Week 3 - Local Food Only, Anyone?

Friends of mine, when I told them about this experiment, gave me a puzzled look asking "don't you eat 100% local all the time?" I wish. The reality is that, as good as the local food scene is in Charlotte, it's actually pretty hard to eat 100% local all the time. Add to that how much I love to try restaurants, see friends, and not cook every single meal and no, we don't eat local food all the time. If I had to do the math, I'd say we spend 50% of our food budget on local food with the other half comprised of staples from the grocery store and eating out.

That being said, this was the easiest week of the three of our experiment. Instead of eating out, I just doubled up on our usual farmers market take. We tried a couple new products like pizza dough from the pasta guy at the market which was pretty good.

Total cost: $120
Garbage: 1 bag
Compost: Overflowing

Great meals of the week:

• Tomato sandwich from the Roots food truck. This sandwich combined three of my favorite things: heirloom tomatoes, Nova's bread and aioli (this one with fresh herbs). Yes, please, I will have another.
• Oven roasted tomato and garlic pizza. I got wholewheat dough from the pasta guy at the market along with red and yellow tomatoes, garlic and fresh basil.
• Breakfast for dinner. One of our favorite things is to make potatoes and onions, pour whisked eggs, tomatoes and cheese over top, and eat with whatever else we had. In this case, we had some Polish link sausage from Windy Hill which was delicious.
• Homemade Tomato Sandwiches on Duke's Gorgonzola Bread. We brought this and some of our homemade pickles to the park one night and had a picnic. 

Observations of note:

• I missed cereal like woah. After two weeks of bagels, toast and eggs, all I wanted the day after this experiment ended was a bowl of cereal. I woke up 30 minutes earlier than my alarm and was literally giddy about cereal. 
• This wasn't that different or more expensive than eating from the grocery store. I admit I expected to spend a lot more money this week but we really didn't and we ate much better.
• If it was possible, I thought more about food this week than I usually do. This was the only downside other than no cereal - it took much more planning because of the far fewer hours the market is open when I'm also not at work.