So, ok, now that that's out of my system, back to the technicalities of the Eat Local Challenge. It's turned out that in order to make my diet 100% local, there were only a few eliminations, the big ones being refined sugar, flour, and most grains. Goodbye bread, pasta, and crackers. Goodbye also to the afternoon pick-me-up piece of candy. This means no granola for breakfast, no crackers with my lunch, and potatoes or polenta instead of bread or rice with dinner. It's slightly lower carb than our regular diet, but actually not as huge a change as it might sound. I eat granola most mornings, but eggs, polenta and yogurt with fruit were all in the rotation, so it is not that weird to skip the granola. I bring leftovers for my lunch, and like to have crackers with them a few times a week, and I am looking forward to their return. For dinners, the change is only noticeable in the reduced variety of the starch dishes. I have been eating more honey to make up for the sugar, so that's not that big of a deal either. I excepted olive oil and have homemade butter and lard, so I haven't had to alter my regular cooking methods to deal with any fat substitutions.

The main components of my local diet:
Milk and homemade yogurt, cheese, butter and kefir from Oake Knoll
Eggs
Honey
Meat from Houde Family Farm and Stillmans
Local fish from New Deal Fish Market
a TON of produce from our CSA and farmer's market
Cornmeal from Gray's Grist Mill

A typical day looks like:
Egg poached in milk
Fish stew with home-canned local tomatoes, garlic, kale, whiting and scup
Roasted eggplant and yogurt
Lamb steak with mashed celeriac potatoes, honeyed carrots and salad greens
Apple with honey and fresh cheese

The only exceptions I've taken so far were dinner date out on Saturday, and a late night snack of sausage and crackers on Sunday night at a friends house, when an evening project ran much later than planned and sustenance became necessary. So far, so good!