31 Jul Bent Arrow’s Local Food Challenge is HERE!

Way back in 2012, Claire read “Animal, Vegetable Miracle” by Barbara Kingsolver. In the book, Barbara and her family set out to eat only local food for an entire year. The pages of this book inspired our first garden and the desire to raise chickens; but, it also made us wonder… Could we be more intentional about eating locally too?

Since then, we try.

We shop the local markets and have great relationships with local farmers, but every August for the last four years we do our best to eat 100% from Indiana and last year we invited you all to join us!

And, it’s happening again this year!

You are invited!

Let’s eat only local food for the whole month.

Let’s break some habits and be really intentional about honoring our local growers and celebrating the bounty that is found in August.

Here are the “rules” we encourage:

1. Local Food = The state we live in (Indiana… but, you can be from anywhere to play along!)
2. If eating out (rare for us), no chain restaurants permitted.  Locally sourced is desired.
3. You get a pass if you are invited to someone else’s home.  No one likes the picky guest.  Traveling for work also fits in this if it’s a conference kind of thing with planned menus… But, if you are traveling, do some research before you go and find the local places there!
4. Freebie items to ensure good cooking… and sanity:
   1. Oils and butter
   2. Salt, pepper and other spices
   3. Baking Needs: flour, sugar, yeast, etc. (Mainly for pasta and bread.)
   4. Lemons/limes
   5. Coffee

These “rules” may look different for you. You may need chocolate or nuts to survive the month. Local to you may mean a 50 mile radius. That is okay! Make it make sense for you and try to do what you can.

This line in “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” taught us that even just one meal per week has an amazing impact:

“Each food items in a typical U.S. meal has traveled an average of 1,500 miles….If every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce we would reduce our country’s oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week.”

Perfection is not the goal.

Creating new habits, like meal planning and skipping the big box store, is.

Trying new things, like making bread from scratch or finding a new farmer nearby, is.

And, of course, having so much fun and celebrating the amazingly abundant season is goal numero uno!

So, get excited to play along. We want to see what you are cooking on social media so be sure to share with #bentarrowchallenge2019.

For inspiration, check out last years #bentarrowchallenge2018 or even #localthirty as its a concept that had caught on a bit across the country.

Be sure to be on our email list too. We will have discounts for local food all over Indiana, prizes for engaging with the challenge on social media and details for an amazing way to cap off the month coming soon!

We will check in each week on email and social media… so see you there! Here’s to August and #bentarrowachallenge2019!