Slow Food Nation and Eat Local Challenge

I attended Slow Food Nation in San Francisco two weekends ago and had a wonderful, delicious, inspiring time listening to lectures touring the tasting pavilion (who knew that four hours would not be enough?!), staging at Coi (learning that mad scientist techniques like foams, thickeners, sous vide and essential oils can play up the fresh and local), reconnecting with friends in the Bay Area, and meeting up with friends from Hawaii who also came out for the event, despite rising airfare to the mainland. Eating local was just beginning to pick up when I lived in the city, and now that I’ve moved away, I’m jealous of everything the San Francisco Bay Area has to offer: olive oil, fresh milk and butter, endless varieties of juicy stone fruits, raw milk cheeses. But meeting up with people and thinking about the options in Hawaii, I muse…we don’t have it so bad here, either.

So I’m inspired to take up the eat local challenge. It may not be all golden peaches and olive oil as it is in the San Francisco Bay Area, but I’m pretty sure our volcanic soil has plenty of tasty treats to offer.

Through this challenge, I’m also hoping to explore another aspect of Slow Food: a reconnection with food traditions and cultures. At some point in the past, Hawaiians had no choice but to eat local. So I suspect at times that my diet will resemble theirs: fish, pig, breadfruit, and taro.

And along the way, I hope to answer some of the nagging questions in my head like:

• Does Hawaii currently have enough resources to feed everyone on the island? A lot has happened since those pre-Captain Cook days of self-sufficiency.

• Is local always better?

• How much more does it cost to eat local? Can eating local be affordable?

The guidelines of the challenge: For the month of October, to eat only foods grown in the Hawaiian Islands (goodbye flour and rice! I suspect rice paddies in Hawaii have gone the way of open space in Waikiki, but if you know of any, please let me know!)

Exclusions: Spices already in my cupboard (a lot of mainlanders also list coffee in their exclusions. We’re probably the only state for which coffee is “local”…I might start drinking it solely for that reason!).