Happy New Year!

What are some of your goals for 2021?

I have a couple goals I will be sharing in the weeks to come, but my first goal is to eat locally!

Fifty or one hundred years ago, many of us grew at least some of the things that we ate. We might have focused on vegetables, for example, or we may have had an animal or two, such as chickens providing eggs or cows providing milk.

In the last few decades, that’s all changed. We know very little about how what we eat is grown. Even if we do know how it is grown, we don’t know where it came from—a state away or an ocean away.

Learning more about the food that you’re eating and making a commitment to as much local food as you can is important and offers multiple benefits. For example, food that’s grown in your vicinity offers a host of benefits to the local economy. You’re probably helping to keep your dollars in the local economy by helping provide a livelihood to farmers that live there.

One tip that I’ve tried in eating locally is finding another culture or country’s cuisine that matches your climate so you can make foods that will be seasonal to you. For example, Russia and the Scandinavian countries have a similar climate and grow similar foods to Minnesota, like potatoes, beets, squash, and other root vegetables. Pick up a cookbook and learn from their wealth of food knowledge! Try something new like Borscht-a Russian beet soup!

Check out the info-graphic below from Zerocater.com for more tips and information about eating locally. Good luck on your New Year’s goals!