Locavore and I'm elite!

Well, I've been vegetarian for about twenty years now. A small part of that time I've spent as a vegan...but I couldn't seem to stay away from cheese. Actually, my downfall turned out to be a box of milk chocolate covered cherries I received as a christmas gift.

More recently I've been learning some new food terms. Of course I think most people by now have heard "ovo-lacto vegetarian" and whatever variants may have become popular. Breatharian? Fruititarian? Okay, I don't think Breatharianism every really caught on, because you are supposed to live on only air. Fruititarians are supposed to live on only the fruit of plants (no roots or, I think, seeds.)

Now in the last few days I have been reading "What We Eat, Why Our Food Choices Matter" and learned the terms "responsible omnivore", which sounds rather intruiging, and "Locavore", which I will talk more about in a minute.

A responsible omnivore takes care to make the best (from an ecological and sociological and humane perspective) choices possible when selecting their food, and yet they may choose to eat meat at least sometimes. I kind of like that idea, but I must admit that I had a few bites of locally farmed chicken a few months ago and a bite of locally farmed duck last week and...well, I'm not saying that I will absolutely not eat any more meat, but it just didn't make me want to go out and eat a cow, a pig, five chickens and a whole barnyard of other animals the way some chocolate covered cherries made me want to go out and rob a dairy of all their fattiest cheeses and chase them down with a truckload of creamy milk chocolate.

So, not too excited by responsible omnivorism at this point, BUT I found out that September is Locavore Challenge month (or something like that.) A locavore is someone who tries their darnedest to eat only locally grown seasonal food, preferably grown within one hundred miles of where they live. SO...for various reasons it is probably NOT the most ecological, sociological and humane thing to do with all foods in all cases all the time, BUT I thought I would give it a try for the month of September. I think it will be educational.

Wish me luck! Tonight we are going to try to eat most anything I have on hand that is NOT locally grown, so I won't be tempted tomorrow (September 1st.)

AND...on a mostly unrelated note...I've been made Yelp Elite. WooHoo! (If you don't know what Yelp is, click here.) I kind of had this little goal for myself of achieving "elite" status without actually nominating myself, which I decided would be cheating.

What are the benefits of Elite status? Not much...you get a free tshirt, you get a little icon labeling you as Elite (gee...kind of like IMVU VIP, only you don't have to pay for the privledge) and a few times a month they have local area events sponsored by local area restaurants and bars or other venues where they have free food and free booze. Oh, and you get to bring a +1. The real question now is...will my bf and I actually attend one of these? I'm a bit shy with strangers and his opinion of Yelp is that it is a bunch of 20-somethings looking to hook up, so I dunno...maybe I'll be able to convince him to go (and convince myself as well) IF it's something really awesome sounding...we'll see.