Another day in the life

DeLoca's up to 33 members. I'd love to see it evolve into something more than just an email list: Social connections with locavore picnics, maybe getting folks together to make bulk purchases of things that aren't available in the immediate area to make it worthwhile to have someone deliver from PA or VA or someplace like that, even just as a group that can stand up and say to farmers, restaurants, stores, local and state governments, etc., "Hey, we want to eat local, naturally-raised foods!" and have some small influence on what they then decide to do.

Dinner tonight was local extremely yummy greens sauteed in a bit of olive oil with a bunch of organic garlic (note to self: stock up on local!) and some mango-chili vinegar, plus totally not local fish and rice. One of the things I hope to find is at least a regional source for not-hideously-expensive fish and shrimp, since we eat so much of it. I was floored to read that the tilapia that we get is imported from China; I know it's farmed in the US -- hell, for a while they were teaching fish farming at my school, so surely there has to be a tilapia farm somewhere in the Mid-Atlantic!

I know that wild fish is much better nutritionally, but there's where I get into one of my locavore dilemmas: Do I get wild-caught fish from a long distance away, or do I get farmed fish from closer? Because as far as I can tell, there simply isn't any commercial fishing anywhere around here.

Boy what I wouldn't give for someone who is obsessed with fishing but catches far more than he ever eats, and who would then sell his excess to us. Well, as long as it wasn't fished from anywhere remotely affected by the Indian River Power Plant, that is... A couple of months ago there was a guy sitting at the bar in La Tolteca (which is now La Teztelteca, but I digress) talking to the bartender about how he'll start bringing him in some fish since he catches so much more than he eats, and I wanted so much to go up to him and ask him to be my personal fisherman, but I chickened out.

Pastured-beef potroast tomorrow, with organic potatoes and carrots. Then next Friday we're having friends over and I'm making another regional-natural chicken with organic roasted root
vegetables.

And since I'm never going so locavore as to give up avocados, I'm very happy to have picked four of them up at the Good4You market today. Oh I love avocados - just to slice one open, sprinkle on some salt and grab a spoon is heaven. Yum.