Eat Local July: 68%, 80%, or 82% local!

Here's the tally: my Taster and I spent way over half our food dollars on local products, mostly directly with the farmers who grew the food. We spent $421 on groceries, with the source breakdown shown in the chart. If you don't include the restaurant meals, it's the classic 80/20 split. If you count eating at all local restaurants as being local, then we're up to 82% local.

This was an unusually expensive and indulgent month by Cook for Good standards:

• Performances. I was taking an improv class in Carrboro, so my Taster and I dined twice at the new and fabulous Vimala's Curryblossom Cafe, once for the "homework" of seeing an improv show and once for my class performance.


• Power lunch. Christine Ramsey introduced me to Melissa Blaisdell at my long-time favorite, the Neomonde Cafe, where we talked about social networking, video, and finding new uses for great old fabric.


• Politics. I met our new city councilor, Bonner Gaylord, for coffee in my conference room at the Cafe Carolina to talk about our Citizens' Advisory Council.


• Pah-tay! For the Fourth of July, we went wild and got TWO four-packs of Boylan natural soda (yumm, black cherry!) and I bought a loaf of bread at the Farmers' Market.


• People-power. Some of the local choices cost more than our usual choices, especially the fresh beans and peas but also cheese, peanut butter, and pecans. Smaller batches, more hand labor.

We learned that it's drop-dead easy to spend 10% of your existing food dollars locally in a great agriculture state like North Carolina. Not so easy for folks in the mountainous or desolate areas we drove through on the Coast-to-Coast Tour. But good choices here are:

• In-season produce. Choose from a huge range of organic, sustainable, and conventionally grown fruits and vegetables at competitive prices.


• Local free-range eggs and RBGH-free milk.


• Local, bulk honey, now at Whole Foods for only $3.99 a pound. I still love honey from Little Flying Cows and better yet, from my neighbor Ziya's hives, but this is very affordable way to get local honey.

But to it can be hard to be local and organic or sustainably grown. Super-delicious, Super-Sharp Ashe County Cheddar Cheese costs the same as my usual organic cheddar from elsewhere, but it's not described as RBGH-free. The RBGH-free butter was too salty and the peanut butter came from conventionally grown peanuts. Brinkley Farms' whole-wheat flour is very fresh and flavorful, but it's not organic. (I'm waiting to hear where it is on the green spectrum.)

And in some categories, it's hard to be local at all. I did find regional, organic sugar, but no local oil, baking soda or powder, tea, dried beans, rice, or couscous. I am growing a hedge of tea plants (camellia sinensis), so soon I'll have very local tea. And I'm thrilled to see that Hmong farmers are growing rice near Hickory, even if they don't yet grow enough to sell.