130 days.