Real People Eat Local

In lieu of our "Local Eater Profile" feature, we are taking this space now  -- at the beginning of a new year -- to quickly introduce or reintroduce ourselves and our various local food information projects to all our readers.

 

After we challenged ourselves (and our families) to eat solely local food for one month in August 2005 (read about our adventure!), lots of friends and neighbors asked us where we found all our great local food and what we did with it. Being moms and journalists, we saw an opportunity to indulge our passion for local eating and at the same time create a rich information source for anyone interested in getting closer to their food.

 

We now provide three related resources:

 

In August 2006, we began sending a text email every other week to a few dozen interested folks. It has grown into this monthly email newsletter that you are reading, accented with photos and graphics that bring the local food community to life, which now goes to nearly 2,000 people who have opted-in to our mailing list. There is no print version of Local Mix, but you can access the archive of previous issues here.

 

Then, we added the website www.realpeopleeatlocal.com in the fall of 2006 as a way to gather more comprehensive information and photos of la vida locavore. To date, both Local Mix and the Real People Eat Local website have been non-commercial projects that we do simply because we enjoy them and believe they are important. Increasingly, we combine these efforts with the business of publishing Edible Chesapeake magazine.

 

In December 2006, Renee purchased the rights to publish Edible Chesapeake magazine, a quarterly print publication that presents beautiful photography and more in-depth features on the people, places and products that make the greater Chesapeake Bay region such a rich "foodshed." Kristi serves as managing editor. Edible Chesapeake is distributed free at many areas markets and stores because it is supported by advertisers. It is also available for home delivery by subscription, if you want to be sure to get a copy. There is no online version of Edible Chesapeake, but www.ediblechesapeake.com contains some of the content of the print publication, as well as additional bonus details and updates (which are not in the magazine), as well as information on where to find a free copy.

 

We're also on Facebook and Twitter, so there are lots of ways to connect with us!

Thanks to the more than 300 people who have taken our online survey about local food shopping experiences so far! That's a phenomenal response! If you haven't yet, click here to take the short survey, through the end of January. We've heard from some of you that the design of the ranking questions is limiting, and we apologize for that. Still your answers give us a good anecdotal picture and you can tell us anything else you want in your comments. Thanks!