Advertisement Do your taste buds cause you to feel happiness when you set the tomato on your tongue and the juice slides down your throat?
Or is the tomato’s flavor weak? Is it one of the nameless masses of tomatoes grown in a land far away, planted by someone you’ll never know?
“You are what you eat,” said Lauri Hoff, marketing manager for the People’s Food Co-op in La Crosse. “It’s a pretty simple concept.”
In an effort to contribute to the local-food movement taking hold across the country, the co-op and other businesses in the region are taking part in a statewide local food challenge.
From Sept. 5-15, the
La Crosse co-op is inviting people to keep track of food purchases and to set goals, such as 80 percent, for how much of their food is grown within 150 miles of home.
“I think it’s good to get people to think about things other than cheap food and convenience,” Hoff, 41, said.
Her family’s 2-year-old backyard vegetable garden in La Crosse includes Rainbow chard and Moonglow tomatoes, and she said her two daughters enjoy picking beets and carrots out of the ground.
“I enjoy it, too,” she said.
I do, too.
A couple weeks ago, for the first time I unearthed potatoes. The experience was magical, as was my first bite into locally grown corn a couple years ago.
I wasn’t expecting it and knew nothing about the local food movement at the time, but when I crunched into the corn, the rich flavor was something new for me.
Jessica Luhning, 29, had a similar experience with local, fresh broccoli in 2004.
“It’s a rediscovery of food many of us in our generation are experiencing,” she said.
Luhning is projects coordinator for the Valley Stewardship Network in Viroqua, Wis., which has cooperated with the Viroqua Food Co-op to organize a challenge to eat more local food
Sept. 5-14.
A dozen restaurants have joined the fun and are serving one local entree a day, and the Community Harvest Dinner will be from 5:30 to 8 p.m. Sept. 6 at Viroqua High School.
The statewide effort, which you can learn more about at www.eatlocalwisconsin.com, challenges people to spend
10 percent of food budgets on local food.
Luhning said eating local food also keeps money circulating in the local economy.
“You take small steps,” she said. “Once you bite into that corn, you’ll never forget that. And when you’re forced to make a decision on local corn or corn shipped from who knows where, you’re going to pick local corn, I imagine, because of that experience.”
For more information go to the Viroqua co-op at 609 N. Main St. the La Crosse co-op at 315 5th Ave. S. or www.kickapoovsn.org.
Joe Orso can be reached at (608) 791-8429 or jorso@lacrossetribune.com.
