While the purpose of the Eat Local Challenge in Burlington, Vermont seems clear enough – help support our local food economy, the commitment asked for is somewhat open to interpretation. Each individual decides his or her comfort level of becoming a “localvore” for a day, the week or longer.
 

Well, "brain hurts" seems crazy on a day that includes this apple galette from August First (local flour from a Quebec miller and Canadian farmers, local Pippin apples).

Three days in and we are starting to hit our stride.
 
It isn't that eating local has suddenly become a lot easier. It's more that we are getting better at letting go of things we had grown comfortable with and have had a hard time carving out of our diets.
 

When people were first telling me about eating local, I liked when I heard about this concept of "wild cards," which meant that, yes, the food would be essentially what was grown within 100 miles, but that I could make exceptions.  Like coffee.  Olive oil.  Bananas.  Chocolate. Maybe citrus.  Probably spices.

My family has been eating healthy food for as far back as I can remember. By healthy, I mean using fresh ingredients, with some preserved foods, mostly done so by food processors, to prepare home cooked meals.
 
Coming into this week’s Eat Local Challenge 2009, we figured it wouldn’t be a big stretch for us to add “local” to our routine, especially since we participate in a community supported agriculture (CSA) program at Wellspring Farm in Marshfield and have a large vegetable garden of our own.

So here we are on Day 3.  And it’s Monday, the day I cajole the boys into picking a meal from the international cookbook I keep foisting on them.
 
Last night we flipped through and landed on the Russia page, which contained the tiny pancakes called Sirniki (SEER-nih-ki, according to the helpful pronunciation key).
 

Following the Mad River Valley Localvore Project’s lead, my family is following the Marco Polo Rule (i.e., salt, pepper, spices) and taking five wildcards (i.e., coffee, olive oil, baking powder, baking soda, TBD) in our 2009 Eat Local Challenge.
 

We had a great time at the EatLocal Potluck kickoff last night.  Here's one of my sons, pronouncing the purple cole slaw YUMMY!

A couple interesting things happened on our way to participating in my family’s first Eat Local Challenge.
 
For starters, we got our dates mixed up and thought things got started on Monday, rather than yesterday. Suffice it to say that like squirrels, most of us gorged on as much chocolate and coffee, sometimes combined, to make it through a whole week of local-only eating.
 

With incredible good fortune and nearly incalculable odds, National Butterscotch Pudding Day and the EatLocalVT challenge have converged.   How better to celebrate than to make a Vermont version of this homey and comforting dessert, no?
Just do be sure to use everything local you can get your hands on, if you please.
This version is adapted from David Leibowitz, who melted my heart with this intro on his original post: