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Traveling...

Posted at 3:57 PM on March 17, 2008 by Gina Keenan (2 Comments)

We have been absent from the Locavore blog due to traveling. It has been crazy, not one trip, but a multitude of them. Somewhere in there I have had to work (some) and do laundry. This has brought some special challenges to eating local.

We have actually done okay on the eating local front-better than our laundry. We have eaten out only twice in all of these trips. Once at the Cheese Factory in Wisconsin Dells-great vegetarian restaurant, but also good for anyone-I highly recommend it: www.cookingvegetarian.com The other time was at snack bar in the hotel; regretted that eating experience.

I rationalized that as good considering we didn't have the kitchen in our hotel room that we expected during one of our trips. A lot of food preparation had gone into that trip, which was in the Wisconsin Dells at a waterpark. It was a four day trip, I ended up way over packing food. Lucky the weather was still cold, so we could store all of the extra food out on the patio-an outdoor freezer.

We did have to purchase milk at Walmart, and surprisingly, we could get something considered local. They had Organic Valley from LaFarge, Wisconsin.

We averted a lot of eating out and purchasing junk, non-local snacks, by being prepared and having a lot of milk, sandwiches, cheese, yogurt, local corn chips and non-local apples (small price to pay) on hand. It got a little monotonous. But the kids didn't care-they live on monotony at their ages. And after eating in the snack bar at the hotel, the taste of the food was by all of accounts disappointing and the price was even more so.

I do need to figure out a more practical approach to deciding what food to bring and how much. We have a lot of small trips planned this summer, and it isn't going to be practical to haul our food along in mass quantities every time. I guess that is part of the experience of eating local.

Does anyone recommend a way to check for local foods in an area? I have found one site, www.localharvest.org, but more sources would be better.

Comments (2)

This isn't much of a tip, but I was surprized at how many hits "local foods" got in my web browser. I like to check in with your colleague in OK because that 'feels' kind of close to me, and had to click through a couple of pages to find it. You might want to try "local foods [your destination].
You might also want to join chowhound.com and post a question on the bboard for whereever you're traveling to. I did that because we're traveling to Boston next week, and have been amazed at all the interest in locally sourced food on the boards and in the articles on that site.
Happy trails to you!

Posted by jen | April 8, 2008 4:46 AM

Jen,

Thanks for the tip! I will be using that info on our next trip.

Gina

Posted by Gina | April 15, 2008 11:36 AM