AMY - Reflection

Well, if you told me a week ago about all the delicious, wonderful things I would be eating on this challenge I probably would have called you a liar. Fresh veggie sauce, smoothies, buttermilk buns, roasted chestnuts, local wine, cheese and apples are some of the best things I have eaten, not just in the past week. I have also been watching the 100 Mile challenge for mission BC, as kind of supplemental learning throughout the experience. I was able to keep pretty close matching their 100 days to my 7, to conclude with the final episode today. I know that their experience was much longer, took a lot more effort and was more of a learning experience than mine, but they also had support from James and Alisa, as well as one another. I would defiantly do this challenge again, perhaps for 100 days, down the road. However I don't think I am in a great position to do so now. Local food can be more expensive, especially if you buy organic, and it takes a lot longer to cook from scratch than from a box. I did not expect my family and friends to do this 7 day challenge with me, but the fact that they weren’t made the experience a lot harder. I always had to think ahead, instead of getting hungry at 5 and making dinner for 6, I pre thought almost all of my meals a day or two days in advance to make sure the chicken was thawed, or I had fresh veggies or cheese or other ingredients I would need. 

In the films there was one family, the Peter’s, who I feel I most identify with. Sherida Peters had some cooking experience going into the challenge, but was pushed out of her shell and out of her comfort zone in order to meet the challenge requirements and put a good meal on the table all the time. I also had some previous cooking skills, and I consider myself a pretty good cook - for specific meals. Trying new things is hard, especially cooking new things without a recipe. I had to do this with almost everything I made. Although the website I previously mentioned was helpful in looking up meals by ingredient, I frequently discovered the recipes shown had ingredients that I hadn't found locally.

I thought the Weremchuck-Williams did extremely well on the challenge, by diving right into the idea of 'where does this food come from?' I know the exact location of most of my food, the eggs, the tomatoes, blueberries, carrots, onions, potatoes and more. If I did this challenge again I would love to be able to spend more time on it, look at the sources of all my food and try making more on my own. Visiting places like bee ranches, orchards, farms, and other local food providers could have made this more rewarding. 

The things I found out that I did not like about the challenge were the people who did not accept what I was trying to accomplish. Some people were very discouraging, and it was hard to bounce back from that. Other people would say things like "that is not possible", when I was asking about things like bread. I think overall, if we were to really succeed with eating local food, the community would really need to come together and all provide support for one another. Local meals are healthy, and very very tasting! It's not a limit on what you can eat, it's a healthy alteration of your lifestyle. I really think people need to know where their food comes from and be ok with that. If you're food is out of your garden, perfect you know exactly how it got on your plate and you won't take it for granted when you buy an apple in January. If the food you eat is packaged processed food, how can you really know how it was made and what it went through to get on your plate? Ergo how can you appreciate it and know what health affects it may be causing you? If you know where you're coffee beans are grown and where they are ground to be turned into powder, than I feel it's alright to have that, so long as you're trying to be more local. This idea also cam acrross in the 100 Mile diet 100 day mission BC challenege when a lot of families signed up for 50% local or 80% local. This is trying to eat more local, learning about where your food comes from while still enjoying the things you might miss on the challenge. I think 50-80% depending on the season would be a fantastic goal for my future, and although I don't plan on regulating it or blogging about it in the near future, I know that these 7 days have procided a strong learning curve for me, and like most of the families in Mission, I know I won't go back to eating the same diet as a week ago, and I am happy to report, I did not cheat once!! I was able to eat ONLY 100% food grown and produced within 100 miles of here shown on my map for all 7 days. And I know that in the future, I will have more respect for the food I eat, I will cook more and I will have increased knowledge of how food is grown and how local it is.