Do you eat locally?
Yesterday when we talked about Beth Terry’s new book and all her great tips on buying from bulk bins, I couldn’t help but think about a few great local resources that West Michigan residents should be aware of (and that might make other readers jealous).
- Treehuggers is a little shop in Easttown and Holland that has some unique bulk items,including Selestial Soaps laundry soap and insect repellent, maple syrup, Bragg’s liquid aminos, and more. You have to bring your own container, so don’t even bother going in on a whim like I did to check it out!They also recycle some pretty unique items, so be sure to check the back of the shop.
- Smart Choice Market, the new health food store in Byron Center (just a few miles off US-131) has the area’s only gluten-free bulk bins, with over 100 products available. They have this organic, Michigan-grown popcorn that starts out with dark red kernels and pops bright white – and it tastes oh, so amazing! You can also get just a little bit of all those weird gluten-free flours and baking supplies in case you want to try one recipe but not commit to a $12 bag of whatever.
There are other great health food and natural foods stores in the area, to be sure, but these two are new to me and so interesting!
Why am I talking Grand Rapids stuff today?
I’m honored to partner with Local First on the 10×10 Eat Local Challenge, during which we’re shooting for one thousand people to shift just $10 of their food budget to local foods for 10 weeks, August 28th-October 30th.
If we succeed, that adds a hundred thousand dollars to the local food system!
Sign the pledge here and you’ll receive emails to help you reach your goal, including coupons and ideas from local businesses like:
- Doorganics
- West Michigan Food Co-op
- Forest Hills Foods
- Reds on the River
- Bearboy Gourmet
- Brewery Vivant
- Romence Gardens
- Koeze
- Superior Foods
- Lubbers Family Farm
Feel free to grab these buttons to challenge others to participate or even use as your Facebook or Twitter icon for the ten weeks. Let’s make local food all the buzz!
If you’re not in West Michigan, I’m not sure if you’re supposed to sign, but certainly consider moving even more of your food/supplies budget to local businesses, farmers, and artisans.
My good friend and local colleague Donielle, coincidentally, has launched an awesome “Eat Local” challenge this month as well. Check out her ideas and challenge yourself beyond 10×10 HERE.
How am I Going to Do It?
If you read KS very much, you probably have guessed that a great big chunk of my food budget already stays very local: milk, eggs, some cheese, maple syrup, honey, almost all meat, and this time of year, almost all produce comes from local farmers.
I try to shop at my local health foods store when possible, but I do make some online and bulk orders.
I figure that 10×10 means moving $100 to local sources, even if it’s not divvied up exactly evenly by the week.
My goal is to plan out $100 that I can spend locally (that I wouldn’t usually) on things like:
- restaurants – when we eat out, it will be local only these 10 weeks. I love patronizing small business and know the importance of keeping our dollars right in town. I’ve been wanting to get to Brewery Vivant ever since a reader told me they have unpasteurized beer with probiotics in it!
- moving all my cheese purchases to local cheese only
- focusing on local breweries for “fun” beer purchases
- maybe grabbing a convenience “real food” meal from Making Thyme, somewhere I wouldn’t normally shop
- trying to choose small, family-owned businesses over big box stores when I can find an alternative
Read more about Local First and their mission HERE.
Don’t forget to SIGN THE PLEDGE HERE!
What are you going to do to try moving $10 a week to local food sources?
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I’d love to see more of you! Sign up for a free email subscription or grab my reader feed. You can also follow me on Twitter, get KS for Kindle, or see my Facebook Fan Page.
If you missed the last Monday Mission, click here.
Kitchen Stewardship is dedicated to balancing God’s gifts of time, health, earth and money. If you feel called to such a mission, read more at Mission, Method, and Mary and Martha Moments.
Disclosure: No money is changing hands. I’m just happy to help all the local businesses listed here and to work with Local First on this important cause. In return for sharing this information, I’ll get to go to Fork Fest as a member of the media, but that’s it. My opinion and thoughts cannot be bought! I am an affiliate of amazon. See my full disclosure statement here.
Hi Katie,
I love this topic. I am a potter and have committed to buying local in hopes that others will do the same with me. Last year, I only bought handmade and mostly locally made items for Christmas. I vowed not to go near a WAlMart or other department store. My gifts were a huge hit. I spend most of my food budget at the local farmer’s market. My only regret is that I don’t have some of the resources you show in your area as we are very rural. I will keep searching for local cheese and raw milk. Haven’t found any here yet. Great job!
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We try to eat local whenever possible. We buy our beef, chicken and milk locally. However we’ve learned to be very careful when going to our “local” farmers’ market to ask lots of questions and not assume they were the grower. It seems about half of the produce available was grown hundreds of miles away from us……
We do have the option of joining a CSA but I’ve held off because we are building our own gardens and hope to eat from them.
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Sharon Reply:
August 10th, 2012 at 12:01 pm
Our local farmer’s market requires vendors to have signs up giving county of origin and whether it’s vendor grown/produced or not for everything they sell. Helps a lot. Perhaps you could ask the market’s manager/organizer to do something similar?
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glad you’re joining the ranks of awesome media sponsors for the Eat Local Challenge! Will I see you at Fork Fest? (it is seriously awesome . . . )
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Katie Kimball @ Kitchen Stewardship Reply:
August 10th, 2012 at 11:35 am
Yay, I hope so! Will you have DH with you, or should we be each other’s “date”?
Katie
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Wendy (The Local Cook) Reply:
August 10th, 2012 at 3:48 pm
I haven’t decided yet, we don’t plan that far ahead lol
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When you said West Michigan – I didn’t even read beyond that, I just clicked!
Imagine my disdain when it’s the LOWER peninsula! I’m in Western Upper Michigan! 
Boo! Guess we have to take a trip to visit the trolls and check these places out!! Thanks for sharing!!! 
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What an awesome challenge! And a happy one for me, since it helped me see how much of our food actually IS local! I don’t buy much produce at the farmer’s market because it’s too expensive, but we recently bought about $1300 worth of local pastured meat for GAPS and I do get my grass fed beef bones at the farmer’s market (for $2/lb!). Thanks for helping me see how much I do buy locally – and some encouragement to expand on that!
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Katie –
Love it!! I just have to figure out what to spend the money on – I buy so much locally already. I do like the idea of buying handmade (local) gifts – and I do have my parents’ birthdays coming up.
I want to go to Brewery Vivant with you! I haven’t actually been to the brewery itself. Of course, I could also teach you how to brew your own beer – and you can make yummy organic probiotic beer for so little cash. (we spend about $16/batch – each batch makes 8 – 9 six packs). Talk about being frugal!
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Kris Reply:
August 10th, 2012 at 9:30 pm
Oh – and check out Trillium Haven – a new restaurant downtown that is both organic and local! I will have to do date night with the hubby and spend some $$$ there.
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