After I joined the dark days challenge, I found out that there was a winter harvest buying club. I immediately joined and expect to get my first set of produce in January. So now, the challenge doesn’t seem like much of a challenge. My argument is that some people get to freeze their buns in 85 degree weather, I get to have local produce all year round.

Still, I did stock up a little bit before I found out about the buying club so that I wouldn’t have to visit a regular grocery store for a little while. I had purchased two gigantic bottles of honey (we’ve stopped using sugar in our household), lotso carrots, onions, potatoes, radishes, apples, pears etc. Most of my meals are cooked from scratch and many contain local ingredients. Except for the spices (cumin, salt, coriander, etc) and other dry ingredients like flour pretty much everything is local.

This past week the most fun item with local ingredients that I prepared were samosas. Although I am not a vegan anymore, I love cooking from Vegan with a Vegence - a vegan cookbook.  The recipes are all delicious and most are easy to make and take few steps. Best of all, the measuring doesn’t have to be exact. For the samosas that I made, the carrots, endamame beans, onions were all local. The flour was not. Neither was the oil.

In an earlier post I had wondered whether the soy beans I purchased from a vendor at the farmer’s market was grown organically. Now I have evidence that it is. I am very happy.