Eat Green! Eat Local! Eco Yummy!

In a few days I'm taking off for Baltimore, lovingly known as "Smalltimore" to those who recognize it's distinct charm as a weird little city where you're bound to bump into people you know in real or imagined life: your college roommate! John Waters! Bubbles from The Wire! I'm looking forward to horrifically competitive word games (we've almost come to blows at Boggle), extra dirty martinis, the heat and humidity I crave during clammy San Francisco summers, and most of all: crab. Sure we've got crab here. But it's not the same without the wooden mallet, the red-and-white checked plastic tablecloth and the barely pronounceable Pennsylvania beer. Hand over my bib: Charm City, here I come.

This brings me, in a roundabout way, to local eating. Crab just tastes better in Baltimore, the same way citrus, figs and grapes seem superior out here in California. Contributors to One Local Summer chronicle their attempts to eat local over the course of each summer. And some of their dishes sound delish: homemade yogurt with strawberry syrup in Pennsylvania, a Midwestern honey cake, and a meal after my own heart: Oregonian roast chicken with cherry clafouti. Even if you're not on the Slow Food or localvore bandwagon, it may be worthwhile to stretch your wings during the summer to cook an all-local meal every once in a while. Walk through your local farmers' market and say hi to the people who grow produce that blows that pale, packaged chain store stuff out of the water. Who knows? Maybe you'll be so enchanted you'll ramp up for the ambitious Eat Local Challenge this October.

Photo courtesy ExperienceLA via Flickr