and there’s still some fresh chard in the fridge.

Sorry about the ginormous pictures.  My brilliant daughter knows how to downsize them in our ancient program but, alas, I do not.  So you may enjoy the huge-ness of the bounty taken from the North AVL Tailgate Market yesterday.

 Hi, it’s Byron the Village Witch, blogging at you one last time from Asheville.  I actually haven’t eaten much today–I thought I’d be cleaning out the locavore section of our fridge today. But we’ve still got lots of delicious and almost hyper-local food to eat next week.

This has been a surprisingly moving experience for me.  Part of it is the usual summer thrill of eating out of my own backyard and part of it has been the eye-opening lesons from this week of eating locally.

I’ve learned that most local eating (for me, at least) requires a commitment of time in planning, shopping and cooking.  No quick snack of peanut butter in a slice of bread.  when I’ve been hungry, I’ve had to make, ie cook, something to eat. If I’d had foresight, there might be some leftovers or I might begin thinking of what I wanted to eat before I was ravenous.  But usually, I was cooking when hunry, which does not lead to creativity in the kitchen.

I have missed soy milk and olive oil terribly but I think I’ll  stay off sugar for a while, at least, and maybe caffeine (though I haven’t decided that yet). I haven’t missed them much this week, which may be the biggest surprise of all.

Several times during this challenge, we’ve been to our usual grocery store for staples for the rest of the family and I’ve discovered that there’s almost nothing local there.  Not even in the produce section.  even our “green” groceries only have some local edibles, hardly enough to make an interesting week of eating.  The place to go is to the people who grow what you want to eat and you find them at the tailgate markets that are all over our area.

On Saturday–was that only yesterday–I bought potatoes from a young man at the N AVL Tailgate market.  He was telling my the virtue