Getting started with local eating

October may not be the best month to become a localvore, at least not in the Pacific Northwest. Many of the farmer's markets have closed shop, we're at the tail-end of the season's bounty. When I asked my delivery guy from Organics to You what I could expect from the winter box he sheepishly replied, "Lots of root vegetables and some sorry looking citrus."

But local eating doesn't have to be all or nothing. Just like we all learned in the waste recycling movement, reducing the amount of non-local food products that we eat can make a tremendous difference in our local economy and the world's environmental health.

My family is like many families: my husband and I both work, he in an office in downtown Portland, I have my own business and work at home.

We have a preschooler and a new baby. We like to cook and eat well, but we're not chefs and we need guidance in food preparation. And there is only so much time we can devote to grocery shopping.

So finding out where to get food staples, packaged foods and how to put it all together is a big challenge for us.

But we know it's very possible to choose a good portion, if not the majority, of our foodstuffs from local sources. We'll share what we find --recipes, sources and people who are doing their own version of local eating -- as we work toward eating a wholly Northwest diet.