I've been reading voraciously all week about the Eat Local Challenge and the brave souls who have committed to varying degrees of local eating for the month of May.
My regular reading includes a whole bunch of Bay Area food bloggers, many of whom are taking on the challenge, including Sam, Pim, Catherine, Tea, Cookiecrumb, and of course our own Stephanie and Jen. (Not only is Jen participating, she's one of the creators and organizers of the entire effort. Steph, on the other hand, is being a little hard on herself.)
In reading about their commitment, a common thread became clear, something along the lines of "I'm lucky enough to live in the Bay Area, so..." In other words, sourcing all of our food to local vendors comes easier to us. I agree (though it doesn't make the effort any less impressive). Not only do we have an abundance of local farms and a hospitable climate, but local olive oil and wine, which are two of the staples that participants around the country just cannot find locally. Wine's a staple, right?
So I started wondering about local eaters around the country. The Eat Local Challenge blog is an amazing centralized resource for the effort, and it lists all the participants (the acknowledged ones, at least) across the country, even some international participants.
The first surprise to me was that the participants are not all food bloggers. I kind of just assumed that this sort of exercise would appeal primarily to someone who thinks very carefully about the food they eat. That's a fair assumption, I think. Where I went wrong was to assume that those people would choose to blog only about food.