Daily Challenge: Create a Locavore Blog or Journal
Food of the Day: Squash

I’m gonna give myself a serious pass on the Daily Challenge for NOFA-NY Day 7. I launched Eating My Share on June 22, 2010 (by sheer coincidence, my parents’ 47th wedding anniversary). While I haven’t always been regular in my blog posts, I have been consistent in trying to be a locavore and write about it here and elsewhere (I still haven’t migrated the first year’s posts from Blogger, obviously). And since I’m seven-for-seven (eight, really, since I announced my intention to blog about the Locavore Challenge on August 31st), I have to admit that I’ve exceeded my own expectations on this effort. It’s not that I don’t blog; as noted elsewhere, I get paid for several of the blogs I tend, and those have to take priority over my personal writing efforts. In fact, if I have one goal for 2013 (I’m thinking ahead), it will be to write more regularly for myself; ideally those posts will create some traction that I can later monetize… I’m not talking about selling ad space, but as a writer I do need to get paid to write! I have a couple of novels I’m working on, I want to collect all my various blog posts (eclectic though they are) and put them under one umbrella website (this is not likely to happen, as there are literally hundreds of posts out there with my digital fingerprints on them!), and I hope to lay the foundation for a couple of non-fiction books I would like to pitch down the road. What did George Eliot say? “It’s never too late to be who you might have been.” (Yes, I know there’s some question as to whether or not she actually said/wrote, but it’s a great quotation nonetheless!)

Which brings me to the FotD: Squash! As fortune would have it, I had two acorn squash from last week’s CSA pick-up. I was planning on my “go to” squash recipe, but I needed genuine maple syrup, which was absent from my cabinet. Then, lo and behold, I get a recipe for Roasted Corn Pudding in Acorn Squash. The prep was pretty simple: The hardest part was cleaning out the squash, which I would have had to do for any recipe. I did run out for NY State cheddar and an ear of corn (we’d already consumed the last of our CSA corn a few days ago). If I had one complaint about the recipe, it was too much pudding mix for the squash. I should have halved the ingredients. I now have a couple cups in the fridge chilling… maybe I’ll get more squash in today’s CSA distribution. This was a really yummy dish, and I ate two of those squash for dinner, even though one would have sufficed. It was that good!

Where I Soared: It was a good day locavore-wise. The blog has been in place, but I cannot fault myself for not “creating” a locavore blog for the challenge. That’s like penalizing the kid who taught herself calculus over the summer break!

Where I Sunk: Not sunk, exactly, but I did eat some chocolate mousse pie from the local shop. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if they did source things locally (that pie ain’t cheap!), but I didn’t do any due diligence to determine from whence the ingredients came.

My Grade: A.